Timothy Ferguson's Blog, page 75

Mirarion : Chapter 10

Let me tell you about an illusion called the thimblerig. It’s not a spell: it’s a piece of con artistry done on fairgrounds. A group of men pretend to have a gambling game going, and they entice others to part with money by moving around thimbles with a pea supposedly hidden under one. In truth, of course, there is no game. The pea is not under a thimble, it is in the sleeve of the man pushing about the thimbles. The men are important, because they convince you that a game is in progress. The patter is important because it distracts you while the trick is done. When you are finally presented with a choice of thimble, the trick is already over.

During Wizard’s War, magical illusionists do this to.  When an illusionist attacks you, then the trick’s already over. What you are seeing is just him asking you to convince yourself. That’s vital, because your Parma Magica may protect you from a created dragon, but it can’t protect you from your own pride, or anger. If he sends an illusionary dragon after you, don’t charge after him. When you do, the odds are you’ll fall into a disguised pit. You get to see him when he wants to be seen.

The day before the duel I went to the infirmary, and spoke with an old Verditius magus who was a patient there. His name was Callidus. I’d heard of him before. His reputation was that of a cranky, old misanthrope, who loathed few things more than other Verditus magi. He seemed frail when I saw him. He had a long neck and a forward thrust of his head that reminded me strongly of a bird. “Sit down please, Mirarius.” he said and then triggered a little Circle spell that hid our words from outsiders. He did this by tapping a small ring on a charm bracelet. Like most of his tribe, he was heavily adorned with bejeweled casting tools.

“I hear that the War Council has asked you to duel Incendia immediately.”

“Word travels quickly in the camp, I see. Yes, they have. House Flambeau insists.”

“Perhaps your criticism of their strategy was unwise?

“Unwise, yes.” I answered in a tone which made clear that I thought it accurate, regardless of advisability.

He laughed: a slight, panting thing. “May I offer you a bargain?”

“You may offer. I may refuse.” I answered, almost without thinking about the words.

“Certainly. I should like to offer you the rental of my talisman, for a single day, at the cost of one silver penny, paid in advance.”

That stopped me for a moment. “That’s generous. Why, please?” It is important to be polite to Verditius magi. Lack of civility draws out the anger in so many of them.

“If it is a rental there is some argument that it remains my property and so, if you fall, it cannot be looted from your corpse.”

“Why a penny?”

“Why not a penny?  You Mycetians generally carry money, don’t you?”

“A little, yes.”

“A strange trait which will now prove its usefulness. A silver penny if you will, and you may borrow, for a day, my staff.”

I thought about it.

“An excellent deal.”  I handed him a penny. “So, what can your staff do?”

“It allows flight. It has a version of the coach nail projection you are reputed to find so useful. It can carry objects at a distance. It can throw up protective sheets of metal. It has other features which I will not disclose.”

“Excellent! Thank you, honoured one, this will be most useful.  Why  do you dislike Incendia so much?”

“Oh, I don’t dislike her. She’s been far more polite to me than most people.”

“Then…oh.”

“You have discerned my reason?”

“Yes, old one. Is there peace between us?”

“Have you affronted me?”

“Well, I was given a place higher than you on the list.”

He cackled. “I would have died in the queue. At least this way, I am still interested. I am still affecting events.”

“That you are. Thank you again. May I have the triggering actions?”

“They are as you might imagine, since you have already wielded an item from one of my apprentices. You thrust toward an object to fling an item at it, wave the tip at an object and command it to move to manipulate at a distance, tap the base on the ground to fly, and drag it across the ground to create a wall of iron.”

“Drag the tip or the base?”

“Oh, either.”

“Sleep well, honored one.” I said.

He looked at me suspiciously. “I shall be angry if you attempt to deduce the other effects. “

“I shall give my oath on the Code that I will not attempt to find them, if you so wish.”

“How do you already know my triggers?” he demanded.

“I don’t. Let the battle demonstrate it to you.  You will be able to view the staff, I assume, through an arcane connection?”

“Yes.”

“Then, let my actions be my proof.  I am about to practice juts outside the Aegis with your staff. Do you object?”

“Yes, I do. There are too many people. They will learn how the effects are triggered.”

“I hesitate to fly out too far. A rogue Flambeau might kill me with impunity.”

“Not impunity.  Not unless they destroy my staff, and they will find that difficult.”

“Very well. I will train on a distant hill.  Thank you again. I will literally be victorious or die trying.”

He smiled, a tight, pained smile. “Thank you, young man. Thank you for letting me be the one to meddle with destiny, perhaps for the last time.”

I left and trained on a distant hill.  When I got back, I had lunch with my father and siblings. Scipia gave me the news I needed.

“After you left, she went to the kitchen and sat by the fire for half an hour.”

I motioned “And?” with me head. My mouth was full of lettuce.

“She was talking to the fire.”

I smiled. She told me that smiling with my cheeks full made me look like a squirrel.

I swallowed.

“No. She wasn’t talking to the fire.  She was talking to the smoke.”

“My son.” said Toxophilus “you seem ridiculously pleased by this news. What is its significance?”

“Well, I need to think through all of the angles, but I think it means I can win. Let me tell you about an illusion.  It’s called the thimblerig…”

 

 

Mirarion : Chapter 9

Scipia found me before dawn. She saw my new leg, but didn’t realize it was permanent. She was waiting for the day, for my wound to open. I told her that I’d been healed. She looked surprised, then dropped to one knee and at the point where my stump joined my smooth, mottled, new flesh. “Come quickly.” she said. “We must get you out of here before the other patients wake.”

She and I walked through to what I assumed was a storeroom. She asked me to cast a spell which would hide our voices, and we sat on some crates of supplies. “You can bivouac with me until we get things sorted out.” she said.

“What needs to be sorted out?”

“I can see her sigil in your skin, Mirarius. They are going to tear strips off her when they find out.”

“Yes, but I doubt she cares. Actually, the Tytalusians enjoy that sort of thing. Maybe she did it just because she hasn’t had a decent argument in a week.”

“She was specifically forbidden from healing you. She’d argued for it in the War Council. She claimed Achlys’s vis was hers by right. The others over-ruled her. She must have broken into the vis stores.”

“That’s serious, but again, I presume that’s what she wanted.”

“No, you still don’t understand. We don’t have enough vis to go around…”

“I do know that…”

“…so there’s a triage list. The vis she spent on your leg should have gone to one of the combat magi. Unless we find more vis, whoever that was is going to die because of Decimata’s decision.”

“Who is it?”

“They haven’t told us. They don’t want fighting over who ranks whom.”

“Who knows?”

“Well, all of the War Council, and whomever they have told.”

I shrugged. “I can see that’s a problem, but I can’t see what I can do about it.” Again, I shrugged. “I just need to wait for orders.”

“Yes, but while you wait, it’s best not to sleep in the terminal ward. A knife in the neck and suddenly there’s Corpus vis available, and the list gets ever shorter.”

***

I was fencing with one of the grogs when I saw Scipia again. She called me aside, and I dismissed him. That was when I met Ruggerio. He became a shield of mine, later in the war.

“Decimata has left.”

“Left where?” I asked, as I took off my training jerkin.

“She’s packed her gear. She’s left left Heartfoam.”

“Why?” I was casting a petty spell to clean me up. I didn’t think this a serious matter.

“The War Council started to upbraid her. She said she was sick of them, and that she was leaving the army…”

“…and they let her go?”

