Rise of the Mages (Rise of the Mages 2) (10 page)

Xan pulled his cloak tighter and inched closer to the fire.

While Brant sulked in the woods, Lainey played at connecting to the magic source like a kid given a new toy. Xan stared into the glowing embers and avoided looking at her.

Absently, he quested for fires behind them and, after mere seconds, sensed a bonfire. Definitely closer than last night. At this rate, they had no shot of making it to a town before Justav caught up.

Xan would be hanged. Worse, Lainey would be, too. Not that there had been a lot of hope before that she’d be spared.

How could he have let her bully him into testing her?

But how could he have known she’d have the ability? It shouldn’t have been possible. Statistically, Eagleton would have only produced three or four mages in their age range.

That wasn’t right. Not exactly.

If Eagleton would have had a normal population in their age range, it would have produced that many. Considering the plague, there shouldn’t have been any mages at all.

Xan slapped his forehead. Was he a complete moron?

He, Lainey, and Brant all survived without even getting sick while all other children died, and all three of them were mages. That was probably the connection, but three points of data could be a coincidence. Dylan hadn’t gotten sick either. If all four of them were mages …

Xan stood. “Why are we just sitting here? Might as well put more distance between us and Justav. Throw some porridge in a pot while I wake Dylan.”

“That sounded an awful lot like an order,” Brant called.

And? “It’s what we should be doing.” Xan sprinkled shaved variegation bark in the porridge. It’d give the meal a slight bitter taste, but they could all use the stimulant, a bit stronger than what he’d been adding to their tea.

When Dylan returned from attending to nature’s call, Xan said, “I need help to confirm a theory.”

“No.”

“But I just want to test you to see—”

“No.”

“It’s just a test,” Xan said. “Totally harmless.”

Dylan yawned. “I don’t care. Not interested. Test Brant. Or Lainey.”

There was no help for it. Dylan was going to find out eventually.

“I already did,” Xan said. “Both of them have the ability to become mages. In fact, Lainey is one.”

Dylan bolted to his feet. “You dragged them into this? You dragged Lainey into this?” His eyes darted from her to Brant before returning to Xan. “You colossal asshole. Are you so selfish that you couldn’t stand going to the gallows alone?”

Lainey’s spoon fell into her bowl with a plop. “Dylan!”

“She wanted it.” Xan’s voice came out as a whisper. He didn’t have the energy to yell.

“She didn’t do it without you!”

What could Xan say? Without him, his friends would be safe and warm in their beds instead of facing a hangman’s noose. He sank his face into his hands.

“Look, we should forget about all this, this, this dangerous …” Dylan’s eyes were wide with fright.

“If I thought we stood a tiny bit of a chance of escaping without magic,” Xan said, “I’d agree with you completely.”

“We’re not completely helpless. Brant is a great swordsman. I have the blowgun and ...”

Xan looked up at him.

Dylan clutched the front of his tunic and slouched onto a rock.

They sat quietly for a few minutes before Xan dared to speak. “So, the test?”

Dylan stiffened. “No way! I’m not jumping off the cliff this time.”

“If I’m right about you having the ability, knowing can help prevent you from surging.”

Dylan tilted his head, and Xan took the silence as leave to continue. “It happened to me by accident because I had no idea magic was a possibility. Had I known, I would never have tried to make a fire go out, and we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Dylan exhaled sharply. “Having the ability doesn’t mean I am one unless I do this ‘surging’ thing?”

“Correct.”

“And what you’re doing won’t cause me to—”

“Not at all.”

Dylan groaned. “Why do you need me to do this?”

“Yeah,” Lainey said. “How can this be? You said the odds against even three of us being mages were ridiculous. Now you think Dylan is one, too?”

Xan explained his realization about the plague.

Dylan stared out into the woods. “I told you magic is evil. It must have caused—”

“Why do you always assume the worst?” Xan shook his head. “Correlation does not prove causation. The pages I read said life force is stronger in mages than in those without a gift. The sickness could have been natural, and our magic saved us.”

