by LeRoy Clary
We caught up with our group well before dark, but not before the searing heat of the day turned to a comfortable warm. We greeted them, I refilled the jars, and we kept walking even after the sun set and the temperature turned chilly. Without wood to burn, we’d be colder as soon as we stopped walking.
I could generate a little warmth, enough for myself, and one or two others, but not the whole group. There might be a way, but I didn’t know it and didn’t trust myself to try. As fatigued as my mind was, I might set them all on fire.
By morning, we’d shiver. Knowing what was to come kept us trudging along well into the night. There was nothing to slow us, no hills, valleys, gorges, or anything else. In the starlight, the ground ahead was clear, flat, and uneventful. Walking was easier than slowing and being cold.
Will said we should have taken clothing from the soldiers. I objected but knew he was right. It was another missed opportunity.
Kendra asked me, “Can you make it rain with warm water?”
“Maybe. Then what? We’d be wet and standing in cold air.”
“I was thinking that you could keep it up. I mean, raining all night.”
It seemed plausible. Then it didn’t. I said, “I could try, but if I can’t do it, we spend a wet, cold night.”
“You’re right. It was just a thought,” she said as she fell into step with me. Her arms were hugging her chest to fight off the cold. “Can you make it warmer with the wind?”
“Where would I draw the heat from?”
She said, “I don’t know what that means.”
“This is as new to me as it is to you, but from what little I’ve heard, magic is not free.”
She snorted. “I know it comes from essence from dragons as well as you.”
“That’s not exactly true, Kendra. Magic draws from one resource and puts it somewhere else. I draw water from leaves, underground, the air, and then concentrate it in one place. Essence gives me the power to do that.”
She walked for a while and finally said, “I’m beginning to understand. I’ve had it wrong all this time. It’s like food provides the fuel to run but food does not make you run. No, that’s a stupid comparison.”
“Not really,” I told her. “It gets the idea across. It’s why a dragon or Wyvern is needed.”
Kendra pouted. “If we had a Waystone, we could just jump through the air to Ander.”
“I don’t know how to use them. For all I know, there will be a hundred mages waiting for us in Ander.” I regretted the words as they spilled from my mouth as if they had a life of their own.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The night was even colder than expected. Once we began shivering, it didn’t stop. We huddled in a tight row of bodies, none of us cared who was beside us because anywhere we touched there was warmth. I had Will on one side, which was good. Anna was on my other side. She was so slight she didn’t seem to have any warmth to share, yet she sucked mine away.
I drew heat from the inside of rocks and boulders, but it dissipated as soon as released. I couldn’t think of a way to contain it, like under a blanket.
Anna didn’t really steal my heat, but it was what I thought about from midnight to dawn when I couldn’t sleep because of the cold. Worse, while in that fog of sleep where I was not awake, nor asleep, tendrils of thought not my own crept around in my head.
Not dreams. Not nightmares. Vague probes of mental energy swirled softly near me, never touching or demanding. It was like a swarm of gnats so small they were hard to see. Now and then one lightly landed on my neck, leg, or arm.
But they were more than feelings. They were mental triggers. With the gentlest of touches, my thoughts shifted to other subjects. After the probing touch of one, a childhood memory of falling from a tree while trying to steal apples returned. I hadn’t thought of that incident in years. Another brought forth the memory of a girl my age who had flirted with me.
The events were disconnected, and minor, but also things are drawn from deep memories as if triggered. That was the right word to describe it. The light mental touches brought them to the surface.
Anna moaned. I assumed it was from the cold but when I turned to examine her face in the starlight, her eyes were wide open. I sensed the shivering was not from the cold.
She whispered fiercely, “Was that you?”
“Me?”
“Inside my head. Just now. Was that you? We had an agreement we wouldn’t do that to each other without permission.” Her tone hardened, and her body stiffened as she pulled away from me, so we were not touching as if I’d violated a trust.
I whispered back so we didn’t wake the others. “Inside me too. I recalled things from my past.”
“Little things? Like someone pulling memories to the front?”
“Yes. I’ve never felt it before,” I said.
She placed an arm around mine and pulled herself closer again. “I’m sorry to accuse you, I should have known better.”
I relaxed on one plane and tensed on another. The obvious conclusion was that if it was not Anna and me in each other’s minds—it must be someone else. That person was the Young Mage, without a doubt.
I pulled myself together and calmed my thinking to be rational instead of reacting and making a mistake. The Young Mage was searching our minds for information. More direct probing would alert us to his attempts. While we were sleeping, he could touch a memory here, bring up another over there, and eventually put together a composite of us that would allow him to know us better than we knew ourselves.
“Is this the first time?” I hissed.
“I don’t think so,” she answered slowly as if slightly confused. Then added, “Maybe last night was the first time. When we were in the boat, I woke confused and thinking about Emma. I know it’s strange, but I missed her. At least, in the middle of the night, I thought I did.”
“Never have the same sort of thoughts before that?”
She said, “I don’t think so.”
