Shadow Phantoms - H.P. Mallory Page 0,40
little group of bound men, and as I saw one of their faces I recalled the last time I’d seen it, in battle on the beach of Tintagel. That face had been spotted with blood, the blood of my friends. A flash of hatred seared through me. Why shouldn’t I kill them? This was war, damn it. They’d attacked us, not the other way around. Furthermore, they were too low-ranking to tell me anything useful about Duine and the King’s Alliance.
Thus, what else was there to do? My own people wanted their blood, it wasn’t just Eirin, they were all baying for blood and I couldn’t blame them. Though I tried to suppress it, I wanted to kill the prisoners as much as any of my men did, because that was all we could now do for our fallen comrades. We had nothing left to give them, but the blood of their foes. Yes, they were defenseless prisoners, but they’d known what they were getting into and it wasn’t as if they’d shown any mercy to my people.
But that was the point, of course.
That was why we showed mercy; to prove we were different.
“Moment passed?” asked Matherson, quietly.
“Yeah.”
“Your eyes went red there for a minute.”
I nodded. “The whole damn world went red there for a minute.”
“Know what you’re going to do?”
I nodded slowly. “I’m going to scour them.”
Matherson pondered this. “Decent middle path, but Eirin won’t like it.”
“She’s not in charge. I am.”
If you happen to be born a charismatic and natural leader, then you may as well use it. It’s not all good, but it’s not all bad either.
###
That evening, I commanded the prisoners be brought before me.
“What are you…? Eirin began, but I silenced her with a look.
“Bring them to me.”
The soldiers of the King’s Alliance had fear in their eyes as they were dragged through our makeshift camp towards me. They knew who I was and they’d been told stories about me, no doubt. Which of course meant they knew nothing about me. As far as they were concerned, Pagan was the scary revolutionary who had slaughtered mages and probably sacrificed babies to the old gods of the four winds. My face tattoos helped. My father had inked them himself and among my people they conveyed the anonymity of leadership; the leader was always the same, you saw the mask not the man.
It was useful to me that my enemies saw me as such, but they would have been very surprised to learn I was the only reason they were still alive.
“On their knees,” I growled.
The wind whipped around us and I reached out to it, urging it on. I beckoned the clouds to glower down and asked the thunder to rumble. It was gratifying to see the fear, sharp and blank in their eyes as I glared down at them.
As the weather gathered, I could feel the wild magic at its edge. I could feel it in the earth and the bedrock. I could feel it in the roots of the trees. I drew it to me, coaxing it forth to borrow what I needed. And for what I was about to attempt, I would need a lot of power. This was not Tintagel or one of those other places where the land was riven with the wild magic, but magic is always there in the natural world if you know where to look and how to ask.
Rain began to fall, and to me the very damp of the air tasted sharp with magic. I could feel the bright aura growing around me, and see it reflected in the wide eyes of my victims.
“Clean.” My voice was thick with magical energy as I laid a hand on the head of the first soldier.
He cried out, more from shock than pain, but it was enough to make the others jump and struggle to get free.
“Hold ‘em fast!” Matherson bellowed from behind me.
I was focused on what I was doing, the power flowing from my hands into the man’s mind, seeking out the memories and razing them from his brain. It wasn’t something I did lightly. To take part of a man’s life, some might say was as bad as killing him. But I left him his childhood, his adolescence, his first love and first heartbreak. I left the things that mattered while stripping back the influences that had corrupted him.
He wasn’t a Mage, none of them were. They were nothing but men who had wanted something better