Chapter 45: Magic Promises

“It’s fine,” Hima said, apparently able to inject at least some gentleness into her otherwise impatient tone, as Miro continued to seethe over a debuff that was intent on infecting everything he tried his hand at. “It just means we’ll drop this for now and focus on your fireballs.”

“My fireballs?” he asked, nearly bursting into laughter. “I can’t hit the broad side of a barn with my fireballs, but you know what can hit the broad side of a barn? My incinerate spell. For some reason, that can bring the whole damn barn down.”

“Well you don’t have much of a choice, do you? The debuff is there, whether you like it or not, and there’s little you can do about that right now.”

“Is that true though? That you have no idea what I can do about lifting it?” Miro asked.

“Well, it’s true that I don’t know how, but there may be those that do.”

“Like the masters at the Akademiya?”

“No,” Hima said with dismissive iciness. “Perish the thought that any arcane knowledge actually exists within those walls. No, the ones I’m talking about are different. They’re not even mages really, if they do exist, though the derision with which the masters talk about them I have every reason to believe that they do. The mages are loath to admit that there may be someone with a better understanding of their own art than them.”

The way Hima talked, it sounded like the stuff of fairy tales, of the before times when magical creatures had supposedly roamed the land among the mages. If there was any spark of hope out there, even if it was in the shape of a magical pixie or fairy hanging off the edges of the world, then he would stop at nothing to seek it out.

“So how come you believe that they might exist even if your masters deny it?”

Hima’s eyes pierced his and Miro shuddered involuntarily.

“They’re not my masters, they’re the masters,” she said and waited until he nodded before her expression softened somewhat. “And there’s no knowledge that can be buried forever. It will sprout from the ground in delicate green shoots. From the ones I gathered, it seems like they’re the last remaining magic user from a time even before dawn of mages over a thousand years ago.”

A month ago seemed like a different epoch to Miro. A thousand years was unimaginable.

“And you have any idea where we might look for them?” he asked hopefully, with little concern as to whether Nydra might have some thoughts of her own about any such plan. He waited for Hima’s response without realizing he was holding his breath, as the icewinder hesitated to speak further.

“I do, actually,” Hima finally said, quietly and uncertainly, “One way to get me to study something in more depth is to tell me there’s nothing there that’s worth studying. All legends point to their last temples dotting the eastern shores of the Shattered Sea towards the edge of the Deep Scar Mountains. It’s only a few hundred miles north of here, but,” she paused and glanced quickly in the direction of their campfire, “I doubt we’ll get much of an opportunity for a detour.”

Miro looked down the hill, Nydra and Peteri sitting by the fire, talking, Nydra laughing, neither seeming to pay the two mages any mind, though knowing Peteri, the archer was always watching.

Miro’s eyes wandered to Hima’s face, and saw that she was eyeing the two faithful servants of the King with her own keen interest as she chewed on her lower lip.

“You don’t trust them?” Miro asked.

“It’s not about trust,” Hima answered, brought out of her contemplation, “I still believe they’re good people. I just think there’s more going on to their mission than even they know about.”

Hima’s assurances did nothing to comfort him as Miro’s attention turned back to his father’s old friends. Despite all the half-truths and the morsels of information they dropped that only left him half-starved and longing for more, he did begin to feel like he was trusting them like they were family. Hima’s words though were already eating away at those fragile foundations, something Hima must have sensed because she stepped close to him and said “Miro” so firmly that he was forced to turn to face her.

“Yes, those two, they’re not like us. It doesn’t make us better and it doesn’t make us adversaries, but it does make us different. And for better or worse, whatever comes next, you and I need to be careful, and to stick through this together.”

Miro could tell how hard this was for her to say, but he couldn’t put his finger on why she’d put herself through it.

“Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?” he asked, “It’s unsettling.” He tried to smile but knew it came out cagey. “Is it because you know I’m a magus now?” Though she had never implied that she believed that he wasn’t, Miro needed to hear it and have her banish the niggling thought.

Hima looked like she was not at all pleased with being asked to answer the question and for a moment he thought that he was about to find himself encased in a block of ice and pushed down the hill to slide into oblivion.

“No,” she said slowly, her voice taking on that creaky quality that made it sound vaguely like a threat, “It’s just that …”

She trailed off and tried to suppress a sigh. In that moment she looked so tired.

“Is it that we both grew up not knowing who we really were, and felt strung along by the people that were supposed to have been taking care of us?” Miro asked and watched her stunned face, though in Hima’s case, ‘stunned’ extended only so far as that she stopped blinking and her lips were slightly parted.

“How did –”

“Peteri told me,” Miro quickly replied, “Please don’t kill him. I kind of like him.”

“It’s not entirely off the table,” Hima said, shooting some daggers past Miro down to the campfire below.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s not really any of my business,” Miro said, his hand scratching the back of his head. “But at this point, I know almost nothing about you, and my life’s been basically laid bare before you. So …” He wasn’t actually sure where that ‘so’ was supposed to lead but he had hoped she’d be able to pick it up.

“Look, I know what I am and I know what I could be sometimes,” Hima said. “And I’m not planning on apologizing for that any time soon. That said, I know I said earlier that there’s no reason for us to be friends, but I lied. I think it would be much easier if we were.”

She gave him then what he realized was the first genuine smile that he had ever seen on Hima – a sight as startling as the first flowers pushing through the ground in late winter.

“Well, I may only have two points of Intellect to deal with, but I also think that would be a great idea.”