Guild Mage: Apprentice

By the time Liv, Wren and Arjun had walked as far as the training grounds and the stables, having passed the inns and shops of Coral Bay along their way, they were noticed by students moving in between their classes for the day.

The college had been nearly empty when Liv left it a month ago, at the very beginning of spring, but with the return of the noble-born students who had gone to King Benedict's coronation, the campus was now bustling again. Liv brought the disc up to the entrance to the East Hall first, so that Arjun could unload his things. Then, she directed it over to High Hall. As she was just maneuvering the mana construct in through the door, Journeyman Maynard came rushing across the courtyard.

"Archmagus Loredan wishes to see you, now that you've returned," Maynard said, coming to a half just outside the door of the building.

Liv shared a glance with Wren. "Can I get our things upstairs, first?" she asked.

Maynard nodded. "In fact, I'll help you." He followed them up the stairs to the second floor landing, where he helped lift trunks and bags down onto the floor. He hesitated when Liv threw open the door to the suite she shared with Sidonie and Edith; it was unlikely anyone would object to him helping to carry their things up, but that was the limit.

"Can you handle getting all this unpacked, by yourself?" Liv asked Thora. The maid nodded.

"Alright," Liv said, heading for the stairs. "I assume he's in his office?" Wren fell in behind her, and Maynard hurried to keep up.

"He will be, yes," the journeyman said.

"Any news while we've been gone?" Liv asked. She couldn't come right out and ask whether or not rumors of her fight on the beach had spread. If Jurian's plan had worked, Liv didn't want to call attention to anything that she'd done.

"We had a bit of excitement at Freeport," Maynard told her, as they tromped back down the stairs. "They'd only just finished the coronation when the rift erupted. It interrupted the ball afterwards. Of course, with so many students in the city, and all the barons, we had more than enough people to deal with the eruption. It was a bit ridiculous, honestly. I haven't ever seen so many people throwing magic around in one place."

Liv nodded. "We could have used some of you here," she observed, trying to nudge Maynard into the direction of what she wanted to know.

"So I hear!" Together, they left High Hall and headed across the courtyard, toward Blackstone Hall. "From what everyone says, it was a lucky thing that Professor Norris' new barrier was ready. I would have loved to have gotten a glimpse of Archmagus Jurian fighting down on the beach, but I hear it was hard to see anything through the barrier."

"It must have been something to see," Liv commented, as much to keep him talking as anything else. It was good if the mana-barrier around the school had interfered with people's view of the bay. Maybe no one had seen her.

"They've had teams out every low tide since then," Maynard continued, as they climbed up the stairs to the second floor, and entered the hall where the archmagus' office was located. Professor Norris and Professor Every have been leading the studies. You won't believe some of the things they've found down there - ancient vædic magic."

"Amazing," Liv said, trying to put at least a little bit of surprise into her voice. She wasn't an actress, however, and doubted she could keep up the pretense for long. Fortunately, they'd arrived at the door to the archmagus' office. She waited off to one side while Maynard knocked.

"Enter," Caspian Loredan called from within.

"I've brought Journeyman Brodbeck, sir," Maynard said, leaning into the room. "As requested."

"Very good. That will be all for now." The archmagus dismissed the boy with a wave of his hand. Once Maynard had cleared the way, Liv stepped into the office, and Wren followed her. "You may wish your bodyguard to remain outside for this conversation," Caspian Loredan suggested.

"Anything we're going to speak about, Wren can hear," Liv said. She waited until the huntress had closed the door behind them, and then Liv settled herself into the chair facing the archmagus, with his desk between them.

She tried to calculate just how bad this could get. Maynard had given no indication that she was in trouble, but then the other journeyman was being used as little more than an errand boy. Liv couldn't imagine that the archmagus would share the secrets of the kingdom with him. If Caspian Loredan knew about her word, and tried to arrest her right here, could Liv get away? She doubted it, and she certainly couldn't beat him in a fight. Not when his Authority could shut down practically all of her spells – and she was still recovering from three weeks in bed, on top of it.

For a long moment, Archmagus Loredan regarded Liv without saying anything. She resisted the urge to hunch her shoulders or to fidget with her hands: years of trying to avoid attention as a young girl in the kitchens had given Liv an instinct to make herself small that never went entirely away. But she managed to remain silent and composed until the man across the desk spoke.

"I am told that Journeyman Isabel Tanner died in the Well of Bones," Caspian Loredan said.

Liv nodded. "The corpse of a – I'm not certain what it would be called. It was enormous. It came out of the shaft behind her, broke her neck, and pulled her down before any of us could do anything."

"Leaving you as culling commander," Loredan said. "Though by that point, the culling was actually over, and you were severely wounded."

"General Mishra gave me her pay," Liv said. "For her family. Do I give it to you?"

