Guild Mage: Apprentice

Privately, Liv had always thought that much of the physical exercise she'd been put through, by the castle guards at Whitehill, had been a waste of time. She was never going to be strong enough to wrestle a soldier to the ground, and she had no intention of wearing around jack of plate and carrying a polearm. But what they had taught her to do was run.

All those afternoons of running around the walls with Piers at her heels, or of chasing down a wounded buck next to Emma and Master Forester came back to her now. The streets of Freeport were not the mountain slopes of the Aspen River Valley, and she'd rather have been wearing just about anything other than a gown, but rust it if she was going to let Josephine get away.

Ahead of Liv, the woman she'd last seen during the eruption eighteen years ago careened around a corner, taking a left down a side street past a group of working men who must have been out drinking. They hooted and hollered at Josephine as she ran by them, and then swore as Liv came barreling through.

"Watch where you're going!" a man with a great drooping mustache called. Liv's shoes clacked off the cobblestones, and she left them behind. They were headed downhill, and that gave her an idea.

"Celent Aiveh Æn'Staim!" Liv shouted, swiping her staff out ahead of her. She let her mana be pulled into the staff, then focused her intent on the cobblestones twenty feet in front of Josephine. A sheet of black ice spread over the surface of the street, and when the woman Liv was pursuing hit the frozen patch, her feet went out from under her. Josephine hit the stones hard, and Liv nearly caught up to her before she scrambled to her feet.

Liv knew exactly where the ice was, and leapt over the patch. She swiped forward with her staff, and managed to trip Josephine before the older woman could get away. Perhaps Liv couldn't wrestle a soldier, but she didn't have to. She threw herself down on top of the fleeing woman, and they rolled across the cobblestones together. Overhead, thunder rumbled.

"What did you do?" Liv demanded.

With a cry, Josephine drew a dagger from her belt and slashed. Liv had to throw herself back, and she felt a line of pain tear across her left arm. Before she could stop herself, she glanced down, and saw that the white sleeve of her dress was now red with blood. The necklace she'd been given by Inkeris grew warm, then flared to life in a blaze of light.

Liv had to close her eyes against the sudden brightness, and for a moment she felt as if she was standing directly in the hot summer sun, instead of on a city street at night. When the light finally died away, she had to rub spots out of her eyes with the heel of each hand.

Josephine was already running, and nearly every bit of distance Liv had managed to close with her ice-slick had been lost. With a cry of frustration, Liv lurched into motion and sprinted after the other woman. She had used only the slightest bit of magic earlier, to cool herself and Cade off at the palace, and now she regretted even that. As her feet pounded down the cobblestones, past shuttered shops and their hanging signs, Liv quickly did the math.

She'd last been measured at sixteen rings. Two wasted at the dance, and four used to take Josephine down with the black ice, left her with only ten rings of mana to use. With her staff, perhaps three good spells. Liv's sleeve was soaked with blood, now, and she felt her head swimming every time she glanced at it. She couldn't keep chasing Josephine forever: she needed to get the wound treated. But she also wasn't willing to let the woman get away until she had some answers.

Josephine skidded to a halt and threw herself into a narrow stone arch between two tenements. Liv got her foot up and managed to kick off the brick wall and dash after her, finding herself in a close, dark alley with stone walls to either side. There was refuse everywhere, and the place reeked of rotting food and fouler things. Liv wrinkled her nose and gagged as she ran: it reminded her of cleaning chamber pots when she was a young girl.

The alley opened into a wider space between buildings, a rough rectangle of dark walls looming overhead, cutting off all but a glimpse of stars and the bright ring in the sky overhead. Dark clouds, lit by the ring, moved above, causing the light to dim and then brighten again as they passed. Liv saw no outlet or exit, only more piles of garbage, and Josephine, finally brought to heel and now facing her. Half a dozen gulls cried out and scattered, flying up from their cast of meals. Both women panted from the exertion of their sprint through the city streets.

"What did you do?" Liv gasped, again. The first fat drop of rain hit her face.

"Me? Nothin' at all," Josephine said. Her words had all the markings of the lowest class accent, of growing up in the slums. "Just went to watch a friend stick your boy there in 'is kidney. You expect e's done bleedin' out by now?"

Liv raised her staff. "Throw your knife down," she demanded, through gritted teeth. "And come back with me. The sheriff will want to talk to you."

"No, I don't think so, m'lady," Josephine said. "Turns out I did have one more task. Wasn't sure it'd work, but you ran right after me, all by yourself."

