Jack Campbell: The Hidden Masters of Marandur

And beyond that, Mari’s thoughts went to someone else much farther north. The Mages have decided to stop watching me and instead are trying to kill me. What if they are also after Alain?

What if his Guild suspects or learns the truth about him, and like my Guild decides to send him on a mission of no return?

I’ve been so afraid that my Guild would learn my biggest secret. If it had, the Senior Mechanics wouldn’t have played around with schemes to get rid of me. They were afraid I knew more than I was supposed to about Mages and Dark Mechanics, they thought I was a negative influence on other Mechanics, and they completely rejected what I once said about where the Mechanics Guild’s own policies are leading. But all they would have had to do to destroy me was to find out that Mari of Caer Lyn was in love with a Mage.

Mage Alain of Ihris went to war.

The elders who had informed him of his new contract had of course betrayed no emotions. He had managed to keep his own expression unrevealing as one of the elders spoke in the cold monotone of a Mage. “You will accompany a military force from the Free Cities during an attack on Imperial territory east of the mountains. Provide whatever services you deem appropriate.”

“Who will be the other Mage assigned to this contract?” Alain had asked, his own voice just as unfeeling as those of the elders.

“There will be no other Mage.” The elders had watched him, as if expecting to see some betraying emotion, but Alain had not given them that satisfaction.

“This one has questions,” Alain said.

Instead of giving the formal reply of “This one listens,” one of the elders simply shook his head. “The Free Cities cannot afford more than one Mage on this expedition of theirs. You will do this task alone. Perhaps you will succeed this time.”

Had Alain’s face or eyes revealed emotion then? The elder’s brutally emotionless reference to the caravan which Alain alone had been contracted to defend, a caravan almost wiped out by overwhelming force, seemed to have been intended to provoke Alain into showing some feeling.

But elders had been using similar tricks ever since Alain had been taken from his family to become an acolyte, and the punishments for any visible trace of feeling had been severe. The scars he bore testified to that. After years of such training, Alain felt sure his voice, his face, and even his eyes revealed nothing as he answered. “This one understands.”

Alain had accepted the contract. He had no choice but to accept it.

Now, a week later, he rode among the soldiers of the Free Cities.

He turned in his saddle, gazing back at the mountains named the Northern Ramparts. They rose majestically skyward, seeming to leap up from the flat lands that lapped at their feet. It was as if nature itself had raised the Ramparts as a barrier to block the Empire’s reach. The column of soldiers had left the foot of a pass at the base of those mountains earlier today. Settling back into his saddle, Alain looked forward again, where the rolling, fertile plains of the northern reaches of the Empire stretched away toward the horizon.

The Free Cities sat nestled within the rugged reaches of the Northern Ramparts, while the Empire had dominated the part of the continent to the east of those mountains for almost as long as history recorded. This attack would not change that, would not change anything, because nothing in the world of Dematr was allowed to change. Some of the shadows who rode and marched around Alain—those the Mechanics called common folk—would die, along with some Imperial soldiers. But in the end the border between the Free Cities and the Empire would remain as it had always been. The Mage Guild wanted nothing to change, unless that change involved something harmful to those who called themselves Mechanics.

The teachings of the Mage Guild were that none of these others was real, no one else and nothing anywhere was real, that everything around him was merely a shadow born of Alain’s own illusions. He had accepted that wisdom—until he met Mari. In a world where nothing was allowed to change, Alain had been changed.

He could let himself feel emotions again. He had learned what it meant to help someone else. He had learned what a friend was.

He had forgotten what love was. Until he had fallen in love.

He had learned that this unchanging world was threatened by catastrophic change, a storm of death and destruction that only one person could prevent—by overthrowing the power of the Mage Guild and the Mechanics Guild.

The elders suspected something was wrong with him. If they ever learned the depth of his failure, he would die. If they ever learned about Mari, that she was the one long ago foretold to overthrow the Great Guilds…

She would die.

Master Mechanic Mari of Caer Lyn. Even the thought of her name gave him a feeling of forbidden pleasure. No matter how hard he resolved, no matter how he tried to concentrate on the danger that he and these soldiers might encounter, Alain could not stop thinking of her, wondering where she was, wondering whether she was safe. Such thoughts could lead to Mari’s death, even if the Mage Guild elders never learned of the vision Alain’s foresight had given him.

Every thought could betray him—and. worse, betray her. She was somewhere far south of here, on the other side of the Sea of Bakre, far from him and the danger his presence would bring Mari. And…it could well be that her thoughts of him had changed. She had said that she cared for him, but they had been separated since then, and Mari had been among her fellow Mechanics. Did Mari still think of him as a friend? As more than a friend? Or had she already regretted and cast aside feelings which could only add to the dangers she faced?

But even if she forgot him, he could not forget her, no matter how hard Alain tried to wall away all feelings, all thoughts of Mari.

He rode alone, about two lance-lengths separating him and the horse he rode from those ahead and behind. Commons kept their distance from Mages, more out of fear and revulsion than respect, but that did not matter to Mages. Nothing mattered to Mages, because nothing was real.

In front of and in the wake of Alain, the soldiers of the Free City of Alexdria marched, following the track they were on eastward and deeper into the Empire. Farthest forward rode a long column of cavalry, their harnesses jingling with a merry sound that clashed strangely with the sharp, businesslike points of the cavalry’s lances. Behind came a long file of foot soldiers, tramping along steadily, every one of them carrying a few empty bags which they expected to fill with loot by morning. Last of all came wagons, pulled by mules and similarly empty, clattering along over the dirt road.

“Do you require anything, Sir Mage?” The question came in a voice that trembled. Alain had a special escort, a young man in new cavalry gear. There had been a time when Alain would not have cared about how the young soldier felt, about the dread Mages inspired in common folk. Alain would not even have deigned to take notice of him, the young soldier and every other person being mere shadows cast on the illusion which was the world.

But Mari would have noticed that young soldier, would have cared about him. She had even noticed and cared about the fate of a young Mage. “I don’t leave anyone behind.” A simple thing. And yet with it she had saved his life and then, unwittingly, began to undo much that long years of very harsh training as an acolyte of the Mage Guild had drilled into Alain.

I will be eighteen years old tomorrow. Master Mechanic Mari is eighteen as well. Will I see her again, as my vision on the wall of Dorcastle foretold? Is she safe, for I know she feared her Guild’s reaction if it learned we had come to know each other? And my own Guild had resolved to kill her if she were to be seen near me again. That is why I knew we had to separate, to ensure that Mari did not die because of me. But what if my own Guild learned of my vision, which foretold Mari would bring a new day to Dematr? If my elders learn of this, they will seek to have Mari killed no matter where she is, for they want change no more than do the leaders of the Mechanics Guild.