Guild Mage: Apprentice

Three days after the crown forces' failed attempt to take the wall, Liv was exhausted. Since killing Baron Fane and defeating Duke Richard, she'd had to endure the pounding of enemy siege engines day and night. Since killing so many soldiers with a single spell, Rose hadn't been sleeping well, often jerking awake from her nightmares in a panic. It might have been possible for Liv to calm her, and for both of them to get used to the shuddering impacts when enormous stones hit the wall, if not for the fact that Benedict's engineers occasionally changed their angle just enough to lob a stone over the wall.

The first time it had happened, a tent and half a dozen Whitehill soldiers had been crushed in the middle of the night, and the screaming panic that had caused roused her from a restless sleep. Liv and Rose had tumbled out of their bed on the second floor of the Sign of the Terrapin, still half wrapped in sheets, to find the two rows of tents closest to the walls all being struck by the illumination of Sevalet-conjured orbs of sunlight.

"Their range is longer than we'd estimated," her great-uncle Eilis had explained, when the two young women found him overseeing the move. He, Baron Henry, and Inkeris had worked up a rough rotation so that one of them was awake and on the wall at all times, so that the others could rest. Each commander was always accompanied by a rotating staff of experienced knights, Elden soldiers, and often Baron Corbett, who had a particular knack for the complicated mathematics involved in targeting the return volleys of their own siege machines.

"It's simple enough to solve," Eilis grumbled. "We simply clear the space of our people. But it is a blow to morale, and I suspect that's all the enemy commander wanted, in the first place."

"You didn't see this coming?" Rose asked. There were dark circles under her eyes.

Eilis ka Väinis shot her a look. "Dā is not like reading a book," he told her. "Perhaps once, when the Lady of Time lived, but I suspect not even then. Confluences are the easiest to perceive - moments when a single chance or decision has wide-ranging impacts. The death of half a dozen men during a siege when hundreds have already perished is, unfortunately, little more than a footnote."

He'd been irritable since his daughter was wounded, and Liv couldn't blame him. She spent nearly all of her time on the wall, when she wasn't eating or sleeping, but she had made time to visit her cousin Miina at the healer's tents, set all the way at the back of the northern lines, behind every rank of tent, every line of horses.

There, a score of healers from Lendh ka Dakruim did their best to tend to the constant flow of wounded men and women from the wall. They had little enough aid - only the chirurgeon from Ashford, the one who'd come with Sidonie's father, a few healers who had arrived with the Eld, and every midwife or herbalist in the Aspen Valley. She looked for Auntie Rhea, but the woman must have been either too old to come, or she'd passed in the time Liv had been gone. If they held the pass, she resolved to visit that cottage in Fairford and find out which.

"You won't hear my beautiful singing voice anytime soon," Miina tär Eilis joked, her voice a mere whisper, when Liv sat down next to her bed and took her hand. Liv's cousin's blue hair was unbound and spilled across her pillow, and her neck was wrapped in bandages. Ghveris, who traded off guarding Liv with Kaija, had stationed himself outside the tent.

"I'm just glad you're alive," Liv said. "I've only just met you, and if Arjun hadn't been right there - and if you hadn't cast that spell - I'd have lost you before ever getting a chance to actually know you. What was that?"

"My father calls it a stasis bubble," Miina whispered, and Liv had to lean forward to hear her clearly. "Don't expect anyone but the two of us to pull it off, though," she said, and then fell into a fit of coughing. Liv grabbed a cotton cloth that was hanging at the bedside, and helped the other woman sit up. When the immediate spasms had passed, the white cloth was flecked with dried clots of blood, and Miina beckoned toward a nearby pot of tea. Liv poured her a cup, which she was surprised to find steaming.

Only after Miina had wet her throat was she able to speak again. "Apologies. There's all sorts of blood and trinity knows what else that's gotten where it shouldn't. Anyway, a stasis bubble's tough to pull off. If you don't anchor it just right, the world moves on without you, and you'll find yourself somewhere out among the stars. And dead - very, very dead."

Liv remembered the sight of their world, turning beneath the ring amidst an endless expanse of darkness, and resolved that she wouldn't be attempting that spell until she'd had a few years to study the word of time - preferably uninterrupted by any wars. "Wait," she said, as a thought occurred to her. "Does that mean you could use it to kill someone?"

"If you really, truly hate them," Miina said, and settled back into her pillow.

Liv had thought that her cousin was out of the fighting for good, but as the days dragged on under constant bombardment, she began to doubt herself. If the siege lasted for weeks or months, Miina might well make it back up to the wall before everything was said and done.

And yet, over the course of three days, Genevieve Arundell had yet to reveal herself at all - and rather than a relief, the enemy archmage's absence was like a looming shadow that cast every moment of the day into a gloom of anticipation.

"They have the numbers," Keri explained on the second evening, as the very last touches of flame rimmed the western mountains, and the first stars sparkled in a darkening, purple sky. "Everything they've thrown at us over the past few days has been levies. Benedict doesn't care if he loses hundreds or thousands of farmers - but every one of our Eld who they take with them brings the balance of magic a bit closer to even."

