Guild Mage: Apprentice [Volume One Stubbed]

Chancellor Blackwood, flanked by Professor Annora, stepped up to the carriages as Liv and her family disembarked from the first. They’d aged, of course, like everyone else. Though Liv had only seen them twice since her archmage test - at the conclave that settled the new rules for the guild, and then again for Sidonie’s testing - she still tended to picture them as they’d looked when she first came to Coral Bay.

She knew that she should have been past being surprised by humans, even those who were mages, having new lines in their faces at every reunion, but it was always jarring. Annora had clipped her hair short, and Liv suspected from the color of it that she’d given up on fighting against the proliferation of gray hairs and bleached everything. Blackwood, on the other hand, had allowed his beard to grow out as much as down, and it had become a great bristly thing, streaked with white especially where it grew from his chin.

“Welcome back to Coral Bay, Archmagus Livara,” he said, raising his voice above the raucous crowd. “Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for having us, Chancellor Blackwood,” Liv responded, matching his volume. Anything said here in the open, in front of so many people was as much performance as anything else. Anything he had to tell her that actually mattered would come later, behind closed doors. “And thank you for your message. You recall my husband, I trust, but his son Rei has grown quite a bit since last he was here, and I don’t think that you’ve ever met my daughter, Rianne.”

Blackwood had opened his mouth to respond, but at the final name, he stopped, his eyes narrowing, and then continued. “You are welcome of course, Prince Consort Inkeris, and Reikis ka Inkeris kæn Bælris. I hope that this time none of us will be dumped into the bay.” Then, he turned, and carefully lowered himself to kneel in front of Liv’s daughter.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Princess,” he said, with a smile. “You know, I had seen your name written before, but it was not until hearing it today that I realized who you must have been named for.”

Liv placed her hand on her daughter’s back, but let the girl speak for herself. In her peripheral vision, she could see Arjun, Sidonie, Lia Every, and the rest of the professors from Bald Peak emerging from the carriages behind hers, and stepping forward together.

“Mama says I was named after her first master,” Rianne said, fiddling with the metal puzzle in her small hands. “He’s the one who taught her very first spell. Did you know him?”

The lines around Blackwood’s eyes crinkled. “I did,” he said. “Jurian of Carinthia was a very good friend of mine for many years. We worked here together at this college until - until his death. I can’t think of anyone more suitable for you to be named after.”

Then, the chancellor stood, and turned to the others. “Archmagus Corbett. Guild Mistress Every. Professor Iyuz, Professor Norris... thank you all for coming. I think it will make Caspian very happy that you’re all here. Please, come inside Blackstone Hall. We can’t accommodate everyone there, but we have rooms for each of our archmagi, and for our guild mistress, at least.”

Annora turned to shoo the crowd aside, and Liv’s guards fell in around her as they all followed. Students and culling mages alike called out as they passed, and Liv raised her right hand to wave while, with her left, she kept a firm grip on her daughter. She let all of the faces slide by her without really seeing any; Liv knew that she wouldn’t be able to relax until they were inside and away from so many eyes.

At the sight of one face, she stumbled. The dark hair was longer, now, and the face older, but Liv had looked into those eyes so many times that she could never forget them. For just a moment, they saw each other, and then she was lost in the crowd. Liv craned her head to see, but the other woman had slipped away as easily as an alleycat, and she found herself wondering whether she’d been mistaken after all.

“Liv?” Keri asked, taking her by the arm. “Are you alright?”

Liv nodded. “I’m fine. I just - I thought I saw someone,” she murmured.

“Given how many members of the guild are here, I have no doubt there’s dozens of people you know,” Keri said, with a smile. “Hundreds, even. You taught enough yourself, after all. Let’s get Rianne inside.”

“Yes.” Liv hurried after Chancellor Blackwood, but she couldn’t help but turn and look back one last time just before she stepped through the open doors. No matter how she looked, however, she didn’t see Rosamund again.

☙

“He’s been asking for you, specifically,” Blackwood said, as he led Liv and her family to Caspian Loredan’s old chambers. “I should warn you that King Lucan arrived two days ago, and he’s practically been living at his great-uncle’s bedside.”

“So far as I am aware, there are no problems between Lucan and I,” Liv said.

Blackwood paused outside the door, where two men in the uniforms of the Lucanian Royal Guard waited. “You are directly responsible for the death of both his parents,” he pointed out.

Liv’s glanced at the faces of the guards, but they were well-trained, and neither of them so much as twitched the corner of their mouth. “You know that wasn’t a war that I started,” she said to Blackwood. “Two of my guards will watch the door, as well.”

“Of course. I simply wanted to be certain you were prepared,” the old man said, with a sigh. Then, he raised his hand and rapped on the door with his knuckles. “I’ve brought Queen Livara, as the archmagus requested,” he shouted through the door.

A moment later, a man’s voice was audible from within. “Come in, then.”

