



"Is there a problem, Battlemage?" The gray-bearded mage on the other side of the table was utterly neat, with every pile of paper perfectly squared in a grid array around his workspace. The Commander had always been a particularly fastiduous person; he hated messes. Which was probably why they had never quite seen eye-to-eye; David cared little about filling out the right form when it meant three hours of paperwork for a three-minute bit of spellcraft. This explained why the Commander considered his paperwork much more worthy of his attention than his subordinate; he wasn't bothering to look at him except during careful, metronome dips of his pen into the inkwell. It was probably a requisition report for a spare toilet.



"No, sir, of course not. I'm just not sure I understand ... the, ah, specifics of your orders, sir." After all, Montresure may be a huge city and hugely important to the Kingdom, the Commander had said he was going on behalf of the Arcane Academy. Nobody went back to the Arcane Academy after they finished their training - well, not real Battlemages, anyway. The academic types that should never have been in short robes in the first place always ran right back, and the hobbled old veterans too old for the front lines, but for someone at the peak of his junior career, it was inconceivable.



"You are to report to go to Montresure, then go searching for the individuals described in that packet. We've been assured by the Academy they're of . . . what was the wording? Ah, yes: 'critical importance to the historical record of pre-unification traditions in military magecraft,' I believe. Good luck. That will be all, Battlemage." David could feel his jaw dropping, perhaps trying to chase the odd sinking feeling in his chest. He was being sent off to chase will-o-the-wisps in the badlands, instead of defending the Kingdom.



"Sir, I -"



"Was there something else, Battlemage?" Suddenly, he had the Commander's undivided attention. It was frightening - steel-gray eyes under a tanned and weathered brow, locked on to his face with the intensity that had killed men with thought and words alone. The room wasn't violent, so much as there was an imminent awareness of potential; the light shock before a lightning storm.



"Not at all, sir. Thank you, sir." Perfectly correct, perfectly intoned. The nod of salute was angled perfectly; he was quite sure the bastard appreciated it and would have left a little note in an immaculate ledger of his inadequacies if it hadn't been. He marched out in perfect parade form, even steps and stiff back. Apparently the tense atmosphere followed him, not the commander, because the adjutant outside blanched as he passed.



The next morning saw him at the stables, requisitioning a barely-adequate horse a chit to have it housed and exchanged at the way-station four hours down the road to Montresure. The orders were a work of bureaucratic art: his mission couldn't be countermanded by a well-meaning superior somewhere along the way, and didn't transfer him out of his chain of command, but they wouldn't grant him any sort of priority or clearance on the way. He'd been tempted to dress in civilian clothes instead of his Battlemage uniform, but figured that the well-tailored uniform would at least give him an iota of respect from passers-by.



The first way-station was fortunate enough to have a well-rested replacement for his mount and a decent kitchen; he didn't feel like he was eating soapy porridge, at least. Not so much the next three; the week dragged out into an agony of contemptuous station-keepers who respected his uniform just enough to talk to him, but not enough to treat him well. By the time he got to Montreasure he was tempted to burn the next inn down to ash as an example to the others. The city itself was almost as bad: the Capitol was a busy place, and Cadia never really slept, but Montreasure was a hive of activity. It took him three hours to find a way-station that would accept his chit, and another two to find an inn where someone would give him more than quick glances and a dismissal from the overcrowded taproom when he asked after a room.



Getting out into the wastelands was even worse; he had to pass carts going down half-paved roads into endless refineries and workshops, each spewing a uniquely noxious brand of smog that ultimately left him dizzy and nauseous. He's been trained to deal with heat, sleep deprivation, thirst - not so much the squalor of a city built all over itself like a scab over the land. At least down in Vuevo the rains carried away the smells every morning and afternoon.



Tracking down these "war wizards" - what a ridiculous name - turned out to be remarkably difficult. It wasn't surprising in the context of his commander's obvious desire to make him suffer a prolonged, agonizing death by boredom from overexposure to the Kingdom's backwater highlands, but it soon became utterly infuriating. He crossed all over the scrub hills and arid badlands south of the city, burning up his welcome at boarding house after boarding house, and finally exhausting his chit's reputation at every way-house in the city. In less than a month he was stalking the hills on foot, his battlemage tunic filthy from wear and dust and grime. If he ever found these dammed warlocks out here, he swore, they'd pay in pain for being backwards, reclusive hermits.



Of course, since he spent his days muttering angrily to himself on the steppe, his customary sense of self-preservation and battlefield awareness was completely useless when they found him, instead.



"Stupid." It was the only warning he got before the ground beneath him dissolved into mud, suckling him down to his waist in filth. The blow sucked the wind out of him, and he failed about trying to get to the edge of the mud. He recognized the spell - they used it in training, though he couldn't cast it himself - but when had the guy said the trigger language?



Dragging himself out if the mud was exhausting and humiliating, but not quite as much as suddenly finding a boot in front of his face and a scimitar at his neck. Following the weapon up to its weilder identified an old woman, festooned with belts of small charms and knots criss-crossing the traditional long robe women wore out on the steppe.



"Ah. Ma'am, I'm a Battlemage; attacking me in the line of duty -"



There was a low laugh somewhere behind him - the same voice that had called him stupid earlier. He started to twist to look behind him, but a slight tsking noise from above reminded him of the scimitar. He cleared his throat to start again.



"I know you're a battlemage, child. We've been watching you light little campfires with cantrips or break offensive rocks with your spells as you trekked across the steppe." Oh, so this was an ambush. The woman had a perfectly correct stance, too - no way to knock her over or get the sword away. He'd have to talk his way out of this one.



