The Hidden Masters of Marandur

Chapter Thirteen

They left the apartment building quickly, walking back toward the center of Severun. Alain kept searching for danger, but at some point he realized that his watchfulness was making him look suspicious. Thereafter he tried to appear less interested in the world while still watching. Not as disinterested as a Mage, but like the commons around him and Mari. The Imperial citizens they passed were absorbed in their own business, and the local police had their attention fixed on the people carousing in taverns along the way. At one point Alain saw a couple of Mechanics in the distance and nudged Mari, but she gave the two a disinterested glance as they disappeared down another street.

Within moments after leaving S’san’s place and expressing her fears Mari had sunk into moody silence. She walked without another word until Alain spoke to her. “What should I do?”

“Nothing.” Mari shrugged. “There’s nothing anybody can do. I already said it. It’s hopeless. All we can do is hide, while the entire world goes to blazes.”

“Perhaps when we talk we can come up with some ideas.”

She stared down the street they were on, shadows stretching across it as the setting sun dropped lower in the west. “I don’t know. There are certain hard realities here, Alain. I can’t change them by wishing and hoping. You can’t change them, either. This isn’t something as simple as…all right, I was going to say as simple as walking through solid walls, but that doesn’t make sense.”

Mari shook her head, gazing morosely down toward the waters of Lake Bellad. “Professor S’san taught me never to give up on a problem, to keep trying different things until I found a solution. But I don’t know if any different things exist to try. And I admit that it shouldn’t be surprising by now to find out that my Guild deliberately allowed me to be placed in peril for its own ends, at a time when I had done nothing against my Guild, but it still hurts. It also reinforces that anything I try now would not only likely be futile but also might end up causing harm to people who know me. While I was in there with Professor S’san I could pretend that there might be hope, but now? What else can be done that won’t be futile?” Mari fixed her eyes on the ground passing beneath their feet. “Let’s find a safe place to sleep. I’m tired. Very tired.”

Alain steered them by a cafe first. Mages were taught simply to take what they wanted from commons too frightened to resist, but Mari had shown him the basics of ordering and paying for meals, so he was able to buy some food and drink while Mari stared silently into space beside him. He made her eat despite the scowls he earned from Mari for his efforts. Only then did he head for a hostel, finding a plain but clean one a fair distance from Lake Bellad which had plentiful vacancies with the winter coming on. Mari had to check them in, since Alain had not yet learned how to do that.

She roused enough to ask for privacy, for a room without anyone in the rooms next to it, a request the clerk granted with a smirk at Alain. But once in the room, Mari sat down glumly in a chair with a view out the window to the lake, where nothing could be seen in the darkness after sunset but the flickering torchlights of fishing boats and other watercraft, gliding like ghost beacons across the surface of the water.

Alain sat down near her. “We need to make plans. Where do we go now?”

“It really doesn’t matter, does it?” Mari shrugged. “Pick a place. Maybe Cathlan. Blazes, Alain, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding.”

He felt the tug of urgency that had first appeared when he saw the vision in the desert. “We cannot afford to hide. There is no such time to waste.”

She glanced at him, then quickly away. “Then you should make the best of what time is left. Maybe if you left me, you could get back in good graces with your Guild. That way you could be with Asha.”

The words startled him. “Why would I leave you to be with Asha?”

Mari shook her head, looking drained. “Only you of all men would ask that question.”

“You would not leave me in the hopes of gaining forgiveness from your Guild. Why would you expect me to leave you? I have promised to stand by you and assist you in bringing the new day. We can make plans in the morning if you prefer that. A night’s sleep–”

“Won’t make any difference,” she interrupted with a bitter voice. “There’s no place left to go and no reason to go there except running for our lives. And for what? To live hunted a little longer? This isn’t a game there’s any chance of winning any more.”

“There must be a way to win.”

“You keep saying things like that. Mari will change the world! Where did you get that idea?” Mari slumped a little lower in her seat, glaring out at the night.

“You have told me you know of your role in the prophecy. I understand why you have not wanted to speak of it, but—”

“What?” Mari stared at him. “I told you what?”

“That you did not wish to talk about your role as the one who will fulfill the prophecy to overthrow the Great Guilds.”

“When did I— WHAT?” Mari gazed at him wordlessly, stunned.

“The prophecy,” Alain tried again. “You kept telling me you did not want to speak of it, and that you already understood what you were fated to do.”

