Magus (Advent Mage Cycle) (29 page)

“Keep going,” Shad encouraged, eyes suspicious.

I refused to look at anyone while I recited it, instead focusing my eyes on the floor under my feet. “The Mother shall give birth, and her son will be named Trivoxor. Blood shall be mixed with his coming; strangers shall seek him. A Rider shall be chosen. Great power shall be his, and all shall know his name. When Trivoxor has chosen a Rider, the Balance will be restored. The son will be named Trivoxor and blood will be mixed with his coming."

Shield let out a low whistle. “That’s quite the prophecy, Garth.”

“I don’t remember part of that,” Chatta frowned, obviously going over it again in her head.

“What I recited is the Coven Ordan version.” I smiled humorlessly.

“That’s how Terran knew,” she breathed.

“Precisely,” Terran agreed. “That’s the
other
reason why we were on the mainland. We wanted to find Advent Eve, if she were still alive, and figure out if she’d had a son or not. And we also wanted to know who that son had chosen.”

“With that prophecy, I can’t blame you,” Shad concurred. He leaned forward slightly, grinning like a demented elf. “Garth, tell me, how
is
it that you get into so many things? This goes beyond a gift for trouble; it’s almost a curse.”

“There’s no ‘almost,’ it
is
a curse.” I was resigned now. After all, the worst part was over. “All right, Terran, they know. Can we drop this subject now?”

Raile cleared his throat, drawing my attention to him. “Boy, you aren’t what we expected. Don’t you think anything of your reputation?”

“I certainly do, sir. It’s annoying.”

Raile blinked. Then he started laughing so hard that he nearly fell off his chair. “You’ll do, Rhebengarthen. You’ll do. Don, let’s get these people to the pool. We have work to do!”

~*~

I have never in my life seen a scrying pool this large. It was housed in a huge building, and easily took up half the room. Even if all of us jumped into it, we’d still have plenty of room to swim around. As expected of a pool that size, the power it drew on was
enormous
. Three different ley lines fed directly into it that I could detect, and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that it was only those three.

All around the pool were plants and small trees, almost like an indoor garden. It was a beautiful place to be, and obviously someone’s pet project.

Only Xiaolang, Chatta and I went with Don and Raile to this place. The rest of them knew they were out of their depth, and chose to stay with Sallah and swap stories. So it was a small group that knelt near the pool’s edge.

“I do have a map with the location of the boy Mage marked,” Don told us as he settled into a comfortable sitting position. “What else are we looking for?”

“Shad tells us that before the War, there might have been scrying pools all throughout Chahir,” Xiaolang answered. “We believe that those pools might still exist, and are being used to detect magicians as they come into their power.”

Don hissed in an angry breath. “Dark magic, he might be right. I hadn’t considered how the magicians were being discovered.” His eyes drifted to me, the wheels turning in his mind.

“They didn’t find me that way, at first,” I answered the silent query in his face. “It was only when I came back for my family that they discovered me. But they don’t rely on magical accidents to betray the magician. They have something else that helps them find people.”

“That explains it,” he muttered to himself.

“Explains what?” Xiaolang inquired, eyes narrowing slightly.

“Here, I’ll show you.” Don shifted his attention completely to the pool. The clear reflection shifted, colors bleeding in until a picture started to come into focus. I didn’t recognize the area, although it was obviously in Chahir, with flat grassland all around it. The building in the picture was old, crumbling in parts, but apparently still usable. It was made of dark grey stone, looking forbidding and cold. I didn’t recognize the building either— but I knew the mark on the building.

Chatta and I both gasped in recognition. “Chatta, that’s—!”

“The Watchman’s Seal,” she confirmed darkly.

Xiaolang let out a frustrated growl. “You two have lost me again. Watchman’s Seal?”

“Not everyone has what it takes to be a Witch, or a Wizard. Sometimes their gifts are just too focused to take on most of the spellwork necessary to be a full-fledged magician,” Chatta explained quickly. Her eyes never left the image in the Pool as she spoke. “For those people that have magic, but can’t pass the exams, the Trasdee Evondit Orra assigns them particular tasks. This is a practice that’s been done since magicians were formally trained.”

