Warrior Mage

Chapter 1

T he noises of the forest vanished into a skin-crawling in-drawing silence. Warrior Mage Jinn Sahja Sharpear, reined in her horse, loosened her inner senses, yanked them back in, and slammed up her personal shields. 

The scream made the air shimmer like heat waves on the western plateaus, pierced the forest like an axe through butter, echoed through her mind in hair-raising waves, shrilled, and faded. It had never reached her physical ears. 

The forest hushed a drawn moment, then, between her and the scream, a myriad of creature-voices burst into protest, including the long, low wavering howls of keilers-close enough to have been following her-the mid distance yips of wild dogs, and distant screech of several rock cats. All reached a crescendo of outraged protest before a scurrybeast screeched over her head, making her jump. After a last mutter from the keiler pack and a heartbeat of silence, the normal forest sounds resumed.

Sahja released her breath and straightened on her horse. Raichfire stood still, too still, but she couldn’t attend to her horse yet. The scream had pierced her hastily erected, usually impenetrable shields, turning them into something resembling loosely tatted lace. She shuddered as the scream’s after-echo skinned its way through her energy centers, then threw the rest of the scream’s effects off in a scramble as her horse came to life beneath her, and, with a shrill whinny, gathered itself to bolt.
Sahja jerked the reins tight, yanking Raichfire’s head close to its chest before the gelding had completed bunching its muscles. The short battle to retain control of her mount burned the remainder of the scream’s paralyzing effects away. 

Raichfire gave one last snort, then stopped, huffing unhappily, but no longer panicked.
Sahja slid from her horse to the edge of the brook-where she had been originally headed. Piercing, more-than-physical pain replaced the numbness and ripped through her energy centers like a swift hard bolt of lightening. Sucking in a harsh breath, she dropped to her knees and fought to stay conscious. 
Eventually the pain ceded to a dull ache. Sahja tucked her face in her hands and breathed slowly and consciously.

Her first formal thought was to give thanks to the Kissing Fates that she had been able to keep her horse from bolting towards, in its panic, the scream. Who knew what she would have ended up in the middle of?

According to the strength of the scream, a duel of magics between two mages five levels stronger than she.

Raichfire shouldered in beside her, dipping his nose in the stream, then staying to drink. She leaned briefly against the horse’s muscular, dark-brown neck, then pulled away and splashed cold water on her face. Her vision cleared slowly, and a throbbing headache settled in.
Raichfire backed away. A heartbeat later Sahja heard the rip of course grass between horsey-teeth. She stayed kneeling, staring in the direction of the scream. Only a fifth level mage could have screamed with that much power. The scream had the distinct overtones of death. No one could kill a fifth level mage except another. Fifth level was the highest mage rank in the country. She wasn’t even a first level mage yet. She would never be a fifth level mage.

A cold sliver of fear leeched down Sahja’s spine, and she drew a damper, uneasily, over her mind. Then she sat trying not to think, while she repaired her shields as best she could with her energy in tatters, her sense-numbing headache, and the continuing, random sizzles of lightning-pain through her energy centers. 

Raichfire nuzzled her hair promptingly. Absentmindedly she patted his nose. He shoved her lightly, obviously wondering why she was just sitting when they had a long road to a hay-filled manger to cover before sundown.

She used Raichfire’s neck to make it to her feet, dragged her heavy, burnt-orange Warrior’s Mage cloak off her shoulders and tossed it over Raichfire’s saddle. She glanced again in the direction of the scream. It would not be a prudent move to investigate that scream. But then Warrior Mages had never been known for their prudence-and her family even less. 

Sahja grabbed the saddle horn and swung onto Raichfire. The horse stood quiet and easy, once again its usual unflappable self. With a barely discernible movement of her wrist, she guided her horse forward, towards her original destination: her home clave, Falcon’s Rest. On the way she would pass the place of the scream and see what she could see. Being a first year journey-member of the Warrior Mages, her only duty was to report the scream to the closest mage hall . . . as if someone there wouldn’t have heard. 

The closest mage hall on her circuit would be . . . Kiften Clave. Sahja made a face. If there was one hall in all of Conyor Ness that she didn’t want to have to report at, that was the one. Vedder Snel, who she disliked nearly as much as her last, unlamented suitor, the officious Kletcher Gly, was head Warrior Mage there. 

