The Making of a Mage King: White Star (34 page)

The fog dissipated shortly before sundown, and still Sean could not puzzle out the magic that permeated the land. Seeing that both his men and their horses were exhausted, they camped that night in a small clearing that had once been another farm. The house had caved in and the fields hadn’t been planted in more than a year, at least. Jenny and her escort were again sent back to the palace for the night; he didn’t know if he was protecting her from any of this, but it was all he could think of.

The night was quiet; no coyotes howled in the distance, no owls hooted, Sean didn’t even hear a mouse scurrying through the grass, and he had, in the absence of other sounds, listened for one. He strode through camp unable to sleep, wearing a black linen cloak for protection from the damp more than from any chill. The only other movement he saw, aside from the outer sentries, was young Paddn who rubbed his arms and looked around warily, not noticing that Sean had spotted him huddled among his blankets.

A light flared in a cabin window a short distance away on the other side of the road. It caught Sean’s attention and he watched it, curious why a farmer would be up this time of night. In every mention he had ever read, farmers normally got up early, but surely not this early; dawn was still hours away, and it wasn’t planting season. When sobs drifted across the distance, Lyra was on her feet. She woke Sicily rudely and began pulling on her cloak, then Sean heard an anguished scream and Lyra was running.

Sean sprinted after her, followed by at least a dozen men Cordan quickly picked while retaining the rest where they were. They were still pelting up the lane to the house when a young man was thrust out of the house to huddle on a bench, and another scream tore through the darkness.

When they reached the house, Lyra burst in without announcing herself, and Sean followed hot on Sicily’s heels. The young man only watched them pass with tears streaming down his face. Inside they found an old man bending over a very pregnant young woman deep in cruel throws of labor that didn’t seem to be going well.

Sean had come thinking there was some danger, an attack of some sort, but this was woman’s stuff. What did he know of labor and babies? He found his back pressed against the door he had just closed.

Lyra looked up at him, her eyes wide. “You have to help,” she cried, and Sean caught the tone of near panic in her voice. He realized bluntly that, though she was strong in healing magic, she was only twelve and probably knew less about delivering a baby than he did. Sicily looked ready to flee and might have already done so if Sean hadn’t been blocking the door.

The girl on the bed lifted and screamed again while the old man dabbed at her forehead with a cool rag in his withered and shaking hand. He may not have known why these strangers had burst into his home, but he wasn’t above asking for help. “Please sir,” he begged with a glance at Lyra, “will you help?”

Sean raked his fingers through his hair and stepped forward. He dropped his cloak across the bedpost and took up the girl’s hand. The touch told him what his eyes had missed; she was young,
too
young for this. The body doesn’t judge its age by the seasons; it only strives to become old enough to reproduce. It has a very finely tuned clock, the biological clock, that tells it when it’s old enough. He looked into the frightened eyes on the young face and realized that they were young, far younger than the face that housed them. Then he realized what had to have happened in this valley; this, the lack of livestock, the absence of children, all the clues suddenly fell into Mountain-Wave’s description of the time wave scrunched into this thimble valley.

Now that he understood, he could undo it, but the undoing would have to come after this. Carefully, oh so carefully, he wrapped his magic around the infant who had grown too fast. The girl’s body had not had time to adjust, and the baby had not turned. That was why there were so few children; if women died in childbirth more often than not, there would be none. The same would go for the livestock. The child was in his hands. It shivered in the chill of dawn and let out a thin wail. The girl shivered too, and clutched at her suddenly flaccid belly.

Sean handed the baby to Lyra; the girls and the old man could take care of it well enough. As Sean picked up his cloak and turned, the door burst open, letting in a blast of cold air, and the young man looked in.

“Close the door, Dennis,” said the old man. The young man closed the door and stood leaning against it with his hands behind him clutching at the handle with fear, fascination, and concern all jumbled together in his face. “It’s a boy, Dennis. A fine boy.” The old man sounded relieved, and yet disappointed too, somehow.

“How old are you, Dennis?” asked Sean.

The young man’s eyes riveted onto his. “I’m…I’m eight…eight years old,” he answered tentatively. Sean spun to look at the girl who was sipping a cup of water held by Sicily. “She’s seven,” offered Dennis, trying to sound proud.

“Congratulations,” said Sean, as he gently moved the boy away from the door. Outside he and Laon strode back toward camp, waving the rest of the men to wait for the girls. At the road, he stopped. He had to straighten this out; he couldn’t do anything about what already was, but he could undo this so that it couldn’t continue. He looked at the empty fields he could see; people might go hungry here if he did this, but it was such an abomination it had to stop, and the sooner the better. “Go back to camp,” he said to Laon. “Have the men tend to the horses.”

Laon gaped at him. “Magic?”

“Big magic,” said Sean, as he knelt down to gather a handful of icy gravel from the road.

“You should bring Mattie back first,” suggested Laon, “just in case…”

Sean considered for a moment. “Not until after. I’ll save enough to bring her back after.” He watched Laon leave. Would there be enough left over to bring Mattie back here when he was finished? That was air magic, but the type of magic didn't matter, it was the energy behind it. He’d done big magic before, but nothing this big. In terms of magic, this was a very large valley. “Mattie?”

“Yes,”
she replied.

“Ready yourself, I may bring you here soon, alone and without warning; take precautions.”

“What are you doing?”

Sean didn’t answer her. He stepped to the side of the road and picked a tiny white flower, incongruous this close to full winter. With the frozen gravel in one hand and the flower in the other, Sean dug into the magic. He untied knots and smoothed wrinkles and folds; he reached to the boundaries of the valley from rock ridge to rock ridge and unwound the abomination from its roots. Using both forms of earth magic at his command, he righted the horrible wrong that had been done here.

