Mage of Shadows (11 page)

Emily's memorial service contained several such moments for me.

It took place in the huge courtyard located in the very center of campus, less than a hundred feet from the UGL and various other buildings. The large fountain that ran all summer and into the fall had been turned off and a stage had been erected at the forefront of the courtyard. Rows upon rows of somber grey chairs had been shoved together as close as possible to face the platform, which was occupied by several people of noticeable importance.

I recognized Dean Strauss, bespectacled and bow-tied, he seemed different out of his usual brown tweed, which he had replaced with a more suitable black formal jacket, leaving him looking like a particularly old teenager attending prom. I vaguely recognized a few of the others, the man in the middle was President Allen, and I think one of the older women next to him was a Dean as well. That pretty much summed up my weak knowledge of my school's staff.

For someone playing at detective, I wasn't very good at learning stuff that was probably important.

A well-dressed couple seemed set apart from the others at the corner of the platform, despite the fact that the stage chairs were placed at neat equal distances in a single row. I recognized after a moment it was the pure sincerity of the grief they portrayed that set them apart. The woman was leaning against the man, whose dark eyes stared off into space, looking at nothing in particular. That was not to say that the others weren't looking somber, but their faces lacked the depth of sorrow that these two had.

She looks like Emily, I thought, staring at the trembling woman who was unaware of my gaze. They could only be her parents.

Jimmy and I had come together and took seats near the back when we couldn't immediately spot Nishi or Eliza, though he kept peering around at the various students, no doubt looking for a sign of Nishi's straight black hair amongst the throng.

I ignored his attempts; feeling a bit underdressed in only long jeans and a dark sweater. There had been no mandatory dress code lain out in the email sent to the students, but many had at least made an attempt to look nice. Several had gone as far enough to dress in full formal attire. I was very glad that I had decided not to wear bright red in the morning; it had been a very close decision.

Despite being ten minutes early, the crowd had nearly surpassed the number of chairs available and I could see more trickling into the courtyard even now. Faces swirled in and out of my vision without any rhyme or reason as I swung my gaze back and forth slowly attempting to take in the sea of people who had come to attend the memorial service of a girl they probably never knew. I certainly recognized almost no one.

It was ignorance that allowed me to worry only about how I was dressed. That moment, the memorial service, wasn't significant to me. The faces around me meant nothing; I hadn't yet realized the significance the Emily's death held. Unbeknownst to me, I was surrounded by more mages at that memorial service than I had ever known up to that point in my life.

What happened, only a second later, changed that.

Imagine a single pluck of a guitar string, not particularly well tuned but loud enough to ring through the silent air to brush against your eardrums with ease. Now imagine that sound is something only you can hear, and with it comes the emotions that accompanied the action of plucking the string… that was how I perceived the first subtle push on the intangible magical field.

Now understand, a very skilled mage can manipulate magic within a spherical field of perhaps one hundred feet- at my current skill level as a freshman I had the ability to work with maybe a tenth of that at my best. That being said, the ability to sense magic being used nearby is a much larger range, for the sole reason that much like the air vibrations that allow one to hear sound, magic is pushed and pulled in buffeting waves, travelling outwards in all directions, but growing weaker and weaker as it becomes more distant from the mage- its source.

That same very skilled mage could have the ability to sense magic done easily within hundredsof feet- the possibility of miles wasn't unheard of. The courtyard wasn't more than a few hundred feet in any direction, only a complete novice wouldn't have been able to sense the deliberate gesture. That being said, finding the exact source would be impossible amongst the hundreds of bodies packed in one area.

A single pluck, measured and calculated… but it was the echo of emotion that accompanied the gesture that made me angry.

Amusement, satisfaction… justice.

I glanced at Jimmy and found he was looking right back at me, eyebrows raised in surprise. Before I could say anything to him, I felt another pluck thrum against my skin.

Acceptance, resignation, understanding.

Another.

