Snippet – A Hope in Hell (Heirs of Cataclysm III – Finale)

Prologue

“This is a complete waste of time for you,” John said. “I don’t know why you’re even bothering to come.”

Katrina Amador, his girlfriend of the last two years, shrugged. “Father insists I should at least see what they offer me, as a magician as well as a aristocrat,” she said. She brushed down her long red hair as the door opened, releasing the last student who’d gone for mandatory career counselling. The girl did not look best pleased. “I don’t just want to be a brood cow, you know?”

John nodded curtly. Katrina had a family that would take care of her, as long as she toed the line and did she was told. He had never been able to decide if she was lucky or cursed. On one hand, she had almost everything she wanted; on the other, he had very little independence or even freedom of mind. It still surprised him that her family hadn’t objected to their relationship. She might be quality, her family renowned for its bloodline even though pre-Cataclysm were at best unreliable and at worst completely faked, but he was a commoner, born of commoners, who had nothing in the family tree worth mentioning. If he hadn’t had powerful magic, she would never have shown any interest in him and her family would have had a collective heart attack at the very thought.

The door opened. “Katrina,” a voice said. “Come inside, if you please.”

And if she doesn’t please, John thought, what difference will it make?

Katrina shot him a mischievous look, then stepped past him and into the office. The door closed with an audible thud. John felt a twinge of embarrassment mixed with sympathy for the teacher on the far side. He had nothing to offer Katrina and they both knew it. The interview was a formality and he was surprised the Academy had even bothered to suggest she attended. It wasn’t out of any sort of egalitarianism, he was sure. On paper, all magicians were equal; in practice, everyone knew that magicians from the aristocratic bloodlines had advantages over those born to less privileged parents. And yet, Katrina was a very good student. The Academy might think it worth the time to convince her to do something else with her life than bending the knee to her parents and older brothers. Who knew?

He leaned against the wall and forced himself to wait. It was hard not to feel he was in trouble, not when students were rarely summoned to the inner offices unless they were about to be punished for something. He had been in enough trouble to know such a visit was always to be dreaded. His heart started to race as he counted seconds, wondering what had happened to the other students. Katrina and he were hardly the only ones in need of career counselling. A third of the student population might come from aristocratic stock, but the remainder were commoners. They needed careers when they graduated.

A flicker of excitement ran through him. Two more years, and then he would be a qualified sorcerer. Two more years, and then he could set out to explore the Free States or marry Katrina or both, living the life he’d dreamed of when he’d been a small boy growing up in a village so tiny, so utterly unremarkable, it didn’t even have a name. His family had tried to stay in touch, over the years, but no one had any real expectations he would go home. He wants to be more than a farmer, or shopkeeper, or a blacksmith … his father had taught him the basics, expecting his son would follow his footsteps, yet John wants to be something more. To be trapped in a small village, spending his life as a blacksmith, was a fate worse than death. The respect such a position brought – a seat on the village council, a guaranteed marriage – wasn’t worth the cost. It would be a life sentence. It was the last thing he wanted.

The door opened. Katrina stepped out, trying and failing to hide her grin.

“It was a fine waste of good time,” she said, once she had closed the door. “But at least the biscuits are good.”

The door opened again before John could say a word. “John, come.”

I guess I don’t get the polite invite, John thought. He was used to it – Katrina was an aristocrat; she was favoured even by staff members who disliked her or aristocrats in general – but it never ceased to grate. He’ll be telling me I’m fit only to hew wood and draw water.

“Good luck,” Katrina said. “I’ll see you in the bedroom.”

John winked, then stepped inside the office and closed the door behind him. The chamber was surprisingly large and comfortable, something that probably shouldn’t have surprised him. The staff in charge of career counselling, and arranging work experience sessions, needed to put students at their ease so they would talk freely. There was no desk for the teacher to hide behind, just a pair of comfortable armchairs and a small coffee table. A plate of biscuits sat on the table. The counsellor himself – a middle-aged man John didn’t recognise – nodded politely to him, then indicated the armchairs. John sat, then accepted a cup of tea and a plate. Katrina was right, he decided. The biscuits really were very good.

