“I don’t have an army!” Mari almost yelled. “I don’t want an army! Why would I want to start another war?” But Alain gave her a look, and Mari knew why. In her mind she heard again the words he had spoken at Dorcastle, words engraved in her memory as Alain told her of his vision. You and I are on this wall, again…a mighty battle rages around us. Another war? One she would somehow start? The idea was terrifying.
“I have told you my advice on the matter,” S’san said, unaware of the memory that brought a tightness to Mari’s chest. S’san paused, her face troubled. “The daughter of Jules.”
“Professor, I—”
“I’m not saying you are her, Mari. But that title—the belief of the commons in the one they accept as that person—is a very powerful variable. How that will affect the equations which govern this world I am far from wise enough to know. That hope alone, that the daughter would someday free them, may have helped keep the commons quiet longer than any other factor. Rather than revolt en masse, the commons have waited for her to appear.” The professor paused, then shrugged again. “I cannot guess how that might change things. Mari, here is my other advice, for whatever good it is. The stars above know that my plans thus far have been utter failures, so you need not feel obligated to do as I suggest. Find somewhere quiet, somewhere you can hide while new plans are formulated. That may be for a long time, unfortunately, as I have few ideas at this point. The Guild wants you, and the Guild will seek out everyone who might be your friend or ally to see if any of them can lead the Guild to you.”
Mari felt that tightness in her guts again. “You’re in danger because of me.”
“You were set up to be kidnapped and possibly killed partly because of what I taught you!” S’san raised an imperative forefinger. “We know a bit more about the problem now, but the solution, if there is one, remains unknown.”
Alain gave her a look, one in which Mari thought she read some meaning, but she focused on S’san as the professor spoke, pretending not to notice Alain’s gaze.
“If you die or are captured and then disposed of,” S’san was saying, “I know how that sounds, Mari, and I’m sorry, but we must assume that is what we’re dealing with—if you are gone, then there may not be any solution. Dematr may continue its slow slide into darkness, with all the world gradually becoming like Tiae, the Great Guilds controlling less and less as they cling to what they will not change.”
“It will not be slow,” Alain repeated impassively.
S’san slapped her chair angrily. “Fast or slow, I can offer no other suggestions or advice at the moment. I will continue to explore the chances of the Guild forgiving and forgetting, of seeing that some change must come, but regard that as unlikely at best.”
“I won’t renounce Alain,” Mari said. “That is off the table.”
“I understand. As your professor, that distresses me. As a person, it gives me hope. Maybe what this world needs is someone who won’t do whatever they think is necessary to make things be the way they want. Now, you can’t linger here or in this city. I recommend you get out of the Empire and go as far west as possible. There are places where the hand of the Guild is a little weaker. The forests around Landsend or the mountains north of Daarendi. Perhaps you’ll have a better chance there. You have already lingered here too long. I do not think the Guild is watching me constantly, but I know I am under suspicion. You should leave quickly, though I wish you could stay and talk, you and this intriguing Mage of yours.”
Mari stood up, her eyes on Professor S’san. “Thank you, Professor.”
S’san blew out a disdainful breath. “For helping to guide you into this mess?”
“Yes,” Mari said, surprised to realize she was sincere in saying that. “You tried, where others are content to ignore truth and reality. I can’t fault that. And if you hadn’t taught me the way you did, perhaps I wouldn’t have gotten to know a certain young male Mage. Will you be safe?”
S’san made a face. “That’s hard to say. No one can tell what the future holds, unless you believe in that fortunetelling the Mages do. What they call prophecies, like that about the daughter.” She directed another look at Alain. “What do have to say about that?”
“Foresight provides warning and visions, though it is unreliable,” Alain answered. “Its meaning is also often unclear.”
“Why would it be unclear?” S’san asked.
“There is only a vision,” Alain said. “It may be…what is the word…an allegory, such as a vision of an oncoming storm, that must be interpreted. But even a clear picture provides no understanding of how the events in the vision came to be, what decisions led to it, or what is happening outside the range of the vision. I have also come to understand that the person you see in the vision of the future, if it is you, may not be the same person you are. If a year ago I were to have seen a vision of myself at this moment, I could have neither interpreted nor understood any part of it. Why do I not wear my Mage robes? Who is the young woman beside me and why does she smile upon me? Who is the Mechanic and why do I speak with her? Where am I? Why did I come there? Though an accurate view of the future, the vision would offer no answers, only questions.”
S’san had been listening very closely. “Remarkable, yet also completely logical. A picture of the future lacks all context, so by the time you can understand a vision of the future, you’re there. It provides no useful information, you say?”
“It can,” Alain corrected. “It may show a possible event. The decisions made can lead to that event, or lead to something else.”
“Oh, Mari,” Professor S’san said, “if I could have only a week with this Mage to see how much I can learn! But I won’t imperil either of you by insisting on that. In a week, who knows what might have happened to me?”
Alain shook his head. “I have had no visions regarding your fate, Elder S’san.”
