Guild Mage: Apprentice

"I don't see how this will help us convince the council of anything," Keri said again. He considered the enchanted gauntlets lying on the bed: in battle, he would wear them, but he wasn't actually expecting a fight. At least, not one he would be participating in. Wearing the armor was more about making an impression, or sending a signal that he had come for something of deadly importance.

Sakari Ka Edvis, ambassador to the kingdom of Lucania, sighed. In contrast to the war-like image Keri was presenting, the Ambassador wore robes of soft gray silk brocade, worked with motifs of ancient wyrms, their wings and tails shimmering under the light of the oil lamps that lit the room.

"This is the first somewhat public event we can use to begin introducing you around, before the actual council sessions," Sakari explained. Keri had heard this before, but he still didn't like it. "There is a masque, to celebrate the opening of the council, but that won't be for two more days, to give all of the barons time to arrive. Many of them have to travel to reach a waystone, or wait until enough mages are present to activate one. There's a reason the king doesn't call these often."

Keri lifted his Næv'bel from where he'd leaned it in the corner. "I'm ready," he declared.

"That will certainly make an impression," Ambassador Sakari grumbled. "I wish you had brought your kwenim along with you. A single dance, and Rika would have had the entire court eating out of her hands."

"Neither of us wanted to bring Rei," Keri explained, following Sakari out of his guest chambers and through the halls of the embassy. "He's too young to travel, especially with the blood cult on the move."

"I suppose I can't blame you for that," the ambassador said. As they stepped outside, two of the embassy guards, swordsmen in enchanted armor nearly as fine as Keri's, fell into step behind them. The embassy had been provided with a carriage, but all four of the Eld swung themselves up into the saddles of waiting horses, instead.

The ride north to the shore passed quickly enough once they were out of the city, and by the time Sakari led the way down to the beach, a crowd of humans was already gathering around a circle of torches planted in the sand. At the arrival of the two Eld and their guards, the audience surged, and Keri had to fight down an urge to turn around and walk right back to the horses.

"Ambassador!" a human with neatly arranged blonde hair called, striding forward to grasp hands with Sakari. "What a privilege you were able to attend. I know you've met my daughter before, and we've all heard rumors of your guest."

"Prince Benedict, Princess Milisant," the ambassador greeted them, shaking the man's hand and bowing over the young woman's. "It is always an honor to spend time with either of you. Allow me to present Inkeris ka Ilmari kæn Bælris, who has come south to speak to the council on the cult of Raktia. Inkeris, Prince Benedict Loredan, heir to the throne of Lucania, and his daughter Milisant, who will be one of the participants in the duel this evening."

Keri switched his spear to his left hand, so that he could clasp arms with first the human prince, and then the girl. It was only when Milisant's face betrayed her surprise that he recalled that one greeted human women differently. Rather than apologize, he decided to simply press forward. "It is an honor to be here," he said. "I look forward to addressing the council. This is a crisis that our two peoples can only overcome by working together."

"Of course, of course," Prince Benedict said. "But before that, you'll be able to observe one of our most talented young women. I fully anticipate that my daughter will be the top student of her year, when she goes to Coral Bay. Millie, your opponent is arriving. You'd better head over; try to wrap this up quickly, please. After you finish, perhaps the Ambassador and his guest will join us for brandy."

"Don't worry, Daddy," the girl said. "This won't take a moment." Drawing a pale wand from the case that hung at her hip, the princess stalked forward across the sand.

"What is this all about?" Keri asked the prince.

"A few unkind words were exchanged at my daughter's tea party yesterday," Benedict said.

Keri glanced across the sand, and then stopped. He reached a hand out and took Ambassador Sakari by the shoulder, turning the older man to look. "Who is that?" Keri asked.

A slip of a girl walked across the sand toward the center of the fire-lit ring, the sea breeze tossing pure white hair behind her as she came. She was tiny, not quite an adult. There was a coltishness to her, still, that told Keri she still had a few years filling out to do. She carried a staff of pale wood in one hand, and sigils of inlaid silver and gold ran up and down its length. Oddly, she was angling it so as not to touch the ground. Her features were delicate, and reminded him of people he'd seen in Al'Fenthia with mixed ancestry.

"A cook's bastard from the north," Benedict remarked. "She has a bit of magic, apparently."

"That is no human woman," Ambassador Sakari said. "I thought this was a duel between your own people. We should have been informed. This needs to stop right now."

"My name is Livara Tär Valtteri Kaen Syvä. If I'm going to risk my life, I might as well use it once," the girl called, from the center of the circle. She'd raised her voice so that everyone could hear her.

