Scarlet Seas

Amon floated, his mind a vast and empty space. It was as if he was the sky itself, a great expanse of clarity through which passed birds and clouds and wind but remaining untouched by any of them.

A mage could easily become trapped here, enamored by the pristine clarity, and forever forget he or she had a body to return to. For a moment he felt he could slip away into it, but he snapped back quickly. Amara had trained him well, though it never ceased to tempt him in those first few moments of Casting.

It would be so easy to leave behind his life and slip into something beautiful. As simple as relaxing one’s grip.

He focused himself, consolidated his being into a single point hovering above Beckhead. He had the perspective of an eagle flying hundreds of yards above, except that he was able to hold himself still. He would have been invisible to anyone looking skyward, but to himself he appeared as a beacon of golden light. His body had no outlines, no substance. Only radiant luminescence.

He aimed himself into the direction of Karrakdun and flew.

If Amon had ever felt anything like freedom since the day they nailed his father to a soothtree, it was in these moments. His body might never leave Beckhead, but here he could traverse unfathomable distances in seconds. Even with the day’s disastrous events, he couldn’t help but feel joy at the experience of flight. As Beckhead disappeared behind him, he found himself soaring over dark forests, the Jall mountains looming ahead and rushing closer like the jagged blade of an old saw. They rose sharply out of the forested hills, and he rose with him, tracing the paths that would take one over the peaks.

He also saw a pack of small darkened dots moving across the snowy passes.

Creaches. He shuddered to think of the messenger woman coming down from those peaks. They must have dealt her the fatal blow.

Soon he was past the peaks, aiming downward and soaring over forests again. He passed more chiefdoms and villages and soon the ocean came into view, along with Karrakdun, jutting out at the mouth of a deep fjord.

At this time of year the sun never fully set. Even night was never more than twilight, casting long shadows across the world. It gave him enough light to see the ocean lay open. No storm raged, only a sheet of grey clouds above.

Whatever joy he’d felt fled from him. It was all real, then.

There was another light, though. Distant but approaching.

A mage. He wasn’t alone here. Whoever it was moving toward him quickly.

Amon’s stomach – or the nexus of energy where his stomach would ordinarily have been – clenched hard. He suddenly wished he was back in his body. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Amara had always warned him about the dangers of running into other mages, but he’d never even seen so much as a trace of one. The Illians had killed off almost all the mages among the thralls, supposedly. He’d often wondered if he and Amara and the few others they knew were all that remained.

Today had been a day of revelations, though, and it seemed they weren’t over yet.

He had to think, but there was very little time to do so. There would be no hiding, he realized. He was burning like a beacon and judging by the speed and brightness of the other mage, they were faster and stronger.

Could it be Amara, though? Maybe she’d realized what he’d done and come after him.

No, she always burned a silver color and there was no reason for her to be out here. Even if she was looking for him, they’d never ranged this far in their trainings and he doubted she would have come here so quickly.

Amara finding up here would have been bad, but a stranger was worse. He didn’t know who it could be or what it meant. He only knew Amara had warned him countless times about the danger of running into other mages, and the Four help them if they were ever caught.

The other mage kept burning across the sky toward him.

Flee. That was the only option that even occurred to him. Lose himself in the mountains, maybe come back after a time to see if he could coax the storm back into life.

In the time since he’d first seen the light the other mage seemed to have already closed half the distance.

Amon took off in the direction he’d come from, willing himself to fly faster than he ever had before. In a matter of seconds, Karrakdun disappeared behind him. He skimmed over the forested hills, wondering if he could hide there, but he doubted it. His light would give him away and the other was too close behind. No, if he was going to hide it would have to be in the mountains. If he could gain enough distance, there were plenty of crevasses and caves to disappear into. They said some of those caves bored right through the mountains, even.

As he began soaring upward towards the mountain heights again, he cast a look over his shoulder.

The other mage was still screaming toward him as a streak of orange-white light.

Amon might not have had a body in the ordinary sense, but he felt himself contract with fear, jolting him to fly faster.

He couldn’t go faster, though. He was already pushing himself as hard as he could and the other was still gaining.

The peak roared toward him. When he passed the summit he would be briefly out of view of the other mage. It would give a matter of seconds to hide. Probably his only chance.

As soon as he came over the crest he spotted a deep crevasse in the ice and dove for it. It was probably too obvious a hiding place but he had nowhere else to go and no chance of outrunning the other.

The crevasse was deep and soon steep walls of ice surrounded him, reflecting his own glow, though hopefully hidden from above.

Above, in the sliver of twilight sky he could see at the crevasse’s opening, the other mage soared past.

He waited and watched but saw nothing more. He let his mind expand and open, the way it had been when he’d first started Casting and before he’d given himself this body of light.

He sensed little in the vast space of his awareness, though. Certainly no sense of the other mage.

You could turn back. Just stop Casting.

That was true. He could simply stop Casting and return to his body.

Return to the ruin he’d created.

No, he had to at least try. He didn’t know when he would have another chance and Aile’s war party would sail in a matter of days. It could prove his only opportunity to stop it. He couldn’t leave without trying.

He slowly ascended from the crevasse, finding himself alone at the edge of a glacier. No sight of the other, or any living creature for that matter.

He began flying back toward Karrakdun, keeping his awareness broad in case the other mage reappeared. Soon he was back above the city, still alone.

Where could the other have gone? What did he even want?

