A Mage Of None Magic (Book 1) (6 page)

Niel stood in the doorway watching until a mountain disguised as a preposterously ugly man shambled up and poked him hard in his sore shoulder, almost knocking him down.

“You stayin’ or goin’?” the mountain grumbled.

“I’m meeting someone,” Niel replied.

Out came a large, frightening hand. “Stayin’. One copper.”

Niel tugged from his pouch one of the few coppers that remained from the silver Arwin had given him, and all but pitched it onto the huge palm. The mountain murmured something, then returned to the stool from which he’d come.

After another quick survey of the room, Niel headed for an empty spot at the bar and sat. Countless bottles in more varieties than he would have thought possible crowded the cabinet on the other side of the counter. Within the bottles lurked an assortment of sinister-looking liquids—earthy browns, spicy reds, and even a few shades of green.

A bald, rumpled little man whose eyes never left the rag in his hand scuffed over and waited. Niel had been in a tavern once before, back home. What he really wanted was water, or even a fruit juice, but he didn’t want to embarrass himself or draw attention.

“Wine?” he asked.

A group of men sitting behind him at a table near the end of the bar scoffed and chuckled.

The bartender shuffled away then returned moments later with a dented pewter goblet half-filled with dark liquid. Niel plunked down a copper, hoping it was enough. The odd little man’s hands scrabbled across and scooped the coin into his apron before moving off to tend another patron.

Cup in hand, Niel faced the open room and let his eyes drift as nonchalantly as he could over to the men from whom the laughter had come. He supposed the three of them could have looked meaner if they’d wanted, but he doubted they would have achieved it by much. He also doubted they thought the same of him, so he sipped his drink and tried to remain unnoticed.

The wine was too sweet, without much texture; nothing like the wonderful wines Biddleby always brought home after a far-away symposium. But it was cold, which was good enough for the time being.

He saw no sign of Arwin. For all he knew, the swordsman had already come and gone.

Niel sighed, unable to help thinking there must be some way to get back to the College, or at least get in touch with Biddleby. But how? The Membership had none of their own posted nearby, which meant no going through official channels…

But what about someone not with the College? What if he could find another rogue magician? If so, he might be able to get a message through and explain what had happened.

Hope fluttered in his chest. All might not be lost.

He turned to set his wine back on the bar, unaware that the burly man next to him had inched closer. The resulting collision splashed Niel’s drink all across the man’s back.

Laughter roared from the three mean-looking men.

Niel felt the blood plummet to his feet as the man straightened and turned, causing the wine to trickle in rivulets from his leather vest, run down the seat of his pants to his legs, and finally pool on the floor between his boots. He had dark brown skin, a bushy beard, and sharp brown eyes that bore into Niel’s with what could only be the bloodlust described in his teacher’s war stories.

Niel managed a hard swallow. “I beg your pardon. I—”

The man seized Niel by the front of his shirt, pressing their faces together. The coarse hairs of the man’s beard bristled against his chin. Niel’s goblet toppled to the floor, bounced with a loud metal ting! and brought the rest of the room to an immediate, dreadful halt.

“Oh,” the man growled through clenched yellow teeth, “I think begging’s the
perfect
place to start.”

He yanked Niel from his stool and dragged him toward the front door. The room gave a collective cheer and clamored with excitement as everyone pushed forward to follow them outside. Niel thought surely Mister Mountain would step in to keep the peace, but as the front door became visible so too did his prospective savior—arms folded, sound asleep on his stool.

A familiar voice sounded close by. “Just a moment, Jharal.”

The man dragging Niel stopped as Arwin stepped into view.

“I think this one might be worth holding onto a little while.”

The bearded man glared down at Arwin, rolled his eyes, then dropped Niel back onto his own feet. Catching his breath, Niel smoothed the fist-shaped bunch in his shirt as best he could, then brushed the dirt from the rest of his clothes.

“You’ve quite the talent for first impressions,” Arwin said with a grin.

The patrons returned to what they’d been doing with what seemed a disappointed though well-practiced fluidity. Even the musicians picked up their tune where they’d left off.

“So,” Arwin said. “You’re here.”

“Do your demonstrations of competence never cease?”

Arwin chuckled and turned to the big man who’d snatched Niel from the bar. “Jharal,” he said, “I’d like to introduce you to Niel. Niel, this is Jharal.”

Niel looked up. The man’s expression of disgust had not relented. He reached to shake hands with Jharal, who snorted and lumbered off.

Arwin smiled. “I don’t think he likes you.”

“Terrific.”

Arwin gestured to a small table. “Let’s talk.”

The two took seats opposite one another. Arwin dismissed an approaching waitress with a shake of his head. “Rough couple of days?”