“Fated? Me?” Mari gulped for air before she could speak again, her words coming fast. “That prophecy was a long time ago. Why would anyone think it connects to me? Aside from deluded commons, that is.”

“You said you knew about what I had seen,” Alain said, growing more confused. “Each time I brought it up, you—”

“What you had seen?” Mari stared at her hands, then back at him. “About me?”

“Yes. The vision clearly indicated that you were the one. She who could stop the oncoming storm, who could bring the new day, who would fulfill the prophecy of the daughter.”

Mari’s mouth hung open. Her eyes were locked on him and she appeared to be struggling to breathe. Alain, alarmed, jumped to his feet and ran to her. “Mari!”

She drew in a convulsive breath, followed by several more. “When?” Mari finally managed to say.

“When will you fulfill the prophecy?”

Mari suddenly shot to her feet and glared at him. “No! When did you learn this?”

“In Dorcastle.”

“In Dorcastle? And this is the first time you’ve mentioned it?”

It was Alain’s turn to stare at her, wondering why she was so angry. “No. I tried to speak of it there, and you told me not to. You said you already knew.”

“I—” Mari couldn’t breathe again for a moment. “You know, I’m pretty sure I would remember that!”

“But I have brought it up again and again and each time you have said it did not need to be discussed!” Alain realized he had actually spoken with force.

“I didn’t mean— That was— You never—” Mari sat down abruptly, as if her legs had lost all strength, her expression horrified. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

He sat down as well, feeling both confused and awful, though Alain was not sure why. “In the desert, after we had joined the salt traders, I saw a vision focused on you. I did not know what it could mean. It showed a second sun above you, and striving against that sun a swiftly moving storm whose clouds were made up of angry mobs and clashing armies.”

Her eyes were still locked on him, but Mari did not say anything.

“You and I had ceased speaking with each other once we found others, so I could not tell you of it then. It was not until I reached Dorcastle that I found an elder who would tell me what the vision meant,” Alain continued. “This elder was not like the others. She warned me against speaking of it to anyone else, because, she said, it revealed that the daughter of the prophecy had come, that she was the one whom I had seen the vision focused upon. That an awful storm approached our world, one that would cause it to descend into chaos and destruction as the commons erupted in uncontrolled fury after centuries of servitude. The elder said the forces making up that storm would try to destroy the daughter, because she was the only one who could change the world and overcome the forces which threatened the world. She told me that, as you and I talked of in Dorcastle, the anarchy in Tiae is a sign of what is to come everywhere unless the storm is stopped.

“I tried to speak of it to you when we met at the restaurant, and you told me you already knew what I wished to say, and there was no need to say anything.”

Mari finally spoke again, her voice ragged. “Wait. What did you say? Exactly what did you tell me?”

Alain tried to remember. “I said it was about you, and about me, and the future—”

“Oh no!” Mari slammed both of her palms against her forehead. “You— You— I thought you wanted to talk about you and me being together in the future!”

“I did, because I knew you would need my help, my protection, in order to fulfill the prophecy—”

“No! No! No!” Mari was angry again, glowering at him. “What you said sounded like a romantic discussion, like you wanted to talk about us being serious and committed to each other, and I was not ready for that so I told you…” She gasped, sagging back against her seat, looking stricken. “No. I can’t be her.”

“Mari?”

“I want to be angry with you. I want to be very, very, very angry with you,” Mari said in a whisper. “But I remember some things, times you started to say things and I thought… Oh, no. Alain, couldn’t you tell that I didn’t really know what you wanted to talk about?”

“No,” he said. “I could not.” Alain wondered what his own face and eyes might be revealing now, because he could no longer think to control them. “You did not know? All this time you did not?”

She looked back at him, and must have seen something there that calmed her anger though not her distress. “You really did think I knew. Why did you think I didn’t want to ever talk about it?”

“It is such a huge thing,” Alain said. “Such a difficult thing.”

“Yeah,” Mari said in a faint voice. “Huge. Difficult. Alain, you said your Guild knew who I was.”

“Not that way,” he hastened to say. “They knew you were the Mechanic I had seen in Ringhmon. They did not know you were the daughter—”

“Don’t call me that.”

Alain tried again. “The elder I spoke with would not have betrayed you or me. I am certain that my Guild did not know. If they did, they would not have sent a single Mage with a knife to try to kill you in Edinton. If they even suspected, they would have used every Mage in Edinton and every spell they possessed, or they would have waited until you came to me to ensure they killed both of us.”

