Battle Mage: The Dark Mage (Tales of Alus) (9 page)

“You picked out a good place to study. It has a good view that might distract me, if I were to use it regularly though,” she said noting some of the boys below catching their looks. “There are a lot of boys here as usual.”

Giving a slight grunt of amusement, Palose responded sarcastically, “I don’t get distracted by boys.”

Turning slowly away from the view to look at the mage, her violet eyes locked on his with a look of bemusement. “There was a rumor that a few apprentices wanted to bully another apprentice a couple weeks ago. Apparently he could use magic to fight fast enough to thrash them rather soundly in a matter of seconds.” She pretended to consider something and mused aloud, “Your hand was bleeding when I met you. You didn’t happen to be part of that fight?”

“I cut my thumb on my sword’s blade checking the edge’s sharpness. It was sharper than I thought.”

She nodded knowingly, and added, “They were calling him a ‘resurrection man’, if you can believe it. If there were a real resurrection man here, I am sure that he would discover that he had more powers than just being returned from the dead. Have you finished reading Resurrection yet? I might be curious to hear what you thought of the conjecture on what a man returned from the dead might be like.”

Turning his left hand where Palose rested his hand on the table as he faced the girl, Sylvaine noted the scar on his thumb. It was already faint as if the cut had been years before, and the girl rubbed her thumb against his. Stroking his thumb and continuing on to the palm of his hand affectionately, Sylvaine informed him, “I hear tell that they can heal unusually fast. How long ago did you cut your thumb? Did you know that one of the boys had a thumb print left on his forehead from whoever fought with them?”

“You hear a lot apparently,” he replied closing off his emotions defensively. Though he liked the girl, her continual inference that she knew who had been in the fight and what he was had begun to worry him. What harm a young apprentice could be to him was unknown and he wasn’t even sure if she were trying to threaten him with the continual beating around the bush.

Her bemused smile returned as she added, “The apprentices wouldn’t say who they had the fight with, since they would get in trouble for fighting. We aren’t supposed to duel as apprentices without supervision and it’s frowned upon to fight amongst ourselves no matter what rank a caster becomes. I doubt that the other person involved would bother to mention it either. No one wants to be cast as a victim and to be the one who beat the other boys wouldn’t be much better, I believe.”

Rising from her chair, the girl ran her hand along his right arm moving to his side. A second kiss on his cheek surprised him even more. She had shown no signs in her eyes of losing control this time. “I have to go find the next two books Eloria wants me to read. More reading about the magic of darkness, what a bore,” she sighed and removed her hand from his shoulder.

He refused to look the way the girl had gone and watched for other eyes that had observed such behavior. Selvor and his two friends weren’t the only ones frowning after noticing Sylvaine’s seductive behavior. The mage wondered if that wasn’t the whole point of the girl’s maneuvering. Had she decided to toy with him to see if the others would challenge him again?

It made little sense to him beyond the knowledge that Sylvaine had obviously meant something from the extra attention. Being someone who rarely built strong relationships with other people, Palose was unsure of the social and personal context. Worrying about what might happen did him little good, however, so he returned to reading his book as if nothing had happened.

Sylvaine had implied that ‘Resurrection’ would reveal more about abilities that he must be currently unaware. His newest mission was to finish the book and discover what abilities they believed might be his.

By the time Palose left the library late in the afternoon, the streets deep in Ensolus had already become shadowed. The vast mouth of the cavern faced south, but the sun’s path was far to the west now and only the eastern wall and Lake End held the sun. For the rest of the cave city, the spires and outer walls cast shadows creating twilight for the area known as the Warlock’s College and surrounding buildings. To the northwest, the sections held by the orcs, goblins and monsters of Ensolus were lit with lamps and lanterns as it became like night.

The mage wondered at the sectioning off of the city. Had it been a natural migration of creatures created by the emperor’s darkness heading towards night or had there been a pecking order established in those first days. The armies and families of even the dark creatures had come in a mass exodus from the Silver World as he had heard it called, so Ensolus had formed quickly and mostly in the image the Dark One had wished. Even choosing the massive cave held with the emperor’s nature, whether anyone would admit it aloud.

He was said to be seen as a collection of shadow when his people saw him. A man or elf once upon a time, his second birth had changed him to the being of night’s shadows. Some said he still had a physical body hidden within the cloak of darkness, but it had been horribly scarred from his battle with death.

Now a city of shadows and darkness echoed its master. One shadow followed Palose as he traveled west towards Atrouseon’s laboratory, though perhaps ‘shadow’ was giving the apprentice too much credit, Palose thought. The youngest of the wizards that had faced him outside the library now followed the mage at a discreet distance, but he was also a little obvious in his attention.

Pedestrian traffic was light on the streets mostly traveled by warlocks and their apprentices at this time of day. Cleaners, food delivery and the other service folk had finished their work in the north part of the city for the schools and dorms of the warlocks and wizards training in Ensolus. While Turless could be simply returning to his dorm at the same time as he was walking to the laboratory, Palose found it unlikely to be a coincidence.

Turning northward sooner than he normally did, the mage tested his hunch. The schools were two more streets to the west and most would walk there to turn north in a more direct path. More labs and offices of those more important than he were along this street. Ducking against the building he had just passed, Palose waited to see where the apprentice would go next.

“Stealth,” he ordered the spell and seemed to disappear from sight. Unless someone was to rub against the wall looking for the mage, Palose knew he could remain undetected as the spell even helped hide his magic aura from wizards. His own sight was muddled by the bending of light around him and his other senses magically extended to make up for the loss.