“I don’t buy it,” Dylan said. “The four of us get sick as much as anyone.”

“You might be right,” Xan said. “Simply put, we just don’t have enough information to know anything for sure.”

“But anyone who didn’t get sick can be a mage?” Lainey said.

Xan nodded. “It seems likely.”

Lainey put a finger to her temple. “So both Wilfred and Ren ...”

Brant’s scowl softened. “What about Kara? I could work magic with her.”

“Brant!” Lainey said. “She’s ten years older than you and already married.”

He smiled. “True. Still …”

“Can we get back on topic?” Xan turned to Dylan. “It’ll just take a few minutes.”

Dylan reluctantly agreed, shaking his head the entire time. Xan grabbed his hand and asked him to concentrate on the fire. After feeling no resonance, Xan threw a rock, and Dylan followed it with his eyes.

The raw energy contained in the magic source responded to him like water searching for a weak spot in a dam. Xan didn’t even need to go back and forth between the fire and the motion. The strength of the reaction left no doubt.

Xan nodded. “You can be a kineticist.”

Dylan slowly stood, turned his back to his friends, and shuffled into the woods, disappearing into the trees as he passed from the light of the fire.

Xan slammed down his empty bowl. “Where is that idiot?”

Brant and Lainey ignored him.

Maybe he’d been going on a bit for the last half hour, but didn’t they understand? A chill wind hit him, and he shivered. No stars showed through the cloud cover. “Weather’s moving in, Justav’s gaining ground, and Dylan’s off sulking. We’ve got to do something.”

“A few minutes isn’t going to matter one way or the other,” Brant said.

“How do you know that a half hour won’t make the difference in us being able to get through the pass?” Xan stood.

“It’s passes, numbskull,” Brant said, “and it’ll take days to get through them.”

Someone had mentioned something about there being more than one. Xan was so tired it was hard to think. “We can’t wait for him forever.”

“You know Dylan,” Lainey said. “He needs a few minutes to process.”

“He needs to get over it!”

“It’s that easy to conquer a fear, is it?” she said.

What was she getting at? Xan nodded.

Lainey grinned. “And what if we were forced to travel with a bunch of spiders?”

Xan shuddered. “I am not scared of …”

“You can’t even say the word,” she said.

“Master Rae has had to amputate an arm because of a bite,” Xan said. “You can’t even see the icky things. They could be waiting in your shoe. Anywhere.”

“And magic can kill you with a thought,” she said.

Xan’s shoulders slumped. “Justav is going to catch us. What do I do?”

She looked to Brant.

He shrugged. “If Xan’s right about how close they are, we’ll not outrun them even going night and day.”

“We are not fighting,” she said. “Think, Xan. There’s got to be another option.”

That was the problem. He couldn’t think. Variegation bark hadn’t helped.

“We delay them,” Brant said.

“That’s the spirit,” Lainey said. “How?”

Brant stroked his chin. “If we had blacksmith tools, we could make caltrops.”

“Hurt the poor horses? I don’t think so!” She eyed Xan.

“I could set the woods on fire.”

Brant shook his head. “It’d have to be burning on both sides of the trail at the time they got there.”

“Then I’ll wait until we see them to start it.”

“Still not good,” Brant said. “Unless you can get an inferno going that quickly because that’s what you’d need to stop them.”

Was an inferno possible? Maybe. Xan shook his head. Figuring out the limits of his power during an encounter with the enemy probably wasn’t the best plan. There had to be something he could do. “What about that tree at the top of the slope? If we topple it, it’d take them hours to get past.”

Brant held up their hatchet, a two-foot piece of wood with a dull blade a few inches long. “How would we do that? That thing was three feet thick if it was an inch.”

Xan grinned. “Fire.”

On their way back down the trail to the tree, he and Brant strung one of their ropes across the trail at chest height for a man on horseback. With luck, it would unseat a guardsman. With even more luck, it would force Justav to slow to watch for more traps.

