She learned to summon the rats that infested the castle and make them march around her room on their hind legs. She learned to call the birds she saw in the sky to her window. As she grew older and more skilled, she found she could control the dogs and horses around the castle, though she was careful never to do anything that would attract attention.
But she was nine years old before she realized she was a mage, and what that truly meant.
THE MINOR NOBLES of the Empire fought with each other over matters trivial and grave in the same manner that most of them breathed, but Sabine’s father Henry was even more belligerent than most. He fought with Hessen, with Mainz, with his brother Adolph—who ruled the other half of Waldeck, which had been partitioned at their father’s death—as well as various other princes and alliances large and small.
Maintaining such a constant state of squabbling required not only a great deal of money but also a large number and variety of hirelings. Sabine, as a girl child, was excluded from such war planning, but she often snuck into her father’s chambers to eavesdrop on it anyway. She found that she could fit inside a cupboard in her father’s council room and listen in as long as she liked. In the rare event anyone opened the cupboard and saw her, it was a simple matter to enchant them to ignore her.
Until one day, it was not.
She was listening in during such a meeting, in which her father was apparently planning to attack Hessen yet again. John II, Archbishop of Mainz, had named Henry bailiff of the territories of Mainz that lay within Upper and Lower Hessen. This technically made him the Imperial magistrate over those small pieces of land, though as a practical matter it was largely meaningless since the Landgraviate was still ruled by the House of Hessen. Still, Henry intended to enforce it.
He and his men were planning an attack on the town of Kirchhain, which though Sabine knew nothing about sounded exciting nonetheless. The meeting dragged on for at least an hour, before Sabine, starting to doze off, suddenly realized her father had sent one of his men to fetch something from the very cupboard where she was hiding. She had been through this before and prepared an enchantment for whoever appeared.
When the door opened, Sabine saw a man in a gray cloak, with a thin pointed beard on his chin. She sent the purple energies swirling toward him, expecting his eyes to glaze over and look past her as every one before him had done—but instead, he reared back in surprise.
And then, quite unenchanted, he reached into the cupboard and dragged her out.
“Well, what have we here? It seems there are dormice eavesdropping on our plans.”
Too shocked at the failure of her spell to be afraid—she could not remember such a thing ever happening before—she stood there as the other men laughed gently. But her father was scowling at her.
“Sabine, what are you doing?”
Sabine stood in awe of her gruff, warlike father. She had never attempted to charm him and certainly did not consider doing so now.
When she did not answer him immediately, he spoke up again.
“Have you done this before?”
“Yes, Father,” she managed.
Then Henry laughed. “Well, if she has such interest in the affairs of state, let her stay.”
Sabine sat in a chair for the rest of the meeting, her embarrassment ebbing but the confusion at the failure of her spell growing in turn—especially since the man in the gray cloak kept staring at her strangely.
When the meeting broke up, Sabine tried to leave, scurrying back toward her rooms. But before she got far down the hallway, she felt a hand grab her arm.
It was the man in the cloak.
“Come, girl. This way.”
He pulled her back down the hallway, around a couple of bends, and into another room. Inside was what appeared to be a workshop of some sort, with several tables set with a variety of glass jars, stone bowls, small wood and metal chests, and metal utensils. Books lay open around these things, and there were more books on shelves around the room. A low bed in one corner was the only sign anyone lived here.
He pointed her toward a chair.
“Sit.” She did so.
The man stared down at her.
“Do you know who I am?”
Sabine thought she might have seen the man around the castle a few times, but that was all.
“No.”
“My name is Andreas. I am your father’s war mage. Do you know what a mage is?”
She had heard the term before but had only a vague idea what it meant. Sabine knew how to read, though she had only been allowed to read the Bible. The only other books she knew of were in her father’s private chambers, and it had not occurred to her to root through them.
“No.”
Andreas stared at her for a moment or two.
“Where did you learn to do what you tried to do when I found you?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded. “It is something you always knew how to do, then?”
“Yes.”
“What else can you do? Tell me the truth. You cannot charm another mage until you have grown much further in skill.”
Sabine gulped. “I can call animals to me. Rats. Birds.”
“And make them do what you like?”
“Yes.”
He nodded again. “And you do this by drawing on energies you feel in the world around you, correct? You pull them to you, shape them, and make them do your will?”
Sabine nodded. It suddenly occurred to her what he had just said. She could not charm another mage.
“Sir? What is a mage?”
“A mage is a person who can control the Flow, use it to do things, whether that is to create or destroy, to heal or to harm. It is what I am. And it is what you are, though you do not even realize it.”
“You can charm people too?”
“No. There are different branches of magery. Different mages have different abilities with the Flow, which is the energy you have been using. I am a war mage, which is a discipline within physical magic. The other three schools are naturalism, divination, and mysticism.”
“What can you do?”
