Ionia reached for her white Sorceress' robe. Stitched by nimble-fingered dwarf women imported all the way from Vandalia, the gold filigree nor the spider-spun silk had aged a day since Lady Ionia’s ascension in her twentieth summer. White, the presence of all colors of the spectrum, the robe signified her proven mastery over all things. Many, many summers had passed since Ionia’s ascension, enough to turn her long hair a matching, shimmering white. Ionia, and Ionia alone had won the right to these robes.
Naturally, she hated the robe, the way a serial divorcee hates the dated, ugly dress of her first wedding. More than simple bad fashion, the robe signified, to Ionia, a series of regrettable decisions.
The white robe only came out when people needed a really nasty job done they were too weak or incompetent to accomplish for themselves. Otherwise, it made folks nervous--as if they spoke to a priestess who could also turn them into a slimy creature that could fit in a jam jar (which, strictly speaking, was true, though Ionia hadn’t in ages).
“I’m too old for this,” Ionia muttered, ducking her head away from her own reflection.
“You’re never too old, lady,” Ionia’s young apprentice, Aga, piped. Her cheerful voice and perpetual optimism made Ionia’s hand itch for the old days when apprentices expected--no, appreciated--pops to the mouth.
“Robes are supposed to billow, not...sag,” Ionia whined, flouncing her robe against her skeletal frame.
“Got safety pins,” Aga trilled.
Aga annoyed the life out of Ionia, as is right and good in a relationship such as theirs, but Ionia couldn’t help pity her. The poor elf-girl was trying. It was too soon for Aga to face magic as strong, as dark as the Lich. It was possible Ionia, herself, could not--or so the gossips had been saying, neglecting Ionia’s extensive network of former apprentices stationed in various trades throughout the city.
“Magic pins?”
“Just ord’nary safety pins, Lady. Use ‘em to keep my robe closed up.Don’t like to think the boys would be havin’ a look."
What would they have a look at, girl? Ionia thought, but held her tongue. Out of any of the complete bastards in Amissopolis, Aga deserved her ire the least, even if she was the most frequent object of it.
“Magick them, will you? The robe is rather snobbish as it relates to ordinary metals” Ionia said, recalling a nasty burn the Old King had received attempting to pin some forgotten accolade to it.
“What should I put on them?”
“I don't believe it matters. The robe will be friendlier to any magic at all.”
Ionia stared at herself in the mirror. Despite her age, despite her trepidation, she still looked imposing. It was all in the hair. Aga had braided Ionia’s long, white hair; pinning it with a silver clasp dotted by cloudy ruby chips, a gift from Aga on their second Solstice together. It was only a little magicked, but it was Ionia’s favorite. If the gossips were right, Ionia planned to meet the Mothers in at least one thing she liked to wear.
Besides, it would encourage Aga, who was whispering to the safety pins. Aga believed non-magical things transitioning to magical things needed encouragement. Suddenly possessing properties beyond holding fabric together or being a stone was a big life change for something not-alive. While Ionia found the habit silly, Aga’s charms stuck in a way far more experienced magic handlers’ charms did not. Perhaps there was something to the little pep-talks.
Ionia wondered if one would work on her.
“Here, my lady, allow me,” Aga said, and Ionia did. Aga sutured the robe in, leaving enough room for billows. She pinned up the loose wrap at Ionia’s chest to give the appearance of a bosom in a place where one would be in a much younger woman and close to her neck, if the bosom belonged to a very modest much younger woman.
“May I tell you a truth, Aga?” Ionia asked, staring at her own reflection as the young elf bustled.
“Always, my lady,” Aga said with the earnestness and cheer of someone not facing imminent demise. The girl was not stupid. Aga was loyal, which was far worse.
“I never believed this day would come. The Star of Sharahala is the stuff of legends. If it were real, and to my mind, that ‘if’ was always quite a large one, I never thought it would be found.”
“Truth?” Aga said, baffled. “I always known it would come around. Ma always told me, she said, ‘Aga, there’s always just the salt of truth to legend, elseways, nobody’d go ‘round repeatin’ them’. Ma always said it, an’ I believe it, my full heart.”