Her eyes stayed on his. “Maybe they expected me to join you on that Alexdrian expedition that was attacked, so that dragon could kill both of us.”

“That…is possible,” Alain said. “But the Roc tried to kill you first, so it may be that the Mage Guild now suspects who you are.”

“That’s what you meant when were talking after we were attacked on the train?” Mari was blinking, her expression shifting from horror to dismay to disbelief and through all those emotions again. “My Guild, your Guild, they’ll kill me in a heartbeat if they find out about this. The Empire…what would the Empire do if they got their hands on me now? My life isn’t worth a speck of dust.”

“But you are fated to fulfill—” Alain began.

“Stop that! That’s simply ridiculous!” Mari jumped up and began pacing, her hands moving wildly as she talked. “How could I be her? Do I look like her?”

“Mari, you had already decided to change this world—”

“That’s different!” She spun to face him. “That didn’t make me…her.”

Alain stood up slowly and spoke with care. “You are still Master Mechanic Mari of Caer Lyn. You will always be that person. All the prophecy says is that you are also the daughter. It is not you. It is only part of what you will do.” His voice faltered and he fought to steady it. “Mari, I…am…sorry. If I had suspected that you did not know, I would have found a way to tell you before this.”

She looked away from him, out the window facing the lake.

He waited, wishing he could see her face. Outside noises came faintly to them, and on the lake the lights of boats moved leisurely across the water, but Mari remained silent and motionless as even the stars swung unhurriedly overhead. Through the window, Alain could see the moon very slowly crossing the sky, forever chased by the two small dots of light known as the Twins.

“Alain,” she finally said, “can you imagine what this is like for me? It’s not just that so many people will want to kill me, but the idea that I’m some…I don’t even know how to say it. If I believed for even one minute that you have deliberately avoided telling me about this until now, I…I don’t know what I would do. But I have been trying to remember every conversation we have had, and I can see how you and I thought we both knew what the other meant, when actually we did not.”

“What can I do?” Alain asked.

“Just tell me one thing.” She finally looked at him again, her face drawn, eyes haunted. “Are you with me because of that? Did you stay with me in that blizzard because of that? Because I’m…her?”

Alain shook his head. “I resolved to be with you before I knew of that. I thought of nothing but you during that blizzard. I would be with you now and always even if that vision had never come to me.”

Mari began laughing and crying at the same time, a mix of emotions that dismayed Alain as he watched it.

“You’re not lying,” she said. “You really mean it. Oh, Alain, what am I going to do?”

“What you were already planning on doing,” he said, feeling helpless.

She shuddered with the effort of regaining control, took in a long, slow, breath, then exhaled, her expression calming somewhat. “My plans just hit a brick wall, Alain, remember?” She wiped her eyes roughly. “You heard Professor S’san. Even if I had an army, it couldn’t prevail. What you call the storm would blow it to pieces before it could get strong enough. And what would I do if I had an army? Do you have any idea how absurd that sounds to me? I wouldn’t know the first thing about leading an army. I don’t know how to fight battles. Where would I get an army, anyway? And why would an army follow me?”

“You wish me to say what I believe?”

“Yes,” Mari said, “and from now on if I say let’s not talk about something, talk about it anyway.”

“Then I will say that from what I saw in the Northern Ramparts,” Alain said, “someone believed to be the daughter of Jules could raise an army of commons simply by calling for it. The same forces that would help drive the storm—the anger and the frustration of the commons—would cause them to flock to the—to the one they believe could save them.”

Mari was still breathing deeply, still looked stricken, but she was also frowning in thought. “Redirect the force? Employ it for useful ends instead of destruction? I can understand that. It makes sense. We talked about attitudes and emotions among the commons as being like pressure in a boiler. If it just keeps building with no outlet, then the boiler explodes. But if instead I use that force to accomplish work…” She bit her lip. “How can they believe that I’m that person, Alain?”

“The soldiers of Alexdria were eager to believe it,” Alain pointed out. “I was told by General Flyn that long ago the children of Jules were hidden among the commons, so that when word of the prophecy reached the Great Guilds they could not slay every child in the line of Jules. No one knows who carries her blood.”

“How many centuries ago was that, Alain! How many daughters would have already been born to the descendants of Jules, and how thin would that blood be by now?” She started pacing back and forth through the room again, though this time in a much more controlled way. “Even if blood mattered, when it came to what a person could do! It’s ridiculous. Me, the daughter of Jules. Am I a pirate queen? Am I an explorer? Have I founded any cities or countries? Have I fought the Empire itself to a standstill? I have nothing in common with Jules. I can’t afford to believe such a thing. You know me better than anyone except myself! How can you believe it?”