“Have you seen the cannons your father possesses? Do you know what they do?”
Someone had explained them to her once, but Sabine had never seen them used.
“I am in charge of them. They use a material called gunpowder, which creates explosions, but it does not work until it has been imbued with the Flow.”
Sabine’s head was spinning. She had no idea she was part of something so fascinating. As a girl in a world where only men could do anything of substance, she had grown up thinking she was bound for nothing but a life of court functions and bearing children.
“What about me?” she asked.
Andreas smiled.
“You, Sabine, appear to be a mystic. And that presents a problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mysticism is a distrusted school. Do you think people enjoy having their minds addled? It is frowned upon by the Church, and is banned in some states. It is also the rarest of schools, which means few people have any direct experience with it. That leaves plenty of room for rumor and superstition.”
He lowered his head and stared at her.
“It also means that you must be much, much more careful about the things you can do than I assume you have been doing. Had you been discovered by someone other than another mage, you might have been burned at the stake as a witch.”
Sabine gasped. “I am a witch?”
Andreas shook his head. “That is a meaningless term used only by the ignorant for things they fear and do not understand. But it is nevertheless a risk for you.”
“Are you going to tell anyone? You cannot tell Father.”
Andreas laughed. “Ah, there is where you are mistaken. Your father is a practical man who has no superstitions about magery. And I think he will be very pleased to hear what his daughter can do.”
IN FACT, Henry—once Andreas had Sabine demonstrate
her abilities on a chambermaid—was a great deal more than pleased. Overnight, Sabine went from being an afterthought to Henry’s most valued child.
Sabine’s other tutors and nursemaids were dismissed, and she was thereafter placed under Andreas’s care and teaching. Andreas was not a mystic, but he was a mercenary as were most war mages, and that meant he was well connected with other mages around the Empire. He discreetly collected a variety of reference materials for her, and arranged for one of the few openly practicing mystics he knew of to visit her occasionally. And while he had no talent for mysticism, he was an experienced enough mage to at least be able to explain things to her when she became frustrated with one point or another.
She learned that what she had been doing to her nursemaids and others in the castle was only the crudest, clumsiest form of enchantment, comparable to fighting with a mace instead of a rapier. There were other, more subtle means of influencing thoughts and actions that did not turn her targets into human automata.
Her skills at calling animals to her grew as well, until she could reach out well beyond her line of sight and bring nearly anything she could sense into her presence. She had to take care with this lest she alarm other residents of Waldeck Castle, so Andreas would often take her into the woods to practice.
Henry, meanwhile, had Sabine continue attending his meetings to learn about the politics and subtleties of ruling lands in the Empire. She rarely spoke, but she listened intently.
One day her father told her the Prince-Bishop of Paderborn was coming to see him to discuss certain negotiations over Henry’s attack on Kirchhain. Hermann, the Landgrave of Hessen, was pressuring the Archbishop to remove Henry from his office as bailiff, and Henry needed to convince the Prince-Bishop to remain on his side.
“Do what you can to convince him, but be subtle about it,” he told her.
Sabine was briefly frightened at the thought of using her talents on someone as important as a bishop, but she was also thrilled at the chance to impress her father.
When the Prince-Bishop arrived, he looked momentarily confused to see a young girl in the room with them, but Sabine had long since learned to turn this sort of attention aside. Enchanting people to ignore things they wished to be away from in the first place was nearly child’s play. And thereafter the Prince-Bishop seemed unaware of her presence.
For a while they discussed generalities, and Sabine’s excitement ebbed. What was she supposed to do?
Finally the Bishop sat back in his chair. “I suppose it is time to discuss the matter with Mainz. I am not sure what it is you wish me to do.”
“If the Archbishop should remove me from office, it will create a dangerous imbalance between Waldeck and Hessen.”
“I do not see why that is my problem.”
“War between Hessen and Waldeck could spill elsewhere.”
Sabine probed at the Bishop’s mind, sending tendrils of purple energy to feel out where she might bend his will. She saw clear resistance on this point. The Bishop did not want to stand up directly to Archbishop John, even though his immediate superior was Dietrich, the Archbishop of Köln.
“Paderborn will not be drawn into such a conflict.”
Sabine could force the issue, but against such resistance the enchantment might fade when he left. A lighter touch would be far more permanent, as long as there was something to shore it up.
“Give him something,” she said softly. The Prince-Bishop blinked at her voice, having forgotten her presence, but wiping the matter from his startled mind was easily done. Her father nodded.
“Waldeck would be most grateful for any support you might give us, Bishop. Perhaps there is some way we might return the favor?”
The resistance was still there, but Sabine sensed a crack opening and pushed at it.
“Perhaps,” the Prince-Bishop finally said.
“Name it,” her father said.
Sabine pushed the crack open a bit more. The Prince-Bishop was concerned about making this request, but she pulled it out.
