Tagaza had crafted the spell that would transfer the Keys from Brenna at the moment of her and the King’s deaths, and transform them to give power over the Barriers. Falk could hold it perfectly in his mind, but could not use it and receive the Keys at the same time. The plan had always been for Tagaza to perform the spell. But Falk had taken the precaution of teaching it to another mage, as well, someone who could step in if something happened to Tagaza.
Which meant Tagaza was no longer necessary to the Plan, and had not been for some time.
Falk turned and walked the last few feet to the gates of his manor. A pity, he thought. But we must all live or die with the consequences of our choices. If Tagaza has betrayed me… then his choice is made.
Mother Northwind listened to the sound of Falk’s footsteps crunching away through the snow, then, chuckling, hauled herself to her feet.
So easy to manipulate, she thought. So unable to see the truth.
She shuffled into the kitchen, her knees stiff after sitting so long in her chair, and stoked the fire, then placed another log on the coals. A wheel of cloth-wrapped hard cheese lay on the lovingly polished table of golden oak, next to half a loaf of crusty bread. She took a knife from the counter and sliced two pieces of the bread, then hung them on a toasting fork, pulled the table’s sole accompanying chair close to the fire, sat down with a grunt, and held the slices over the flames.
It was true enough, as Falk believed, that she and he shared a goal: both wanted the Barrier to fall. What Falk had never known, never guessed, she suspected, for he could not imagine a Mageborn would even think of it, was that she wanted the Barrier to fall, not for the greater glory of the MageLords, but to destroy them utterly.
Staring into the fire, she saw, as she always did, another fire from long ago: the flames of a burning Minik village, as men, women, and children she had come to help were slaughtered by a MageLord and his men, and she stood helpless on the hillside.
Lord Starkind had been one of the Twelve, but not of the King’s Council. He had come north with his entourage on a hunting trip, but their prey had not been deer, moose, or bear.
He had come to hunt the Minik.
He had set up camp on the outskirts of Stony Creek, the Commoner village where Mother Northwind lived (though that had not been her name then). He had ordered the Commoners to act as forest guides for him and his drunken companions. The locals were on good terms with the Minik and did everything they could to prevent Starkind from finding them, but he soon caught on to what they were up to-and in retaliation executed the village mayor, splitting him in two from head to crotch with a blue-white blade of ice conjured from thin air. Terrified, the guides took him to the Minik village the next day.
When Starkind and his men, blood-spattered and smelling of smoke, grinning, drunk, and laughing, rode back into Stony Creek, the villagers begged him to let them flee south with him and his men. But Lord Starkind jeered at them and rode away, forbidding them to follow. They waited until he was out of sight, then began their own desperate journey south, abandoning everything but what they could carry, the men, women, and children struggling along the forest trails on foot.
By sunset that first day of their journey, none were left alive. .. except Mother Northwind, spared by the vengeful kin of the slaughtered Minik for the Healing help she had always provided them. Taken prisoner, she served the next ten years as Healer to the Black Bear Clan, and as his last action before he died, the old chief set her free. She had set out south at once.
Lord Starkind, grown too fat to ride to any kind of hunt in the ten years since the massacre, shortly thereafter went violently insane, servants rushing into his room when they heard him screaming in the middle of the night, watching in horror as he plucked out his own eyes, chewed, and swallowed them. He had eaten all the fingers off his left hand, his own cock, and was halfway through his second testicle when he finally expired.
Every one of the Mageborn who had accompanied him on his hunting trip north soon met similarly unpleasant fates.
And meanwhile, a new Healer, Mother Northwind, settled down to a quiet life in New Cabora, where she was very welcome, since so few Healers were willing to devote themselves to the care of Commoners.. . and regularly visited the city’s library, repository of the documents the Commoners had thought most important down through the centuries. Ostensibly she was researching the ailments of Commoners; in truth, she sought to learn everything she could about the Magebane, the antimagical force that had supposedly helped the Commoners defeat the MageLords of the Old Kingdom.
