Stray Magic Read online

  “No. No, no. I don’t do magic. No fireballs, no—”

  “You channeled magic to heal people.”

  Dorotta’s quiet statement silenced me.

  For as many people who had died in the fever epidemics, far more had lived than was the case in surrounding towns and further distant cities. It was why travelers detoured to visit Apfall Hill. Wounds I dressed resisted infection. Broken bones mended faster when I splinted the limbs and gave comfrey roots to the patients to brew and soak poultices in.

  “Magic,” I whispered. “Dorotta, will I be allowed to return home? If I can heal people, they need me.”

  “Many people need you, and your magician most of all. I do not know if you’ll be able to return to your village or for how long. It will depend on whom the trials find you best matched to.”

  “You keep mentioning trials…” My attitude toward the dragon had gone from mistrust and anger to relying on her seeming sympathy for honest answers.

  “The trials are designed to reveal your core self. When you are too tired to hide from yourself or from others, when you can’t summon the energy to meet anyone’s expectations of you, then you stand naked and the natural inclination of your magic will be revealed.”

  Dorotta’s explanation of the trials sounded awful.

  I raised an objection. “But you said my magic is for healing.”

  “No, healing is what you’ve channeled magic to produce. Your needs and desires shaped the channel, but it may not be the best purpose in terms of maximizing and stabilizing the magic you can channel.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Smoke gusted from her nostrils. “The teachers at the trials will explain. Just demonstrate your goodwill and you’ll be treated well.”

  I shook my head, and mumbled. “All I ever wanted was to heal. To be a doctor.”

  Dorotta’s silence was an answer in itself. She wasn’t confident that my magic—or rather, the magic that I unconsciously channeled—would be used for healing.

  Within a few minutes, another nine familiar candidates joined us in the meadow. None flew in. They walked, accompanied by their Faerene escorts. Evidently, we’d all been briefed individually and, at least in my case, inadequately. Or perhaps that was unfair to Dorotta. I now knew enough to be terrified.

  “Maeve is opening a portal,” Dorotta explained quietly as the air in front of a green-skinned woman, an elf, shimmered. “The trials are to be held in the Pontic Mountains.”

  “Where’s those then?” a Bronx woman asked.

  Her escort, a thickset ogre who only stood as high as my shoulder, answered. “In Turkey, south of the Black Sea. Pine forest.”

  We all saw the pines as the shimmering air on the far side of the portal coalesced into a vision of a large field lit by torches and fire pits that revealed the encircling forest.

  A second elf, a male this time, beckoned us to join him in the field.

  “Meet our efforts with goodwill and you’ll be fine,” Dorotta reminded me.

  I wondered if the implicit promise had a loophole as large as the one in her promise to Digger. It didn’t matter. The sole viable path forward for me at the moment was to obey the Faerene.

  The Bronx woman, her gray hair in dreadlocks and her expression fierce, walked through with me. The remaining eight humans followed us hesitantly.

  The portal closed with our escorts remaining in Manhattan.

  “Welcome to the Inaugural Familiar Trials. My name is Lajos. If you are hungry, the food tent is to your right. The latrines are back behind those rocks. Then return to the field and wait.”

  I took the opportunity to go to the bathroom, and the other humans trailed me. A unicorn stamped a hoof and separated the four men to go to the left. At one end of the latrines, cold water emerged from a rock, literally, and a bar of sandalwood soap sat beside it, enabling us to wash our hands. Drying them, however, was as rudimentary as wiping our hands on our trousers.

  I’d worn my best trousers for the harvest festival, the navy blue cotton tailored pair I’d bought in Appletonia, and a long-sleeved cotton sweater. With the wind blowing cool in the mountains, I wished I’d chosen to wear wool. However, never in my wildest dreams—or nightmares—could I have imagined this end to the day.

  We returned, as instructed, to the field and wove between other groups of humans to an unclaimed fire pit. The warmth was welcome, but my every instinct for self-preservation screamed at me and I couldn’t force myself to sit. With attack possible from any direction, I intended to remain mobile.

  None of us spoke, not even to exchange names.