"You know this carries the death penalty, right? I am in pursuit of official business and-"



"Yes, yes. You're looking for war wizards, we know that too. You were quite clear about it in your cups at the taverns. People talk, you know, even to us - relics of a bygone age, was it?" If he hadn't been blushing before, he certainly was now. He'd used that exact phrase when discussing his mission with a tavern wench about a week ago. Of all the things to filter back to his quarry ...



"So. You found us. Now, what do you want? I've found I'm less patient in my dotage, so be brief." The scimitar inched away from his neck, but not quite far enough that he could roll out from it without falling back into the mud pit. His mouth was suddenly dry - he could die here if he screwed up too badly, and they'd never find his body under ten feet of drying mud.



"I have a - uh, a warrant to search for you, commanding me to report on your, um, traditions and practices, to see if they're - ah ..." he fumbled. What was the rest?



"Hmph." The woman's eyes flicked around the landscape. "If this is a trap, they sent the wrong man. Gunt, did you see anyone?" "I'm sorry, sir?" There was no way that was right."Is there a problem, Battlemage?" The gray-bearded mage on the other side of the table was utterly neat, with every pile of paper perfectly squared in a grid array around his workspace. The Commander had always been a particularly fastiduous person; he hated messes. Which was probably why they had never quite seen eye-to-eye; David cared little about filling out the right form when it meant three hours of paperwork for a three-minute bit of spellcraft. This explained why the Commander considered his paperwork much more worthy of his attention than his subordinate; he wasn't bothering to look at him except during careful, metronome dips of his pen into the inkwell. It was probably a requisition report for a spare toilet."No, sir, of course not. I'm just not sure I understand ... the, ah, specifics of your orders, sir." After all, Montresure may be a huge city and hugely important to the Kingdom, the Commander had said he was going on behalf of the Arcane Academy. Nobody went back to the Arcane Academy after they finished their training - well, not real Battlemages, anyway. The academic types that should never have been in short robes in the first place always ran right back, and the hobbled old veterans too old for the front lines, but for someone at the peak of his junior career, it was inconceivable."You are to report to go to Montresure, then go searching for the individuals described in that packet. We've been assured by the Academy they're of . . . what was the wording? Ah, yes: 'critical importance to the historical record of pre-unification traditions in military magecraft,' I believe. Good luck. That will be all, Battlemage." David could feel his jaw dropping, perhaps trying to chase the odd sinking feeling in his chest. He was being sent off to chase will-o-the-wisps in the badlands, instead of defending the Kingdom."Sir, I -""Was there something else, Battlemage?" Suddenly, he had the Commander's undivided attention. It was frightening - steel-gray eyes under a tanned and weathered brow, locked on to his face with the intensity that had killed men with thought and words alone. The room wasn't violent, so much as there was an imminent awareness of potential; the light shock before a lightning storm."Not at all, sir. Thank you, sir." Perfectly correct, perfectly intoned. The nod of salute was angled perfectly; he was quite sure the bastard appreciated it and would have left a little note in an immaculate ledger of his inadequacies if it hadn't been. He marched out in perfect parade form, even steps and stiff back. Apparently the tense atmosphere followed him, not the commander, because the adjutant outside blanched as he passed.The next morning saw him at the stables, requisitioning a barely-adequate horse a chit to have it housed and exchanged at the way-station four hours down the road to Montresure. The orders were a work of bureaucratic art: his mission couldn't be countermanded by a well-meaning superior somewhere along the way, and didn't transfer him out of his chain of command, but they wouldn't grant him any sort of priority or clearance on the way. He'd been tempted to dress in civilian clothes instead of his Battlemage uniform, but figured that the well-tailored uniform would at least give him an iota of respect from passers-by.The first way-station was fortunate enough to have a well-rested replacement for his mount and a decent kitchen; he didn't feel like he was eating soapy porridge, at least. Not so much the next three; the week dragged out into an agony of contemptuous station-keepers who respected his uniform just enough to talk to him, but not enough to treat him well. By the time he got to Montreasure he was tempted to burn the next inn down to ash as an example to the others. The city itself was almost as bad: the Capitol was a busy place, and Cadia never really slept, but Montreasure was a hive of activity. It took him three hours to find a way-station that would accept his chit, and another two to find an inn where someone would give him more than quick glances and a dismissal from the overcrowded taproom when he asked after a room.Getting out into the wastelands was even worse; he had to pass carts going down half-paved roads into endless refineries and workshops, each spewing a uniquely noxious brand of smog that ultimately left him dizzy and nauseous. He's been trained to deal with heat, sleep deprivation, thirst - not so much the squalor of a city built all over itself like a scab over the land. At least down in Vuevo the rains carried away the smells every morning and afternoon.Tracking down these "war wizards" - what a ridiculous name - turned out to be remarkably difficult. It wasn't surprising in the context of his commander's obvious desire to make him suffer a prolonged, agonizing death by boredom from overexposure to the Kingdom's backwater highlands, but it soon became utterly infuriating. He crossed all over the scrub hills and arid badlands south of the city, burning up his welcome at boarding house after boarding house, and finally exhausting his chit's reputation at every way-house in the city. In less than a month he was stalking the hills on foot, his battlemage tunic filthy from wear and dust and grime. If he ever found these dammed warlocks out here, he swore, they'd pay in pain for being backwards, reclusive hermits.Of course, since he spent his days muttering angrily to himself on the steppe, his customary sense of self-preservation and battlefield awareness was completely useless when they found him, instead."Stupid." It was the only warning he got before the ground beneath him dissolved into mud, suckling him down to his waist in filth. The blow sucked the wind out of him, and he failed about trying to get to the edge of the mud. He recognized the spell - they used it in training, though he couldn't cast it himself - but when had the guy said the trigger language?Dragging himself out if the mud was exhausting and humiliating, but not quite as much as suddenly finding a boot in front of his face and a scimitar at his neck. Following the weapon up to its weilder identified an old woman, festooned with belts of small charms and knots criss-crossing the traditional long robe women wore out on the steppe."Ah. Ma'am, I'm a Battlemage; attacking me in the line of duty -"There was a low laugh somewhere behind him - the same voice that had called him stupid earlier. He started to twist to look behind him, but a slight tsking noise from above reminded him of the scimitar. He cleared his throat to start again."I know you're a battlemage, child. We've been watching you light little campfires with cantrips or break offensive rocks with your spells as you trekked across the steppe." Oh, so this was an ambush. The woman had a perfectly correct stance, too - no way to knock her over or get the sword away. He'd have to talk his way out of this one."You know this carries the death penalty, right? I am in pursuit of official business and-""Yes, yes. You're looking for war wizards, we know that too. You were quite clear about it in your cups at the taverns. People talk, you know, even to us - relics of a bygone age, was it?" If he hadn't been blushing before, he certainly was now. He'd used that exact phrase when discussing his mission with a tavern wench about a week ago. Of all the things to filter back to his quarry ..."So. You found us. Now, what do you want? I've found I'm less patient in my dotage, so be brief." The scimitar inched away from his neck, but not quite far enough that he could roll out from it without falling back into the mud pit. His mouth was suddenly dry - he could die here if he screwed up too badly, and they'd never find his body under ten feet of drying mud."I have a - uh, a warrant to search for you, commanding me to report on your, um, traditions and practices, to see if they're - ah ..." he fumbled. What was the rest?"Hmph." The woman's eyes flicked around the landscape. "If this is a trap, they sent the wrong man. Gunt, did you see anyone?"





