Mages Must Fall Read online

  Mages Must Fall

  Jeffrey Biles

  Copyright © 2017 by Jeffrey Biles

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  I. Trials

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  II. Training

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  III. Rescues

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  IV. Cat and Mouse

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  V. War

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  The next one’s coming soon

  About the Author

  Part I

  Trials

  1

  Knives, daggers, leather jerkins- Terrance surveyed the new shipment. It was a bit outside their normal range, but Wile’s general store provided every legal good that the people wanted, and recent crime spikes in the area meant that the people’s tastes were changing.

  “A crime spike,” said Wile, “or the people making these things have paid the town criers to emphasize the crimes that do happen.”

  “You’re too cynical,” said Terrance.

  “I’m a businessman,” said Wile. “I have to be able to see the tricks. You’ll need to start seeing them as well, if you ever want to start up your own shop. Not that I’m suggesting that. I’d say you have… twenty more years here training.”

  “So, why did demand for apples go up last year?”

  “Conspiracy of Orchards. Convinced people that apples are better for your health than the other fruits.”

  Terrance laughed, then focused on finding a good place for the larger knives. There wasn’t a great place for them- no weapons section of the shop, since no one outside the Warriors' Guild was allowed bows and arrows. He eventually put them in “accessories”, next to the belts and the money pouches. The jerkins went next to the raincoats.

  With the big items in place he went to the back of the shop, leaned against the counter next to Wile.

  “You should let Anne move in,” said Wile. “Make it official. Maybe have a kid.”

  Terrance laughed. “It’s your basement we’d be filling up.”

  “That basement could hold ten people.” Wile faked a stern face. “If you don’t start filling it up, I’ll have to hire other apprentices and make you all compete.”

  “The other apprentices would slow me down way more than living with Anne, and they wouldn’t be nearly as pleasant.”

  “Then it’s decided. We’ll just have to soundproof the walls so that crying babies don’t chase away all the customers.”

  With Wile’s help, Terrance thought he could be ready soon. After all, he was already nineteen, and Anne was just a year younger. The old-fashioned folks like Terrance’s mother thought they should have started a family years ago, but it worked differently for merchants- especially those like Wile who weren’t satisfied with selling just one category of item. You waited a bit longer to get settled, the local artisans and foreign shipments being even more fickle than the rains, and then once you were settled you got busy and made up for lost time.

  Terrance’s brother Aaron was a special case. Their father had died seven months before Terrance was born, and so Aaron had been forced to provide for all three of them until Terrance had gotten the apprenticeship with Wile five years ago. Now that Terrance was bringing in an income and had a place to stay, what was Aaron’s holdup? Maybe he knew something Terrance didn’t.

  “Hey, is everything organized enough at the shop for now? There’s an errand I want to run.”

  “I don’t think Anne’s home right now,” said Wile.

  “I want to talk to my family.”

  “Sure,” Wile waved him away. “Organize the rest this afternoon, and then you’re seeing Anne tonight.”

  “Pushy.”

  He smiled. “I just want you as dependent on this shop as I am.”

  Terrance headed for the door, then on the way grabbed an apple from a shelf and spun away like a thief.

  Wile laughed. “Not like that.”

  And then Terrance was in the street. The midday sun shone bright and clear, replacing the relative coolness of Wile’s shop into a comforting spring warmth. It never got too cold or too warm in Nordheim. Not like the snows near the Ostenberge Mountains, or the heat in the Southern Wastes. There were just enough seasonal changes to provide a nice variety and rhythm, further tempered by the waters of the river that ran from east to west through town.

  Terrance walked east along the road by the northern shore of the river for a while before crossing. He could have crossed earlier, but he didn’t like walking between the river and the walls of the core — it felt as if he was getting squeezed and pushed into the river. Going past the inner wall into the core was possible, but out of the way, and he didn’t like being so close to all the official buildings.

  Ten leisurely minutes later he crossed the river on one of the Mage-built bridges — high enough for trade ships to pass under it — and started heading south. His family’s house was in a poor but respectable part of town, close to the southeastern shantytown though not yet consumed by it. Thanks to Wile and the apprenticeship, Terrance should be able to get them moved north before things started breaking down too badly. There was smoke in the distance- probably some tenement had caught fire.

  As he got closer, Terrance became more worried. And when he turned the last corner his fears were confirmed.

  It was his house that was on fire.

  Terrance began sprinting, scanning the crowd as he went. Where were his brother and mother?

  He was nearly to the front of the gathered crowd before he saw them emerge from the building, his mother limp in Aaron’s arms. Aaron was unharmed and glowing with a glorious light.

