“You scared me.”
There was a nervousness in her soft voice, almost reluctant. It made Lian’s stomach turn.
Lian wanted to either comfort her or confront her, but he couldn’t do either of those with his back burning. It was already all he could do to hold still against the pain.
“I scared myself.” He admitted gritting his teeth as he debated the merits of questioning his mother.
Neither of them spoke as Lian’s mother rubbed a sweet-smelling salve on his back. The touch didn’t cause him pain, despite the fact that he knew it probably should have. Still, he didn’t speak yet, couldn’t speak. Fear of the answers he would get stilled his tongue.
He wasn’t stupid. He knew what the glow of his mother’s palm had meant. Magic wasn’t a hidden secret, even if the ones with the power to wield it made themselves into hidden secrets. Like his mother had apparently done.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Lian saw his mother startled when his voice finally broke their stalemate. Her eyes flittered around the room, not quite meeting his.
“Why didn’t you tell me.” He repeated again, his tone harsher as his agitation grew.
Her pale face creased with worry as she finally met his eyes and took a deep breath. “You were too young. When we realized that you-”
“I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about you. I am nothing, I have nothing. Why didn’t you tell me you had magic?” Lian cringed at the tone he’d taken with his own mother, but he was too angry to take the words back or apologize. He didn’t want to even think about what her words had meant, what they implied about him. He didn’t care.
Sharp eyes met his glare and Lian saw the nervousness on her face. She held her tongue against his disrespect in a way he’d never seen her do before. She was the first to reprimand him about respect and manners.
“You don’t understand Lian. There is a lot more going on than you could possibly hope to grasp.” She finally stated, her hands hovering over his back.
“Then explain it to me.” He said, carefully.
“It won’t matter. There is nothing that I can tell you that would change anything.”
“Everything has already changed!”
Lian flinched back at the volume of his own voice and he saw his mother do the same. Closing his eyes and trying to breathe through the pain of his carved up back, he tried one more time.
“You once told me – ‘A Warrior’s greatest strength is his knowledge. There is more to battle than drawing blood.’ Are you going to let me go into this situation at a bigger disadvantage than I already am?”
He didn’t need to open his eyes to know that his mother had caved. She knew he had a point, as much as she was uneasy with what was obviously going to be a tender conversation.
“Okay.” She breathed.
“What have you been hiding from me, mom?” He asked softly, turning his head so that he lay facing the wall. He wasn’t sure he could stand to see her face as they talked. “Why can you suddenly use magic? How did I…do what I did? What did I do?”
Silence blanked the room for a moment. Lian refused to be the one to break it this time.
With a deep sigh, his mother finally spoke.
“Do you know anything of Mages Lian?” She asked kindly, her words as caring as her touch on his back.
Without turning his head, Lian smiled wryly. “I know they have the power to control fire and move mountains.” The words from the boy in class, Coal, echoed in his mind.
“Some do, yes.” His mother answered, a small smile in her own face as she carded her fingers through his hair.
“I know they control energies.” He admitted with more honesty. “The books in father’s study called them manipulators. They sold their soul to demons to obtain their power.”
“That’s a lie.” The harshness of her voice made Lian’s head snap to face and he felt the fire in his back burn him back to stillness. He groaned but did not allow his eyes to leave his mother’s face.
She looked furious.
“Magic comes from the earth Lian.” She continued, no less harsh as she looked into his eyes. “Magic is nature at its purist. The power runs under our feet in patterns, ley lines buzzing underneath us that make the impossible come to life.”
There was passion in her that Lian had not had the chance to ever witness. His mother had never been passionate or driven. There was a mild and almost docile quality to her nature Lian had wrapped himself in as a kid. She was the water to his father’s fire, the calm to his father’s storm. Yet Lian was sure now that there was fire in her as well.
“All Mages are born on the ley lines.” She continued. “We are born baring the mark of an animal on our bodies. This animal would be our Familiar. They would also be born on the ley line, making them different than nature’s children. Power would flow between them, connecting them and granting humans the power to correct the mistakes of the past.”
“What do you mean by mistakes?” Again Lian spoke without knowing he would, but it hardly mattered now. Like a boy being told a story, his mother had captured him in this tale.
