“I would be honored to do so, Your Majesty,” I said and then wondered if I should have let Phineas speak for me.
But the emperor seemed satisfied, smiling and sitting back again.
“In that case, let the festivities begin in earnest.” He spoke louder, his words carrying down the room, and somewhere a gong rang out.
Immediately servers appeared with large platters laden with finger food and began to circulate among the guests. A silent server offered a platter to the emperor who made a selection before turning to say something to the empress in an undertone. Phineas gestured for us all to move away from the thrones, and we did so promptly, no one evincing any desire to linger.
“Well, that went fairly well,” I heard Phineas murmur to Lucas.
“And the negotiations are to start tomorrow?” Lucas asked.
Phineas nodded an acknowledgment. “Although there is no need for you to take part personally. The emperor will not, nor any of his family. This is a matter for the bureaucrats, Your Highness.”
Another gong sounded, and a ripple of anticipation swept through the crowd. Everyone pressed back, away from the central section of the room.
Five mages in wind worker blue entered the room, marching forward in perfect unison toward the cleared center. When they reached it, four peeled away to stand at the front of the watching crowd while the oldest of them remained in place. I stood too far off to see any details of the parchment he withdrew from his robe, but it looked like he had retrieved more than one. The sound of tearing filled the air.
For a moment it seemed like nothing was happening, although power rushed out from him in all directions. And then Jasper nudged me, pointing off to our left between two columns. One of the small creeks of golden light had lifted into the air, carrying the waterlilies with it, and had begun to snake toward the man.
Another soon followed and another, until the air in the middle of the room was full of dancing streams of light. The man began to flick his fingers in the direction of different sections of light, and the rivers pulsed where he pointed, flaring up for a moment as rich musical notes sounded through the room.
His fingers moved faster, dancing now like the light, and the notes cascaded over each other, creating a beautiful melody. The music crescendoed, signaling the streams to explode, tiny sparks of light fountaining into the air or descending like a waterfall. I raised my hands ready to clap, but neither the light nor the music died away, merely dropping before beginning to build again as the streams of light flashed, transforming into birds of pure energy with long elegant tails and broad wingspans. They began to make their own dance to the notes, weaving between each other through the air.
I could feel the power required to fuel the wide-reaching performance, and it shocked me.
“So much power,” I whispered to Jocasta beside me. “He must have been prostrate for a week to complete a composition such as this.”
She shook her head. “This isn’t just one working, it’s many. Didn’t you see he had a whole stack of parchments? Although only one man is conducting, I’m sure all of those who just entered the room contributed compositions for it.”
I examined them more closely.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “It must have taken an enormous amount of precision to patchwork the different workings together so seamlessly.”
“As you said, this is too much power for a single mage. We already know they have a more communal mentality here in the Empire—this is most likely meant as a demonstration of how they can use that strength.”
She turned back to the performance, angling her body away from me to signal she didn’t wish to be further distracted. The birds transformed again, bursting into showers of sparks that reformed into small dragons.
A light touch on my arm made me start. Lucas had sidled up to me unseen while the rest of the room was held enthralled by the display. We drifted backward through the crowd until we stood inside a small alcove in one of the walls. I could still see flashes of light from the performance, but the crowd partially obscured it. No one looked our way.
“You needed to speak to me?” Lucas asked.
“Yes.” I shook myself, trying to marshal my thoughts.
“Something about the Sekalis?” His eyes darted around the assembled crowd.
I leaned closer. “It’s their energy. I thought maybe they were sick, but Beatrice hasn’t noticed anything. And I’ve been watching more closely since then. It’s all the commonborn, and all the mages with the green robes. Both shades.”
“What do you mean?” He frowned. “Their energy is sick?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? It just feels wrong, different. Like it’s…shadowed somehow.”
“Shadowed?” He stared into the distance.
“I felt it back in Ardann first, with the green-robed mage who accompanied their delegation.”
His eyes swung back to me, intent.
“In Ardann? You never said anything to me.”
I gave him an apologetic look. “There was only one of them, then. It seemed more like a curiosity than anything of great significance. And we haven’t exactly had a lot of opportunities to talk.”
He sighed. “You’ve been practicing?”
I nodded. “With Jasper.”
“Good.”
His eyes suddenly darted past me, latching onto something in a dark corner of the room where a small side corridor entered the main chamber. I spun to follow his line of sight, sucking in a shocked breath.
A servant bent over a small table. A long parchment rested on the flat surface, and the girl examined it closely. As we watched, she glanced over her shoulder, surveying the crowd. We were out of her sight, tucked into the alcove, and no one else watched her. Pulling a pen from her tunic, she pressed its tip toward the paper.
Chapter 14
Lucas and I both reacted at once.
“Stop!” he yelled, thrusting one hand into his robes and the other back, sweeping me behind him and using his body to shield me within the alcove.
I ducked beneath his arm, keeping my eyes on the girl.
