The Unconquered Mage Page 16

  It was so difficult, as if I were trying to shape water, but eventually I felt it respond, and before it could ignite anything I let it pass from me into Davik’s grip. Once it was gone I felt utterly drained, weakened, but we’d expected that, because being able to shape magic and then give it to someone else to use was so difficult we’d almost had to devise a different kathana before Relania worked out the technique. The idea was for each mage to bring the pouvra (or th’an) into shape, then give it to the next person, who would combine it with his and pass it forward until the keypoint mage, the one at the circle, was handling four times his normal ability.

  It sounds dangerous. Was dangerous, clearly. I still don’t see that we had another choice, except

  Never mind that. If I write it all down, it makes their sacrifice less of a waste.

  I was at the back, so I couldn’t see the rest, but I knew how the kathana was meant to work. We’d never been able to get the Balaenic mages to work the pouvrin at the same speed, because some of us just take longer than others, so as each keypoint person received their burden, he or she started slapping the ground in time with the song’s rhythm. As soon as everyone was doing that, Jaemis would begin his part, linking the eight magics together and essentially telling the pouvrin to act like th’an, rigid and malleable at the same time.

  Like I wrote, I couldn’t see any of this, but I could hear this noise begin, a range of pitches that sounded like moaning. I think it was moaning, the sound of those eight mages trying to keep the magic from escaping. I know it’s not a living I don’t know if magic is living or not. Maybe that’s the problem. But I couldn’t help picturing it trying to escape, as if we were caging it, or tormenting it.

  There was the music, and the moaning, and very faintly the sound of someone dragging a knife or a stick through the hard, half-frozen earth, and then I did see something—an icy glow that sprang up around each of those keypoint mages. If winter were a color, that’s what it would be, silver-white light that looked like it would burn anything it touched, except our mages weren’t screaming in pain, so it was just an illusion.

  And then they did start screaming.

  Four of the mages at the circle went up in flames, gold mixed with that silver-white light. The other four—I couldn’t see them, just that the light grew more intense and then shrank down to limn their outlines. I saw Jaemis, just barely, as he collapsed and began thrashing on the ground. That was when I tried to stand and found I needed the support of my hands to get to my feet. Everyone else was screaming, and I reached out with the extinguishing pouvra, thinking I could at least put out the fires, and it worked, but the silver light was still there, and they were all still thrashing around, and I did the only thing I could think of—flung myself forward and scrabbled at one of the inert th’an, finally prying it up and crushing it in my hands. The light vanished.

  I didn’t think I’d ever be able to move again. Then someone helped me stand—it was Jeddan, and he was saying something I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t that I couldn’t hear him, but I felt addled, as if language were beyond my understanding. He had to repeat himself several times before I realized he was asking if I was all right. I nodded, though I think I was lying—it depended on what he meant by “all right.” At least I wasn’t injured. Then I looked around, and I thought I might never be all right again.

  All the keypoint mages were dead. Four of them were blackened husks curled up on themselves from extreme heat. Four of them were crushed and mangled as if they’d been caught in a rock slide. Jaemis was unrecognizable as human. It was so silent that if Jeddan hadn’t spoken to me, I’d have thought I’d gone deaf. Then someone began sobbing, and it was as if that had broken through some invisible barrier, because everyone joined in, screaming or wailing or just making these inhuman groaning sounds. Jeddan and I both sat down and held each other, crying without making a sound.

  I don’t know how long it took before people from our camp came to investigate the light. I had my eyes closed because it was too hard to keep them open, and because everywhere I looked I saw a dead friend, but I heard them running toward us, and then at least one person threw up. That told me I had better get control of myself, because someone would need to supervise everything, starting with taking the bodies to where they could be cared for before being buried.

  It was just as hard to stand as it had been before, but Jeddan and I helped each other—well, he helped me and I tried not to weigh him down—and I was able to face the soldiers and give them instructions. Then I went to each of our mages in turn and made them calm down enough to look at me, and told them to go back to the palace and rest—in groups, if they could, because I didn’t think any of us should be alone. Not that I had any choice about it, myself.

  I stayed long enough to ensure the bodies were being handled with respect, then followed that horrible white-sheeted procession back to camp with Jeddan. Neither of us said anything. There wasn’t anything to say, really, until we’d seen our friends cared for, and then we walked back to the palace. Once we were at the door to his chambers, Jeddan said, “I can have someone send a message to Cederic.”

  “He shouldn’t be interrupted,” I said, “and when Radryntor finds out about this, who knows what she’ll think it means? I just want to sleep, Jeddan, and hope this doesn’t look quite so bad later.”

  Jeddan didn’t look convinced. “You don’t look well,” he said.

  “Neither do you,” I said. His normally tanned complexion looked chalky.

  “Well,” he said, “if you can sleep, sleep, but come back to the mages’ quarters later. I think everyone could use some reassurance.”

  “I will,” I said, but as I write this I’m not sure I’m capable of reassuring anyone because I can’t even reassure myself.