On top of the buildings surrounding the cramped courtyard, shadows moved. Liv reached over with her right hand and twisted the mages' guild ring on her left, not even waiting to see what was coming. Ice glittered in the light of the ring, rising up from her feet and arcing around her in tight curves until she was surrounded in a frozen globe. She distinctly heard the twang of half a dozen crossbows, and the chunking impact of the steel tips against ice.

If Liv had hesitated even a breath, she realized, that volley would have killed her. As it was, her Ice Sphere blocked off not only her attackers, but also any view she might have had to tell her what was happening.

Liv looked down at her arm. She had at least a moment to do something about the bleeding, finally. She muttered the Chirurgeon's Charm that old Master Cushing had taught her to clean a wound before going to work on it, and then she ripped strips off the bottom of her underskirt to bind the cut.

As she pulled the linen tight, a great crash shook her sphere. Liv flinched from instinct, then tied off the linen as best she could. More impacts came, hitting the sphere from all sides. Had they brought hammers? That was what it sounded like. But the only reason to bring something like that was if Josephine and whoever she was working with knew what she'd done the night of the duel.

Liv gripped her staff in both hands as she tried to think what to do. She was safe for the moment, but sooner or later men with hammers would break through her defenses. When that happened, they'd either pound her skull in with those same hammers, or duck back and let the crossbowmen on the roofs fill her full of bolts. Either way, she would be just as dead.

She was an idiot for running off alone, without anyone to help her, but knowing that wasn't going to get her out of this alive. Liv reached up with her left hand to touch the necklace Inkeris had given her, and found it still warm. "It will send up a signal if you are wounded, so that we can find you," the ambassador had told her. If they were watching for a flare of sunlight stabbing up out of the city streets on a dark night, that meant that eventually they'd find her. If she could survive until the two Elden men were close, and make enough noise, she would have help.

Wait until the men broke down her sphere? There were already cracks in the ice, and Liv doubted it would take much longer. She'd have to leap out as soon as they did - but she'd be surrounded either way. No, it was better to strike back while she had some protection. She could certainly thrust lances of ice out from the sphere, like she'd done with her decoy in the Cotter's field. But without being able to see her enemies, she wasn't likely to hit them. Liv needed something that would hurt or stun those close by even if she missed. For a moment, she was jealous of the royal family and their word of power.

Then, Liv remembered feeling ice in the clouds during the duel. There were clouds overhead right now; she'd already heard the rumble of thunder and felt a drop of rain on her face. She closed her eyes, and tried to find that feeling again, that sense of what was happening so far above her.

The pounding of hammers and the cracking of ice made it difficult to concentrate - but yes, there it was! Small pieces of ice, smaller than anything she'd ever worked with before, moving in the clouds above. They were moving, being thrown about inside the clouds, and hitting each other. Every time the pieces of ice impacted, there was something - a power, a spark, that built up, like a flooding river. Could she make them move faster - hit each other more?

Liv had no words to describe what she wanted, in that moment, but Cel stirred in the back of her mind all the same, and she reached a hand up to touch the curved roof of her shield. Mana roared through her body and into her staff, where the sigils shone so brightly that she could feel the glow burning away at her sight painfully.

"Cel," she whispered, over and over, in a kind of chant that she hadn't even realized she'd begun.

High above, the ice responded. Infinitesimal specks of it careened back and forth, accelerating with every impact and bounce, and Liv felt a great swelling. More and more mana poured out of her, and through her, as wild and unrestrained as the day on the frozen river when she'd saved Emma.

With a great crack, a chunk of ice fell down onto Liv, scraping her face. She huddled away from the descending hammers, arm extended up. "I can see 'er now," a man's voice called. "Get 'er out boys, get 'er out of there!"

"Cel," Liv whispered one more time.

A crash of thunder and an explosion of light became her entire world, and when the sound faded, she heard men screaming. Liv huddled in a ball among the broken remnants of her sphere of ice, and thunder rolled. Flash after flash, until she could do nothing but hold her good arm over her face, trying to get away from it.

When the clouds overhead had exhausted themselves, Liv felt it. Too much of the ice was gone, now, or scattered, and she was losing the feel for it anyway. She pulled her arm away and looked down, and beneath the dim light of the ring in the sky she saw that the veins in her wrist were dark, as if they'd been filled with ink.