Vedder Snel had been looking for a reason to oust her from the Warrior Mages since the day she’d joined. Before that, he’d done what he could to keep the Clavemasters from voting her in by starting a smear campaign directed at her, including reminding everyone involved just how flighty Jinns were considered to be. Snel would disbelieve whatever she reported out of hand just because of her Family.
Sure, her Family was eccentric, but look at the Fains. Their line boasted of Mad Fancy Fain, the king who had ordered creation of all those mind and mood altering derivatives from mirage and then been foolish enough to take them himself, subjecting the country to some of the most ridiculous and terrifying laws in Conyor Ness’s history, until stopped by her Family, a Syiin (an offshoot of her Family), a tradesman, and a Lower Select Wizard called Righteous Qyvik. 

Or the Yghts, who everyone conveniently forgot owned most of the mirage fields in the country and still produced certain derivatives. She wouldn’t bet much that all those derivatives were legal either.
Just because her Family happened to have more notorious and esoteric legends than anyone else’s, didn’t mean she was entirely fluff-headed.

Oh, no, what if the mage killed had been from one of the nine Families? Now that would start the political pot boiling with a vengeance. If the Warrior Mages solved the killing, they might gain the backing of that Family, something they sorely needed in her opinion. 

Certainly the Warrior Mages were tolerated, but no one forgot that they’d been started by a Lower Select Wizard. The only reason Righteous Qyvik had succeeded in establishing the fellowship at all was because he had helped corral Fancy Fain. People had been so relieved they would have granted him almost anything. Besides, her Family had backed his proposition-a fact entirely ignored now by ninety-nine percent of the Warrior Mages, and especially Vedder Snel. The toad. 

But, if she didn’t do her duty, Vedder Snel would have the reason he’d been looking for to have her stripped of her powers and rank-low though that rank, and moderate those powers they knew to strip her of. Empathy, what a pitiful talent to base a career on. 

If she could solve this case on her own, that would show Vedder Snel. Except, if she tried, she would likely be demoted for overstepping her rank. 

Sahja let out a short, exasperated breath. A lose or lose situation. Unhappily, she was used to them. 
“Ho, Warrior Mage, luck of the road to you!”

Sahja yanked warily from her thoughts. The road wove into a grove of sweep trees just ahead and a blue-caped messenger grinned at her merrily from a double-man’s length away.

“And to you,” she responded, forcing a smile through her beating headache.

“The road’s clear ahead,” the messenger added.

Not really. She studied him a second, memorizing his features-though one of the Queen’s Messengers wouldn’t be a killer of mages-before answering in kind, “So’s yours.”

The messenger passed behind her and Sahja returned to her thoughts-plodding though they were. At least her duty entailed going by the sight of the scream so she could make as full a report as her abilities allowed-without touching anything. There wouldn’t be a body. The first spell stone given every mage was one to burn their body to nothingness in a heartbeat. No one sane wanted their body dismembered and used for blood magic, especially against their families or, in the case of Warrior Mages, their Clave Hall. She had two death-fire spells on her: one from her Family and one from her Clave Hall. In case of any but a peaceful death, the spell triggered a white-hot, instantaneous, all-consuming fire that could not be doused.

Sahja paused to scan the sky for smoke, but it was too late. She should have thought of it before . . . except that she’d been stunned by the scream at the time. 

Only the Clave Hall in Black Woods South knew how and had the talents to make the firestones, and they had placed several safeguards on them. For instance: the firestone would not work on a live person. 

A cheeka-cheeka bird shrieked, startling her aware. She straightened in the saddle and took note of her surroundings. At least three more dragonlengths ranged between her and the scream. The trees in this part of Wild Cat Woods were close canopied with heavy branches and hanging gredler-string moss. Ground cover tended to thick, coarse scratch-grass interspersed with frowzy gray- green scattertail ferns and deadly scarlet puff-button moss.

The lowering sun slanted through the branches in subdued streaks, making it seem later in the day than actuality. A sun-streak striped across Raichfire’s neck, turning his hide there purple-red and his mane blue-black. She patted his neck and he tossed his head. The day now appeared calm, gentle, somnolent. She relaxed. Then tensed and straightened again. Her sense-numbing headache had made her stupid. A wizard had been killed. She was, for all practical purposes also a wizard, and worse, in the eyes of the killer, one who could bring him to justice. Safe she was not.