“I am Professor Staunton,” the counsellor said. He sat and looked John up and down in a manner John sounds rather disquieting, as if he’d did just found John dead drunk and face down in a ditch. John stared back at him evenly. The teachers were not supposed to look down on common-born students – they were all supposed to be equals in magic – that he’d met far too many teachers who thought he couldn’t count past ten without taking off his socks – or his trousers. “I must say your academic record is very good.”

“Thank you, sir, John said. He knew, without false modesty, that he had done very well. His first years had been hampered by a lack of basic skills – he had barely known how to read and write – but once he had caught up he had never fallen behind again. “I think …”

“I have no hesitation in recommending that that you take up an apprenticeship in the capital, perhaps as an infuser or a potions brewer,” Professor Staunton said, speaking over John. “Your raw talent qualifies you for many jobs, but you require focus. A proper apprenticeship would provide the grounding you need for a successful career.”

John stared at him, feeling as though he had been punched in the stomach. “But … I want to travel!”

Professor Staunton studied him for a long moment. “My task is to steer you into a career path that benefits both yourself and society at large,” he said. “I believe that travelling would benefit neither yourself nor society. You have considerable talent and potential, but …”

“I do not want an apprenticeship,” John said. It was hard to keep the shock out of his voice. “I want to be something more.”

“Many students want to something more, but they have to be realistic about what they can achieve,” Professor Staunton said. There was an edge to his tone that suggested he was irritated. John ignored it. He’d had five years of Professor Gallant and, compared to the sharp-tongued enchanter, Professor Staunton was an amateur. “You have considerable talent, like I said, but talent alone does not guarantee you a position.”

His tone became almost bored, as if he were reciting statistical data. “You have no family and connections worth the mention. Your … girlfriend may be unable or unwilling to do anything for you after you both graduate. You have no other connections, nor have you been particularly interested in taking up roles serving either individual aristocrats or monarchs or the states as a whole. An apprenticeship is your best hope of a successful career. You could go far.”

“But not far enough,” John muttered.

“No?” Professor Staunton made a show of looking at the clock, then shrugged. “What do you want to be, when you grow up?”

John gritted his teeth at the professor’s mocking condescension. “I want to travel. I want to be a wandering sorcerer. I want to go from place to place, exploring the world and helping people and …”

“And stepping outside the borders of society,” Professor Staunton interrupted. “The days of the wandering sorcerers are long gone. It is illegal, now, to practice magic without a licence. Independent sorcerers can be incredibly dangerous, as you should know from your lessons. Their magic, their styles cast without proper supervision, can and often does lead to tragedy. You must know this. It was drilled into your head – it certainly should have been – during your first lessons, when you came to this school. Or were you skiving those classes?”

John flushed. The lessons had been mandatory and Professor Staunton knew it. There was no shortage of horror stories about bereaved parents who tried to bring their dead children back to life, or untrained magicians who lashed out at bullies and round up slaughtering entire villages, or warriors who summon powerful elementals to fight wars and then could not dismiss them, or even spoilt little aristocratic girls who played with forces they didn’t understand and discovered, too late, that they had bit off far more than they could chew. He had heard stories as a child, warnings passed down from the nightmarish days just after the Cataclysm, about the ground melting and men becoming monsters and everything just breaking down … he knew, after five years of education, that most stories shared by the common folk were nothing more than wild fantasies. But that didn’t mean magic couldn’t be very dangerous.

“I am a trained sorcerer,” he said. It wasn’t entirely true – he had yet to pass the fifth-year exams, let alone the seventh year exams – but he knew far more about magic and its dangers than an undiscovered magician in the middle of nowhere. I know the risks …”

“They all say that.” Professor Staunton actually managed to sound regretful. “Every single independent magician claims he can handle it, until he discovers – too late – that he’s wrong. He does something, or let himself be talked into something, and all of a sudden he’s unleashed a disaster … if he’s lucky, he’s the first and only victim. But they are rarely that lucky.”

He sighed. “It is better for you to graduate and serve the community than risk destroying it.”

John met his eyes. “It isn’t about serving the community, isn’t it? It’s about control.”

Professor Staunton looked back at him evenly. “What do you mean?”

