“What makes you so sure of that?” Damiya asked, still clutching her scorched arm, and Emonael couldn’t help a laugh, her hands extended to hold the shield in place.
“We’re within a mile of the Association! Do you really think the High Magi are going to allow three apprentices to die this close to their headquarters? Their reputation won’t stand for that, if nothing else,” Emonael explained, grinning. “Believe me; they’ll be here, soon. Marin may not be as fast as the others, but she’ll come.”
“I hope you’re right.” Christoff replied, his voice worried. “This man may not make it, otherwise.”
They lapsed into silence, and Damiya slowly eased down against a tree as the two drakes circled the shield dome, obviously trying to decide how to break it, which amused Emonael in some ways. If they just attacked it, they probably could break it even with her mana reserves, but instead they almost seemed confused by the barrier, and kept giving it time to recover from their attacks.
Less than a minute passed before one began to attack more heavily, causing Emonael to swear softly, murmuring. “Now would be a good time, Teacher . . .”
Almost as if her voice was a cue, one of the drakes suddenly let out a shriek of pain, and through the shimmering barrier of water Emonael saw blood splatter over the ground. From above, she heard the measured, annoyed sound of High Mage Larin Windsong’s voice. “How dare filthy monsters like you defile the lands around my tower and interrupt my music? Come, beasts, let us sing the symphony of your demise.”
While she hadn’t been impressed by the magi’s attitude before, Emonael had to admit that the man had style as the two creatures roared in anger and launched themselves into the air after him, even as Larin began to weave through the sky in an oddly beautiful pattern, sending dozens of blades formed of air at the creatures as his clothing fluttered around him. He didn’t hit hard, she noted, but the man didn’t have to, not with how much faster and more agile he was.
A few seconds later, there was a much louder, angrier bugle from above, and Emonael’s eyes went wide as an eighty-foot long silver dragon flashed into view, descending on one of the drakes and dropping both itself and its victim to the ground with a deafening crash that shook the forest floor, causing her to drop her barrier as she muttered, “What in the hells?”
The attacker was no drake like the two monsters which had been attacking them; this was a greater dragon, one with wings on its back and front claws as well, and it was using those claws to good effect as it savaged the smaller drake it’d chosen as its victim. The other drake had paused, seeming torn between fleeing and helping its mate against the new attacker. High Mage Valis took that moment to take the field, and Emonael winced as a white-hot bolt of fire flashed through the sky like an arrow, punching a hole directly through the creature almost effortlessly, and sending it crashing to the ground.
“I . . . I thought you said that fire couldn’t hurt them!” Damiya protested softly, her eyes huge when Emonael glanced at her.
“I said they’re highly resistant to fire,” Emonael corrected gently, shaking her head. “You’re still an apprentice; your magic isn’t powerful enough to overcome their defenses. High Mage Valis is an entirely different matter. I’ll admit that he seems to be even more powerful on the offense than I anticipated.”
“I can see that,” Damiya replied, still obviously stunned by the sight.
“Apprentice Emonael, that was a well-cast message spell,” Larin interrupted, and Emonael turned to look at the unruffled air mage, hovering only ten feet above them, his clothing and appearance utterly immaculate. “Should you wish to take up the art of air magic, you have but to approach my tower.”
“Isn’t it a bit crass to try to poach the apprentice of another High Mage in a situation like this, Larin?” Valis interrupted, the mage coming into view, looking only slightly winded from the trip, and he grinned at Emonael, nodding. “A talent with water magic too? Impressive, Ms. Teardrop.”
“I’m merely informing her that she’s welcome, when she loses patience with Marin.” Larin sniffed, shaking his head. “That’s what’s happened with every other apprentice she’s taken.”
At almost the same time that he was speaking, the silver dragon pulled away from the drake and slowly began shrinking, then turned into the shape of High Mage Hothar, to Emonael’s slight surprise. Instead of staring, though, she bowed her head and spoke up firmly. “Thank you for your praise, High Mage Windsong, and I must thank you for your assistance, as well as that of the other High Magi. I’m not certain how much longer I could have held the shield against the drakes.”
