After only a few more minutes, the dragon announced, “It is done,” and released the spell that had been sustaining Drayson against the elemental allergens as the dragon worked. A wave of nausea seized the Dark mage, as the foreign elements began burning his skin from the inside. The experiment had failed. At least Jesreael was a merciful master; he would quickly destroy Drayson and the mage’s agony would be short-lived.
Then Jesreael spoke again. “You are mine. My strength is yours”—not destruction, but a spell linking dragon and mage. The other mages sang notes harmonizing with their liege’s voice. Drayson inhaled the magic in his master’s breath, felt the gift of power from the Earth mage nearest, from the River and Sea mages, the Air and Metal mages, from his brother Stone mages, and from the Moon mage at the edge of the gathering. He could feel the creation energy flowing into him, a rush of power that made his breath catch.
The fire under his skin died down and his mage glow increased in strength, illuminating the cavern.
Four days later, Drayson, dressed in human clothing, waited at the depot for the train carrying the mage, Thorn St. Croix.
Kraken Conquered
Late Summer 105 PA / 2117 AD
Faith Hunter
Standing at the back of the train car, I looked over the dome of the Enclave. It looked as if a huge, amber crystal bowl had been upended over the French Quarter of New Orleans. Bands of darker material, perhaps heavenly metals, held it in place, rising to a central pillar capped with a gleaming, golden fleur-de-lis. It was the sort of beauty someone with a soul might expect to see in the heavens, in an afterlife. The massive dome covered the Quarter, downstream over Faubourg Marigny and parts of Tremé/Lafitte, and upstream all the way to Lafayette Square.
When it appeared, the first Enclave in the world to be set in place by seraphs, it had blocked the Mississippi River, forcing its waters to cut a new bed through the alluvial soil and the remains of cities to the west of the dome. I hadn’t seen the gilded prison of my home since I left it, smuggled out wrapped in a rug, when I was fourteen.
Enclaves were rare, made by seraphs, the angels of Heaven, to keep neomages safe from humans. Or so it was said. Maybe it was to protect them from us.
The dome glowed with power in the early evening, a scintillating rainbow light blasting out, the visual spectrum of power itself. I had never seen it in person from this side. I’d been unconscious when I was carried out of Enclave more than a decade ago, taken into the human population to save my life. From inside, it had looked like cut crystal, and reflected back the blues and greens and yellows of mages within conjuring.
The light from inside the car angled out and Eli took his place to my left, smelling of horse and hay and sweet-feed. The train clackety-clacked over the rails, as it had for weeks. He didn’t speak. He just stood there, available if I needed him. Silent, if silence was what I wanted. As a human, he shouldn’t know what I needed at any time, not nearly as much as some of my other champards, but he always did. He always knew.
Softly, he said, “You look beautiful, mistrend. You look beautiful in a ball gown or in fighting leathers. You look beautiful fresh from the shower or covered in the blood of battle. And more importantly, you look powerful. That is what they will respect. That is what they will respond to. To them, power is the greatest beauty of all.”
I laughed and the notes were harsh, strangled. My few friends and enemies in the Enclave would think many things of me when I went back inside. Beauty would not be one.
I am Thorn St. Croix, once rogue mage, returning to the Enclave of my birth, with my twin, Rose. I could feel her inside the train car. She was like a splotch of death in space itself, a touch of chaos, like the faint scent of explosives, blasting cap in place, ready for destruction, death, and ruin. All while sitting in a corner, reading a book. The skin along my spine tightened with fear. Fear of my own sister.
This trip had multiple purposes but my main goals were two: to force the priestess to parley and provide me with a permanent visa, so that I could remain in the human world; and to discover a way to cure death magics once they’d taken hold of a mage. If I failed, I’d end up a prisoner inside the gorgeous, brilliant dome, or on the run, in hiding, as I’d spent most of the last decade. And my only sister would become a mass murderer before I had to kill her to stop her.