“You drill the rules into us every single day,” John said. Anger bubbled up within him, overriding his common sense. “You expect us to follow in the footsteps of everyone who has gone before, not experiment with our magic to see what we can do and make new discoveries of our own. You chart our career paths and hand out jobs to force us to stay in line, rather than be something new. Why should we allow ourselves to be regimented?”

“Because independent magic is dangerous,” Professor Staunton snapped. “And because experimenting can easily get someone killed.”

“If it is that dangerous,” John demanded, “why are the Grey Men allowed to experiment?”

Professor Staunton’s face darkened. “Young man, you are treading on some very dangerous ground.”

“Because you don’t want to discuss it?” John knew he was about to get into real trouble but he found it hard to care. “Or because your boss doesn’t want us asking questions?”

He forced himself to keep his eyes on the professor. It had always frustrated him, after he had mastered the basics of magic, that students were discouraged from doing any private research. He had dozens of ideas for exploring his own potential, and that of others, but his teachers had flatly forbidden him to carry out unsupervised experiments, and even punished him for daring to ask why. He didn’t want to limit himself to a single magical career. He wanted to be a roving sorcerer, even if it meant being a jack of all trades rather than a master of one. He’d grown up in a small village. He knew his hometown, and villages like it, didn’t need specialists. They needed someone who knew the basics of everything.

Professor Staunton visibly composed himself. “The rules exist to prevent disaster,” he said. His voice was so flat John knew he was angry. “If you flout them, you will get precisely what you deserve. Unfortunately, so will anyone else who has the misfortune to be close to you when you do it.

He took a breath, then waved his hand to summon a small folder. “Your summer will be spent doing work experience in a nearby town,” he said. “You will get to spend some time doing the job for which you are suited, ideally suited, and hopefully it will show you that following a career path laid down by your elders does not have to be boring. You may, of course, refuse to do this experience, but that will limit your ability to find a job – any job – once you graduate. If you don’t get a job, you will not be allowed to practice magic.”

John gritted his teeth. “Sir …”

“You are a common-born student,” Professor Staunton snapped. “You have nothing, save for your magic. Perhaps your girlfriend will marry you and raise you to the peerage through a venereal transmission of power, perhaps she will dump you and marry someone more suited to her station. I advise you to be aware of your position, and not do anything that would jeopardise it – or your life. We have no tolerance for rogue magicians because the risk of disaster is too high to be borne.”

“Sir …” John felt his fists clench. It was hard to unclench them. “I want to be …”

“If you are so selfish that you want to indulge yourself, rather than serve the community, then it would be best for you to remember the dangers – both go yourself and to others,” Professor Staunton said. His voice made it very clear the interview was over. He pushed the folder into John’s hand. “I suggest that you read the papers, decide what to do, and then make your choice. If you make the wrong choice …”

He shrugged, then waved a hand at the door. “Dismissed.”

John stood, fighting to control his anger and bitter resentment. It had been years since he had taught his well-born peers to respect him, to understand he was a powerful magician who could not be trifled with even if he happened to come from a nameless village. Now … he scowled at the papers as he left the office, all too aware the walls were closing in. He wanted to be something special, to become one of the most famous magicians in the world. But the world didn’t seem inclined to give him a chance.

He closed the door behind him, then sighed. Professor Staunton was a condescending asshole, a well-born man who had never known a day of hunger and deprivation in his entire life. The system worked for him, but John wanted to be something more. And if that meant taking a risk …

I will make something of myself, he told himself as he made his way back to the dorms.  And it doesn’t matter what anyone else has to say.

In hindsight, he would come to realise that Professor Staunton hadn’t been entirely wrong. But that would be a year later, and far too late.

Chapter One

The air was hot, humid, and deceptive.

John felt his head ache as the small party galloped over the dunes and made their way down to New Hope. They had broken contact with the bounty hunters – he didn’t want to think about who else was chasing them – weeks ago, but the wildlands were incredibly dangerous even when there were no humans trying to kill them. They had avoided patches of wild magic, fought their way out of traps set by creatures warped and twisted to the point they had developed a certain intelligence of their own, and evaded two elementals that had come very close to capturing them. He saw things at the corner of his eye, never quite there when he turned to look at them properly. The ground below the horse’s hooves shifted constantly, veering between sand and ash and earth to the remains of cities destroyed by the storms that had backed over the world. He thought he could feel unseen eyes watching them, but when he turned to look he saw nothing. His senses were useless. There was so much tainted magic in the air that there was no way to pick out anything from the blur.