Outrage, vehemence-

Yet another. They began to come so fast, like dozens of voices all crying out to be heard all at once. I sensed that they were defying each other, a cacophony of emotions beating with a strange cadence against my conscious mind.

Denial-

Rage-

Fear-

Hatred-

Malice-

Rebelliousness-

The squabbling twangs were akin to a crowd was fighting over the guitar, grappling over it to play a single note, different with every person and coming from a different direction every time. I lost count of the number of times I felt the emotional reverberations bang against my psyche in an almost eclectic melody, but I was sure it had been at least thirty. Some had come from the same people, no doubt, but the sheer number unique in origin was overwhelming. It had to be at least ten different people, ten different mages in one small area at a single time.

The whole of it had only lasted some twenty to thirty seconds. It would have kept going, I think, if it had not been for what happened next.

What happened was difficult to explain to a Normal… imagine magic being air, invisible and everywhere.

It was as if someone had seized the air in the courtyard for a long thirty seconds and would not allow anyone to breathe. For several long moments I felt at a complete loss. The constant buzzing of magic against my skin had been a known quantity to me for such a long time that I often forgot it was there unless I paid attention to it. Those unseen gnats had been forcibly frozen, locked by the will of one person- a person I couldn't sense not only because of the crowd but because they had taken my sense away from me.

It had never happened before, and it was possibly the most humbling moment of my life. What did I know of magic, compared to whoever had this kind of skill? Nothing.

It was staggering power. A darker part of me, something I hated to admit existed wanted more of it… hungered to have it. For in every human there is the capacity for acts of great altruism, but there is also greed, lust, and gluttony that more than balance out that capacity, oftentimes drowning it so deep in a murky darkness that a person couldn't ever tell that the ability to think of others really existed within them.

Swann had gone very pale to me, looking as I believed I must have. He gripped my arm so fiercely that I thought it would bruise, "Stratus, Stratus," I had never seen him so shaken, he muttered, "I can't feel… I can't…"

I could only nod weakly, trying to convey that I understood- words had escaped me.

The majority of the crowd knew nothing of our troubles. The service had yet to begin and the courtyard was full of quiet murmurs, and they masked Jimmy's unhinged muttering quite well.

It lasted about thirty seconds longer before like a switch, the magical field began to move again around us. The familiar motes enveloped me again, leaving me to feel like I was engulfed in a warm hug from a close sibling who had been with me all my life, but had left for several long years before finally returning to me.

Jimmy's grip on my arm relaxed after a few seconds before he finally pulled away, still looking noticeably shaken by what had just happened. The mages, wherever they were in the crowd didn't attempt their strange method of communication again, for which I was thankful. Now I understood just what kind of people I was surrounded by.

This is what a coven is, I realized grimly. It was a group of mages bound together by oath and duty, all for the purpose of enhancing political and magical status of the members. One User was nothing; one coven was a force to be reckoned with.

No matter what reassurances I made to myself, it was unsettling to sit in the crowd now. The Normals had noticed absolutely nothing, still chatting quietly about how Emily had died, the dreary weather, the cold… I wanted to scream at them for their absolute ignorance. Could they truly have no idea what had just happened, how substantial the event that had just passed had been?

Was that what it meant to be Normal, to live without magic, and it had been so long that I had just forgotten? I wasn't sure. I definitely couldn't remember ever feeling like that before.

Lost, alone… insignificant.

Jimmy sat silent next to me, face masked in a careful blankness, but his hands trembled slightly in a way I knew had nothing to do with the afternoon chill.

Minutes passed without a word between us. There was tension in the air now. An elephant in the room rampaging around, its rage leaving us untouched only because we were invisible to it, two tiny mice frozen in fear, powerless. We were in a sea of unfamiliar faces, and didn't know which ones were really sharks, poised to strike.

In comparison to those long seconds that I felt like I had lost connection with the world- lost the ability to breathe- the beginning of the memorial service was dull in comparison.

