Guild Mage: Apprentice

Around Liv, the battlements descended into a swirl of chaos.

Spells lit the faces of fighting men and women with the glow of shining blue mana, the white glow of concentrated sunlight, or the ruddy orange cast of flames. Incantations, half-heard, rose above the screams of the wounded and dying. For a hundred feet in either direction from where Baron Henry held command, the stones grew slick with blood, and struggling men and women slipped and fell.

Dā shifted somewhere deep inside her, and for an endless moment, Liv had time to see a dozen struggles, with life and death hanging on the edge of a blade or the tip of a wand in each. There was Merek Sherard, the spiteful boy who'd broken her arm, with a rapier in one hand and a wand in the other. A flock of birds soared down from the sky at his command, diving toward Sidonie and her father. Liv's friend caught them with a mana shield, and after half the flock had fallen to the stones with broken necks, Baron Corbett sent an entire load of rough stones, stacked to be loaded into catapults, flying toward the boy.

A man in Arundell colors surged up and down the line, flashing between one soldier and another, his sword sending sprays of blood in every direction as corpses piled around him. Liv's great uncle, Eilis, surrounded him with a circle of House Däivi soldiers, and the man stumbled. When he raised his sword, surrounded, he only moved as quickly as any other warrior on the wall, and the Elden warriors mobbed him.

Keri's companion, Linnea, used a gust of wind to sweep a half dozen crown infantry off the wall; they fell into the waiting maw of a conjured plant, much like those Liv had seen at the Garden of Thorns. It was clear to her that the wall would have already fallen if not for Elden magic - but there was a limit to how many spells most soldiers could cast. After four or five magical attacks, their mana reserves ran dry, and they were reduced to fighting against superior numbers with only swords and polearms.

Baron Ward and his daughter, Celestria, whispered incantations, and a dozen Whitehill men dropped their weapons, dazed and besotted. A line of crossbowmen knelt behind them, loosed at a single command, and cut the enchanted soldiers down in a single volley. At Liv's side, Ghveris shifted, then stepped toward the wards. The barrels on his shoulder began to roar.

A ring of lightning erupted from the dowager queen; as one, Bryn, Master Grenfell, and Court Mage Fulke summoned panes of mana upon which the crackling spell shattered. In the next moment, they'd each dropped their defenses and pressed their own assault in turn: gouts of fire, from the two Grenfells, and knives of coherent mana, from Fulke. The old woman shattered into a flock of birds, which winged off in every direction. A handful dropped, burnt, to the stones, but the rest descended on the three mages, pecking at their faces.

As Liv watched, Fulke screamed, blood streaming from his eyes, arms waving in a futile attempt to bat away the birds. The court mage stumbled between two merlons and then, overbalanced by his own girth, fell from the wall, screaming.

Grenfell, on the other hand, shouted an incantation, and a wave of fire burst outward from his body, charring half a dozen birds to ashes in an instant. Bryn surrounded herself in a globe of shimmering, coherent mana, but Liv could see blood streaking her face.

"I need to stop the dowager," Liv declared, turning to Julianne, and time seemed to reassert itself.

The duchess, standing with one hand on the back of Henry's chair, cast a single glance to where Grenfell fought alone. Liv saw the calculation flash through her adopted mother's eyes: Kazimir Grenfell had never been a fighter. He was a scholar, and his shallow mana capacity had always been a weakness. It wasn't a fight he could win.

"Go," Julianne shouted back. "Finish her as quickly as you can."

Liv drew her wand and ran left, unsurprised when Keri and Kaija fell in at her side, then lunged ahead. With spears flashing, they cleared a way for her through the melee. An enormous boulder, flung from one of the enemy siege machines, barrelled toward them, but before Liv could even react, it dissolved into a fine rain of sand, and she knew that she had Rosemund to thank for it.

By the time she skidded to a stop next to her old teacher, the cloud of birds was drawing together, and condensed once again into an old woman, her back hunched over, clutching a cane to support herself.

"Are you alright?" Liv asked, reaching out to steady Grenfell by his shoulder. His face was streaked with blood from where the talons of the raptors had torn him.

"I won't lose any more of my family today," the old man growled. "Get Bryn away from here." He raised his staff, muttering under his breath, and conjured a whirlwind of fire that spun around the dowager queen. It took a moment for Liv to understand what he was doing. When Grenfell had flung a wave of fire at the old woman, she'd dissolved into a cloud of birds, and it seemed that losing one or two of them didn't seriously impair her. So, he was surrounding her - if she tried the same trick again, none of the flock would be able to escape. The tactic also gave the old woman limited time to respond: the fire would be consuming all the air, and she'd quickly find herself unable to breathe.

Unfortunately, from the way Grenfell was staggering, Liv doubted that he had another spell left in him after this. "Kaija!" she shouted. "Get Bryn out of here!"

Liv had just enough time to catch a glimpse of the armorer kicking a corpse off her spear, then dashing across the battlement to where the fallen woman lay on the stones, her mana shield exhausted. Keri, in the meantime, had fought his way to her side, and readied his spear.