Mana sickness - Master Cushing had taught her the symptoms. But that could be dealt with later. Liv scrambled past the shards of ice, and saw the groaning and stunned bodies that filled the courtyard. She couldn't tell if she'd been lucky enough to hit any of the men directly, but they certainly had been stunned by the lightning storm. The air smelled just like it had on the beach, both when she'd practiced against Lady Julianne, and then after the duel with the princess.

With sharp cries, gulls dove at her, and Liv scrambled back against one stone wall of the dim courtyard, trying to find shelter. "Load!" someone screamed, and she knew the men with crossbows had survived. How much mana remained to her?

Liv felt within herself, and found that she was entirely spent. The only bit of power she had left was stored within a small piece of mana-stone set into her ring. "Celet'he Sekis," she said, and let the blade of ice form in her right hand. She had no glove to protect her skin from the cold, tonight, but Liv swung anyway when the gulls came down. She caught one of them, cutting it out of the air, but the others pecked at her arms and face. All they needed to do was hold her against the wall long enough for the crossbowmen to load and aim.

The gulls flapped back up into the sky, and Liv felt blood running down her face. She hurt everywhere, from her bleeding arm to where a chunk of ice had fallen on the top of her head. At least some of the men with hammers were standing, now, and she saw Josephine among them.

"The birds," Liv said. "I know whose word controls them."

"What you think you know don't matter," Josephine said. "Go ahead, kill 'er."

"Savelet Aisarg Æ'Næv'bel!" A burning spear landed between Liv and the people assaulting her, sinking into the cobblestones as if they were nothing more than freshly turned loam. The spear flared bright as the sun, and Liv flinched away from it, using the distraction to throw herself to the ground and off to one side. The twang of crossbows releasing sounded, but the loosed bolts did nothing more than clatter off the wall behind her.

There was the sound of stone rumbling and cracking, and then screams from the rooftops. The shining spear was already dimming in brilliance, and Liv snuck a look past it to see that the rooftops had all crumbled, dumping the crossbowman down into the courtyard.

Three men stepped out from the alley. Liv recognised Inkeri and Ambassador Sakari immediately, but the last man was no one she'd ever seen before. He wore travelling clothes, including a cloak and boots lined in white fur. His hair was white, as well, and long, though much of it was braided, and from the ends of the braids hung carved ornaments that looked like they were made from bone.

He walked out in front of the other two, and for a moment his eyes met Liv's. They were shockingly blue, like the winter sky cracked with frost. They were the same eyes that she saw in the mirror every morning while Thora combed out her hair.

"Daddy?" Liv asked.

The man clenched his fists, eyes sweeping over Josephine, the surviving men with hammers, and the fallen crossbowmen who were even now struggling to their feet. Then, light began to spill from the ornaments at the ends of his braids, and he stretched his hand out.

Immediately, crystals of ice sprang forth from the ground, each as long as a grown man's leg and with edges straight as a blade. They grew in clusters, swelling in size, and spawning more and more rapidly so that they pressed back upon Liv's assailants, crowding them together in the center of the courtyard.

The men began to cry out for mercy, throwing down their hammers and crossbows as a token of surrender. On the crumbled rooftops surrounding the courtyard, the gulls took wing, spiralling up until they were lost in the night sky.

And yet, the crystals of ice did not cease to grow. More and more spawned, growing off like branches from the trunk of a tree, until the screams from within the knot of frozen crystals changed from calls for mercy to wails of agony. Blood sprayed up into the air, and the crystals ground together until the cries of dying men were replaced only by silence, and the innermost crystals seemed stained pink and red. Finally, the ice stopped swelling, and for a moment all was stillness.

Suddenly exhausted, Liv put her back to the stone wall, and tried to loosen her fingers from the hilt of her frozen sword. They were stuck, would not come loose, and she could no longer even feel them.

Keri stalked over to the ice crystals, shook his head, and then grumbled. "I'll have to wait until they melt to get my spear."

Liv, however, could only watch the man with the braided hair, who had just killed a dozen or more people as easily as she might chop onions. He turned back to her, crossed the intervening space in a few quick steps, and knelt down in front of her.

"I didn't know whether to believe it," he admitted, and something about his voice was soothing, like being wrapped in warm blankets. The man reached down to touch Liv's sword, and it melted away like an icicle in spring. Then, hesitantly, he wrapped his arms around her, folding Liv against his chest.

"I have a daughter," Valtteri of House Syvä murmured, and Liv allowed her face to fall into the soft white fur that lined his cloak where it surrounded his neck.

"Daddy," Liv said, unable to form any more coherent thought. She threw her arms around the father she had never met, and he was as solid as a rock, and as wonderful as a dream. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to cry.