“The Lord of Padberg wishes to occupy the castle in Upper-Ense. It is his, but he fears you will resist.”
Henry grumbled. Sabine did not know what this meant, but he did not appear to like this request.
“If we can be assured of your favorable influence . . .” he finally said.
The Prince-Bishop wavered, and Sabine saw her chance. She quickly spun a web of enchantment over this line of thought, tying it down firmly. She could see this should hold for some time, as long as her father kept his end of the bargain.
“Done,” the Prince-Bishop said.
When he left, Sabine’s father turned to her. “How much of that was your doing?”
Sabine explained, and he nodded. “A hard bargain, but worth it if I can retain my bailiwick.”
21.
WHEN SABINE was fourteen, her life took a sudden shift into a new and unfamiliar realm.
She had kept up her studies with Andreas, rapidly mastering the materials he obtained for her. Her skills at enchantment grew to the point that the most difficult element was resisting the impulse to control everyone around her. But she had gained enough wisdom by then to know she had to be very circumspect in how she did things.
Conjuring animals and forest creatures eventually lost its allure, yet she could sense there was more she could do with this skill, if only she could think of what. Many times she felt there were other . . . things . . . out there waiting for her call, but just beyond her ability to entice them. Not just magical creatures like trolls and ogres, but things beyond the physical realm. Time and again, she thought she could almost sense them there, and then the feeling would vanish.
The breakthrough, such as it was, came not long after her monthly bleeding began.
Sabine was lying in bed one night, thinking about how this physical change carried with it so many others. She was no longer a child. She now had the ability to bear a child on her own. She did not yet quite know how this worked, but there it was.
Her mind wandering, she reached out for something to conjure as she had been doing, wondering not for the first time if she was simply imagining these beings she thought she could sense in her mind.
It occurred to her at that moment that maybe she was doing things wrong.
If these things lay beyond the physical world, then maybe the problem was not physical distance but something else. Rather than reaching out, perhaps she needed to reach in.
So she pulled herself back, focusing inward, concentrating on the core of energy flowing through her, the thing Andreas had told her was her personal flow, the vital element of herself that gave her the ability to control the larger Flow.
For a while nothing seemed to happen. But gradually, she felt the same things she had sensed before, only now they were much closer. She reached for one—then it was gone.
She pulled back, and in a while the things returned. But each time she reached for one, it vanished.
What was she doing wrong? This was nothing at all like conjuring animals. For that, she simply reached out and grabbed one, just as if she were grabbing something from her dinner plate.
Frustrated, she lurched out as hard and fast as she could, but again, the things scattered before she could take hold of one.
There was something important here she was missing.
These things were clearly not animals. They had no physical form. So maybe they could not be commanded in the same way.
Again, she lay back passively waiting for the things to return. And return they did.
This time, though, she did nothing. They came closer, almost hovering around her, and now at last Sabine realized what they were. These were spirits, incorporeal beings of pure energy.
The realization both thrilled and frightened her. What did they want? What could they do? Could she control them? Did she even want to?
Mindful of what had been happening, she did nothing to disturb them. Finally, she felt one of them close the final gap, pushing fo
rward. It was pushing at the precise point where her flow moved through her.
But it could get no further, and Sabine suddenly understood that it could do nothing unless she let it in.
She faced an existential question. Should she allow this thing to enter her? What would happen if she did?
Had this happened by accident, she would never have done what she did. But the months of struggling with this mystery made her reckless. She wanted an answer.
Sabine lowered her defenses, at once feeling the thing enter her—
—love love love need need want love need eat want need love need love love want want love need need—
—and Sabine was immediately grappling with something that wanted desperately to seize control of her body, her mind, her soul. She jerked and thrashed in her bed as the thing fought to overwhelm her. But deep inside herself, on her home ground, Sabine realized she was far more powerful than it was. She seized the thing instead, and this time—unlike the other abortive attempts outside herself—she was able to grab hold and control it.
It fought her. But it was hers. And all at once, she saw. The feeling of holding this thing, though it was inside her, was identical to what she felt probing and meddling in the minds of other humans.
She turned the full force of her skills upon the spirit, and almost instantly it was tamed. It lay quiescent in her grip, as tractable as any rat or sparrow.
Sabine laughed out loud at what she had discovered. To think she had once reveled in controlling forest animals. This was so far, far beyond it. Now that she could hold and see this thing, she realized there was an entire world of them around her.
As the beating of her heart slowed, it then occurred to her that she could command the spirit. What should she do with it?
She examined the thing. Entirely within her being, it had no secrets from her. Its entire existence was as open as a book.
Her excitement then slipped a few notches. This seemed to be a minor thing. It was weak. It had possessed goats and sheep, but knew little or nothing about the rest of the world.
The Witches' Covenant (Twin Magic Book 2) Page 14
