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  He didn’t pick his usual horse. He picked the one he’d first asked Kel if he could learn on, but she’d tactfully said something about its missing a shoe and never mentioned it again. The horse was big and black, with long, slender legs and a mane that fluttered and waved as it tossed its head, its neck muscles bulging.

  The naturalist mage who was on duty that night started to say something, but his words died on his lips when he saw Finn’s face, and he only bit his lip as he helped Finn saddle the horse up.

  Finn led the horse by the bridle, out through the main gates and down until they stood directly in front of the barrier. Glowing shapes skulked along the edges, making circles around the mesa. Occasionally the barrier vibrated as one of the monsters tested some far region.

  He stuck his boot through the stirrup and heaved himself up. The stallion danced, its feet kicking, its back shifting under him. Finn gathered the reins, straightened his back, and nudged the creature with his heels. It danced sideways, tossing its head and eyeing the barrier, which gave off an unpleasant tingling energy, and the strange, glowing shapes beyond.

  “Come on, girl,” Finn said, then cringed.

  The horse didn’t seem to notice or mind his mistake, though. It seemed to come to a sudden decision, and darted forward, its ears flattening as it plunged through. Finn nudged it again with his heels, trying to keep his thighs strong, his heels down, his weight balanced in his legs like he’d been told, and the horse broke into a trot, which quickly smoothed to a rolling canter.

  They plunged together in between the black tree trunks, down the central road that cut through the forest, away from the Table.

  Finn relaxed his death grip on the reins, took a deep breath, and let himself follow the movement of the horse, listening to the hooves, feeling the ground rolling away beneath them.

  They went by so fast that the Ael didn’t even look their way. Either that or they were more focused on what was inside the walls to pay them any mind.

  For a long while, Finn let the horse carry him through the darkness, thundering around corners. He hoped it could see, because he couldn’t. The moon was bright, but hardly any of that silver-grey light filtered through the black leaves overhead.

  Forest. Incredible, Finn thought, for the thousandth time. The forest rolled away from the Table, a beautiful carpet of life. Finn remembered the first time he had crossed these plains, with Eraldir and the mages. This had been a dry, barren land only sparsely covered in grass.

  So many people had died along the way. And each time, it had seemed tragic. A loss. Terrible, but unavoidable, and… it had felt like he was on a path. Moving towards something. They’d all felt it. Every day since… since that day he’d accepted what he was. Or, the day he’d been forced to. The day he’d killed his parents, and half the town, and run away with Kel into the woods.

  His mind whirled, churning as the shadows flashed past. The trunks of the trees were like silent sentinels. He could almost imagine them as the faces of the dead. Monuments to the people who had died in this long, drawn out war that had been going on since long before he was born.

  The hundreds and hundreds of mages murdered in the aftermath of the Fall. All those who died in the Fall itself. All the non-mages killed before that.

  I wanted to fix all that. I just wanted it to all be for something. To have meant something. To not have been just pointless death. If it was all going towards something, something great, it was worth it.

  But now, if it didn’t… if it didn’t work out… Finn didn’t want to think about it.

  He urged the horse on, but it didn’t need urging. All it needed was permission. It shot through the trees, its muscles bunching and exploding with power under him. Finn locked his legs tighter, leaning forwards and resisting the urge to drop the reins and grab the mane with both hands.

  I don’t know what to do.

  He stopped thinking. He thrust it out of his mind, concentrated only on riding. There would be time to think. Soon.

  Both Finn and the horse required breaks. Finn moreso than the horse. They rode for what felt like several hours, following the road, until at last the trees petered out, giving way to the rolling, empty hills that Finn remembered. The dry grass glowed grey in the moonlight, rippling softly as a breeze passed across the empty landscape. Finn reined in the horse, its back sending up clouds of steam, and surveyed the open land, trying to get his bearings. Things had changed so much. And they kept on changing. How long had it been since his last trip? Too long.