“One of those tasks is to be a Watchman,” I continued the explanation, as Chatta obviously wanted to think instead of talk. “Those who were adept at scrying could become permanently assigned to a specific scrying pool. Their job was to watch the surrounding countryside, and alert the nearest magician of any problems.”

Xiaolang was nodding in understanding. “So that Watchman Seal means that there’s a scrying pool inside the building.”

“Yes.” I rubbed my chin thoughtfully, trying to turn the problem around in my head and see if there was a solution. “Don, since you haven’t shown us the pool itself, I’m assuming there are wards on the building?”

He gave me an odd look. “Of course. Can’t you see that?”

“I don’t see magic,” I explained absently. “I can only feel it. Chatta, what kind of wards are they?”

“Entry wards, mainly, to keep people out. But there’s a glamour on it as well.” She shot Don an admiring look. “You’re quite good to see the building, considering the strength of that glamour.”

Don flushed slightly. “Um, thanks. But I’m afraid I can’t see inside.”

She waved this away. “It’s enough to know where it is.”

“She’s right,” Xiaolang concurred. “Do you know of any others?”

“A few,” Don admitted. “I haven’t been paying them a lot of attention, honestly. I’ve been mainly focused on people.”

“Shift your focus, Don,” Raile ordered quietly. “I think this is more important at the moment.”

He nodded in grim agreement. “Yes, I think so, too. All right, someone grab a map and let’s get to work.”

It was no surprise to me when Xiaolang drew a map out of his pocket. I think he was born with a map in hand.

For the next several hours, we were all busy searching for those buildings with the Watchman Seal on it. We found several—some of them obviously still in use, others lying in ruin. We marked them all down. I wasn’t surprised to see that each Province had at least one, perhaps two or three, depending on the size.

Xiaolang marked the last one down on the map before raising his arms over his head and stretching. “Hmmm…owww!” He rubbed at his shoulders with a pained grimace. “How long have we been at this?”

“Too long,” Chatta groaned, shifting to her feet like a crotchety old woman. “Don, is that all of them?”

“I think so, but we might have missed one or two.” He spread his hands helplessly. “It’s a big country, and we did the search pretty fast.”

“Unfortunately, we can’t take the time to slow down and do a proper search,” Xiaolang sighed. “The best we can do is try to contact you again in a few weeks, and see if you’ve found any more.”

Don nodded in understanding. “That’s probably the best plan. You’re staying tonight, aren’t you?”

“That’s the plan.” Xiaolang folded his map back up, shooting me a look under his lashes. “And I think we’ll be leaving late tomorrow morning.”

I shook my head ruefully. “Surely I’m not that obvious?”

“You are,” Chatta and Xiaolang said in stereo.

“…thanks,” I replied sarcastically.

~*~

To no one’s surprise, Sallah and Aral put us up for the night. Don took the Red Hand, as he had enough guest rooms to accommodate the team. The rest of us were in the brick two-story Aral and Sallah lived in. It was a night of stories, and conversation, and good food, and, unfortunately, the threatened memory crystals. My attempt to snatch them and hide them somewhere was foiled by Shad’s quick reflexes. He grabbed them before I could, and had Chatta put some kind of unbreakable barrier around me while he viewed the memory.

Brat!

I suffered through the resultant teasing with a long face, and distracted them by a different topic as soon as I could.

It was very late when we went to bed, but I found that I couldn’t sleep. After an hour of tossing and turning, I gave up and made my way downstairs. But the walls of the house were a little too confining, so I kept going, winding up on the front porch of the house.

This really was a beautiful place. The sky was so clear I felt like I could reach out and capture a star in my hand. It was becoming a toss-up on where I wanted to retire—Q’atal or here.

I’m not sure how long I stood there, lost in thought, when I heard the scuff of feet behind me. I turned to see Aral standing just outside the front door.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Neither can you, apparently,” I observed.

He moved to stand next to me, arms casually propped against the banister, as mine were. “My mind won’t shut off,” he admitted.

Welcome to my world.

“How many Mages are in Hain, Garth?”