“They were fine,” Niel replied, realizing for the first time they truly had been fine, if not better than. Thanks to Arwin he’d had plenty of food for the trek, and he’d found no fewer than three streams from which to drink along the way, not to mention some of the most alluring flora he’d ever seen. More than once he’d had the eerie sensation of being watched, but that aside, after his arduous journey to the Nilfranian a couple more days hiking through tranquil, picturesque forest had been nothing close to a hardship.

“Glad to hear,” Arwin said. “Because there may be more of that sort of thing for you in the near future.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, I think you should come along with us.”

“I see. Have I failed to mention that I’m trying to get to the College?”

“No, you’ve mentioned it.”

“Then how in the world do you expect me to join your expedition?”

Arwin leaned forward. “Lower your voice, if you please.”

“All right. Now, how?”

“You are in dire need of funds. As I’ve said, I’m in need of a magician. We’re in a position to help one another.”

Niel tapped the end of his finger on the table to punctuate his few words. “There is no. Possible. Way I can go with you and make it back in time to salvage my first semester. Which means my place there will be rescinded.”

“I understand that, and I’m sorry for your predicament. I truly am. But this is the only alternative I see that you have. It also happens to be the only one I can offer.”

“I’d hoped to find a magician in town or nearby who might help me get word to my teacher.”

“There aren’t any. If there were, I wouldn’t have bothered looking for one in Lyrria. Besides, you couldn’t afford it.”

“You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if
you
sent those robbers after me. Just so I’d have no choice but to come with you.”

Niel barely caught the blur of Arwin’s left arm before being knocked from his chair by a violent backhand across his face. He tried to sit up despite his dazed senses, but Arwin circled the table just as quickly, lifted Niel from the floor and threw him into the nearby wall between two other tables. He grabbed Niel’s face in a gloved hand and squeezed hard, mashing his mouth shut.

“Now you listen to me,” he said. “I understand you’re angry and afraid, but know this: Regardless how much help we might be to one another, if you dare impugn my honor again, I’ll run you through. Consider that an oath.”

With his final word Arwin pushed Niel’s face away from his own and took two slow steps backward toward the table. By the time the swordsman had seated himself, his previously pleasant demeanor had returned as though nothing had transpired. He gestured to Niel’s empty chair. “Now,” he said, “let’s conclude our business, one way or another.”

Niel considered bolting for the door but held still, mindful he had nowhere else to turn if he lost his one feasible source of assistance, undesirable and barbaric though the assister may be. He cupped a hand over his mouth and stared hard at the table. The noise of the room shrank away, replaced by numbing dread as the appalling, merciless notion he’d fended off again and again simply could no longer be denied:

More than likely, he would never attend the College.
Never.

A lifetime of work, lost.

No. There
had
to be some other way. He could sneak back to Glensdyl and hope to avoid being seen by anyone associated with the men who’d attacked him. But with no money for fare to sail back, what good would that do? He’d taught himself how to juggle some years ago; maybe he could earn fare back to Lyrria by entertaining on the street. That wouldn’t exactly be keeping a low profile, and the people he’d encountered thus far hardly seemed like patrons of the performing arts. And who knew how long that would take?

Niel sighed. When it came right down to it, going with Arwin did seem the only choice. At the very least,
more than likely
never attending College held slightly more hope than
absolutely
never attending the College.

He took his seat again. “I accept your offer,” he said, wishing his voice sounded less quivery. “And… I thank you for saving my neck. Twice.”

“You mean three times,” Arwin replied.

“Three times. Sorry. I wasn’t counting.”

“Then by all means, Apprentice,” Arwin said with a smile as he beckoned the waitress back over to the table. “Allow me.”

8

Ennalen strolled through the yellow early morning to her breakfast with the Lord Magistrate, paying only enough attention as she crossed the shimmering, frosty grass of the West Commons to avoid seeming aimless to any who might be watching.

She had all but surrendered to the meander of her thoughts when a gold-speckled butterfly fluttered into sight from nowhere, quivered near her face for a moment, then doddered off again in the opposite direction. She watched it struggle in the brisk morning breeze to clear a distant hedge, then as it disappeared she wondered what the creature was doing so far north, so close to winter—the beneficiary of some careless lab assistant, most likely.

She smirked, imagining the beating that no doubt awaited that student, and as she continued along her way her musings veered onto an unexpected and quite fitting tangent.

Butterflies.

At the age of six, Ennalen had evoked from a foul-smelling cloud of sulfur the shape of a butterfly that flapped its wings twice before dissipating. She still recalled with perfect clarity her reflection afterward in the large wooden wash bowl, how tears of triumph had left thin, clean paths through the yellow dust caking her face.

One’s first true feat of magic was inescapably an overwhelming event, and because that powerful initial experience invariably instilled a zeal for the next, young students often made easy fodder for whatever unscrupulous appetites a teacher might harbor.