“If it’s a dire one, I have only my own mistakes to blame. Forgive me, Mari,” S’san said in an unusually quiet voice. “My errors placed you in grave danger.”
Mari walked forward to hug her old teacher. “You have not just my forgiveness but my thanks for what you’ve taught me. I have a lot of thinking to do. Since you taught me how to think well, maybe I’ll make the right decisions.”
But as the door closed behind her, Mari could see nothing ahead. Momentary optimism, fleeting hope, dissipated into nothing as she thought of her situation. “All of these people think I’m going to make some huge difference,” she said to Alain. “Including you. But how? It’s impossible. I’m out of options. It really is hopeless.”
Chapter Thirteen
They left the apartment building quickly, walking back toward the center of Severun. Alain kept searching for danger, but at some point he realized that his watchfulness was making him look suspicious. Thereafter he tried to appear less interested in the world while still watching. Not as disinterested as a Mage, but like the commons around him and Mari. The Imperial citizens they passed were absorbed in their own business, and the local police had their attention fixed on the people carousing in taverns along the way. At one point Alain saw a couple of Mechanics in the distance and nudged Mari, but she gave the two a disinterested glance as they disappeared down another street.
Within moments after leaving S’san’s place and expressing her fears Mari had sunk into moody silence. She walked without another word until Alain spoke to her. “What should I do?”
“Nothing.” Mari shrugged. “There’s nothing anybody can do. I already said it. It’s hopeless. All we can do is hide, while the entire world goes to blazes.”
“Perhaps when we talk we can come up with some ideas.”
She stared down the street they were on, shadows stretching across it as the setting sun dropped lower in the west. “I don’t know. There are certain hard realities here, Alain. I can’t change them by wishing and hoping. You can’t change them, either. This isn’t something as simple as…all right, I was going to say as simple as walking th
rough solid walls, but that doesn’t make sense.”
Mari shook her head, gazing morosely down toward the waters of Lake Bellad. “Professor S’san taught me never to give up on a problem, to keep trying different things until I found a solution. But I don’t know if any different things exist to try. And I admit that it shouldn’t be surprising by now to find out that my Guild deliberately allowed me to be placed in peril for its own ends, at a time when I had done nothing against my Guild, but it still hurts. It also reinforces that anything I try now would not only likely be futile but also might end up causing harm to people who know me. While I was in there with Professor S’san I could pretend that there might be hope, but now? What else can be done that won’t be futile?” Mari fixed her eyes on the ground passing beneath their feet. “Let’s find a safe place to sleep. I’m tired. Very tired.”
Alain steered them by a cafe first. Mages were taught simply to take what they wanted from commons too frightened to resist, but Mari had shown him the basics of ordering and paying for meals, so he was able to buy some food and drink while Mari stared silently into space beside him. He made her eat despite the scowls he earned from Mari for his efforts. Only then did he head for a hostel, finding a plain but clean one a fair distance from Lake Bellad which had plentiful vacancies with the winter coming on. Mari had to check them in, since Alain had not yet learned how to do that.
She roused enough to ask for privacy, for a room without anyone in the rooms next to it, a request the clerk granted with a smirk at Alain. But once in the room, Mari sat down glumly in a chair with a view out the window to the lake, where nothing could be seen in the darkness after sunset but the flickering torchlights of fishing boats and other watercraft, gliding like ghost beacons across the surface of the water.
Alain sat down near her. “We need to make plans. Where do we go now?”
“It really doesn’t matter, does it?” Mari shrugged. “Pick a place. Maybe Cathlan. Blazes, Alain, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding.”
He felt the tug of urgency that had first appeared when he saw the vision in the desert. “We cannot afford to hide. There is no such time to waste.”
She glanced at him, then quickly away. “Then you should make the best of what time is left. Maybe if you left me, you could get back in good graces with your Guild. That way you could be with Asha.”
The words startled him. “Why would I leave you to be with Asha?”
Mari shook her head, looking drained. “Only you of all men would ask that question.”
“You would not leave me in the hopes of gaining forgiveness from your Guild. Why would you expect me to leave you? I have promised to stand by you and assist you in bringing the new day. We can make plans in the morning if you prefer that. A night’s sleep–”
“Won’t make any difference,” she interrupted with a bitter voice. “There’s no place left to go and no reason to go there except running for our lives. And for what? To live hunted a little longer? This isn’t a game there’s any chance of winning any more.”
“There must be a way to win.”
“You keep saying things like that. Mari will change the world! Where did you get that idea?” Mari slumped a little lower in her seat, glaring out at the night.
“You have told me you know of your role in the prophecy. I understand why you have not wanted to speak of it, but—”
“What?” Mari stared at him. “I told you what?”
“That you did not wish to talk about your role as the one who will fulfill the prophecy to overthrow the Great Guilds.”
“When did I— WHAT?” Mari gazed at him wordlessly, stunned.
“The prophecy,” Alain tried again. “You kept telling me you did not want to speak of it, and that you already understood what you were fated to do.”