"No. Stupid." Where was he? Wait. Invisible. Of course; he was up against mages, and they had come prepared. All he'd expected was a friendly chat and maybe some awkward conversation. Not so much the muddy ambush before the awkward conversation and the death threats.





"Well. So what are we to do with you, then?" The scimitar flicked back - to his ear, now, which was a mixed blessing. He'd risk losing his eye, but if he -





The scimitar flicked just an inch out, nicking him in the ear, and a wave of magic crashed out, smashing his mental defenses to bits and dropping him into a deep, dreamless sleep.





-------





Waking up from a sleep spell is both pleasant and awful. On the one hand, those spells always woke you with a deep sense of well-being, like the universe itself had enfolded you in its arms and cradled you gently in the hours of your slumber. On the other hand, one tends to wake up covered in one's own drool, dressed in dirty clothing, and slung in whatever position you landed in when you were tossed around like a sack of potatoes.





Even less entertaining is waking up to discover you've been tied up, and that your spellbook is probably missing. Stealing a book is something of a prank when you're still in training - but out in the real world, it's like stealing the air from your lungs. Finding it in the hands of someone who had bound you up in the first place, spread carefully over a rock shelf and displaying exactly what spells he'd practiced and mastered . . . well, it wasn't the best surprise he'd had while waking up. There was a fire somewhere behind him, and as his eyes played over the rock surfaces he deduced that they were in a cave - probably a bit higher into the mountains, from the chill and thinner air. His mouth was dry, too, but he could hear running water somewhere. Flexing at the bonds found them professionally and carefully bound; he wasn't getting out of this without being cut out, probably. There was a lot of knotwork at the back somewhere - he felt it just by one of his shoulderblades.





"Not to worry, I'll let you out in a minute or so. Fascinating reading, your books. I haven't seen some of the new forms in quite some time; your notation has improved since my day. Or perhaps you're just neater than I was when I was young." The old woman - she was quite old indeed, he could tell as she stepped into his view - carried no real ire but a note of quiet scholastic appreciation. "It's always good to see the art practiced well by the next generation. Or the one after them, as the case may be."





"Ah ... thanks. I'd be happy to, um, trade or -"





"Oh, no worries. Only one or two that I didn't have already, and while the notation isn't utterly transparent it wasn't so difficult to get the hang of it once I got going. It will serve as a down payment for your training." She pulled a little wooden charm off her belt, eyed him, and snapped it in half. As it fell to the ground, he could feel the ropes loosening all over his body all at once - the creepy sensation of a dozen snakes slithering away and coiling somewhere else. She hadn't cast a spell, but magic had obviously been done.





David was deeply confused, now. It was obvious that this woman - and perhaps Gunt, too - were powerful spellslingers of some variety. But why hide in the mountains, living in a cave? The more he saw of the place, the more obviously inhabited it was; there were worn ruts, the shelves were clear of dust, there were even delicate carvings around various openings. The rugs he was splayed on were old but obviously well-tended, and the furs piled on some of the deeper rock shelves were quite clearly comfortable perches for talking or reading around a fire. These two were powerful, capable mages, articulate and mature - they could have commanded high prices for spellwork in the cities or been movers and shakers in the guilds. Why live like savages?





"Cat got your tongue?" The old woman prompted. "I was making you an offer, you know, and not one that I give lightly."





"I . . . I guess I'm confused." This was something of an understatement. "What do you mean, my training?"





"Well, you came here to steal our secrets, such as they are. Did you think it would be as easy as a few interviews and some moldy spellbooks?" The woman's tone made it clear she thought that was a profoundly absurd way to pass along magical knowledge, and given the context David was somewhat forced to agree. "I'll train you, or at least set you on the right paths, so you can go home to your ... Lord Battlemage Kinsan, wasn't it? - having completed your mission properly."





