James Barclay - Beyond the Mists of Katura

The harbour master having withdrawn and with Ulysan standing just outside to deflect Takaar after his avowed intent to join the meeting, Auum, Drech and Stein could talk openly.

‘If there was one thing you humans taught us during the decades of slavery it was that we cannot afford to kill each other,’ said Auum. ‘Yniss knows we struggle with this every day, but at last the threads work together and they have done ever since the filth of your past left us. In all the time your people were occupying my country, only two of you showed you had a soul. Garan, who I will admit was misunderstood in his dealings with Takaar, and the first Stein. You might be the third.’

Stein nodded but could not keep the hurt look from his face.

‘I understand that the memories of our past atrocities are still fresh for you but you have to understand-’

‘I have to understand nothing. I have some respect for you, but I will not commit any forces to your aid unless I believe there is a direct threat to the elves. Takaar believes there is, and that worries me. Now you have to lay out the facts and convince me.’

Stein held up his hands. ‘That is nothing more than I had expected to do.’

‘Good. Your war should have ended with your Sundering battles hundreds of years ago. Perhaps you should have learned our lesson, eh?’

‘Some of us did, believe me. And now we are forced into alliances much as you were.’ Stein paused to take a lengthy swallow of his infusion and looked over at Drech. ‘Before I start, how much have you discussed our magic colleges with Auum?’

‘I have never spoken about human magic with either Drech or Takaar. It is of no interest,’ said Auum flatly.

Stein opened his mouth and then closed it again, getting a little edgy. Auum knew he was being confrontational but it did no harm for the human, however welcome, to understand where he was and in whose presence he sat.

‘Right,’ said Stein and a brief smile played over his face, masking his anxiety. ‘With respect, Auum, I think you need to know a little background before I can properly explain the magnitude of the threat that we, and as a direct result you, now face.’

Auum shrugged. ‘If you must.’

‘I’ll be brief. The Sundering was the inevitable consequence of our differing approaches to magic, its learning and its casting. Four schools of thought, ethics and morals emerged over the course of time; then there are your old friends Ystormun and the Wytch Lords.

‘I doubt there would have been a battle, let alone a full-blown mage war, if the Wytch Lords had not been determined to cling on to Triverne. Obviously, that could not be allowed.’

‘Obviously,’ said Auum.

Drech chuckled. ‘It was the location of the heartstone — the artefact that focuses all human magical power.’

‘Was?’ Auum felt cheered by the implication.

‘During the conflict Triverne and the stone were destroyed. It set back magical research and use by — I don’t know — three hundred years.’

Auum bit back a childish comment and suppressed a smile too. Instead, he spread his hands.

‘Let’s skip to the outcome, or by the time you get around to our problems your enemies will be docked at wharf one.’

‘As was already agreed, each faction set up its own college, but there was no stone to split so we all had to make our own. They were the work of generations. But at least the Wytch Lords had been defeated, diminished and banished way into the west to dig dirt with the Wesmen.’

Auum let the reference to Wesmen go. ‘So what happened? I had no idea Takaar was sending elves to Julatsa — your college, I presume? — but not even he would send them into the teeth of a breaking war.’

Stein blew out his cheeks. ‘The first adepts arrived a hundred years ago, well before any conflict could be foreseen. But the latest arrived less than a hundred days ago. You’ll have to make your own judgement.’

‘I wish I could believe he wouldn’t ignore the warnings. If there were any?’

Stein flinched under Auum’s bleak gaze.

‘There were warnings. But the tide rolled in so quickly. The Wytch Lords had been building their strength of magic and arms beyond the curtain of the Blackthorne Mountains, but their chosen moment to strike should have been foreseen.’

‘We are all guilty of not seeing the obvious at times,’ said Auum. Stein inclined his head. ‘What was the trigger?’

‘Our greatest mage, a man called Septern, created a spell to prove a theory. Once he’d announced his success to a four-college meeting it quickly became clear they would all fight to get it.’

‘Must be some spell,’ said Auum.

‘It is. It’s Dawnthief.’

‘That’s supposed to mean something, is it?’

‘Dawnthief,’ repeated Stein. ‘An extraordinary construct. Septern made the impossible possible. He demonstrated that, in theory, magic can do absolutely anything.’

‘I think that’s too great an assumption,’ said Drech, his enthusiasm for this debate only marginally less than Stein’s. ‘Dawnthief can, in theory, remove all light and air from an entire dimension. That does not prove that magic can, say, grow crops from seeds in a fraction of the usual time.’

‘What?’ said Auum.

‘It’s a matter of perspective,’ said Stein, turning to Drech, his hands making a globe, his fingertips together. ‘If you take our dimension as a single entity, then a spell that can remove all light, air and life from that dimension must, at its core, understand that life. Hence it could potentially give rise to any spell for any purpose you care to mention.’

‘What!?’ said Auum, hoping he was mishearing but knowing he was not.

‘That doesn’t follow,’ said Drech. ‘If my understanding of Dawnthief is correct, it merely, if I can use that word in this context, removes light and air and hence life. You do not have to understand the basis of the genesis of life to know how to remove it from something that is living.’

The slap of Auum’s palms on the table overturned all three mugs and jolted Drech and Stein from their ridiculous discussion. Both looked at him like guilty schoolchildren, Stein’s expression instantly became anxious. There was silence but for the drip-drip of spilled infusion from the table to the floor. Auum’s face was hot with anger.

‘And there you both sit. Smug examples of exactly why magic is so dangerous and its practitioners must be treated with maximum suspicion. One of your own has developed a spell that, unless I misheard you, can kill everything in a heartbeat, and yet you sit there and discuss the finer points of the theory?

‘How can you have been so. . careless ? Yniss preserve us, but I thought I’d heard it all. But in all the thousands of years I have enjoyed blessed life, I have never been so astonished, so furious , that another sentient being could do something so. . so stupid !’

Auum pushed back and got up, unable to sit any longer. He walked around the kitchen, trying to get his thoughts in order and failing completely.

‘To be fair, we weren’t the ones who were careless,’ said Drech.

‘It’s the whole sorry lot of you!’ Auum shouted. ‘Don’t you understand? This is the curse of magic. It endangers innocent people all over Balaia and Calaius. I don’t care if you call yourself a mage or Il-Aryn, you are all complicit in this. Of course Ystormun and the Wytch Lords want Dawnthief. Why by all the gods of elves and men did you let this Septern create this thing and, worse, allow it to be announced to the entire dimension?’

Auum rubbed his hands over his face as if that would cleanse him of this reality. But when he looked back at Drech and Stein his anger intensified.