  Terrance burst through the ranks of the crowd and ran to them. He felt sick because he knew what was coming.

  Miracles did not go unpunished, and Mages always found their targets.

  “She’s safe,” said Aaron. “She’s singed, but she’s safe.”

  “You..”

  “I couldn’t not save her, Terrance. It was the only way.”

  “They’re going to come for you.”

  Aaron nodded as he placed their mother on the ground. “You have to take care of her now.”

  Terrance ripped off his shirt and tore strips from it, using them as bandages for his mother. Aaron helped apply them although his shirt had burned off in the fire.

  “She’s going to make it,” said Terrance.

  “Then it was worth it.”

  “There’s still time. Maybe you can run.”

  “You know as well as I do that that won’t work.”

  An Inquisitor burst through the crowd, blue Mage Cloak flowing around him, sword in hand.

  Aaron embraced Terrance for one last time, then stood up to meet his fate.

  The Inquisitor pushed Aaron down onto the ground, tripping him so that his he
ad knocked violently against the cobblestones. It would have been a concussion, had he lived long enough for that to matter. The Inquisitor put a knee on Aaron’s stomach, then pulled out a smaller knife and started sawing through the shoulder joint. Blood spattered, rolled off the blue cloak while sticking to everything else.

  Aaron was usually strong, could usually put on a brave face and suffer silently. That’s what he had done for years. So he didn’t scream, he didn’t moan, he didn’t whine- he roared. Powerlessly, he roared.

  The Inquisitor didn’t like the sound any better than the rest of the crowd and knocked Aaron in the head with the butt of the knife. After that sickening crunch, the loudest sound was metal through flesh.

  The procedure was gruesome. Aaron’s limbs were each removed by cutting through the shoulder and hip joints, and then they were switched around. His right arm where his left leg had been, his left leg where his right arm had been, but in each case leaving about an inch of space. The same switch happened with the left arm and right leg.

  After that the Inquisitor pulled out spikes, like gigantic nails, and tried to pin each limb to the street. He aimed for the space between the cobblestones, but it was hard to aim through a limb. Nearly half the strikes met with hard and ungiving cobblestone, making spike and limb both bounce with each strike of the hammer. The Inquisitor cursed. All the while Aaron’s limbs kept getting further shredded by each attempt. One of the spikes eventually broke, leading to another round of cursing from the Inquisitor.

  Terrance didn’t dare intervene. That would just get him killed too.

  No one messed with a Mage.

  No one could mess with a Mage.

  Instead he finished bandaging his mother and slowly, laboriously, began to carry her.

  2

  Terrance didn’t know where the nearest Healers' Guild building was. He was healthy enough, and poor enough, to not visit them very often. Their buildings were normal height, not like the towering Mage-built structures in the inner core, so he couldn’t find them at a glance.

  After walking several blocks away from the Inquisitor he decided to dare call attention to himself.

  “Healers!” he yelled into the crowded street. “Healers!”

  Most hurried about and ignored him, but a gruff greying man stopped to stare him down.

  “Do you know where the healers are?”

  The man grunted. “Come this way.”

  Terrance followed the man down a dark alley. Not because it was smart, but because his arms were tiring and he didn’t know what else to do. Smart or not, it was the right decision; on the other side of the alley was the comforting sign of the Healers' Guild.

  “Thanks,” said Terrance.

  “A sick mom won’t get you in.” The man looked him over, judging. “I’ll help with the money.”

  Once they got inside the building, things went by in a blur. Two men grabbed Terrance’s mother and hauled her away. He tried to run after her, but the man blocked his path with an arm. “Let them work.”

  There was a woman up front with lots of records, lots of ledgers, and a big smile. The man handed her several large coins — nearly a week’s worth of shipments for Wile’s shop — and she scratched some new lines onto a record and a ledger.

  Then the two of them were politely pushed out of the building. “You can see her once we’ve done the initial healing.”

  Outside it was still bright and sunny, and the crowds still jostled. The smoke had dissipated.

  “Thanks for helping,” said Terrance.

  “Yea,” said the man. He looked thoughtful. “A parting bit of advice.”

  “Yea?”

  “Apply to the Mages' Guild. Before an accident happens. It would be a shame to see you go to waste.”

  The man walked away. He was long gone by the time the relevant questions started forming in Terrance’s mind.

  Terrance entered the Healers' Guild again, but they turned him away. “It will be at least several hours until you can see her,” said the smiling woman. “Maybe a day.”

