2. Light Magic
two
Light Magic
You either loved or didn’t. There was no loving a little bit, not for Sofia anyway. Her Aleksei, she loved with all her being, but she lived for thirty-five years not knowing him at all. Her father had been Elfurian, a contentious neighbor of Fedosia, and to make matters worse, he’d been convicted of necromancy, the cardinal sin of Fedosia, and burned by the church—which was the archmage, her uncle.
Her father, Sofia remembered a bit, but her mother died birthing her. She grew up in her uncle’s household, not the archmage, her other uncle, the archmage’s younger brother whom she called Papa.
Half Elfurian, a necromancer’s daughter, a great stain on her family’s legacy, growing up she wasn’t allowed to leave the White Palace, Papa’s estate, except for the one time she’d been to the capital to attend service on Day Solis. She was twenty-five years old then, just betrothed to the count after her family tried for years to find her a husband. As a wedding gift, she’d asked Papa if she could go to the capital, and they took her to church. That was all.
The count had been forty when they married and now he was fifty. A military man, the count liked to talk about the Elfurian War a hundred years ago and discuss politics for endless hours, which bored Sofia to tears. He had three grown daughters from his late wife, and they found it a great embarrassment his father’s wife was so much younger than him. They wouldn’t say that to their father, though, only to Sofia, which was the reason she mostly stayed in her room and minded her business.
A month ago, the count received a summons from the queen. Prince Nikolas was turning fifteen, and there were to be fifteen days of festivity at Krakova, the capital, and all nobility of Fedosia were to attend and celebrate their future tsar.
Sofia asked to go and was denied, of course. Who wanted to remind the court he’d married a necromancer’s daughter? But the count liked to gamble, his estate was bankrupt, and he loved Guard gold was his problem. The archmage had paid a fortune for Sofia’s dowry but the gold was spent now, and Ania, the count’s oldest daughter, was getting married. The count needed money, thought to extort the archmage, and changed his mind about taking Sofia to the capital. He was going to parade her around the court to remind the Guards how much burden he carried for them. But Sofia didn’t care. She could go to Krakova was all she heard.
She’d packed weeks ago and now just waited. But the good news continued. She’d written Lev, Papa’s only son whom she called brother because they’d grown up together, that she was going to Krakova, and he volunteered to come get her. And this was how it all began, because had she not gone to Krakova, she would have never met Aleksei.
This was spring, and before summer visited Fedosia she’d be standing in a church in Murmia, begging the archmage not to hurt her beloved. Did she regret it in hindsight? Not that she loved him, only that she brought him trouble. But this was before all that, though, and she excitedly waited for Lev to arrive. She hadn’t seen him since he was a boy.
Winter retreated, becoming small white patches of snow on the browning lawn, and ice on the pond turned clear and floated like broken pieces of glass. Sofia stood by the window, the white veil in her hand as she peered out, and her maid Malina chattered as she tied her corset, pulling the laces so tight she occasionally yanked Sofia back.
“It’s so very exciting, my lady,” Malina said. “I imagine Lord Lev is as handsome as my lady.”
Sofia elongated her neck and put her hands on her hips to allow Malina to button the back. “He does have the Guard look,” Sofia said. “If you haven’t seen my family, they are all blond with blue eyes. The archmage’s eyes are amber but that’s the magic affecting them. I’m the only one like this. Black sheep of the family, I’m afraid.” She had black curls and green eyes, which she got from her mother. Everyone who’d known Lady Yelizaveta would remark Sofia was a dead ringer for her mother.
“I heard he’s an excellent rider. Won the steeplechase last year, Lev of Guard,” said Malina. “I suppose it will be grander this year, all the young lords arriving, and the race being held in the prince’s honor.”
“How do you know so much?” Sofia looked over her shoulder and laughed.
“We common folk like to fancy about lords and ladies.” Malina had an utterly silly and dreamy smile.
