The trees surrounding the village cast an eerie patchwork of moonlit shadows across the cobblestone path. Most of the windows were dark but a few still had the flickering light of a lantern or the solid white of a mage’s orb.
I wanted to imitate something I’d seen Alisa do and flick a coin to decide which way to go. The coin would have surely been lost in the attempt, so I went in the darkest direction. My feet padded across the stone walkway until I reached the first turnoff where I ducked into the shadows, and raised my hood.
Anyone who had seen me walk out of the inn should have lost sight of me. Daral had assured me darkvision was a spell with many drawbacks, even if you knew it would be pitch black for ages, so I shouldn’t have to worry about it.
I was surrounded by the weird mana-infused trees that gave the others issues. In the quiet of the night, the trees themselves whispered their distaste for their forced growth.
The building I passed next had people inside with a few being mages. They didn’t feel like they had that much mana, but it was hard to tell from far away through the many layers of trees.
The flying fox's use of mana had interested me and I’d been trying to imitate it since the night before. The first time I’d tried with the others around had Ian asking if anyone else felt that, with everyone agreeing they had. It was decided it was a normal shift in the ambient mana.
The second attempt had heads turning and faces scrunching in confusion. The third might have made Annalise sneeze, but I wasn’t sure about that.
The rest had the desired effect of telling me where everything was in the area around me…and gave me a headache. The bounced-back mana hit me almost at once, and all the information overlapped to fill my head with nonsense.
I tried sending out the pulse to only where I was looking. That helped tell me there were multiple cobblestones somewhat higher than others, that the bark wasn’t smooth, that the air was moving, and the cloak I was wearing was thick. It was still too much and I decided to stop playing around while doing something important for Annalise.
White light spilt into the crossroad I was approaching from the right side. My foot smacked into the ground when I abruptly stopped. On either side of me were only buildings and doorways. Multiple laughing voices carried on the wind as I tucked myself into one of the doorways. As the light’s origin came around the corner, I pulled in a flap of the cloak I hadn’t noticed sticking out.
I didn’t dare look, but it felt and sounded like five people. They turned down the path directly ahead of me. It only contained a few buildings before hitting the wall of trees.
The light moved away from where I was looking back towards. I peeked out to see them entering the farthest entrance on the right side.
It was as good a starting place as any I’d found so far. I crouched low and moved to the crossroads, glanced each way and crossed to the other side.
There were a lot of mages in the surrounding houses, with most windows still throwing out the white light of their orbs. It made moving through the shadows a bit more difficult, but I managed to manoeuvre myself over to the door they had used.
I stood with my back to the building, realising that it was very difficult to sense mana concentrations and differentiate them when they kept moving past each other.
Averaging out my multiple counts gave me around seventeen mages, with four being easier to track than others. They at least had more mana than the apprentices.
Annalise always wore her charm to make her mana feel murky, so I had no clue how to compare it to her.
The building across was different, entirely made of stone all the way up to its tiled roof. There was nothing with mana inside, but there were spaces without mana in the form of an iron lock on a door with iron strips across the wood.
I’d gotten a lot of what I wanted and was trying to decide whether to return or not when I noticed something weird with the trees. I shuffled closer.
There wasn’t just one layer of the mana-infused plants, but another after a gap.
I chewed on my lip, trying to decide what to do. My heart was racing, yet I found all the sneaking around exciting rather than scary. There was also a lot of time left on the hour Annalise gave me—probably.
The trees didn’t have an entrance that I could find and once I had gone the whole way across to the stone wall I guessed the entrance must have been inside the buildings since there was a gap in the mana of the wall.
Without an easy way to get through the iron door, I tried to ask the trees to move over. Their whispers suggested assent, but nothing moved because the plants were not the ones in control. The bark was rough and gave me a second of numbness as I demanded an entrance to open. The mana inside didn’t like me touching it, however, a small pathway still opened up.
Nothing was behind me, so I jumped through the gap before it grew shut.
Only a sliver of moonlight was able to get through the canopies of the trees that now surrounded me. A stone tower that connected to the iron door building jutted out into the small clearing with the cone of its roof almost level with the canopy.
There was an empty doorway into it that was entirely dark and empty. My eyes had adjusted as much as they ever were and there was nothing else in the clearing. So, I went over and poked my finger into the doorway to make sure there was nothing sinister in the darkness.
