Blessed heights

“Who are you to talk–” The soldiers let go of Varion and Maron hauled back, his face stained. Maron, who had strutted before him like a glorified hero, turned now fire red. It wasn’t the redness of alcohol and mania that covered his leather skin. It was the cinnabar discoloration of fright that bound the prosecutor where the law did not. Varion regurgitated the fabric, looked past his shoulder, and learned why.

“Y-you cannot enter these lands.”

“I can now.” He pointed to the stark column of smoke.

The man wore a lilac tagora with black pants and polished maroon boots. Neither armor nor weaponry adorned his black leather belt in a country where even children wore self-made knives. He lifted his hood and produced an orderly trimmed beard with light brown curls that fell beneath his ears. No scars corrugated his face. With a posture that was proud like a swan, blue violets that bore similarities to pink lavender glared at the humans. The mage widened his eyes at him, an intricate gesture that Varion could not interpret.

His voice was soft. Where shouts would have been a means to hyperbolize, there lay no threatening tone in his words. The calm and reasonable way he spoke left no room for speculations. The man with the curls took another step, and the Ashlanders, except for Varion, resiled.

He bowed deep enough for his nose to meet his kneecaps, never staring away from his target. Then, he whispered, “Is this a ploy of the king. Are you here for trickery, for mere kicks? Or is this real?”

“Look! Another mage appears to save his comrade,” shouted a villager before Varion could answer.

“Anal blisters!”

“They all are in league with each other!”

“By the Deathhall,” Maron hissed but searched for the proximity of his hoplites at the same time. “How did you circumvent the barrier.”

Taking stance behind Varion’s right shoulder, the mage patted his folded cloth even. “I didn’t. Your barrier is no more.”

Maron looked incredulous. “Impossible. We are guarded against it. No disruption works here. The portal guild–”

“Bah,” said the mage. Then he pointed again. Same target, so the villagers did not flinch as he moved. “The portal guild has nothing to do with this. Common merchants. Not true battle mages. Unlike me.”

He let the words hang there for a minute. But Maron seemed to be one of those men who were blessed with a heavy misunderstanding of their place in life.

“I could have you hanged.”

“Unlikely.” The man who had been hooded chuckled. He elucidated collectedly and cautiously. Someone who was used to enunciate his needs without backtalk. A palace boy, Varion would have spat at in his younger years. “But sure, give it a try. I usually don’t fight humans, far too brittle these creatures. I would make an exception for you, though.”

The prosecutor, covered in thickets of flesh and steel, flustered, slightly more browbeaten. “We have a covenant. You cannot cross our borders.”

“I am here to retrieve one of my own. The boy is no subject to the Ashlands and should be handed over into save custody.”

“You’re invading–”

“Invading?” the mage blustered and Maron winced. “Let our spirits rest for the day! I am but one man, fellow human. My peers stride through the venues of our world wherever, whenever they want. And yet I am here alone.”

“You are alone because we are protected against disruptions.”

“The crap of a bull, man! Don’t you follow? Whatever blew up in your forest tore a massive hole into your barrier.”

Maron heaved then and emerged back to the surface of steel like a water snake, ready to spew poison. “This trial is not to be interrupted any longer, and the boy will serve his sentence.”

This once, the mage let an inveighing tone deepen his invocation. “Your sentence is as significant to him as it would be to the Queen of Ilarys. It’s no more than mist in the wind.” He snapped his fingers; a sudden mood swing, and he was auspicious again. “Or how would humans put it? The breath of your word is worth no more than a fart from an asshole from the other side of the planet. You cannot condemn what is not subject to you. I quote your own words: Varion is not your kindred.”

Maron nursed his recalcitrance. His furrows deepened further. His knuckles cracked. “He fed himself strong, he enjoyed elitist education by tricking us, and he is responsible for the deaths of four valuable warriors! This cannot go unpunished.”

“The boy was not responsible for the fire. As for the education, I know of the upbringings of your warriors and what you call education, I brand indoctrination.” The mage rolled his tongue out of his mouth and picked it as though he was trying to remove dirt. “You call yourself scholars among soldiers, and if that is indeed what you are, you had better heed my advice. The Forest of Trials is one of the oldest woods of our continent, filled with magical flora and fauna, resistant to the flux of theurgy. It would take a mage decades of training to conjure fire ardent enough to inflict any damage that comes close to that level of devastation.”

One of the magistrates, the woman with the white brooch on her cloak, came forward. “What are you suggesting?”

The mage slowly raised a palm. Everyone watched it closely, forgetting all about Varion. “I am saying that this chaos was caused by one of your animals, not by some boy. In the Valley of Wind, our Magistries keep track of the beasts that live within the forests and mountain chains, so we know where we can safely set foot in. You, however, send your pupils through nature older than civilization itself and expect what to happen? Dexterity? Deference? This is your own doing.”

At last, Maron showed a shred of sense. He did not tell the mage the real reason why they sent their youths through those particular woods. Perilous, yes. Lethal, absolutely. But whoever emanated benefited from a natural resistance to all things theurgical.

It was one of their biggest secrets how humans had first been able to defeat the tyrant mages of the past, establishing a state just for them.

Maron bit his underlip when he heard the murmurs dissolve into quietude. “If this was indeed an accident, then explain his eyes.”

“His family will.” The mage shrugged, and Varion grew more confused. Not because of the vocable but because the mage had raised his hand and pointed to him after he had finished the word.

“I have no family,” replied Varion. He was a stray, raised on the streets of Ashrain before the warriors of Inaea had taken him in.

He asked himself another time if this was a mirage, for the mage ignored him. He was with belongings, but the finger remained target-oriented like a string that had clung its final accord. The mage raised his other hand and rubbed the middle finger and thumb against each other, producing small flares of blue as if his skin consisted of rubbing firestones. “Our relations have dispersed, but I’m sure you know of my kind and what we do to those who would do us harm. Should the King find out about those gleaming shackles… Well, I’m sure of your undying gratitude if my report finds no mention of them. Provided we are to leave airily.”

The words were uttered like promises of labefaction. Especially the expression undying had been phrased in a way that indicated the opposite, a guarantee that Maron would not survive uncooperative behavior. Varion feared the reaction, for the Ashlands did not listen to the absolute. They turned those words into challenges and surpassed them as instructed. The prosecutor could attack the hooded man and have him imprisoned, too. A true warrior of Inaea would do it that way, the hard way. He could kill him for interfering with human jurisdiction. A foreigner such as Varion was could certainly not be saved by yet another outsider.

Maron grunted, turned, and stomped away, the shackles chinking goodbye, and not a single soldier or villager ranted at his decision.