“It’s not all that’s cracked up to be, I’m afraid.” Her dress done, Sofia sat down to let Malina do her hair. The count’s lack of funds allowed her only one maid, but she liked Malina and didn’t mind.
The good humor ended when Malina leaned in and whispered, “Perhaps my lady should tell her brother about the count’s behavior. It’s not right, beating your woman. Not right for a commoner, not right for a lord. If he dies, we’ll all be free.”
“That’s too bold,” Sofia warned Malina.
“Your hair is done, my lady.”
Malina had red hair, freckles like copper flecks, and she was in love with Pavel the gardener. But the count wouldn’t let them marry because Malina owed him money for her mother’s funeral. So once in a while she would make outlandish suggestions, but the church and the throne still burned women who murdered their husbands. Sofia had witnessed such an execution, and it had been an awful ordeal lasting nearly half an hour.
Sofia didn’t mind her life too much. She’d learned to stay out of the count’s way when he was drunk, which admittedly was every day, but she liked her quarters and staying in it fine.
Her room had belonged to the late countess and a portrait of her hung on the wall still. She’d been a fair lady, and in the painting she wore a white flowy dress with a black floppy sunhat. Over the years, Sofia had come to consider the portrait a friend because the countess was always there. Another friend she had was her macaw. He was a gift from the archmage, and Sofia named him Prince. He was green with a bright yellow chest, and used to talk, but Ania, when she was a girl, was angry Sofia had replaced her mother and fed Prince poison. Sofia had Prince stuffed. He didn’t talk anymore, but he was her friend still and sat on a mantle in her room.
Her carpet was faded blue with white flowers and looked like the autumn sky with cotton clouds. The furniture she had in her room consisted of a short table with two chairs, her bed, a white settee, and a screen divider with the firebird painted on it. It wasn’t the White Palace, but it was her home. She’d rarely been allowed in public for most of her life, and the thought of attending the festivity was frightening yet exciting.
She waited by the window all day and became disappointed at nightfall when Lev didn’t come. It was some ten days of ride in a carriage to the capital, and she’d wanted to spend the time with her brother, rather than with the count and his daughters. Oh well. It was what it was. At least they’d take her.
Malina returned at nightfall and helped her change. After she refreshed the water on her washing table and left, Sofia blew out the candle on her windowsill and went to bed.
“Sofia. Soful. Songbird.”
Sofia frowned in her sleep, opened her eyes, and found her room dark. She’d heard a male voice but that happened sometimes. An invisible stranger, she called him, and the presence who came and went had been visiting since she was a girl. He didn’t frighten her. She closed her eyes.
“Soful.”
That was not him. Her eyes popped open.
“Let there be light,” came a whisper. A sound like the snapping of fingers followed. A spark of fire and all the candles in her room lit.
A blond man with blue eyes stood in her room. His cloak was royal blue and the golden sun, the Guard crest, was embroidered on his sleeves. He wore riding boots and had tracked in mud, but his attire was silk and pristine.
It took her a moment, but Sofia shot up when she recognized him and flew into his open arms. “Lev!”
He used to be a little boy and had cried and thrown a tantrum when Sofia got married and had to leave. When did he become taller than her and such a fine man?
“Lev. Lev.” She ruffled his gold hair and kissed his cheeks. “You’re so big now!”
“And you look the same,” he said. “And I was afraid you’d be a crone by now.”
“Lev!” She slapped his back.
Twelve years younger, he was twenty-three now, yet she’d expected him to be a boy. How silly.
“Oh, I’m so glad you came! How did you get in? No one announced you.” She fell all over him again, wanting to touch and hug him. He smelled of sunshine and honey oats.
“Your room is so sad.” He looked around. “It’s smaller than a country outhouse. And your bird is dead, by the way.”
When he pointed, Sofia saw Prince was on fire and screamed. She ran to him and put out the flames by wrapping him with the tablecloth, but his feathers were singed. “Lev, you still can’t do Dragon’s Breath. Look what you did!”