I thought about the night before also, and how I’d awoken tired and restless, also thinking about Emma, the Young Mage, and Kendra when she was a child. My explanation to myself, at the time, was that it was the worry for our friends in the boat and the things the Slave-Master had told us about what our past lives might be. It had seemed natural and I’d repressed it.
However, tonight when it was so cold, I couldn’t sleep, the mental intrusion was more noticeable. Without the cold and sleeplessness, I might never have identified what was happening, thinking it was only dreams. Worse, the Young Mage might be probing other minds now.
I rose to my knees and called, “Is everyone awake?”
Several assents came in the forms of groans and grunts. I said, “Listen, it’s too cold to sleep and we’re not generating any heat while remaining still. Better we move on and rest after the sun comes up.”
They stood reluctantly, but nobody objected. We gathered our few things and were almost ready to walk when I gathered them close to me with a few waves of my arms. “I have something to ask all of you. Think back to a while ago, and to last night. Did you have any strange dreams, off thoughts, or sense something was wrong? Before you answer, think about it for a moment.”
All of them either answered negatively or shook their heads.
Elizabeth said, “Why the question?”
“We’re not sure, but Anna and I felt a strange sensation.”
“Meaning?” she persisted.
“We think perhaps the Young Mage was trying to get inside our heads and find out what we know. I know how that sounds, but we both agree.”
There were confused glances passed between them, especially between Jess and Tang who knew almost nothing of what we were involved in, but Coffin motioned with his hand for them to be quiet. Wiley said, “I didn’t feel nothing.”
I shrugged as I wrapped my arms around myself for warmth. “Why don’t we walk and maybe all get a little warmer from the exercise?”
We went in a ragged line, all fol
lowing Will. As we walked, my mind slowed and became almost numb, concentrating on only the next step until the faintest mental touch came again. Instead of fighting it, I allowed it to continue, as I followed the others without missing a step. Anything unusual would cause the intruder to flee. The mental touch formed and took shape. It was a dark outline against a stark blue sky. It moved. A dragon.
A memory of the dragon on the flat mountain top near Mercia flooded to mind. The dragon was arriving back to where it had been chained. I had been terrified.
It was not the dragon or memory that scared me now. It was the intrusion and the forced recollection because I had no doubt the Young Mage was inside my head telling me what to think, which memories to dredge up. I carefully followed the tendril of thought to the source, to the place in my mind where a slight tickle of oddness resided.
Like closing a door, I knew a mental push from me in that place would close off the contact. Instead, I fell to my knees and rested my butt on my heels as I closed my eyes and followed the tendril, like the last wisp of smoke from a dying fire. I didn’t force it.
The mental image was a soft mist and wound and twisted like a small river on a flat plain. At times, it almost turned back on itself. I pushed gently onward, following it. There was no resistance.
A glow occurred. Yellow and dim, it emanated from one place. Concentration carried me to the flame atop a candle in an otherwise darkened room. The walls were made of stone blocks, the ceiling wood. Carpets overlaid each other on the floor. Tapestries hung on the walls, and the candle sat upon a small table in front of my eyes.
The table was near me. I sat in a chair facing it. The flame allowed me to concentrate. It held my attention—all of it.
I looked at the candle through the eyes of the Young Mage.
The image abruptly closed as if a dark curtain was pulled. A wave or brilliant red swept past me, engulfing me in a brief wave of searing heat. My mind instinctively fought back, reflecting the red heat to the source as it simultaneously pulled away and fled back to me.
“Talk to me,” Kendra’s voice demanded.
I was on the ground, my head cradled in her lap. I said, “I’m all right.”
“Thank the ancestors,” she said. “Where were you?”
“Where?” I tried to sit but she held stubbornly to my head and refused to let me move.
“You fell to your knees. When we tried to talk to you, there was no answer. Then, you fell to your side and were still. We’ve been trying to find what’s wrong.” Kendra was in near panic mode.
Trying to lie to soothe her, wouldn’t work. I looked up into her eyes. “I touched the Young Mage’s mind. I saw where he is.”
Elizabeth was kneeling at my side. “Where he is?”
“Sitting at a table in a dark room with stone walls. There is one candle. He is trying to reach out to us. To steal information from our minds. I fought back.”
Anna said, “I haven’t felt him since we started walking. He must have been concentrating on you.”
“I think so.”
Elizabeth said, “Of course. He wants to know where we are, our destination, and what are our plans. What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I think this was his first time, or maybe his second. He went slow and was clumsy—and didn’t expect me to do the same to him. He is no better at it than me, and probably worse. He didn’t think I’d invade his head when he was inside mine.” I struggle free and stood. “But we can’t be sure and need to move. There is no way to understand what, if anything, he took from me. Even now, he might be redirecting his forces.”
When the sun finally came up, we were walking steadily and facing it. The warmth didn’t arrive until we’d walked a fair distance after that, but when it did, we warmed—then cooked.
The sun blasted us so hard we shielded our eyes with pieces of material. The shivering in the night was forgotten. We walked and sweat, thirsty and hungry. There wouldn’t be any food but there was plenty of water. I was getting used to using magic to materialize water and it seemed second-nature.