  I counted nine other fire pits, and soon the last of them had a group of humans huddling near it.

  “Please, be seated.” Lajos’s voice carried easily over the large field. It wasn’t a sergeant’s shout, but a magical amplification of his order.

  Unwillingly, I sat. The back of my neck crawled. Whether I could see them or not, I believed there were more Faerene out there in the forest, watching us. What did they intend to do with us? Were we to be pets, slaves or prey?

  “Candidates, welcome to the Familiar Trials. There are one hundred of you. You will be the first humans to be taught the nature of the Faerene and the purpose of our presence on Earth. Each of you is hearing me in your own language.”

  Magic. We were being exposed to magic. Although Dorotta had said that we already employed it, if unconsciously.

  I shivered. The fire warmed my front, but my back was cold; icy shivers sliding over it.

  “Among you are two who channel magic as truth-seekers. If you hear me lie, protest loudly. Among the Faerene gathered here are those who can cast truth spells. Magistrate Istvan?”

  A massive black griffin materialized out of the shadows of the forest, appearing just behind and to my right.

  My heart raced in the high panicked rhythm of pure fear. Jarod’s story of glimpsing a griffin in Baltimore hadn’t prepared me for this. Magistrate Istvan was nearly as big as Dorotta, the copper dragon.

  “If you lie, Lajos, I will execute you.” The griffin surveyed the field of scared humans. “This is the decreed punishment of Fae King Harold and emphasizes the value the Faerene place on you, the first of our potential familiars.” He stayed where he was, embodying an extreme threat. The firelight flickered against the black of his feathers, coaxing out flashes of iridescence.

  It was impossible to angle so that I could keep both Lajos and Magistrate Istvan in view.

  To my left, around the curve of the fire pit, the stranger seated there flexed his right hand, as if he wished to grasp a knife that wasn’t there.

  I hadn’t had a weapon on me when Dorotta collected me. If I had, no doubt she’d have taken it from me. Humans were to be powerless at this gathering.

  “Lessons will begin tomorrow morning,” Lajos said. “The rules of the trials are simple. You must obey our instructions, even if they seem strange to you. As you learn more about magic and our purpose on Earth, you will appreciate why we value you and that no matter how strange our orders, they are for your ultimate good.”

  To my right there was a faint shift in the air currents, a suggestion of movement. I turned my head in time to witness Magistrate Istvan settling his ruffled feathers.

  Did his restlessness indicate agreement or disagreement with Lajos’s speech and the sentiment beneath it?

  It seemed to me that the elf was building up to an unpalatable ultimatum.

  The pause before he continued drew out intolerably.

  Just bring the hammer down, I thought.

  Lajos did. “You are free to leave the trials at any point. An unwilling familiar would be dangerous.”

  A stir swept through the hundred of us humans. People moved, none quite standing, but unable to prevent a physical reaction to the promise of escape.

  “However,” Lajos continued. “If you choose to leave the trials, if you decide you cannot be a familiar, you will be executed.”

  A woman across the f
ield screamed, her nerves betraying her.

  The humans nearest her leaned in. They tried to calm her with hugs and pats.

  Meet our efforts with goodwill and you’ll be fine, Dorotta had said. She had to have known that the alternative was death. We were slaves, existing at the whim of our new Faerene masters.

  The shadow of Magistrate Istvan’s presence at my back seemed to press in.

  Lajos clapped his hands. The fires spaced across the field flared up. “The reasons for the severity of this judgement will form part of tomorrow’s lessons. You will now be assigned to your tutors. When I call your name, please join your tutor. Tutor Karoly.”

  A short man—elf, goblin, something else?—strode from the food tent to the empty space in front of it, halted and folded his arms.

  Lajos read out a list of ten names.

  The ten humans rose and headed uncertainly for their tutor.

  The procedure continued.

  “Tutor Melinda,” Lajos announced.

  A unicorn walked out of the shadows. Her coat was a pale blur in the darkness, but her silver horn had the subtle, silver glow of starlight.

  “Amy Carlton.”

