The Magics of Rei-Een Box Set

by Georgina Makalani

‘I’m not well,’ Lis murmured. She pulled the covers up, then pushed them away to take the cup from Wei-Song. ‘I’m so dry.’

  ‘You have had such dreams before,’ Wei-Song said as Lis gulped the cupful of water.

  Lis nodded and held the cup back out to her. ‘This was different,’ she murmured.

  As Wei-Song went to say something else, the door opened and the prince appeared. She scuttled back, and Wei-Song put herself between them again.

  ‘I see we have shared the same dream again,’ he said.

  ‘You have had this dream before?’ Wei-Song asked, then turned to the prince. ‘You have had the same dream.’

  He nodded and took the cup from Wei-Song’s hand. Moving to the table, he filled it and then handed it back to Lis, who waited too long before putting out her hand to accept it.

  ‘I wouldn’t hurt you,’ he murmured.

  ‘But you have,’ she said. ‘And you will again.’

  He looked at Wei-Song. ‘Can I have a moment with her?’

  ‘What did the gate say?’ Lis asked before Wei-Song could answer.

  ‘That I… It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It was enough for you to set me on fire,’ Lis said.

  ‘It wasn’t you I was aiming the fire at.’

  ‘Who else was there?’ she asked, watching Wei-Song disappear into her small alcove.

  He shrugged and sat on the edge of the bed, then stood. ‘You lied to me. Or at least kept secrets.’

  ‘They weren’t mine to tell.’

  ‘Did you tell mine?’ He moved uncomfortably from foot to foot.

  ‘She already knew, in a way.’

  ‘Did she?’ he asked. ‘Would she tell the emperor?’

  ‘No,’ Lis said. She reached out to him, but he pulled back.

  ‘No one can know. I need to learn control,’ he murmured as he headed for the door.

  Chapter 23

  The fire bearer was already waiting for Remi when he pushed open the gate. He had come with good reason, he tried to convince himself as he closed the gate behind him. He needed to learn what skill he had and how he could control it. What if he lost control and exposed himself as a magic in the open? What might the guards do? What might his father do? But then he knew the answer—without question, his father would send someone to kill him.

  The emperor might have been the strongest, most feared man in all the Empire, but he had never completed such a deed himself. That was left for Remi to do. Since the emperor couldn’t send his son to kill himself, Remi wondered who he might send. Who would he trust enough to kill the future emperor?

  ‘Will you tell me what you know of her?’ the magic asked, pulling him from his thoughts.

  ‘I am here to learn of myself.’

  ‘She is the reason you are who you are. She is the reason the trouble will come.’

  ‘The prophecy states that she will bring peace between the magics and non-magics. Where is the trouble in that?’

  ‘Their own kind of magics,’ the man said. ‘The Hidden. They will not include others in that. She has surrounded herself with secrets.’

  Remi nodded agreement before he could stop himself. ‘How can you teach me? What can you teach me, other than the hidden princess and what she might be?’

  ‘You don’t want to work with her?’

  ‘I need to know what I can do.’ Remi’s voice carried further than he had intended. ‘If you can’t help me, then I’ll find someone who can.’

  ‘And who would help you with such a thing?’ the man asked quickly as Remi turned for the gate.

  ‘The hidden princess said she had a friend who could assist…’

  ‘But they weren’t able to?’

  Remi paused. ‘It was a risk to them. I am a hunter, after all.’

  ‘The greatest hunter of the Empire,’ the man agreed. ‘But I will help you.’

  Remi nodded.

  ‘Come,’ he said, and Remi followed at a distance through the small house, wondering who would have lived here. Servants perhaps, for very few actually lived on the island. Unless their work required it, such as the healers. His frustration rose at the idea of them. Healer Yang should have been living with the other healers, but he had not only been sent to watch over the hidden princess, he had been living at the end of her bed. Remi wondered if anyone else had queried this move as he had, or whether they assumed a connection with the maid who wasn’t a maid. Healers were to remain chaste, but was such a thing truly possible?

