The Sentinel Mage

CHAPTER SIXTEEN





RAIN FELL STEADILY. Mid-afternoon, the ground began to rise. The vegetation changed, oak giving way to low-boughed mountain beech. Wet leaves slapped Harkeld in the face as he rode.

“By the All-Mother,” Justen muttered behind him. “I wish I could change into a bird and fly above these cursed trees.”

Harkeld’s skin prickled as he remembered the dream he’d woken from—feathers bristling from his chest, down growing on his face. I don’t.

They halted for the night at an outcrop of rock. Gerit was waiting for them, drenched and naked. “It’s not a cave,” he said. “But it’s the best shelter I can find.”

Harkeld looked up at the slight overhang.

“It’ll do,” Dareus said.

Harkeld dismounted stiffly. Every item he wore was saturated. His muscles told him he’d been doing nothing but sit in a saddle for the last three days. He swung his arms, trying to work out the stiffness. “How about some wrestling?” he asked Justen.

The armsman blinked. “Now?”

“After we’ve seen to the horses.”

Darkness fell while they unloaded the packhorses. Cora and Gerit set about making a meal. “Well?” Harkeld said, once the horses were hobbled.

“Er...” Justen glanced towards the fire. The witch, Petrus, walked into the circle of firelight, a blanket around his shoulders. “I don’t want to hurt you, sire.”

“A friendly bout,” Harkeld said, stripping off his shirt.

Justen hesitated, and then shrugged. “All right.” He pulled his shirt over his head and kicked off his boots.

They started slowly, testing each other’s strength, each other’s skill, grappling and breaking off, their feet scuffing up wet leaves. Harkeld saw an opening—now—and came in low, driving his shoulder into Justen’s hip. The armsman grunted and sprawled backwards. Harkeld followed him. They wrestled, rolled, rose to their knees. He had his arm around Justen’s throat—

Justen grabbed his elbow and drove his weight forward, breaking the hold. He rolled free and sprang to his feet. His teeth glinted in the firelight as he grinned.

Harkeld stood. He wiped sweat and rain from his face. Justen’s amulet caught the firelight as they circled. They came together again, forehead to forehead, gripping each other’s arms. Harkeld tightened his hold on Justen’s left arm and shifted his balance, preparing to bring the armsman down. Got you.

Justen twisted free, his skin slick with rain. He dropped to one knee. Harkeld’s breath exhaled in a whoosh as his armsman’s shoulder rammed into his stomach. Justen grabbed him behind the knees, heaved—

Harkeld found himself face down on the ground, gasping for breath.

Someone laughed. He thought it was Petrus.

Harkeld pushed himself up and spat leaf mold from his mouth.

“Did I hurt you, sire?”

Only my pride. “No.” Harkeld climbed to his feet. He looked at his armsman with newfound respect. “Again.”

They wrestled until the stew was cooked and it was too dark to see more than the pale blur of Justen’s amulet. Harkeld walked back to the overhang and the fire, breathing heavily. He rolled his shoulders. The stiffness was gone.





“THAT WAS A good wrestling match,” Petrus said as he changed clothes with Innis. “You nailed him a couple of times.”

It was hard to tell in the dimness, but he thought Innis grinned. “I like being Justen.”

Petrus paused, one leg in the wet trews. “Innis, you need to be careful.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, wrapping herself in the blanket. “I know this is the shape I’m meant to be. It’s just...you’re lucky to be so strong.” She handed him the amulet. “Can you ask about the curse tonight?”

“The curse?” The disc of walrus ivory was warm in his hand. “What about it?”

“How much do you think he knows?”

Petrus shrugged. “Not a lot.”

“So ask questions.”

Petrus grunted. He put the amulet over his head. It rested below his collarbone, warm and smooth. “If he wants to know, he can ask himself. Surly son of a bitch.”

“You’d be surly too, if you were him. He’s lost everything. He’s like a mage who’s been stripped of his magic.” She laid her hand on his arm. “Please, Petrus?”

Jealousy stabbed inside him. “Fancy him, do you?”