I looked down at my hands, resting on the painted wood railing at the back of the car, seeing the glow of scars on one. You look beautiful, mistrend . . . Lies. Unlike the expectation of mages in Enclave, unlike the best of the best, I wasn’t soft, beautiful, young, or idealistic, as I had once been. I was battle-scarred and damaged, had been broken and put back to together—more than once by a seraph of the Most High. My skin was pearled and shining with blemishes of healed flesh on my left hand, my cheek, my throat, and a dozen other places. I glimmered like mages and glowed with mage scars, testament of war. Yet I carried a shadowy stain of darkness on my side where a Major Darkness had claimed me.
“You. Are. Lovely,” Eli said again, with emphasis. “And even if others see only the scars and not the beauty and strength, your power makes them pause. You are more than any other mage. A Stone mage and a battle mage. And you are the consul-general of the Battle Station Consulate of Mineral City, Carolina. Never forget that, Thorn.” Then he added with a touch of the mischief I’d come to love, “And you’re a celebrity.”
I smiled and shook my head, letting my breath flow from me. My consulate sat on the edge of civilization in the Appalachian Mountains. It was the last bastion of safety between the reign of Darkness in the frozen peaks and glaciers and the reign of human civilization. “A general by default,” I said, wryly.
“Nevertheless. You held your land in the face of Leviathan.”
Leviathan was the name of one of the most powerful forms of Darkness, a dragon of true might. To defeat it, I had broken a sacred vow and allowed my best friend to die. And Rose had taken his death energies to save us. If that was discovered, we would be anathema to Enclave.
There were other things that made me different. I could, rarely, join minds with my own seraph, Raziel, the chief of the supreme mysteries, an angel of secrets, and an archangelic governor. Together, we could enter the River of Time and change events that were about to happen, or had just happened. Not that I had told others about that. It was unheard of. Possibly deadly to me if I did it again.
Worse, I was also an omega mage. I was hard, edged like a blade, strong and brittle as stone, and powerful beyond most other mages. I could command seraphs in battle. Omega mages died for their presumption at commanding seraphs to act. I probably had a life expectancy of days. And Rose? She was a death mage. Together, we were a weapon not seen in . . . forever. Omega mage and death mage. Together, it seemed that we had begun to fulfill the prophecy uttered at our birth: A Rose by any Other Name will still draw Blood.
My greatest fear was that there was still a purpose left undone, something that the Most High (if He existed) wanted us to accomplish. And that accomplishment would mean our deaths. And the deaths of those I loved.
I laughed softly, the acrid sound blending with the clacking. I tightened my fists on the railing, letting the wood burn through me, painfully binding me to the here-and-now. As a Stone mage, wood can be hazardous to me. The healed skin of my left hand glowed brightly at the contact of the allergen. My prime glowed as well, protecting me.
If I failed at my goals, my sister and I would suffer or die, my champards would suffer and die, and my seraph might go to war against the mages. That last wasn’t likely, but . . . my fear said it was possible. And terrifying.
It was dead dark when the engine and remaining cars clacked away along the tracks that paralleled old Highway 90. It left my two cars on the spur line set aside for commuter cars, sleeper cars, and personally owned cars like mine. Well, like Cheran’s. I had claimed the cars for the consulate and he hadn’t disagreed. Much. Cheran Jones was another champard, though a bit unwillingly in his case.
>
Eli again at my side, I stared into the night, the nearly full moon brightening everything for him, and mage sight allowing me to see far more than a human. In the distance, uptown, I could see the lights of New Orleans, the parts that humans had returned to after the Last War. Homes and businesses had been expanded over the last decade into what had once been the Garden and Warehouse Districts, the land protected from attack by the Darkness under the faintly glowing power of one of the strongest wards in the world. Human New Orleans might not like mages, but her citizens made use of their abilities. And in exchange for the ward, the mages received transportation, shipping, legal and trade assistance, and imports of perishables, raw stone, and ores.
Thanks to the Enclave, New Orleans was a hub of trade, shipping, money, and magic.
