Balancer (Advent Mage Cycle) (24 page)

I couldn’t agree more with that. I frowned, thinking about it very carefully. “No, I don’t remember mention of a Weather Mage at all…”

“It would have stuck out in your mind if you had read it,” Shad agreed grimly. “I was just hoping you hadn’t mentioned it to me or Night. A vain hope, apparently.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. For that matter, I didn’t know how to respond to any of this. A whole line of magic had disappeared without a trace, and without anyone suspecting it, until Shad had asked that simple question. People might call me the Advent Mage and go on and
on
about how special that is, but retrieving and reviving a line of magery was completely beyond my abilities.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a Weather Mage,” I finally offered.

“Maybe,” he agreed. But his voice clearly said that he wasn’t putting a lot of faith in that possibility. “The line must have died out right before the war really escalated…” he speculated aloud.

I started thinking it through too, comparing different time lines in my head. “Why then?”

“It took me a while to realize that nothing in Night’s Jaunten blood had any information about a Weather Mage,” he admitted grimly. “And the nreesce were created right before that final battle, correct?”

“Thereabouts,” I admitted. “Advent Eve always maintained that she was created just
before
they were moved to the Isle of Strae. But it was only a matter of a few days before that last battle.”

“So the Weather Mage had to have died before that time, otherwise she would have known of him,” Shad pointed out patiently. “And in turn, we would know about that Mage too.”

The pieces just fit too snugly for him to be wrong.

“They ordered all of the magicians off the main continent,” I mused, taking the different pieces I had gained from Night, the Remnant and Shad himself to try to understand how everything happened. “Even the children were rounded up and sent up there. The Remnant was formed by the children taken to Strae, mostly, as a few of the Mages and one Wizard took all of the children to Bromany to keep them out of the battle.”

“I wonder if Raile knows about the Weather Mages?”

“He probably does. Raile was alive before the War broke out, like you.” That left the question of what else he knew and just hadn’t mentioned. If I ever had a few weeks of spare time on my hands, I was going back to Raile’s house and picking the man’s brain. He’d probably forgotten more than I’d ever known.

Shad shifted restlessly on the bench. “Did you ever hear mention of a Weather Mage over there?”

“None,” I admitted heavily. “Which probably means they don’t have them either.”

He didn’t seem surprised. “I hope the line isn’t dead. You have no idea, Garth, what the world is supposed to look like. Most of Chahir wasn’t semi-arid grassland, but prime farmland and forests. The forests were lush, full of game. The lakes deep and clear. The farmland rich and fertile. None of it is right anymore,” he whispered.

I couldn’t picture what he was telling me. The Chahir I knew was largely flat plains.

“We never had severe weather,” Shad continued in a faraway voice, body tense. “We never had to worry about snows that would bury us, or storms that would tear the roofs off houses. Flooding was unheard of. So was drought. The Weather Mages didn’t just control the weather for this country; they controlled it for the whole
continent
. While they reigned, this place was a paradise.”

I really couldn’t imagine that.

“I really hope that we find one soon.”

Never had Shad seemed so ancient to me as in that moment. Leg drawn up, left hand clenching his shirt, right hand placed over his eyes to press the coolness in, I imagined that I could see every bit of those two hundred years he had survived. The land around him had changed beyond his recognition, as had the people. It was no wonder he seemed so lost at times. When I thought of all the damage and heartache natural storms caused, I found myself echoing Shad’s wish. I really hoped that we could find a Weather Mage soon.

My magical sense perked up and informed me that dozens of magicians of all types were rapidly approaching the city. I looked up to see some of them coming down from the sky, being carried by an Air Mage. It looked like it was time for me to go back to the problems that I
could
solve.

Time to bust through a barrier.

Chapter
Sixteen: Barrier

What I really wanted was to surround the barrier and take it completely down. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to hammer at it until the thing caved. Chatta reported that the Priests had abandoned the device—whatever it was—and that the Priests were now headed directly for the Palace. I knew from experience that it wouldn’t take more than ten seconds for them to get through the barrier the Remnant magicians had put up.