Scout shifted against him, her arms tightening around his waist. She was half-asleep. John didn’t blame her. Scout was a weirdling, a child of the badlands, but even she found it difficult to endure the desolation. He felt a rush of affection as she tightened her grip. They’d been lovers for the last two years and …

He gritted his teeth as he felt a sudden surge of guilt. It had been nearly three years since he had carried out the experiment that had nearly killed Katrina Amador, his girlfriend, and been expelled from the College of Wizards, affectionately known as Greyshade School. He had tried, since his exile into the badlands, to make contact with her and offer what little he could in hopes of setting things right, but there had been no response. He had feared her family was intercepting his letters and burning them, yet the truth had been far worse. She had abandoned her family and entered Headmaster Greyshade’s service …

His head swam. The desert was getting to him. It was hard to think clearly, let alone put together a coherent outline of anything. He had burnt Katrina – body, magic and soul – and what little had survived had been worthless, at least to her family. He didn’t know precisely what happened – he had been sent into exile the very day of the accident – but he could guess. Greyshade, the ruthless old manipulator, had offered to restore some of her powers, in exchange for her service. John couldn’t even blame her for taking the deal. He had hurt her so badly, crippled her, that the best she could hope for from anyone else – even her family – was being exiled to the family’s country estate and left to rot.

He must have had something like this in mind from the start, John thought. He had never really liked the headmaster, although he had never been able to put his feelings into words. Greyshade was the most powerful man in the world, the effective master of thousands of sorcerers, magicians, and apprentices. He controlled, directly or indirectly, lives, cities, and even entire kingdoms. Did he know there would come a time when he would have to track us down?

His heart sank. It had been Greyshade who had sent in into exile – and Greyshade who had pointed him to Captain Joyce and her adventurers. It had been Greyshade who had hired them for a handful of missions, all of which – John was sure – were completely off the books. And it had been Greyshade who had sent them to steal an ancient plague box, a deadly weapon from the days before the Cataclysm, before the entire world had been devastated. John hadn’t questioned their orders, at least until they’d discovered a colossal bounty had been placed on their heads and an entire army of bounty hunters was after them. And then … they’d discovered the plague box was nothing of the sort.

John ground his teeth in bitter frustration. Greyshade hadn’t wanted the box stolen to protect the world, but to protect his monopoly on magical motivators. And he had sent Katrina to kill them.

She came very close to killing all of us, he thought. And next time she might finish the job.

He cursed under his breath. He had used a makeshift motivator to trigger a magic storm that should have killed her, that had come very close to killing them both. It was impossible to be certain, but he was positive she was still alive. He wasn’t sure how he felt about her survival. He blamed himself – and rightly – for what had happened to her, but she had tried to kill him and tortured Scout and Greyshade alone knew what else. If it had been just him, he thought he might have walked up to her and invited her to do whatever she wanted … and yet, the stakes were just too high. Greyshade had to be stopped.

So all we have to do is defeat a man who has thousands of sorcerers, soldiers and monarchs under his command, John told himself. Good thing we like a challenge, isn’t it?

He raised his eyes as Joyce, the lead horsewoman, pulled her horse to a stop. The rest of the team cantered up to join her. John hoped she knew where they were going. They’d gone into the badlands before, several times, but they’d never travelled so far from the borderlands. There was no hope, now, of turning around and getting back to the more settled lands before they ran out of food and water. John had picked up a few survival tricks over the last two years, but he knew his limits. Scout was the only one amongst them who might survive long enough to get to safety, if there was any to be had. The bounties on their heads were still waiting to be collected.

“We should be there within the hour,” Joyce said. She was a past master at navigating the badlands, but even she was being pushed to the limits. There was so much tainted magic in the air that normal navigational methods were dangerously unreliable. “Try not to scare them.”

“Perhaps I could sing a song,” Bard said. His voice was raspy and weak. John couldn’t help thinking that it would be a long time before Bard managed to sing anything more than a few lines. “Perhaps a rousing chorus of …”

“And then they drive us out of town,” Sergeant Ted growled. He and Bard normally bantered, exchanging insults as casually as lovers exchanged endearments, but his tiredness gave his words a sharp edge. “The moment they hear you try to sing, they’ll start throwing things.”