“Because I know you,” Alain said. “You are smart and you are brave. You help others find new strength. You give them hope. You do not give up.”

She stopped and stared at him. “Alain, I am scared. I’d gotten used to the idea that my Guild and your Guild were hunting me, but that is nothing compared to what will be sent against someone who claims to be that person.”

Alain nodded. “I know. I long ago resolved that I would die to defend you. That will not change.”

“Oh, great. So if I die, you will, too. That doesn’t actually make me feel better.” Mari flung her hands toward the ceiling. “Just what do I do now? You heard Professor S’san. Her whole plan hinged on my getting access to the Mechanic Guild vaults and the banned texts inside them. That’s impossible now. What can I do without that knowledge?”

“These texts exist only in those vaults?” Alain asked.

“Yes! At Mechanics Guild headquarters in Palandur! Supposedly kept safe for use in emergencies when the tech in them might be critically needed, but no Mechanic believes those texts will ever actually be made available, no matter what happens. Everything is so tightly guarded we’d need an army to get at them. A very big army. That’s even if a Mage were helping me get through some of the defenses. I wouldn’t put it past the Senior Mechanics to destroy those texts if they thought I was trying to get them.”

“Palandur?” Alain shook his head. “That city is not much more than a century and a half old. Surely there was once another headquarters for your Guild. Might something not still be in that place and perhaps not as well protected?”

Mari laughed bitterly. “The old headquarters was in Marandur, Alain.”

“Perhaps that is the answer.”

She gave him a startled look. “Marandur? How can Marandur be the answer? I don’t know all that much about it, but I do know that after the city was destroyed the Emperor Palan declared it off-limits for all time. It’s an automatic death sentence to set foot inside the old city. Even Mechanics were warned not to mess with that prohibition.”

“Yes,” Alain agreed. “But you do not know the story? The history of the end of Marandur?”

Mari finally sat down again, still looking very worried but eyeing him with interest. “Please tell me. It was some kind of rebellion, but that’s all I know.”

The change in her mood heartened Alain. “A fanatical underground movement arose. It gained thousands of followers who worshipped their leader. The Imperials had become complacent and did not realize how powerful this group had become. Over time, the rebels by trickery lured away the legions which normally guarded the capital and in a bold nighttime stroke seized Marandur, closing the gates before the legions could return. They captured most of the Imperial family along with the capital city.” He shook his head. “Then, as the returned legions watched along with Prince Palan, who had by chance been out of the city, the rebels brought the Imperial family to the walls and murdered them all.”

Mari made a noise of disbelief. “I’m not the smartest person in the world, but even I know how stupid that must’ve been. Everybody talks about how loyal the legions are to the Imperial family.”

“Yes. Palan proclaimed himself the new emperor and ordered the legions to retake the city at all costs, ensuring no rebels survived. Many Mages were called upon to assist in the assault, and I assume many Mechanic devices must have been used as well. The city was destroyed, building by building, as the legions advanced and the rebels fought to the death.”

He paused, his thoughts dark. Once the story had seemed interesting but removed from him, something that could not stir emotions he no longer acknowledged having. But Mari had made him see that other people were not just shadows, and now the thought of the suffering disturbed him. “No one knows how many citizens of the city died during the retaking of Marandur. But when the assault was over, every rebel had been slain as they fought to the last, and the city was a wasteland of ruins populated mostly by the dead. That was when Palan decreed that Marandur would stand as an eternal monument to the costs of rebellion. After giving any survivors a very short period to leave, the ruins of the city were declared sealed on pain of death, a quarantine enforced by Imperial soldiers ever since. Palandur was built as the new capital.” Alain pointed at Mari. “Some artifacts and wealth were removed from the wreckage of the Imperial palace, but by the emperor’s decree no one else was allowed to bring objects out of the ruins of Marandur.”