  The small courtyard opened into a surprisingly large space. ‘There is no one living in the neighbouring houses. We are safe here.’

  ‘The hunters may sense your magic,’ Remi said.

  ‘But they can’t sense yours, can they?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Show me what you can do.’

  Remi hesitated and then opened his palm, exposing a small flame.

  ‘Can you direct it?’ the man asked.

  Remi let it run over his hand as he moved it around. It crawled along his arm and sat on his shoulder before running down to his outstretched palm again.

  ‘Light that candle,’ the man directed, pointing across at a tall candle against the wall, ‘without moving.’

  Remi reached towards it, but the flame remained on his fingertips, reaching forward for the candle so far away.

  ‘Throw it,’ the man said.

  Remi flicked his hand, but the flame was attached to him.

  The man stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder. Remi glared at him, but he remained as he was. His voice was kinder as he said, ‘Close your eyes. Imagine the candle alight with your flame, as though it has risen in the candle rather than in your hands.

  Remi tried to ignore the man’s close presence and the fact that he had touched him, which no one had ever done save his mother, or Lis.

  She kept creeping into his mind.

  ‘Clear your thoughts. Think only of the fire.’

  He took a deep breath, cleared his mind of everything other than the candle and reached towards it, thinking of his fire glowing atop it.

  He opened his eyes to find the flames still sticking to the end of his fingers. Closing his fist, he extinguished them in frustration.

  ‘It will come,’ the man said, although Remi wasn’t sure he believed him. ‘You will be very strong, but it will take time for you to become who you need to be. I think we can work well together, Your Highness. My name is Chonglin.’

  Remi tipped his head in acknowledgement and took a deep breath. He wished for rain, and a small cloud appeared beside him.

  The man nodded slowly. ‘Can you make that happen further from your body?’

  Remi pushed a hand slowly towards the little cloud, and it floated away from him before drizzle fell from the formation.

  He pushed further, but the cloud evaporated and the rain stopped.

  ‘A good start,’ Chonglin said.

  ‘It isn’t much,’ Remi said.

  ‘It is enough to start with. You can’t expect to rule the world in a day. You can’t expect to magic what you want. Can the girl do that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Remi said. ‘Secrets, remember?’

  ‘You have to let her go.’

  ‘It isn’t that easy. There is a connection. She is to be my bride, after all, and we have shared dreams.’ Remi wasn’t sure why he would share so much with this man. But he needed to share with someone and, despite his concerns, Chonglin appeared to be helping him.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Hidden princesses,’ Remi murmured, still holding back some things.

  ‘We need to know what she can do.’

  ‘I am more concerned about what I can do. And why.’

  ‘I have told you why.’

  ‘How could the prophecy have been unknown before now?’ Remi asked.

  ‘The world can change on a single action.’

  ‘If you wanted her dead, why not kill her before she became the hidden princess?’

  ‘
Because another would have taken her place. It is destiny that this would occur now. We did not know the impact it would have on you, that it would pull your magic to the surface.’

  ‘Are you saying that everyone has magic of some kind, and it just needs to be triggered?’ Remi asked.

  ‘It is an idea, but there is no proof.’

  ‘Unless that is why the girls all had power.’

  ‘What girls?’

  Remi shook his head and tried to focus on the candle, still unlit before him. ‘I worry that I might hurt her,’ he said, unsure why he needed the man to know.

  ‘It is what we hope will come to pass. When you understand the danger she poses to the Empire, you will understand the need to fight against her.’

  ‘What if she is stronger than I am?’

  ‘You will have us on your side, and together we are stronger than you realise.’

  ‘What do you think she could do?’

  ‘My fear is that she will rally the people against you. Tell me honestly what power she has, so that we can fight against her.’

  ‘She makes flowers grow, and she can make the earth move.’