Too bad I only knew only a few magic tricks. There were a thousand things I wished I knew like Kendra had mentioned the night before. Could I have made warm rain? Could I have drawn heat from the rocks and soil, then combined it into a breath of warm air? And contained it over us? Is such a thing as fire without wood possible? Lightning said there is, but magic always costs, just like fire. If there is no wood to burn, something else must either supply heat or supply energy that can be changed to heat.
My legs and calves hurt from walking in the sand, as well as the lower part of my back. I’d have slowed but each time I looked up and saw Coffin ahead of me moving steadily forward, I pushed on. His three boys seemed to have lost their ability to banter about the time Kendra had fought with the youngest. All three were in awe of her—and didn’t want to offend and have her humiliate them.
Will dropped back and walked with me. Something was on his mind. He said, “It would sure be nice if we could look over the next hill and see if there is an army waiting for us. We could stumble right into them.”
“Hey, I like that idea. Let me know when you figure out how to do it.”
“You’re a mage . . .”
“I am just like you except I can take the small amount of water in the air and concentrate it into clear water to drink. I am not a mage, don’t fool yourself, just someone who can perform a few little tricks. It takes years of practice to do those other things.”
“Is there anything you can do to help?”
I took a couple of steps and said, “Ask Kendra. She can tell if a mage is near us. Other than that, we can have one person walk ahead.”
He accepted my rebuke and we continued. Sweat poured off me. It ran down my forehead, soaked my underarms, and made my shirt stick to my back. Between my legs chafed. The sun was not yet halfway into the sky. No wonder nobody lived in the Brownlands.
Kendra called a halt. She turned to me and said, “Everyone here knows you are not a full mage, but you can make water for us to drink, and I know you can make little rainstorms. Why are we suffering when you can change that? It’s not like we have to hide your abilities anymore.”
My thoughts were confused, sluggish. I hadn’t had much sleep, and her tone offended me. My anger flared, but I held it inside. Keeping my meager magical powers hidden from others had been a lifelong habit. The people around me had risked their lives with me.
More to the point, I hadn’t thought of making rain, despite having done it with Kendra only a day earlier. Magic of that sort is all too new to me, especially when tired, mentally and physically.
I said, “You’re right. We’ll talk as a group later, but Kendra is right. You’re my friends.” I extended my gaze to include Coffin and his boys. “Why suffer like this when there is help available.”
My mind had drawn water from under the surface of the ground before, but now it had to extend deeper to find moisture because of the dryness of the ground. I withdrew it while thinking there were deep-rooted plants that would hate me for stealing their future. Once free of the ground, I atomized the water into a fine mist that surrounded us in a damp cloud.
The fog prevented the direct, searing sun from reaching us, and the air felt cooler with the cool fog that was so dense it almost combined into raindrops. I fought to find a balance. We didn’t need rain when a fog would do, but controlling the elements was still new to me.
We could see outside the fog, so our travel was not impeded. At first, the bank of fog was too large and unwieldy to control as we moved. I pulled it back in size until it only encompassed the nine of us, with a few steps of extra on either side.
Almost instantly, smiles appeared. A few jokes were told, and people giggled or laughed. Shoulders no longer drooped, and when they got over the initial reactions, our pace increased to a full walk instead of a tired shuffle. I imagined what we must appear like to any who might be out in the desert and realized that for all intents, we
were concealed. They would only see a gray smudge, like a small drifting fogbank, and probably wouldn’t notice inside it were people.
What a way to hide. It was a trick to remember. My stomach growled and while one portion of my mind kept the fog in place, another tried to find a way for magic to feed us. It didn’t happen.
Perhaps a more accomplished mage could make food appear. If we stood under an apple or nut tree, I felt certain I could shake a few branches and watch the bounty fall from the branches. I might, with practice, calm a skittish rabbit long enough for my arrow to strike. But I had no bow, and there were no rabbits.
A thought occurred to me. “Kendra, is your dragon guarding our rear?”
“I see no need for that,” she said. “Do you?”
“No, I was just wondering where it is.”
“South of Ander, along the seacoast, is a small range of mountains. She is there. Resting.”
We walked on. Her answer bothered me for a couple of reasons. “Is there a reason why she is there instead of closer to us?”
“I don’t know. She’s been a little standoffish, I guess you’d say.”
That was an odd answer and I’d pursue it later. Maybe the dragon didn’t like people since every time it flew around them, they were shooting arrows at it or trying to stab it with swords. But there was more, and I tried to gently prod an answer from my sister with an indirect question.
“How do you know about the mountains?”
Kendra kept walking. We all did, enveloped in our land-cloud of coolness. She finally said, after obviously thinking about it for a while, “I don’t know. I can’t talk to her. I just know where she is.”
We continued walking as a group. Nobody said anything. They probably sensed Kendra was trying to work out something she didn’t understand. Even Wiley had quit chiding Jess at every opportunity, something that had started up again during the walk.
Kendra said abruptly, “She has eaten a mountain-goat, flown out over the sea searching for food, and is napping on a ledge of rock where she can watch out over a valley with a river at the base. I have no idea of how I know all that, so don’t ask.”
