Chapter 34. MAGES IN TRAINING

  While we marched back to our desert outpost, a messenger reached us, sharing the latest news from the city. The retaliation was immediate:

  The city had already erupted in panic as Uof’s thugs methodically searched markets, ransacked every shop, pub, and residence, hunting down secret entrances, rebels, or signs of the resistance, imaginary or not.

  His thugs threw more people into prison, and some suspected rebels were beaten or killed with or without proof of collusion. For days afterward, Uof himself stormed around the city, seeking out mages and hints of rebellion, killing suspects himself in the middle of random streets, and rooting out anyone he could find who purported to have information on our whereabouts.

  As a result, anyone loosely connected to the rebellion fled to the desert with us. Our desert base swelled in size, and we built more structures and defensives to house everyone, and protect from incoming attacks.

  A couple days after our siege of The Factory, Uof made a show of force to try and draw us out. He marched his army through the city personally and called out “Mage! Mage! Where are you?” every few minutes. From the western edge of the city in the foothills to city walls at the Eastern edge, Uof marched his men back and forth.

  We hiked back to our desert stronghold by a circuitous, hard-to-follow route through the foothills, which took longer than normal because of the exhausted and emaciated mages we’d rescued, and the prisoners we’d captured.

  The rescued mages had all required rest, food, and water, and some needed to be carried along in the wagons. Depending on how long they’d been captives, some of the mages retained adverse effects from their years in captivity including everything from nightmares, catatonia, and panic attacks.

  Eventually, we reached the outpost in the desert hills far to the south. We hunkered down and waited, knowing we needed to let the storm pass. The stronghold which we simply called was well hidden, but it had grown so much, Uof's men certainly knew where it was by now.

  Either way, we had protection at all time, so we could all recover.

  After we’d been back at the outpost for a full day, I joined our Spellcasters out in the desert. They worked through various spell forms together, picking up their training where they left off—and I could already see our forces had grown significantly.

  Standing next to Bend, I watched a young boy in the back row, who called himself Jaz. Brand new to our ranks, he'd arrived with his mother a few days before apparently coming from an outlying village some distance way. They were both emaciated.

  Today, all the practicing mages stood a good dozen paces apart on either side, standing in front of attack dummies made from wooden forms, standing on wooden poles driven into the sand.

  I watched Jaz move through the forms of an attack spell, a simple spell all the mages learned together.

  Jaz threw his arms straight up in the air, clenched his tiny hands into fists, bringing his elbows back down, and then releasing his fists as his hands reached forward—simultaneously calling out the command: "Push!"

  Blasts of wind ripped out from each spell caster as they each completed the basic Windpush spell, a good, non-lethal attack spell. But when Jaz attacked, there wasn't anything basic about it.

  As Jaz called "Push!" a howling torrent of wind ripped from his very fingers. The attack dummy in front of Jaz snapped in half with a loud crunch, the dummy's torso flying back and hitting another mage in the back. The same mage went sprawling as the torrent of wind slammed into him, and he lost his footing momentarily. All the other mages turned to look at Jaz.

  Though some of the other spells had been quite powerful, none of the other attack dummies broke.

  At the destruction of the attack dummy, Jaz looked around at Bend who led this little exercise. Jaz's eyes flashed with exhilaration and a hint of an apologetic look.

  "Sorry Bend," Jaz called out. "I didn't mean to do that!"

  Bend gave me a look, and smiled. "See, I told you, the boy's strong," he said. "He doesn't yet know his own power."

  "We have a young Greer in the making," I said. And since Bend had looked at me, young Jaz looked at me too. His eyes grew a bit worried as did so.

  "Well done young Jaz," I said, more to allay his fears than anything else. "You'll learn your strength soon enough. Again!"

  They all lined up again and started working on a different spell form, while one of Dirk's men began working to repairing the attack dummy.