  I inhaled deeply, tasting the wood smoke at the back of my mouth, before I stood. The back of my neck prickled as I walked toward the unicorn. I felt a tiny release of pressure as I put another fire pit between myself and Magistrate Istvan. He had yet to be called as a tutor.

  The Bronx woman, Winona Daly, joined me in front of Tutor Melinda. I would have to wait for daylight to take the measure of the other eight members of the tutorial.

  “I leave you to the wisdom of your tutors. Goodnight,” Lajos said.

  Melinda led us to a row of four tents.

  There was a surreal insanity to following a horse’s ass to our doom.

  Men went to the left, women to the right. The tents held mattresses similar to futons unrolled on the ground with woolen blankets stacked on them.

  It might have been midnight in the Pontic Mountains, but it was early evening in Pennsylvania. Factor in my fear and there was no way I’d sleep. Nonetheless, I obediently unlaced my boots, lay down and spread the two blankets over me. I slept immediately. It was obviously a spell.

  I woke at dawn and showered outside with my modesty protected by leather walls. The cold stream of water flowed away via a pebbled floor. The Faerene provided us with new clothes: cotton underwear, a woolen shirt and trousers, and wool socks. I kept my boots.

  Breakfast astonished me. A handful of humans muttered about bribery.

  The coffee was hot.

  In Apfall Hill, we’d used up all our coffee and were now experimenting with substitutes; roasting roots and nuts and grinding them up. Or there was the mildly caffeinated yerba mate tea from plants that Stella had nurtured all summer.

  The coffee was wonderful, and the Faerene food tent served it with yeasty cinnamon rolls warm from the oven.

  I was shallow, definitely shallow, but the breakfast reminiscent of pre-apocalyptic life improved my mood.

  “Coffee, my long-lost friend, I adore you.” Winona sat beside me on a log outside and unashamedly enjoyed the treat. Her good humor received glares and a couple of muttered insults from other humans, although the critics didn’t refuse the hot drink or food.

  Melinda collected us when we’d finished eating. Other tutors already had their groups sitting in semicircles around them. The unicorn, though, led us along a path deeper into the forest before stopping in a sunlit glade.

  “I graze my meals,” she said. “Fortunately, I can talk while doing so. The voice you hear is real, a shaping of soundwaves. It is not in your head, since I am not skilled in telepathy. Make yourselves comfortable and we will begin.”

  Making ourselves comfortable would be a challenge. Not only didn’t we want to be here, but the grass in the glade was heavily wet with dew. Standing was our sole option. I relaxed into a balanced stance.

  Our lesson began.

  “The Faerene come from a world called Elysium. We have used magic for millennia. There have been terrible wars, atrocities, and famines in our history. We do not see ourselves as better than humans. The difference lies in our experience and knowledge. Humanity set itself on a course destructive of Earth when the dominant paradigm became that of linear progression. Thought shapes action. You aligned your resources, including yourselves, your time and energy, to move forward. However, in directing everything at a single point, by relentlessly driving toward it—”

  She broke off both her speech and her grazing to point her silver horn at a middle-aged man who swore loudly, but without communicating anything other than his anger. “Please, save your protests and questions till the end of the lesson. I promise to answer your concerns.”

  The irate man with his shaggy graying hair told her graphically where she could shove her promise. He went to storm off and an older man grabbed his shoulder. The first guy tried to shove him off.

  The older man let him go, but stood in his path. “If you leave, they will kill you.”

  “What is one more death on their consciences?” The shaggy-haired man flung his arms about in furious gestures. “I won’t listen to lies. They stole our lives from us. Our families. Our future.”

  “These are grievous times,” Melinda said.

  I winced. I could swear she meant her comment sympathetically, but it wouldn’t be taken that way.

  “Hell damn you,” the man swore. “Kill me. Because I won’t be your slave.” He glared around at us. “We are worth more than this horse pucky.”

  When none of us responded, he stormed away.

  I never saw him, again.