“The can’t stop her. Many of the Tytaluses are heading off on their own. They think they can do more harm to the Diedne with guerrilla tactics, or that they can seek a separate peace.”

She and I had walked to a quiet part of the stableyard. I dropped my voice. “How bad is it?  The desertion, I mean.”

“Hers?”

“No.”

“People rally to causes in the ascendant. A lot of the Tytalus magi are angry at the tactics used in the Tempest.”

“Is that what they are calling the battle?”

“Oh, yes. The Criamon says they have been calling it the Tempest for decades now. No point annoying them.”

“So how many have we lost?”

“It depends what you mean by ‘lost’.” She sighed and sat on a rail. “Flambeau heading south or Tytalus heading to the sea just claim they are just going to their Domus Magna. They say they are going to bolster the defences in case the Diedne decide to knock their House out of the war, to cover their rear before they march east.  Some of them are even telling the truth.”

“But what are the numbers?”

“No-one is sure. More leave every day. We are now grossly numerically inferior in this theatre. The Diedne may be fielding a force five times the size of ours, and theirs are less injured, and more experienced. We lost most of the Mercurians when their ritual was disrupted.”

“So, what are our orders?”

“Currently? Hold Heartfoam, to buy the leadership time to cajole the stragglers back into the army.”

“That’s not going to happen. What are the contingencies?”

“Unofficially? We wait until enough stragglers leave for House Tremere to say “We are doing things our way from now on, and you can join in if you can obey orders.”

“It can’t be that bad. We only lost one battle.”

“If the Diedne make it as far as Bohemia, then they hit some of the defences we have had prepared since the post-Sundering security monomania. We might hold them there.  If we can’t, then Lycaneon is where we win or lose.”

“We are openly discussing drawing a line at Lycaneon?”

“Yes. Within the House, yes.”

“That…” I paused. “That could never work.”

“It could if they were stupid about it.”

“If we give them all of France and Germany, they just need to wait for a decade, harvest all of the vis…”

“Call up demons with it, and feed us to them. Yes. Demons lack patience.”

“That’s why they have human servants, so they can borrow patience.”

“This is why we wanted allies to begin with. To prevent the scenario which some of our commanders are now suggesting is the best possible outcome.”

I sat down and stared into space for a minute.  I couldn’t find any angle that made things look better.  “What can I do?”

“Well, the Primus may have orders for you tonight. He’s seeing you directly before the next meeting of the War Council.”

I felt my spine straighten “Me? Why?”

“You are a conciliarus. He’s calling together all of you. I’m guessing he’s about to make a major shift in strategy and wants to make sure none of you are going to demand he defend his right to lead with a duel.”

“You’d have to be an idiot to challenge him now.”

“Some people are suggesting father might challenge.”

“He’s not an idiot. Whoever is in charge…I mean, it’s…”

“At best, of a forced withdrawal where we kill our wounded, harvest our dead, and burn the earth as we flee?”

“Yes.” There was nothing else to say, really. I smiled, resigned half smile. “I’ll tell you what I can afterwards.”

“I know.  I’ll tell you what I learn too. Things are going to get worse, Mirarius. We haven’t finished paying for the Tempest yet.”

Scipia broke off as a redcap found us.  The redcap was called Aristella, and she started talking, apologetically and hurriedly. One of the patients wanted to see me. Her name was Incendia of Flambeau. She’d sent a redcap so that this was an official request for an audience. I sensed this was not going to go well, and had the redcap lead on.

I attended Incendia’s bedside. I’m not sure why she was in the hospital. They were keeping her between days, so from dawn until dusk her wounds were closed by magic. Come the evening her skin would peel off and her burns erupt through her flesh, until another temporary spell could soothe them. During the day, though, there was no need for her to be on a pallet.

She introduced herself. Incdendia of Flambeau. No honorific. Not parent’s name. She looked old. Not just experienced: tired. I gave my name. She came right to her point.

“I know you offered to commit suicide, and I’d like to accept your offer.”

“I didn’t offer to commit it for you.”

“You did, though. I’m the person highest on the triage list. The vis used to replace your leg was meant to heal my burns. When the Diedne arrive here, I’ll certainly die at the turning of the day. You can prevent that. Give up your life, and let me take your vis. I will slay many of our enemies in your memory. They will light your way to the Afterlife.”

“Will they, though?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your plan seems to be to be to incinerate the druids.”

“Yes?” she looked bemused, as if I was speaking in riddles.

“So, make the biggest fire you can?”

“I will kill legions of them and write your name with their ashes, in commemoration.”

“No. You won’t. You can’t.”

“I will, and can.”

“If you’d offered virtually anything else, I might have killed myself for you. This? This is ridiculous.”

“You are mocking me?”

“Yes. You plan is to just fight the Tempest again. Why do you think we lost the last time?”

“The Mercurians botched the ritual…”

“No! That’s exactly my point. We lost last time because you, and I, and the Diedne all know exactly what you plan to do in every battle. You just try to burn people. Not just you: your entire lineage. You had one great victory at the Battle of the False Sun because the other side didn’t know fire magic was scalable. You’ve fought that one battle ever since. Usually you win. You burned out the Corruption. Well done you. Your doctrine though? It’s always the same.”

“And you? You illusionist?” She spat the word. “What do you plan to do with your little amusements?”

“Improvise.” I shrugged. “I don’t know what I’ll do, but neither do the enemy. I don’t have much hope of success, but you? You have none. I’m sorry you are going to die, but fire magi are a penny a gross. You’re all the same. All interchangeable. If you’d been almost anything else, even an Apromorian, I’d have seriously considered assenting to my death. This? To die just so you could try to prove your housemates weren’t acting like idiots last time? No. Never.”

“Then you leave me no choice. Creo!”

“No. I refuse to meet your challenge, on the basis that it breaches military discipline, breaks the Code and is just damned stupid.”

“Coward. A Mycetian who will not duel!”

“Duelling is for disputes that have merit on each side. This is just foolish. I won’t give my life for yours, because I don’t accept that you are of greater military value than me.”

“Then I declare War upon you.” she announced.

“Well, see you at the full moon then,” I snapped back. Mentally I did a quick calculation. I’d lost track a little, because of my time in hospital, but I presumed the moon would be full in slightly over two weeks. I turned to stride away.

“Will you flee? My brethren will hunt you if you flee.  Even if I die, you will not know peace. You will feel our fire, and we will see if you mock so easily then!”

I turned back at the door. “How could I kill you if I fled?” I asked. I had no idea how I was going to fight her, but I’m an illusionist. Sometimes you need to lie about things until you can make your words true.

I took a moment to calm myself, and then decided I need to talk to the most dangerous person I could find. Decimata was gone, so that left my father. I knew he’d be busy, but since I was now one of his main problems, I thought he’d find the time.

Mirarion : Chapter 8

I awoke. It was dark outside, but Decimata stood near my feet. A semblance of a candle flame hovered over her left shoulder. There was another spell also: I could see the curve of its circumference on the floor. I knew it: it is called The Aid to the Resurrectionist’s Shovel.  It is used to prevent light and conversation carrying when the caster and allies are engaged in questionable activities.

“Mirarius, are you aware you died in the night?” she asked.

“No!” I sat up swiftly.

“I am sorry to inform you that you have passed from life.” she looked solemn, but that was not unusual.

“I find that very difficult to believe.” I could feel my breath, but then again, some ghosts did think they were breathing. I could feel my pulse speeding up.

“Ghosts often cannot believe they are dead. It is not unusual to have difficulty crossing over. You are an exception, of course, but our families have helped people to cross for generations.”