When they reached the massive oak, Brant held his torch close to the trunk and circled it. “It’s even bigger than I remembered. What now, genius?”

“Cut a notch, and I’ll burn it through.”

Brant snorted. “Green wood this thick? Got a week to spare?”

Why was he being so negative?

“You got a better idea?” Xan said.

Brant swung the hatchet hard and fast, and bark and wood chips flew. A minute later, he stepped back to reveal a gash in the trunk. “Have at it.”

Xan’s heart thudded. He wasn’t exactly an expert on using magic. Could he really burn through the tree?

Did he have a choice? What other way could he delay Justav?

In theory, using magic was easy. All he had to do was locate the magic source and concentrate on fire burning the wood in the notch. Fixing his goal firmly, he nudged the bulge in his mind. Power flooded through him. Flames burst from the notch.

Brant jumped back, nearly dropping his torch. “Watch it.”

Heat radiated as fire climbed the bark. Xan shielded his eyes from the light. How awesome was that!

He poured in more magic. The flames spread further. After a few minutes, a lot of the trunk had ignited, but it hadn’t burned through much of the thickness. At this rate, it’d take days to collapse the tree.

“Told ya,” Brant said.

What to do? A burned husk of a trunk would accomplish nothing. Xan needed to drop it across the trail. Most of the fire’s energy dissipated into the surroundings. If he could focus it somehow, he’d make better progress.

His instinct guided him into creating a barrier with his mind. A shield snapped into place, and the light, except the tiny glow from Brant’s torch, disappeared. Xan blinked at the lack and hugged himself against the sudden encroachment of cold.

“Did it go out?” Lainey said.

“No.” Xan grinned.

The energy was being reflecting into the trunk and burning the wood fast. At that rate, he’d be through in minutes. He poured in more magic.

Spots danced in front of his eyes, and the world spun.

Xan latched onto Brant’s shoulder to keep from falling, but the dizziness only increased. He lost his concentration and his connection to the source. The shield dropped. Fire and intense heat exploded from the cut but, without magic sustaining them, quickly diminished. Flames only continued to burn where they had a firm grip on the wood.

Xan shut his eyes. “Help me to the ground.” He sat and tucked his head between his legs.

“What’s wrong?” Lainey said.

“Got light-headed from the lack of sleep, I guess.”

“Want me to take over?” She sounded eager. Too eager.

But Xan didn’t have much of a choice. They needed to get the tree down, and with the way his head was swimming, he couldn’t do it. He nodded and sank onto a nearby rock.

Brant stomped into the woods. And what was his problem?

Xan sat for several minutes taking deep breaths.

“I can’t get it,” Lainey said.

“Remember the place in your mind where the magic came from. Picture what you want to happen. Then probe that spot.”

An instant later, the flame flared brightly before she slammed the shield into place. Not long later, with dawn approaching, Xan’s mind cleared enough for him to think.

What would it be like to be so close to a mage using magic and sense that use at the same time? He tried it. Sure enough, the surge flowed directly into Lainey, disappearing into her body, and when he looked at both her and the tree, a red glowing line stretched from her to the base of the fire.

Interesting. It wasn’t possible, then, to hide what you were doing from other mages. That could be both good and bad.

Brant appeared on the trail. “This is taking too long. It’ll be light enough soon to hunt for Dylan—if he’s not already back at the campsite.”

“Almost done,” Lainey said.

The tree creaked.

“See?” she said.

Crack!

The top branches tilted forward, directly at the trail. And directly at Xan. He stared.

The first few inches of the tree’s travel seemed to take minutes, but it sped as it fell. Xan could only watch.

“Move it!” Brant yelled.

Something large hit Xan from the side. He crashed into the ground. Something heavy weighed him down. Brant.

Rocks tore Xan’s skin. The tree toppled with a crunch. Branches slapped Xan’s leg.

Dylan appeared a few yards up the trail. “What the blast is going on?”