  After a few minutes, one of The Factory mages came out to watch wearing a small bemused smile on his face. After a few minutes of watching curiously, he stepped into the back row next to Jaz, and joined in, making the same spell forms along with the others.

  Tears sprung to my eyes. I turned to the North and looked away.

  I remember all those months ago, when I’d arrived in Vale, and it was just me. When I'd first met Dirk, on that first day, there was only one other mage I knew of in the city of Vale—and he had been in prison. Now, we were training up a small mage army, and we'd rescued dozens of others we'd thought were dead and gone.

  The Way of the Mark was alive again for the first time in years.

  I looked back to mages in training and saw Dirk standing on the front stoop of the house. He caught my eye and nodded, a hint of a smile cracking his lips.

  Every day, one of Dirk’s men slipped out of the city and brought us reports of the goings-on in Vale and we sent messages back to the city the same way.

  For the time being, I tried not to think about Uof at all and instead I focused on helping our new mages recover. There would be time for him soon enough.

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  On the morning of the fifth day, I walked into the large bunk room where many of those rescued from The Factory lay recovering. This was one of the newer buildings that had sprung in recent days and weeks. We'd set up beds and cots, some quite crude and simple in their construction.

  One graying older man named Keven stood over the bed of one of the badly wounded mages. The man in the bed had spoken gibberish and thrashed about wildly when we first rescued him. Keven stood over him speaking softly, his hand on the man’s shoulders. Keven cared about these men and appeared to be a leader among The Factory mages.

  “Keven, morning to you,” I said as I entered.

  “Mage,” he replied, looking down at the man before him. The man was asleep but murmuring as he slumbered.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Deen. We grew up together in a small village outside of Vale, a few days hike from here,” Keven looked at Deen, who slept peacefully now.

  "You grew up together, then?" I asked.

  “Yes, he and I were trained by the same man," Keven replied. "A mage of the old ways who'd served our village for decades. This mage was an outcast in our village, especially in later years as the Motorized grew in number, but he also protected our people for as long as he could.”

  He paused, and I gave him a moment.

  “When Uof— ” Keven spat the name with a grimace, “When his thugs came to our village we fought them off, Deen and I and our master. They wanted us to join them in Vale but didn’t say why. They did not ask politely. When we refused to go, they drew weapons and threatened us. For a time, they left. When they came back, they killed our master on the spot, taking Deen and I with them. This was before we knew enough about The Way to be of any real use in a fight. Even now, we’ve not been formally trained. The Factory has been our home now for most of our lives. After so many years, I guess something kicked loose in Deen. He hasn’t been himself for a long time.”

  “I’m sorry Keven,” I replied. "I'm just glad we finally got you out of there alive.”

  “Me too,” he said. “We’ve already had to cleanse the minds of several of these men."

  “You’ve been able to remove the damage done to them?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “With great effort, we can reset their minds, most of them. And if they're strong enough, it is my hope they can start over, and slowly try to rebuild who they were.”

  “What about Deen?” I said, gesturing to the man lying before us.

  “We’ll see in time,” he said. "It may be too late for him, but I won't give up on him easily."

  “Did you have a family in your village?” I asked him, changing the subject, and hoping to get to know Keven a little bit.

  “My parents were still alive when I was taken to Vale, but that was long ago,” he said. “While the threat of Uof still exists, I can’t return. Not yet. If you mean to take him down, I must stay and help you.”

  Keven seethed as he spoke.

  “Come, let us talk,” I said to him. I led him outside as the sun peeked over the eastern horizon, beginning to light the desert sand with an orange glow. The early light of the day shot brilliant across the sky, but the warmth of the sun hadn’t yet reached us.

  We walked together away from our temporary home, moving between dry scrub brush and several squat, dead and twisted trees that still stood nearby.

  “Can you tell me what happened in there Keven?" I finally asked him as we walked. "What did you see in the Factory? What do I need to know about Uof and the things he's does there?"

  He nodded in response but did not speak right away, thinking. He cleared his throat after a moment.