I had to stop a second and add them up in my head. There was me, of course, and Trev’nor, and Hevencoran, and Rheijennaan. Remcarparoden hardly counted anymore, since he was stripped of all magical power. “Four, including me. Why?”

“We have six Mages over here,” he murmured, blindly staring off into space. “Did you know? The most Mages this world has ever seen at once was twenty.”

We had half that number, and we were still searching Chahir for magicians. There’s no telling if that’s all of them, either.

“Sallah and I have a theory. We believe that magic is only partially hereditary. I think there’s other factors, too, that wake up magic in a person. Garth.” He turned to look at me, eyes almost solid black in the dim lighting. “Which place has the most magicians?”

“Here,” I answered slowly, trying to understand what point he was making.

“Why?”

“Because you have concentrated bloodlines of magic here?” I admit it, I was fishing.

“You do in Hain as well,” he pointed out. “So why do we have the most magicians?”

Actually, he had a good point. There were many people with magic in their blood in Hain. So why weren’t there more magicians there?

Long forgotten Jaunten blood surged to the front, giving me an insight I wouldn’t have considered, if not for this conversation. Why had the Jaunten become Jaunten? What had changed their blood so that knowledge became a hereditary thing?

The only people that became Jaunten were from Jarrell, which was close to the Isle of Strae.

A place where a great deal of magic was worked.

My body tensed as my mind raced, putting the pieces together to form a fantastical picture. “Are you suggesting that the more magically enriched the environment, the stronger the possibility that magicians will appear?”

He gave an approving nod. “That’s it exactly.”

“Aral, I was
not
in a magically rich environment!”

He tsked me in a diabolically cheerful manner. “Are you sure? What are the ley lines like under Tobadorage?”

Until he asked, I hadn’t thought about it. “The last time I was there, they were…growing…”

“The War destroyed most of the natural ley lines in Chahir; either that or drained them. It’s taken two hundred years for the damage to be repaired, and even now they’re not like they were. Still, enough magic is in the ground again to influence magicians to appear.” He spoiled this authoritative argument by adding, “Or so Sallah and I believe.”

Something about this line of reasoning seemed to make far too much sense. “You might very well be right,” I admitted slowly. “I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to the ley lines in Chahir, as I don’t dare do much magic over there. Still…” Another, more recent experience popped in my head. “I was in Q’atal a few days ago, putting up a barrier for them. There were so many ley lines under their feet I was amazed they didn’t glow.”

Aral froze, eyes widening in realization. “Aren’t all Q’atalians empaths?”

I nodded in confirmation. “They have a touch of precognition, too. This supports your theory, doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does,” he breathed.

I thought about it some more, turning it in different angles. And I frowned when I realized the gap. “The only problem I see with this theory is that it doesn’t explain the people who
aren’t
magicians, even when all the conditions are right.”

“Well,” he said comfortably, “how do you explain a child in a family full of musicians whose tone deaf?”

He had me there.

“All I’m saying is that when the conditions are right, the odds of a magician being born go up. When those conditions aren’t met, then odds are against it.”

“I can’t argue against that.” It seemed like a pretty solid theory to me.

“Changing the subject a little…I’m curious. What was it like to raise Trivoxor, Nreesce of prophecy?”

I debated several ways to respond to that question before settling on, “Did I tell you that ‘Night’ is short for ‘Nightmare?’ ”

Aral blinked, looking blank for a moment before bursting out laughing. “That rough, eh?”

I shook my head ruefully. “By the time that he was old enough to graze on grass, I swore to myself that I’d do something very nice for my mother to make up for having to deal with me as a child. I understand how much sacrifice that requires now.”

He clapped me on the back, still chortling. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected any different. A child of prophecy is still a child, after all.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. “All right, my turn to ask a question. What is it like, being married to another Mage?”

That dried up his laughter, replaced by a faint frown. “Annoying, actually.”

My head cocked slightly. That wasn’t the answer I was expecting. “How so?”

“Garth, you should know the answer to this,” he chided. “Our magic doesn’t lend itself well to everyday tasks. My life would be a lot easier if I’d married a Witch.”