We had to get in there
now
.

Dassan coordinated us into formation along one street, pointing toward the inner gates. It reminded me of a spearhead in shape. He took a minute to give some of us a crash course on the incantation necessary to link all of our power and focus it. To my complete lack of surprise, the incantation needed to be sung, it was that old of a spell.

We’d managed to call in forty-six magicians on short notice, and all of them looked a little ragged around the edges. I prayed they had enough strength. We didn’t have a back-up plan if they didn’t.

My cousin Aral had been chosen as the incantar for this, as he’d led group spellwork before and, as a Mage, he could handle Mage power flowing through him. So he faced all of us with a raised hand, signaling his readiness, and then gave a low, steady hum. We matched pitch with him, words flowing into low, musical tones.

What stands before us

We cannot let remain

The power rose with each word out of our mouths. The song itself had an intensity even without the magical power imbued in it. It had the solemn tone of a hymn and a part of my heart ached with its resonance. But that feeling was almost buried by the magical power that flared to life all around me. It was so overwhelming that I hovered between pleasure and pain.

How was Aral going to
channel
all of this?!

We gather now before it

Our power we give to one

Let him cast the fatal blow

I stood half-way in the crowd, and with the close quarters, I couldn’t begin to see Aral where I stood. But I certainly felt it when he drew upon the power we were sending to him and struck out against the barrier.

I had my eyes glued to the deep, crimson red barrier even as I continued to sing the incantation over and over. Aral hit the thing with sheer, raw power without any finesse whatsoever. Every time he landed a strike, the barrier flinched, a ripple spread across it as if someone had dropped something into a pond. At first, I thought the ripples were a sign of progress. I’d hit the thing with boulders for three hours, after all, and never got any sort of reaction.

Then I realized that the ripple effect was actually a
bad
sign.

Aral hit it over and over, drawing upon all of our strength to do so. But each time there was a ripple in the barrier as it accepted the power that struck at it, and reset itself.

Evening had started to descend, the heat of the day fading with it, but my back and forehead beaded with sweat at the exertion of keeping my magical core this open for this long. I hadn’t even been the one destroying sigils earlier, either! I couldn’t imagine what everyone else was feeling.

This wasn’t working.

The magical drain abruptly stopped. Aral waved both hands over his head and called out, “STOP!”

We all thankfully did. Some people sagged, bracing themselves against their knees, drawing breath in quick pants. I felt a little tired, but not exhausted. I pushed and slid my way to the very front so that I could talk with Dassan and Aral. It took several moments to reach them.

Aral had sank onto his haunches, head hanging, a fine tremor in his arms. I recognized power over-use when I saw it. I dug out my mirror broach and murmured, “Chatta, Aral needs one of those power-restore potions of yours.”

“
Understood. I’m coming.”

I sank down to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Chatta’s coming with a potion for you. Just wait a moment.”

He gave a thankful nod but didn’t pause in gulping air.

I looked up at Dassan. The Wizard stared at the barrier with unfathomable eyes. It felt like lead churned in my gut, but I forced myself to ask, “That didn’t have any affect, did it?”

“None,” Dassan gritted out.

Dark magic, that wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear.

If sheer power from this many magicians couldn’t break through the barrier, what by the four winds could?

~*~

As frustrating as it was, we had to step back and think for a moment. Most of the magicians were dropping like flies, so even if we thought of some brilliant strategy, we wouldn’t be able to draw upon them. I requisitioned food and water from the nearby restaurants, using the authority Vonlorisen had given me, and helped people into the various buildings along this street so they could refuel and rest.

When I returned to the outdoor café where the team still gathered, Chatta hovered over her scrying bowl with a worried crease between her eyes. I slipped in beside her and bent over the table to get my own look.