Her eyes flickered around the room for just a moment before they came back to his.
“The human heart is not a pure place my darling.” She said sadly. “Whims rule us more so than sense. Just as there are good men in the world, there are evil ones.”
Lian didn’t speak, catching on already despite the delirium of pain. He waited calmly for her to collect her thoughts and speak again.
“The First Mage was not a kind man. With so much power and nothing to oppose him, he only ever understood power. Because of this, the kings of their time rallied themselves against him. When the armies came, the First Mage knew he would not survive if he fought alone. So he twisted the ley lines so viciously, that the magic rebelled. It changed the men who’d come to fight the Mage. Changed the animals in the forest surrounding it. Changed the very earth itself.” She looked down at her hands and Lian suddenly understood.
“Darkin.” He whispered in shock.
His mother merely nodded her head.
“So many soldiers were changed that day. Some in small ways, some in large ones. The Mage however, did not survive. And so began the first Darkin War.”
“That’s why he did it.” Lian tried to sit up, but his back pulled and dropped him back onto his mattress with a cry of pain. “It was why King Kincade called for the mercenaries. Why the Warriors, Raider, and Hounds rallied under the banner of the King against the Darkin.”
“Yes child.” His mother chided softly, pressing a cool hand against his back to keep him still. Her touch wasn’t painful and Lian sighed in relief at the cool press of skin. “Stay still or I will not continue the story.”
Reluctantly he agreed. He’d always been a sucker for historical knowledge. It took more than just strength to pass the Warrior’s Exams. It was likely why Nova had failed multiple times in the two years one was granted to try.
“The King’s Alliance came into play to fight the soldiers that had been turned into beasts by the First Mage. It was why the King despised Mages, so far as to outlaw the use of magic and order the death of every child who could wield it.”
With a twist of her wrist she wrung out a soft cloth from the basin of cold water beside his bed. It was a relief when she laid the cloth against his back.
“Each faction would receive a reginal territory within the kingdom if they united against the Darkin. It is why we live here in Halbourn, the territory of the Warriors. To our north lives the Hounds, to our west lives the Raiders, while northeast bares the capital of the Kingdom of Verran. Beyond the capital is the Academy.”
“The Mage’s school, right?”
Her smile was wistful, an unknown longing reflected in her touch as she stroked his hair back from his face.
“The Academy of Magic, yes. Do you know why it was built to the east?”
Lian did, it had been one of the first points made in a book defending the current King’s choices upon the death of his father during one of the battles in the first Darkin war.
“The Mages were able to erect a shield at the edge of the Darkin’s Forest. It keeps the Darkin at bay and must be maintained by every Mage who dwells within the Academy.” He recited from memory.
“Yes, my smart little Lion.” His mother praised with a smile.
“So did you go there? To the magic school?” He asked.
She paused before answering. “I did. A long time ago.”
“Why aren’t you there now?” He knew more about the Alliance than anyone else in his class. He knew what the rules where.
Every Marked child taken in by the Academy lived and studied there. The town surrounding the school housed the direct family of Marked children. While most children were given a choice to leave or stay when they turned 18, many of the Mages chose to stay and work towards the title of Master.
“I’m not as strong as I once was.” His mother admitted, sounding small all of a sudden.
“What does that mean?”
They had now hit a sore spot for his mother and he could see it in the pull of her lips as she tried to smile. Her face ashen with her illness and her limbs weak and slow as they moved to water the cloth that had been cool against his back. He tried not to notice the blood that turned the clear water pink.
“Do you remember the mark I told you about? That each Mage is born baring the mark of an animal born on the same day along the ley line?”
“Yes.” Lian answered out loud because he wasn’t sure he could move his head without pain.
“Those animals are called Familiars. They follow a Mage throughout their lives acting like a water pail. As a Mage grows, we gather power from the ley line to work and wield the elements. Sometimes the residue of such power destroys our bodies. So nature created a counterpoint for us. A vessel to hold that backlash. That is what Familiars are.”
“And what happens when one or the other dies?” Lian asked skeptically instantly seeing the unbalance in the relationship.
