-13 years prior-
“How does it work?”
Marigold was silent, considering how to put an answer into words. Or there was the easier route: lie and say it could not be explained in words. She already knew what her apprentice’s rejoinder to that would be. Iris would ask for a demonstration. No, she would demand one. Such a demonstration would cost Marigold days in Slumber. Not ideal when the entire manor was like a stirred-up ant’s nest, preparing for the arrival of some important guests from the King’s Capital City. None of the serving folk—Marigold’s best sources for gossip—seemed to know who these guests were, yet they all knew they were set to arrive this very afternoon and that everything had to be made perfect. Marigold knew better than to do any magic casting that would leave her indisposed in Slumber when important guests were expected; the lord of Black Crux liked to flaunt the master mage he employed to any visiting aristocrats.
Iris paced the room behind Marigold, her slippers a whisper on the thick rugs of the high sitting chamber. Marigold had come here to sit by the window and watch the day dawn while having her morning tea. It was a simple routine she’d developed, one that typically afforded her a bit of peaceful contemplation time before starting her day proper. Today, it did not.
“Say I desired to cast a Barrier that would prevent my husband from entering his audience chamber for a meeting with his advisors any time he intended to keep the meeting a secret from me?” Iris spoke as if she had only now come up with the idea, but it was clear she’d thought it out carefully and extensively.
Again, Marigold held her tongue. A treacherous notion came to her that it would, admittedly, be an intriguing exercise in advanced Barrier-Casting to try something to that effect. It would be a unique application of the magic, and a challenging one, even for a master mage. How would she go about performing such a Casting, she wondered. Then the fear followed: would Iris be capable of learning it? The possibility disturbed her.
Iris persisted. “The least you could do is tell me whether it would be possible or not. Do not act as if you do not hear me, Mage-Matron. It is already true that when I speak to my husband these days, it is like petitioning a cow chewing its cud. Don’t you go taking inspiration from him.”
Marigold set her teacup down on the table, but remained where she sat looking out the window. “It is unfair to characterize your husband that way. Lord Marcus dotes on you.” Marigold left untouched the way Iris’s insult had been extended to include her as well. She didn’t have to look at Iris to know the younger woman crossed her arms.
“In the bedroom, perhaps. Nowhere else. And why should I not speak of him that way when it is true? He treats me as if I am still a girl only recently come to my majority, wide-eyed and naive at this golden castle in which I am to live. I am a woman grown, Marigold. One afforded power by my title, at that. I have learned the ways of the court and kingdom. I see the bountiful resources of my hold and how we might use them. Yet he sits, like a frog in a stagnant pond, without ambition, refusing to see plainly all we could do. He will not even entertain the idea of expanding our borders, winning new lands for our hold. With Draffor’s surplus, we could raise forces to drive off the bands of raiders who stalk our border and then overtake their territories as our own. Add to that the advantage of a magic as great as ours, and entirely new holds could be ...”
Marigold let the words drift past her ears. She closed her eyes and clenched her hands together tightly as a way of counseling herself to remain calm. Then, she sighed and massaged her knuckles. They had begun to ache on cold mornings like this one. She resisted the urge to state the obvious to her apprentice: just because one could do something does not mean that it was wise. She had tried to communicate that in different ways over the past year. Iris always found ways to rebuff her, or to declare that Marigold simply did not understand the way of things that were not magic casting.
Marigold did not claim to walk in the same sphere as nobles—nor did she have much desire to involve herself in her lord and lady’s personal quarrels. She did understand, however, that Lord Marcus placed peace and stability above all other things in his hold, as his forebears had done before him. Did it mean he sometimes bribed foreign raiders with tributes of goods and coin to maintain that stability, rather than send his garrison out to deal with them and have fighting break out that might require the crown to inevitably get involved? Yes, it did. Some would view that as capitulating, but it worked. Hold Draffor, and its seat of power at Black Crux, had enjoyed peace and prosperity for generations.
Holds that did not cause the crown trouble were viewed favorably by the king. That was a concept even a mage could understand. Marigold could not blame Lord Marcus for having grown tired of his wife’s increasing obsession with winning more territory through magic and war. Perhaps Iris could be forgiven for wanting to do something of import with the rare skill she had worked so tirelessly to learn, to use magic to raise herself to level ground with her husband as head of an entire hold. But this was not the way to do it. It was misguided and childish, and it disregarded Hold Draffor’s subjects.
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None of these things would Marigold say to Lady Iris. Not today, at least. However, if they continued to clash over the implications and repercussions of turning magic such as theirs toward ambitious ends, Marigold feared that one day she would not be able to hold back.
