Chapter 47

Without any preamble, Wallace launched into his story. “As you all know, I was raised on the coast. I was alive to see the days before Evrain took power,” he said.

Aris leaned in. Intent on hearing every single syllable that dropped from the older soldier’s mouth. The General knew that Wallace’s words had the power to change the future. There had to be something in his story that would provide the answers that he’d been searching for these past few months.

“I was there, in Portin as it fell,” he said, “but I’m getting ahead of myself. First I need to go into my history. How I came to control this Memory Magic that we all share.”

The green haze that signaled the gloaming melted away and night took the small coterie in its embrace as Wallace told the story of how he’d come to realize he possessed Memory Magic. He had immediately recognized its touch. When he was a child magic had not been so rare as it was now. It was true that there were few known as Memory Mages, and rarely talked about in more than whispers, but they were known. They were an open secret in Vealand. Memory Mages were the bastard children of society. Always hidden, but never forgotten. They were tools that the powerful paid great sums to wield.

Wallace explained this and more and Kestrel’s imagination blossomed at the scarred older man’s words. He was a natural storyteller. Kestrel wondered if Wallace knew the way his words directed the mind. His descriptions of the cold sea that constantly pounded the rocky Veaish coastline made Kestrel feel like he was right there with him. It’d been forty-something years since the catastrophe that had left the twin cities in rubble and had caused the great flight to Fiell but Wallace made it seem as if it were yesterday.

Kestrel wondered as he listened, why Wallace painted the sea in such terrible colors. Though he’d been born on the coast and had spent his formative years next to the waters, he spoke of it as an enemy, as something hateful. Kestrel soon learned why.

“It wasn’t long after that that the beatings began,” Wallace explained. “My mother was one of a long line of Memory Mages. You could say that I was born into the magic. That it was my birthright, and she made sure that I knew every facet of it. My mother was no saint though. She had always been a hard woman, but her edges only got sharper after we lost my father to the sea when I was just a little over five years old. His death stole any of the softness she had left in her and replaced it with steel. A cold, sharp, hard steel. She would not allow her only son to be weak. No, he would survive, no matter what may come to pass,” he said.

Sephira looked at Kestrel when his shoulder grazed hers. He’d sat down by her side.

When had they taken a seat? She hadn’t been paying attention. His light touch warmed her. She turned her head to look at him. His attention was rapt. He clung to every word the old man said. He had thrown himself into the world of Memory Magic with reckless abandon and soaked up every detail he could. He worked at mage-craft with the dedication of one who had always been a failure offered a last chance at redemption.

How would it feel being there with her uncle and Kestrel?

Yes, she was training with them, but she was different. She had no Magic. Though she had been born into it —her father Van was a powerful mage— it had abandoned her. She was an outsider even though she was sitting next to them, shoulder to shoulder as Wallace told a story that reshaped her whole view of the world.

“My mother’s idea of praise was a fist. I can’t recall how many times I got the switch. I’m sure that you’ve seen the scars Aris,” Wallace said. “I was too young at that time to have many painful memories to protect my mind with, so my mother beat them into me. It only got worse when Evrain arrived.”

Aris’ ears perked up at the mention of the emperor. He had been waiting for Wallace to get to this point of the story.

“He came from across the sea. He was much younger then. He looked to be barely a year over fifteen when he appeared as if from nowhere. One day, we’d heard rumors of the fall of the the caliphate of Sanfid across the sea, and then our coastline was flooded with refugees. Their extremism caused untold problems for us. Their presence brought terror as they tried to rebuild their caliphate on our shores,” Wallace said. “He appeared not long after the Sanfidi’s were driven to our shores. This young man, barely more than a boy really, appears, as if from nowhere and quickly rises up the ranks of the military and, nearly as quickly as his rise, was his conquering of the Sanfidi’s. He quelled their uprising within months. It was as if he intimately knew their ways. Like he had been one of them in a previous life,” Wallace told the trio whom he held in rapt attention.

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Aris’ skin crawled at Wallace’s description of Emperor Evrain.

Why? And what about the Sanfidi’s?

Of course Aris had heard of them. Much of the blame for the destruction of the old capital and it’s sister city had been placed on them, but why had they disappeared so completely after the destruction? Why did the mention of them make his heart feel as if it had split from his head, standing at odds with with each other?

“Evrain’s defeat of the Sanfidi agents brought him great acclaim in the eyes of the nation. His name was on every tongue. It wasn’t long before he gained generalship of the whole of Vealand's military,” the greying soldier explained.