  It was no use just waiting around. In fact, waiting around would be the worst thing he could do for himself. He trudged back to Wile’s shop and immediately set about organizing the rest of the new shipment.

  After the daggers and leather jerkins, the rest of it was pretty normal. Lots of cloth, various household supplies, fruit, flour. No meat- that was one item that Wile had decided to leave to specialist shops.

  “What the hell did Aaron say?” asked Wile. “You’re like a tornado of sadness.”

  Terrance desperately sorted and counted fruit, trying not to think about anything else.

  “Not everyone’s meant for marrying,” said Wile. “You are, but maybe Aaron is more… wait, is that blood on your shirt?”

  “Aaron’s dead.” Terrance crushed a kiwifruit in his hand. It was overripe anyways. Breakage.

  Maybe that’s what Aaron was to the Mages' Guild. Acceptable losses. Breakage.

  “What happened?”

  “He saved our mother from a fire. Committed a miracle to do it.”

  “Oh no…” Wile hugged him, and Terrance let himself be enveloped.

  After a bit they heard a customer come in.

  “Get yourself downstairs,” said Wile. “We’ll talk later. Until then, there’s a shop to run.”

  Wile couldn’t move fast physically, but his emotions zipped smoothly from sad and supportive to cheery and helpful, the perfect shopkeeper. Terrance’s emotions had more… momentum.

  He wouldn’t be talking to Anne tonight until he was more composed, and he certainly wouldn’t be talking about their future. Frederick he could talk to. Frederick should know. What were best friends for?

  Terrance took the first step up the stairs then turned back. He could tell them all tomorrow. Or get Wile to tell them.

  He lay down in the bed, curled up, and tried not to feel anything.

  The Healers' Guild let him in the next day.

  “She’s got the best care money can buy,” the smiling woman said. “You’re lucky to have such friends.”

  Terrance didn’t care who the gruff old man was, and they certainly weren’t friends. He just wanted to see his mother.

  She was awake and already looking much better, kept in a clean plush bed, fresh bandages applied over some sort of ointment. Happy, almost. “I’m afraid I missed all the excitement,” she said. “The smoke must have gotten to me, and then I woke up here. The people here are very nice.”

  She took a sip of juice from a cup at her bedside.

  “Where’s your brother? He was out on an errand when our little mishap occurred, thank goodness. He…”

  Terrance’s face must have told the story, because she stopped talking. “He saved you from the fire,” said Terrance.

  “Did he commit…” Her voice trembled.

  “A miracle. He committed a miracle.”

  “No,” she muttered. “No, no, no…”

  There was no purpose in telling her the details. Everyone knew the vague outline of what the Mages' Guild did and that was enough.

  “Not again,” she muttered. She threw off the covers and pushed her legs to the side of the bed and tried to get up. It didn’t work. She ended up tumbling onto the floor, landing on a burned area. She yelped, then started crying. “Not again…”

  A man in healer’s garb rushed in to pick her up and get her back to the bed. “It’s okay, it’s okay… we’re here to help. Running away won’t make your problems disappear.”

  Another man came to grab Terrance. “I’m sorry sir, you’re upsetting the patient. We’re going to have to ask you to leave.”

  Terrance looked to his mother, but she was busy being manhandled into the bed, muttering and sobbing, in absolutely no condition to speak up for him. Before he knew it he was once again outside the Healers' Guild.

  He would try again tomorrow. There was a whole day ahead of him.

  He ended up back in bed.

  “What’s y
our plan?” asked Wile.

  Terrance moaned. “I think I’m going to stay here forever.”

  “For fuck’s sake… come on up and do some math for the shop. It’s always a nice tranquilizer.”

  “I still haven’t told anyone else.”

  “Yeah, I figured. I’ll send out a message to Anne and Frederick with the news.”

  “You’re a good man, Wile.”

  “And you’re not helping yourself at all. Should I go get the books ready for you, or should I come pull you out of bed myself?”

  Terrance groaned and kicked off the covers. He rolled back and forth a couple times before making it all the way out of the bed, and even then he landed in an unsteady crouch.

  By the time he made it up the stairs and got his blood flowing again it was a little better. After running the numbers for the last two weeks he felt better yet.

  When you’re focused on something, there’s not much room in your brain for sadness.

  After that he tackled one of his favorite side projects - predicting demand for the next six months and predicting any storms or guild negotiations that could interrupt supply. You can focus on running the past numbers, but you can obsess about predicting the future.

  Obsession is the world’s best anti-depressant.

  The sun shone in the cool early-morning air. For a while he could forget his troubles- simply forget, instead of crowding them out.

  It didn’t last.