Battle Mage: Winds of Change (The High King: A Tale of Alus Book 11) (11 page)

Sebastian grunted at the wizard's trying to bait him into going to White Hall. "Flying would certainly be a helpful piece of magic with the emperor's new creatures around. Did you hear that he has started using giant shrikes to attack the nomads?

"It is just a matter of time before the Dark One creates enough of the monsters to attack Southwall. The wall will be useless once the enemy can fly right over it. He nearly succeeded in destroying the Two Towers just using Palose and his portals. Another enemy capable of attacking the defenders on the wall or opening gates behind our lines could be the end of us in a battle."

Darius nodded and admitted, "Then it is a good thing that you have reason to go to White Hall then. Maybe the owl can finally learn how to fly as well?"

Giving the wizard another nod, the two men lapsed into silence. Sebastian was glad enough to see Ashleen as the girl came to draw him back to the dance floor and end their conversation.

Chapter 6- Gate Mage

"Come on, sleepy head," Sebastian encouraged the blonde lump as Ashleen rolled away from the mage when he tried to get his assistant up for the chore they had for the morning.

When the girl had truly become a hater of early mornings, he wasn't quite sure. Bas remembered traveling in the winter with her, though Ashleen had been in a carriage for the trip from Falcon's Keep to Windmeer. While it meant that the apprentice hadn't needed to ride horses, the mage couldn't believe that she had rested that much on the trail running between the two guardian cities.

Their escort duties had followed her lord's schedule, which didn't include rising early most mornings; but they were up at a reasonable time.

After traveling to White Hall, his team had separated from the Kardorian lord's caravan as he trained at the school for a time before heading to the tournament. Ashleen probably was on a similar schedule, but Sebastian saw nothing of her habits until they reunited at sea. Traveling on the ship left everyone with odd habits of sleeping.

Sebastian and some of the others still found ways to train to keep themselves occupied aboard ship. They weren't sailors and could pitch in only so much without getting in the sailors' way on the deck. Ashleen tried to learn portal magic late in the trip like the rest, but again no one really followed any sort of schedule while at sea.

"Five more minutes," Ashleen grumbled from her pillow.

He pulled back the sheet. If it were winter and with a few layers of blankets, the change in temperature would have certainly encouraged the girl to come awake; but summer was winding down and the air in the room was comfortable.

"We can't wait five minutes for you," he said swatting her butt and heard a muffled yelp from the pillow. It was the most padded of her body to receive the good natured wake up call, and Sebastian smiled slightly at the feel of her as well. "I've already bathed and dressed. We need to get downstairs and eat before tackling this new gate set up."

Turning her head, the girl's right eye opened glaring at him with crystal blue annoyance. "That's your problem. You're the one who volunteered to make it."

"And you chose to be my apprentice, so you volunteered because you are following me."

"I resign," she replied but rolled to sit with her legs dangling from the mattress. Stretching her arms over her head, Ashleen continued, "Besides I was your smith's apprentice. How does this qualify as apprentice work?"

"We'll be working with metal and runes just like the swords."

The mage's face looked away from the girl as she cutely yawned before slipping from the bed to stand. One step closer to being ready for the day, Sebastian was already thinking of the task he had taken for himself.

He had never worked a frame as large as they had planned for Hala. It would be sixteen feet long and ten feet high. The measurements had been determined by guessing at what would need to be moved through a portal.

While most of the time the size would be overkill, the idea was to allow for large loads moved by carts. Sebastian had never seen a cart or carriage near ten feet high, but he supposed that was why they had chosen such a height. It was unlikely ever to be challenged and anything they could conceive of should fit through the height. Even the Dark One's largest beasts, the armored viles could walk through meaning that the emperor's warlocks wouldn't know that they were walking into a trap. Too small and they could possibly be stopped by a size restriction like the staff trying to push through a smaller hole.

"Can you make a gate that size?" the girl asked as she threw her top onto the bed followed quickly by her bottoms. She no longer worried over what he saw. It was a tease trying to get him to finally take her on one hand and the familiarity she had with him on the other.

This wasn't anywhere near the first time he had seen her naked and the young man had become almost used to it, though Sebastian had to admit that she was very beautiful. They had decided to take their relationship slowly, well at least limiting it to sleeping with each other or kissing but no more.

Ashleen was the one who wanted to finalize the relationship. She knew that he had been with his last girl friend and wanted to be as close, but that was only physical in his opinion. Though that had started from magic's influence, he and Yara had continued to be together for quite awhile. Then it had ended and the mage was left wondering why.

That confusion made him want to wait to figure out whether he and Ashleen should have a close relationship. A battle mage's life meant often leaving friends and homes. A closer relationship like lovers had him worrying over having to leave her again.