  This is the worst disaster I can imagine. Not only did we lose so many people, we failed utterly at the only thing we could think of that would make our magics whole. Magic is fading, we don’t know how to stop it, it’s nearly spring and we have barely any support and only a shred of an army, the God-Empress is winning, and I might as well have no husband for all we ever see each other.

  I know I told Jeddan I would sleep, but I feel as if I will never sleep again, just go on putting one foot in front of the other like a puppet on strings, and writing in this book is all I can do. And it’s completely pointless.

  I’m going to bed now. Maybe all I can do is stare at the wall and think about my failures. Maybe that will shake something loose. Maybe not. But it’s all that’s left to me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  18 Teretar, evening

  I don’t know how long it was after I finished that last entry that I woke up—I didn’t realize I’d been asleep either—to find Cederic shaking me gently and saying my name. I felt so numb, it was as if I didn’t recognize him. As if he meant nothing to me. He was sitting on the edge of our bed, so I sat up to face him, and he clasped my hands and said, “Tell me what happened.”

  “I can’t talk about it,” I said.

  “You have the look of someone who is being eaten from within,” he said. “You need to tell someone. Please, Sesskia, let me share your burden.”

  Him saying that—I don’t know what happened. Usually, as I’ve written before, I tell him everything. But it infuriated me—all those days of never seeing him, of trying to reach out and being ignored or passed over in favor of something more important, and it took nine deaths for him to decide he wanted to be with me?

  I screamed at him—I won’t even try to record what I said, it was horrible and vicious and I felt myself growing harder and colder with every word. He just looked at me, and before I’d fully wound down he withdrew his hands, stood and walked away, silently, his face as expressionless as always, and that shut me up. I clenched my hands and listened to his steps, listened to the door open and shut, quietly, and then I threw myself face-first onto the bed and howled.

  I was making so much noise I didn’t know he’d come back u
ntil he picked me up and put his arms around me, laid his cheek against mine, and held me, whispering, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I cried and cried and clung to him and cried some more until my throat ached and my eyes ached and I ran out of tears. Then we sat like that, silent, until I said, “I shouldn’t have said any of that. I didn’t mean it.”

  “I think I may have deserved some of it,” he said. “I have been incredibly stupid not to realize how little we were seeing of each other. Lady Radryntor has consumed so much of my time I told myself my own needs could wait—but I never thought of yours, nor that my needs are now to an extent those of the Empire and should not be neglected.”

  “Even so, I should never have spoken to you that way,” I said. “Please forgive me.”

  “As you forgave me, once,” Cederic said, and my heart lightened.

  “I should have pushed harder,” I said. “I knew we were drifting apart, but part of me was selfish and believed because I was exhausting myself, you should be the one to make the effort. So I never did anything beyond trying to stay awake until you came to bed.”

  He smiled. “You don’t know how many times I thought of waking you,” he said. “But I knew you needed your rest, and I told myself there would be time, eventually.”

  “I wish you’d woken me,” I said.

  “I wish I had too,” he said, kissing me. “But we have nothing but time now.”

  “Even if Lady Radryntor decides to evict us from Pfulerre?” I said.

  Cederic gestured, and a heavy chair flew across the room and wedged itself under the doorknob. “She will need several men with large axes to do that,” he said between kisses, “and if she is able to get past that door, there are more chairs in this room I will use as projectiles.”

  I started unbuttoning his shirt. “Are you sure your concentration can be divided like that?” I said.

  “No,” he said, sliding his hands under my shirt and unfastening my breast band, “but I thought you might like the reassurance of knowing I am so committed to making you cry out in pleasure I would attack the servants of one of our vassals to ensure it.”

  “That is the most romantic thing you have ever said to me,” I said, and then we were done talking.

  I love him so much.

  We made love, then we held each other, and talked, and made love again, and part of me wanted to feel guilty that I could be so happy when nine of my friends were dead, but I know it’s foolish to think that way, because my being miserable isn’t going to bring them back. And I needed this so much.

  I told him about Roda, about what we’d said to each other, and he listened intently and held me close, and this time I didn’t cry. When I finally wound down, he stayed silent, just played with my hair the way he does sometimes when we’re lying close together. Eventually, I said, “Well?”

  “I was not sure whether you wanted my opinion, or just a listening ear,” he said.

  “I—actually, I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I want reassurance.”

  “If you are looking to me to tell you whether or not to forgive your sister, you will have to ready yourself for disappointment,” he said, “as I think it is not my place to tell you what to do with your pain. But I think you are wrong in believing that forgiveness means behaving as if the sin never happened.”

  “Then what does it mean?” I said.

  “What did it mean when you forgave me the cruel things I said to you in the palace?” he said.

  “That was different,” I said. “That wasn’t years of pain and abandonment. Besides, I was in love with you and I wanted a reason to forgive you.”

  He laughed. “The two may be different in, let us say, intensity,” he said, “but the principle is the same. You chose to let go of the resentment you might justifiably have harbored against me. That is not the same as pretending it never happened. Much as I personally would like not to have that memory.”