A gout of blood fountained up from inside the whirlwind of flame, then broke into a score of raptors, which swooped toward one of the undamaged stone merlons. There, they reassembled into the old woman, clutching her cane.

"Lucet Aiveh Trei Æ'Mania," Milicent Loredan croaked, and three bolts of lightning stabbed down from the sky.

Liv inhaled, and frost cracked out along the stones. The bolt of lightning that came for her simply ceased to be when it touched her authority. The second bolt stabbed for Keri - or, more accurately, for the space he had been standing an instant before. The blue light of mana shone from Keri's eyes, Liv saw, just as it did from Beatrice's when she used her family's word of power.

Master Grenfell raised his staff against the third bolt, and a pane of mana flickered into existence. It must have been the very last of his mana, but for a heartbeat Liv thought that it would be enough. Then, the mana shield shattered, and a twisting column of light too bright to watch connected her teacher with the clouds overhead.

Kazimir Grenfell was thrown backward, and lay, still and smoking, on the stones of the battlement.

Liv heard someone release a wordless cry of pain and rage, and only afterward discovered the voice was hers. Six swords coalesced, hanging to either side of her, and then shot forward in a wave, intent upon piercing the old woman's heart. Six birds fell to the stones, transfixed.

"If I kill enough of those things, sooner or later you won't have enough to come back," Liv shouted, stalking forward.

The old woman's laugh came from behind her, and Liv spun around to see that she'd reformed. "At a field of slaughter like this, you'll run out of mana long before I run out of materials," she called back. To Liv's disgust, blood began to bubble up from every corpse on the wall. It flowed across the stones in rivulets, rose into the air and hung as globes of wine-dark red, and then floated toward the dowager queen.

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"It's you, then," Keri shouted, falling into a spear guard to Liv's right, just a step ahead of her. "The cult of Ractia here in Lucania, in Sherard lands. It goes back to you."

Liv's swords hovered in a circle, each pointed at the dowager from a different angle. "We kill her together," she told Keri, and then met the former queen's eyes. "We should have pushed for you to be executed all those years ago. Exile wasn't enough."

"And if I'd realized how much trouble you would end up being, I would have gone into that alley myself, rather than trust mercenaries to kill you," Milicent spat back. She swung her cane up and stabbed forward with the tip, and Liv could just make out the click of a button. A bolt of lightning erupted from the tip of the cane, but Luc wasn't going to win the old woman this fight.

Liv caught the bolt with her Authority, gathered it in her left hand as a sparking ball, and then threw it back. The dowager batted the lightning aside with her cane, and it hit the side of the wall, exploding against a merlon and sending a shower of rock down toward the ground on the north side of the fortification.

Keri, in the meanwhile, had lunged forward, the blade of his spear glowing, and made a cut that forced the old woman to dissolve once again into a cloud of birds. Liv watched, and gathered her swords. The moment the dowager reformed, she would -

"Henry!"

Liv spun about, looking back to where Julianne and Henry held the command, and it almost killed her. Julianne clutched her husband's head in her arms, and the shaft of a crossbow bolt protruded from his eye.

"Liv!" Keri shouted in warning.

Lightning blasted down from the clouds toward Liv while she wasn't paying attention, moving too quickly for her to possibly respond to it. Beneath her armor, the enchantment on a single button, prepared so many months ago at Coral Bay, activated, deflecting the blast off to one side, where it barreled through a knot of fighting troops and tore out the top of the wall in an explosive blast that carried screaming men and women out into the air, where they fell into the advancing army below.

With a wordless cry of frustration, Liv turned away from the sight of Julianne's grief-stricken face, and swept her swords at the dowager again. She wasn't actually trying to catch the old woman, at this point; she merely wanted to press Milicent hard enough to prevent her from casting.

"Dāet Aiveh Ais'Deris Senic," Liv said, stabbing her wand forward at the moment the dowager reformed her body. In the space between one breath and the next, Milicent Loredan's cane rotted away to dust in her hand. The old woman stumbled at the unexpected shift in her balance, and Keri was there, cutting at her and forcing her to dissolve into a cloud of birds again.

They could do this, Liv realized. As long as Keri kept the old woman on her backfoot, so that she couldn't cast, and as long as she used a word of power that couldn't possibly be avoided. Anything that struck at the dowager physically, she responded to in the same way. But Dā gave Liv an entirely different way to fight. She'd never actually done it before, but she knew the word could be used to kill directly. It would pit her authority against that of the dowager queen, that was true - but that was an arena in which she was confident she would emerge victorious. After all, she hadn't had any trouble batting aside a lightning bolt, when she was prepared for it.

A golden light swept over the battlefield from her right, and Liv turned to see Genevieve Arundell, surrounded by a cloud of weapons, each formed from coherent mana: axes and swords, maces and even shields. The archmage's staff rested easily in her right hand, her hair tossed in the wind, and a strange leather mask covered her face. Facing her, Julianne eased her husband back into his chair. As Liv watched, Julianne kissed Henry's unmoving body once on the forehead, and then drew her stormwand. She stepped to one side and faced Genevieve, and the entire battlefield seemed to still around the two women.