Innis removed her hand. “No. I feel sorry for him.”

Petrus bit his tongue. Fool. He shrugged into the wet shirt. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll ask about the curse.”





PETRUS PUSHED A lump of meat around his bowl. Beside him, Prince Harkeld ate silently, not looking at anyone. His face was dark with shadows, dark with stubble. His hostility was almost a tangible thing.

Petrus glanced at Innis. He scooped up a spoonful of stew. “Dareus, can you tell me about Ivek’s curse?”

“The curse? What about it?”

Petrus shrugged, chewing. “Everything. All I know is that it’ll kill everyone in the Seven Kingdoms. And that he’s the only one who can stop it.” He pointed at Prince Harkeld with his spoon.

Dareus glanced at the prince. “Very well.” He put down his bowl. Behind him, water dripped steadily from the edge of the overhang. “It started nearly three hundred years ago, when the rulers of the Thirteen Kingdoms decided to purge this continent of mages. There were thirteen kingdoms back then, not seven; Osgaard hadn’t begun its expansion.”

Petrus nodded.

“Hatred of mages had been growing for some time. Admittedly, a few were abusing their powers, but mostly it was just rumors.”

“What sort of rumors?”

“Mages eating human flesh, procreating with animals—absolute nonsense, but you’ll find that people here still believe such things today.”

Petrus glanced at Prince Harkeld. He appeared to be paying no attention to Dareus.

“Some mages managed to flee across the ocean to the Allied Kingdoms,” Dareus said, picking up his mug. “But most didn’t. A lot of completely ordinary people were killed too, merely on the suspicion they had mage blood.” He lowered the mug without drinking. “The killing of suspected mages is a practice that continues to this day. They have a saying here: the only good mage is one that’s dead and burned.”

Petrus grimaced, and then smoothed the expression from his face. Justen wasn’t a mage; he’d hear those words with nothing more than mild interest.

“Witch,” Gerit said. “The only good witch is one that’s dead and burned.” He scowled. “They call us witches here.”

“The wife and children of a mage named Ivek were among the first to die,” Dareus continued. “Ivek laid the curse as his revenge.”

“What does it do?”

“It strips people of their humanity.”

“What?” Petrus wrinkled his brow. “It makes them into animals?”

“Less than animals. They become maddened by blood lust. They’ll slaughter each other, just as Ivek’s family was slaughtered.”

Petrus tried to react as if the tale was new to him. “But...all this happened three hundred years ago. Why didn’t the curse kill everyone then? Why now?”

“The curse was dormant while it gathered power. It’s...as an analogy, imagine a pot of water over a fire. Ivek placed it there, but it’s taken this long for the water to boil.”

“And only Prince Harkeld can put out the fire?”

“Yes.”

Petrus shoveled stew into his mouth and chewed, trying to think of another question. “How did the curse gather power?”

“Ivek anchored it with three stones. You’ve seen a map of the Seven Kingdoms? You know that it’s roughly divided into three regions? North, east, west?”

He nodded.

“Ivek anchored the curse in each region. In the north, Ankeny. In the east, Sault. And here, in the west, Lundegaard, up on the Masse plateau. Each stone has been drawing power from the kingdom it’s anchored in.” Dareus laid his hand on the wet soil. “From the ground.”

Petrus tried to look as if he didn’t already know this. “Did Ivek know it would take three hundred years for the curse to gather enough power?”

“He thought it would take longer. We have some of his writings. He estimated four centuries.”

Petrus lifted his eyebrows. “A slow revenge.”

“He died knowing that everyone in the Seven Kingdoms—the Thirteen Kingdoms, then—would die, just as his family had.” Dareus shrugged. “It didn’t matter to him whether he witnessed it or not; he knew it would happen.”

Gerit grunted. “He was mad.”

No kidding. “How did he die?” Petrus asked.

“The soldiers caught him in the end. Cut off his head, then burned him.”

Petrus pushed the stew around his bowl. “And the curse is in Vaere now?”