"I . . . but why?" This was baffling. They had tracked him while he floundered through the wastes for months, asking anyone who would bother to listen about the lost War Wizards, and now she was offering him exactly what he wanted, gratis? "I mean, why all the drama of the ambush and dragging me to a cave and . . . would it have been so hard to come visit me at the tavern and have a nice chat?"





The old woman looked at him speculatively.





"Nah. I like this way better. Gunt, be a dear and fetch the tea?" She turned and walked over to a stone shelf that approximated a table, with piles of furs surrounding it and low mounds of stone for backrests. David stood shaking, brushing the dust and dried much off his filthy uniform.





"Um, do you mind if I . . . " He gestured to his spellbook. The woman nodded politely as if he'd opened the door for her at a salon in the Capitol. It made him feel like he was a marionette in a strange parody play. His fingers trembled as he checked the spellbook over - no extra markings, nothing missing, all the pages in place - it was like a mountain sliding off his back. He moved to slick the mud and grime away with a spell, tucking the book back into its carrier, when he saw the carvings all around the shelf.





The angle hadn't been quite right before to see it, but the carvings he'd seen weren't the only ones in the room. The shelf was engraved in a glorious four-tone mural depicting an artist's fancy of the Vendabonum's Duel with the Dragon King, each detail finer than life and sheened over with wafer-thin layer of perfectly clear quartz. The edges of the mural were etched in mesmerizing geometries that would make artisans throughout the kingdom weep; the mural almost seemed like a vision in the ripple of stone, just after a tiny teardrop fell into a still pond.





For a moment, he wondered if he'd been enchanted, tripping a spell or trap of some kind when he'd claimed his book. A glance at the old woman saw her watching him with calm interest, but no smug gratification or glee at a trapped enemy. Turning to the mural again, it was just as enthralling as before.





"I . . . who made this place?"





"We did. Well, the war wizards did, I'm just the latest to live here and take care of the place." The old woman nodded to the nook and its mural. "Clean yourself up, and we'll talk."





The talk lasted a good, long time. It was quite obvious why neither the old woman nor Gunt had been taken as battlemages during their schooling; David suspected that Gunt might never have gone for schooling at all. The old woman was crippled; her left arm was withered. Gunt was simple - as far as he could tell, the man only knew a few words, though from the way he followed their conversation and laid out the tea with perfect, casual precision it was clear he understood every word spoken around him. While he and the old woman settled in to talk, Gunt fiddled with a little plate of rock, engraving at it with precise, careful strikes and an intensity that was almost eerie.





Over the course of a few hours - and three masterfully brewed pots of good tea, dosed with a tiny lump of honey - the old woman laid out the history of her people. The war wizards hadn't gone extinct, so much as their skills never quite lined up with the kingdom's needs. While Vendabonum was still alive, they'd been tolerated as auxiliaries alongside the Vuevo magical corps. But after his passing, it became increasingly clear that the War Wizards' particular brand of austere magic and rigid traditions weren't suitable for the sort of war magic the Kingdom used to protect its borders. The point was intuitive to David, but he kept it to himself; neither Gunt nor the old woman would have made it through his training process, but he was quite confident now that either of them could crush him - or half a platoon of battlemages, for that matter - before breakfast and still have enough spells to make a clean getaway. That adaptability and apparently paranoiac drive had led them here: a reclusive base for "retired" mages to practice the older traditions of their former nation, passing the skills down from master to student all the way down to the old woman resting across from him. They'd left their marks all over the mountain, almost too large: now that he had a chance to assess it for himself, it was clear that they were in a smaller room in a much larger complex, no more than a nook off the side of a vast and lonely cathedral.





"Where are the others? Surely . . . I mean, this space is so huge. And you said there used to be hundreds of war wizards."





"There used to be. Fewer and fewer asked to be taught, preferring the lowlands and a good life to a more independent disposition. I don't think we ever reached a point where all of us were training apprentices; I know that I was one of only three in my generation. Gunt is the only one in his. You will likely be the last, unless you train more. I won't be around for the next crop, after all, and I'm afraid Gunt makes a poor instructor in the finer points of our arts." The man grunted and twirled his carving stylus in a distinctly profane gesture before returning to his work.





"So . . . there's nobody else? At all?" It seemed terribly sad - to go from men and women of such skill and art, to an old woman and a simpleton, resting in the graying shell of their predecessor's palace.





"I'm afraid so. The other two - my dear friends, bless them - died in a shipwreck a few years ago, visiting their daughter off in the Isles. Should never have travelled like that, no totems or books or even weapons. They lived in town, you see, and wanted to keep a low profile. I never saw the need myself; the mountain provides for me and Gunt just fine. Now for you, too, of course."





"I'm sorry, it just seem so . . . tragic."





"Ah, one gets used to it. Part of why I'm sympathetic to your little snipe hunt, actually. Not to put anything on you, but if you don't cock it up or die on me you might bring us back to being . . . well, something other than this. Might not happen anytime soon, of course. But other people grasp at afterlives or necromancy -" her mouth twisted in distaste "once they feel Old Man Time creeping up on them. I've always been a bit more practical." She stood, stretching. For an old woman, she was clearly spry, and her withered arm was perfectly functional in most respects; he could see bracelets and a telltale piercing indicating that she'd embedded a spell in that arm to shield it from damage or heal it from harm. She stepped gracefully, straight-backed and sure around the rugs and furs. Gunt tracked her with flicks of his eyes as she walked over to the wall and hefted her sword belt. She grabbed another - a straight longsword, plain and clearly a soldier's blade - and stared at it with a frown for a moment.