One of the royal guards opened the door, and Liv stepped through with Rianne’s hand held in hers. She almost stopped there, because it was so different from the office that she remembered, but she managed to continue on into the room and make way for everyone following her.

When Liv had come here as a student - usually because she’d gotten into some sort of trouble, as she recalled - the outer room had been an office, complete with a large wooden desk, a carved wooden chair for the chancellor to sit in, and somewhat less comfortable chairs for a pair of students at a time. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves had been built right into the walls, and completely filled with texts of all kinds. There’d been objects gathered from the archmage’s travels, as well: sea shells and pearls from right here at Coral Bay, white hunks of mana stone, golden statues from Lendh ka Dakruim and pieces of carved bone from Elden lands in the north.

Now, the desk had been removed to make way for more chairs and benches, which had been dragged up against the walls, presumably for the convenience of visitors, or perhaps the healers. The center of the room was now taken up by a great cabinet, of the sort with which Liv had been familiar during her classes in the infirmary. She knew that it was filled with medicines, bandages, surgical instruments, and every other sort of medical tool that might be required in the treatment of a patient.

The entire space smelled of lye, but the windows were shuttered tight in spite of the season. The door to the archmagus’s bedroom, which Liv had never seen open before, now stood ajar, and she could hear the sound of wet coughing from within. She’d treated enough coughs to know that sound meant trouble.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

But before Liv could pass through the office into the bed-chamber, a young man with carefully cropped and styled blonde hair rose from one of the chairs which had been set against the bookcases lining the room’s outer wall. He was dressed in what Liv assumed was the most current style out of Freeport: a doublet in deep, vibrant purple and gold, the colors of the Lucanian royal family, with matching trunks, garters just beneath his knees, and black stockings clearly meant to show off his calves. His mustache was the barest dusting of blonde fuzz over the top of his lip, and Liv doubted he was old enough to grow a full beard, but he wore a rapier on his hip, and jeweled rings on his fingers.

“Queen Livara - it has been some years since last we met,” Lucan, King of Lucania greeted her. “I wish it could have been upon a happier occasion.”

Liv extended her hand to him - the left, the one with her mages guild ring on the finger. While they were equals, he was still the man and she the woman, and so etiquette dictated that he bow. Only once he had straightened again did she speak.

“King Lucan. You have my sympathy,” Liv said, unable to keep herself from glancing toward the door to the bed chamber. “I only spent a bit over a year here at Coral Bay, but your great-uncle made an impression even in that short time. His duties on the council of regents, and mine as queen, prevented us from spending much time together, but he always has had my respect.”

“Thank you.” Lucan’s eyes looked tired, red and deeply shadowed, and Liv doubted that he’d had very much sleep in the last few days. “But I will not keep you here with introductions. The chirurgeons cannot say how long he has left. Please, go and speak to him. I believe it will ease his mind greatly, and we can speak to each other later.”

“Thank you.” Liv inclined her head, and stepped toward the doorway, but her daughter wrinkled her nose and stopped.

“Do I have to?” Rianne asked, very quietly.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of here,” Liv told her. “Come in for just long enough that I can introduce you, and then you can wait out here with your brother. Can you do that?”

Rianne nodded, and this time she followed Liv through the doorward.

A chirurgeon wearing silk gloves and a cloth mask over his face stepped back from the bed and bowed. Whatever Caspian’s bed chamber might have looked like before, his personal effects had largely been moved out of the way to make room for the constant coming and going of healers, and the apparatus dedicated to keeping him alive. There were bedpans, all clean at the moment, and enormous steel needles for the drawing of blood.

At the center of it all, the old man reclined on a heap of pillows, his hands crossed above the blankets which covered his lap. His skin was pale and thin, delicate as paper, revealing every vein and artery, and his knuckles looked large and swollen. His white beard had been trimmed close to his face, presumably to make it easier to keep him clean, and his skull was covered by a warm knit cap. What little hair remained to him lay limp and colorless across the pillows, as if someone had forgotten to dust for spiderwebs. His eyes, however, immediately fastened upon Liv, the very moment that she entered the room.

“Livara,” Caspian Loredon said, after licking his cracked lips to wet them. “You came. And you brought your family.”

“Of course I did,” Liv said, trying not to let him see how much the sight of his weakness had struck her. “You know Keri and Rei, but I don’t think you’ve met my daughter Rianne. She was too small to travel the last time I came to visit Freeport.”

“Princess Riane.” Caspian’s mouth trembled, but that did not prevent him from smiling. “What a beautiful girl you are. And if you’re anything like your mother and your father, you’ll make quite a mage one day. I wish that I could be there to see it.”

Rianne glanced up to her parents, and then back to the bed. “Mama could freeze you,” she offered. “It wouldn’t hurt, and then you could sleep instead of dying. She could wake you up in a few years and maybe then you would feel better.”