President Allen said a few words, expressing his sorrow, and the rest followed his lead. Each speech felt emptier than the last, leaving me feeling angrier and angrier at it all. Emily's parents were the only ones on stage who didn't speak. They sat in their own little corner as if trapped by an invisible barrier, disconnected from the rest of the world. I wondered if they were even aware of what was being said about their daughter.

Honor roll student, well behaved, popular… it felt like the emptiest sort of biography, with no emotion- because none of these people- her teachers they may have been- really knew Emily Albright.

The student speakers that came up next were better. I watched each closely- first the student body president, followed by the female student head of Emily's mixed-frat, then finally Emily's roommate. Their words lacked the sophisticated syntax of the adults that spoke before them, but that left the speeches feeling more genuine. However, none of them had a neon arrow pointing at them that flashed with the dazzling word 'mage' for the world to see.

I was tempted to reach out and test them like I had Nishtha, the size of the crowd hiding my identity. I might have gone through with that plan if it hadn't been for what had occurred beforehand- when magic ceased to exist for several long horrible moments. There were at least ten mages scattered in this crowd of hundreds, and one of them was more powerful than I had ever imagined a mage could be. It would be the worst sort of hubris after that to believe that I knew anything about what more experienced mages could or could not sense in a crowd.

So I stayed my hand and just listened. Larry Chen, the student body president went through his speech with a mechanical precision, his sentences short and to the point. He admitted to not knowing Emily as well as he would have liked, being a senior while she was only a new sophomore. Still his sorrow seemed real enough that she had died, and in such a terrible manner.

"No person should have absolute power over life and death." Was the sentence that struck me the most from his speech.

Following Larry was Danae Lincoln, a senior in Alpha Phi Alpha, Archanos's cover on campus. I stared her down intently; she was almost definitely a mage. It was disconcerting to listen to her mourn Emily when there was little doubt that she had some part in her death- if not pulling the trigger, then hiding the person who had.

It was impossible to tell just by looking at her. With pale blonde hair cut stylishly just above the shoulders, light complexion, and fair features, she was striking. Each word she spoke was laced with a real feeling of distress. If I had to describe how the speech was in total, it sounded vapid, blonde, but well meaning. Lincoln played the dumb blonde card a little too well. Danae ended her speech to the largest applause yet, walking over to Emily's parents and hugging each of them, ice-blue eyes glistening with unshed tears.

It looked so real. I had never been a very good liar, and sometimes felt equally bad at spotting them. I could see or hear no falsehood here, Danae Lincoln seemed absolutely genuine on the surface. I had always felt like I could trust my instincts though. They screamed at me that Danae was far different than what she appeared to be.

Carmen Munez, Emily's roommate, was the last speaker.

I recognized her from Emily's profile picture, the grinning girl who had been to her right. She was the Latin princess to Danae's regal queen, with dark locks and olive skin. She had no notecards when she reached the podium, and reminded me of Emily's parents- in a living daze. For several seconds there was silence as she stood there, unmoving, and I wondered if she was too distraught to speak.

"I…" Carmen shook her head, as if trying to shake her mind back into place from somewhere very far away, "Emily and I… we were best friends, I loved her. We did everything together, and we had thought we would have forever. I knew her since I was thirteen…"

I had looked for deception in Danae Lincoln, but couldn't see it. If falsehood had been hidden well in Danae's speech, they were completely absent in Carmen's. The girl was bearing her heart to the crowd, tears falling, absolutely broken by Emily's passing. Stumbling over her words, she spoke of the good times they shared, of studying together, and their plans for the future.

I felt a sort of kinship with this girl I had never known. Carmen was an absolute stranger to me… but I was familiar with that feeling of absolute loss. Of losing someone so important to you that it seemed impossible to function or go on. If Carmen ever recovered at all, it would take months… that's how long it had taken me. Still, I felt it. A little pain that would never completely fade.