  ‘Move?’

  ‘In a way,’ the prince said, remembering the excitement they had shared when the earth moved in a wave across the courtyard.

  ‘I think she is under your skin,’ the man said. ‘A girl has reduced the greatest hunter to nothing.’

  ‘I am not nothing,’ he snapped, the flame growing tall in his hand. Chonglin didn’t flinch. Remi looked towards the candle and snapped his fingers. The flame burned bright and tall atop it.

  ‘No, but you can be so much more with us.’

  ‘What else do you think I might learn?’ he asked, an excitement growing in his chest at the new ability.

  ‘I think there is much for you to learn. We will find someone with water to assist you as well.’

  ‘I don’t think it safe for many to know what I am.’

  ‘We will only include those we can trust.’

  ‘You mean those you can trust.’

  The man nodded once with a grin.

  ‘Let us see if you can put the fire into something else.’

  ‘I burnt the hidden princess.’

  ‘Did you?’ he asked slowly.

  ‘I didn’t mean to. I was very angry and I grabbed her arms, and although I could feel the heat, I didn’t understand what I was doing to her.’

  ‘Did she heal herself?’

  He shook his head. ‘There has been a healer with her since the attack on the residence.’

  ‘Do you know how she stopped us?’

  Remi shook his head. She didn’t understand herself, and he wondered if she was getting training and support now that she was surrounded by other Hidden, while he had been floundering. He wanted so much to be angry with her, to hate what she was and what she had done to him, but he couldn’t direct that at her. He had tried when he’d thought she was running away—but she wasn’t running. She was trying to help him, and he didn’t know how to deal with his conflicting feelings.

  He would stay away. As he should have in the first place. It was the only way. While she was doing whatever it was she did, it was surrounded by soldiers. He could take the time to learn more about his own skills.

  He realised then that as his thoughts had returned to Lis, his internal flame had pushed through. He flexed his fingers around the flame in his hand. He tried to imagine the rose she had helped him create, but the flame turned into a ball instead. It floated above his palm.

  ‘Throw it,’ the man whispered, and Remi hurled it towards the candle. It burnt through the middle of the candle, causing the top half to fall onto the ground. He stepped forward to study the charred wall on the other side.

  ‘Impressive,’ Chonglin said.

  Remi straightened and grinned. He formed another flame in his palm and tried to form another ball, which rose easily.

  Then he closed his other hand over it, and it vanished.

  ‘I wonder what we can do with smoke,’ the other man pondered.

  A small spiral of grey smoke appeared in Remi’s hand. He tipped it onto the floor at his feet and twirled his finger, making it larger and denser as it moved around him.

  ‘You are a fast learner,’ Chonglin said. ‘Maybe I can just suggest skills I have seen in others and we’ll discover what you can do.’

  Remi smiled and, with a click of his fingers, the smoke dissipated.

  Chapter 24

  The following morning, Remi stood in the rear courtyard of the little house and wondered why he was there, why he had agreed to work with these men. All he had wanted was some control—and now he stood with the enemy, trusting them to help him. They were still determined that Lis was the danger and that she needed to be stopped. Yet these men might have been behind his brother’s death.

  ‘What is it?’ Chonglin asked. ‘Do you think we can’t teach you? Are you too strong for us, or will your lightning never hit the ground?’

  Remi scowled at him and then glanced at the other man standing against the wall, his expression far too serious. Chonglin had introduced him as a water magic, but he appeared to trust Remi even less than Remi trusted them, and he wasn’t prepared to share his name. He had taken some time to try and explain to Remi the feel of the water in the cloud and how to build the magic within it to form the lightning. Remi could do this to an extent, but he couldn’t make it hit the ground.

  ‘You talk of control,’ Chonglin continued, ‘but what else do you want?’

  ‘I want to know what happened to my brother,’ Remi said softly, forming another cloud.

  ‘What makes you think we will tell you?’ the water magic asked.