Not that she didn’t have her unregistered talent to pull her out of any hole she might blunder into. No other Warrior Mage had that security. No other Warrior Mage was a Jinn, the only Family with the talent: unregistered, not really believed in, passed off as legend. 

Not that she had much talent in that area either. Next to Whither Winds Wandering or Patriarch Hedwraith, hers would be barely perceptible. 

Sahja dug her fingers into her hair, tugging at it as if that would pull her headache out. It didn’t. The only thing she pulled out were a few long, excessively curly ebony hairs. If she was going to have to report at Kiften Hall, she hoped they would have a large beaker of pain potion they would be willing to part with. 

At least the scream had livened up a heretofore boring circuit ride. Her teachers had said that a bad run meant encountering enough wrong-doers to use up your criminal-marking stone. She had used it three times on minor thieves. Winged Cat Estate, two days back, had been the highlight of her journey. Talk about strange families . . . just the Race combination of Ta’Shen and Maemar made them that. She had never encountered such in-family bickering. The little girl who had shaped to a kitten with wings had been adorable, though. Now there would be a talent interesting to have. Not that shapechanging was a talent to Ta’Shen, to them changing shape was as natural as breathing. The Ai’Bet Wizards, though, she’d heard, had mastered a magical shapeshift. She wondered how it worked. According to gossip, only a few families of royal blood continued the craft. Just imagine if she could prowl up to Kiften Hall as a huge golden lion, then she’d get respect-

-or shot for her pelt.
Sahja sighed and checked to see how far she’d come. Not far enough. 

Despite inspecting the sight of the scream would add a detour of a half-day, she had almost completed her first circuit. Next year she’d have a scrid of seniority and get to pick her circuit-after those who outranked her picked theirs. In two years she would graduate to quest mage. Some chose to continue riding circuits, but she wanted a stationery post at her favorite Clave Hall, Chadrel, including special tutorage under her mentor, ’Hint’ Fadestep and nights in the arms of Firan Kincaid, her current, very scrumptious lover. 

Raichfire, snorting, yanked her attention to their forward path again. They had reached Lade Forks, where the road branched north and south. In the center of the fork, a half dragonlength away, a young woman sat slumped against the wide gray-brown trunk of the falloe tree that divided the roads. The north road, Lade Forks Branch, passed to the left of the tree. The right fork led to another branching, the scream and, in a week, Falcon Rest Clave and her best friend, Cherry. Sahja let Raichfire drift to the right side of Wild Cat Wood Road.

The broad, deep green leaves of the falloe tree shadowed the woman’s face, but her hand clutching a walking stick, tied with three feathers and bits of colored string, lay in full sunlight. As Sahja advanced on her, the woman stayed unmoving except to tighten her fingers around her staff.

Sahja nodded to the woman as she rode past. A hedge witch, she supposed, considering the staff-a young one who looked as if she had used her power beyond ability. There was no law against hedge witches or against them practicing their magics in the countryside. Warrior Mages only hunted those who strayed into the Dark arts. 

Any hedge witch-male or female-could register with the Warrior Mages, giving them access to Warrior Mage schooling and a way to learn their craft from people who actually knew rather than old sham-casters or street wizards with no ethics, who might rather steal their students power than teach. 
After all, Lower Select Wizard Qyvik had started the Warrior Mages to provide a guard against renegade Family Wizards. The Warrior Mages now patrolled, licensed, and oversaw all wizards, their schools, and apprenticeships for all the citizens of Conyor Ness.

As for the Family wizards: even though the Warrior Mage’s official capacity was to police them, their duties fell more to keeping them from embarrassing themselves in front of the other countries . . . any further than they already had. Mad Fancy Fain hadn’t been the only wizard given to unusual flights of laws, magic, or hobbies.

“Ho, Warrior Mage, lucky day to you.”

Sahja started aware, then pressed her knuckles to the bridge of her nose to lessen her headache . . . and her double vision. The Dark Fates obviously hated her; she had developed a reaction headache from having her shields punctured on top of the headache from the scream. The wavery figure trundling towards her down the center of the road finally resolved into a short, slouch-hatted tinker. He grinned at her and jiggled his pack questioningly.

“Not today, I have a report due by sundown,” she answered. She tried and failed to dredge up a smile for him. “Luck of the road to you.”