Caspian let out a quiet sound, somewhere between a cough and a laugh. “If only it were that simple, little one. But unlike you and your family, I am only human. There’s not enough Vædic blood in me to matter. My magic has kept me alive longer than most, but after a hundred and four years, I’ve reached the end.”

“I’ll take the children out so the two of you can speak,” Keri offered, and took Rianne by the hand. The chirurgeon, at a glance from Liv, followed them out, and closed the door.

Liv reached out for the nearest chair, lifted it, and carried it over to Caspian’s bedside, where she gently placed it down and then sat.

“She seems like a kind girl,” the old man said, reaching out with his hand.

“She is.” Liv took Caspian’s hand in her own, and found it very cold. She frowned. “Do you need a fire in the hearth?” she asked him.

“I don’t feel the cold much anymore,” he said, shaking his head very slightly from side to side. “Nor the heat, I suppose. Mostly I just wish I could get comfortable and sleep. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I had a good night’s rest, without waking up.”

“Cei?” Liv asked. Surely the word of dreams could ease his suffering.

“I’ve been afraid to let them use it,” Caspian admitted. “Afraid that if they did, I wouldn’t wake up, and that I’d miss you.”

“Perhaps when we’re done speaking, then,” Liv said. “I’d be willing to do it myself. I’ll give you a dream of the mountains in spring, right when the first flowers are blooming.”

“That sounds nice,” Caspian said, with a long sigh. He took a few wheezing breaths before he spoke again. “When I go, it will just be you and Sidonie Corbett, until the next test. I would have liked to see another one, but it seems I won’t live to see more than three archmagi at a time.”

If you’d stepped in between Jurian and Genevieve before it was too late, you could have had five, Liv thought, and chastised herself for even letting it occur to her. Instead, she said, “There’s a few promising students at Bald Peak, and I’m sure Chancellor Blackwood has some here as well. I’m certain one of them will ask to be tested, sooner or later.”

Caspian shifted against his pillows, and then winced as the movement obviously caused him pain. “You’ll outlive all of them,” he said. “Sidonie and Lia, as well.”

“I might,” Liv agreed. “Or I might not. I can be killed, just like anyone else.”

The old man gave a huff at that, and it set off a fit of coughing. Liv found a clean linen cloth next to the bed, and used it to wipe the blood from his lips when he’d finally finished and gotten his breath back.

“I think I’ll take you up on those dreams, shortly,” Caspian finally said. “But there’s something I need to tell you, first.”

“Another secret spell?” Liv asked him, with a smile. She gave his hand a gentle pat.

“No. No - an apology,” the oldest living archmage said, turning his head so that he could meet her eyes. “I owe you an apology. I should never have let it get so far, Liv. You were my student, and I should have protected you. It was my - my responsibility, but I was afraid to split my family.” His face twisted in pain and sorrow. “I was a fool. I hesitated, and war came anyway. I should have stopped Genevieve when I could. You should never have had to run away.”

To Liv’s surprise, she felt something loosen inside her - a knot that had been tied around her heart for twenty years. “We all make mistakes,” she said. “I’ve made them, too. You did the best you could at the time. And who’s to say how it all would have turned out if you’d done differently? If I hadn’t fled to Valegard, Calevis might not have been killed there. Ractia might have got away with an entire army of Antrian soldiers. I might never have gotten to the Tomb of Celris, or Al’Fenthia. Maybe I wouldn’t have been ready to face her, at Nightfall Peak.”

“You shouldn’t have had to,” Caspian said. “You were so young. It should have been me, and Jurian, and Genevieve. We should have carried the burden, so that you didn’t have to. I was too afraid to act, and I lost nearly everyone. My nephew, my granddaughter. Jurian. Can you - can you forgive me, Liv? Out of all those I wronged most, you’re the only one still alive.”

Liv had to swallow before she could speak. “I forgive you,” she said, raising the old man’s hand to her cheek. “I forgive you. You can rest now.”

“Good.” Caspian closed his eyes, and lay back into the pillows. “Good. I’m ready for those dreams now. I’d like to be able to move without hurting.”

Carefully, Liv placed his hand back onto the blanket, and rose from her chair. She crossed to the door, and opened it.

Lucan stood immediately. “Is he -?”

“I’ve offered to put him to sleep,” Liv said, keeping her voice low. “So that he doesn’t hurt anymore. I thought you might like to come in before I do.”

“I would.” Lucan strode forward, and Liv stepped aside to let him pass. She watched him cross to the bed, and thought that other than the clothing, in that moment he looked nothing like a king: only like a boy who was much too young to lose the only father he’d ever known.

When she reached out with her magic, she found Caspian’s Authority, once so strong and vital, parted easily. It had become a weak thing, like cloth so old that it would crumble at the slightest touch. She shaped a dream for him: a dream of sunshine and mountain air, and wide, endless sky, with blue columbines waving beneath in the breeze.

Just before the eleventh bell of the evening, the archmage took one final, gasping breath, opened his eyes, and was still.