“I’ll have you know that King Atherton thought my singing was wonderful,” Bard said. “He loved me!”

“Yeah,” Ted agreed. “How could he possibly hope to find a more economical method of torturing prisoners? Five minutes of you murdering The Ballard of Peeping Tom and the poor bastards will be confessing to everything, even crimes they could not possibly have committed.”

“Ah, you love me really,” Bard said. “Boss Harris said he’d never get another singer like me.”

“No,” Ted said. “He said he never wanted another singer like you.”

John tried not to roll his eyes. Bard was a very enthusiastic singer, but not a particularly good one. He was fond of insisting that he had moved from court to court, singing for monarchs and their courtiers, yet it was hard to believe he’d been allowed to stay at court after he had opened his mouth and sung. Ted said Bard had moved from place to place because he’d been kicked out repeatedly. John would have thought Ted was right, if he hadn’t known Bard was both a skilled fixer and a terrifyingly capable swordsman. Joyce hadn’t hired him for his singing. Bard was easy to underestimate until it was too late.

He looked from one to the other, shaking his head. Ted was a short stocky man who looked – always – as though he just walked away from a battlefield. Bard was a handsome taller man who normally had his blond hair, moustache and goatee perfectly tailored, but now he looked as though he had been through the wars. His tailored outfit – he liked to dress like a cross between a dandy and a travelling minstrel – was practically in rags, even though it had been designed to allow him to move freely. John suspected he didn’t look any better. Two weeks hard riding, without washing or even a change of clothes, had taken its toll. Scout was the only one of them who didn’t look any different and even she was clearly tired.

Joyce glared them both into silence. “As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, try not to scare them,” she said. “New Hope is the only settlement for dozens of miles and there is literally nowhere else we can go if they don’t want us.”

“They must want us,” John said. It was hard to keep the desperation out of his voice. Scout tightened her grip slightly. “They want – they need – more motivators.”

He glowered at the box – the wretched box that had nearly gotten them killed several times – on Joyce’s back. The knowledge within would change the world, if they got a chance to spread it from one end of the Free States to the other. The motivators alone would make one hell of a difference. He knew the New Hope community wanted them – they’d gone to some trouble to buy up every motivator they could find – but would they take the risk of harbouring some of the most wanted fugitives in the world? They wanted their independence from the monarchs, yet …

There’s nowhere else to go, he reminded himself. This is one last throw of the die.

“We’ll see,” Joyce said. “We should have plenty of time to convince them before any hunters track us down.”

“Don’t count on it,” Ted said. “We think we broke contact, and we certainly broke the link leading them to us, but a skilled tracker could have followed us while remaining out of sight.”

“I doubt it,” John said. He might be the least experienced of the team but he’d picked up a few things over the last three years. “They’d have to be on horseback to follow us and we would have seen something … wouldn’t we?”

“Perhaps,” Ted said. “Or they might be using charmed beasts to follow us while the hunter himself stays well back, out of sight.”

“Greyshade certainly has magicians who could do it for him,” Bard agreed. “The bastard has virtually unlimited resources.”

John couldn’t disagree. Joyce had worked for Greyshade – and, by extension, so had the rest of the team. There was no reason to think they were the only team of adventurers – or bounty hunters – under his control. He had the resources to quietly patronise hundreds of teams without making his involvement obvious, as well as the connections to help people and – in doing so – make them indebted to him. If things had been different, if they had never discovered their patron had been lying to them, they might have been on the other side. John didn’t like the headmaster, but he was – had been – in the man’s debt. And a man always repaid his debts if he wanted to call himself a man.

“Or a weirdling,” Scout said. “There are others out there who are far less human than me.”

“You are human,” John said. He had punched a man who mocked Scout to her face for being a weirdling. The man had been bullying a dragon – even in broad daylight, Scout could make herself practically invisible; John had seen her walk up behind someone and slit his throat – but he hadn’t wanted to let her think he didn’t care enough to defend her. “And anyone who thinks otherwise is a complete idiot.”