As she dressed in knee length shorts of brown and a light blue blouse, Sebastian mused aloud, "It's all magic. Size shouldn't be a problem for it to work the same as the smaller models.

"The trick is just handling the lengths and figuring out how best to mount them into the new walls. Earth wizards should be able to make it easier, but there is still a lot I haven't dealt with up until now."

Ashleen slipped on a pair of short boots. The tops were fairly loose to allow them to slip on and off, but they were tougher than the casual slipper like shoes the female wizards often wore. Ashleen's taste in shoes seemed to be switching between her boots and the slippers she liked to wear for dancing.

"This height will be well above anyone's reach, Bas. Will you assemble it on the ground and use poles to lift it into place? I'm barely half the height of what you decided to make. I certainly can't reach that height easily," the girl complained as the couple exited the room to eat a quick breakfast.

"The earth wizards are supposed to build walls and finish them after the gateway is in place. We will have to figure out how best to lift it into place, but probably building it on the ground would be the easiest way to make it."

Sighing at the thought of all he needed to do to make the gate and its lock, Sebastian wished he had let Ashleen keep him in bed to avoid the problems the owl would inevitably find working on something for the first time.

Hilda noticed the couple as they descended the stairs and smiled. Greeting Sebastian and Ashleen, she received smiles in return.

"We have a lot of work to do this morning, Hilda," Sebastian said as they sat, "so we'll need a good breakfast to hold us for awhile, but could you assemble one of your work baskets for us also."

"You've taken to calling them work baskets now?" the owner questioned with a smirk. "I am not sure if I should be offended or take it as a compliment that you enjoy what we lovingly put in a basket to try and keep our wizards fully supplied for the day?"

"Lovingly?" Ashleen questioned knowing the words were a joke. "Do I need to warn your husband about this? And I can't think of a better term for a basket of food unless you just want to call it a food basket."

Barking a quick laugh, the older woman retorted, "I don't think Ivol would believe anything was amiss anyway. The man has his forge and I think the rest of the world works as it will around him.

"As to love, I kind of look at you more like a couple of my kids with you two living here so long."

Ashleen giggled and pointed at the inn keeper saying, "I've seen you and Mr. Alamore on the dance floor. I don't think the forge is on his mind when he is with you."

Blushing slightly, the dark haired woman looked unsure how to reply at first. She was saved by her daughter carrying a tray of food for the couple. Like Hilda had said, the two had been there long enough that the servers knew what to bring them. The kitchen made limited types of food, but still Sebastian in particular always ordered the same thing anyway.

"Well, perhaps you are right, Ashleen. We didn't wind up with so many children because he could only think of a forge at night," Hilda laughed embarrassing her daughter.

"Mother!" the girl protested as she backed away towards the kitchen.

Ignoring her daughter, Hilda decided to steer the conversation away from what she and her husband did at night. "So you two will be busy today. Are you working in the forge? Ashleen doesn't usually get up this early for metal working unless there is something important to do."

"We have work to do for the city actually, though I will still be working with metal. I just don't need to use a fire to work with it this time."

The inn keeper looked at him with a stare that seemed to have more understanding of what he did in the forge. "With your magic, I suppose that you don't truly need a forge to do the work that you do. My Ivol says that you use the fire, but that often times you let your magic take over to finish a sword that would have been unimpressive otherwise, well at least in the time you spend on finishing the weapons."

"The fire is still a good tool to use to learn," the mage agreed without committing to her words. "Magic can do a lot, but some things are best done using the strength in one's arm and a hammer."

"Well, I'll let you build your strength for whatever you two face then," the woman stated leaving them to eat.

"I wonder what Ivol tells her of your work?" Ashleen questioned quietly. They weren't afraid of anyone finding out exactly, but the battle mage had tried to keep his work from being dragged out across the city. A battle mage creating magic swords was likely to draw attention and much of it would likely be negative.

"I'm not too worried about it," the young man replied. "Ivol knows that I have made swords, but not what they can do. Though I doubt he talks about it beyond his wife."

"A woman who runs a restaurant and inn sees a lot of people. He doesn't need to talk to anyone beyond her for the nature of your experiments to spread across the city. You don't need lords and rich men coming to you asking for a fancy sword, do you?"

"It would be an interesting possibility for a different line of work. Maybe I should stop being a battle mage and just make swords for rich men so I can take the money and live in peace?"

Her face took the idea a little more seriously than he intended as Ashleen replied, "If we could live in peace like that I would gladly be your apprentice, but I doubt that you can stop being a battle mage any easier than I can stop the connection between me and the energy in the ground."