Nothing happened.
I walked through to see the faint outline of a table sat in the middle, surrounded by chairs, and covered in white paper that stood out in the darkness. A stone staircase ran up the side of the circular room towards a landing at the top.
I started pacing around the table, debating whether or not to grab the paper. A glint caught my eye amongst the clutter, a silvery spike with a needle head at the end. I picked up the piece of cold metal just bigger than my hand, and put it in my pocket. I thought it was a knife, but since it was blunt maybe a large needle for crochet.
It was too dark to see anything on the paper, so I left it where it was. I checked the inside of the wall and found more iron under the staircase. The hand I used to pat around found the lid of the chest and brushed against the lock. Unlike Mother’s, this one felt like a leach was sucking on my palm as mana was pulled from me and into the iron.
The metal started to warm and I snatched my hand away.
There was no chance I was going to find a key in the darkness. I sent out one of the flying fox's mana pulses, the iron stole most of it before it could get back to me.
I went over and started ascending the steep staircase and into better light. The stairs were short and smoothed out by use. I kept close to the wall with a hand stuck to it since there was no railing to stop me from falling.
The top area was half covered in wooden planks that supported an empty desk and a weird metallic creation. Open glass windows let in a cool breeze and the sound of rustling leaves. The view outside was mostly those same leaves, and a quick peek at the ground below made me want to sit in the most stable position possible.
I couldn’t remember being that high up before without branches to block my view of the ground, and break my potential fall.
The metallic thing was part box at the bottom and part…something else. The top half was a very large saucer that pointed out of one of the windows. Feeling around revealed a latch to the box portion; a few wiggles in each direction opened it up. Inside was a dull piece of murky glass sitting on top of a gold plate.
I picked up the glass and thought it was just the moonlight reflecting off it when it started to glow faintly. Another few seconds of staring confirmed it was glowing brighter, and I quickly placed it back where the light had faded again. I felt a ripple of mana come from the saucer and heard a mimic of my thoughts, conveying intrigue and confusion.
I took it out of the box and tried holding it again, thinking about how high up I was. Then, I put it back on the gold and heard the apprehension I felt when looking over the edge.
The people on the other side of the road stopped my third attempt. They were moving across the street to the iron door. Two out of them were the more prominent mages. I cursed myself for playing with something mana-related. I ran down the stairs and stopped halfway, went back up a few steps and stopped again. My excitement at snooping around my discovery was turning to panic.
They were below, and only windows existed above.
They’d moved through the iron door and opened another I hadn’t noticed in the far wall, letting white light spill in. Calm voices carried through as I went back up the last few steps and stood by the open window. I’d been joking about jumping out in the inn, but I was ready to test it out now.
Chairs scraped against the stone floor, and I waited for the footsteps on the stairs to investigate the ripples.
“Well, Oleza, what is the update on our message?” Someone said in a weird accent.
“Yes, sir,” said a woman in a less harsh version of the same accent. “We had to wait a week so they could get to the front of the transmission queue but we got a reply, it was delivered this morning.”
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“Good, show me the letter in a moment. I have the cypher.”
I’d climbed up onto the window ledge to take my feet off the creaky wooden beams when I heard them all sit-down. My arms held the side of the window frame as I crouched in it.
“Ghaven?”
“We—Uh, yes sir—We had five new mages come through here earlier. Two of the men took offence to my provocation while the others just seemed surprised. Pennie might have more insight to offer,” Ghaven said.
“About the same for me, sir. One man looked ready to jump across the desk at me while the others weren't impressed about the price differences. They’re sharing a room with a lesser girl that was with them. Maybe bodyguards?” Pennie said.
“Recruitable?” Accent asked while someone scoffed about mages being bodyguards.
“Eh, not sure, sir. Maybe the blonde woman and the baby face boy. Black hair had something weird with her mana and didn’t really react much,” Pennie said.
“Think we need to get rid of them?” Oleza asked.
“Again, might be bodyguards. Someone might miss the lesser and the mages seemed somewhat powerful.”
“If they came through Ghaven’s gate they must be from Greenway, there’s no reputable mage school there. Maybe Black Hair is a private teacher? Was the girl young enough not to come into her blessing?” Accent asked.