He would have to puzzle that out later. He warily settled his attention on the city, feeling into its energy. Karrakdun looked like a massive, chaotic sprawl of wooden buildings and narrow cut-log roads in most places. He could tell there were more people in the city than usual, and more ships in the harbor. The city would only swell further. An armada would swell that same harbor within days.

Then he turned his attention to the skies. Amara had taught him how to create wind and light amounts of rain. He’d never created anything like an unending hurricane, but in principle, he assumed, the process remained the same, and so he started by sensing the existing wind, whispering for it to blow stronger.

And it did. It picked up from a strong breeze to something more like a gust, but not nearly strong enough. He would need to open his awareness wider still, which of course increased the risk he would become untethered and lose himself forever. The wider he spread himself, the more powerful he would be.

Also more vulnerable.

This is stupid. And dangerous. Whoever that was could reappear any moment.

But this might be his last chance to stop the next Long Reaving and all the misery that would follow. He could stop his premonition of Cassadan streets running with blood and Reavers, but only if he gambled and won here. He would have to end his Casting the moment the mage came back into view, though.

He broadened himself, until any sense of having a body grew as faint as a distant childhood memory, on the edge of fading away entirely.

He focused on the clouds – just one area of his broad, sky-like awareness – already pregnant with rain. He would start there. It only took a gentle nudge for them to begin releasing their water. Casting and manipulating the weather always came easier when the conditions were already present. The wind was uneasy as well, and a small intention whipped it into stronger blasts.

This was about as far as he’d ever gone under Amara’s tutelage. He could create a storm like a bad summer’s thunderstorm, but it wouldn’t sink fleets. The Eternal Storm had been orders of magnitude stronger than this, with winds that could peel a man off the deck and smash the strongest dragon ship into splinters. He needed more.

He poured more of his will into it. Ultimately, it was all a matter of will and concentration, as Amara had taught it. A balance of absorbing as fully as possible into one’s intention and object of focus, but without losing sight of oneself entirely.

The rain started coming down harder around Karrakdun, the wind tearing at the choppy sea.

Not enough.

He was only manipulating the weather directly around Karrakdun. He needed a storm that would wrap around almost all of Illia.

He needed more. He needed –

“WHO ARE YOU?”

The voice seemed to come from within his own mind, but that was impossible, because the voice didn’t belong to him.

“WHO ARE YOU?” It spoke again, even more deafening this time, driving through his mind.

Pure animal panic set in. A wild, flailing sense that he was on the verge of being annihilated. Amon tried to pull himself back, to focus himself back into a point, but something blocked him. The voice and the presence behind it was like a wedge driven into his mind, forcing it open. He thrashed against it, but the wedge didn’t move.

“Fool,” the voice said, quieter this time. It was feminine. “Who are you? Give me your name.”

It was the other mage, he realized. Though his mind was flung wide open, he could sense the other. She’d been waiting for him, watching his attempts to summon a storm. Amon couldn’t answer, though. His own name seemed slippery, sliding away from him each time he grasped at it.

“You have power, but terrible training,” the other remarked, voice dripping with scorn.

The panic deepened further. He was on the verge of annihilation, he realized. He might not have remembered his name, but he remembered that losing his name was very, very bad. Among the worst sins. If he lost that, he’d lost everything.

He felt the other mage peering into his mind. She must have realized he was in danger of slipping away entirely, because she eased the grip on his mind, allowing him to consolidate himself somewhat. She didn’t want to kill him, at least not yet.

He couldn’t end this nightmare, but he’d collected himself that he knew he was Amon again, that he was floating above Karrakdun, but he couldn’t seem to move. He was pinned in place.

The other floated nearby and he realized he could look right back at her. The channel between them flowed both ways.

The other mage was looking into him, he realized, sifting through layers of his mind. He could feel her presence in his mind as clearly as a stranger’s hand on his body.

Amon stared right back.

She no longer appeared as a body of light at this distance, though she still glowed. She looked human. A Cassadan woman, with dark hair and sun-browned skin. Her outfit – what looked like some kind of elaborate hunter’s garb, with a leather jerkin and elbow-length leather gloves – told him she was no thrall, either.

That meant she was one of the Cassadan mages Amara had taught her about. Not from here, but from the other side of the Scarlet Sea.

His panic subsided. This must have been some kind of misunderstanding. They were on the same side. Only she didn’t know that yet. “Have you come to bring back the storm?” he asked her.

She didn’t answer, though. She was staring at him so intensely she didn’t seem to hear.

As he looked back at her, he realized he could see more than just her actual physical appearance. He could see into her mind, too. Presumably the way same way she could see into his. He could steel feel her presence there.

She wasn’t here to bring back the storm. She was here to make sure no one else did. To make sure the seas remained open.

Confusion warred with fear. How could she want the storm to end? She was Cassadan. She should have been doing everything in her power to fight the Illians, not aid them.

He tried to shut the channel between them, slamming against it with all the strength he could muster. He needed to stop Casting and return to his body, but he couldn’t.

The other wouldn’t let him.

She’d transfixed him, intent on tearing through his mind until he was transparent as glass. He knew that through their connection, somehow, knew that she was searching for his true identity. She would find it soon. She would learn who his father had been, where he lived. She would see Amara, Lucia, and anything else he’d ever been or known.

Horror flooded through him. He tried to seal his mind off as best he could. He would let her destroy him then and there, but he couldn’t let her find out who he really was or where he came from.

But he sensed it was already too late as the mage smiled at him.