Just when he thought he was finished, he realized he was not; nature pulled at him to finish. He knelt to the ground just short of falling. With his hands resting on the gravelly surface of the road, the old magic took hold of him and made its own right. Roots halted their reaching and leaves went back to sleep. Plants
did
gage their age by the season, and the season said they should be elsewhere in their life cycle.

He pushed himself to his feet, sparks dancing before his eyes. He picked out Ferris coming toward him, but he couldn’t tell if he was running or walking; he kept having to turn in order to continue to face him. He reached for Mattie, then tripped. Something hit his shoulder, and the side of his head bounced against the surface of the road, then the vertigo forced him to close his eyes.

Hands pushed at him, then turned his chin; he didn’t know anything else.

Sean would have opened his eyes when he woke, but he felt something over them, something cool and damp. He reached up and pulled it away to find Lyra looking over him with Ferris at her shoulder. Beyond them was a roof. “Where am I?” he asked, and felt his throat shrivel with the effort.

“You saved my daughter-in-law,” said a quavering voice. “When you fell ill, I couldn’t just let you stay in some tent. You’re in my home.”

Sean turned his head and clenched the rag in his hand as his stomach informed him violently that he hadn’t satisfied it for getting so dizzy before passing out. Most of the contents of his stomach were caught in a wooden pail. When his stomach was satisfied with its efforts, Sean sagged back. “How long have we been here?” he rasped after Lyra had wiped his mouth, beating his hand to the task.

“Just since last night,” she replied.

“Where’s Mattie?”

“Boy,” growled Ferris, “you’re still cross-eyed and you have to ask a million questions; why don’t you just let us handle things and go back to sleep? You’re not going anywhere today.”

Sean tried to clear his throat with little success, but tried again anyway. “Where’s Mattie?”

“You sent her back to the palace two days ago,” said Lyra.

“Oh god, no.” Sean tried to push himself up, but he was easily pushed back down. “Mattie!” he called desperately, terrified that he had lost her somewhere between here and there.

“My lord?”
was her soft answer. She was concerned and worried, but well and whole.

He sank back, shaking with relief.

Lyra’s hand touched his forehead. “Mattie taught me how to do this. She had me practice on Paddn, then on Lord Ferris here a couple times.” She pushed Sean into a doze and slipped a shield in place at the same time. She was stronger than Mattie; her touch was a little harsher, less sneaky, but caught unawares, it was just as effective. He slept.

When Sean woke again, he felt lethargic and dull, but not so much so that he didn’t recognize the cry of a baby. The cry couldn’t exactly be called lusty, but it sounded healthy at least. He pulled himself up onto one elbow and looked around the small cabin. The girl, the new mother, was sleeping curled up in a chair in the corner; otherwise, the place was empty and quiet.

The baby fussed again; it wasn’t totally upset yet. Sean pushed the blanket back. Someone had removed his armor and boots, and loosened his belt. He tested his balance and pushed himself to his feet. Raking his fingers through his hair, he made his way over to the baby. It was so small, but then he had never seen a newborn before. The only babies he had seen belonged to someone pushing a stroller along the streets of New York City, or those who crawled around his aunt’s house during meals.

He reached into the rough-made crib and touched the fine black fuzz on the baby’s head, then he explored the fingers; he had never seen fingers so small and yet so perfect, all the way down to the tiny fingernails. A quiet gasp distracted him from his exploration.

“Forgive me, my lord,” said the girl. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. Lord Ferris thought you might sleep longer if no one was in here, but Miss Lyra said someone should watch over you. She said the baby shouldn’t be outside so soon, so I was picked to watch. I’m sorry I fell asleep. I… I…”

“Hush,” said Sean. “It’s all right. You have a fine son.” He marveled that the tiny hand tried to grasp his finger; he was in awe that there was enough muscle to move the little fingers at all. Surely, there wasn’t enough room inside the delicate skin for such a thing to be possible.

The girl flushed at the compliment, then asked boldly, “Will you bless him? If it were not for you, he…we would be dead by now; it’s only right that he have your blessing before you go.”

Sean sighed; he remembered his last blessing. The boy had been brutally born and left blind because of it. This child, having grown far too fast in the womb, looked normal and healthy, but he too might have problems in the future. He nodded, but he needed a blessing to fit this case. The otherness he had felt before stepped in front of his eyes again. His fingers found the boy’s tiny feet, and his thumbs rubbed their soles.
“Mahlē yōh, asha yōhe pasché, shumal washumé
.
”
He pulled himself erect and took a deep breath. Two identical thumbprints were left on the bottoms of the baby’s feet. “May you walk strong along your path,” he said to echo the indistinct translation left behind by the otherness, and so his mother would understand what he had said.

Ferris, Lyra, and Laon all three burst into the room just then to see the girl looking terrified with her eyes wide, her hands covering her mouth, and Sean standing over the baby that cooed just then and kicked his feet free of the blanket. “What did you do?” growled Ferris.

“It’s just a blessing, Ferris. Cool down, man,” said Sean.

All three of them visibly relaxed. “I’ll cool down when I see you back with your wife,” said Ferris. “Then I may wash my hands of you completely. I’m getting too old for this.”

Sean moved over to sink into a chair at the table. “You’ve got room for more gray hair,” he said, smiling. “I could send you back to the palace if you think traveling with me is too stressful.”

“You used enough magic out there to bring down a mountain. You should let it rest, for a few hours at least. And you should get back in that bed and rest yourself for what’s left of the night.” Ferris spoke with a growl that did little to conceal his concern.

Lyra had stepped out while they spoke, and now returned to hand a tall mug to Laon, though she spoke to Sean. “Mattie says you are to drink this. She says that you won’t like it, but to drink it anyway. I made it a couple hours ago.”