“Shield!” I screamed, and power poured out from me.
It raced across the short distance and enclosed the servant. I could only hope it would be enough to contain the blast.
Those close enough to hear our shouts turned, confusion and disapproval on their faces. If my shield failed, they would all be dead. Without hesitation, I gasped out another word.
“Drain.”
My power raced across the crowd, searching for any unshielded source of energy, drawing small drops from many places. Lucas seemed to have anticipated my action before I had even thought of it myself. Ripping a parchment, his power swept out, not shielding but pushing back the crowd, creating a ring of empty space around the servant girl. And ensuring no one would notice my own strange working brushing against them.
But a breath passed and then another, and nothing happened. No explosion. No fire. The servant girl had dropped the pen, staring wide-eyed at the commotion around her, but I could see two full words on the parchment.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
Lucas stood rigid beside me, his eyes focused on the girl, wide and disbelieving.
The ripple of disruption spread, flowing through the crowd, and murmuring sounded, a counterpoint to the final climax of the music. As the ending notes rang out and the light display finished, the streams sinking back into their original positions, Phineas thrust through the crowd toward us.
I had dropped my shield, and both Lucas and I stepped forward, approaching the girl. Seeing us together so far from the others, Phineas frowned, but Lucas didn’t give him time to speak.
“Do you see those words?” He pointed at the parchment. “That servant wrote them. We saw her.”
A gasp sounded from the Ardannians who had arrived in Phineas’s wake.
“Impossible,” he said. “There was no explosion.” He looked between me and Lucas. “Did you contain i
t somehow?”
Lucas shook his head. “Nothing whatsoever happened.”
Chen appeared from the crowd. “If you will please come with me. The emperor would like to speak to you.”
“Good.” Lucas’s voice sounded hard. “We would like to speak to him also.”
Chen led us through the murmuring crowd and past the now empty thrones. A door in the wall behind them led us through to a smaller, more intimate audience chamber. The empress and princesses had disappeared, but the emperor awaited us there in an elaborate wooden chair. We stopped before him.
“You have made a disturbance at my banquet,” the emperor said, his voice flat and without emotion.
“We sought only to protect your people from what appeared to us a threat,” Lucas said. “It seems you have not been entirely open with us.”
Phineas stepped forward. “We do not wish to question the way you choose to run your empire, Your Majesty, but is it possible you use mages as servants?”
I could hear the incredulity in his voice.
The emperor briefly met Chen’s gaze before speaking.
“Such an allocation of roles would not be an effective use of my citizens’ differing abilities.”
“So that girl we saw writing is not a mage?” Lucas asked.
“No, she is not.” The emperor paused, and we all waited in silence, trying to absorb the meaning of his words.
“Every Sekali, regardless of their birth, is able to read and write,” he said. “We do not permit any of our citizens to remain in darkness as do the southern kingdoms.”
“It is not a matter of permitting,” Lucas said stiffly.
“Perhaps,” the emperor said. “You and the Kallorwegians have squandered your opportunity in blood and death.”
“We are not the aggressors,” Phineas started, but the emperor cut him off.
“I do not speak of your current conflict. It is small and insignificant in the history of your kingdoms and this peninsula.”
I stiffened. It wasn’t insignificant to Torkan, or Tobias, or Clarence. Or to their families.
“What do you speak of then?” asked Lucas.
The emperor gestured and servants sprang forward, placing large cushions throughout the room. When they had withdrawn from the room, he gestured for us to be seated on them.
“Please, join me.”
Phineas hesitated, but Lucas sat smoothly, and the rest of the delegation followed.
The emperor began to speak, his voice falling into the cadence of a storyteller.
“The Sekali civilization is old. And for a long time our development was stunted by the same shackles that still bind the south. With so many of our population unable to read or write, the mage clans had to carry them on their backs.”
Jasper glanced at me, and I only just refrained from rolling my eyes at him. We knew all about such a system, and the mages took as much as they gave.
“And so our mages searched without ceasing for a solution to this dilemma. And, at last, the greatest of us discovered the answer. He was the first to wear the honored green robe, as he gave birth to new life for the Empire.”
“And what sort of life would that be?” Phineas asked, his brow creased.
“He discovered a composition that would block a person’s ability to access power, thus rendering their written words no more than ink on a page. A permanent block.”
“Permanent?” Lucas sat up straight, and I could almost see the thoughts racing through his brain, the unbelievable potential of this information.
“Yes,” the emperor confirmed. “It does not matter how much they write, the act does nothing to unleash power of any sort. It is as if a wall blocks their personal connection to power—or perhaps a cocoon is a better image. They are entirely enclosed, blocked forever, free from the connection that would unleash so much destruction. We call it sealing.”
“And why did you not share this composition with us?” Phineas asked.
“It is not a simple solution,” the emperor said. “There is a side effect. It cannot be done by solely tying our power into parchment in the way we traditionally do compositions. It must be designed as an open composition—one that, when released, draws power directly from the mage who works it.”