The train car door opened behind us. “Orders, mistrend?” Audric asked. His tone was cold as steel in winter and I didn’t turn to see him. The lamps threw his shadow across the ground beyond, massive shoulders, rounded bald head. A death lay between us, a sacrifice that had pierced us both. The friendship that should exist between champard and mistrend had died with Rupert.
As had my self-worth. I had sworn before the Most High (if He existed), promising that I would give my own life in exchange for Rupert’s, that I would die by own hand rather than kill one of those I guarded. I had vowed it to the Most High by His unspeakable Name. And I was foresworn.
“I’ll go to the inn,” I said without turning, “and check us in. You unload the horses and bring them. They can use the exercise. We should be safe enough within the city ward.”
“And Thadd?” Audric asked.
Thaddeus’ wings were going to be a problem. They had proved impossible for him to glamour, they were large enough that they trailed on the ground behind him, and kylen were creatures of tremendous interest to humans and mages alike. He would attract attention no matter where he went, and eventually that attention would bring seraphs who’d take him to a Realm of Light forever. I sighed. Audric knew what to do. “Put him on one of the horses and give him a cloak. And stop being such an ass.”
He ignored my comment. “And your power sink?”
We’d brought four, two hundred-pound rocks packed in dirt, in crates, in the stall car. They would need to be taken to the cardinal points of whatever acreage I chose as my temporary embassy grounds. Their placement and the raising of my flag were diplomatic declarations meant to confuse the priestess of Enclave and her advisors. They might be interpreted as declarations of war against her personally. Or they might be a declaration that I had my own power sink—which I did—and that I was setting myself up as a separate nation, outside of Enclave—which I might have to do in the end. Such a thing had never been done, and would be in violation of the edict that all mages must wear what were essentially tracking devices, tied to their home Enclave. I had one now, one with a time limit built in. When it went out of date, I would be forced to other, untried measures. Or the boulders might be a declaration of personal insanity that put all of New Orleans outside of Enclave in danger. Or a combination of all three. Either way, I was declaring total independence from the priestess. Whatever she and her advisors thought, my actions would keep them guessing and give me time to establish myself here.
The massive stones would need to be buried as soon as possible, so that light and air couldn’t touch them. Once in place, I could use them to anchor a ward, as well as provide power. And since they came from the earth near my power sink at home, I could use them to link to the power stored there.
“Leave them for now,” I said. “We’re all tired. Let’s sleep in real beds that don’t rattle and shake.”
“As my mistrend commands.” He backed away, into the train car. I kept my eyes on the horizon, but inside I ached at the loss of our friendship. It felt as if I bled.
When he was gone, I pried my hands from the railing and accepted Eli’s assistance to the ground. The trip had been eventful and I was exhausted. I wasn’t expected to make an entrance in Enclave for several days, maybe for several weeks, once the Enclave rulers had a chance to see my new quarters, power sink, and flag. My champards would be negotiating with the priestess and her council and acting sly and amused and haughty while I established myself and threw wrenches into the process by my actions. We had rooms set aside in the St. Charles Inn, a short distance from the spur line track.
From the train car, Rose called, “Thorn, wait! I’m coming!” I felt Eli tense, a fast reaction, quickly gone. My champards feared my sister. She tossed down her reticule and stepped to the ground. She was wearing pink silk with heavy embroidery, which she could use to store creation energy for her Earth magery. She was using her birth element again. I hoped that the power of death would begin to fade.
She hefted her bags and I pulled my longsword from its sheath, just in case I was wrong about our safety for the walk. As we strolled toward the buildings that comprised the city and port of New Orleans, Rose added, “Lucas and Ciana said they’d be along shortly. Seraph stones! It’s good to be home!”
I didn’t reply. As a child, I had never been outside of the dome. As an adult, New Orleans had become a familiar place to her. Nothing was familiar to me.
Eli murmured, “You should let me shoot him.”
I chuckled. He was talking about Audric, and we’d had this half-serious/half-joking discussion more than once. “Tempting sometimes. But I’m his mistrend. I’m still his friend even when he isn’t mine. And besides, we might need him. He has friends inside, friends who might know the priestess and who will know her staff.”