“Drakes that damned well shouldn’t have been here!” Hothar growled, glowering at the nest as he continued. “We sweep the region for things like this several times a year just to make sure that they don’t pop up near our students! It makes no damned sense that something like this is in the area, not without us noticing.”
“I’m guessing that they were invited into the area,” Reesa broke in, coming around the bend of the trail with Marin, both of them with staves in hand. The half-elf glanced over and asked, “Marin, would you please help the apprentices? I’d like to investigate the nest.”
“Of course I will. I obviously was a touch too late to help with the battle, but that’s hardly my specialty now, is it?” Marin replied, her tone only slightly sardonic as she glanced at Emonael in amusement.
“What do you mean by invited?” Hothar asked, and Emonael wisely took a step back and kept quiet as Reesa approached the nest.
Marin instead stepped close to the forester and began casting a spell, keeping to her usual careful methods, yet using far more complex magic than Emonael had seen before as the redhead began closing the injured man’s wounds. Her spells were far more thorough than what most healers that Emonael had known could manage.
“Fire drakes only build their nests in areas like volcanoes or which have a lot of fire magic around them. We all know there wasn’t one in the area, otherwise Valis would’ve built his tower on top of the spot to help with his spells,” Reesa explained, going through the nest slowly, poking things with her staff. Valis simply nodded at her comment.
“Very true, though I didn’t know that about the fire drakes. That makes this really unusual, since this was a mated pair, I believe,” the High Mage agreed.
“That’s why you think someone invited them?” Larin asked. “How might they go about doing that?”
“By burying a fire-aspected mana stone here,” Reesa replied, bending over and putting her hand against the ground. Moments later, the ground shuddered and a gleaming crimson crystal the size of Emonael’s fist tore itself from the ground. Reesa picked it up grimly. “There isn’t any chance of this getting here naturally.”
“Well, that’s a lovely sign, isn’t it?” Marin murmured. “Damiya, come here and let me see your arm, please.”
Hothar sighed and shook his head. “Let’s get these youngsters back to the Association and the man there back to town, then we can talk about this properly. This isn’t a subject we should be discussing in the open.”
Emonael suppressed a sigh at that, and hoped that Marin would share later. Still, she couldn’t refute his words. If someone had drawn the drakes here, that was worrying.
She still hadn’t learned everything Marin had to teach her, after all!
Chapter 7
“What did you think you were doing, Reesa? Sending a trio of apprentices out to face a pair of fire drakes is practically asking for them to die.” Larin spoke in a deceptively calm voice, the wind mage sitting back in his chair. Marin resisted the urge to snort as he continued. “If the one apprentice, Emonael, hadn’t managed to communicate with us or raise that shield, we’d be down three students.”
“Oh, shut up, Larin!” Reesa snapped, crossing her arms in front of her as she glowered back at him. “You’re hardly one to talk, having taken all of two apprentices in the last three years, and barely contributing to teaching any of the students.�
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“Enough, both of you!” Hothar interjected, slapping an open palm down on the table loudly to silence them. He looked around the table, and Marin looked back at the other four High Magi calmly, feeling utterly at ease, compared to their obvious stress. After he was sure that they weren’t going to continue, Hothar spoke again. “Very good. Now, Reesa, do you know why the apprentices were out that way?”
“Of course; at least in Christoff’s case. He’s been a promising student, a little slow in some regards, but he finds it easy to communicate with animals. One of the birds he talked to said that there were an unusual number of wolves near the town, so I decided to have him take a look in that area to see if there might be anything drawing them in from their normal ranges,” Reesa explained, her tone still tart, but relatively level. “I hadn’t heard anything about a pair of drakes. If I had, I’d have put together a hunting party of journeymen and gone out to deal with them myself. I have no idea why the other two were with him, but I’m glad they were, considering how things turned out.”
