Lis looked out over the little rocky beach below the school and across the water at the horizon. It looked like it went on forever, yet it still felt so close. It had taken more effort than she wanted to admit to reach the little space. She needed the air, despite the discomfort it took to reach it. Wei-Song was going to let her talk with the child today, and she hadn’t given any indication that she had heard some of what the child had seen.
She sucked in a deep breath, then closed her eyes and blew it out softly. It wasn’t going to change what had to be done. The emperor and his men would not accept the Hidden or any other magics after the very public demonstration that the crown prince was a magic himself. She was sure the rest of the Empire was in uproar, mostly out of fear. Rumour would have reached the little island school, Lis thought. But if it had, they weren’t sharing any of it with her.
Lis was sure the people would want to know how the emperor had protected a magic of his own blood while killing so many others. He was determined to remain in power, yet Lis wondered how it could be done.
‘They have closed the gates,’ a soft voice said behind her, and she blew out another long breath before turning.
Master Yangshing smiled kindly. Lis had grown to care for the man over her time here, in the same way she cared for her father, although they were very different men. The master was always very level, and Lis had learnt much from him in remaining calm even when her insides were tied into knots.
‘Is that to keep them in or to keep others out?’
‘A good question, and one I cannot answer. In some ways, I wish you were there to ensure things would be as they should.’
‘They may never be as they should,’ Lis said. ‘They haven’t been for some time, and I may not be the one to fix it, despite what the child might say. Who is to say that what she sees will happen?’
‘Who is to say it won’t?’
‘It was so hard to fight him,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think I can do that again. And we nearly killed each other. I might have killed him,’ she added, wondering if it was indeed possible for her to kill him, or he her. ‘I suppose he nearly killed me before,’ she mused aloud.
‘I don’t think he could,’ the older man said, looking beyond her out across the water. ‘There is something there, whether you want to admit it or not. The crown prince did far more for you than he had done for anyone in the past.’
‘He looked after Mu-Phi,’ Lis added, looking back at the view.
‘Do you think he does so now? She might be quicker to kill him than you.’
Lis shook her head slowly. ‘I saw her die in the square,’ she said softly, closing her eyes as the memory of her swift death played out again in her mind.
‘I don’t think she knew who to fight,’ he said.
‘Are we really safe here?’ Lis asked, shaking the vision of the girl’s death.
He nodded. ‘All those years of fighting, and we have continued on without any notice from the Empire.’
‘What if I were found here, or Wei-Song?’
‘Many know who she is, yet she was able to grow in peace here.’
‘Her father doesn’t know.’
He sighed. ‘It is difficult with the emperor to be sure of what he knows.’
‘I saw his face when he first laid eyes on her. He didn’t know.’
‘It is time for you to meet the little one,’ the master said kindly, indicating the buildings, and she followed him back towards the little school. The greying wood looked as though the building had stood for long in the weather. The lacquer around the eves was cracked and peeling. The tile roof was faded. And yet it looked lived in, as though many students had used it. And they had. Lis just wished she’d had the chance to study here, to learn all she could of herself before she had been thrown into her strange new life on the Palace Isle. But then if she had been at the school, she might have had a very different life.
‘Do any of your students go on to be priestesses?’ she asked as they entered the building.
‘A different kind of calling,’ he said, walking ahead of her.
But a life of seclusion, she thought.
The child sat on the floor, her legs crossed, her hands in her lap and her eyes closed. Wei-Song put her finger to her lips, and Lis continued quietly into the room. Wei-Song stood beside the child as the master followed Lis in. The girl opened her eyes, smiled up at Lis and tapped the floor before her.
Lis lowered herself quickly to the cool ground. The girl reached out and took Lis’s hands quickly in her own, then sucked in a sharp breath.
‘Close your eyes,’ the child directed.
Lis nodded at her very young face and then did just that.
‘Breathe,’ she continued.
Lis struggled to maintain her quietness in the darkness behind her lids. She wasn’t sure what she had expected or even what she had hoped for, but this wasn’t it. After several moments, she concentrated on the small warm hands in her own and slowed her breathing.
‘Good,’ the child said.
Lis wondered if Wei-Song and the master remained in the room or if they had left them alone. As her mind began to wander, the child squeezed her hands. Lis wondered who she was, what her name was and who she had been before the visions and the school had taken her in.
‘I am not the focus of this session,’ the child said, her voice deeper and more commanding now.
Lis nodded again and tried to focus only on her breathing.
A flash of colour penetrated the darkness behind her lids, and she leaned back, only to be pulled forward again by the girl. Another flash followed, and she was sure she saw flames, like those she had seen in the prince’s eyes.
The girl sighed loudly. Lis wondered if she saw the same images or something very different. Perhaps Lis only saw part of what she did.
The flames changed and flickered, growing smaller and then taller again before turning into a rose, like the one she had created with the prince. And then it changed into another creature—she wasn’t quite sure what as the flames licked around its form, changing the shape and obscuring the beast beneath. She thought she saw a wing. Could it be a bird of fire?