  ‘You know what happened to him, and I need to know. You want my help; you need me to get what you want. And yet I know you killed my brother to get it. I have come to you to learn, yet you might kill me just because I know who you are.’

  ‘We would have killed you already,’ Chonglin said. A flame ran over his hand as he watched Remi’s little cloud, as though he wasn’t even aware of its heat. ‘We need you and you know it. Your brother’s death is not what you think.’

  Remi allowed the cloud to evaporate and turned his full attention to them. They glanced at each other and the water magic shook his head, but Chonglin nodded.

  ‘You know what happened,’ Remi repeated.

  ‘I know that the man responsible thought he was helping. That he tried to help,’ he said carefully as Remi took a step forward. ‘We knew his princess had no power. It was known who your princess was and what she was destined to become the day she was born. The world would be different if your brother had remained the crown prince, married his hidden princess and become the emperor he was meant to be. Your hidden princess would never have been in the position to bring magic together with the rest of the Empire.’

  Remi had asked about why Lis hadn’t been killed before she reached him, but there was destined to be a hidden princess that would become what she was said to be. ‘Would U’shi have been replaced by another?’

  ‘No. Another would have come forward at some point in our future to be what your hidden princess is. In some ways, we didn’t want to wait any longer to become what we were meant to be…’

  ‘You killed him to enable Lis to come,’ Remi interrupted. ‘You helped the prophecy.’ Remi wasn’t quite sure how he felt about this. He couldn’t imagine not knowing Lis—despite the risk she was to him, despite what she had done to him—and yet he missed his brother. If his brother had lived, Remi would never have known she existed.

  ‘The man responsible for his death was trying to save him. He was trying to prevent the prophecy and keep your brother as the crown prince. The moment you moved into the position, the future was set.’

  ‘Not as well set as it was thought to be,’ Remi murmured, allowing a flame to run over his hand just as Chonglin had done.

  ‘He wanted to save your brother, or at least prevent a new hidden pr
incess. But the crown prince wouldn’t listen. He…’

  ‘He told Ta-Sho why he was there,’ Remi finished for him.

  Chonglin shook his head. ‘He tried to explain to your brother that magic is not all it is thought to be. The crown prince had been looking for something; he had sensed that there was more magic out there and begun looking for a girl. The magic was confused by what your brother was saying. He thought the crown prince was trying to bring the prophesied girl to the Palace Isle. He imagined that act the start of the prophecy. In trying to talk about it, they argued. The magic’s anger flared, and the crown prince was dead before he realised what he had done. It was an accident, Your Highness. He was trying to save your brother but killed him instead.’

  Remi stood stock still. He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure Chonglin was telling him the truth, but there was something in his manner Remi trusted. Maybe they hadn’t tried to kill his brother. Maybe they had tried to keep him alive—tried to save him.

  ‘Who is the girl he was looking for?’

  Chonglin shook his head slowly. ‘That I don’t know. But if your brother had lived, your hidden princess would not have come to the Palace Isle and you would not have the skills you have.’

  Remi nodded slowly, closed his eyes and formed another cloud. As he opened his eyes, he breathed out slowly and the lightning flashed around it. He sighed.

  ‘It will come,’ the water magic said.

  ‘You don’t regret these skills,’ Chonglin said slowly. ‘Despite your fears and anger, you enjoy what you have.’

  Remi huffed and the cloud disappeared. ‘I’m no longer sure of what I should think about magic.’ Or Lis, he added silently. She was so comfortable with who she was and what she could do. Remi wondered if he could ever be the same. He formed another cloud, larger than the last, which darkened quickly before heavy rain fell to the stones at his feet.

  He had wanted to blame them, make them pay for what they had done to Ta-Sho, the pain his death had caused their mother, the way his life had changed. But if it was an accident and they had tried to protect him, they may be better men than Remi had imagined. And they may be able to help him find the control he needed to counter what Lis had done to him.