"This is yours, now. We'll train you on the others as we go, but you'll start with the longsword." She tossed it across the room, and David barely managed to catch it, fumbling.





"I'm sorry, what?" He untangled the sword belt and managed to get a decent grip on the entire bundle.





"Your training starts now. Follow me. Gunt, join us when you like, there's plenty to be done." She turned and walked right out, so that David almost had to race after her down the corridors. Each turn proved even more to him that their little aerie had been the home to gifted artisans and skilled mages. The walls were rough stone, but the floors were perfectly even save for the occasional divot where footsteps had passed for decades. Murals of arresting beauty were tucked away in various nooks, and archways carved in dizzying detail connected empty corridors and abandoned rooms as they reached the end of their walk.





The old woman led him into a vast, vaulted space lit from above and frigid with cold mountain air. The stone walls were carved with diagrams of human, elven, and dwarven physiology; the detail was remarkably realistic, David realized to his discomfort. So were the charts and notation that proclaimed in large type where one could strike to kill, disable, or merely stun an opponent. Another wall held figures frozen in sword forms, lunging with lifelike intensity or angling a block perfectly against a brutal assault. After a moment, he realized he was gaping as the woman removed some of her outer furs and stretched, limbering up. He clumsily did the same, unsticking the sword from its scabbard and trying to untangle the belt from his arm.





The first slash was half an inch from his eyes, so close he had to flinch out of the way. The second was closer, a hairsbreath away from his throat. She danced around him, each step in perfect sync with a flickering blade. He flailed, every staggering jerk half a step from a cut tendon or sliced muscle.





"Stop. Not terrible." She wasn't even breathing hard! "Look at the floor. Go on, I won't attack, we're talking now."





He risked a glance. At first it wasn't obvious what she was talking about, but once he saw where her feet were positioned - squarely at separate confluences of lines in the geometries lain in the floor - he understood. The entire floor was a diagram of footwork, and he was off-kilter. Sliding one foot back, a half step to the other side . . .





"Good. I knew you weren't as stupid as you looked crawling out of that mud trap. Again, and I'll go slow so you don't trip over yourself and die."





It was like that every morning for the first three weeks - and for every three weeks after, a new weapon. Scimitar against halberd, pick against handaxe, flail against rapier, greataxe against scythe. Longbows that made his shoulder ache, shortbows that seemed almost too light after the heavy draw of their cousins. Gunt took over more and more of these lessons as he grew in skill and the old woman focused on teaching them - both of them, as it turned out - the tactics that he'd never bothered to learn as a battlemage. And around it all, magic.





The magic was the glory of it all. The old woman - she never bothered to give her name, even when he asked, and Gunt just laughed and called him stupid when he tried him - had forgotten more than David had ever known about magic. He drank it down like a man dying of thirst, pushing for more and more and more around their chores cleaning out the citadel, gathering firewood, or stalking the elk that populated the slopes. He practiced drawing his material components out in an instant, altering his somatic components to curt, cramped gestures, and even forgoing materials entirely. Every wand and pouch seemed to rest like a bird on his skin, constantly aware and ready for an instant's need. After the first month, Gunt or the old woman started surprising him at meals, during training - once, embarrassingly, while he was bathing in the hot springs down in the bowels of the castle - and either casting a spell or outright assaulting him. Usually he was able to fend them off - barely - and as he grew in skill it became obvious that these were tests. He was being trained to unconsciously, perpetually keep his magic to hand, on the verge of his lips, a half-step from bursting.





Other lessons were more theoretical - almost mystical, as such lessons tended to be. But the ideas! Conservation of magic, no wasted effort, constant, unrelenting preparation, planning for contingencies that would never happen except to kill you in your sleep - it was thrilling, frightening. He'd considered himself a competent battlemage, able to use the Kingdom's resources to lay low their enemies and defend his fellow citizens. The old woman and Gunt could do it themselves, with twigs, rocks, and an unholy amount of paranoia.





He kept asking after the twigs and rocks, of course, but they diverted him to other lessons or muddled on about the universality of magic. It was frustrating; he could see them working on the little carvings, and watched intently while Gun tattooed his own hands with arcane symbols that teetered just on the edge of his comprehension.





The only thing that kept him sane for that first year was the weapon practice. When he and Gunt were finally of a par - or nearly so, at least - the gloves came off. They'd spar with spell and blade, whipping steel through the air and blurring away from lightning or fire flung from an outstretched hand. The large man never used his totems while they were sparring, but it was clear that it was mere forbearance - otherwise, he'd have wiped the floor with David once he'd exhausted his ability to cast spells. For a simpleton, the man had enormous magical talents - breadth and depth, and a keen tactical insight. He'd have been a wrecking ball on the battlefield, a tiny god. David found himself angry at the Battlemage Corps - not for sending him to the wastes, but for turning down people of such obvious talent. The old woman mentioned the Arcane Academy enough for him to know she'd finished her training there as an academic mage before returning to take up War Wizardry, but Gunt had never been afforded the opportunity at all. Every time the man trounced him in combat, it burned - not at his pride, but stoking the fires of rage at the injustice of it all, that they hadn't fought side-by-side.





He'd mentioned it to Gunt once, after perhaps their best sparring match ever. They'd left the beginnner's training hall months ago, sparring on the cleared slopes of the open mountain, lightning and fire flashing as they danced across each other's blades. The old woman had declined to join them - she had a research project that needed attention, she claimed - so it was just Gunt that had the satisfaction of witnessing their perfect, elegant draw, their last heaving breaths canceling each others' spells in a burst of raw magic on the mountaintop.