“Yes. Ivek crafted it to rise in the east and pass across the kingdoms until it set in the west, like the sun.”

“Only much slower,” Gerit said, leaning forward to throw another branch on the fire. Sparks rose like a cloud of fireflies.

“How slow?”

“At the moment, about a league a day,” Dareus said. “Three or so miles. We believe it’ll move faster once it reaches the first anchor stone. Within a year, all the kingdoms will be infected.”

“Infected?”

“The curse is waterborne. Drink one drop of infected water, and you’ll go mad. And since everyone needs to drink, everyone will go mad.”

Petrus looked up at the rain, falling steadily beyond the shelter of the overhang. “Water?”

“Rivers, lakes, wells. The curse is bound into the soil, so rain is safe until it reaches the ground. Then it becomes infected too.”

“What about animals? Does it affect them?’

Dareus shook his head. “Only humans.”

“So...how do we stop it?”

“Ivek crafted the anchor stones so they can be destroyed. He called it his joke against the Thirteen Kingdoms.”

“Joke? How’s that a joke?”

“The anchor stones can only be destroyed by a royal prince or princess descended from the house of Rutersvard and a mage. Something Ivek knew was impossible.”

“Sick son of a whore,” Gerit muttered.

“Why a Rutersvard?”

“Because the purge was led by a Rutersvard.”

Petrus chewed slowly, trying to think of something else he could ask. Something Prince Harkeld wouldn’t know. “Can you lay curses?”

Dareus shook his head. “None of us can. The ability to cast curses is rare.”

“Just as well,” Gerit said.

“Casting a curse is a very personal thing,” Dareus said. “It usually requires physical touch. It’s...think of it as un-healing.”

Petrus nodded.

“What Ivek did with the anchor stones is extraordinarily complex. He somehow managed to bind his curse to the land itself. We’re still not certain exactly how he did it.”

“So Ivek un-healed the Seven Kingdoms? Thirteen Kingdoms, I mean.”

“Thirteen, Seven...” Dareus shrugged. “It means the same thing: the entire continent. Yes, that’s exactly what Ivek did.”

Petrus gestured at Prince Harkeld with his spoon. “And only he can undo it?”

“Only his blood. And his hand laid on the anchor stones.”

“But...he doesn’t have to be alive?

Dareus shook his head. “As far as we can tell, no.”

“How much blood will it take? It won’t kill him, will it?” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the prince pause in his eating. Petrus was careful not to grin. Scared you, huh?

Dareus shook his head again. “No.”

Petrus stirred his stew. What else could he ask? “If the prince has mage blood, is he a mage?”

“It’s possible,” Dareus said, with a shrug. “Prince Harkeld would have to undergo testing to know that. By breath and by blood.”

“You should do it, sire,” Petrus said.

Prince Harkeld glanced at him. He uttered the only word he’d spoken since sitting down to eat: “No.”

“But don’t you want to know? I would.”

“I am not a witch.”

It’s mage, you surly son of a whore. Mage, not witch. Petrus shrugged.

“Can’t know that,” Gerit said. “Not unless you take the test.”

Prince Harkeld ignored Gerit. He continued eating.

“If all the mages were killed, how does the prince have mage blood?” Petrus asked, his tone innocent.

Gerit uttered a snort of laughter, and changed it into a cough.

“For the past two hundred years Sentinels have been coming here in secret,” Dareus said. “Monitoring the Rutersvard bloodline, looking for a child who could break the curse. When it became clear it wouldn’t happen naturally, we decided to intervene.”

“Intervene?”

“To introduce mage blood into the other royal houses in the hope that one of the children would marry a Rutersvard. We waited three generations for it to happen.”

Prince Harkeld put down his bowl. His movements had the rigidity of rage.

“Why was marriage necessary?” Petrus asked. “Couldn’t a bastard—”

“It was one of the first things we tried,” Cora said.

Prince Harkeld turned his head to stare at her.

“Who was the bastard?” Petrus asked.

“A boy called Kiel. His father was a legitimate Rutersvard prince, his mother was a Sentinel mage. She’d been pretending to be a servant.”