"No," the archmage said. "You took over her command. This is your responsibility. Write a letter to her family, and the guild will see it sent. The money itself should be deposited into an account with the banking guild. Safer than sending loose coins."

"I can do that," Liv said. Privately, she wondered what she would even write. She'd never met Isabel's family; the girl was a year ahead of her, and until going to Lendh ka Dakruim, they'd really only spent time together during the King Tide.

"Good. Now," the archmage said, "You need to justify to me your decision to enter the depths of the rift, endangering your classmate and leading directly to her death."

"Did General Mishra send word that the dead are no longer rising from the Well?" Liv asked. "That the rift is shrinking, and they think by the end it will settle out as a lesser rift, instead of a major?"

"Was that your goal, or merely a result you stumbled into?"

Liv bit her lip. "I wanted to go down there because we don't know enough about what Ractia is doing. We need to understand what's beneath the rifts if we're going to have any chance of stopping her."

"And you took it on yourself to do that," the archmagus said, "without consulting any of your superiors in the guild."

"You weren't there," Liv argued.

"Are you going to sit there and tell me this wasn't your plan from the beginning?" the archmagus asked. Liv remained silent. "That is what I thought," he said. "You acted recklessly and got a member of your team killed. Isabel's death is your responsibility. If you had simply left after the culling was complete, she would still be alive."

Liv swallowed, and then nodded.

Loredan drummed his fingers on the desk. "I am told that during the attack on the tidal rift, lightning fell from the sky and struck the reef."

Liv shrugged.

The archmage leaned forward. "Your friends told Professor Blackwood that you followed Archmagus Jurian out through the barrier to the beach. Don't deny that you fought."

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"I don't deny it," Liv said. "Jurian was all alone –"

"Archmagus Jurian."

"Archmagus Jurian was all alone," Liv began again. "They've taken us by surprise too many times. That's how my grandfather died, that's how my people died at Soltheris. He needed someone to help him –"

"Debatable, he is an archmage."

"If I hadn't been there, Karis would have got what he wanted from the rift," Liv argued. "Everything else was a distraction to keep him busy, and it would have worked. Even if he won."

"So you fought an Antrian war machine at the rift – the same machine that is currently being disassembled and studied in Professor Norris' workshop – and managed to kill it."

"After the armor on his chest was broken open, I could see the brain inside," Liv said. "I put an ice blade through it."

"I suppose it was pure coincidence that the machine you were fighting was scorched by lightning."

"No," Liv said. "I called down lightning in Freeport too. Ice crystals in the clouds build the charge."

"So you used Cel," Loredan said. "My niece did not imprint Luc and teach you to use it."

"If I understand correctly," Liv replied, "that would be against the law."

"So it would." Loredan leaned back in his chair. "And if I examined you right now, I would find that only Aluth and Cel were imprinted on you, and there is not a trace of the royal word of power."

Liv's heart felt like it was about to rip out of her chest. "Are you going to check?" she asked. The archmagus' eyes bored into her like drills into wood, and Liv's fingers twitched. She knew there was no point in drawing her wand: she wasn't skilled enough to fight an archmage yet.

"There may be a day you can defeat me," the older man said, his voice even. "But not yet." After a long moment, he let out a sigh. "No, I am not going to check you for an imprint," he said, and Liv let out a shaky breath.

"I am not going to look," Caspian Loredan continued, "because right now I could not say with absolute certainty whether you have the royal word. I can honestly tell my nephew, if he asks me, that as far as I am aware, your only two words are Aluth and Cel. But I must warn you, Journeyman, that it is a thin shield you are hiding behind, and I do not believe it will hold for very long."

"I heard a rumor Benedict pardoned his mother," Liv said.

"King Benedict, yes, and he did."

"That sounds a lot like he's going back on the agreement he made with Duchess Julianne," Liv pointed out.

"My brother is dead," Caspian said. "Whatever restraint his life put on Benedict's power is gone now. My nephew is king in truth, and in every way. He no longer needs to worry that Roland will wake one morning with his wits about him, and ask after his cherished daughter."

"What's he going to do, then?" Liv asked.

"First, he seems intent on reforming the kingdom's laws regarding guilds," Loredan explained. "He has also, immediately following the Freeport eruption, issued a proclamation that rifts outside of Lucania are not our concern. The guild is to pull back our teams from Varuna. If word of the proclamation had reached Coral Bay before you left, your team would not have been permitted to go to Lendh ka Dakruim. Lucania, first, he says."

"That's only going to play into Ractia's hands," Liv argued, before she could think better of it. "She's already attacked Lucania once, and if there's something she wants in one of our other rifts, you can bet she'll do it again. My father's already gone to Varuna. We should be sending people to help, not hiding."

"It is not within my power to countermand the king," Caspian said. "I can counsel my nephew. In private, I might even argue with him. But in public, his word is law. And so far as members of this guild are concerned, it will be obeyed. Is that understood?"