Conveniently for that sort, when it came to instruction, Members never openly criticized one another’s individual techniques, pointing no fingers lest their own methodologies be called into question. Thus during Ennalen’s fledgling career at the College, no one had come forward to test the rumors she knew circulated regarding Solamito, her teacher. Instructors and peers alike considered her an exceedingly bright student, advanced for her age, and she succeeded brilliantly in her courses—how bad could things have been?

Eventually, Ennalen grew to tolerate the situation. As grotesque as her teacher’s lechery had been, however, the most abhorrent aspect of all was how her slightest movement in the workshop prompted Solamito to peer up with his tiny black eyes, no matter what he was doing, a piggish smile that spoke plainly to the myriad perversities squirming in his brain. Years later, the idea of his eyes wandering her body still made her quake with cold loathing, even more intensely than after the occasional nighttime liberties he took with her—either through indifference or incompetence, the charm he used to keep her asleep rarely did.

For her, the end—or beginning, one might say—came just prior to her confirmation. Solamito had gone to attend a conference in Adelmoor, and Ennalen had enjoyed the rare time alone engrossed in her thesis involving what she termed “partial levitation.” In her efforts to fashion a charm that laborers in remote areas could employ to move boulders and heavy debris, she had enlisted the help of a brown field mouse found hiding in the cupboard. The experiments had been to gauge how dynamic an incantation was needed to allow the mouse to drag a bar of lead, and then adjust the final spell for proper scale.

After endless attempts and frustration, the bar of lead finally budged. When it did, Ennalen scooped the mouse up in a rush of elation and nuzzled him as she danced and laughed.

Solamito had returned that same moment, demolishing her glee into a ruin of disgust. She recalled his leer, how when she looked up toward the doorway his narrow eyes already flicked hungrily from place to place wherever her robe met her figure.

“How I did miss you,” he purred, “but I’m afraid I’m quite weary and need to rest tonight.” With a wink he added, “You’ll just have to see me in your dreams.”

She remembered how his familiar reek rolled over her as he grunted past toward his bedchamber—sharp, piney cologne atop a vile, unwashed musk. She recalled how the silky black sheen of his robes accentuated the cascades of fat bobbling beneath. No matter how hard she tried, Ennalen still could not remember closing her fists.

Her memory from that point forward, however, remained vivid.

She’d opened her fingers and believed the mouse had fallen asleep, until a bright bead of red grew and glistened at its nose. Its almost weightless body made no sound when she dropped him onto the workbench.

The lead felt cold in her hand. The door to his room creaked as she opened it and entered, having long before deciphered the warding glyph overhead. Solamito, naked from the waist up, sloshed around to face her and barely had time to show anger from the intrusion before the lead bar smashed against his head.

There’d been a loud, wet pop as the corner of the bar bit into his face. His arms bounced in unison when he flopped to the floor. She moved around the bed to stare at the motionless bulk of her teacher.

She’d known eyes were spherical, but without eyelids the roundness of the detached one at her feet made it appear surprised to find itself suddenly no longer in Solamito’s skull. With one eye missing, she supposed she’d be seeing him in her dreams a lot better than he’d be seeing her in his—and at that she’d laughed hysterically.

Solamito had not died. Killing him where he lay would have been the simplest thing for all involved, despite a key tenet of magic-making that asserted life was never to be taken for mere convenience. Instead, Ennalen found a leather pouch, plucked the eyeball from the sticky pool of blood on the floor, and dropped it inside. From there she marched across the West Commons to the Ministry of Law, resigned that Solamito would endure whatever embarrassment she could cause him, no matter how greatly she herself would suffer. Assaulting one’s teacher was no inconsequential matter, and punishment for such was dire.

By the time Ennalen arrived at the Ministry of Law she’d already decided she would not explain herself to just anyone, and demanded to meet with Lord Magistrate Denuis.

Despite her grim determination, she found herself flummoxed when the Lord Magistrate came down to see her. After a curt greeting in the Ministry’s foyer, Denuis led her not to his office but to his personal chambers. In the apartment’s darkened main room by the warmth of the fireplace he instructed her to take a seat in a worn high-backed chair. On a small table beside the chair sat a plain pewter goblet.

Ennalen sat and, without prompting, confessed her assault on Solamito with no hint of apology. Denuis listened intently, and after a thoughtful pause responded with an offer as bizarre as it had been unceremoniously direct: she could become his pupil at the Ministry of Law and under his protection never fear reprisal from any Member, or she could drink from the goblet at her elbow. When Ennalen asked why he would want her as a student in light of what she had done, Denuis merely repeated the proposition.

The Ministry of Law had been then to Ennalen as it was now to most Members—a mysterious, foreboding group whose very mention prompted unease and good manners. Yet while sitting there with Denuis to her left and the goblet to her right, she realized being ordained a Magistrate would let her exploit that very same fear in others and see that anyone defiling the integrity of the College as had Solamito would pay, and pay dearly.

Ennalen accepted the offer, and in her new room that long ago night, slept soundly for the first time in her life.