As I watched, the barrier around the Palace faltered then disappeared completely. In the next instant, another barrier appeared, slightly smaller than the previous one, and held steady for several long seconds. I blinked. The Priests were obviously able to crack through these barriers—although I found it interesting that they had a little trouble with a Mage’s and Wizard’s combined barrier. So why rebuild an obviously fallible barrier… “Are they casting successive barriers to slow down the advance?”

“It’s an interesting delaying tactic,” Shad observed. He put his forearms on the table to lean closer to the bowl. “You have to admit, it’s buying at least ten seconds each time. I’m sure they’ll eventually run out of room, at which point they’ll have to do something else, but at the rate they’re going they could buy us another thirty minutes or so to get to them. Someone in there is using their head.”

“That means we have ten minutes to think of a way inside.” Xiaolang sat down heavily, eyes blind to his surroundings. “Dassan, walk me through how blood magic works and how that barrier is operating. Step by step.”

Dassan stopped frowning at the barrier, finally, but only transferred the frown to Xiaolang. “I thought you understood my explanation earlier.”

“I did. But I’ve discovered that if you explain something to someone else, covering even the basic fundamentals, that you’ll often discover you overlooked something vitally important,” Xiaolang explained patiently. “So walk me through this again.”

Dassan let his head drop back and blew out a breath. “It can’t hurt. Alright. A blood magician is unlike every other magician in that they don’t draw power from something else. They only rely on the magic within their own bodies. The sole exception to this is that they can take power from other people. This is why most blood magicians have to link with other people to perform any kind of significant magic. Over the years, they have learned how to imbue objects with their power, which you’ve all experienced with their shields and weapons.

“Barriers are actually one of their more intricate pieces of spellwork.” Dassan jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the barrier behind him. “This is more impressive than most I’ve seen. The sigils in place are in quad-directional alignment, like all of the others, but this one is in dual layers. The first layer of sigil draws upon the life force of everyone inside, which powers the Priests and the barrier. The second layer holds all of the information for the barrier construction itself. In mathematical terms, this is very complicated. Whoever built this thing had to have been a genius to get everything so perfectly right.” Dassan shot a grimace over his shoulder at the barrier. “I personally wish his mother had dropped him a few times as a baby so he wouldn’t have the wits to create something like this.”

Unfortunately, the whole explanation was something I already knew and didn’t get any insight from. Xiaolang didn’t appear to have gained any brilliant flash of inspiration either. I looked around the table to see if anyone else had an idea. Chatta frowned into her scrying bowl, as did Shield, Shad stared at the barrier through narrowed eyes, and Hazard glumly stared at the table top. Aletha wasn’t looking at anything, just rubbing the bridge of her nose with one hand.

Eagle…Eagle had the oddest look on his face, as if someone had just smacked him on the back of the head. “Eagle?”

“Both of you said before,” he started slowly, “that just destroying one sigil would terminate the resonance. Because in a quad-directional alignment,
all four
sigils have to be in direct line of sight with each other to work.”

“Right,” Dassan agreed with a tad of impatience. “But we can’t very well destroy one of the sigils with that benighted barrier protecting it. We’d have to break through the barrier to reach the sigil to break the barrier—it’s a complete conundrum.”

Eagle held up a restraining hand. “Bear with me, I’m thinking out loud, here. Forget about destroying the sigil or making it inert or whatever. Focus on just this part: if one sigil is removed from the directional alignment, then the rest of the sigils are useless, right?”

Dassan was obviously forcing himself to be patient. “Right.”

“How far does that barrier go? Does it stop on the ground level?”

I blinked at this question. I’d never once questioned how far it extended. Every barrier or ward I’d ever put up surrounded the
entire area
, including the foundation. That was just good sense, in my opinion. But then, I was thinking like a person that tunneled underground on a regular basis. For someone who didn’t have that capability and hadn’t known anyone that could, would they have thought of it?