  “I’m sorry,” Melinda said. She didn’t clarify what she apologized for. The lesson resumed. “Every world generates a shield that protects it. Humans exploited every resource Earth had, except for magic, which you never accessed. Until now. Until you. In directing every resource at linear progression you drilled into the shield. I am, of course, radically simplifying the metaphysical concepts involved.”

  For all I or any of the others knew, she could be telling us fairy tales.

  “The Faerene have migrated to six other worlds before Earth. We monitor candidate worlds. So do other peoples. The Kstvm were aware of your erosion of Earth’s shield. The Kstvm are an insectoid sentient species who would have claimed your world. Humanity would have been bred as cattle, slaughtered to feed the Kstvm’s insatiable appetite and to incubate their eggs. Earth has parasitic wasps that do the same. When the young emerges from its egg, it eats its way out of its living host.”

  “Ew.” Winona wrapped her arms around her stomach.

  “Fortunately for you, the Faerene mobilized and came through the Rift to Earth first. However, we then had to hold it. We’ve been battling the Kstvm for months, keeping them out with a temporary barrier until the shield resealed itself. This has now happened.”

  At the edge of where our group had clustered together stood a guy aged about thirty with a skinny build that verged on evidence of starvation. He squinted in a manner that suggested he needed glasses and had lost them. His shoulders bowed inward and he had a habit of rubbing nervously at his gangly wrists. He put his hand up. “Will the Rift reopen?”

  Despite her order that we save our questions for the end of the lesson, Melinda answered. “The Rift will not reopen because the Faerene will do whatever is necessary to reinforce the shield’s health.”

  Her answer implied that technically the Rift could reopen.

  “As our magic recycles much of your technological extravagances, returning them to the Earth, the shield strengthens. Balance is achieved as your insane insistence on linear progression bends to a normal cyclical pattern. Life, death and rebirth.” The last phrase had the melodious quality of a religious sentiment. She almost sang them before her measured tempo returned. “The migration analysts planned for Earth’s redemption and protection. You are safe. What they didn’t anticipate, and hence, couldn’t factor in, was the s
pontaneous emergence of humans with the ability to channel magic. We absolutely cannot risk your juvenile powers damaging the shield.”

  She paused. A strand of grass clung to her lower lip. “Do you have any questions?”

  The previous questioner’s hand shot into the air, again.

  “Yes, Aati?” Melinda acknowledged him.

  “Do you intend to use the magic we channel to strengthen the shield?”

  It was a good question.

  “No.” Melinda resumed grazing. “Not directly. Indirectly, a harmonious society’s actions serve to reinforce the shield. The trials are designed to match you with the Faerene magician best capable of using the magic you channel to build and strengthen a blended society of Faerene and humans.”

  Her statement matched what Dorotta had described. The hundred of us humans had been brought here so that the natural channel of our magic could be revealed.

  I was positive that more was also going on. “Tutor Melinda, are the Faerene magicians present at the trials?”

  Her tail swished and her voice sounded approving. “Yes, they are, Amy. I am not one of them. None of the tutors are. It would be a conflict of interest. Be assured that the Faerene magicians have been selected carefully. They will not be cruel or reckless with you. They may, however, be demanding. The match of your magical capabilities is our primary concern, but we hope that your personalities will also mesh.”

  Hmm. I hoped I would be matched with a healer, despite Dorotta’s implied doubt that this would be my future.

  The real and interesting point was that I was already considering my match. I had accepted my future as a familiar.

  Perhaps Winona’s mind was travelling a similar path. “What is a familiar?”

  “A familiar is a sentient conduit for magic who is bound to a single magician and serves to amplify the power of that magician’s spells.”

  Another woman had a different question. “What do we get out of this beyond a tale of strengthening a mythical shield?”

  Mythical? Did the intense forty year old woman think the unicorn lied? Or did she mean mystical?

  “The Faerene will not bribe you to perform your duty to safeguard your home world.” Melinda stamped a front hoof. “I would hope that your relationship with your magician becomes one of friendship and mutual respect.” She hesitated. “Some of you have families. As we can’t yet know how the familiar bond will operate between a Faerene and a human, we will pay you in goods that will ensure your families’ security even when you must be physically absent.”