“Christoff, Damiya, and Emonael are friends. He likely asked for company,” Marin added quietly. When all of the others looked at her in surprise, she snorted softly, shaking her head. “What? Just because I focus on my research doesn’t mean I’m blind. Emonael is my apprentice, and she talks about them occasionally.”
“I suppose. That explains what they were doing out there. But speaking of Emonael, how in the hell did she use both a water and wind spell that skillfully, Marin?” Larin asked, glowering at her as he leaned forward, looking at her intently. “No one else really had the chance to see the water shield, but she’d surrounded all of them, and held off the drakes until we arrived! I don’t know of any water magi in the Association who can manage that, let alone you!”
Marin gave the man a pitying look, and looked around the table at their curious gazes before laughing softly, shaking her head. “After years of deriding my research, the moment my apprentice manages something outside of your expectations, you expect me to answer all of your inquiries? I’m sorry, but that isn’t going to happen.”
“Marin, please don’t be that way. That she can cast the spells is . . . moderately troubling, if I’m being honest,” Valis finally spoke, the fire mage frowning as he shook his head. “She already showed an immense talent with fire magic, and a modest talent with earth. If she can also use both air and water, that’s almost unheard of. Furthermore, the shield that Larin speaks of is troubling. She doesn’t feel like an apprentice, not really. She’s far more confident and self-assured than most students I’ve seen, and there’s a part of me that fears she might be an agent from Tethlyn, trying to infiltrate the Association.”
He stopped at Marin’s sudden laugh, and she shook her head sharply in derision, speaking suddenly, her voice pointed. “No, she is not an agent of Tethlyn. I know more about her than she thinks I do, Valis, and I can assure you that your worries on this matter are misplaced, and that I’ve taken precautions just to be safe. As to her magic . . . the spell Larin witnessed was one I recorded two centuries ago, dictated by Archmage Ode Stormtower. I shared it with her two weeks ago.”
The sound of a pin dropping could have been heard for a moment, but Reesa broke the silence, her voice careful. “Are you saying that Ms. Emonael is capable of learning spells from books, easily?”
“No. I’m saying that with what I’ve taught her so far, Emonael is quite capable of mastering not only my own magic, but the magic of every last one of you as well,” Marin replied sharply, glowering at the other High Magi. “I didn’t expect this to come out quite this soon, but sometimes things progress faster than we expect.”
“Marin, I know that this is a bit delicate of a matter, but . . .” Hothar’s voice trailed off for a second as he took a deep breath, then asked, “Are you saying you’ve completed your research, and that you’re right?”
“No. I’m not saying that it’s done, because we aren’t even close to ‘done’ by any imaginable measure,” Marin told him, her voice flat. “What I’ve taught her is barely scratching the surface of what we’re doing. Yes, she can learn any form of magic, though we’ve confirmed that talent with particular types of magic exists as well. I suspect that the same methods could be used to teach other students as well. But despite that, I’m not sharing until I’m done.”
“But if any student could—” Valis began, only for Marin to abruptly stand up, her chair screeching across the floor as she glowered at the other High Magi.
“You have all regarded my research with derision and disbelief for years; for decades or more in some cases. I’ve been marginalized and ignored, and now you think that I’m going to share the first fruits of it before I’m ready?” Marin asked, her tone deadly quiet as she looked around the room. “I won’t. Emonael won’t, either. And I’ll have you know that I’ve set things up so that if I perish, or if I so choose, my entire tower will be engulfed in an inferno that will leave none of my work intact. You can all wait with the rest of the world for me to be ready to share my research. Now, why don’t you go back to talking about how someone lured fire drakes near the Association grounds, rather than trying to interrogate me? For myself, I’m done here.”
Marin grabbed her staff and turned to leave, a sense of satisfaction rushing through her as she noted the numb silence that she left behind her. As she went down the staircase from the upper floors of the main building, though, Emonael stood from a chair, her face brightening with relief.