“What happened?”

“Kiel’s blood and hand were tried on all three stones.” Cora lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “It didn’t work.”

“The child has to be born in wedlock,” Dareus said. “It has to be legitimately royal. Ivek worked it into the anchor stones.”

Prince Harkeld stopped looking at Cora. He frowned down at his bowl.

“So why didn’t you just ask a Rutersvard to marry a mage?”

“We did that when Kiel’s blood didn’t work,” Dareus said. “One of the Sentinels approached the Rutersvards and explained the situation and—”

“They killed him.” Gerit spat into the fire. The flames sizzled for a moment.

“They thought the curse was a tale. A century had passed since Ivek’s death. A century with no sign of anything wrong.” Dareus shrugged. “Do you know what they say here, when something’s never going to happen?”

Petrus shook his head.

“They say it’s as certain as Ivek’s curse.”

Petrus grunted. “They won’t be able to say that any more.”

“No.” Dareus rubbed his jaw. The close-cut beard rasped beneath his hand. “Where was I? Oh, yes. They killed the Sentinel. So for the next hundred years we watched and waited, until finally it was decided that we had to act. So we created an opportunity to break the curse.”

“Prince Harkeld?”

Dareus nodded. “Once he was born, there was a lot of debate about what to do next. Should we steal the child and raise him in the Allied Kingdoms? Should we leave him where he was?”

Prince Harkeld lifted his head. He stared across the fire at Dareus.

“In the end, the Council ruled that we couldn’t take away his birthright. Harkeld had been born a prince; he had the right to grow up a prince. The question then became, how to inform him of his destiny—and when.”

Gerit snorted. “They debated that for nearly two decades.”

“Finally it was decided to follow diplomatic channels. This was a chance to forge a relationship between the Seven Kingdoms and mages. A delegation was sent to Osgaard, to speak with King Esger. I was one of them.”

“Weren’t you afraid they’d kill you?”

Dareus shook his head. “We carried a diplomatic seal granted by the rulers of the Allied Kingdoms. It guaranteed us safe passage. King Esger took some convincing that we spoke the truth about the curse and his son’s blood, but he took the news surprisingly well. Much better than we’d expected.”

“When?” Prince Harkeld demanded. “When did you tell my father?”

“When you were eighteen.”

The prince’s mouth tightened. He turned his head away.

“Why didn’t you speak to the prince, then?” Petrus asked.

“We asked to, but King Esger said Harkeld was too young, too immature. He requested more time and asked that we not approach the prince directly.” Dareus shrugged. “We agreed. There was no urgency; we thought the curse would be dormant for decades.”

“But weren’t you worried about the prince’s safety once you’d gone?”

Dareus shook his head. “Esger promised to protect his son. He swore an oath on the seal we carried. To break it would have been tantamount to a declaration of war against the Allied Kingdoms.” He drained his mug and placed it on the ground.

“We returned three years later, but the king declined to let us speak with Prince Harkeld. He said he was still too immature.”

“We should have ignored the fat bastard,” Gerit said. “Should have just gone in and—”

“We carried a diplomatic seal.” There was an edge in Dareus’s voice. “We were bound by oath to act with openness and honesty.”

Gerit pushed to his feet, scowling. He stamped off into the darkness, his shoulders hunched against the rain.

“The curse took us by surprise, Justen,” Cora spoke into the ensuing silence. Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact. “We thought we had plenty of time. Decades. King Esger’s stalling didn’t worry us overmuch.”

“But then word came about the curse shadows,” Dareus said. “And we knew we had to act immediately. Whether Esger agreed or not.”

Petrus nodded, and then realized that the prince wouldn’t know what a curse shadow was. “What’s a curse shadow?”

“Anyone who’s been cursed has one,” Dareus told him. “It’s like a shroud. Only trained mages can see them. There have been curse shadows across the Seven Kingdoms ever since Ivek laid his curse, but they’ve been extremely faint, almost impossible to see. In the weeks before the curse became active, they became noticeably darker.”