She took a moment to realize what that meant. “The vaults at the original Guild headquarters. I was told that the rebels overran the Mechanics Guild headquarters, which was blamed on the guards not being alert. That’s why apprentices get told about it, since apprentices stand the routine security watches in Guild Halls. The Guild Hall in Marandur was certainly badly damaged, if not destroyed, when the legions retook the city, but the vaults might still contain manuscripts. If the Guild had copies elsewhere—and there are always supposed to be copies of important documents—and if the Guild believed that the ones in Marandur had probably been destroyed anyway, it might not have contested Palan’s decision. Blazes, the Guild would have known that the Empire was keeping everyone out of what was left of Marandur, the legions inadvertently guarding those old vaults better than even the Mechanics Guild could have. If those vaults are still sealed, which they well could be because they would’ve been very strong, those manuscripts might’ve survived intact.” Mari was getting visibly animated as she spoke. “It’s possible. Alain, it’s just possible. I can open those vaults, given time.”

Mari clenched her fists, gazing toward one wall. “Maybe…maybe the technology in those vaults could change things without a war. Maybe that army you saw me with would never be used. Maybe the big battle in Dorcastle wouldn’t have to happen. That’s possible, right?”

“That is possible,” Alain said. “The visions showed only possible futures.”

“And we’re already together again. Oh, Alain, this could give me the tools I need to fix things without some kind of war happening. The prophecy doesn’t say there will be a war, does it? It just says the Great Guild will be overthrown.”

Alain nodded, thinking. “As far as I know, that is correct. But will either the Mage Guild or the Mechanics Guild surrender without fighting?”

“I don’t know,” Mari said. “I have to try.” She looked at him, a different kind of worry visible now. “But it’s an automatic death sentence from the emperor to go to Marandur. That doesn’t matter as far as I’m concerned, with so many people who will want me dead when they discover about that prophecy. But you…I can’t let you be sentenced to death as well.”

“I am already under a death sentence from my Guild,” Alain reminded her. “It would not matter if that were not so, for I meant what I said. If you die, it will only be because I have already fallen protecting you. If you go to Marandur, I will go also.”

Mari looked at him for a long time, then to Alain’s surprise smiled in a very sad way. “I’m such an idiot. Do you know why? Because you and I are going to Marandur. I still don’t believe that I’m that person, but I’m going to keep trying to fix things.” Mari came over to hold Alain tightly. “You’re forgiven for not telling me.”

“I tried,” Alain said, once more bewildered.

“In your own silly Mage way, yes, you did,” Mari agreed. “But you have to promise me something.”

“Anything,” Alain said.

“Never say that,” Mari insisted. “I don’t own you. I don’t have any right to ask you to promise anything I want. But this one thing I need you to do. Please promise you will not call me that name. I can’t control what other people do, what other people might say, but I need to remain Mari in your eyes. Not…her.”

“I promise, Mari.”

She started laughing softly, alarming him again. “The word of a Mage. I just got a Mage to promise me something.”

“Many people would not understand why you bothered,” Alain said, relieved. “Do you feel better?”

“No. I’m in denial right now. I’m scared and overwhelmed and my mind is racing. But,” she paused and looked at him. “You’re here. You just gave me hope. You also just scared the blazes out of me. I’m no longer sure that I’m the most difficult person in this relationship.”

“I remain sure of it,” Alain said.

“Did you just make a joke?” She pulled away a little and stared at him, smiling more like she usually did. “Are you making fun of me, Mage?”

Alain couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had laughed. The act was completely alien to Mages, to the training he had endured since he was a small child. But now he laughed, the sound rusty and halting, yet he knew it was a laugh, and it felt so good to be laughing and holding Mari that Alain wondered what Mage art or other promised reward could possibly be worth giving up such things.

Mari looked at him, blinking away tears. “You’re laughing. What a wonderful sound. My Mage is laughing. Our Guilds want to kill us, everybody thinks I’m somebody I’m not, and we’re going to a ruined city where the Emperor has decreed any trespassers must die. And we’re happy. Do you want to leave for there tomorrow?”

Alain stopped laughing long enough to answer. “Certainly.”

Then the moment vanished as they both heard an odd sound, like a distorted voice.

Mari flung herself away from him, toward her pack. Digging in the pack frantically, Mari surfaced in a few moments with the boxlike thing Alain had seen her use to call other Mechanics in Dorcastle. He heard a strangely raspy voice speaking in barely audible words. “I repeat, Master Mechanic Mari, please respond. Your Guild is concerned for your safety. If you will please come to the Guild Hall here in Severun we will ensure you are taken care of and that you are protected. Please respond—”

Mari did something to the Mechanic device and the voice cut off. “We’re not leaving in the morning. We’re leaving now. Somehow my Guild suspects that I’m in this city. Get everything together. I want us out of here as fast as possible.”