Grinning, Sebastian countered, "All I need to do is take you up to the highest tower I can find to do that. I just don't want to make you sick doing so."

"Ha ha," she mocked his thought. They had tested how Ashleen's power worked and had found that her tie to the earth was behind much of her wilder power. Even with stone beneath her feet, Ashleen had grown ill from her disconnect with the earth after climbing a tall tower in Falcon's Keep. Separating her from the ground was likely to kill the girl, so the second floor room of the Black Smith inn was about as high as he would recommend for the wilder.

In spite of her hatred of waking up for the morning walk, Ashleen finished breakfast almost as quickly as Sebastian. He took the basket made for them by Hilda and thanked her again before the two walked to the fire wizards' guild building outside the inner city walls.

"How did I get roped into this again?" Olan complained making Ashleen giggle as she knew the feeling.

Wizards Serrena and Liam were joined by Mecklin and Frell also. The remaining members of his team, he had called on them to give him a hand moving the parts of the metal frame he was building.

"Stop whining, Olan," Serrena admonished the falcon while she moved a four foot iron bar end to end with another. Making them as straight as possible, the fire wizard mumbled a spell placing her right hand directly over the two ends.

The wizard's hand began to glow red. After a moment the color changed to orange then yellow and finally nearly white. Beneath her hand the two bars began to melt together. Like a welder, the fire wizard created a bond between the two rods until they were as strong as one.

Finishing her spell, the little wizard stood brushing back her auburn hair to wipe at the sweat beading on her forehead. Serrena aimed her green eyes at the falcon and added, "It isn't like you have to do anything other than help hold the frame once it's finished. If you were bonding the bars or imbuing the runes like Bas, then I might offer you my sympathy."

Olan winced, though they all knew that it was exaggerated. The falcon took the admonishment in stride knowing that the wizard was only picking on him to pass the time. Walking the next iron rod over to Serrena, he replied, "But my boredom alone should buy some sympathy. Just standing around watching you bend over to cast your magic isn't easy you know."

As her eyes narrowed slightly, the woman retorted, "I've been told that I have a nice rear end. I'm pretty sure watching me bend or squat isn't that much torture for you. By the way, does Yaroma know that you watch other women bending over all day?"

The other two mages were laughing behind their hands as Olan turned red with the wizard's cutting words. He had to wipe sweat from his forehead and scrubbed at his neck trying to throw off the embarrassment.

Sebastian rolled his eyes at the two from where he and Ashleen were working on another length of frame. The lightning wilder was working the magic welds while the mage held the metal together. Having the sole duty of imbuing the runes into the metal once the frame was finished; Sebastian was trying to conserve his energy for the process. Without using the power of the earth with a staff, the only other way Bas could supplement his strength to do it all would be to borrow power from a wizard.

Ashleen could do the welds by herself with less energy wasted than combining their efforts, so the mage sat back and just helped as much as he could for the moment.

"Done if it meets with your approval," the wilder stated moving from kneeling to sitting cross legged to ease her knees from the other position.

Sebastian nodded. "It doesn't have to be perfectly in alignment as long as it is all connected enough for my magic to pull it together with the runes."

"You're sure that you can do it without cheating?" Ashleen questioned insinuating the process of pulling from the earth. It was a secret and the girl knew how to evade giving away too much, since others beyond his team were nearby as well. Even his team had never been fully informed of how he managed to increase his power. They all knew he could, but Sebastian didn't think anyone had fully put it together yet.

"Well, I may need to borrow your strength or one of the others. Until I actually try it, I can't really know."

"Your power reserves seem to have grown, but can you do more powerful spells now?"

Sebastian handed the wilder the third segment of the four segment base. The sides would be made from two full bars and another cut in half, since it was the shorter dimension.

As Ashleen sighed and moved back to her knees to crawl the extra few feet to the spot of the next weld, he considered her question. Musing aloud, "I'm not really sure. Maybe I still use the staffs as a crutch instead of pushing myself further. If I don't need the extra draw, it would probably be wise to avoid the risk of pulling too much or in a harmful way."

"Is killing yourself in a flare of magic the harmful way or are you considering something else?" the girl chuckled with a grin before turning to the next weld.

"Well, that would be harmful, but I have told you what Darius said in warning. There were wizards using the same way of tapping the earth for power. Most used spells to kill and cause destruction.

"Darius said that quite a few wizards died young from abusing the technique. He said that twenty year old men would die looking like they were ancient men several times their true age."

Ashleen stretched her hand to touch his cheek and said, "Well, I wonder if that is why Yara decided to part from you? I don't know if I can see myself dating you if you look older than my grandfather though."

With that she laughed at the mage and turned back to the metal before her.