“And now?”

“Now they’re very dark.”

Petrus looked across the campfire at Dareus, seeing the shadows cast by the firelight and the one cast by Ivek’s curse, a dark and unwholesome stain. “Do I have an extra shadow?”

“We all do. Anyone who sets foot on this continent does.”

“Until they leave,” Cora said. “Or die.”

“But...I’m not cursed, am I?”

“You’re cursed, in as much as everyone in the Seven Kingdoms is cursed, but you won’t go mad until you drink infected water. The curse shadow is...think of it as a promise of what’s to come. If you stay in the Seven Kingdoms.”

A shiver crept up Petrus’s spine. “What happens when Ivek’s curse reaches the west coast?” he asked, placing his bowl to one side. “Will it spread across the ocean? Will it reach the Allied Kingdoms?”

“The scholars think not,” Dareus said. “But the truth is that no one knows. There’s a chance it will poison the whole world.”

“So we’d better break it,” Petrus said.

“Yes.” Dareus turned his head and spoke directly to the prince: “Thank you for agreeing to come with us, Prince Harkeld. Things would be even more difficult if you hadn’t.”

“Would you have killed me?” the prince asked. “Taken my blood? My hands?”

“If necessary, yes.”

The prince’s lip curled contemptuously. “You’re not allowed to kill.”

“It’s one of our Primary Laws,” Dareus said. “But Sentinel mages have the authority to break those laws, if the need is great enough.”

The prince lost his sneer. His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he didn’t know whether to believe Dareus or not.





IT WAS STILL raining in the morning. Harkeld pulled on his sodden boots and buckled the sword belt around his hips.

Justen held his shirt to his nose for a moment and grimaced, before shrugging into it. “Ach. I’m growing mold.”

Harkeld grunted. “Me too.” Everything smelled dank—his clothes, his hair, his skin.

Justen took a small cloth-wrapped object from his pocket and carefully unwrapped it. “The paint’s coming off.” His voice held a note of dismay.

Harkeld stepped closer to see what his armsman held. It was a tiny portrait painted on wood, smaller than the palm of his hand.

Justen held the painting out to him. “Doutzen. We’re betrothed.”

Harkeld took it carefully. The armsman was correct: in places the paint was peeling from the wet wood. Doutzen’s face was untouched. She was a smiling, plump-cheeked girl.

“She’s waiting for me,” Justen said, pride in his voice.

“You’ll have a happy marriage,” Harkeld said, handing the portrait back. If we survive.

A hawk landed while they ate breakfast. Petrus. “The pass is misty,” he said. “Can’t see an awful lot.”

“Soldiers?” Dareus asked.

“Not that I can see. There are some on the next ridge, though.”

“Keep an eye on them.”

“Shall do. Is that bowl for me, Cora?”

“And on the other side?” Justen asked. “In Lundegaard. Have you seen any soldiers?”

The witch shook his head. He began to eat.

“Prince Harkeld?” Cora said.

Harkeld glanced up.

“How well do you know King Magnas?”

“I lived in his court for two years when I was a boy.”

“Why?” Justen asked.

“I was fostered,” Harkeld told him. “It’s common practice here among noble families.”

“What’s your opinion of King Magnas?” Cora asked.

“I doubt he’ll seek to stop us. He places higher value on human life than my father does.”

“But isn’t he related to King Esger?” A frown puckered her brow.

“By marriage,” Harkeld said. “His daughter, Sigren, was my father’s fourth wife. My half-brothers Rutgar and Lukas are King Magnas’s grandsons.”

Saying their names brought the boys’ faces vividly to mind: Rutgar’s gap-toothed grin, Lukas’s dimples. His throat tightened.

“You don’t think King Magnas’s loyalty will be to Osgaard in this?”

“It could be.” Harkeld stared down at his bowl. In the two years he’d been in Lundegaard’s court, King Magnas had treated him no differently than his own sons, had even called him son.

Harkeld dug the spoon into the gruel, but didn’t eat. He had witch blood. No man, king or commoner, would want him as a son now.