  Just over the lip of a rise, far in the distance to the east, Finn saw what he was looking for. Gingerly, his arms shaking with exhaustion, he pulled the horse around, urging it back into its long, distance-devouring lope.

  Now that they were out of the cover of the trees, Finn could see for miles in every direction. He could see the shadows made by every rock, every blade of grass sharply outlined, every ripple of air across the fields. It was strange to think that this was always here. Every time he slept, miles away, this grass was here, in the thundering rain, or covered by snow, or bowing to the great winds that swept across this emptiness here in the middle of their country. It was always here, and he hardly ever thought of it.

  All too soon, the light appeared above the horizon. Not the sun, but a pillar, glowing brightly, a riot of shifting color. The all too familiar lump formed in Finn’s throat, and he slowed to a walk, approaching, as he always did, reverently, remembering what had happened here.

  He was so focused on the pillar that he nearly fell when the horse shifted, sidestepping to avoid… something? Finn stopped, squinting at the object, then slid out of the saddle, tossing the reins over the horse’s back as he went to get a closer look. Was that… It was a wood and metal rectangle, with circular loops of iron at regular intervals. The only other person he knew who came out here was Isabelle. And Kel sometimes.

  He shook his head, making a mental note to ask Isabelle about it later, then turned to face the pillar.

  It was several times taller than he was, and he stopped a few feet away, craning his neck back and looking up into the darkness. It was so bright it outshone the stars behind it, casting a pool of yellow and pink and blue and gold light on the ground around it.

  Finn smiled as he saw a tiny red figure running through the forest, tripping, falling on his face. A bright blue girl helping him up, leading him to an old man who examined his face, giving him a ghostly compress to put on it.

  He knelt, and for a long while he only watched. Some of the stories he had heard, or been present for; others he hadn’t but had seen here before. Some, as always, were new.

  “Hey, Eraldir,” he said at last. No answer.

  He looked down at his hands, bathed in bright colors.

  “I don’t know what to do.” The magnitude of the reality of that hit him, and his shoulders slumped. “I really don’t know what to do. None of it is working.”

  “None? Surely not none, boy.”

  “Well, the school itself isn’t going badly. And Isabelle’s inventions are amazing,”

  “And young Kel, of course. She hasn’t been to see me in a while. Just because I’m a pillar doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings. Tell her that, will you?”

  Finn nodded. “Of course.” He pulled out his pack. “Oh, I brought you something.” He pulled out an old, battered mug, which he filled with the flask he had brought. He risked the smallest of flames and heated the water, bringing it to a boil before adding the herbs. When he was finished, he set the steaming mug on the ground in front of the pillar.

  “Ahhh… that smell. Thank you, boy.”

  I wish you were here.

  “Sure, sure, me too. Don’t worry yourself so much, though. You’re doing fine.”

  Finn explained what had happened with Frewin. And the Ael. And with Kel and her insistence that they needed to destroy magic altogether.

  “I see… I see.” If a pillar could have hands, it would have been steepling its fingers and tapping them
together. “OK, yes, that is bad.”

  “So, what do I do?”

  “You do what every brave adventurer has done before you when faced with a challenge of this magnitude.” The pillar paused, and Finn watched its shifting colors expectantly. “You give up.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me correctly. You give up. Very noble profession, giving up on things. Well, course, it’s not a profession. Not sure why anyone would pay you to do that. I suppose it depends on what you were giving up on, though.”

  Finn knew he’d better cut in before it got going. The pillar was even more intransigent and likely to go on for hours than Eraldir had been in life if it got up a good head of steam.

  “Give up how? What do you mean by that?”

  “Oh, the how of it doesn’t really matter. Go on a vacation, refuse to get out of bed, hide. Eat only candy for weeks. Any of the standard methods would work. The important thing is that you need to give up. I’ve thought that for years now. Didn’t want to say it.”

