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Dawning of a New Mage

By

Steve Cross

Helen gazed at her boyfriend as he lounged back in the couch. She took a deep drag off her Nepenthez Cig.  Finally, after years of independent study and protests on one college campus after another, the herb had been approved for recreational use.

            Helen had spent time in jail, been hosed with a water cannon, and tazered on the front lines of the fight. It wasn't that she was some kind of nepenth head: it was more a matter of personal liberty, which the government had been trying to curtail for years. Only occasionally did she smoke, but when she did she went all out, just as she had done with everything in her life.

She held the mostly tasteless smoke in her mouth and then exhaled slowly. In a few short minutes, she would fall asleep or lapse into a waking dream where all of her wishes would be fulfilled.

            She sighed. If only the dreams didn’t fade.

            “Why don’t you give me some of that?” Jed, her boyfriend of several years, asked.

            Wordlessly, she passed it to him. Her surroundings began to fade.

            Jed took one deep drag and almost finished the whole thing.     

            “You big jerk.” She lunged for the cig but Jed pulled it away.

            “I paid for it.”

            She couldn’t argue.  Just because Nepenthez was legal didn’t mean it was cheap.

            When she was elected president, she was going to make the growers lower their prices.

            She laughed at the idea of herself as a politician. No way in hell, she thought.

            She leaned back and closed her eyes.

Chapter 1

            Vallya, a beautiful young girl, splashed water at Meshon.

            The water almost chilled her, but it beat the hot, summer air.  Even though the great burning took place before her birth time, she knew it had caused the extremely hot weather.

            Before the great burning, they said, it was warm all the time, but never hot and you didn’t have to rub oil over your skin to keep from burning and getting sick.

            Meshon stood still in the water, his head cocked as if he listened to a voice only he could hear. Fear slowly spread over his voice.  

            “What is it?”

            “I have to go.”

            “Why?” She reached out for him and then let her arm drop at her side. Instead, she gazed into his eyes, silently imploring him not to leave her alone.  She didn’t want to go back to Nana’s.

            “I have to go to the fields.”

            “It’s too hot –“

            “He’ll whup me, Vallya. He’s already mad.”

            Vallya shuddered. Meshon’s stepfather was more than mad; he was furious. And she knew that just as surely as Meshon did.

            “Tell him I talked you into going –that it was hot. It looked like rain.”

            “The day is clear blue.”

            She followed him as he walked toward the bank. "You could stop him if you --"

            “Don’t even say it.”

            “Look.” Vallya gestured toward the sky.  Black clouds appeared on the horizon. “It’s starting to cloud up.  If it rains, you can’t work in the fields.”

            “Don’t.”  He backed away from her, his eyes widening.

            “You could –“

            “No! No! No!  Leave me alone.”  He stumbled up on the bank as lightning crackled in the sky.

            “Don’t go.”

            Thunder boomed. The clouds spat out great drops of rain.

            “I will see you later.” He looked over his shoulder one last time and then hurried away.

            Lightning blew a tree to bits as he disappeared.  “Damn you, Lucius.”

            By the time she stepped onto the bank, the rain fell in torrents.

            She started to run home but then realized her Nana wouldn’t be worried about her.  The woman would be in a nepenthal haze most likely, and if not, she would just be bitchy and whiney and ready to go back into another one.  Nana, who kept Vallya in her home only because no one else would and because the elders paid her to do so, would not miss Vallya.

No widows and orphans went hungry in Sovo. Sadly, they never went anywhere.

            It would only be a matter of time before the council and Nana met to decide whom Vallya would marry.  The official nuptials would not happen until she was 16, but the betrothal would begin in her 15^th year.

            Her schoolteachers told the class that before the great burning, men and women could marry when, where, and whom they choose.

            She didn’t believe that, just like she didn’t believe it when they talked about the T word.  They always whispered the word as if it were a curse.

            “You may ask yourself what happened to the one world.”  Her history profeeb had begun a lecture one day. “Technologos. The kingdoms gave up the old ways and depended on man to advance the world. They often ridiculed the mages and the wizards.”