‘What did you see?’ the girl asked, shaking her. Lis opened her eyes to the bright room. She shook her head and realised they were alone. ‘You must tell me.’
‘What did you see?’ Lis countered.
‘Death and destruction,’ the girl whispered, leaning towards Lis, her hands still holding her tight. ‘But I don’t know if you work together or against each other. What you saw might give us that answer.’
‘It wasn’t clear,’ Lis said.
‘But you recognised what it was,’ the child continued confidently.
Lis shook her head and pulled her hands from the child’s tight hold. ‘Do you not see anything clearly?’
‘I know you must work together, but it is a challenge for you both to trust each other. I saw blood, but I don’t know who sheds it.’
‘Could it be another war that goes on until there is no one left?’
‘The Empire continues. Two will rule.’
‘And if we don’t work together and I am killed, will he take another?’
‘Who would know such a thing?’ the child asked, confusion knitting her brow.
‘You would,’ Lis said, standing suddenly, although she still felt somewhat shaky on her legs. ‘Who sits on the throne?’ she asked too loudly.
‘I can’t see that either.’
‘How do you know two will rule?’
The girl shrugged. ‘I just do.’
The door slid open and Master Yangshing entered. He looked serious. The child turned to him, her face pleading, and Lis was reminded of when she was a child and hoped her father would give in to what she wanted.
‘Tell her she must tell me what she saw,’ the child demanded.
The tutor looked at Lis and then back to the child. ‘Why won’t she tell you herself?’
‘I don’t know,’ she sa
id.
‘I thought you knew all,’ Lis said.
The girl turned back to her, and Lis realised just how young she was. ‘I only know what I am shown. I can’t choose what that is. And when it comes to you, I see blood and darkness, fire and…’ She stopped, shaking her head.
‘You don’t know,’ Lis whispered.
The girl shook her head again.
‘I think there was a bird in the flames, but I’m not sure,’ Lis said.
‘The phoenix,’ the master whispered.
‘When was the last one seen?’ the child asked.
‘It is just myth,’ he murmured. ‘There are stories of dreams and images, but no certainty that they ever existed.’
‘They do,’ the child said.
‘Do you think it means we will work together?’
‘You have great skill,’ the master said.
‘That doesn’t answer the question.’
‘I only know you must work together,’ the girl said.
Lis shook her head slowly. ‘Only I have no choice about whether or not we do. It must be his decision. He is the one who chose to turn away—only he can turn back.’
The child suddenly smiled at her. ‘You are getting closer,’ she said, ‘but you have more choices than you realise.’
Chapter 2
Remi sat on the edge of the bed and looked over the cobwebs surrounding him. He had wanted so desperately to push them away, but he feared they lent themselves to the magic that kept them all hidden. He didn’t know where the magics had hidden themselves before, other than the little houses he had visited, but they had managed to keep themselves from the hunters.
Now they filled the hidden princess compound he had discovered with Lis. The one he had dreamed of, that they both had. He felt the loss of her. The entire world was in chaos. It was what he had thought he wanted. But he had never really imagined her gone.
She had wanted to save him, and that hurt more than her death. She had faced him, not because she had felt she was an option for the Empire, or that it was the only thing she could do to stop him. She had been there because she had thought she could save him. And in trying to do that, she had died.
Some of the magics had suggested she had hidden or been hidden away. But she wouldn’t have had the energy left to do that. He’d barely had the energy himself, yet the flames had swirled around him.
There had been something about her before she’d disappeared in the flames, maybe a sadness that it had come to this, like she too had lost him. He pressed his hand into his chest. All the anger, all the hatred, all the confusion seemed insignificant now that she was gone.
It was a physical pain he felt at her loss. He gulped as it threatened to tear him apart. The fire was hot beneath his skin. He appeared to have maintained his power, but he had even less control. It should have scared him, what he had become, what he could be, but he only wanted it to consume him and end his suffering.
He lay back and closed his eyes. His body ached from the fight, but the sharp pain in his chest was worse. Lis had tried to talk with him, tried to tell him what it would do to him, and the magic had pushed her away. Again, he had raised his sword to her, and he understood now why she had been so scared of him. He had never given her the opportunity to understand how much he had wanted to protect her. And then he had lost her. In the one moment as they’d faced each other across the square, the moment he’d realised she was trying to save him, the moment before she’d died.
A memory of Mu-Phi flashed before him. Her anger had made his flames swirl higher, and her sword had been sharp. He rubbed his hand over the still-healing wound on his arm. It was only luck that she had just managed to graze him before one of the magics had taken her down. Just like that, she was gone.
His brother would have been very disappointed if he’d been alive and that had cut him, but not as much as Remi was at the idea that Lis might be gone forever. And they were in hiding, not taking the Empire for themselves as the magics had predicted. The knowledge of where the visions had come from was still a secret. He didn’t know who had told them of what he was and what he could become. Chonglin wouldn’t speak of it. And no matter what Remi tried, he wouldn’t even hint or confirm that Remi could meet the person in question.