“I can feel my pulse.”

“I’m sorry, you really are dead. Please look at your leg.”

I looked down, surprised she had said “Please.” and my leg was intact. It looked kind of dark and smoky, but it was certainly there. I flexed my knee.

“You know we don’t have any spare vis. Your spiritual form is intact, because you think of yourself as having two legs. I’m sorry, but you really are dead. This leads to a difficult question.”

“What?”

“Do you consent for your body’s vis to be harvested for the war effort?”

“I have already. I offered to commit suicide.”

“Were you in earnest? Not merely discussing an option?”

“I was in earnest.”

“Thank you for your service and sacrifice, cousin.” she intoned.

“Decimata?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“What’s brown and sticky?”

“Pardon?”

“A stick!” I laughed. I’d always loved that joke.

“I don’t understand.”

“Ghosts are obsessed with their final business. They can’t really think about anything else. They can’t enjoy jokes, because their minds can’t suddenly shift direction. If I was dead, puns wouldn’t be funny.  Right now, I think the expression on your face is hilarious.”

She smiled. “Well played. The leg won’t turn to ash at dawn.”

“Where did you get the vis?”

“You father has has spirits haunting the battlefields, and bringing in the corpses of the fallen. We have harvested them. We are all ghouls now, feasting on our dead. The Diedne will not do it, you know. More fool them. They have a great sepulcher filled with vis that they must eventually use, and that will break their morale. It is always best to dispense with one’s morals at the beginning of a war.”

“We found so much vis we can cure illusionists?”

“I cured you on a personal whim. I shall have to discuss it with our commanders tomorrow.”

“Why?” I felt a sense of disgust welling up.

“Achlys’s spirit was quite clear concerning its disposition.”

“I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”

“No lecture on my wastefulness?”

“No.”

“Goodnight cousin. Long life and glorious foes for you.’

“And you.”

I didn’t sleep.

Mirarion: Chapter 7

I did not know where I was, but a pale face loomed huge above me, its eyes pools of shadow. I screamed and smashed it with my fist. There was cursing and, as I attempted to rise, I was struck with, the Call to Slumber. I tasted ashes and fell unconscious again. As I drifted into an incoherent nightmare where I was somehow both an octopus and a gingerbread man and my legs were being eaten, I was relieved. I knew the spell’s sigil was that of Decimatia of Tytalus, Achlys’s mistress.

The next time I woke I was strapped down, and muzzled. I tapped the first few portions of “Sons of Mycetias, Rise as The Dawn” onto the bedhead. It may seem odd that we have an accepted knock code for “I’d prefer you didn’t treat me as is I was insane.” but Mentem duels often end with someone in need of a gentle rest under tight confinement. The person who came to untie me was Scipia, my sister.

Scipia was a corporeal necromantrix at that stage, although she’s more famous as a battlefield surgeon now. You may have heard she developed spells which allow you to graft a dead, but functional, limb onto a living person for the duration of a day? Disgusting, but effective. It doesn’t even have to be the person’s own limb. For a while there she was assembling grogs out of other grogs in a fashion I consider terrifying only now. Then it was awesome, and now it is awful.  She had been suborned to the hospital because the hospice was already sorted out, and her ability to keep the walking dead combat worthy was directly relevant to keeping living combatants walking.

“Salve!” she said “don’t try to rise. You’ve lost a leg in battle.”

“I remember. It was eaten.”

“Yes. I surmised as much. The marks on the bone are distinctive.” and then she peered at where my leg should be and I thought…well, it was just a burst of emotions, really, focused on the determination to never look at what she was examining. It must, of itself, be horrible, both in material and implication, but with Scipia’s sigili, my stump was possibly covered in putrefying insect scales.

“Could you come up to the head of the bed?” I asked “I’d prefer not to strain my neck looking down at you.” As she walked up I asked “And if you could tuck in what’s left of my legs? It’s a bit cold.”

“One of them’s fine, and the other will be fine until dawn. Then the wound will reopen and I’ll magic it closed again.”

“Why are you holding me between days like this?” Wounds kept closed magically don’t heal.

“The injury’s too severe to survive without magical aid, and we simply don’t have the Corpus or Creo vis to spare. What little we have has been channelled to the combat magi. Our line is falling back. Losses are heavy. We may have to make a stand here.” She did not say “You are just an illusionist.” but I would not have resented her if she had. I was just an illusionist.

“Will I be fit by then?”

“No. We haven’t the time to either fix you or evacuate you.”

“So you prop me up somewhere with good line of sight and I cast as many spells as I can before the day ends, and my stump opens up and I die.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, but only victors make choices.”

“We have one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Euthanasia. If I’m going to die anyway, you could harvest me for vis.”

“How strong are you in Corpus?” She asked, evincing none of the disgust common among magi for the idea of using the vis of other mages to fuel spells. Is it necrophagy if the magus asks you to do it?

“I’m not, but I’m quite skilled in Creo.”

“No, that’s  only enough vis to heal…”and here she smiled “an injury like a missing limb. You’re more use alive, at least from a weight of fire perspective.”

“Anything I can do? Any preparation I can help with?”

“Sleep.” she said “The more fatigue you carry into the battle, the less use you are.”

I slept.

It was not until the third day that I thought to ask where Achlys was.

***

It was Decimatia who told me that Achlys was dead. She was rebinding my stump at dusk, and I asked her how Achlys had escaped the ambush. I had assumed Achlys had dragged me back to Heartfoam.

“She never made it back.”

“Then how..”

“You appeared in the courtyard with her Leap of Homecoming pin driven into the flesh of your back, between your shoulder blades.”

“Why?”

“To show you hadn’t stolen it.”

“No, why didn’t she…”

“We do not flee challenges. We are elevated by them.”

“I’m grateful she saved me. Don’t take this the wrong way, but…”

“You would have done the same for her.”

“Yes, but because she was a more significant military asset than me. That’s not the sort of thing you can just mirror. I don’t understand why she saved me.  Why not let me die and keep it with her, in case something worse came along? Something she couldn’t handle?”

“It’s not a real threat if you can just vanish like smoke. When you wade into the crucible of conflict, you must accept that you might fall, anything less is a game.”

“Then why take the pin into battle at all?”

“There’s no fault in flight if the scenario is hopeless. She must have assessed the challenge as worth her time.”

“How are you so calm about this?”

“I am pleasantly surprised at how well she turned out.”

“He death doesn’t seem to have saddened you at all.”

“Few masters get to review the entire life of a student, and weigh it. I am glad to have that opportunity, to measure my skill as a teacher. I am gratified that I did so well.”

“That’s just sick.”

“Nonsense. You think Toxophilus doesn’t know that you discussed euthanasia with your sister?”

“I hope he’d feel some sort of regret afterwards.”

“Why wish pain on those you love, Mararius?”

Then she wandered off to her other duties. Her House always needs the last word.

***

The next day Scipia was binding my wound at evening and said “Do you want to talk to Achlys’s ghost?”

“No.”

“Really? Why not?”

“What would be the point?”

“To get some closure. To say goodbye?”

“To whom?”

“How do you mean?”

“You seem to be suggesting that talking to her ghost is in some way talking to Achlys.”

“I don’t know what to say to that, beyond that I don’t understand it at all.”

“Ghosts aren’t people, Scipia. They are just fragments of people. They aren’t even the good fragments, or the fragments which represent the truest version of the person. That’s the soul, and it vanishes at death. Ghosts are just obsessions given bodies. I’m guessing the ghost has some final business?”