"And then there's the issue of mana," Arjun pointed out. He'd made a point to be on the wall with his friends as much as he could, after what had happened to Miina. The healer's eyes constantly darted around in search of the next ambush. Liv had thought about trying to talk to him a dozen times, but couldn't ever find the words. The plain fact of it was that Arjun couldn't possibly be everywhere, at all times. Sooner or later, someone was going to get hurt while he was absent, and she was afraid that he'd blame himself when that happened.

"We have a supply line to Al'Fenthia, but there's simply no way to feed mana-enriched meals to over five hundred Eld for every meal - not without a lot more wagons than we have," Keri admitted. "We can't manage it in Varuna, either, but there we're stationing people inside the shoals of rifts."

"It would be over two-thousand, two hundred pounds of food every day," Sidonie pointed out. Liv couldn't help but smile: if there was a calculation to be done, her friend couldn't resist doing it. "That's a wagon from Al'Fenthia every day, just in food, over nearly fifty miles of muddy spring roads. Call it two to three days travel. We essentially need half a dozen wagons, with the draft horses to pull them, in constant rotation between the pass and Bald Peak. If they slip another group of raiders through the mountains to hit our supply lines -"

"Then we're in big trouble," Keri confirmed.

"And this is an operation Airis had to keep up for weeks, or months," Liv concluded. "For as long as they sit there lobbing rocks at us."

Every evening, before retiring for bed, Rose would use every ring of mana she had left to repair and reinforce the wall. It left her exhausted and wrung out, which was why Liv had insisted on that particular timing. Frequently, her lover would collapse into their bed with her boots still on, and Liv had gotten used to undressing Rose without any help or cooperation. Neither of them had either the energy, or the desire, to do anything but pass out next to each other.

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And all the while, Liv felt worse and worse herself.

She was constantly tired, dragging herself between the inn, the wall, the healing tents, and back again. Her joints ached, from her knees and elbows to her hips. When she stood up from bed, or a chair at meal times, or even just took a step after standing still for too long, a wave of vertigo and nausea never failed to manifest. It was all Liv could do to keep her stomach from emptying itself all over the stones of the ramparts. Sometimes, she even had difficulty catching her breath.

Still, she forced herself to the top of the wall every morning, because any day might be the day that Genevieve Arundell showed herself - and as determined as Duchess Julianne seemed to be to face the archmage, Liv simply didn't trust that her adopted mother would be able to win that fight on her own.

☙

On that morning of the third day after the initial crown attempt to seize the battlements, Liv was accompanied by Kaija, rather than Ghveris. The latest wagons from Al'Fenthia had contained ammunition extracted from the Tomb of Celris, and now that it had finally reached them, the war-machine wanted to make certain he was well supplied for the day's fighting.

Henry sat at the command post in his wheeled chair, with a cup of morning tea cradled in his hands and a blanket over his lap. Even late into spring, mornings in the valley were still cool and crisp. Sir Hardwin of Ashford stood watch at Henry's shoulder, but the knight caught Liv's eye, bowed, and retreated several steps when she approached.

Liv settled herself into a camp chair, consisting of a folding wood frame and canvas fabric, and Kaija poured her a cup from the nearby pot before joining Hardwin.

"You're awake early," Henry observed, after a moment.

Liv shrugged; it had been the pain in her joints that made it impossible for her to sleep any longer, but she'd be dead before she admitted it. "I have the feeling Genevieve is going to do something, sooner or later," she said, instead. "And I want to be here when it happens."

"Lady Rosamund still asleep?"

"I thought I'd let her recover a bit more," Liv confirmed.

"I'm not certain the walls would still be standing without her efforts," Henry said. "It's good that you brought her."

"That isn't why she's here," Liv said.

"I know." Henry took another sip of tea. "But she's proved herself day after day, and I don't think anyone who's seen what she's done would ever raise a word of objection to your... arrangement. Still, when this is all over, you're going to need to consider a husband."

Liv was shaking her head before the baron even finished speaking.

"I'm not trying to start a fight with you," Henry said, with a sigh. "There are plenty of powerful men who keep mistresses, Liv. No one would object to that."

"Rose would," she shot back. "Anyway, you have Matthew and Triss." Yet even as she formed the thought aloud, Liv knew the problem with that answer.

"It is becoming incredibly clear to anyone who can put aside their own hopes and feelings that Beatrice will never give my son an heir," Henry said. "But as I said, I am not here to get into an argument with you. It is, in fact, the last thing I wanted. I shouldn't have spoken at all. The truth is, Liv, that I wanted to apologize."

"Apologize for what?" Liv asked.

"When you were young, I see now that I treated you unfairly," Baron Henry admitted. "I thought it a stain on the honor of my house to have a bastard working in our kitchens, and I made no secret of it. And all the while, I was not too proud to wed a royal bastard. What seemed a gulf of difference at the time now seems to me mere hypocrisy. And I do not think that I have ever adequately apologized to you."