Joyce looked east, then shrugged. John followed her gaze. The landscape was a rolling nightmare of desert sands, the air a shimmering haze and the sky bright blue and clear of anything that might be following them. He had been cautioned visibility was lower that it seemed; the combination of heat and haze distorted one’s eyesight and generated mirages that could be utterly convincing, at least until one tried to touch them. An entire army could be lurking just out of sight, watching them from a safe distance. Cold logic suggested otherwise – it had been hard enough to keep the five of them in hardtack and water over the last few weeks – but logic was powerless against emotion.

And it doesn’t help that the most powerful man the world is after us, John thought. He has enough magic to smooth the logistics problems and send an army after us.

Ted’s thoughts were clearly moving in the same direction. “Given time, he can get his forces after us,” he said. “New Hope came out this far because they thought they couldn’t be followed in a hurry. They had nothing to make the effort worthwhile. But that will change” – he pointed to the box – “when their enemies realise what we’ve brought them.”

“If they’re not tracking us,” Bard said, “they’ll have to work out where we are going.”

Scout leaned forward. “Where else?”

John hated to admit it, but she had a point. There was no way they could dicker with Greyshade and offer to hand over the box, in exchange for the bounties being lifted. Greyshade could not be trusted and even if Joyce felt otherwise and Greyshade kept his word, some of the hunters wouldn’t get the message until it was far too late. They could go to one of the monarchs, the ones who chafed under Greyshade’s tutelage, and offer to sell the box or even simply give it to them, but Greyshade had too many clients – including a number who were completely off the books – for any of the monarchs to be sure Greyshade wouldn’t find out until it was too late. What else was there? Destroy the box, change the names, and hope the best? John doubted they would ever be safe again. The bounties were just too high.

New Hope is our only hope, he thought. The settlement had openly declared itself to be a whole new kind of society, in stark contrast to the hierarchical Free States or the rough and ready settlements along the borderline. There was no one else might have the nerve to stand up to Greyshade and the monarchs, no one who was far away enough to be reasonably sure of having time to prepare before the enemy armies arrived. And if we can work that out, so can they.

“They couldn’t take it for granted,” Bard said. “I might like to think I’m a very big man indeed, particularly my enormous …”

“I think we need to have his head inspected,” Ted said, deadpan. He sounded more like his old self. “He’s having delusions of adequacy again.”

Bard made a rude gesture. “We are five very small people,” he said. “We are tiny. The region they have to search, if they want to find us, is immense. Even if they work out just how far we could have travelled from the last encounter, they are still going to have to search a vast area. They may think they know where we are going – they may, yes – but they could not be sure. I don’t care how big their armies are. They’re not going to be devoting an entire army to New Hope unless they have some reason to be that’s where we are going.”

“They do,” John said quietly. “Where else could we use the box?”

“He’s right,” Joyce said. “Greyshade isn’t going to lose sleep over the prospect of us hiding the box somewhere, then splitting up, creating new lives and vanishing into the borderlands. He is going to worry about us using the box, for which we need a base of operations that won’t report back to him the moment they see us. New Hope is the only place that fits the bill.”

“Unless we try to set up a settlement of our own,” Bard pointed out. “Or we go to one of the hidden settlements in the borderlands.”

Joyce shook her head. John nodded in agreement. There were hundreds – perhaps thousands – of hidden settlements along the borderlands, from towns set up by bandits and refugees to settlements run by weirdlings who couldn’t or wouldn’t pass for human or fit into human society. Most of them, he suspected, were already known to Greyshade and the Grey Men, even if they were officially off the maps. The remainder were just too small and underdeveloped – or hostile – to be helpful. The team might be able to hide in one of those towns, particularly if they split up, but they would never be able to up watching over their shoulders for possible enemies. And it would take time, time they didn’t have, to set up a town of their own.

“It’s too late to change our minds now,” Joyce said. “Remember what I said. Don’t scare them. Don’t act like bandits. We get to the settlement line, hail them, and asked to speak to the town council. As long as we behave ourselves, they should remember the code.”

John nodded. The code of the borderlands was very clear. If someone needed help, and you could help without compromising your own safety, you helped. Only the very worst bandits ignored the code and they were considered outlaws, to be killed on sight. New Hope should give them a hearing. It was all they could ask for.

Joyce sprung her horse around and dug in her spurs. “Let’s go!”