"House Syvä," Keri repeated. Of course, the white hair. He knew that when he got a look at her eyes, they would be blue as the winter sky. The thought stirred a memory, but he didn't have time to try to place it right now. "This ends now," he said, and only after he spoke did he realize it came out in a growl. Around him, people backed away.

"It's too late," the human prince objected. "They've already agreed to this and stepped into the circle. Interfere now, and you're breaking the law."

Keri spun on Benedict. "We will have words on this later," he said through gritted teeth. "And if she dies-"

"I do not take kindly to threats," the blonde man shot back.

"No one is making any threats," Ambassador Sakari said. "But keeping this from us was, at the very least, a gross oversight. Some of my people will take this as willful deception, and an insult."

A flare of blue drew Keri's attention back to the duel, and he gripped the haft of his spear tightly because he couldn't do anything else. He hadn't realized how ignorant and foolish the human prince would be.

The two girls were now encircled by a ring of blue fire, and everyone else had cleared the area. At a call of 'Begin," both of them moved. The princess raised her wands and began to chant, building her spell piece by piece. The half-blood girl, on the other hand, immediately slammed the butt of her staff down onto the sand, speaking no words at all.

Ice gathered beneath her feet, lifting her above the strand even as it began to wrap around her body. "Contingent spells," Keri muttered. "A bit of magic. Your daughter has no idea what she's gotten into, does she, Your Highness?"

In the space of a single breath and exhalation, the shape of the white-haired girl's intent had become clear to everyone watching. Glittering ice coalesced around her into the shape of a delicate rosebud, the petals tightly closed, rising up the beach on a slender, thorned vine. Every leaf, thorn, and petal was shaped perfectly.

A bolt of lightning fell from the sky, striking the rose of ice. Keri blinked away dark spots in his vision - had the girl survived? He craned his neck forward, trying to get a view of what was happening, but a cloud of steam boiled out from the point of impact, and he could only glimpse shadows of shapes.

"There!" Ambassador Sakari said, pointing. A woman's shape rose from the sand, three or four yards distant from the sculpture of ice. The girl - Livara, she'd said? - must have caught the lightning strike with her flower, and then ducked out and circled around.

The princess screamed the same invocation a second time, with no variation whatsoever, and a second bolt of lightning fell from overhead. This time, it hit the girl directly, with nothing to shield her.

"If that girl is dead," Keri repeated, but before he could finish, Princess Milisant screamed.

"Get it off me!" She bent down to tug at coils of icy roots, wrapped around her feet and calves. "It's freezing!"

☙

"We know that when lightning strikes the ice," Liv had explained, that afternoon, "the heat melts my walls so quickly that a lot of steam is released. At that moment, she won't be able to see me clearly."

"You're going to count on that to avoid her second strike, or delay it?" Master Grenfell asked, rising from his chair near the fire.

Liv shook her head. "No. I want her distracted long enough that I can catch her and hold her in place. A target, just like I make for Matthew in the practice yard. I'll shape it to look like me, and when she sees it through the cloud of steam, she won't be able to tell the difference. That will draw her second strike, and give me time."

"I thought we said a single intent would be best?" Sidonie said.

"I can't do this with less than two," Liv admitted. "But after the decoy, everything else will come from the initial spell. When I visited Alban Cooper's home with Airis Ka Reimis, he used the roots of the plants in the garden to grab onto my ice and break it apart. I wrote down the invocation he used the moment I was free to. I'm going to take a page from his spellbook, so to speak."

☙

Keri understood the moment he saw the roots.

The rose of ice that had grown from the sand did not exist merely above the beach - but below it, as well. While the human princess had been distracted, the rose's roots had quested forward, digging beneath the sand, and then emerged from beneath her, wrapping around her legs to hold her in place. That meant the half-blood girl - Livara - must still be alive.

Keri glanced at the spot the second bolt of lightning had fallen from the sky. With the steam clearing, what he had assumed to be the girl was revealed as only a statue of ice, now broken off at the waist from the explosion.

The rose-vine flexed, drawing his gaze back, and half a dozen thorns shot off the vine like crossbow bolts, flying across the thirty paces that separated the two girls. Two of the frozen thorns missed, digging furrows into the sand just beyond Princess Milsant, but the other four hit: one took her in the thigh, one in the left arm, and the other two in her chest. The force of the impact broke the roots around her feet, and threw the girl backward onto the sand, where she lay bleeding.

Across the dueling field, the rosebud opened its petals, stretching them down to the sand itself, forming a kind of ramp.

"She never left it," Prince Benedict finally realized. "Where did Julianne find a monster like this?"

The girl held her staff in her left hand, now, and carried a sword of ice in her right, clutched tightly in gloves of white leather. "She planned every step of this," Keri said, a smile curling his lips. She stalked across the sand in the blue light of the dueling circle, hair blown out behind her, and placed the tip of her sword beneath the princess' chin. Though it was not yet winter, snowflakes were drifting down onto the beach from the night sky.