Phineas frowned. “Such workings are dangerous, it is true, and we discourage their use, but they can be done safely. Are you saying this working drains the mage dry?”
The emperor shook his head. “No, it does not kill the mage. But it means the mage must be present for the working. We set up careful shields around the halls where the compositions are worked, to give the working boundaries, but the mage themselves must be inside.”
I frowned, confused, but I could see from Jasper’s face that he already understood.
“The mage’s access to power is also blocked,” the emperor said. “Permanently. It is not a working to be taken lightly.”
A rustle swept through the mages around me, but I sat rooted in place, my mind whirling. Jasper could read and write. And his Clara. Clemmy, my parents, Leila. Perhaps all of Kingslee. I could do that for them. But if I did so, I would never speak a composition again.
“How…how many?” My voice was quiet, but it brought silence.
The emperor leaned toward me slightly, his eyes gleaming.
“That depends,” he said.
“On what?” Lucas asked, also watching me, concern on his face.
The emperor resettled himself. “It depends on the strength of the mage. Commonborns are gathered together in large groups inside our shielded halls in their second year of life, and a mage in their eighteenth year enters with them to work the sealing that blocks them all. Between sixteen and eighteen, those mages have trained with a single purpose: to extend their strength and efficiency so they may seal as many as possible.”
“But not all your mages,” Lucas said. “I feel power all around us.”
“No, certainly not all,” said the emperor. “Only those from the most honored of our clans. Only those who wear the green robes.”
I blinked several times, robbed of speech. It all made sense now. The veiled energy. The pattern in who possessed it.
“So both colors of green robes are sealed mages?” I asked, still in shock.
“No.” The emperor shook his head. “The forest green robes are worn by our administrative branch—commonborns who have passed a series of exams and won places in the administration of the Empire.”
“A branch made of commonborns? Wearing mage robes?” One of the older members of the delegation spoke for the first time, outrage roughening his voice.
After everything we had just heard, of course he would choose to fixate on that.
“They are the best our kingdom has to offer, rigorously selected for their intelligence and skill,” the emperor said coolly, and the mage subsided.
I glanced across at Jasper. If he had been born a Sekali, he would not only be able to read and write, but he would have won himself a position of honor and prestige and the right to wear a robe like a mage. I could see the same awareness in his eyes, changing everything.
“Even if one mage can seal many, how do you have enough mages for the purpose?” asked Lucas, his face serious as he weighed each aspect of this revelation.
“For two reasons,” the emperor replied. “Although the mage’s power is blocked, his bloodline remains. His children are full mages, just the same as if he had not been sealed. We have two mage clans dedicated solely to sealing our citizens. They are awarded great honor among us.”
I could see the mages around me casting each other uncomfortable looks. No amount of honor would convince them to sacrifice their own power to enable commonborns to read and write.
“But how many are we talking?” Lucas leaned forward. “How many mages would it take?”
“More than you have,” said the emperor.
Lucas sat back, disappointment in his eyes.
“And that is why I say that you southern kingdoms squandere
d your opportunity. And that is why my Empire long ago closed our borders against you.”
“Our history teaches it,” Chen said. “But it is hard to believe.”
“No,” the emperor said. “Never disbelieve the folly of men.”
“And what folly are we guilty of specifically?” Lucas asked, his voice level once more, his emotions locked away.
“Here in the Empire we have many more mages than you. And not just because of our greater population. Proportionally we have a higher number. Once you were the same. Back in ancient times when you were united. A strong southern kingdom who enjoyed open trade and traffic with the great Sekali Empire.”
The emperor’s eyes narrowed slightly. “And then you splintered. Internal conflict led to the creation of a second capital at Corrin, and half the kingdom broke away.”
“Are you saying the united kingdom was Kallorwegian?” Phineas asked, incensed.
The emperor regarded him. “It was neither Kallorwegian nor Ardannian, but Southern. But its capital was at Kallmon, if that’s what you mean.”
Muttering sounded around me, but I ignored it. Even if this was true—and it did seem hard to believe—it didn’t matter what had once been. We had been two separate kingdoms for many centuries now, and Osborne had no right to deal out death for the expansion of his power.
It did provide some explanation, however. The words of Prince Cassius, burned into my memory, sounded in my head again. He believes you Ardannians stand in the way of the rightful Kallorwegian possession of the entire southern half of the peninsula. It seemed that somehow King Osborne had heard this story.
“You warred among yourselves for years,” the emperor continued. “You sent teams of mages to battle one another, and they were consumed in the process, their bloodlines lost forever.”
Lucas’s eyes met mine. Breach teams.
“And why do our own history books not tell of this united southern kingdom?” Phineas asked. “Or the history books of Kallorway? I remember in my youth when we could still travel to Kallmon and access their libraries as freely as our own.”
Voice of Life (The Spoken Mage Book 4) Page 17