“Well, they all do.”

“Exactly. It can’t learn, can it? You have the same conversations with it over and over again?”

“She. She’s fixated on delivering a message, yes.”

“It’s not her, then. It’s a caricature. A bit of mental detritus. No more her, really, than a faerie. There’s no point in me talking to it.”

“It will give her some sort of peace.”

“No, it won’t really. Ghosts are just the energy that used to allow the soul to animate the body. They don’t rest. They don’t pass on to Judgement.  They just dissipate back into the Magic Realm. They rise up and are gone. You may as well just cast Lay to Rest the Haunting Spirit on it. It’s not her.”

“It’s a fragment of her.”

“Is your fingernail you?”

“In a sense.”

“Not in any social sense. You say a fragment, and then you pretend its the whole. It isn’t though: it’s just a caricature close enough that people who need to can fool themselves. It’s an illusion.”

“She wants to talk to you.”

“No. She doesn’t really. Take a message of you like.”

“Are you sure? This isn’t a decision you can rethink later. Is this the cautious choice?”

“I’m sure. Ghosts aren’t people. Ghosts are just obsessions wearing the faces of people we knew. If I asked her why she saved me, could she answer?”

“Yes, she’s very coherent.”

“Is she coherent about anything but her final business?”

She paused, and thought “No.”

“Would it lie to finish its final business?”

“I don’t know.”

“So even if it was able to answer me, it might well lie.”

 “Yes. I’m sorry I offered this to you. I thought it might help you face what’s coming with greater equanimity of spirit. It seems to have troubled you instead.”

“No. Thank you. My…forcefulness isn’t from sadness. I have made peace with her death. I don’t need to see her ghost.”

“Do you want to know what her business is?”

I thought about it. “No. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m going to die when the Diedne line reaches Heartfoam. That’s enough to have to worry about.”

She nodded, quickly finished what she was doing, and left.

 

Mirarion : Chapter 6

Running like Hell was inglorious, but we don’t care about glory in my House. There are times when the line needs to hold, and there are times when standing your ground is just a pointless sacrifice. Generally, it wasn’t my call as to what time it was. After the Tempest, though, it was pretty clear the hour had grown far too late for good work to be done. Time to head home, on your feet or in a box.

Achlys and I weren’t just tearing through the forest randomly. There’s method, even in failure.  We were hiking for Heartfoam. It was the rally point for this theater. It had a strong Aegis, supplies, and either re-enforcements or commands to rally elsewhere. It wasn’t an orderly withdrawal, but for the two of us, it wasn’t a rout either. We came close: we’d avoided the enemy for six hours when our luck ran out.

I think she saw it first: a huge serpent head, emerging from the trees ahead of us.  If it had waited another five minutes, we would have been dead. I remember thinking that there was no way it should have caught up to us. The Diedne forces had splintered in the chase. The fastest elements, mostly fliers, were the soonest to catch fleeing magi, and so they were the first to stop chasing.  The thing ahead of us wasn’t meant ot be be quick.

“Do we go around?” I yelled.

“No. It must be faster than us. The only way out..” and she smiled in a tired sort of way.

“…is through.” I finished. I readied my first spell, and Achlys, who was faster on the uptake than me, flung poison mist at its face. The mist didn’t kill it, but it did defoliate the tree it was standing underneath. I’d already guessed, but she shouted “Testudohydra!” to make sure I’d noticed that it had five heads, and could crush us with its elephantine legs.

Illusions don’t really cut it in these situations, but I could tilt things in our favour. Achlys wouldn’t want to dip her Parma at a time like this, so I couldn’t make her invisible. If I made myself invisible the chances were good she’s and I would trip each other up. Time for a simple trick.

“Eyes down!” I called, and cast The Alpine Blindness. It floods an area with species, overwhelming the eyes of all nearby. I loved it in combat because species are natural: the magic resistance of monsters like the hydra doesn’t protect them from it at all. Some creatures don’t care much, but I was hoping that since it had ten eyes, this would really wreck its nerves.

The creature screamed and charged at us, but it clearly couldn’t see where it was going. It was shaking its heads, little sideways convulsions. As it came towards us, I broke left and Achlys broke right.  I expected her to lay down a pit trap, and so I drove a coach nail through one of its eyes. The thing about two heads growing back if you cut one off is perfectly true, and yes, fire is the Herculean way through the riddle. It turns out that piercing weapons work too, in a fashion.

Achlys did try a pit trap, but not on the creature. She’d spotted a human figure further back in the woodland, and had dropped the pit under him. That’s how the creature had caught us: it had a handler, and the druid was able to move it rapidly using magic. The druid had missed his chance at an ambush because he was snowblind, and would be for a few minutes. His Parma seemed to be holding, and he was trying to get some area spells to take out Achlys, but Sight ranged spells don’t work when you can’t see. She was probably the weaker magus, but she had momentum.

Their little duel basically left me alone with the hydra, so when I had the chance, I drove another nail into another head. At this point I should have cast an illusion and fallen back, to draw the hydra away. I didn’t want to lose contact with Achlys, though, and things seemed to be going well, so I held my ground and slammed home another coach nail. Three heads hung limply and I prepared to finish the beast off.

The remaining two heads whipped around and chewed through the necks of two I’d destroyed. As this was happening I drove another coach nail home, but it was too late. The creature sprinted toward me, presumably following my scent. It was only slightly slower than a running man. You can’t flee at that pace and keep casting spells, so I stood still and kept launching nails. As it came, blisters that had formed on the severed stumps of its necks bloated out into fully formed heads. Their eyes were fresh.

I tried to puncture its heart. I drove three nails into its chest, making it a pulpy mass, but it wasn’t enough. The creature caught me. I didn’t see the strike. I only knew it had happened when I lost my balance.

I looked down at the huge fanged, scaly head, wrapped around my leg and thought “So, that’s what death looks like.” As I come from a family of necromancers. I’d tried not to think about my own death, but I’d failed. This was less painful than I’d expected. I felt the bone break and, as the creature worried it, my lower leg came away in its mouth. It had dragged me up a little, and so when my leg was torn away, I felt myself fall backward.

The spell I improvised doesn’t make much sense. I’ve talked to some Criamon magi since and they say I was casting through the Arcane connection that links severed parts of the body. Some Tytalus magi have told me that I tapped into a deep mystery of our ancestral necromantic cult, and called forth a death curse.  In my delirium, as shock claimed me, I forced all of my despair at my imminent demise into my very flesh, demanding it become sour and poisonous. In my final act, I called the powers of magic to make my corpse a weapon to choke my enemies.

The hydra spat out my leg and waddled up the slope toward Achlys. Presumably its master had called it. I crawled over its tracks, perhaps two dozen feet, and hugged my leg to my chest. It was covered in stomach acid, and it burned me, but I clung to it as the grey clouds on the edge of my field of vision filled my eyes.

I knew nothing until I woke in Heartfoam.

Mirarion: Chapter 5

The two armies felt each other’s positions under the cover of  darkness. Achlys and I were involved in that. We didn’t engage. We just needed to know how they’d prepared the field. Oh, yes, the story of the Tempest you often hear makes it sound like it was fought on a flat plain, by two armies who surprised each other. That’s ridiculous.  We attacked them.

