The Black Mage: Candidate (7 page)

“I didn’t think so.”

Next to me Ian didn’t say a word. I wondered if he was upset to be assigned with the fifty of us clearly headed in the wrong direction. The weaklings. It had to be an insult for Ray to be given the premium assignment even though Ian was a year older and more experienced. Chancing a quick glimpse I saw the boy’s face was a mask.

Since when was that boy unreadable?

We wove in and out of the thick-trunked pines dotted in fuzzy growth, following the obvious indentations of crushed foliage for nearly three hours before the prints finally turned around and backtracked the path they had taken through a nearby hedge.

“Well, isn’t this a surprise,” a soldier grumbled.

I dismounted and Paige followed by habit. The sun had turned a hazy amber peaking out beneath the trees, illuminating our stop with shades of crimson and violet. It wouldn’t be much longer before it was time to set up camp. Some of the knights nearby were debating whether to turn around now to try and catch up to Sir Gavin’s group to the north, or rest for the night. Knowing how sinister the terrain could turn without the sun’s rays to guide us, I was in favor of the latter.

“Mages, would you mind collecting the firewood?”

Now that we were down to fifty, the soldiers needed help with the tasks a hundred usually accomplished without the mages’ and knights’ aid. I didn’t mind. It gave me something to do, and I needed a distraction. I grabbed one of the soldier’s empty sacks and Ian and Paige followed suit, the three of us scouting the west side of the trail while Alchemy and Restoration took the east.

“Everything is wet,” Paige complained after ten minutes of fruitless searching. “It’s so shaded here the dew stays on everything. Nothing is dry, look…” She snagged a branch in passing and attempted to split it—revealing a fresh-looking center that did not want to break. “I hope the others are having better luck.”

“There’s some light over there.” Ian pointed to some brush in the distance that looked more aged than the rest of the forest. “Come on.”

The two of us trudged after him, pushing past an assault of dense bramble to reach it. By the time we emerged on the other side I had small red lines all across my arms.

They itched like crazy.

Lovely, just lovely
. I scratched my bare skin and made a face at nothing in particular. Service in Ferren’s Keep Regiment was nothing like what I imagined. After an action-packed apprenticeship I had expected danger; so far this forest plant was the closest enemy I had encountered.

I kicked out at the nearest shrub with a vengeance and then swore as my foot collided against a large rock beneath.

“Ryiah?”

I looked up to catch Ian watching me with a cautious expression. A couple feet away Paige was pointedly ignoring us both, breaking off branches one at a time.

I made my face blank as I held the sack open for my guard. “It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure?” Ian stopped what he was doing. “You’ve been acting as though something has been bothering you all day.”

Why deny it? He already knew something was wrong. “The others were talking about me.”

Silence.

I picked up a piece of wood from the ground and yelped as my finger caught on its splintered bark. I yanked my hand away and plucked the infinitely small shard from my skin, watching as a small bead of red settled onto the surface. “Everyone thinks Nyx only offered me the position here because of my new status,” I added.

Ian didn’t look surprised. “I heard.”

Thanks for sticking up for me.
“Why didn’t you correct them?” I swallowed and forced myself to ask the question I’d been secretly wondering since I arrived. “Are we… are you mad at me?”

“Ryiah.” Ian folded his arms across his chest. “This has nothing to do with our past. Me saying something wouldn’t change the facts. You are a lowborn who received second-rank status on the same night the prince told his father he was to marry you instead.” The boy took the now-brimming sack from my hands and set his own empty one in its place. “What is everyone supposed to think?”

“Darren didn’t ask Byron to do that.” I felt frustration working its way to the surface and swallowed hard, forcing the anger back. “I earned my rank, Ian, you know that!”

“Yes,” the boy said with a sigh, “and how convenient it was that Master Byron decided to have a change of heart the year of your ascension.”

“It’s not my fault Marius finally talked some sense into the old man!” I felt as if I had taken a punch to the gut. This was Ian.
Ian
. My former friend, or so I had thought. Maybe he was still mad. Maybe he hadn’t forgiven me after all.