“I still should shoot him,” Eli grumbled, his words cut off by a rumbling train. For all his claim to want to kill his fellow champard, he was the most thoughtful of them all. Of course, part of that was his desire to bed me. I hadn’t chosen to accept any of my champards as bedmate. Having a kylen as champard and the threat of death to me should I give in to mage heat and sleep with him had kept me chaste with all of them. “Or at least hit him with a big stick,” he finished, trying to make me laugh. I managed a smile.
Eli adjusted my reticule. He was carrying all my luggage, including my large weapons case. We’d have to hire servants soon to do the mundane and housekeeping tasks. No visiting priestess or royalty or whatever I might become should be seen with only one servant. It simply wasn’t done.
There wasn’t much left of the old city between Lafayette Square and the old expressway. Now there was the new railroad, terminal, warehouses, the entrance to the warded city, and the gas station with its pay phone, the one used by mages when they needed to make calls to the human world. The banks of the Mississippi were close, as was the Gulf of Mexico, and I could smell the power of water on the air, a natural toxin to me. I drew on mage sight to see the sickly greenish-yellow of its energies.
I could also hear the screams of prey as minor, water-borne Darkness crawled from the river in search of food. There was no way to keep these creatures away. Some few always managed to find a way to swim or float in on the currents, do some dreadful thing to local wildlife, and disappear. Mage power kept the larger things at bay and protected the humans of New Orleans. When I was growing up, there had been regular training missions for the second unforeseen, when large numbers of fighters would leave Enclave and wipe out the minor Darkness. I had no idea if the current priestess had kept up the policies of the previous one.
The screams got loud, high pitched, as something wild died in the night. I wanted to be back in Mineral City.
At the ornate ward-gate, I presented my visa and papers to the soldiers who guarded the only entrance through the ward after sunset, and informed them that my champards would be following shortly. I was several days early, but the uniformed humans were eager to provide me access and would have tales to tell in the morning about the sight of the rogue mage who fought with seraphs.
Once inside the ward of uptown New Orleans, the scent of coffee, tobacco, and food assailed us and Rose breathed deeply, the rose quart
z focal on her chest moving with her ribcage when she groaned with delight. It was moments like this that made me believe she could be saved. The city smelled wonderful, even to a dedicated vegetarian like me. The scents were spicy, meaty, and cooked in grease. The entrance was prestigious, with repaved streets and new construction, most of which had been built from the blasted remains of older, Pre-Ap buildings. Mage lights kept the streets well-lit and people were everywhere in the safe confines of the ward, eating, drinking, partying—a lifestyle unknown to me. Here there was little influence of the orthodoxy, the citizens reputedly having thrown them out when the kirk tried to stop a Mardi Gras celebration long ago.
Only a block into the city, we walked the roundabout on St. Charles. The ancient roundabout was surrounded by restaurants and pubs and even a playhouse, as the ward-gate and the nearby inn were focal points of city life. Trade made its entrances and exits through the main gate, mule trains and miners, diplomats and envoys hoping to negotiate with the mages came and went from here. And it was part of the party life of the city, so ingrained that even the orthodoxy in uptown had not been able to eradicate it totally.
The St. Charles Inn was a few steps off the roundabout on a side street, composed of two old churches that had been combined and converted to living spaces. The amalgamation of the buildings had resulted in a mishmash of architectural styles, brick and stone, with tiled roofs, one curved side, two turrets, a bell tower, and a garden space.
Many buildings in the area had been devastated in the Last War, but the blended churches stood strong. The once-sacred ground had been turned to other uses in Pre-Ap times, de-sanctified as museums, playhouses, and such, and the stone of the structure had been painted over and protected from the elements for over a century. I had hoped it might be possible to combine the old stone with my boulders for a bigger power sink. We took the walkway to the inn’s entrance and I let my hand trail across the stone. I felt the buzz of latent power. This is good. I drew upon it to restore my own exhausted state before walking inside.