  Actually, the pillar had told him that every time he’d visited, but he’d always thought it was insane. Of course, if you were going around judging the sanity of pillars you probably weren’t one to talk anyway.

  “But… everything I’ve worked for...”

  “All very well and good.” The words were warm, like a pat on the back. “But, as are so many things in life, ultimately pointless. And that’s fine.”

  “Ultimate—”

  “I don’t mean totally pointless, but, look… you’re going against the flow.”

  The pillar had said something similar before, but Finn couldn’t quite remember what it had been.

  “Sometimes, you know, things just work. Like a landslide full of mountain goats. Ever seen those things? So sprightly. The goats, not the landslide. Anyway, as I was saying, some things work better than others. Like pulling a cart with a bunch of horses or pulling a horse with a bunch of carts. Horses just don’t like to be led like that, I’m telling you.” The pillar trailed off into a meditative silence for several seconds. Finn tried to follow its chain of reasoning. As much a pillars could be said to have reasoning.

  “Now, I get that you want mages and non-mages to get along. To make things the way they were before, and you’ve sacrificed a lot to achieve that. You have.”

  Finn’s mind went again through the list of the dead.

  “But you’re never getting those goats back up the hill, or all the rocks. Sometimes you gotta ride with the slide, as it were. Like a goat.”

  “Wait. Am I the goat in this metaphor? I thought…”

  “It doesn’t matter. Either way. Point is, you gotta get a feel for things first. You can’t just do whatever you want. Well, you can, but it won’t go that great. You gotta get a feel for what’s possible. And likely. And unlikely. And sometimes you want something and, even though you work really hard for it, and even though you’ll sacrifice anything to get it, it still won’t work. And maybe it wasn’t that great to begin with. And you know the worst part about it? Sometimes, if you work with what would have happened anyway, what you get is something better than what you wanted in the first place.”

  “Like a bunch of mountain goats riding a landslide?”

  “You think I’m joking but I’m not. That’s a crazy sight to see, I’m telling you.”

  “Right.” Finn sat back on his heels and looked up at the shifting lights. “I can’t give up. I’ve been working for this for ten years. And I’ve…”

  “Given up everything, right. And how’s that working out for you?”

  Finn smiled, remembering another time he’d heard those exact words, spoken by that exact voice. How was that working out for him?

  “Why is it that giving up everything else in your life is easier than giving up this one thing? And you don’t even have to give up the whole thing. All I’m saying is, stop trying to make the world fit with the vision in your head. See what it is and try nudging it a little instead. Small changes. See what happens.”

  Finn scratched his chin. Where was any of this getting him? The ambassadors weren’t working out at all. If he was really honest with himself, he hadn’t expected it to work. He’d known, deep down, that they weren’t interested. But he’d let himself hope, because every other crazy thing he’d put his mind to over the last ten years had worked out. The school was famous, and new students were arriving every month. Yes, most of them were sent there against their wills or only came because they had nowhere else to go because they’d been kicked out by their families, but still. They came. They had a place to come when they hadn’t before, and that was something.

  Finn sighed and lay down in the dirt, his head next to the cooling cup of tea, and stared up at the bright lights and the dark sky beyond.

  So… what is working? What do I want to do? What do I want to make? What does the world need?

  He didn’t have answers to any of these questions, and he didn’t have time to answer them, either. That was the problem, he didn’t have the luxury of giving up. Because, if he did, the monster he’d unleashed would destroy everything.

  What’s my legacy, then? Sure, I made the world a little better for some mages. For a little while. Ten short years. And then I let a monster out into the world. All because I was arrogant enough to believe I could just decide how I wanted the world to be.

  No. I’m not giving up. I can do this. I still can.

  That voice was still there. Strong. Hard not to listen to it. He’d been listening to it for ten years, to great success, in some ways. And it was better than the old voice. The one that said… things he didn’t listen to anymore. Things he didn’t think about. No. That voice wouldn’t help.