Ionia sighed. It was the sort of thing common mothers told their children. While not untrue, the idea annoyed Ionia. Legends were vicious cycles. Not many people lived long enough to see legends in action. Those who did, like Ionia herself, were forever forced to play parts they, more often than not, did not get to choose in them.
“What did she tell you about the Star, child?” Ionia asked.
“‘S’posed to be imbued with a terrible lot of magic, ain’t it? Belongin’ to Empress Aicha the First herself, gift from The Mountain King Ebbe. Founded the whole land.”
“An incredibly long winded and dull treaty between Empress Aicha and King Ebbe founded Sharahala, not this...magical macguffin,” Ionia snapped. “I apologize, Aga, I do not mean to speak ill of your good mother, may she rest and return.”
“‘S alright, my lady. Ma was never given to specifics on what the Star did, legends never were,” Aga said.
“All it does is be difficult to find,” Ionia said, rolling the Star across her vanity table, “and now, it has failed even that. Its sole existence is as a catalyst in a legend near as old as myself.”
“Beggin’ pardon, lady, but don’t that give it some power? People believin’ in it, an all? S’how you taught me, at least.”
Ionia rolled her eyes. Aga was a great deal more intelligent than she let on, a clever affectation she had definitely not learned from Ionia.
“Magic can be contradictory, as you ought to know by now.”
“As you like, Lady,” Aga said, fussing over Ionia’s hair, a smile playing at her cupid’s bow lips on seeing the old silver hair clip. Ionia reached to touch its clouded rubies.
“I do love this old clip,” she said, “The Star hasn’t half the magic as it does, child. This clip holds the hard work of a quick, eager little elfling with too much faith in her mistress, as well as the hair out of an old woman’s eyes.”
Aga grinned.
“You do go on, Lady,” she said, “It’s dwarf made, s’why it still holds up. It was my first real charm, can’t have be stong as all that.”
“It has not failed me one time,” Ionia smiled, “much like the grubby little elfling who grew into the somewhat less-grubby apprentice who first charmed it. This is magic enough for me, and more power than The Star could hope for.”
Aga did not answer, only hugged her mistress around the shoulders. On an ordinary day, Ionia would have swatted away such a display of affection, but the elf was still young, and despite her acting, very frightened.
“Think you ought to say it? ” Aga asked, her voice careful. “Just gettin’ the Mothers’ attention here at the last?”
Ionia stifled a groan. The child meant well, which only made the suggestion more grating.
“Yes, yes. Certainly couldn’t hurt anything. But only I’ll not recite alone. I always feel a fool, reciting in front of others who simply sit and listen.”
Aga nodded eagerly, holding her hands out to her mistress. Ionia gritted her teeth and took the elf-girl’s soft, bare hands into hers. Together they intoned the High Magic Handler’s Oath:
I swear on my staff, my art, and the combined judgment of the Mothers to protect the land, the empire, and its inhabitants from threats incorporeal, inscrutable, and insidious. By these I swear to cultivate the spirit of the land, the kingdom, and its inhabitants by furthering Arts, magics, and crafts both lesser and greater, to uphold the keeping of oaths. In exchange for adoration from the poor, counsel from the wise, and mastery over my Art I swear upon these three.
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May the Mothers break my staff, sunder my pride, and send me to exile shall I fail to fulfill this oath.
Ionia and Aga made the Sign of the Star naming each Mother as they did.
“Don’t think the Mothers’ll mind me sayin’ it, given I’m just an apprentice?” Aga asked.
Ionia bit back no fewer than seven scathing remarks as to how observant of anything the Mothers tended to be before answering.
“I shouldn’t think so, child. Should they hear you, I suspect they would merely put it down to practice.”
“To their ears,” Aga said, attempting a smile.
Ionia sighed. The blues of dusk had given way to the black of night.
It was time.
“He said nightfall,” Aga repeated the Lich’s demand in a voice straining not to shake.
“They always do,” Ionia spat. Men; Mothers and Sisters both damn it, wasn’t it always men, tended toward dramatic scheduling for their battles. Times of day best suited to their magicks and personalities, for all the good it did them. The few other women magic handlers she’d faced had just attacked, exactly as Ionia had done herself when circumstance forced her hand. An element of surprise was just sensible.
“Aga,” she said, voice just above a whisper. “I release you.”