“Why am I being punished for impressing the Black Mage? Why am I being put down for catching Nyx’s eye after I
saved
her regiment? Why does my new status have to mean anything here? I have proven myself time and time again!”

“You can’t just pick and choose when to play the victim, Ry.” Ian stopped ducking his head to look at me, really look at me. “Yes, people are going to speculate. That’s what they do. But forgive me for saying you received plenty of privileges from your friendship with the prince, too. Or did you already forget how Darren got you a spot on that mission in Port Langli? Or how about the time you woke up our entire camp to yell at him—and were it anyone else Byron would have sent you packing in a minute?” He exhaled slowly. “And do you think the Black Mage would have been quite so eager to point out Byron’s obvious bias unless Darren had drawn attention to it?”

“Ian, I…” My cheeks were in flames. I
had
received privileges. And here Ian was reminding me how silly I looked complaining over the prospect of one disadvantage when he would have killed to have any one of those. The boy whose heart I had trampled for another. “I’m sorry, I… I didn’t realize—”

The young man held up his hand quickly to show me it wasn’t what I thought. “
I
know you deserve your rank, Ry, but...” He swallowed loudly. “But the others are going to need a bit more convincing. And in the meantime don’t bite their heads off for talking. Because their beliefs aren’t entirely unfounded.”

I wiped a strand of sticky hair back from my forehead. “Well, now I feel just terrible.”

“As you should.”

I opened my mouth and shut it as I caught his smile.

“I’m kidding, Ryiah.”

I gave an embarrassed shrug. “I guess I’ve forgotten your humor. This has to be the longest conversation the two of us have had in years.”

The boy chuckled. “It is a bit awkward, isn’t it?”

“It was awkward for me.” Paige's voice cut through my delayed response. I gave the knight a half-hearted glare. She was never very subtle.

“So…” Ian said.

“So.”

“You and Darren.”

“Oh…” I paused. “That.”

The boy cleared his throat uncomfortably. “The non-heir turned out to be full of good intentions in the end. I can’t say I saw that coming.”

I shifted my feet guiltily. “I did… and then I didn’t. He’s…” I didn’t know how to say it without making the conversation worse. “He’s complicated.”

“You could say that.”

I cringed and hastened to explain. “But he wants to do the right thing. He doesn’t always do it the right
way
, but he has good intentions.” I cringed at the use of the same phrase as Ian. It made Darren sound so… complicated.
Complicated?
I had already used that word too. I was floundering here.

“I think you will be good for him.”

My gaze shot up to meet Ian’s. “T-thank you?”

“I’m not just saying that to be nice.” The mage’s eyes bore into mine. “You didn’t grow up at the palace and spend your days wasting away in a convent. You will be able to advocate for others, affect policy…”

I laughed nervously. “You obviously have not spent much time with the royal family.” King Lucius couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as me, and I wasn’t so sure his eldest didn’t want me dead, despite whatever his brother claimed.

“Ryiah.” Ian shut his eyes. “You convinced Darren to marry you. You have influence whether you want to believe it or not.”

“He’s not the heir. He can’t—”

“Won’t you at least try?” My friend’s voice became increasingly strained. “Or does the lowborns’ cause no longer concern you now that you are not one of us?”

That
hurt. Ian knew full well that neither of us had been “lowborn” since our apprenticeship. “O-of course it does!”

There must have been something in my voice because Ian immediately looked guilty. “I’m sorry, Ry, I didn’t mean—I know you are a good person. I just don’t want this new life of yours to change you.”

“It won’t.” I made myself smile as I reached out to touch his arm. “Believe me, it would take a lot more than pretty dresses—” A foul odor rose up and I wrinkled my nose, peering down at my boots. Horse droppings. I had managed to step into a mound of them, half-hidden by the dense forest floor. “Great, just…” I froze.

Droppings. Fresh—only a couple days old. Ten minutes past the brush where the bandits had supposedly turned around.

I glanced up sharply and took a quick examination of the surroundings, trying to locate any trampled foliage that had not come from Paige, Ian’s, or my tracks.