“Possibly, sir. Looked like she could be a younger sister.”
“They only requested board for the night,” Pennie said.
“And no interesting conversation at dinner,” Oleza said. “We have someone camped out in the room below them, said they used mana shields for privacy.”
“Normal enough I suppose. Make them stay another night, see if we can weed out some prospects,” Accent said.
“Sir, aren’t we already being too aggressive with our recruitment? Killing mages isn’t the same as getting rid of some lesser that heard the wrong thing,” Ghaven said.
“We’re behind schedule, the baron was supposed to be sending sympathisers our way and my superiors don’t care that it’s him delaying us,” Accent said. “Next topic.”
“Uh sir, some of the new recruits aren’t showing enough restraint. One openly harassed a lesser woman for rejecting him,” Pennie said.
Oleza scoffed. “They should understand their place in the simple hierarchy. Werl and its self-hating mages have poisoned their minds. Our ancestors should have taken over when they got here.”
“That’s only the end goal, Oleza. Recruits should be able to show restraint till we are ready to be restored as lords,” Accent said. “Your great-grandparents were happy enough to lick their wounds in a country that didn’t want their servitude to lessers, it’s only natural their descendants want more.”
“I’ll make sure they behave,” Oleza said.
“Show me this month’s ledger,” Accent asked. Paper shuffled around and someone asked for the letter opener for the mail. More paper shuffling and mutters made the needle-shaped metal in my pocket feel heavy.
There was a long discussion between Pennie and Accent on the accounting and finance of the village. Taxes still needed to be paid to the Baron of Kiteer who governed the region and they discussed how to move numbers around to make the tax make sense when adding their payment on top of a reasonable figure.
They moved on to arguing about who had to infuse all the enchantments and when to set up a time to go around the wall. It had to be far beyond the hour I was given and throwing myself out the window was starting to sound more and more enticing. My muscles were also starting to get sore from holding still for so long.
“Let’s leave it there for the night.”
A chorus of yes sirs’ followed with three chairs scraping. The one with the most mana, and who I thought had the weird way of speaking, stayed seated while the others filed out. The door closed with a thud, leaving me feeling conscious of the sound of my breathing and beating heart.
He breathed out a long sigh. “I don’t have the patience for this shit.”
I almost fell off the window sill when I heard his voice without the accent. It was still strange, but he sounded like he used the proper letters now, like Oleza. There was no time to think about it as he rose and moved towards the stairs. The lock on the chest clicked and the lid hit the wall behind it.
He started muttering to himself. “Fucking yokels stole my fucking letter opener. Where do they even hope to sell silver in this forsaken settlement?”
The chest slammed shut and the footsteps started up the stairs. I shuffled my feet to turn around and move across the threshold of the window. The footsteps got halfway. I glanced down and slowly put my foot down to try to find a hold. There was a slight gap in the stone blocks, but only enough for the edge of my toes to brush.
The steps got closer. I pushed for the stone to bend inwards like the trees. Another foot went down as I hung off the open window and outer sill. My fingers were still hanging onto the ledge as I felt the mana move past the window.
My other food slipped as I tried to quickly get my hands out of sight from the room and onto their ledges.
He unlocked the latch of the box while my leg dangled in the air. I somehow had the wherewithal to remove the indents I made in the stone as I went down when I should have been focused on leaving. My foot was crossing the halfway mark down the tower when a much stronger ripple than the ones I had made hit me.
A simplified rehash of their earlier conversation seared itself onto my sight rather than whispering in the back of my mind.
My back hit the grass before I even felt my hands and feet slip off the stone. I was still trying to blink away the words and get air back in my lungs when I noticed him moving down the stairs.
The wall I used to come in was past the doorway my pursuer was about to exit. I staggered to my feet and threw myself against the outer wall of trees and fell through the opening I made.
Pieces of bark flew past and hit me in the back as a boom sounded behind me. It was the loudest and scariest sound I’d ever heard before. My legs were moving as fast as they could while my ears still rang. I looked behind me to see a flash of light and another loud boom as larger splinters flew off the trees.
Another flash washed over the area I was running towards. A long series of cracks and creaks had me looking back again. One of the trees had been detached and was slowly falling my way.
It crashed to the ground behind me as another spell flew to my side and ended in the same flash of light, and a wave of wind, knocking me to the side.