“If a Mage dies, his Familiar is set free. Allowed to live the rest of its life as a normal animal.” His mother answered, but she could not meet his eyes. “If the Familiar dies…”
“The Mage will die soon after.” Lian finished for her, knowing she would not.
A small nod was his only confirmation.
“So when you say you are less powerful than you used to be, do you mean because you lost your Familiar? Or did your Familiar die?” He was struggling to put the pieces of these countless puzzles together, because he knew if he could, then they would all make sense, not just this part of it, but all of it.
“My Familiar, Morgan, died during the second Darkin War.” His mother answered, her voice barely a whisper.
Lian felt his heart clench, though he wasn’t sure why. There was pain in every line of his mother, a kind that could not be healed with care and salve, a kind that did not leave a scar as a reminder.
“You fought in the second Darkin War.” Lian uttered the words in awe, but he was still caught up on the part where his mother’s Familiar died, but she did not.
“I did.” She answered, and then her demeanor changed again, like it had countless times during this conversation. Lian didn’t know how to place this one though, he’d never seen it before. “I fought alongside your father that day.”
“Is that were you met?”
So many new things he never knew before, coming into light all at once and he was struggling to hold onto all the pieces of these puzzles.
“It is.” His mother's smile was fragile as she went on. “We did not meet in battle you see, for I was the Master of the group of Mages sent to fight on the boarder, and your father was a Lieutenant in the Guild’s Warrior Guard. We met during a tactical discussion about the territory beyond and where we could safely push the Darkin so no villages would suffer mass casualties. We argued against each other more than any member of that battle counsel. Yet when night fell, he came looking for me.”
Her eyes were glazed as if she were no longer in the room. Lian knew she was there, in that moment with his father. He also knew, the second her gaze darkened, that what came next was not so pleasant a memory.
“We were attacked that night. The battle was brutal, many of my Mages taken out by Darkin assassins so that the attack would hit the battlemen much harder. I was fighting blind, struck by grief at the loss of my friends that I forgot to cover my own back. Morgan hadn’t. She took an attack from a poisoned blade in my place. She died four hours later, but the battle had already ended by then.”
“How did you survive?” Lian pushed, knowing he could not help her through her pain now. It was much too old, much too deep for him to reach. So he had to push past it with her.
“You father.” She said simply. “He saw her go down, and then he saw me fall after her. He fought his way to our side and he protected us with his sword and shield, batting down every Darkin that came for the fallen Mage. I remember his back that day. Strong and broad, fiercely straight and proud. When the fighting stopped, he went to his knees at my side and held my hand. He knew what Morgan’s death would mean for me, so he offered his body, his existence, to become my next vessel. My Familiar.”
And there it was. The final piece of three separate puzzles.
“That’s why you’re ill.” Lian realized with a turning fear. “That is why no one can find anything wrong with you, they are not healers, and they cannot see the magic that eats away at you.”
“Yes.” She sounded so broken. Lian felt like he would break too.
“You…there’s nothing we can…” And like a candle being lit in the darkness, an idea burned. “Me! I will become your Familiar, like my father, you can use my body.”
“You are not an empty vessel.” His mother argued, shutting him down fast and hard.
He turned on his side with a pained grunt and grabbed his mother’s hand.
“Stop!” She cried trying to turn him back on his stomach, but he would not move and she was much too weak to move him herself.
“You will die unless we try.”
“I will die if we do.” She answered back with a solemn frown. “You do not understand what it took to connect myself to another being, one not of the ley line. One that does not naturally belong to me. It nearly killed us both. Everyone thinks me dead, Lian. I am only allowed to live here and raise you because I am thought dead. They do not know I still live, they do not know about you.”
She was pleading for his understanding, but there was no understanding. She would die, no matter what.
“What will I do?” He let go of her hand as he asked, moving carefully until he was once again on his stomach. His face buried in the hollow of his crossed arms. “What will I do once you are gone?”
Everything hurt. His back, his chest, his heart. Where would he go when his mother left him all alone?
“You will not be alone, my Little Lion.” She urged to him, a hand on his shoulder blade. The same area that had felt like ice during Nova’s onslaught.
“If you go, I will be.”
“You will not.” She insisted. “A Familiar will come for you. One born for you, a companion to walk alongside you when you struggle to walk at all. You will never be alone.”
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