“No!” Aga squeaked. “You ain’t releasin’ me on account of I won’t go!”
Ionia’s expression turned scalding.
Aga changed tack with quickness.
”I am for you, Lady Ionia. You done raised me to be a great woman, a great sorceress, mayhap. You took me when none other would, and treated me, better or worse, as your own blood. Mothers and Sisters strike should I leave you in your time of need.”
Ionia took her apprentice’s head between her hands and kissed her forehead.
“On your head be it,” she smiled. “But if we make it out, life and limbs and all, stop it with this ‘my lady’ business. Aiding me in defeating an evil bedeviling the empire for longer than you’ve lived is sufficient to pass from apprentice to journeyman, I should hope.”
Outside, the Kinship of the Ascension had convened. General Begatt stood in front of his men in his rumpled old dress uniform, looking as if he could use some of Aga’s magicked safety pins. He was entirely too old for this affair. Behind them, commoners whose curiosity had won over their fear clustered to watch. Toddlers bobbed on shoulders, fat little fingers tangled in their parents’ hair.
Idiots. Ionia seethed, as if this were a carnival.
“My lady, shall I?” Aga asked.
Ionia glared.
“We ain’t walked out yet,” Aga retorted with infuriating calm.
“It’s all the same to me, the damn fools.” She sucked her teeth and sighed. “You’re a good little witch, Aga,” she sighed, the air crackling with the wall of protection Aga raised. “Better than they deserve.”
An anxious susurration snaked through the crowd.
The Lich had appeared.
Despite his cruelty, despite his reported rejection of Mother Hineui’s hospitality, he was a handsome man. High cheekbones, dark, tousled hair streaked with white framed an ageless face. His sea-blue eyes danced, full of arcane knowledge. Smiling, the perfect, even pearls of his teeth may’ve belonged to a man of twenty, though no one could name his age for certain. He’d been king these thirty years, and not a day of it was written on his face.
“Well met, Lady,” he called, steadying his midnight-black stallion, flanked by a guard of trolls, ogres, and black-cowled men who believed themselves to look quite threatening. “The Star laid at your feet, I suppose you wish for me to do so as well? Alas, I arrive too late. You were quite comely in decades past,” he taunted with a boyish grin.
Mothers help us, the idiot man has swagger, Ionia groused, sighting more than a few young ladies from the corner of her eye touching their hands to their chests. Swagger was magic unto itself, one Ionia could not abide. The Lich’s men laughed, standing straighter, as older, or at least more sensible, spectators shrank back. Ionia cursed the commoners again. Beasts as stupid as snakes charmed prey with swagger, and who among the crowd had not crushed a snake’s tiny brains with a common, unmagical garden hoe in their day? Why should it conjure fear?
“The nerve,” Ionia muttered. “Black, black, black, ogres and trolls. It’s all so cliche. Where did he even find trolls? They’ve been endangered since I was a girl.”
“Started a breedin’ program, Lady,” Aga answered.
“How very conscientious of him,” Ionia grumbled. “Well met, Gregory,” Ionia called across the field. She was one of few in Sharahala who recollected the Lich’s true name, persisting in calling him by it without ending up a smear of organs on cobblestones. So far.
The Lich flinched, caught off guard hearing the name his mother--for even monsters have mothers-- had given him. Regaining himself, he sneered.
“You ache for your own death so? You are nothing, shriveled old hag, no matter the robes you wear--”
“Mothers and Sisters, he’s written a monologue,” Ionia interrupted. She clucked her tongue to Aga. “How dreadfully embarrassing.”
A few spectators in earshot chuckled at Ionia’s complaint as General Begatt shook his head.
Laugh, fools, Ionia raged at the assembled. He’s never been any more than a stupid, pretty little snake. Any one of you could’ve taken a mattock to his lovely curls, for all his power.
“You’ve no final words, then? As you like. I will dispatch you, then your point-eared apprentice.The protection she laid is weak, and will die with her. You simpletons watching might have the choice to follow me or die.”
Ionia’s eyes narrowed. Jibes about Aga’s race were uncalled for, and the assembled crowd were her simpletons. Common folk needed a show to truly believe magic. But Ionia was finished posturing.