"Blood and shadows," Liv cursed. She was out of position, Henry was dead or dying, and Julianne had been left to fight an archmage alone.

"Go," Keri told her.

Liv turned, meeting his eyes, which were still sparking trails of translucent blue light.

"I'll handle the old woman," Keri promised. "I've been hunting her kind for long enough, Liv. Don't worry about me." He twirled his spear through the air into a guard that left the haft up near his ear, and the blade pointed directly at the old woman's chest.

"I'll see you when the battle's over," Liv said, and wordlessly cast. Blue wings of mana erupted from her back and carried her up over the battle, followed by her flock of ice blades. As she approached, she could hear the words exchanged by the two women.

"You aren't my match, Julianne," Genevieve Arundell rasped, from behind her mask. "Perhaps once, but you've spent twenty years playing mother instead of honing your magic."

"No?" Julianne called back. Her voice was hoarse from sobbing, but she stabbed her wand up to the sky, and the heavens answered. A column of lightning descended on Julianne, and the Archmage facing her had to raise a bubble of solid gold mana to protect herself from the explosion.

Liv, for her part, beat her wings, halting her forward momentum, and climbed up and away from the explosion. She trusted her Authority to protect her from any lightning that Julianne lost control of, but flying chips of rock would only be stopped by distance, or a mana shield - and she didn't want to spend her rings recklessly. Not in a fight against an archmage.

Below her, two words of power roiled about Julianne Summerset, sometimes working in tandem, sometimes tearing at each other like a pair of hounds in a fighting pit. Liv's mind cast back to an incantation that her adopted mother had shared with her, a spell that had never been cast: Luc to draw lightning down from the sky, Aluth to turn it into mana. A wave of magical power boiled out from the unspeakable brightness where Julianne had stood, and for a moment, Liv felt like she was standing at the center of an erupting rift.

Lashes of lightning flickered out from the center of the light, connecting the unseen duchess with her enemies. One crackling arc moved from an armored Arundell knight, to a barely armored peasant heaving himself off a siege ladder and onto the wall. A second arc flicked toward Genevieve Arundell, but one of her golden mana shields intercepted it.

Liv breathed the mana in, allowing it to fill her, and felt her headache recede for the first time in days. She squinted against the light, which dimmed only slightly, and saw that her adopted mother's wand had become a shaft of stilled lightning. Wisps of Julianne's hair floated up around her in a cloud, and feather-thin tendrils of sparking power ran along her arms, leaked from her eyes. The veins in her forearms had darkened to nearly black.

And yet, Julianne Summerset smiled. "It worked after all."

"I always knew you had talent," Genevieve Arundell said, from behind her array of orbiting magical manifestations. "But casting an archmage spell is only halfway there."

"Then I'll bring the other half!" Liv tucked her wings and dove, her swords plummeting down with her, cradled by her Authority. She shot directly at Genevieve Arundell, hoping to give Julianne an opening.

Arundell blurred aside, and streaks of golden light, barely perceptible, surrounded Liv. Her wings shattered into a hundred shards of coherent mana, and she had to tuck her shoulder, hitting the stones of the battlement and rolling across the width of the wall before fetching up against a half-shattered merlon.

She hissed in pain. A fall like that would have broken every bone in her body, once, but now Liv guessed she wouldn't be suffering from much more than bruises. What was more worrying was how easily Genevieve Arundell had cut through her wings. Liv should have been able to stop those peculiar, golden-colored mana weapons when they reached her Authority, but everything had simply moved too fast for her to perceive it.

The archmage's Authority erupted out of her, smothering every soldier on the wall, whether crown or northern, within twenty paces. The surrounding conflict simply stopped, as they all collapsed, first onto their knees, and then their bellies.

Liv threw her own Authority back at Arundell in defiance, and flakes of snow danced in the air around her as the stones froze over at her feet. She held her ground, but Julianne did not.

The Duchess of Whitehill's knees buckled, but she caught herself with her left arm, and kept her head up. Julianne Summerset, eyes still sparking with lightning, raised the Stormwand in her hand, and pointed it at Genevieve Arundell. "Luc-"

Archmagus Arundell vanished from Liv's sight, borne along by Vefta, the word of her family. When the masked woman reappeared, she stood behind Julianne, and a dozen blades of gold, each veined with bright blue, pierced the duchess through every part of her body.

Julianne's finger's, blackened from mana sickness, twitched, and the wand which had been carved from the bone of a god dropped from her grasp. It hit the stone, and the light faded from the length of it, leaving only a pale, engraved bone to roll away across the stone.

Liv threw herself forward, battling against Genevieve Arundell's Authority. Julianne turned her head, her eyes meeting Liv's for a moment, and she opened her mouth, as if she might speak - but no words came out. Liv felt a cold wetness on her cheeks, and realized that her own tears were freezing.

Julianne Summerset's body collapsed in a spreading pool of blood.

"Thus dies the rebellion," Genevieve Arundell rasped, and turned to face Liv.