She looked out the window at dawn rising over Black Crux town. It was pleasant little town, small for a hold’s seat of power, but boasting the amenities of many a larger habitation. Its close-set black stone houses and shops stood together as close friends stand together, most converged around the central stony gully that apexed at the split black cliffs upon which Black Crux Manor stood over all. From this window, Marigold could look down over most of the town. Its small market was already bustling with people trading in goods from both within the kingdom and without. These were a hard-working people, a happy people content with the prosperous existence Lord Marcus maintained for them. Marigold saw shopkeepers opening shops, messengers running about, wagons coming into town on the little farm roads that split the uniform wheat fields to the west and south.
It was different from where she had been born in the northern climes, and different also from Moonfane Forge, the mountain town where she had grown and learned her magic. But she liked Black Crux. She had made a home here. She liked its dependable rhythm. She liked the freedom she was afforded in teaching and practicing her craft. It was why she chose to stay.
Or, perhaps it was more accurate to say it was why she still hesitated to leave. Her life was privileged here, and most master mages could only dream of finding and teaching such a skilled pupil as Iris. A mage could leave a striking legacy upon the world written in a student such as this one. If only ... if only she could instill in her a proper mastery of how such magic should be used and looked upon. Magic, in Marigold’s eyes, was about more than the ability to cast it. There had to be restraint. A mage had to develop a set of ethics related to their craft, one that they must imbue into their students. In the past year or so, Iris’s words—the way she spoke of using her increasingly powerful skill—had begun to disturb Marigold. Barrier-Casting was not a war magic, despite the views of some outlier mages she was aware of. Even martial magics were cast only with the utmost discretion, not on a whim that they might help a noblewoman expand her hold. She had tried in vain to rein in her apprentice’s ambitions in this regard, but it was easier said than done.
In more recent weeks, she had even begun to consider holding certain practical lessons back from Iris. That shamed Marigold. How could she deny lessons to her apprentice? Yet the idea kept returning. It might be prudent, she reasoned, at least until Iris’s grasp of the philosophy of Barrier-Casting caught up with her raw ability.
As if to bring those discomfiting considerations back to the fore, Iris snapped her fingers in front of Marigold’s eyes.
“Are you listening? He does not respect me. He shuts me out of meetings, heeds not my words and ideas. He gives me nothing! Not even a child to bear, in his infertility. He will leave this hold in the hands of some distant nephew one day, who will then push me out, I am certain of it.” She made a small sound of displeasure.
“Lady Gilliana—”
“Lady Iris.”
“Iris. You revisit this same bitter argument every time some high standing figure pays us a visit. You know my stance on things. It ain’t up to me to tell your husband to include you more in all of that. I do wish he would. Make no mistake, I side with you on that. But rather than waste your energy complaining to me about it, I suggest you focus on your magic studies instead.”
The very moment the words were out of Marigold’s mouth, she regretted them, for Iris seized upon them immediately.
“So, we are in agreement. You will teach me the trick of Intent in Barrier-Casting.”
Marigold spoke through exasperation. “Intent is difficult, my lady, even for a master Barrier-Caster. Only a Journeyer would even have begun reading abo—”
“And there is another thing!” Iris was relentless. “I should be made a Journeyer now, should I not? I should have been raised above apprentice years ago. Why do you insist on holding me back?”
Because I fear what you will do with the things a Journeyer might learn in her travels, Marigold thought. What she said was, “Because you refuse to set aside your life as Lady Black Crux to travel the roads for years, as required.”
“I cannot simply give up my standing here and uproot my—”
Marigold raised her hand, and her voice. “Again, we revisit the same arguments. I’ve heard it all before, girl. You know how bein’ a mage works. You want to be a master one day, then you need to put bein’ a lady on hold for a while. Why do you test me so on this today? What is it making you act like you’ve got a pin stuck in your smallclothes?” A thought came to Marigold. “Exactly who is it arriving from the capital today?” She turned finally to face her student.
Iris raised her meticulous brows, a wry smile riding her immaculately painted lips. “Ah. So, for once there is something that my husband tells me before you somehow catch wind of it. Will surprises never cease?” She waited a beat before revealing the news to her teacher. “Truly, you had not yet heard? The guests coming today are Queen Orla herself and the young crown prince.” The surprise Marigold felt spread to her face and she could see how much pleasure her apprentice took in being the one to deliver such gossip. “Maybe you’ll be more inclined to demonstrate one of your most powerful spells to them, should they request it, than you are for your own apprentice, who desires to learn it and is more than ready to do so. Don’t be late for dinner, Mage-Matron.”