Achlys had a spell which turned grass into blades of iron, and I could hide that with illusions, so we spent a lot of time putting these sorts of traps into the far end of the battlefield. I know people claim they were demons, but I think we penned up some blood-drenched satyrs. Our spells probably did them some damage. I certainly didn’t see any of them later, when everything fell apart. We had the time, so why not use it?

As dawn broke, parts of each side began to cast vast rituals. They’d held off so that their Parmae didn’t flicker out partway through. The remaining parts of each side squared off in the centre of the battlefield. The rituals mattered, but only because we let them matter.

The skirmish lines in the middle could have been decisive, if we’d wanted them to be. We thought the ritual would win the battle for us. They thought their ritual would win the battle for them. Our leaders had said we were to attack, and technically we were pressing forward. Combat occurred, because each side had certain assets they could either use or lose, but the plan was never, really, to pierce the enemy line and strike the other ritual directly. We just wanted to knock them so hard they’d rattle, then bunker down and let us complete our ritual.

Achlys and I did make random attacks on the druids, which could be why things went so badly for me later. In the quiet times, why not sling some spells at the enemy? Perhaps you’d distract someone. Achlys was killing people, I assume. I certainly saw her poison mists drifting over the field, sickly blue and grey, and vaguely malicious. I knew I wasn’t going to get through the Parma on anyone important, so I was just throwing the weirdest illusions I could think of. Pornography sometimes. Visual gags. Anything that might lead someone to miss a syllable.

I did have a magic item which could push coach nails through magic resistance. I launched some of them, perhaps two dozen. My combat doctrine was based on attacking and then moving, using illusions to prevent the enemy locating me. I did some damage to the monsters the other side had bought to the field. I think I wrecked whatever they were planning to do with their satyrs. My method of fighting slowed my rate of fire down, though, and it also slowed Achlys too, because she’d relocate each time I did.

Our side wanted to incinerate everything at the druidic end of the battlefield. The idea was to create a spell so tremendously powerful that the Parma would crack before it. This spell was, perhaps, sixteenth magnitude. It was going to take hours to cast. The rest of us were just meant to absorb any attacks until the sky itself caught flame and everything died. The druidic plan was simply better than ours.

Their plan was to cast a small, subtle effect, that was specifically designed to slice through magic resistance. Even with the time needed to enhance the spell’s penetration, their ritual was completed first. You know “Call to Slumber”? It’s the deadliest spell in Hermetic history.

I know the others will tell you that it was some sort of storm, or lightning, and that’s why it’s called The Battle of the Tempest, but no. formed. The Tempest was what happens when dozens of magi all fall into Final Twilight at once. The Realm of Magic just rips open, and bleeds from its depths until everything magical nearby is scoured away and the mundane realm is all that’s left.

You can feel it, in your Gift.  You know how you can feel your Gift flicker in Church? Imagine that. You know how if you are dying of shock, toward the end you feel deliciously warm?  That. In your Gift. That’s what it feels like when the Mundane Realm vomits its pain into the Realm of Forms. It feels like everything that’s wrong with you, and everything that’s right with you, and everything that’s distinctively you, is about to get smoothed away, and you are kind of looking forward to it.

Achlys and I were on a little hillock, looking at some tortoise-hydras and hoping they’d stay exactly where they were. We both felt the Tempest begin. We looked at the Mercurians and they were being blown about like scarecrows in a storm. We heard the Diende’s monsters scream with hunger and bloodlust. They hadn’t spotted us yet, because we’d just shifted position. Their line began to charge across the field, and our position was going to fall in a couple of minutes. Time to decide.

Achlys slapped my arm, hard, and yelled over the storm “Now, we run like Hell!”

I nodded.

We ran like Hell.

 

 

Mirarion: Chapter 4

I want you to accept that what I’m about to say is sincere. I know you have heard other accounts of the Tempest, and I know what I’m about to say differs from those. In the past people who have heard this story have called me a liar, or have said that my injuries caused me to misrecall what I saw. I can’t prove that they are wrong. I know what I’m about to say lies counter to some cherished beliefs. I ask again that you accept that I truly believe this is what I saw.

Two days before the Tempest, the leaders of the various factions in allied armies met at Heartfoam to plan the assault. I wasn’t a leader, but I was present as an assistant to my pater and to the Primus. In other houses providing bodily services for older magi, like fetching food and drink, is considered demeaning, so everyone else was served by redcaps. I was the youngest magician there by a couple of decades.

Our Primus could have prevented the disaster, but he was not alone in thinking that a strike against the Diedne was the only sound course. Their argument sounds a cogent one. The Diedne were able to call up demons. Therefore the more time they were given, the larger their army would grow. As a matter of urgency, all forces which could be quickly gathered should be thrown against the centre of the enemy force, to disperse it, and prevent the casting of the great rituals which could call up demonic princes. There was some question as to if their rituals required certain unholy days, and the necessity of bringing them to battle before certain pagan or infernal festivals.

Many of the archmagi present held primitive views concerning the practicalities of war, and had so much prestige that it blinded those nearby. Consider the Flambeau archmagi present. Some were great heroes of the Corruption, and many saw the Schism as just the Corruption repeated and enlarged. Consider though, the nature of that war. The Infernal Tytalus were, at their core, still Tytalus: indeed it was their pride that had caused their fall. The battles of the Corruption were individual affairs, where a great Flambeau champion could stand and smite the pomps of a dark wizard. It was a war of individual skill, until the end, when sieges began and the glamor wore off.

People don’t pay enough attention to the sieges. The bards of the order do not sing of Mendelaus the Beseiger, who held the Tytalus pinned in their hovel for season after cold season, while our side found a way to crack their defenses. No, they sing of the Flambeau who turned up at the end, to do the actual killing, or at least to stand nearby looking impressive while Tremere magi ground the demonic hordes down with less flashy, but far more effective, magic items. These were the people planning the Tempest: people who really thought that the Diedne were going to fight them in a courtly way.

I didn’t say anything during the meeting. Well, nothing of consequence. “Do you take your wolfberry tea with milk?” was about as high in the pecking order as my comments made it. I know at the time I found their ideas convincing. The attacking side has all the advantages in war. You get to choose the timing of the battle, and you can strike at any point in the enemy’s territory. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking “That’s just stupid.” I agree now. I’d like to point out to you, though, that the finest Roman generals advised people to attack and attack and then attack, and it had worked well during the Corruption, so we found it terribly and fatally convincing when planning the assault on he Diedne.

The plan was set. We’d march to their fortress, and cast the biggest ritual we could, to just incinerate everything. Imagine the Battle of the False Sun. That was the plan. After all, it had worked on Davenllous. Why wouldn’t it work on a huge house of Hermetic Magi, with the Parma and an army of demonic shocktroops?

Before the meeting was over, there was a respite for a meal.  Toxophilus took me aside.

“My son.”, he said “I want you to know that I stopped being ashamed of you a long time ago.”

“That’s good to know, pater.” I replied. I knew he was saying this because he was concerned one of us might die on the morrow.

“I always though I’d damaged your Gift. Impoverished you as a magus.”

“Yes. I know. It doesn’t matter.” I answered. I was surprised we were discussing it, but my older siblings were a necromancer, a healer and a vexillator. They were kind to me, but I always had the sensation they were a little too kind. I was the broken sibling. The crippled one.  It was good that I’d found a way to be useful, but I was always going to be the result of a mistake. I think that’s why Achlys and I got on so well. She treated me as something durable.