The low bow ended their bout, and David couldn't resist: "Gunt, you should have taken my place. I don't know if there's a battlemage alive that could beat you in an unfair fight." He gestured to the totems strapped all over the man's belt and barding. Gunt looked down, then back up with a slight smile.





"Stupid." He reached up to ruffle David's hair - longer now, in the mountain climate - then punched him in the shoulder. "Yes."





The man swaggered off the mountaintop, his usual predatory stance sublimated into perfect march, head forward and back straight, altered only by great heaps of arrogance that David had seen his old comrades wrap themselves in after a commendation or a night out of the barracks. He never thought of Gunt as a simpleton again; the man was far smarter than David ever would be.





After he'd mastered the most difficult challenge the old woman had put to him so far - recharging a half-dead wand with his own magical potential, which had proved an exercise of weeks to figure out but only moments to complete - she embraced him with a smile that seemed to flow out from her eyes to the very tips of her toes.





"Come, I have a gift." She led him into a part of the citadel he hadn't visited before, down by the hot springs. The workshop was large, and somewhat ill-lit by the small brace of floating lights Gunt had levitating over a low bench. The table was covered in gilts and a few semiprecious stones, etching acid and styluses, scrolls and a few haphazardly stacked books. Gunt looked up from the table, nodding to the old woman.





"You've given me so much already; I don't need anything you haven't already given me." David offered. It was true; he'd found himself here in ways he would have never expected. The person he was two years ago - ah, how fast it had gone! - would have been appalled at his life here, but now he resisted the idea that he might ever have to leave. The pull of his uniform was strong, but it was kept safely wrapped under furs and the bandoleers he now wore for his wands and other paraphernalia.





"It's traditional. And well-deserved. Gunt, if you please." The man nodded, then pulled something out from under the bench - it had been resting on shelf under the table, clearly. Probably one meant for concealed weapons, given who had built the place. It was a scimitar - probably one of those he had flailed about with in his first weeks, when the old woman drilled him relentlessly on her own weapon of choice. He'd come to agree with her; the curved blade seemed to fit naturally into his footwork, and extension of his arms and will. The patterns on this blade seemed to dance with uneven light, waxing and waning in just-off colors. It had been enchanted, obviously, but the work was subtle. He'd seen it on two blades before: Gunt's favorite shortsword, and the old woman's own scimitar.





"You've been a war wizard for a little while now. This is just ceremony." The old woman held a hand out, and Gunt placed the blade in her hands carefully. "I believe the scimitar was your best, even though we began it early. Versatile, good reach, defensive and offensive in equal measure - ah, we dawdle. Here."





She held the blade out across her arms, balanced perfectly across her wrists. He'd never seen her treat a blade so carelessly, barely traced against her wrists, outrageously close to vital veins. It was a terrifying display of trust; one she'd never shown him, or even Gunt.





"David, I am proud to name you a war wizard. I name you one of my brothers in our art, and charge you to practice it with honor and distinction." She rolled the scimitar up to her fingertips; thumb and forefinger catching the edge of the blade. "You have duties beyond us and before us. I know you will discharge them well because of our teachings."





He took the blade carefully, the steel heavy with the extra purpose of her words. The blade whispered to him, the spells of its making clear to him as if written in his own hand. It would stay ever-sharp, and it was, in that moment, perhaps its most prized possession.





"I . . . I don't know how I can ever repay you." They nodded to him gravely. Some debts weren't meant to be paid.





"You know most of our secrets. The rest will be obvious to you in time as you grow in skill. I think, sadly, it is time for you to return home." She really did seem sad; Gunt had a somber mien. Their last meal wasn't quite somber - the old woman had hid a bottle of stiff aquavit somewhere in the mountain and unveiled it for his departure - but it still carried the weight of imminent separation.





The next morning was even harder; he'd worn just his battlemage robes for the first time in two years, until the strangeness of being without his bandoleers and holsters, the paraphernalia he'd grown accustomed to over the months of surprise attacks and dirty tricks made him return them to his person. Gunt walked him down the mountain, where they surprised each other with little pranks and quick ambushes along the low hills. It was play that would have killed most men; David was now quicker on the draw with a counterspell than any battlemage he'd trained with or fought beside. He figured the pranks were Gunt's way of admitting that he'd be missed.



Walking into town was a strange experience. The little outpost nearest the mountain was a smelting and sorting operation for a mine up in the hills, conveniently placed next to a waterway that led eventually joined the River Montresure a few miles downstream. The air smelled foul and too thick after the mountains; the people too loud and careless. The place preyed on him like a cat dancing on raw nerves; strange noises blending back into familiarity as he remembered the sound of donkeys braying and the rushing flap of the odd gryphon flying off on a commercial courier mission.





Montresure itself seemed like a huge, sprawling mess, and he almost relished how it played on his senses. He wasn't sure if the gate guards recognized his uniform or not; they might have just been surprised to see him on foot and armed with something other than a spellbook. The fruitsellers and vendors gave him strange looks as he wound his way to the inns. The bar wench was too-friendly, obviously flirting for coin more than affection, and the other drinkers were edgy and exhausted from travel or the day's labors. He felt like he was seeing them all for the first time; they were completely unconcerned, unaware.





No wonder the old woman and Gunt stayed on the mountain. Life here was too overwhelming to the senses, the people too accustomed to their routines. And yet, their casual regard and careless nature was narcotic; they lived rich off the rest of the Kingdom's regard and well-earned coin. Gunt would have been relegated to the life of a bondsman, hauling goods about, and the old woman to a back office for academic research or selling spellwork in a narrow, bespoke office with a small window in an alley. David already preferred the mountain.