Sebastian knew better than that however. Ashleen might tease, but he thought even if such a thing should happen the girl would stand by him. He had been surprised at how attached they had become. It was the real reason that Yara had broken up with him, the man was pretty sure. Though he had always told her that he was just a friend to Ashleen; Yara must have seen more there than Sebastian had believed.

Relationships weren't easy, the young man thought, and relationships between wizards and battle mages had their own built in problems. Yara was a healer and though he could heal as well, Sebastian was in fact a soldier too. The differences eventually came to the fore and Yara's mind built upon her jealousy and fears of Ashleen, who was a much closer match from that stand point. A wilder with Ashleen's abilities was similar in that she could fight enemies and even kill. A healer, like Yara, couldn't usually use magic to harm or destroy at all.

Sebastian had been the first anomaly to the wizard view that said that one could either heal or destroy, but could not be a balance of both. Since he became the first battle mage healer, more had been found, though they were quite rare. He wasn't alone and the wizards had to question if their beliefs were correct on the matter. It was just one more issue the mage had caused for the wizards as the owl proceeded to break down the barriers between battle mage and wizard.

"Ok, last one," Ashleen stated moving to the end of the three joined bars and extended her hand to the battle mage for the next length of iron.

A rumble, as one of the earth wizards working in the courtyard created a wall from a cart of stone hauled in to build the trapping walls, drew his attention away from the girl as she used her magic for the last weld for the lower bar. Half a dozen men and women in brown clothing had been working on fortifying the walls and making new ones while building a pair of towers all morning. The amount of work they had finished by the time he and Ashleen had arrived made the mage think that they had been at it for hours.

Fire wizards dotted the surrounding yard watching both the earth wizards and Sebastian's team. While it was known as the fire wizard's guild building, he doubted that it had been created with the idea of just one class of wizard holding the structure for its own. A fortress with towers surrounding the courtyard and walls running to the inner wall joining them together, it was one of three wizard fortresses within the city. The air wizards had one in the southeast corner and used the towers of the inner and outer wall overlooking the vertical drop of the cliffs, while another jointly used by the earth and nature wizards was south of the fire wizards near the middle of the inner wall.

Even the healer wizards had a center just for them, though their hospital was inside the inner city unlike the rest. Only the water wizards had chosen a building outside the city. At the base of the cliff, a harbor and town servicing it had the water guild's fortress to protect them in times of danger.

The remainder of his mages stayed in the corps garrison, a fortress like the others, it fell between the air wizards and earth guild. The fortresses were further proof of a city designed to be held even should the enemy find a way within its walls. Now they were building defenses for a gate that led nearly to the heart of the city and created a potential weak point when the rest of Hala was designed to avoid any weakness.

As his mind returned to the fire wizards, he wondered if they hoped to learn something or were more worried about the intrusion into their fortress. The gate had been placed within their courtyard, but that wasn't the invasion they found most annoying. Other wizards and mages traipsing about their grounds was probably the greater offense.

The side supports were fused together and attached to the top part of the frame. Foot long pins were attached every couple feet perpendicular to the top and sides. Even the base had a few, but the corners were fastened differently than the top. While the metal was attached directly to the side frames for the top, two stones had to be built into the base.

Darius' lodestones had to be part of the gate to continue using it. Though Sebastian could have used his magic to bind the portal points instead, the other cities and schools had been trained to look for this magic to open the gate. Making it slightly more difficult, he could have asked Darius to be there to infuse his magic into the frame also; but the wizard was already quite busy and the mage was sure he could make use of the stones to do it in a different way.

Laying the frame on the ground with the stones touching the metal of the base and sides, the duty of finishing the gate frame was now on the mage. Ashleen knelt behind him as he placed his hands on the metal near the center of the frame's side. The wizard would back him up should his power falter. She could supply what he needed for the major work that involved the smithing he had learned, rune magic, portal magic and a spell that had no name.

He had once taken a piece of wood and drawn iron through the veins of the once living branch making it a combination of the two. Iron had its pores and channels, especially while in a more basic form, and the owl hoped to take advantage of this property of the metal.

Taking a deep breath the mage used a new word to focus his spell. "Bind."

His magic moved into the iron and began to try to encompass all that he could feel. The frame was large, yet the thickness of the metal wasn't great. Still it felt massive to his mind as the mage closed his eyes concentrating on what he must do.

Like a straw drawing in liquid, the two lodestones began to join with both the base and upper frame suffusing the metal with Darius' magic imprint. The metal began to feel like the spell which the high wizard had placed on the lodestones, even while the iron used the two stones to create a bridge. The base and sides flowed together creating an attachment that required no heat like the welds of the wizards.