The toast was done. She pulled it out of the fire, cut a slice of cheese, laid it on top of one of the bread pieces, and munched contentedly. Mother Northwind’s hatred of the Mageborn had only intensified during her years in New Cabora. She had seen too many lives torn apart by the casual cruelty of the MageLords: too many abused children, pregnant teenagers, Palace servants crippled by multiple beatings, released prisoners bearing the marks of torture, though with no memory of how it had happened or what they had said to their interrogators in their distress. Even with her extraordinary skills, she could do nothing to help some of those who came to her; ease the pain of their bodies, perhaps, but not their scarred minds.
Oh, she understood perfectly why the subjects of the ancient MageLords had risen up. And she knew that the Magebane, by counteracting magic, had given them the victory. But where had the Magebane come from?
Though she found hints in the Commoners’ official library, she finally discovered the answers she sought in what she thought of as the unofficial library: books, scrolls, letters, songs, and legends, passed down within families, and above all, kept hidden from the Mageborn (for early in the Kingdom’s history all talk of the Magebane had been ruthlessly suppressed). From one crumbling scroll an old woman showed her, Mother Northwind learned that the Magebane had been the bastard offspring of a MageLord and a Commoner. From a book hidden beneath a floorboard in a grateful father’s kitchen, she learned that the Magebane had not been born, but made. Like a crow collecting shiny things, she pecked and scratched and hid away the fragmented and sometimes contradictory bits of information she uncovered, until at last she thought she could detect the shape of the truth.
The Magebane had been the creation of a great Healer named Vell, who had forced the conception of that bastard child, then molded the fetus within the womb, melding its Mageborn and Commoner halves, creating a very special whole: a man who, though he could not use magic, could counteract it-and not just counteract it, but turn it back on its source.
Vell had raised the child as his own, while secretly fomenting rebellion among the Commoners and a few renegade Mageborn. When the time at last came for open revolution, he had placed that child, then a young man, at the head of an army of Commoners, and when the MageLords contemptuously called down magical fire on the Commoners’ heads, it was they who died instead, blasted apart by their own magic.
Without magic, the Mageborn had been hopelessly outnumbered. With the myth of their invincibility so thoroughly shattered, Mageborn began to die even in places where the Magebane had never been seen. They were poisoned, arrow-shot from hiding, burned alive in their homes while they slept. From every corner of the island Kingdom, panicked Mageborn had fled to the capital of Stromencor. There the twelve surviving MageLords of the Great Council had drawn on all their knowledge and resources to find, on the far side of the world, another lode of magic to rival that of the Old Kingdom. They would use the connection between that lode and their own to magically transport themselves to what was now Evrenfels, along with the surviving Mageborn and the Commoners who were supposedly loyal to them, but were in fact, Mother Northwind believed, simply trapped.
As they had been trapped ever since, inside the Great Barrier the First Twelve had crafted to protect their fledgling kingdom from the Commoners and their cursed Magebane, who they feared would pursue them even here.
Mother Northwind knew her abilities well. What Vell had done, she could do. To understand how he had crafted the Magebane, though, she had needed access to the libraries of the Colleges of Mages and Healers, and the archives of the Palace, and so she had changed her appearance and her name and offered her services to First Healer Jimson, predecessor to Hannik, as “Healer Makala.” Jimson had tested her and, astounded by her abilities, welcomed her. For the next few years, while she tended to the complaints of the mages she secretly detested, she had also delved into ancient magical lore. She had learned a great deal that had made her own magic even stronger… and eventually, she had learned enough to be confident she could do what Vell had done.
She, too, could make a Magebane.
Mother Northwind brushed crumbs off her apron, decided not to eat the second piece of toast, and instead heaved herself to her feet, picked up the lantern from the kitchen table, and went to the door that opened onto the