The horse the way-station gave him made for a strange moment; he'd lost all his saddle-callouses but two years of hiking everywhere had drastically changed his sense of pace. The countryside seemed to fly past and he got off the horse feeling like he'd walked the entire way with someone kicking him in the ass. Each day brought him closer to his old life, and he found himself dreading the encounter, preferring to muse on problems the old woman had asked him to consider in training, trying to suss out which secrets she'd hidden there for him to find. His books were full of notes and clues, but the puzzles were elegant, clever, and they occupied his mind even as his eyes roamed the road and fields.





The Battlemage Garrison was a hive of activity, with people going in and out like liveried ants. The dusty uniform - obviously a bit threadbare at this point from a few too many bouts in the mountain with Gunt - earned him some raised eyebrows. He'd drafted up a report for delivery to the commander the night before - a break from carving up the various sticks and wood he'd collected in an attempt to replicated the totems his companions used and discarded like scrolls. The old woman had insisted that it was quite simple, but that one had to work it out on one's own, which made him suspect it was something like the ciphers mages used to protect their spells from -





".... Battlemage Kinsan? Is that you?" A passing aide asked, wide-eyed. David realized he was standing in the courtyard, ruminating with his saddlebags instead of reporting to the commander. He hadn't missed any activity - he was still scanning the courtyard for places to duck if Gunt should decide that following him halfway across the kingdom for an ambush would make for a good prank. But reporting in - his first duty as a battlemage returned from a mission - just seemed so trivial that he hadn't felt the need to rush.





"Yes, it is. My apologies, I was caught up in my own thoughts. Is the commander here? I didn't see his flag on my way in." The aide shook his head, clearly a bit baffled as to why David wasn't making a bigger fuss about returning from a long mission away. The stablehand hadn't recognized him at all, she was new.





"Sir, but . . . you're dead. You've been dead for almost two years . . . "





"Oh, that sneaky bastard."





--------------





For once, his uncle was staring him straight in the face. There was a clock, clicking, somewhere in the room, and the entire arrangement was completely indefensible in a way that made David's hair stand on end, but he didn't dare look away. The silence was awkward, and getting more so the longer it lived, but neither of them seemed especially interested in breaking it. David's report sat on the Commander's desk, opened, but unread.





The adjutant saved them from the standoff by arriving with stack of papers, which he dumped fearfully in the Commander's inbox before fleeing in barely concealed terror. The Commander's eyes flicked to the papers, then back to him, then he sighed.





"So, you say you've completed your mission, then? Where are the War Wizards?" The commander gestured expansively, as if they were somewhere in his pockets.





"They declined to make the trip. However, I've been quite thoroughly trained in their methods and will be happy to provide an evaluation to the Arcane Academy and a report on their historical relevance to -"





"Hmph. I don't much care. Do it on your own time, or not. Now that you're back, I have another mission for you." He yanked a set of papers out of a drawer, flicked open his inkwell, and carefully, precisely scratched something out and wrote in a new line. A little sand over the ink dried it out before being carefully deposited in a bowl meant to catch the leftovers. "Please have the adjutant tell Battlemage Haveen that Third Patrol won't be deploying today. I'm sure your new skills will be put to good use. Good day, Battlemage."





"Sir." David remembered the perfect march-step out of this office the last time he'd been here. This time, it borrowed some of Gunt's quiet competence and the old woman's self-assured calm, and he wondered if it infuriated his uncle more or less than an insolently correct gait.





The orders took him out into the swamps, alone. He was fairly certain that a routine patrol had been replaced by a suicide mission; the struck sentence in his orders had been for an entire infantry platoon under Battlemage command.





The serpentkind one found at the edges of the swamp were either outcasts of their own kind, or armed parties prepared for an incursion into the Kingdom. The latter were trivial to dispatch or scare off. The former required a great deal more creativity; he only encountered one war party, but it took most of the day to harass them into a position where he could kill a few and break their morale enough to consider his duty done. He was fairly certain they were no more than his counterparts: scouts, sent to patrol the border and make sure no Kingdom assault forces were massing on the drylands for an incursion.





Sleeping in a hostile environment was oddly welcoming, even though everything was repulsively damp. The first time a snake tried to creep up on him, his spell flung it directly at the jaguar that had been creeping up a branch to watch him sleep, which solved both problems admirably and made him a bit nostalgic for the being pranked in the baths back in the mountain.





The constant draw of awareness didn't distract much from his other pursuits. With magic to keep him warm and a paranoiac's desire to leave a minimal footprint to avoid being tracked, his evenings were remarkably empty even with a full night's sleep. Twiddling with vines and sticks, he had more time than ever to ponder out how Gunt and the old woman had carved their totems.





The key, of course, had been in the way the old woman had described them. He hadn't quite realized it at the time, but both war wizards had very distinctive styles for their totems and never used one the other had made. They were each unique to the mage: magic tied up into symbols and solid form that, when broken apart, released a spell just as if one had read it off a scroll. Clever, and remarkably spartan; he could see the first war wizard swearing off vellum and ink in ancient prehistory with disgust after figuring out the trick. All the other skills he'd mastered built on these core ideas; that the spell triggers he'd been taught so rigorously were just a few of the many ways to mastering his magic. Energy could be transferred, rerouted, bound up in specific forms for later use. After a few bad cuts, he even figured out how to burn it towards healing himself and binding raw wounds together.