When Turless reached the street, he started to turn and quickly stopped with a frown creasing his forehead. The boy searched twisting his head back and forth looking down both streets trying to find the missing mage. A chant, as the apprentice raised his right hand to his forehead, the first two fingers pointed towards the ceiling as the magic gathered, instilled the power of sight on his eyes giving a light glow as Turless searched for the man he was following.

Even his magic could not pierce the veil of the mage’s magic, but Palose had seen enough. Moving quickly behind the slightly shorter apprentice, the battle mage used his Southwall training well against the caster. His right hand twisted Turless’ right arm behind the boy’s back holding pressure points to keep the appendage mercilessly locked in place while his left arm slipped around his neck pulling up on the chin. Brown hair brushed against the mage’s cheek as he released his spell and said in a quiet, threatening voice, “Why are you following me? Did you plan to try and get some sort of revenge for your friends after I left you unharmed last time? That can be changed if you want.”

Shaking his head weakly, Turless’s breathing became agitated and his voice held a tremor as he replied meekly, “N-n-no, I wasn’t planning any revenge. I...,” the boy seemed more embarrassed than fearful as he finished confessing, “I have been trying to figure out how to ask you if you would teach me how to fight. I don’t need to be as good as you. I just was hoping to learn how to defend myself.”

“Defend yourself from what?” the mage asked continuing to the hold the boy in his defenseless position. His voice remained low and menacing.

“They will be sending me out on patrols soon and I am afraid that one day I will be in a fight with no one to protect me. If I knew how to fight, even a little, then I would feel better when that day came,” he confessed as his voice held fear for his future rather than for the mage holding him captive now.

Pushing the apprentice away from him enough that Palose could react to an assault or spell from Turless, the mage looked him in the eye as the boy turned to face him. He shook his right arm and began to rub the pressure point to ease the discomfort from the hold.

“There are fields for soldiers west of the emperor’s citadel. You could find someone there to teach you how to fight,” Palose informed the young warlock in training. He had a feeling that like Southwall’s wizards, the warlocks and wizards of Ensolus trained little in martial arts. They were not trained like battle mages, who were viewed as soldiers wielding magic. There was a separation between the three classes, wizard, battle mage and soldier because of the differences in their philosophy that made each unique.

Turless looked off towards the west as if he could see beyond the buildings and spires to the part of the city Palose had mentioned. When his eyes returned to the mage, he shook his head, “Soldiers can’t teach me the skills you have. They can only fight with swords and spears. You know how to use magic in combat, don’t you?”

Eyeing the boy and noting his sincerity, Palose answered, “I was a battle mage before coming to Ensolus.”

The apprentice’s eyes seemed to glow with magic once more as he looked at the mage. Shaking his head, Turless refuted, “You don’t have the strongest of auras, but you are much too strong to be a battle mage. My teachers have taught me about the magic wielders of Southwall, Kardor and Staron as well as others. They say battle mages are weak in magic, little more than foot soldiers hiding behind weak blue shields of energy. They can cast fireballs that might light a campfire, but they can’t destroy an army like a wizard with real power might.

“If you were a battle mage, you wouldn’t be this strong,” he finished.

Though the boy wasn’t being defensive or apparently trying to call him a liar, he was sure that Palose was too strong in magic to be what he claimed. The former battle mage had read most of ‘Resurrection’ by the time he had left the library. It was filled with conjecture more than facts, as few seemed to have performed such a spell who had allowed their projects to remain alive for long. Some had resurrection men that turned on them and the later part of the book had gone into several intricacies of forming the spell that could impart directives in the bodies to prevent such from happening now. Still few seemed willing to leave a resurrection man alive for long as they feared that they would still find a way to turn on their masters or turn into one of the wraiths that were more malevolent yet.

Palose also couldn’t dispute that he was stronger, but that had been covered in the book as well. A warlock performing the resurrection spells had to use their own blood, like the harder to perform curse spells it alluded to, and that connection tied the two together. When the raised man returned, he had part of the master’s power inside of him, or perhaps they shared power, the book’s writer didn’t seem sure. These were questions that the mage was still searching for answers to and hadn’t found yet.

“Do you know anything of resurrection men and the spells involved? Your friends seemed to know how I came here, at least as far as what I am. What do you know of it?”

Looking less sure of
himself at the question, Turless started slowly, “Well, I don’t know much about the spells. All I really know is that a body is brought back by a necromancer, usually as some form of servant. They can think for themselves at least, but they are no longer really alive.

“At least that is what Selvor said, but you did show that you bled like any man. So maybe you are somehow alive, but maybe your original soul is changed?”

Palose wanted to chide himself for even asking such questions, he didn’t have time to waste debating whether a resurrection spell brought him back to life changed or not. He still needed to get to the laboratory or Atrouseon would be livid.

“I don’t have time to debate the issue. You can be pretty sure that I am alive and I believe that I am still the person I was before I died.”

Turless looked dubious and refuted, “You served Southwall, didn’t you? Now you serve Ensolus. I would think that means something changed inside of you.”

The point hadn’t totally eluded him, but the matter of fact way the apprentice pulled away the lie he had never fully dealt with before made the mage wonder what else might have changed with the spell. A coercer could warp a man’s mind in time, perhaps it was just something along that line, but again the question would have to be considered later since he was now becoming late.

“I don’t have time for this. Return to the library or return home, but stop following me or this will end badly for you. I will consider your request. Perhaps in a few days we will meet in the library to discuss it more. For now I have business to get to, so this discussion ends now.”

He was firm in his pronouncement and turned onto the western stretch of the street to go towards Atrouseon’s lab.