Liv's thoughts spun for a moment. It was true that Henry had only warmed to her over time, while Julianne had been kind almost immediately. She'd simply thought that was the sort of man the baron was - he'd always treated Matthew with the sort of love any father had for their son, while keeping her at something of a distance - even after the adoption.

"Thank you," Liv said, because she wasn't certain what else there was to do. She took a sip of the tea, and was grateful for it, because it gave her something other to do than speak.

☙

By midmorning, it was clear the crown forces were mounting another attempt to gain the top of the wall. After days of bombardment, they sent another mass of levies marching out, spreading in a wide series of columns to either side of the road.

Behind the levies came hundreds of infantry in the uniforms of the new royal army, led by knights in their antique armor of enchanted steel plate. Another two rams, each fashioned from stout wood and capped with a head of steel, were carried toward the gate, and long siege ladders were passed forward over the heads of the marching men.

It was no quick thing to set the assault into motion, and as the enemy came on Liv's friends gathered atop the wall to watch the enemy approach. Kaija and Ghveris both waited, one to either side of Liv, for another attempt by the enemy mages. Liv had given up her camp chair for Julianne, who now sat at Henry's side. Master Grenfell exchanged quiet words with Master Fulke, and Bryn stood halfway between the Ashford court mage and the other former students from Coral Bay.

Rose, Keri and Arjun were close enough that Liv could speak with them comfortably, while Sidonie waited at her father's side. Sohvis, the last Liv had seen, was somewhere with the troops from Mountain Home - and she suspected that Keri would be joining them once the attack on the walls truly began.

"Kazimir," Henry called out. The baron had been watching the advancing line carefully, and evidently the crown troops had crossed some marking point known only to him. "The final load of mana-stone is prepared?"

Master Grenfell turned away from where he'd been speaking with Fulke. "It is."

"Send it off, then," Henry commanded, and one of his knights dashed off to give the order.

Once again, the catapults along the wall flung their load of enchanted mana stone into the air. The white fragments arced out over the battlefield, and then descended, dropping down behind the advancing front line of the crown forces. Half a dozen panes of blue light, striated with gold veins, flickered into existence, catching the missiles just before they exploded into bursts of flame.

And yet, not every fragment of mana stone was caught by the enemy mages. Enough skittered off the mana shields and fell into the advancing columns that, when they ignited, flinging jets of fire in every direction, dozens of soldiers died.

No one, no matter how brave, could maintain discipline while on fire.

The more clear-headed among them flung themselves to the ground and rolled, in an attempt to extinguish the flames, while those who panicked ran, arms pinwheeling in desperation, crashing into their friends and comrades while they screamed.

And yet, the enemy came on, in numbers too great to be broken so easily. At Henry's command, the catapults were loaded again, this time with ordinary stone. The Whitehill, Ashford, and Corbett soldiers fired their crossbows in volleys, while the Elden archers held aside their magic in favor of bows for the moment.

Men and women dropped to the ground and stayed there, dead or dying, all along the road and to either side. The court mages that had come with their barons used their mana shields to avert the worst of the bombardment, but they could not be everywhere, and their mana reserves were not inexhaustible.

This time, instead of striking all at once for the center of the wall, the enemy sent their magic-users to either side, hitting the left and right flanks. It happened all at once, with well-orchestrated coordination. Disks of mana lifted a group of mages, barons and knights to the top of the ramparts, while common men raised siege ladders and began to climb.

Liv saw a storm of silver shards to her left, and a flock of birds descend to her right. There were knights on either side, and where the blades on the left opened gaping, bleeding wounds at the slightest cut, those opposite them melted armor. She hesitated - she knew that she was supposed to hold back, but what if the wall fell in the meantime?

"Baron Corbett, to the right," Henry ordered. "Lady Ashford, to the left."

Sidonie met Liv's eyes for a single moment, and then hurried after her father. Bryn rushed to the other side, with Master Fulke at her heels. All along the wall, the Eld began to unleash the magic they'd reserved, sending blasts of light or twining vines against the Lucanian knights. The men and women of House Däivi, rather than engaging directly, used their magic to rot away siege ladders, while Whitehill, Ashford, and Corbett guards protected them.

"With your permission," Kazimir Grenfell said, and Henry nodded.

Liv was confused for a moment, and then understood when he hurried after Bryn and Master Fulke. He'd already lost his nephew; she couldn't blame him.

Overhead, dark clouds had begun to gather.

"Henry," Julianne said. "There's someone else here. Someone's fighting me."

Lightning stabbed down from the sky - but this time, it struck not the enemy ranks, but instead the wall itself. Chunks of rock were flung twenty feet into the air from the explosion, and the smoking bodies of men were left blackened and charred, halfway between where Master Grenfell and Bryn had just joined battle against Baron Seton and where Liv and her friends stood next to Henry and Julianne.

A flock of birds descended on the scorched stone where the lightning had struck, and collapsed into a single form - an old woman that Liv had seen only once before.

The dowager queen of Lucania stood atop the wall.