Remembering
Chapter 12: Three Mages
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Here is one of the fundamental truths, the knowledge that can help or hinder:
There is nothing you can do.
As painful as it sounds, as horrible as it can be, some things cannot be healed.
In times of war, the people most in need of healers are the ones who can be helped the least. A man who screams from arrow wounds through the night is one who will die with the dawn. A man who suffers in silence will live. Because once the pain passes a healer's power, there is nothing that can be done.
In times of peace, the healing is still needed. Between friends, a few words can be unforgiving. An action can be as painful as a dagger wound. The world can fall apart, and there's nothing you can do. You cannot help, heal, forgive or forget. You can only despair.
The elementals tell a creation myth:
In the earliest days, the Gods saw this breach, saw the despair of the first men and women, and thought of a remedy for what seems like a hopeless situation. But, of course, being Gods, this method was flawed. They forgot that their own divinity was not mimicked on the earth. They gave the gifts to three groups of beings, and watched to see what would happen.
The first group was not pleased. What was given with benevolence was received with no thanks. For ever kind action the gods granted, their mortal children found their own flaws:
They created hope, so that the humans could create cynicism.
They created forgiveness, so that the humans could create bitterness.
They created love, so that the humans could create hate.
And thus the human race was created.
The second group received the gifts with thanks, seeing the power in the offerings. Blind to the beauty, they studied and controlled the gifts until the god-power from them was extracted. They used the power as part of themselves, telling the humans that this was the true purpose of the Gift.
And thus were mages created.
In the third group, there were people who defended pure gifts. The ones who looked at the beauty of love, and of the world the gods had created. The ones who cherished. They spent their time with the humans, trying to give them their greatest gift- hope. They lived wild in the nature that surrounded them. They were few, but dedicated. They were the closest to divinity, and so the gods made them obey the rules of the immortal realms.
And thus were the elementals created.
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The plan might have worked, if the rain hadn't started.
The plan might still have worked… if the palace hadn't caught fire
The plan might have worked anyway, but who was left to carry it out?
The plan wasn't going to work. Lindhall was quite disappointed.
After working so hard on such a complex magical simulacrum, it was annoying not to be able to show it off. The plan had seemed so perfect, and now there was no point using it!
When the rain had started, the river had risen at an incredible rate. The dust banks were baked as solid as stone in the bright sun, and the water simply overflowed. Boats had capsized, floated away, or run aground. Bridges washed away. It was impossible to cross.
Driven from their posts beside their river by the stinging rain, swarms of Carthaki guards and soldiers ran into the university. Strangely enough, the stampede for shelter didn't begin until all the men were soaked anyway, as if they were waiting for something before they moved. Laughing and joking with the students, they set up a temporary camp in the entrance hall and settled down to wait out the weather.
Despite their casual attitudes, they were deceptively alert. No mage could come within ten meters of them without being challenged. The words were light hearted: "Hey, glitter-fingers! Think you can magic yourself up a patch of sunshine? Better stay in here then!" But the meaning was clear- something was going on, and everyone should stay where they were or get in trouble.
Lindhall risked a trip down into the hall, stepping lightly on the slippery marble. The throng of soldiers was dense, an effective barrier between the stairs and the exit. Without appearing to, the regiment had completely isolated all the mages from the palace. Lindhall sighed and turned back to his apartment, idly musing on the political implications of this military maneuver…
And so it happened that the two great mages, instead of being able to search for Daine, were stuck in Lindhall's small apartment watching the water rise. Flying out of the window was out- the rain was falling like lead, weighing feathers down.
Like the true academics they were, they used the time to have long arguments and point out the obvious. As is usual in these situations, they were beginning to get on each other's nerves.
Numair paced the university rooms frustratedly, glaring across the river at the palace that was so close, yet so impossible to reach. Lindhall tried to calm him down without much success.
"You've been gone for weeks. A few hours won't make that much difference. It never rains for long here, you know that."
"But it's flooding. What if he's keeping Daine in one of his godsforsaken underground cells? If the palace floods he won't care about anything except his own wretched skin…"
"I'm sure she's fine." Lied the other mage, wondering what he should suggest. From the look of the grim generals downstairs, something was seriously wrong in the palace. And Ozorne was very good at making sure everyone else suffered with him. "If nothing else, he thinks he needs her to look after those birds. And he does care about them."
Numair threw up his hands in a defeated gesture and leaned against the window. "But I can't do anything! I got so close, and now I'm stuck here! It seems that I can't do anything right, any more. I should never have left Carthak in the first place! And it's worse than that! On the way here, I saw…"
"Saw?" Lindhall prompted, glad for the abrupt change in conversation topics. Numair half-shrugged, as if he wasn't sure of the answer.
"I don't know. I only saw him for a moment, but it's impossible." He smiled in self-mockery at the answer, and glanced out of the window. Something was wrong…
"Stop evading the question!" Lindhall demanded, slipping into his 'teacher' mode. Numair risked another look out the window, not sure he could believe what he was seeing.
"I think the palace is on fire." Stated the most successful 'question evasion' of all time. Lindhall stared at him, his eyes wide, before rushing to the window. For a while there was no discussion, just the awed silence of people who can't believe their eyes.
For over an hour they remained motionless, hardly daring to speak in case they were both imagining things. The most elaborate, beautiful architecture in the world, the city that both men had lived in for years, was crumbling before their eyes.
At one point, a stream of colorful birds erupted from the center of the palace, fighting against the rain to make their way across the river. Numair smiled and watched them land in the shelter of the stable.
"I think Daine's alright." He told Lindhall. The older man raised an eyebrow in mock surprise and gestured at the fire.
"Who else would have burned down the palace?"
And later:
"There's lots of debris in the river." Numair commented.
"There's debris everywhere." Lindhall said, watching the damage with detachment. Clouds of steam were billowing up from the flood, covering the land in mist and blocking the view. There was wreckage in the river- planks of wood, crates from the docks upstream, and even the occasional lump of stone being dragged along by the heavy current. Small boats, ripped from their moorings upriver, crashed against the banks and dislodged larger boats and more rubble. The water boiled and raged like the fury of the Gods themselves.
"It's all collecting over there- there must be a shallows or something. Maybe we could cross, is what I'm suggesting." Numair continued, not sharing his friend's fascination with the destruction.
Lindhall blinked and looked in the direction the other mage was intently studying. The temporary ford looked about as safe as a cobweb harness.
"We can't get out of the university." He said.
"We can." Numair grinned and gestured at the empty barracks. "All we need is a diversion." He muttered something under his breath and pointed at the building, which exploded in black flames. Shouts from the soldiers echoed along the hallway as they ran towards the wreckage, looking for the "attacker".
"You know, magic is a versatile, complex gift." Lindhall muttered petulantly as he followed Numair out of the building. "You could have made any kind of diversion- an illusion, a summoning… so why are you and Daine intent on just using it to burn things?"
"It's more fun."
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A/N: Very sorry for how short my chapters have been recently- had lots of exams at college. They finish in a fortnight, and I have all summer to write in, so should finish both this story and Forest in the next few months.
I've also realized how little I'm actually saying in each chapter, and thinking maybe I should make each one twice the length, so their more self-conclusive and less… episodic. I'd really value all your input in this!
Do you think the chapters average out at too long, too short, too detailed, too slow, too fast… what?
Thanks :) x-Viv-x