  “And it meant being able to love you, so it’s not as if nothing good came of it,” I said.

  “It’s up to you to decide whether something good came of Roda’s actions,” Cederic said. “But I think, if you choose to let the past bury the past, you may feel happier. And your happiness is paramount to me.”

  I put my arms around his neck. “Show me,” I said, and he did.

  Finally, it grew dark, and we got dressed and went to eat, not with Radryntor but with the mages elsewhere in the palace. That was a lot sadder, and then I felt guilty that I’d had such a wonderful afternoon when most of them hadn’t, but we remembered our dead together, and that made things easier. I think we’ll be able to go back to our work soon—not before the funeral, naturally, but soon.

  Cederic’s right. I’ve been carrying around a lot of anger toward Roda for years, even though most of the time I wasn’t aware of it. And it hasn’t made me happier. It seems like she really does regret the choices she made, which means she’s going to carry that burden whether I forgive her or not, so if I’m worried that forgiving her means pretending none of it happened, I shouldn’t be. If I could forgive Cederic for his deliberate cruelty, maybe I can forgive Roda too. But I don’t think anything good came of her actions.

  Well, maybe. I was able to survive on my own after I left Thalessa because of what I’d had to learn to keep the three of us alive after Roda left. And it would have been harder to go out on the road the way I needed to if Roda had still been there. But I’m not ready to think like that. I’m sure as hell not going to be grateful to her for what she did. If she’d been with us, she would have gone for the medicine and I’d have been with Bridie when she died. I guess I’m not as over my resentment as I thought.

  True God help me. I re-read that last paragraph and realized something I’ve failed to see all these years: it’s myself I can’t forgive.

  I was supposed to take care of my baby sister and I failed her right at the end. It doesn’t matter that I was only fourteen and working myself to exhaustion every day, I was doing it for her sake, because she was small even for a ten-year-old and couldn’t do much more for the family than scrounge along the tide line. I had to go out for the medicine because there wasn’t anyone else, and it was just stupid bad luck that’s when she had her final seizure. It’s just been easier, all these years, to blame Roda or Mam so I wouldn’t have to face how much I blamed myself.

  It doesn’t change anything I wrote above, but…maybe if I can forgive Roda, I can forgive myself too.

  I don’t know. Letting go of this pain is hard. I’ll see how I feel in the morning. And now I’m going to bed with my husband, and while we probably won’t be having sex again, we will sleep close together, and bring each other comfort, and tomorrow I’ll be able to face whatever the future holds. And I don’t feel one bit superstitious about writing that.

  19 Teretar

  Today was a rest day. We each, Balaenic and Castaviran, prepared to bury our friends according to our different customs, but we also wanted to do something to honor them as mages irrespective of their nationalities. So we went into Pfulerre and bought nine blank books, and everyone wrote messages in them—nothing maudlin like “We’ll never forget you,” because that’s either true or it isn’t and writing it under these circumstances felt trivial. Instead we wrote about magic, how we felt when we used it and why we could still go on using those pouvrin and th’an that killed them because it wasn’t the magic’s fault what had happened.

  Then we wrapped those books in red silk—red for celebration, since we already had enough white for death, and it turns out Castavirans associate white with death like we do—and laid them with the bodies. They’ll be buried tomorrow, the Castavirans in one of the Pfulerrian cemeteries, the Balaenics in the burial ground outside Lethess. We’d wanted them all to be buried together where the kathana circle was, but I judged it was better they lie with the rest of the dead so their burial place wouldn’t be forgotten, or disturbed by one or both of those cities expanding beyond its current boundaries.

  When I wa
sn’t participating in those things, I stayed in our room and read a book I’d borrowed from Granea, something light and mindless like I haven’t read in years, and ate off a tray they brought me at lunchtime, and basically did nothing of importance. I did have dinner with Cederic and Radryntor, who wasn’t quite as cold as she’s been lately, probably because she’s not an evil person and respected the fact that I’m in mourning. We talked about a lot of things, and I think she wanted to bring up the failed kathana but couldn’t find a graceful way to do it. Probably she just wanted to be assured that Castaviran magic isn’t what caused it to fail.

  In two days we’ll have the funeral. After that, it’s time to get back to work. We still have to bring the magics together, and we still don’t know how to do that, and there’s still the problem of magic diminishing, so that’s a lot of work. But we’re not giving up. (I almost wrote “we’re not giving up yet,” but that implies there’s a point in the future where we will give up, and I’m too stubborn to ever do that.)

  21 Teretar

  The funeral was the same as any other, which is all I’ll write about that because it’s bad luck to record the details of a funeral. It draws Death’s attention, and I don’t need any more of that. We were all able to go to both because Balaenic funerals are traditionally held at dawn, and the Castaviran funeral was mid-morning. So many of the funeral traditions are the same that for the first time, I could see how our cultures might once have been one. How terrible it’s our death rituals we haven’t changed in all these centuries.