"I understand," Liv said. "But when I'm visiting my father's family, I'm not in Lucania."

"What you do among your father's people is none of my concern," the archmage said. "What you do at this school is. To that end. Now that you are a journeyman, you will be working directly with one of the professors. The other members of your group have long since been sorted out while you were recovering at Akela Kila. Your strengths are, obviously, spellcraft, magical theory, and practical combat magic. That would ordinarily mean that either Archmagus Jurian or myself would take you."

"That's about what I would expect," Liv said.

"However," Loredan continued, "after your fight on the beach, I cannot possibly take you myself."

Liv blinked. "Why not?"

"Should it ever be proven that you have imprinted Luc, I cannot be associated with you," Loredan said. "Let me be clear, Liv, I will cut you off like a gangrenous limb to preserve this guild, if that is what is necessary. I don't know that you've done anything illegal. But if you were my direct student, for months or years, and such a crime was later revealed? There would be a lot of questions asked about me, and what I knew when. I cannot afford that. This school cannot afford that."

"Will Archmagus Jurian take me, then?" Liv asked.

"He has said that he will. I hope that he does not live to regret it." The archmage sighed. "You will assist in teaching the remedial Magical Combat course, beginning tomorrow morning. I am certain that Jurian will have further instructions for you at that time. Now, do you have any further questions for me?"

"Has anyone figured out what a mana capacitor does?" Liv asked.

"Think of it like something of an automated mana-stone," Loredan said. "It can be charged with mana, which is then expelled to produce a more powerful effect."

Liv stood up, pushed her chair aside, and then paused. "Don't you want to know what I did at the bottom of the Well?" she asked.

"You disrupted the spell left by the Lady of Bones," the archmage said. "If it was done using your Authority, you are progressing much faster than I had anticipated."

"Her corpse was still down there," Liv said. "There was mana pouring out of it. I took it. Until there was nothing left, and what was left of her fell apart."

"I would recommend you not spread word of that around," Loredan told her, quietly. "How many rings do you have now, Journeyman?"

"I don't know," Liv admitted. "More than before I did that. Twenty five, twenty six? A little more?"

"Go see Professor Norris and get measured," Loredan said. "Now. I believe that is all, Journeyman."

"Thank you," Liv said. She stepped out into the hall, waited for Wren to follow her, and then closed the door. "I notice you didn't say much," Liv muttered, as they set off toward the stairs.

"What do you want me to say to him?" Wren shot back. "I'm the bodyguard, remember?"

"So if he'd decided to take me prisoner, you would have helped me fight him?"

Wren laughed. "The only way we were getting out of that room was if he let us," she said. "Honestly? I think your stay at Coral Bay has got a limit on it, Liv," she said. "You heard the man. If it's a choice between you and the school, or the guild, he's told you exactly what he's going to do. Take it as a warning."

They made their way down the stairs, and then out into the courtyard, where Liv set off around back to the enchanting workshops. There, she asked around until she was directed to Professor Norris, who was bent over a long table covered in scattered pieces of damaged metal.

When Liv and Wren stepped closer, she saw that Norris was disassembling the remains of the Antrian, Karis. She looked about for the brain in its shattered glass jar, and was very relieved when she didn't see it.

"Professor Norris?" she asked. "Excuse me?"

"Mmm?" Norris looked up, blinking as if he'd been roused from sleep, and then smiled. "Ah, Brodbeck. I haven't seen you in class lately."

"That's because I've been in Lendh ka Dakruim, Professor," Liv pointed out.

Norris shrugged. "What do you need?"

"Archmagus Loredan told me to come to you and have my mana capacity measured," Liv explained. "He sounded like he wanted it done right away."

"That man is always interrupting my work," Norris grumbled. "Come over here, then." He led Liv and Wren over to a large chunk of mana-stone, similar to the one that Master Grenfell had used in Whitehill. "Testing ring," he said, digging through a drawer, and came out with a guild-ring that had not a single bit of glow to the gray stone. "Are you currently full?"

"No," Liv admitted. "We just got in from the waystone." As a result, she had to first pull mana out of the stone, until she couldn't hold anymore, before she even begin filling a ring at a time.

It was a time consuming process, and by the end, a cluster of students who, apparently, had nothing better to do, had begun to gather around the room. Liv didn't even have to count, anymore, because with every ring she emptied, the number was whispered around the group of observers in tones of increasing disbelief.

"Twenty seven!" Journeyman Turstin exclaimed, when Liv filled her last ring. "That's insane! Can any of the professors even hold that much?"

"Archmagus Loredan can hold twenty-nine," Professor Norris said. "But he is the only one."

Liv groaned, and closed her eyes. There was absolutely no way that she was going to avoid being talked about, now.