“It does, though. I want you to know I was mistaken. One days your brother will be a great commander of the legions of the fallen, and your sister a politician of rare skill, but for now, neither excels me in the Art. You, however, you are something I’d never have considered. You are a tool that the Primus has, unlooked for, to hand. A credit to me, that I did not truly earn. Your sister the healer is a result of this. Before teaching you, I would have taught someone of her talents corporeal necromancy. Now, she supports our mortal allies.”

“Well, I’m pleased to know that.”

“You do not take my meaning?”

“By your question, no.”

“You are more powerful than me in your field of choice.”

“Yes, I’m aware.”

“Perhaps you might like to test that publicly, before the battle tomorrow? The Primus is here.”

“He’d never allow a duel now.”

“To the first fall? He would.”

“Very well. Thank you for your…candour? pater.”

“Thank you, my boy. It would give me no little satisfaction to see one of my students acclaimed before what might occur tomorrow.”

After dinner was over, I walked to my master, where he dined with the senior Mycentians and I said:

“Begging the leave of all present, and to the first fall, I challenge Toxophilius, for the right of my sigil.”

The Primus began to interrupt, and Toxophilus put a hand on his shoulder and said “Pray no. Let us test our power. We will not be too weary for battle with a slight show of strength. Are you sure my son?”

“I am adamant, pater.”

“Then let us to terms. A single blow, and given the exigencies of War, no vis on either side?”

“I accept.” I paused. “Creo?” I asked. He did not veto.

“Mentem?” he responded, and I demurred. “Then Imagenem” he finished. I had been expecting Corpus, as had everyone else in the room. Those skilled in duelling knew that that meant that Toxophilus was happy for me to win. He wouldn’t throw the match to me: he’d fight hard enough that my graduation would be considered sound, but he’d deliberately picked one of my tines. He could always claim that he wanted to crush me in my own bailiwick: some duellists did that to humiliate their challengers. I nodded.

My brother, who had been preparing to challenge me if I won, relaxed. He did not gain his sigil for another twelve years, but he was decades more powerful than me. Like most Rego Mentem specialists, duelling him was a horrifying experience. I was pleased not to have to face him. He and I did duel together, after the War, so I could train him.

Certamen is a battle not of illusions, but of the substance of the spirit, made external by the ritual of battle. It is, in the purest form, mind against mind, manipulating raw magical energies. It is as close as we come to measuring the effects of our Gifts. The one with the greatest Gift is the victor. Many see Certamen as war by less violent means, and for some it is, but this is not always the case. Have you seen Intellego duels fought by Criamon magi? I once fought a beautiful duel with a Jerbiton illusionist in a faerie rose garden. We let our minds roam into the ritual space, and we try to overcome each other.

I had never really duelled anyone before.  For the love of the sport, of course, I’d had many duels. This, however, was the first time I was fighting in earnest. My mind flowed into the ritual space and I found the intimacy of it revolting. My master and I created titanic knights: his of dark cables, mine of flickering comets. His advanced slowly toward mine and as it neared, my disgust flowed out of me into my knight. His began to swing a vast flail. Mine simply strode toward his, a sword in its right hand and its left hand outstretched, fingers spread wide. The flail landed, but glanced off harmlessly, although the audience seemed to think it a solid strike. My knight slammed its hand clear through the torso of my master’s phantasm. It walked to him, and backlanded him in the face. The blow shook him, and there was a burbling of comment from around the room. The phantasms disappeared.

My master sprang to his feet. He was older, but fit for physical combat. “I commend you on your victory my son.” he said “and walked to me, holding a simple ring of opal and brass in his cupped hands. “This is your sigil. I surrender it to you.” There was some scattered applause, but most in the room though he had thrown the combat, and so were merely polite. My own siblings were enthusiastic, because they knew I’d surprised our pater.

I took my ring, and began to serve my elders dinner, until one of them pointed out that he was not free of his master, the Primus. I was a conciliarus now, and he was not. He gave me his chair, and went to find me something to eat. I was always grateful to Fabius for that. I think he did it not just to show that he accepted the verdict of the Certamen, and so others should, but to make perfectly clear to our watching allies that from the House’s perspective, I was a person of elevated status and honour now. I might have been carrying around slabs of beef and cheese at lunchtime, but that was no longer relevant.

I think my happiness at claiming my sigil flowed over into my confidence in the plan. I went into the Tempest thinking it was going to be glorious. We do not seek glory, but it’s nice when it arrives while you are doing what’s necessary. It wasn’t glorious, though. It was the worst day in the history of my House. Yes., even worse than the Sundering.

People tell you the Tempest was our great victory over the Diende, and I know you want to believe them. They are wrong. I was there. I saw the allied forces collapse. I fled the triumphant Diedne army. They hunted me like a pig in the undergrowth and I escaped through luck and the sacrifice of friends. We won the war, so we write the history. Tell me, in your version, can you name a single battle we lost?

Then why did half of us die?

 

 

Mirarion: Chapter 2

My first memory of Achlys is of her handling me an apple. I knew who she was, although my memory had been erased a few weeks earlier. My master had let me make some notes, before the erasure, and although he had censored them, he only obscured five passages. I used to wonder a lot about what they contained. Achlys was also Gifted. I couldn’t mystically sense the Gift, but I caught myself wondering if the apple was poisoned, and so knew she must be the apprentice mentioned in my notes.

She was a wispy sort of thing, back then. Later, in the war, our hard living made her bulk up, but she;d had a hard childhood, like most of us, and so she was scrawny. She had dark, thin hair, and the sort of eyes that could fillet fish. She was smiling as she handed me the apple.

“So, they told me your name is Celerites, now?”

“Something like that. You’re Achlys?”

“Yep. How much do you remember about me?”

“Quite a bit. I remember the people here, and the places, just not my interactions with them.”

“So, you don’t know we’re allies?”

“We have enemies?”

“Everyone has enemies. Everyone has trials. We help each other past the hurdles.”

“Well, that’s good to know. So, did I cheat?”

“Leave a secret message for yourself? No. They’d detect it and erase you again. Then they’d punish me for giving it to you. Probably by putting false memories of childhood abuse into my mind.”

“Julia would do that?” Julia was her mistress.

“Sure. She’s tried to scare me with your example. “Be good or I’ll wipe you clean and we’ll start again.” I don’t believe it.”

“Why?”

“You know our birth parents hate us, right? The Gift makes…

…them suspicious. They think we are changelings. Yes. I remember the content of my studies, just not the actual studying.” I finished.

“I hate it when you talk over me.”

“Oh. Sorry. Didn’t know. Pray continue.”

“Accepted. So, my master left me with my biological parents for a few extra years.”

“To toughen you up. I know.”

“Oh.”

“You must have told me that story before?”

“Yes.” She took a moment to collect her thoughts. “My point is, she doesn’t want an apprentice who is a blank slate. She’d have to put in all that abuse again. Too time consuming when she could just sell me off to someone else.”

“Good point.” I nodded.

“So, you know you love pears, right?” she added, changing the subject.

“No.”

“They aren’t in season, but you love pears.”

“That’s great to know.”

We chatted like this for about an hour each day. It was nice to have someone my own age to talk to. It was about six weeks later she and I had our first fight. We then fought regularly for decades.

Achlys has called me out of bed for a midnight escapade. We had been doing an escapade a week, she assured me, for pretty much ever. This time we were going to break into the library and steal some cool casting tablets. She said it would be low magnitude stuff that no-one would miss, but that would suit our level of skill. She hinted that her mistress had dropped the existence of these useful tablets into conversation, in that sort of deliberately accidental way she sometimes had.

