Chapter 14: The First Magus

Miro was right. When they’d reached the docks, there were still a few boats there and one of them was heading in the direction they needed. He was also right in that the fishers didn’t ask any questions other than “where to?” and “how many?” and accepted the hunks of oxhawk meat, either not recognizing it for what it was, or simply not caring a whit, just like Renith had said. It was still morning when they set sail on a single-mast vessel called the Faithful Shoal, and they put some much-needed distance between them and the town where Bagsil was likely still nursing his wounds and his rage.

It was a sunny day on the expansive lake, the largest one Miro had seen since he arrived in the Lake Country, with the other shore hardly visible against the horizon. There was some chop on the water and between the bouncing of the Faithful Shoal and roiling of his stomach from the oxhawk offal he consumed, Miro spent his time leaning over the railing at the bow of the boat. The most frustrating thing was the relief of actually hurling into the lake never came, and all he could do was make pained honking noises every few minutes alone at his chosen station.

It was Nydra who eventually joined him at his side despite his sorry state.

“Having a rough go of it are we?” she asked without a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

All he could muster in response was an animal-like gurgle.

“First time on a boat, I’m guessing?”

“It is. But it’s not that. It’s that blasted oxhawk … thing Hima made me swallow. You ever had one of those?”

“Can’t say that I have, but also I don’t need to. Not a mage, remember?”

“Right, sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about, lad,” she tapped each of the swords hanging by her side, “I get by well enough without having to be one.” She smiled and he tried to summon a laugh but came up only with a belch.

What he wanted to do, instead of being a victim of the oxhawk’s posthumous revenge, was to soak in the scenery. The experience counter before him grew incrementally, recognizing that he was exploring more of the land, but currently this was entirely a passive process. Though he registered the rolling green mountains, and the villages nestled underneath their shadows against the lakeshore, a cluster of boats always indicating one’s presence, it wasn’t enough to take his mind off his stomach. He did suspect that one thing might do the trick.

“Hey, the last time I asked something like this I was smacked around and threatened with a sword,” Miro started, “But it would be really nice to know what exactly is going on.”

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“I guess all we have is time, don’t we?” Nydra said, also staring off where the green and blue met in a line of docks and houses.

“I guess so.”

Nydra was silent for a while, and Miro thought that even here no one would bother to let him know anything other than the direction they were traveling in, but then the swordswoman sighed and said, “I don’t know how many mages you’ve chanced to meet, but you would have noticed that they all possess only one specific type of skill. Whether it’s moving things with their mind, or lightning, or, as in your case, fire, a mage has but a single skill tree they can explore. Not so much in the case of your father.”

Hearing his father mentioned so directly, Miro looked up at Nydra, as if expecting to glimpse him in the eyes of someone who’d seen him in the flesh.

“That’s right,” Nydra confirmed. “Now, growing up he wasn’t that much different from you, a low-level fire mage living in a small village on the shores of the Boundless Sea. But then, when he was around your age actually, he realized that he now had the ability to communicate with animals.”

“Was it sheep?”

Nydra looked somewhat stunned by the oddity of the specific question and then looked up as if rooting around in her memory. “Yes, if I remember correctly, it was sheep.”

As far as Miro knew, his sheep had never tried to speak to him. Nor had they really shown much of an ability to listen to him. Still, the fact that it was sheep troubled him for a reason he couldn’t quite place.

“At first he just went along with these new abilities – attending a few farmers’ meets and showing off his unusually obedient flock.” Nydra laughed and shook her head. “He admitted that he really enjoyed the attention that gave him. Naturally though, rumors of a fire mage with beast whisperer abilities reached the capital, and the Prime Minister himself sent a delegation to fetch your father and have him study at the Akademiya of the Magi.”

“There’s a whole school for mages?” Miro asked, excitement briefly overshadowing his pain.

“Oh yes. Most of the mages that go there are born into one of the noble houses or the family of a very rich merchant. Your father though, he may have been a commoner but he was no ordinary mage. He was a magus, a mage who had the ability to gain skills outside of his original skill tree. An ability that had never been seen before. A mage with perhaps limitless potential.”

Nydra finished the sentence off with a sigh and grew quiet, seeming to be absorbed again by the scenery. Miro knew that this story was unlikely to have a happy ending, but he had not truly felt it until then. Sierra and Bondook said nothing of his parents, other than making it clear that they weren’t them, and though Miro had assumed they were dead, he never dared broach the subject in order to avoid forging his suspicions into reality.

The swordswoman turned back to him, as if just remembering that Miro was still there. “So Jalvyn, that’s your father, he was convinced to move to Arkensk, the capital city, with his new wife – your mother.”

She softened that last word, as if guessing correctly that it would not be easy for Miro to hear. He turned away from her, wiping with his palm the tears that came unbidden to his eyes and then took a deep breath and looked back at Nydra, finding nothing in her eyes but sympathy.

“For years your father trained under the greatest mages in the land, mastering fire, concussion, lightning, iron skin, water and others I either can’t remember or he just never used.” Miro looked at his own hands, wondering what it would feel like to have something other than flames dancing on his fingertips. “And then the Northern Rebellion broke out. At first, King Ganryh had been reluctant to risk the life of the only magus known to have ever lived. But the northern part of the Kingdom is well protected and the war dragged on. We lost territory and many good soldiers. So the Prime Minister advised the King to put together a small band of some of the Kingdom’s best warriors, including your father, Peteri and myself.”