  Give up? On what? On how much?

  Maybe it didn’t have to be on everything. Maybe he could just tweak things. Maybe he could make small changes. He could give up on the new country. That wasn’t going to work. At least not in the way he’d had planned. But the mage school, and mages living in harmony with non-mages. Those were the real goals. The important things. He could still work for those.

  In the time he had left. Two weeks. Or sooner, if Morthil could manage it, it seemed. He was anxious to get out. Understandable.

  What do I want to do in the last of the time I have left? What change can I possibly make?

  The Ael had to go. And Finn needed to kill himself so thoroughly that Morthil couldn’t use his body anymore. Those were things he could achieve.

  A tiny voice in the back of his mind said, if you destroy magic, all those mages and non-mages are all just people, and they can go back to living the way they did before. Maybe Kel’s plan isn’t the worst thing in the world. But people would die anyway. And the world would go back to being so much smaller. And that, at least, was a small part Finn wasn’t ready to give up on yet.

  47

  Finn

  It was nearing daybreak when Finn rode back through the barrier and up to the main gates of the Table. He gave his horse an exhausted thank you as he handed it off to the surprised naturalist mage who had just gotten on duty.

  Then, without pausing for food or drink or to rest, he climbed the many stairs up to Kel’s rooms.

  It took her quite a while to come to the door when he knocked, and she had a bleary, faraway look in her eyes when she finally opened it.

  “Sorry to wake you, do you have a minute?”

  “Sure, come in,” she said, moving backwards into the bright room. Orange light shone across the treetops; the sun was just lifting over the horizon. She looked… otherworldly as she eyed him, the sun glinting redly in her eyes, wrapping a wool shawl around her shoulders as she waited for him to speak.

  “Kel, I’m sorry, I’ve been going about this all wrong.”

  She relaxed visibly, and he continued.

  “I’ve been so focused on getting this country thing to work, and, it just isn’t going to.” He started pacing nervously, then stopped himself. “I went and talked to Eraldir last night. He s
ays to come see him soon by the way.” He stopped for a minute, remembering the last person he’d told her to go see.

  “I shouldn’t have been focusing on the non-mages. This place, this school, and the mages. This is what’s important. You’re right, Kel, if the Ael are hurting we need to help them. And we can’t just keep going the way we are. But you can fix magic, I know you can. We have to try. We can’t just go back to the way things were. That’s what I’ve been trying to do this whole time. Make this country back the way it used to be. And… it’s been like… trying to get goats to go uphill… or…” He scrubbed his hands over his face. What had Eraldir said? Maybe he should have slept before trying to make such an important point to his sister. Focus, Finn. You can sleep later. Like when you’re dead. Which will be soon.

  “Finn, I don’t think there’s a way. It’s not the same thing. We need to fix what’s broken, and I’m sorry, but that will mean humans won’t have magic anymore.”

  Finn shook his head, rubbing his temples, which had started to pound.

  “Please, think with me. There has to be a way. We don’t have to go back. We don’t have to try to make things the way they were. Let’s think.”

  “I’ll think, Finn. I don’t have a choice, anyway. There isn’t another shadow mage, and Sarai won’t help us. So, we can’t even try yet. I’ll think, but as far as I know, this is the only way.”

  “What if we… bring the Ael back? Back to the physical realm?”

  She tilted her head to the side. “The Ael do bond with things, maybe if… if we give them something to connect to…” She trailed off thoughtfully. “Even if we did that, though, I think they would still be in pain. They’ve been in pain ever since Morthil did what he did. And the rift caused by what he did is growing all the time. Didn’t you say the Montvans were even starting to get magic?”

  Finn nodded. “Yes, but it still doesn’t mean it won’t work. Or, maybe we’re just in a transition time. Maybe when magic splits fully apart, the Ael can be in one part or the other. Maybe it’s only painful because they’re partway through the process.”