There
. I squinted.
There
. My eyes locked on some crushed ivy: and
there
. The bandits had come this way!

I drew a baited breath. “Lord Waldyn’s envoys said their regiment couldn’t find the bandits after two full days’ search. But didn’t their report state they went north, like Sir Gavin’s group? Everyone thought the tracks leading south were too obvious. What if they weren’t? What if it was a ploy?” I pointed to the mound at my feet.

Ian whistled. “The bandits
wanted
us to assume they took the stream.”

I felt my excitement building. “It’s why the southern trail looked so trampled. Because it was! They didn’t just send a couple men to give it that appearance and turn around at our camp—they kept going: here!”

I was practically dancing in place.
Finally. Something to show the others I was more than the girl the prince favored.
“If the bandits had circled back they wouldn’t have had reason to create false tracks this far south. My guess is they missed this or ran out of magic and figured they were too far south for us to search.”

Paige groaned. “You mages make everything so complicated.”

Ian gave the knight a victorious grin and hauled both wood sacks onto his back. “Things would be too easy otherwise, my dear.”

The guard scowled and snatched back her sack. “I am nobody’s ‘dear.’”

I waved us forward. “Come on, let’s go see where these tracks lead…”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Paige grabbed Ian’s and my wrists and yanked us back with a heavy tug. “You two will report back to the rest of your camp and let
them
decide whether to pursue the search now or in the morning. You know Sir Gavin will have my head if I let the both of you recklessly wander off to hunt the bandits on your own.”

I made a face. We were already three days behind the bandits’ progress. “It’s not reckless. Lief said we could go in pairs and we’d only be scouting—”

“But
Sir
Gavin said you mages shouldn’t be doing anything the soldiers can handle on their own.”

“They sent us for firewood,” Ian offered. “We are short-handed, we’d be doing the rest of them a favor.”

“I am sure your leader will have a different priority for tracking criminals.”

The two of us gave loud sighs as we followed Paige back to camp. She was right, of course, but I was itching to prove myself to the rest of our party. I chanced a glance at Ian and his expression mirrored my own.

“Feels like the old times, doesn’t it, Ry?”

I smiled. Not yet. But I expected it was about to.

****

In the end our party voted to search the forest that morning. We were already three days behind the bandits’ progress, and it would be foolhardy to try and ascertain their location at night when we could barely see two feet in front of us. Torches would give away our location, and the mages weren’t about to use up magic tracking when we would need it for our inevitable encounter later on.

I spent a restless night tossing and turning. It was a warm summer night—cold in the shade of the forest, but still heated enough by fire to spend it under the stars instead of a tented canvas. Next to me I could hear Paige doing the same. She put on a brave act, but I suspected she was nervous for her first test of duty. When we went to battle, she would be undoubtedly glued to my side.

The entire camp was packed up and ready to go by the first morning’s light. Ian, Paige and I were no exception. Every one of us was restless and ready for battle. Sixteen days of camping in the wilderness, and without the repetitive training routine of the Academy, I was itching to use my magic.

Five straight years of routine were hard to break. Here in the regiment we were expected to conserve our magic while on duty—one could never know when we could be forced to engage—and with the added pressure of my squad’s disapproval I was ready to show it.

Luckily for us, the bandits’ trail was easy to pick up with the discovery of the horse droppings the night before. The criminals clearly hadn’t expected us to investigate this far south, so they hadn’t bothered to hide the rest of their tracks. Everything was still a little wet with the morning dew, but by midday we had left the cool cover of the denser part of the forest for the sparser terrain deep in the mountains.

Summer heat beat down like the gods’ pounding fists. In no time at all I was drenched in sweat and grime and my clothes were sticking to my skin. I was definitely happy Darren wasn’t there to witness his betrothed’s repugnant stench. Let alone the way the undershirt beneath my chainmail had turned brown and wet in the most revolting of ways.

Hours dragged by and the ground we passed became coarse. Jagged granite lined the narrow trail up and down into the heart of the northern range. Our stops became more frequent as even the horses grew weary.