Night deepened with his words. His story made the blackness of the night feel deeper, and the stars feel further away.

Just who was Evrain really?

“It was after his generalship that things started to change. Evrain was constantly warning that the Sanfidi weren’t fully defeated. He kept saying that they would return, and that their vengeance would come down like a hammer. The poisoning of the wells was just the first of many acts of terror yet to come. He kept up his rhetoric. He stirred the hatred. He fomented the violence,” Wallace said. His voice sounded as if he were struggling to recall what had happened. He noticed the question in his audience’s eyes. “I remember, but Evrain is a powerful mage. His Memory Magic is like none-other, with others, if you too have the touch of magic, you can recognize its presence, as young Sephira here well knows,” he indicated to Aris’ niece.

She nodded, her recognition of magic outstripped even that of her uncle’s and Kestrel’s.

“But Evrain’s Magic is different. It’s constant and insidious. Even one such as I, who’s known Memory Magic since I was a tiny youth, has never seen such power. Despite having lived through the destruction of the coast, I still feel like the memories he’s implanted in me are more real than my own sometimes. It was so real that I allowed myself to fall under its touch for years. I knew it not to be the truth, but it was easier to believe it to be so despite what my heart knew to be true. It was during that time that I met Aris.”

That made sense. Aris had always thought Wallace had been a strange fit for the military. Yes he’d lived a spartan lifestyle and the trials of military life had seemed to barely faze the man, but he had led differently. He would just as soon ignore the command of higher ups to do what he knew would save more lives or kill more of their enemies. He had always seemed to be the reluctant leader. Like he knew that he shouldn’t be there, but never left because he knew there was nothing better out there for him.

Aris had once admired that aspect of his former commander but now despised it as cowardice. Wallace was unique. He was one of the few, if not the only, of the Memory Mages to live through the destruction that had destroyed their old Capitol. He was one of only a handful of men who had known the monster that Emperor Evrain truly was, and he’d done nothing. He had joined in the military to fight for the man who had destroyed his city, who had uprooted his country.

Wallace had been a coward, but what would have happened if he hadn’t been? Where would their nation be if he hadn’t hidden and trained those such as Aris’ brother Van in Memory Magic? Would he have lead the revolutionaries? Would he have died, and along with him any hope of opposing Evrain?

Who knew?

There was no use dwelling on the past now. Wallace’s cowardice had begun to quell ever since Kestrel had crashed into his life that day he’d blinded Rel. That was what Aris would choose to focus on.

Wallace would have to live with the cowardice of his past that had eaten away at his bones, but now he was moving forward. He was leading them into a world alien to them. Aris’ view of the man may have been tainted with each new revelation, but he was owning up to his past.

Aris had to forgive him. Resentment for his cowardice would get them nowhere.

“Everything came to a head when the Sanfidi sent an assassin to kill the former Emperor. That’s when the real violence erupted. Evrain blamed the attack on rogue elements of Memory Mages who had taken the rogue Sanfidi and had fed his mind with delusional memories of the horror that the former Emperor had rained down on his people. The well connected had long known the former emperor’s hatred towards the Memory Mages” Wallace said. “That was when they started hunting us.”

It seemed that despite the warming weather the mountain air got colder as Wallace spoke those words.

“I still remember the smell of their bodies. Evrain whipped the public into a frenzy. Any suspected of having Memory Magic were reported and chased down like dogs. My mother was taken early. I wish I could say I cried for her but I didn’t. She had been a monster to me. Even now my bones ache from her beatings, but what she had done did protect me. When they came after me too, the memory of her beatings protected me. I couldn’t have been a Memory Mage, no-one would abuse someone so unless they hated them for being alien. I hate my mother, but she saw what was coming and saved my life,” Wallace said. “Not soon after my mother died, people started turning on each other. Have an argument with someone? A rivalry? Simple, just accuse them of being a Memory Mage and they would be killed. The purge was so complete that it wiped our existence from the minds of the people. What’s more terrifying is how quickly it was forgotten.”

Wallace stretched, his old bones popped with the motion.

“It was that loss of memory that terrified me more than anything. It was that that led me to joining Evrain’s military. Why should I fight a monster that could so completely rewrite the memories of his people?” Wallace asked rhetorically. “It wasn’t long after the purging that the riots started, and with them, the fires that started the destruction that laid the coast to waste.”

Wallace’s story continued late into the night, the moon had past its apex by the time he had finished his recollections.