“Fated? Me?” Mari gulped for air before she could speak again, her words coming fast. “That prophecy was a long time ago. Why would anyone think it connects to me? Aside from deluded commons, that is.”
“You said you knew about what I had seen,” Alain said, growing more confused. “Each time I brought it up, you—”
“What you had seen?” Mari stared at her hands, then back at him. “About me?”
“Yes. The vision clearly indicated that you were the one. She who could stop the oncoming storm, who could bring the new day, who would fulfill the prophecy of the daughter.”
Mari’s mouth hung open. Her eyes were locked on him and she appeared to be struggling to breathe. Alain, alarmed, jumped to his feet and ran to her. “Mari!”
She drew in a convulsive breath, followed by several more. “When?” Mari finally managed to say.
“When will you fulfill the prophecy?”
Mari suddenly shot to her feet and glared at him. “No! When did you learn this?”
“In Dorcastle.”
“In Dorcastle? And this is the first time you’ve mentioned it?”
It was Alain’s turn to stare at her, wondering why she was so angry. “No. I tried to speak of it there, and you told me not to. You said you already knew.”
“I—” Mari couldn’t breathe again for a moment. “You know, I’m pretty sure I would remember that!”
“But I have brought it up again and again and each time you have said it did not need to be discussed!” Alain realized he had actually spoken with force.
“I didn’t mean— That was— You never—” Mari sat down abruptly, as if her legs had lost all strength, her expression horrified. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”
He sat down as well, feeling both confused and awful, though Alain was not sure why. “In the desert, after we had joined the salt traders, I saw a vision focused on you. I did not know what it could mean. It showed a second sun above you, and striving against that sun a swiftly moving storm whose clouds were made up of angry mobs and clashing armies.”
Her eyes were still locked on him, but Mari did not say anything.
“You and I had ceased speaking with each other once we found others, so I could not tell you of it then. It was not until I reached Dorcastle that I found an elder who would tell me what the vision meant,” Alain continued. “This elder was not like the others. She warned me against speaking of it to anyone else, because, she said, it revealed that the daughter of the prophecy had come, that she was the one whom I had seen the vision focused upon. That an awful storm approached our world, one that would cause it to descend into chaos and destruction as the commons erupted in uncontrolled fury after centuries of servitude. The elder said the forces making up that storm would try to destroy the daughter, because she was the only one who could change the world and overcome the forces which threatened the world. She told me that, as you and I talked of in Dorcastle, the anarchy in Tiae is a sign of what is to come everywhere unless the storm is stopped.
“I tried to speak of it to you when we met at the restaurant, and you told me you already knew what I wished to say, and there was no need to say anything.”
Mari finally spoke again, her voice ragged. “Wait. What did you say? Exactly what did you tell me?”
Alain tried to remember. “I said it was about you, and about me, and the future—”
“Oh no!” Mari slammed both of her palms against her forehead. “You— You— I thought you wanted to talk about you and me being together in the future!”
“I did, because I knew you would need my help, my protection, in order to fulfill the prophecy—”
“No! No! No!” Mari was angry again, glowering at him. “What you said sounded like a romantic discussion, like you wanted to talk about us being serious and committed to each other, and I was not ready for that so I told you…” She gasped, sagging back against her seat, looking stricken. “No. I can’t be her.”
“Mari?”
“I want to be angry with you. I want to be very, very, very angry with you,” Mari said in a whisper. “But I remember some things, times you started to say things and I thought… Oh, no. Alain, couldn’t y
ou tell that I didn’t really know what you wanted to talk about?”
“No,” he said. “I could not.” Alain wondered what his own face and eyes might be revealing now, because he could no longer think to control them. “You did not know? All this time you did not?”
She looked back at him, and must have seen something there that calmed her anger though not her distress. “You really did think I knew. Why did you think I didn’t want to ever talk about it?”
“It is such a huge thing,” Alain said. “Such a difficult thing.”
“Yeah,” Mari said in a faint voice. “Huge. Difficult. Alain, you said your Guild knew who I was.”
“Not that way,” he hastened to say. “They knew you were the Mechanic I had seen in Ringhmon. They did not know you were the daughter—”
“Don’t call me that.”
Alain tried again. “The elder I spoke with would not have betrayed you or me. I am certain that my Guild did not know. If they did, they would not have sent a single Mage with a knife to try to kill you in Edinton. If they even suspected, they would have used every Mage in Edinton and every spell they possessed, or they would have waited until you came to me to ensure they killed both of us.”
Her eyes stayed on his. “Maybe they expected me to join you on that Alexdrian expedition that was attacked, so that dragon could kill both of us.”
“That…is possible,” Alain said. “But the Roc tried to kill you first, so it may be that the Mage Guild now suspects who you are.”
“That’s what you meant when were talking after we were attacked on the train?” Mari was blinking, her expression shifting from horror to dismay to disbelief and through all those emotions again. “My Guild, your Guild, they’ll kill me in a heartbeat if they find out about this. The Empire…what would the Empire do if they got their hands on me now? My life isn’t worth a speck of dust.”