I suited up warm, grabbed some apples, and snuck out to one of the storerooms. It was the one room we could find where grogs didn’t sleep, so it was our base of operations. She outlined the plan. She’d boost me through the shutters of the librarian’s house. I’d steal his sigil of office. That would let use walk around the library safely. She’d swipe some books. We’d return the sigil. Job done, back to HQ for a celebratory apple.

“Why don’t I boost you through the window?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Well, you know what it looks like, for one thing.”

“Are you chicken? You’re lighter than me.”

“We could get a ladder or something for you to use, then.”

“Seriously? Come on. You aren’t scared are you? He sleeps like a log!”

“So, then why won’t you do it?”

“This is meant to be a fun thing we do together. I could do it on my own, but I want your help. It’s more fun that way.”

“So, I’ll be the one standing outside and we can do that fun bit together, just with the jobs reversed.”

“Look, he’s not going to catch you!” she said, raising her voice a little.

“Look, I know, alright!” I answered, raising my voice a little more.

“What?” she looked confused.

“I know this is just another one of your schemes to make me look like a fool! I know we aren’t friends! I know you bullied and humiliated me before I lost my memory!”

“How?”

“I left myself a diary! I know exactly what you are like and I’ve just been playing along with this chummy thing you are doing, waiting for the other shoe to drop. So, no, I’m not doing it.” I turned to storm off.

“Please wait!” she said, and because she’d never said “please” to me before, I paused but decided that once you’d started storming off, you couldn’t just stop.

“Wait!” she ordered, and cast a little spell that made a rat the size of a dog appear in front of the door.

I looked at the rat. It reared at me. I went up to it and when it reared again, I planted my boot down through it. It was an illusion, of course. I knelt down to look at how it had been done. I could see Achlys’s sigl, which was a sort of grey mistiness, in it. It made the hairs on the rat’s back indistinct and unconvincing. It had been the lack of sound, though, that had tipped me off. Still, it was impressive. I liked it a lot. I poked at it with my fingers to see if it would react, and knelt down to see if she’d worked out the skeleton. “What?” I asked, trying to sound angry, but genuinely curious.

“We don’t need to do this. You’re right. I used to bully you. The thing is though, that was getting really repetitive. I thought that with your memory wiped, I could make my choice over, and have you as an ally this time. Easier to start as an ally, and if I found out having you as an enemy was more fun, I could just bully you again. Harder to start as enemies and work on allegiances. I’m rubbish at making allegiances.”

The thing is, that made perfect sense for a Tytalus. That’s really how broken they are. The Mycetian way is to not make enemies casually. Enemies are exhausting. You set an objective, make the enemies you need to make, then you placate or destroy them afterwards. Clean. Rational. Decisive. My goal was to graduate. Achlys could make that harder or easier.

“Alright.” I said.

She looked surprised. “Just like that?”

“I don’t remember any of the things you put me through.”

“You know you’re scared of rats?”

“No. I’m not.”

“Seriously, you hate rats.”

“No. I’m not. Check out the dentition on this!”

“You’re unsettling me a little here.” she said, which was a rare admission for her.

“Oh. Right. So, let’s go rob the library.”

“I thought that was off?”

“No, either you’re serious, or you’re setting me up. If you’re setting me up, I’m just going to rat you out and your master will punish you for getting caught.”

“You’ll never do that.”

“I’m a Mycetian apprentice. I don’t care about dignity. I care about victory.”

Then we raided the library and stole some really useful books. Ever after, rats were our thing. A sort of in-joke that other people could observe, but never really understand. She’d been serious. We were never friends in the conventional sense, but we were as close as she could come to having friends. Thinking back I was perhaps the only child she could talk to that her mistress couldn’t threaten to torture. When we were older we were trained to fight as a team. She bought the destructive power, and I used illusions to weaken the enemy and find the places where the damage would have the greatest effect. We worked together all the way through our graduations, until the middle of the War.

Mirarion : Chapter 3

The faerie queen began to kneel before us. Our minstrel’s song was crushing her, binding her in, and her physical form sagged under its metaphysical weight. Through constricted lungs she choked out a final question: “Why are you doing this?”

Achlys answered her. “The strong do as they will. The weak do as they must.”, she said. It fit what she was doing, and it broke what passed for will in the faerie queen. Our minstrel faltered for a second but she rallied, and tucked the queen away. She’d sleep until kissed by a nun released from her vows, born after the dawning of the next century. That last bit was just a cruel twist, to make sure that even if our pagan foes could find a released nun, she’d be useless before the War was over.

I was guarding the minstrel. That was my role. On this mission I was pretending to be the muscle. I’m an illusionist, so I pretended to be a lot of things during the War. Faeries like that sort of thing. We’d pretended our way into her court, and past her guards, and now we were sealing her in a story so tight that she’d never escape until we wanted her to.

The Queen’s guardsmen also fell asleep, in sympathy, but that was just stupid of them. Achlys and I systematically harvested each one. I had little throwing knives specifically for the purpose, which I was thankful for. Before the end both sides would be consuming the vis from their own dead and these faeries thought we’d let them be picturesque.  We couldn’t have left them for the Diende to find. Sometimes I wondered if they gained some sort of benefit from being harvested. If their vis was used to heal your wounds, were they with you forever?

Afterward we retired to camp. I wanted to sleep for a week, but there was no time, so I hit the wolfberry juice hard, set up the wards, and Achlys sent messages to Heartfoam. We tore into our rations, because we couldn’t eat in that Faerie court, and our bard kicked off our first big argument of the War. It had new clothes, but it was one we’d had every few months for my entire life.

“Why did you do it? Your answer didn’t make sense.” the minstrel asked. Her name was Claudette, by the way. She and I lived together for a few years after the war, but she wanted children, so…anyway. “Why did you ask me to do this?”

“There’s a war on. This is a chevauchee.”

“A…”

“We are destroying all of the faerie courts near the enemy, so they can’t harvest them for materiel they can use in the war. We are like nobles burning crops and killing peasants, but we’re destroying the things magicans need.”

“And the song?”

“Specifically crafted for the war. There are several teams, and we are creating a particularly inaccessible faerie messiah. One that the enemy can’t make. One we can put together when we win, so that the faerie courts pop back like…”

“Mushrooms after rain?”

“I know nothing about mushrooms. If it makes it make sense to you, then, sure, go with mushrooms.”

Then she asked the question which really dropped the flag on it.

“What caused the war?”

Achyls nodded at me, and said “His people want to control what we do. Their people want his people to leave them alone. My people love challenges, so I’m here to perfect myself through strife.”

We’d had this argument before, but I was tired and starving and I’d been awake on wolfberries for days. Being a bit deranged like that isn’t a bad thing in some faerie courts. I couldn’t just let it go. I knew that arguing with me was her way of working out her battle stress. She could be pretty sure she’d win, and she assumed I’d not take low blows at so useful an asset. I was the professional soldier: she was the mercenary gadfly.

“That’s just your usual crap, Achlys” I said, and because I never swear, she should have picked up on the clue that now wasn’t the time. Instead, she saw weakness, and that’s like honey to her people.

“You do want to control them.” she baited.

“We want them to not offer up themselves to the Black Goat at midnight, mostly because the first thing he’ll ask them to do is turn the world into a pastiche of Hell.” I sighed. “You know this.” And then I really let it go: “Of all magi, your people know this best.”