“Teacher! How did things go?” her student asked, smoothing her trousers, yet somehow looking almost more beautiful than normal in the dirt-streaked outfit.
“They promptly got distracted by your performance, which led to them trying to interrogate me about my research. I got a touch annoyed and told them off before leaving,” Marin replied, smiling at her student and gesturing for Emonael to follow her out of the building, waiting until they were well away before she continued. “They were worried that you were an agent of Tethlyn. You aren’t, are you?”
“What? No, of course I’m not a foreign agent!” Emonael protested, following along and looking almost outraged by the suggestion. “Why would they think that?”
“In part because you’re simply too good with magic. I corrected them, telling them that your skill with multiple forms of magic was at least partially due to what I’ve taught you,” Marin explained, then paused, glancing at Emonael sardonically. “Just yesterday I asked you to try not to show the full scope of magic that you could use, yet it hasn’t even been a day and you’ve been unmasked, at least in that regard. Ah, well.”
“I’m sorry, Teacher. I didn’t want my friends to get hurt,” Emonael replied, lowering her gaze guiltily.
“It’s fine, Emonael. The problem is that the other High Magi now realize that I have methods of allowing an apprentice to learn any form of magic.” Marin continued down the path toward her tower, sighing as she added. “I suspect that you’re going to be heavily courted by other magi now, possibly romantically as well as with wealth or the like, and I’m going to be plied with numerous potential apprentices in the hopes of luring more information out of me.”
“They can court me all they want. Nothing they can offer is as fascinating as what you’ve taught me so far,” Emonael replied, quickly following Marin and smiling, teasing, “Though I’ll admit that once or twice I’ve thought about trying to take your research for myself.”
“I’m not surprised. I’ll just tell you what I told them. I’ve set things up so that if I die, or on command, I can incinerate all of my research,” Marin told her, and grinned at the way Emonael blanched. “I’ve always believed that I’ll either prove my research or leave nothing behind.”
“Please don’t, Teacher! Just what you’ve learned . . . all the research you’ve done is priceless!” Emonael protested quickly. “The idea of all of it going up in flames . . . you’re going to make me drop dead of terror!”
“In that case, think of it as motivation
to keep me focused on getting my research completed, and also as a reason to keep me in good health,” Marin replied, smiling even more at this point. “If I don’t abuse my body, I know I’ve got more than enough time to finish it.”
“I suppose, but even so . . .” Emonael started, and her voice trailed off after a moment, and let out a soft sigh. “I’ll do my best. I just worry, Teacher. While I think that with everything you’ve put together and taught me I might eventually be able to figure everything out, there’s a part of me that suspects that there are a whole host of subjects I’ll never think of.”
Marin laughed, shaking her head and smiling at Emonael, considering her demonic nature for a moment before she spoke softly. “I doubt that, Emonael. You’ll outlive me by a long, long time . . . and your starting point will be far beyond my own. You had better surpass me, you hear me?”
“I’ll do my best, Teacher. I promise,” Emonael replied happily, smiling more. After a pause, she continued. “So, in the fight with the drakes I noticed something interesting. As one of them was breathing in for its fire breath, I noticed an odd tone to the sound of the inhalation. Do you think that it was actually forming the sounds needed for a natural fire spell of sorts?”
“That’s entirely possible. I’ve long wondered how the first magi learned to cast spells. The most likely answer is that they learned from the gods, or other beings of power. It’s also possible that they tried to mimic the fey, elementals, or other natural spellcasters,” Marin replied, smiling as she continued toward the tower. “It’s even possible some tried to copy monsters with innate magic of their own, like fire drakes and other creatures. I honestly don’t know. I know that dwarves have a strange, rune-based form of forging magic into metal and stone, but I’ve spent my life on just one form of magic, adding an entire second field would take more time than even an elven life could encompass.”
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