White light flooded the grassy landscape from above. I squinted up at the mage orb while stumbling into a run. Lines of light zipped past me. My breath hitched as some connected with my back.
I threw up a wall of dirt behind me and tried to figure out which side of the village I exited from.
With my best guess, I turned slightly to make my way towards the river that we had been travelling near earlier. I was moving past the white light's reach and behind shrubs, into the shadows. More lines of light faded into the distance far to my side. My feet slid under me as I ducked into the shrubs around me.
He wasn’t moving.
Another flash of light and a loud boom made me flinch, but it was too far away to matter. My breath came out hard and fast. My heart was beating out of my chest, but I found the corners of my lips turned up.
That had been…exhilarating. Not so much the getting flung about part, but getting away from him was.
Instead of going for the river I crept around the village and entered through the wall again. I’d taken off my cloak to ditch near my entrance when I noticed two singed holes in it. Reaching my hand to my back revealed another two holes in the skin. I poked at the sore spots and they didn’t feel that deep.
I kept close to the side of the buildings as I moved through the street. It was only a short path to get back to the main road that housed the inn. Lights were on in the buildings yet the path was dark. I could see another white orb in the sky through the two layers of leaves where I had gotten out. There were plenty of mages there and a lot of shouting going on past the intersection I had gone down.
The inn door was locked, but I went through the wall and let it close behind me. No one was in the staircase or hallway so I walked as fast and quietly as I could to Annalise’s door. I knocked as faintly as possible while letting them still hear it.
The door cracked open for me to see one of Annalise’s bright blue eyes.
“I—”
She opened the door, grabbed my arm to pull me in and shut it again. Everyone was in the room wearing full armour. I was marched by the shoulders to the bed, spun around, and placed on the edge of it. The mana shield went up around us.
“You…what…are you okay?” Annalise asked with a sigh after scrunching up her face in a variety of ways.
“Yeah, fine. I found—”
“What the fuck did you do?!” Alisa asked and pulled at a lock of my hair. “You're covered in dirt and grass. Wood chippings in your hair…Is it singed!?”
“Yes, I—”
“We heard someone throwing around explosive spells, were those at you?” Daral asked.
“Flash of light, loud sounds, and wind?”
“Yes...”
“Shut it,” Annalise said. “Let her talk, Ian check her back. Actually, change into your old clothes first. Where’s the cloak?”
“I stashed it outside the walls,” I said, pulling my shirt off while Alisa quickly moved a bedsheet in front of me.
“Outside? Nevermind. Barick, burn that,” Annalise said about my borrowed shirt. “Are we in danger of them busting down our doors? How much did they see of you?”
I pulled my old shirt back on and ruffled the wood chips and grass out of my hair. It was annoyingly long.
“They only saw the back of my cloak which is why I dumped it, sorry. They didn’t see me come back into the village, they still think I’m outside.”
Annalise dropped the shield spell and looked to the door. No one was moving about in the hallway or downstairs. The shield blocked out my senses again after a moment.
“From the beginning then, Valeria.”
“I found a group of mages heading to the edge of the wall and followed them. There was an area of the wall that was two layers thick so I went through—”
“Through?” Annalise asked. “These walls are made with someone else's mana, you’d have to overpower weeks, maybe months, of mana infusion to take control. Unless you broke it?”
“No, I’m good with plants I guess?” I said and continued when Annalise shook her head and sighed. “I made a gap that closed behind me and there was this tower inside the clearing that I went into. It had a table with paper all over it.”
“Did you grab any of this paper?”
“Ah…no. A group of mages came in. It was the man from the gate, Ghaven. The woman from the counter downstairs and two others, Oleza and someone else with a heavy fake accent?”
“Where were you in all this? And how do you know it’s fake?”
“I went up to the top of the tower, there was this transmitter—wait let me finish—it sends out these subtle ripple codes from a crystal you put inside.”
“We know what a transmitter is.”
“Okay well, they had a meeting where Ghaven and Pennie, the woman from the desk, said they purposefully tried to antagonise you to see if you were worthy of being recruited. They then talked about all this other accounting stuff, killing non-mages, paying off the baron and logistics. And then—”
“No, no. Not ‘and then’ explain what you mean by killings and the bloody baron?”