  “You call that place The Factory, but Uof calls it his Workshop,” Keven said. “His father built it and he expanded it. We made weapons, machines, cycles to rove the desert, and tools for Uof’s army, and for others—I believe he sold much of what we made for gold. Over the years, a few of us heard him talk about orders, buyers. I don’t know what went on outside of the walls of that valley because he didn’t let us out. We never left that valley.”

  I nodded slowly. This is how Weer, and then Uof after him, amassed a fortune making Vale the wealthiest city in the world.

  “After a time, our ranks swelled—as they brought in other mages," Keven said. "Some of us disappeared, one at a time. We often speculated amongst ourselves: were they killed for acting out or used for other experiments? Did they simply die from being worked too hard? Did Uof use them to test out his mechanized body parts? We never found out where all of them went. Eventually, however, the tide of new mages slowed. None joined us at all in the last few years. We worked the same spells all day, every day, with very few breaks. His men kept us working, scared, and tired all the time.”

  “How often did you see Uof?” I asked.

  “Every few days he would come in talk with the soldiers who ran the workshop," Keven said. "He rarely ever spoke to the mages at all, though recently he had grown angrier and much more threatening. I imagine his change in attitude was your fault.”

  Keven hadn’t smiled since I’d seen him, but upon saying this, his mouth spread just slightly, into a half-smile. We continued walking in the cool morning, the sun beginning to warm our faces.

  “What about his ‘upgrades’?” I asked.

  “When I first arrived at the workshop, many years ago, Uof was a man, like you or I," Keven said. "Not the mechanical monster he is now. We saw additions to his body appear slowly. At first, it was a new arm—then something added to that arm, a weapon of some kind, a rifle or a crossbow. Eventually, he replaced another limb, and then another, and he seemed to embrace the change fully. He had ‘evolved’ he would say to his men."

  "So they weren't making improvements to Uof's body in the Workshop?" I asked.

  "No, it all happened somewhere else." Keven replied. "We all thought it was the work of a man we called The Grinder. He was a tallish fellow with an angular nose and a predatory nature, Uof’s general who ran the Workshop. Didn’t talk much, just watched everyone. He knew how everything worked and we assume he helped Uof become what he is now.”

  “Why didn’t he mechanize himself, this Grinder?” I asked as we walked over a rise.

  “I don’t know," Keven replied.

  “Such irony,” I said, almost to myself.

  “What?”

  “Uof built an empire known for oppressing and killing mages of The Way,” I said. “We always thought that he killed every mage he found, removing all obstacles to his Motorized culture But all along he used those very mages to grow his empire: he harnessed the old ways and built his empire on their backs.”

  We walked on as I considered what Keven had shared.

  “You will take him down won’t you, Mage?” Keven asked finally.

  “We will try,” I said.

  “You will kill him?”

  I looked at Keven, whose face seethed with bitterness.

  “Yes,” I replied evenly.

  We turned back to return to the outpost, and I looked toward the West, toward the Broken mountains. Even though it was a long hike away, I could hear the bustle of the city to the North of us, a low hum of humanity and the grinding clunk and hiss of machinery. The occasional grumble of a motorized cycle could be heard blurting out in the distance.

  Today, however, something new appeared on the horizon toward Vale. Smoke rose from the city at several different locations, from what appeared to be three or four dense fires.

  As we walked back toward the bunkhouse, one of Dirk’s messengers ran out to meet us, panting hard, sweat soaking his clothes.

  “Dirk sent me to fetch you,” the messenger said through gasping breaths.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Uof discovered our tunnel system, the main headquarters and he found some of our men. He burned buildings, and his thugs are tracking every tunnel to its entrance. They’re burning all shops that offered entrance, tearing tunnels down, and killing the resistance fighters they found. Mage, Dirk is in the city and he pleads you for help.”

  I nodded, “Go now, and tell Dirk that I am coming.”