“You! You there!” Ionia interrupted the Lich’s monologue for the second time, pointing at a young ogre behind the Lich, “You’re Veridak Greengrass’s boy, aren’t you!”
Across the way, the ogre stepped away from his comrades, attempting to hide behind a troll.
“You are! I saw to Dreama Craft as she birthed you, and with great difficulty, I might add, you snot nosed little...if your father was alive, he’d tan your green hide blue!” she seethed, “All the same, step back, boy.”
The Lich failed to conceal his shock. “Enough, crone!”
Ionia rolled her eyes and Spoke a word like the roar of a beast from the deepest sea.The ground where Veridak Greengrass’s boy had stood opened up, swallowing the men in black cowls as trolls jumped away. The air rent, the crowd covering their ears and screaming as Aga looked on in confusion.
And the Lich was gone.
“Ionia, what in the outer darknesses did you do? Was that a Word of Power?” General Begatt demanded, appearing at her side.
“No, a knock-knock joke.” Ionia sneezed. Words of power always played merry hell on her sinuses. “What did it look like?”
“It looks like a tree,” Begatt said. The space the Lich had occupied more than looked like a tree. It was a tree. A rather stout, stately tree whose dark leaves rustled in the breeze.
Ionia panted, allowing Aga to support her. She wasn’t as young as she once was, and words of power were exhausting business for even the spryest magic handlers.
“As it ought to be, I should think. A common outcome of words of power, or so I’ve read.”
“So you’ve read?” General Begatt screeched.
“Do calm yourself, Jerome, your people are watching,” Ionia scolded. “One cannot go about practicing Words of Power like a great magical fool. It would upset the balance of reality in altogether unpleasant ways. In my whole career, I’ve said perhaps three. The others resulted in a statue, a rather chubby housecat and a pot of tea roses, if memory serves.”
“They was knockout roses,” Aga chirped.
“So they were. Mothers be thanked for younger memories than our own, Jerome.”
“So, the Lich is this tree now?” General Begatt asked, puzzled.
“Kafe Kalel, as our Baladian friends are fond of saying,” Ionia said, tilting her hand back and forth.
“Ought we go on an’ chop it down?” A soldier behind Begatt called.
“Oh my, no. He’ll be an oak, mark me. Oak is incorruptible. Gregory was quite terrible, but he’ll make a fine tree,” Ionia reassured with a tone far calmer than she felt.
“It’s just that we’d all feel a lot better, I think, if we knew we were well shot of him.So he can never hurt anyone again,” General Begatt wheedled.The crowd of spectators continued their confused celebration, giving the tree a wide berth.
“You’ll not lay a hand on that tree,” Ionia spat, equal parts menace and embarrassment.
“Why, pray?” Begatt demanded.
Ionia chewed the inside of her mouth. She had been hoping for a monolith, or just a spot of lava, so she wouldn’t have to explain this bit.
“Well, see, words of power don’t transform things so much as cause ‘em to switch places with other things,” Aga explained. “Gotta be equal, see; gotta have balance in magic. The Lich was corrupt as anything, so it follows he’d be switched with somethin’ what can’t be corrupted, that's only ever oak, if you follow. Terrible complex magic, words of power,” she apologized, watching the General’s face crease in confusion.
Something was wrong about the tree. Ionia felt she had done, if not something wrong, something which from certain angles may appear wrong. She left Aga to lecture Jerome and walked to the tree. Its leaves, the color of aubergines, whispered in the wind among its branches. Perhaps, she thought, hoped, it was a tree from very far off, where the season was Autumn, and the colors were changing. But they were too uniform. It couldn’t be, she swore, reaching to snap a twig from a branch. It would not give, bend, or break. It held fast, hard as a diamond in her hand.
“Mothers and Sisters,” Ionia breathed, tapping the Star across her forehead, hips and shoulders. “It’s an Amaranthine Oak.”
“I thought they were extinct?” the General said.
“They are,” Ionia answered. “Gregory saw to it himself.”
“Then this?” he gestured, ignored by all but Aga and Ionia.
“May prove problematic,” Ionia frowned. The Lich was gone, irretrievable. Dead. Yet Ionia could tell his story’s end was, as common mothers love to say, just the beginning of another.
She could not, however, tell whose story was just beginning.