He hitched his pack up, leaned harder on his staff and passed her by muttering to himself.

Her talent at empathy picked up his emotions even if his words were too low to hear. She did not consider herself too good to buy from a tinker, odious man. But she wasn’t about to prove it by buying from him either. She turned to scowl after his slowly retreating back. 

After all, one of her favorite cousins, Lonesome Jinn, turned tinker as a disguise. Lonesome had two disguises. Whither Winds Wandering, who she had yet to meet, was said to have two handfuls. Sahja shook her head. Whither Winds Wandering, an enigma . . . and a legend. Something she, with her minimal talents could not aspire to: being a legend or being one of the Favored Cousins who had adventures exciting enough to become legends. And her disguise, as a Warrior Mage, was real. 
She might not be all that talented in any of the areas she had talent in, but she ought to be able to dream up something creative to do with those talents and make a name for herself. After all, she came from one of the most creative Families in Conyor Ness, a country where exotic creativity was the measure of a woman or a man. Hedwraith, her many great grandfather, had made a name for himself designing outrageous costumes (and fathering bastard children). She wanted to make a name for herself in something decent-like solving unsolvable crimes.

The hair lifted on the back of her neck and Sahja yanked from her thoughts into the awareness of a piercing headache-and the sense that she had just entered the main energy pool generated by the scream. She should have been on her guard long before now. Irritated with herself, she straightened in the saddle . . . and realized she had veered onto Caid North Branching, rather than Lost River Wander South, her circuit. She halted Raichfire and glanced back the way she had come. But it seemed silly just to turn around and head back when she was so close to the scream.

She pulled her short lance at ready, urged Raichfire forward, and reworked her personal shields as she rode . . . despite doing so made her head pang as if attacked by a swarm of angry, fist-sized slap-sting bugs. 

The trees had thinned while she’d been mulling over Family and fellowship, and now hidloe trees predominated, their tiny, yellow-green leaves chittering in the slight breeze. Scurrybeasts chattered and scurried among the branches. Horizon birds twittered from the tree tops. A leaper sprang from the base of the largest tree in the grove and hopped off into a nearby patch of horsetail ferns. Everything seemed normal.

Sahja slowed Raichfire and pressed her pained mage-senses into duty. Nothing pathed wrong either. Maybe she wouldn’t find anything. She had only heard one scream. If the other wizard was that strong, he-or she-could have banished the evidence. The strongest wizards she knew were Wizard Elite Yght Hord, Wizard Exalt Nyyle Eternity Nyyle (the current king), and Elitedaughter Luscious Lyy. She wouldn’t want to have to go after any of them. 

Sahja scanned the sides of the path. The underbrush offered up only a jabberwolf, a small creature with a coat of sharp quills that could fling them if enraged. She ignored it, and the creature waddled into the cover of parch-grass and dead leaves. The wind picked up momentarily and brought her the heady scent of sweet jim, one of her favorite late blooming flowers. She inhaled deeply, then mind-scanned the area again. She pathed nothing more than the step by step strengthening echo of the scream’s psychic residue.

Sahja teethed her knuckle briefly, wondering what she would find. Her Family’s fire-spell was set to leave her personal and Family signal behind as evidence. Uncle Whimsy Sander’s had etched itself into the cornerstone of the Crier building in Chimeri. Any of the nine Family’s marks would be somewhere for her to find. Most of the Select, some of the wealthier Lower Select, a few others, also carried firestones that would leave signals. 

What if she found a signal? Dare she try a spell on it to ascertain the killer? Her low rank said no. However, depending on how traumatizing the death-it had sounded horrendous-that spirit might fade before a senior warrior mage could arrive. Assuming one hadn’t already. She had been silly not to consider that earlier.

What was she thinking? That she was the only one who had heard the scream? That was as unlikely as Vedder Snel putting in for her promotion. Didn’t Ren Lade Clave, even though primarily a teaching hall, harbor one of the foremost mind-speakers? Well, either there or the western hall. Right now she couldn’t remember the empath’s name or clave, not with her head pounding itself inside out. Or at least her head felt like it was trying to turn itself inside out.