I saw her stiffen and I knew I’d gone over the line, but the Tytalus have been carrying on with their teasing and prodding since the Founders themselves argued over who got the last piece of cake, so I thought “Why not? She wants to be purified by struggle? I’m doing her a favour by her lights. Let’s see how bad we get this time.”

She answered “You Mycentians always bring diabolism up, but it’s just your excuse for everything. You want to know all their secrets, so they need to show them to you, or you’ll call them Satanists.”

“They are Satanists! Stop apologising for diabolism!” I knew shouting at her was a bad idea. I knew she saw that, too, as weakness. She saw it as a little victory, and she couldn’t help but push.

“I fight them better than you do, but I don’t pretend they deserve it.”

“Of course they deserve it. They’re calling up demons to tear the rest of us apart.”

“You have no proof of that.” she smiled.

“How would we get proof?  Even if we could, the time it would take would be decisive. Calling up a demon’s easy compared to training a magus. You know all of this…” and I slipped in the boot again “Tsagilla tried it all a while ago.” I knew she hated that. I knew and I said it anyway.

“Guilty then, until they prove themselves innocent! The same could be said for you. After all…”

“Every one of our rituals has been examined top to toe by the Quaesitores.” I cut in, forestalling her easy smack at my House’s history.

“Only because you lost. If you’d dominated the Order…”

“We lost! You can’t have it both ways! We are utterly transparent!”

“Yeah, sucks to lose  like your Founder did. Bet you wish you’d kept some of that private like the Diedne.”

She was mocking me, but to me it felt like a win. She’d changed tack, and gone back to one of her standard gambits. She must have been as tired as I was. This felt too easy. I could have stopped there. I could have marked that up as a rare win, in the ledger of my mind, but I wanted her to acknowledge I’d argued her to a standstill for once, and I was just exhausted and not thinking straight, so I put the boot in again. “Stop admiring the enemy. Just because the chaos they are causing using dermons is bigger than the chaos your people caused…”

She snapped. “Shut up about the Corruption! My family fought and died in the Purge!” I’d never seen her this angry before. It made me so happy to finally, for once, win one of these things that I couldn’t help myself.

“Yes. On both sides.”

She threw her watter bottle at my head and stormed off into the woods. The bottle hit me fair in the face and bloodied my nose, but I burst out laughing. I sat down and gripped my nose and blacked out. For that moment I was the happiest I’d been since the War started.

When I woke up, she was back. We pretended to be professionals. We pretended it hadn’t happened. The minstrel told my master, but Toxophilus didn’t care. I only know she told him because  I read some of his reports after the War, and he suggested I be pulled off the line for assessment. I think they just had an informal rummage in my mind and decided that I needed sleep.

Achlys changed after that. She wanted something from me that I could never really give her. It took me forever to realise she wanted me to be her Beloved Enemy. It’s this idea they have of a perfect rival who knocks that chips off you, and you knock the chips off them, and you make each other marvellous by your constant abbrasion. I just thought she’d upped her bullying, because I’d finally beaten her in an argument.

I only realised it when she made sure I survived The  Tempest. Achlys didn’t give her life for mine, not exactly, but she took on extra risks to get me clear. If she’d left me to die, she would have made it home.

Mirarion : Chapter 1 : Names

Oh, I didn’t really choose my name.  I know many young magi do, as their first act of independence. They stand with their new robe and hold up their shiny sigil before the Tribunal and say “I am called Maximus Magnus!” and we laugh, or politely sigh and then after a few years they discover a vocation and choose a better name. My name was given to me by my master, and my own foolishness.

There was a shriek, and cold that reached through my eyes, and my master struck me, hard, from the side, and sent me sprawling into his laboratory equipment. I was, if only for a moment, free of myself, looking down at the scene of wreckage. A small boy, with the beginning of the gangliness of adolescence, lying in a pool of silver liquid that smelled of blood and straw. I could see the glazed look on my face. I could see the thing in the corner, gloating and chattering in its circle.

I had been incautious: my foot had crossed the barrier of chalk and salt. Given the profound effect this tiny moment of carelessness was to have on my life, it used to annoy me that I could not explain it better. I was a child and did not take seriously my master’s injunctions to caution? I had know her. I suppose that was it.

She had been a maid in our service, killed in one of those accidents so common in castle kitchens. She had been kind to the scrawny boy with the terrifying master. A bread roll here and a slice of cheese there. She was not my friend, but she was nice to me, in the petty ways available to her.

Snobbery also, I assume. I knew that ghosts are kept in the world by unfinished business that burns within them, holding back Death itself. The stronger their passions, the brighter they burn. They are stronger, but wilder, and less a person that an instrument of final obsession. I was a little boy, proud to be swept into the magical aristocracy. I didn’t believe that a simple maid could have business so important as to generate a powerful spectre. I thought that kings and saints and wizards were what really mattered. I didn’t understand that, for her, whatever her business was, it was the most important thing in all the world. The thing to cling to life for. The thing that made trying to steal my body obvious, and possible.

My master did not allow it. Toxophilius made the briefest gesture and his power rose, as always, in dark tangles of force. She was thrown from the world, her business never to be completed. Her scream as she vanished made it seem to me that she understood this. As she dwindled I saw again through my own eyes, and felt the pain where the shards of a retort had cut through the sleeve of my white robe.

I used to touch those tiny white scars, whenever I felt nervous. I recall doing it all the time, so much so that one of the other apprentices used to tap her arm to greet me from a distance. Yes, Achlys.

My master was not, initially, alarmed. After he discovered that the incident had seriously harmed my Gift, his disappointment was quickly hidden. His other apprentices had continued the great necromatic tradition of the House. Now he, the wise Toxophilus, would produce an apprentice who was not a necromancer. His colleagues would be shocked and amazed, and not know that, shamefully, I was unable to command the dead.

In that moment of attempted possession, I had the most intimate instant of my life. There are other intimacies, certainly, in which magicians indulge, but for me, there was never another moment like that one, in which the edges of my mind, and those of another, we so closely combined. I found it then, and I find the mere idea of it now, profoundly unsettling. I had nothing but my pride at the time, and this threat to my selfhood felt very like oblivion, like being assassinated or eaten. I do not want someone to know me that completely ever again.

The Arts of the Mind have always disgusted me. I was incapable of commanding the dead after my accident, but even the living are, by my choice, beyond my power. I have never learned the spells to command them. The idea that I might stretch out my mind and brush it upon another’s, to make them do my will, is nauseating. Other Houses suggest ours is so committed to self-control because we are militant, but they do not understand the Art of the Mind. It is the ability to control the minds of others that forces discipline on us. It is a corrupting magic, a vice, that cannot be indulged whimsically.

When a person is utterly under your control, as is so often the simplest way in the Art, then what sort of monster might you become? Not merely the crass sexual conquests dreamt of by peasant boys with their fairground bottles of red clay and fennel. Not merely the ability to force victims to forget your crimes, of whatever type. A master of the Art of the Mind can read the innermost etchings on the heart. How worse a nakedness this is than that of the revived corpse, or the bewitched maiden. I have felt the joy of the thing which was pouring into my eyes. I have seen the joy on the faces of my brothers and their children. I cannot abide it, and so have never learned its words.

So that is perhaps is where I started. My sigil changed. My master changed my name, now that I could not follow the tradition of our foremothers and rule the shades. He called me Mirarius, which might mean “the impossible thing”, and was an excellent name for an illusionist. It might instead mean “the one who sees his reflection”, and I think that was his real intent. I liked my new name, and kept it after my graduation to magus.  They didn’t start calling me “Magister” until decades later, until after the War.