If he hadn't been in a serpentkind-infested swamp with no backup, he would have celebrated the discovery. Instead, he spent his nights mastering the new craft, his days harassing outcast serpentkind, and the evenings between finding new ways to cook the various natural threats of the swamp in more appetizing ways. Rather than gag on the results of those efforts, he usually applied a little magical flavoring just to get a meal down his gullet.





After a month in the swamp he considered his duties sufficiently complete to return and report in; most patrols only stayed out for a week at most before returning for resupply and another sally into the marsh.





This time, his return stirred a bit more interest in the garrison. For one, the guards searched him very thoroughly, administered a truth-test with a very confused priest dragged out of a local church, and called a senior battlemage to dispel him just in case. The concern, he deduced, was that he was an imposter, since returning from the dead twice in one year was a bit of a tall order for the guards' credulity. The senior battlemage curtly forbade the guards to call for an exorcist, which was apparently the next step in the protocol, and sent David to bed instead.





The next week was a mix of interminable boredom and icy bureaucratic combat with three adjutants and the commander. Sorting out and reassuring the military that they had not, in fact lost a junior battlemage at all, much less twice, apparently required a great deal of discussion, consultation, and endless paperwork. It left him plenty of time to draft up his report and write up a comprehensive, thorough, and possibly too-sympathetic monograph on the role of War Wizards in pre-unification magical practice and their society to date. He didn't specifically mention the location of the fortress and kept the description vague enough that it wouldn't be easily scryed. He'd be astonished if someone hadn't masked every square foot of the place from scrying anyway, but it didn't hurt to take precautions. He was far from an expert, by admission, but he was happy to throw a few wrenches into the process for the prying bastards.





His other pastimes were somewhat more unnerving for his compatriots. He'd taken to recharging his wands every evening with whatever spare spells he hadn't turned in to totems, and his bandoleers were filling up with oddly carved bits of wood, bone, engraved stones, or oddly knotted rope and twine. He'd also had the same wands for months, despite using them extensively during his foray into the swamp. To anyone who knew anything about magic, this was comfortably in the realm of the bizarre. The Commander seemed to frown more severely the more "unusual" his uniform became, to the point that David wondered if he shouldn't have brought back an entire snake skeleton or something to drape over an epaulet like a branch braid, just for kicks. Something for future war wizards to aspire to, surely.





Once the matter of his repeated non-death was sorted out, the commander got right back to trying to kill him. Over the next six months he spent about five of them in the swamp or under it, confirming "reports" that either led nowhere or straight into the middle of serpentkind tribal lands. He had a lot more fun with his "patrols," where at least he had the freedom to hunt about and kill everything in the swamp that was trying to kill him. He brought back a live viper for the commander after one mission as a pet, but had to kill it while waiting in the office outside when the sleep spell wore off and it got a bit uppity with a passing aide. It made a passable braid and got a great reaction from the commander, though he figured the skull would be more useful as a totem once he got the skin and gristle off. His tattoo work became more elaborate and more careful after he accidentally set the midden on fire with a yawn one night; the other battlemages were torn between the hilarity of the event, its complete disregard for proper use of magic, and desperate envy to find out how he'd pulled the whole thing off.





He was peripherally aware that he was making something of a name for himself, but it didn't much affect his daily life. The commander's obvious ire kept most of his peers at a blast-radius' distance, and their superiors were diligent about keeping things strictly professional. But something in the monograph he'd written had apparently lit fires under some really old and obscure scholastic debates back at the Arcane Academy, which led to a lot of very strange mail, including a carefully preserved pre-unification diagram drawn with human - ahem, fluids - on bull-scrotum vellum. He had no idea what most of it meant and tried desperately to get the point across that he probably shouldn't be handling archeological relics much less receiving them by mail, but that only meant the volume of his regular mail increased. After a little while he began to long for the swamp.





The only mail he actually enjoyed was the occasional oddly carved stick of very familiar granite or basalt, cleverly inscribed with puzzles and symbols for him to decode. Half were spells or correspondence of a kind - working notes, essentially - and the other half were purely personal. Gunt's work was especially difficult to decode; he was fiendishly clever. The old woman was a bit more direct, even if the meanings were usually subtler than Gunt's reports about how bad the hunting had been after he left. Well, he assumed it was about the hunting - the symbology might have implied that the man had been sneaking out after some local loose women, and David wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that interpretation. He sent back messages carved in animal bone and exotic woods from the swamp, along with blank wood blocks or "virgin" bones - once a whole snake skeleton, separated out they could use the extra vertebrae for totems. The postal service always looked over the delivery forms with a sort of ginger concern - his somewhat "out-of-code" uniform probably had an effect there - and the unusual address of "War Wizard Mountain, Bonventure, Montreasure" drew confused looks. He knew they arrived in a timely fashion, from the responses he got back (apparently he wasn't the only one who thought skulls were remarkably good for carving). He had nothing but pity for the poor mail clerk in Bonventure that was doubtlessly becoming used to seeing his bizarre parcels disappear overnight. Or possibly while he was looking; Gunt must have sorely needed new outlets for his pranks.





Matters came to a head, however, one afternoon. An aide dragged him bodily to his uncle's office and, rather than pointing to a couch to start his customary waiting period, shoved him straight into the office and fled without explanation. He found his uncle glaring furiously at two sets of documents, one open and the other sealed with an impressively gilded set of stamps and honest-to-gods wax impressions. A very dusty and somewhat bemused man in the uniform of an aerial courier stood in a corner watching the veins throb in the commander's forehead.





David couldn't resist a smile, knowing just how much it would infuriate. "Commander, is there anything I can do for you this fine afternoon?"