There was nowhere he could go and no one he could talk to. He wondered what his mother thought, although he knew Lis had told her long ago of what he was. And she had been accepting of his sister, even if his father hadn’t been. There was no way his father would forgive him for this. Not only did Remi have magic, he had started a fight in the middle of the Palace Isle—which told the people that his father had lied, or at least that he was wrong and magic was not gone from the Empire.
If only Remi could have the chance to talk to his father about what he really believed. There had never been a chance for them to talk other than Remi receiving directions. There were some stories of his father’s reign during the magic war, but even those were vague. Although his father was a strong man, Remi was sure it was men like General Long and the hunters who had done all the work and saved the Empire. They might have been covered in the blood of the magics, but it had stained his father.
The emperor ordered things to be done but did little himself. Remi wondered for a moment if his father might have delegated other duties, perhaps he wasn’t really his father, and yet it was the line that was most important.
He threw the covers off, trying to throw his frustrations and sadness with them. The dust swirled up around him, and he wondered why no one had cleaned up in all the days they had stayed in the hidden princess dormitory. But perhaps he was right and cobwebs were part of the magic of the place that kept them hidden from the rest of the Empire.
He slowly moved his legs around and onto the floor. Sharp pain rippled through his feet as he tried to stand, and then the high priestess was there, hooking her arm around him and helping him to his feet.
‘It will take some time,’ she said softly, ‘but movement is good for you.’
He nodded and leaned heavily into her small frame. He wondered if he would have survived without this woman. The magics needed him, he thought, and yet when they had dragged him here after the fight, they’d left him alone in the dark corner of the room. They had huddled and talked at the other end, and then the priestess had appeared.
She had fed him soup, wiped his brow, massaged his limbs. She had brought him back to the world, although he certainly hadn’t wanted to come back and they didn’t appear to need him. When she led him out into the sunshine, he wondered when the storm had cleared.
‘Have you heard anything?’ he asked, his voice raspy from underuse.
‘No, I have not,’ she said without looking at him as she carefully walked him towards the dark water of the pond.
‘Have you seen anything?’ he asked. He tried to pull her to a stop, but he only managed to nearly fall.
She glared at him as though he was a child. ‘Nothing that makes any sense,’ she murmured. ‘And no, I have not seen her.’
A part of him, a large part of him, hoped there had been some mistake and Lis lived, but the priestess had not heard anything about her, nor seen anything, no matter how many times he asked. Other than a certainty that Lis was dead.
‘Why are you not with the others?’ he asked, leaning into the railing around the gazebo as she rested him against it and stepped back.
‘I am needed here,’ she said simply. ‘You need me.’
‘And what if others need you? Do they know where you are?’
She shook her head and leaned beside him on the railing. ‘I will return to the temple now that you are up. It is decided that the priestesses are to return to the Sacred Isle.’
Remi took a step forward. ‘You are the visionaries,’ he said, the idea coming to him quickly. It was the only explanation.
She nodded once. ‘I have always known that we needed to keep our abilities secret. That to be able to do what we do, we need to do it in isolation. If the
world knew what we could see, they would be forever asking us what the future holds, which in itself would change that future.’ She sighed and looked down at her hands. ‘Many of the magics know what we are, and I can’t discover how they were told, who told them, or for what reason. But I can guess that it was done after the start of the magic war, to enable us to do what we can for the Empire.’
‘Such as destroying the princess?’
‘She would have destroyed the Empire if we had not stopped her.’
‘Would she have?’ he asked. The question was serious, but the woman before him smiled, a knowing smile. ‘Surely someone would have seen what was to come,’ Remi said.
‘But I cannot see what occurred. I wonder if the person, or priestess, had some skill in hiding that and knew what telling them would do to change the future. Maybe it was the way to defeat the princess. I couldn’t see how that could be done, only what it would mean. What it would do to the future. You were unseen until your magic developed.’
Remi nodded slowly. He was an anomaly the magics had been quick to try and influence—and he had been influenced so easily, he realised now. He thought it was due to the lies Lis had told, the way she had hidden her true self from him, as well as his sister. And learning that the magics had in some way tried to save his brother had helped lead him to their cause. Yet he knew that wasn’t what he wanted. He hadn’t wanted to fight his own men, or Lis, and he certainly didn’t want her dead.
If he could go back, he would have worked with her. He would have found a way to accept what he was. The priestess jumped back, and he realised the flames were flashing over his skin. Any control he’d had was gone. And as his frustration at his predicament increased, so did the reason for it.
‘You are where you are meant to be,’ she said softly, but he shook his head. ‘You are a magic, just like these men. A man trying to live in an Empire where the world wants you dead.’
Her words moved over his skin with the flames, fuelling his frustrations and anger. But she was wrong. ‘What did you see?’ he asked, and she looked away again, over the water. ‘Why were you so sure we could win?’
The Magics of Rei-Een Box Set Page 54