From now on she’d ignore all snide looks and carry packets of pain potion with her. After all, she had never claimed to be any sort of healer, like Cherry had mock-pretended to be her first year as a way to get out of classes. When a visiting fifth level mage, not in on the clave joke, demanded a healing and hadn’t gotten one, her red-headed friend had nearly gotten sent out. Later she and Cherry had laughed themselves silly over the fifth level mage’s expression when Clavemaster Cinflower had admitted to the clave-wide indulgence in Cherry’s masquerade.

The memory made Sahja grin, until the prickle of the scream’s echo impinged on her thoughts again. She blinked aware and scanned the area carefully, pretending there would be clues to find. A dead, lightning scarred tree sported deadly orange viper-tears moss. Beneath it sat a sluggish pond, water green with the viper-mosses’ secretion. Someone had marked the pond with the rune for danger. It seemed redundant, but she supposed it hadn’t been to start. 

She mind scanned again. The scene of the crime felt a mere half dragonlength away. Time to dismount and creep up on it, just on the wild chance the killer still lurked in the area. Which would mean the killer was too arrogant to speak of, beyond touch-or just too stupid. She looped Raichfire’s reins back over the saddle horn and let him follow her. He had been trained by her horse- raising family first, the foremost horse trainer in Ai’Bet second, and by the Warrior Mage’s horse trainers last, so he was well equipped to be her back-up and far more full of tricks than his languid attitude suggested. He reminded her of Cousin T, who sported the same attitude and same overstocked satchel of tricks. Which reminded her: she retouched her personal shields, and, since no one was around to see her do it, drew the spell mandala in the dirt for a time portal just in case, then walked through it, leaving her at the edge of the time tracks, which gained her a much wider margin of safety than her mortally thin personal shields.
She couldn’t sense any presences in the area dead or alive. Sahja armed herself with her favorite confusion-spell stone, then braided her hair back and tight, out of her way in case she had to indulge in a bout of kick dancing, which she had a moderate talent in, or knife dancing, commonly called brass kissing, which she had more of a talent for. That talent also ran in her family. Cousin T, who had all the Family talents to a disgusting degree, was outrageously talented in brass kissing, even when he didn’t augment it with his timewalking ability- something she could do but which didn’t come natural to her and she hadn’t taken time to practice.

She only hoped the dead wizard or killer wasn’t Family. Not that she expected it to be, her family’s main wizardly talent worked best for running away, and she couldn’t think of anyone offhand-even the dull, outer cousins, uncles, or aunts-that cared enough to kill a fellow wizard. The ones that could would be more creative. Dark Fates, they would go way out of their way to be creative. And the ones she knew could kill and did, had other agendas: like Cousin C who chased slavers, a really dangerous pastime.

Belatedly Sahja pulled a speak-disc out of her mage pouch and slipped it in her pocket in case she did have to record the dead mage’s last words. It had to have been a crime in the heat of passion. No one would plan something like this, when the chances of getting caught and stripped of ones powers were so high.

Dark Fates, what would she do if either killer or killed were Family? Part of her swearing in had been a spell to insure her impartiality as a Warrior Mage. So her Family had a strong enough wizard to take the spell off her, something that had been done to save her life, since she had almost died when that spell had conflicted with her previously sworn waywalking vows. 

Sahja stepped into the inner pool of the scream and her hair lifted all over her body. Half holding her breath, she veered off the side of the road, over a dry stream bed, past a fallen tree, and paused to motion Raichfire to stay. 

The residue of magic and the scream, pain, and torn power made her queasy. Her head started to pound harder. She pressed her hands to her temples, pushed aside the low, broken branches thick with heart-bead vines . . . and the sight of the body sucked her breath away.

She hadn’t expected a body.

And she definitely hadn’t expected a body wearing the burnt-orange cloak of a Warrior Mage. Sahja swallowed hard. Almost as bad as if it had been one of her Family, it was one of her comrades. She braced herself on the broken branch a heartbeat and mind-checked for any other presence. Raichfire registered, curious but content; he’d found a snack of succulent wiche-flower leaves to amuse himself with while he waited. There was no human presence inside the circle of the scream other than her own.

She steeled herself and took a step closer and paused.

No one sane killed a Warrior Mage, they would know that that Mage’s comrades would go to the far end of the legendary Scattered Cities and back to find out who had done it. 

Sahja mind-scanned one last time, strengthened her shields as best she could, and stepped into the small clearing. 

Story copyright Sara Ryan 2007

All rights reserved. No portion of this chapter may be copied in any manner. Thanks.

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