"First blood," she called out. "Unless Mistress Arundell wishes me to continue?"

"The sword," Ambassador Sakari said, and when Keri glanced to his side, he saw the man's face was pale. "She looks just like her. What did she say her name was?"

"Livara Tär Valtteri Kaen Syvä," Keri answered.

"Livara of the Five Blades," the ambassador said. "It's as if a ghost has risen from the grave."

The circle of blue flames died. "The duel is finished," the court mage called out. "Chirurgeons! Attend to the princess!"

The half-blood girl - Livara, Keri reminded himself - stepped back from Milisant Loredan. The blonde girl was no longer moving or making any noise, and he hoped that she wasn't dead. That would only make things more complicated. Prince Benedict scrambled across the beach toward his daughter, while a group of young men and women from the other side of the beach rushed the circle and surrounded Livara in a knot of laughter and congratulations.

"What is this going to mean for us," Keri said, grabbing the ambassador by both shoulders and pulling him close. "Quickly."

"We register a formal complaint that this was kept from us," Sakari said. "We demand an apology. That will put the prince and his people on the defensive. We send a message to House Syvä immediately. Anything they want to do other than apologize, we stall for time and say nothing can be done until a representative of her family is here. She can't be an adult yet, can she?"

"She doesn't look it," Keri said. "Right on the edge, though. If they want to count using human years, she'd certainly qualify under their laws."

"Rust their laws," Sakari swore. "We argue that she's a child and nothing can happen until there's an adult here to take responsibility for her."

"She needs training," Keri pointed out. "If she can do all that with only human teachers-"

"I know. To awaken a word without a teacher," Sakari shook his head. "I can't even imagine how many bad habits they must have taught her."

"I trust you to handle the diplomacy," Keri said, releasing the ambassador from his grasp. "Give me enough time to speak to her without interference from the prince." He turned and strode across the sands, heading straight for the knot of jubilant people that surrounded the girl.

"Livara Tär Valtteri," Keri called ahead as he approached. "Of the House Syvä. Congratulations on your victory."

The crowd parted before him, revealing the girl. She turned toward him, brushing her hair back behind one ear, and their eyes met. Keri stumbled, unable to take a breath, as the memory came back to him at once, in awful, perfect clarity.

Eyes opened, meeting his gaze. They were the blue of the winter sky, cracked over with frost. The delicate lashes put him in mind of a woman, though he could see no other part of her. Her eyes flinched away from him, like an animal who has endured too much pain.

"Who are you?" Keri remembered asking, during the vision.

The only response was the sudden gust of snow, and his world became entirely white.

"I know you," he said now, on the beach. "It was you. You were the one I saw that day."

The girl blinked. "I don't think we've ever met," she said, her voice no longer full of confidence as it had been during the duel, but tremulous, uncertain and fearful. "I - I hope it isn't a problem, what I said. I know you must not believe me, about my father, but-"

"I believe you," Keri said. "Your word is Kel, is it not?"

Livara nodded. Her friends clustered around her, as if they would protect her from him. As if they could have; as if they would ever need to.

"The House of Syvä is descended from Kelris, Vaedic Lord of Cold and Winter," Keri explained. "You have the look of them - the hair and the eyes. You have the word, with no one in the southlands to have taught you. I don't see how you can be anyone but what you claim, and that means you are Vakansa, one of us."

"Free people?" the girl asked, wrinkling her brow. He wondered if she knew how adorable it was.

"The Vaedim called us Cotheeria," Keri explained. "When the war was over, we took a new name to mark a new beginning. To show that we were no longer slaves, we put aside our slave name.

A human boy with dark hair and dark eyes put his hand on Livara's shoulder protectively. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"I am Inkeris ka Ilmari, of the Unconquered House of Bælris," Keri responded. "My friends and family call me Keri," he continued. "You may, as well, Livara."

"Liv," she said. "My friends call me Liv."

"We have a great deal to speak about, Liv," Keri said. "I know you must be tired, but may Ambassador Sakari and I call upon you tomorrow?"

A human woman of middle years, her dark hair bound tightly in a bun, strode forward. "Why don't you bring the ambassador with you to luncheon with us at Acton House," she suggested. "We can speak more then, Inkeri of House Bælris."

"Agreed." Keri nodded, then looked back to the girl. "You did well," he said. "You did your house proud." He allowed himself to meet those winter eyes for a brief moment, and thought he saw a hint of tears there. Then, he spun on his heel and stalked toward where the ambassador was arguing with Prince Benedict.

"Whatever else happens here," Keri promised, his words nothing more than a whisper, "I will protect you."