            At about that time, Vallya had tuned him out.

            Vallya stopped.  The rain, like her anger, had subsided.  Only a few drops splattered here and there.  Coming to herself, she realized where her footsteps had taken her.  When she looked up, she saw the towering cliffs above her. 

            A series of caves lurked in the cliffs.  Most people in Sovo knew nothing about them.  Since they spent all of their days in the fields and the mines and their nights in alehouses or smoke joints, they did not explore their surroundings. 

            The one day a week they did not work they spent listening to the apprentices preach about the old ways. Most listened with respect without really paying attention.  Magic meant nothing to those working sunup to sundown.

Those who actually believed in the power of wizards would go to their homes and to the ale shops to whisper about how the wizards didn't deserve the power and respect they got.  This kind of disrespectful rumblings disturbed Vallya.

            She found the place where the opening into the vast network of caverns lurked under the water, which at this part of the river was at least twelve feet deep.  The opening was normally about eight feet under water and remained well hidden even in the driest seasons.

            Vallya slipped into the water and scissor-kicked.  The opening loomed before her.  With several forceful kicks, she propelled herself through the opening and then immediately kicked upward.

            Her head popped into the clear, sweet air of the cavern.

            “No one is going to tell me who I can marry.  I’ll run away first.”  She looked around at the vast expanse. “And live right in here.”

            She started toward a path she had traveled down many times before.  It did not scare her that less than 15 feet away from the entrance to the cavern it was pitch black.  Someone from the times before had left a light stick in a crevice; this she pulled out and switched on.

The first time she found it she had no idea what it was, but she touched it in one spot and it set the tunnel aglow.  In one class, she asked a subtle question about the times before the great burning and learned about fire sticks and how they were powered.  The teacher dismissed it as another toy from the age of technologos.

            She switched it on and looked to see how many batteries she had left -- not many, so she would have to conserve them.

            The lake narrowed into a river that flowed out of her sight into a deep darkness.  Vallya didn't know how far the river wound back into the caverns because she didn't dare go very far without knowing if there were other light sources within.

            She sat down on the bank of the lake, put her feet into the icy water and shivered.  She concentrated on her light, wishing it were brighter.  The harder she concentrated the brighter the light grew.  When a twinge of pain went through her head, she blinked and the light faded to its original strength.

            "How long have you been able to do that?" The voice echoed as if coming from a dozen different places.

            She dropped the light into the water and sucked in her breath when the black swallowed her.

            "Who's there?"  Vallya clinched her fists for protection although she could see no one in the total black.

            "Close your eyes."  The voice, belonging to a man whose age she could not discern, lulled her until she found herself sinking into a trance.  When she realized what he was doing, she blinked the hypnotic trance away.

            "Don't fight the feeling, Vallya," he said. "Think about the light."

            Despite her attempts to fight the spell, she closed her eyes again.

"The light, Vallya, the light."

The voice faded into a whisper.

            When Vallya opened her eyes, she could see a little better.  She thought of the light and peered into the darkness trying to find it.  Three feet in front of her, it suddenly popped on, revealing itself floating on the water.

            Vallya knelt on the bank in an attempt to recapture it.  At first, she couldn't grasp it, but then she strained, reaching for it.  The water rippled, and the light stick drifted up against the bank.

            As soon as she grabbed it, she turned the light to the deeper recesses of the cave. She hurried toward the direction of the voice, but saw no one. When she swept the ground with the light, she saw a footprint in some mud. When she knelt to study it, she felt a cool breeze stir the air.  She inhaled its sweet freshness.  When she turned back to the footprint, it was gone.

            She wanted to run back into her world and hurl herself into Meshon's arms but she knew his arms would be hard at work for Lucius, his stepfather, if they weren't slashed and bleeding from a whipping.

            She looked at the light, which gleamed a little brighter that it had earlier -- or so she thought.  It could have been her fear, she realized.

            The breeze kicked up again. To Vallya, it felt as if it were coming from even deeper inside the cavern. In the glow from her light stick, she saw the same things she had always seen.

            This time, however, she did not turn her back on it. Instead, she walked toward it.