“In the dark, it looked like a candle, sorry.” He shrugged. “I’m starving. Do you have wine?”
“Should you be drinking?” Sofia frowned. She couldn’t get over how big he was.
“I’m already drunk, Soful, and I have no desire to be sober. I tried it once. It was terrible.” He fell onto her bed with his muddy boots, and she pulled them off.
“You’re starting to look a lot like Papa,” she remarked.
“Well, he is my father.”
Sofia went to put his boots by the corner and as she bent, the door flung open. Diana was the youngest of the Illeivich daughters and she entered holding a lantern.
“You’re not my father,” she said to Lev, frowning.
“You can’t be certain.” Lev lifted his head from the pillow. “I get around, and so did your mother.”
“Lev!” Sofia gasped. “Lord Lev is my brother, Diana. Lev, Diana Illeivich is Count Gavril’s youngest daughter.”
“I don’t care,” Diana snapped. “He shouldn’t be in your room. It’s improper.”
“I’m a Guard. I’ll come and go as I please. Now, bring me wine, wench, or I’ll turn you into a frog. You look like one, anyway.”
“Lev!” Sofia ran across the room to put her hand over his mouth. He used to be such a good boy. Now, he was a foul mouthed man. Diana looked horrified, so Sofia clarified. “He can’t turn you into a frog. Not a knock on him, but the alchemy is impossible.”
“Not impossible, just forbidden,” Lev corrected.
The girl fled. A commotion started down the hall and it became a whole ordeal, the count came with his saber… and it turned into a farce acted out by drunks.
Sofia wore a long maroon skirt with a white blouse, and Lev said, “It’s dreadful. You look like a country baba taking a loaf of bread to the harvesters. Why not wrap a tattered scarf around your head to complete the look? With your gorgeous hair showing, they might think you’re a lady.”
“You’ve become mouthy.” She flicked him. They were in her room. The count calmed down once he understood through his drunken stupor the man in his wife’s room was Lev Guard, the only child of Pyotr Guard, the wealthiest lord in all of Fedosia, and more importantly, the archmage’s nephew, and became full of smiles and bows.
“That’s not you,” he remarked at the late countess’s portrait.
“I like it. Leave it be.”
The day was turning silver outside the windows, the pale light glowing through the white veils. After breakfast, they’d get on the road, and Sofia couldn’t contain her delight.
“So, tell me how your study is progressing? Are you a mage yet?” Sofia sat down to do her hair because she didn’t trust Malina around Lev. The maid might exaggerate the truth and start trouble where there had been none. Her hatred for the count was deep.
“Getting there, Soful,” he said, thumbing through the Light Codex she had out on the table. “All the saints, you’re up to volume two-thirteen? Anything useful?”
“What’s wrong?” She glanced in the mirror at his reflection. He was very talented, and she wouldn’t believe he couldn’t complete the codex had he wanted to. “Do you not want to be a mage?”
He shrugged. “The cost is too high.” He took a drink from the wine cup on the table, then fiddled with the tablecloth, inspecting the lacing. “I’m reconsidering. That’s all.”
“Is it a girl?” She smiled. He was that age now, she supposed.
“There may be a girl, but that’s not all. I don’t want to live in the church, Soful. Look at Uncle, all that power, and what good is that when your dick doesn’t work.”
Sofia flicked a look at the door, then hushed Lev. They weren’t supposed to talk about that just like the Shields didn’t speak of the madness prevalent in their house. Sometimes, the use of magic incurred debt that couldn’t be settled by gold.
“The archmage won’t live forever,” Sofia said. “He needs a successor.”
“He might.” Lev took another drink. “Have you seen him lately?”
“Uncle? No. Why?”
“He looks younger than us, Soful. He might have discovered the fountain of youth, but again, what good is that when your dick doesn’t work?”
“Lev…” Sofia sighed. It was no good telling him not to do something, she was learning. In that regard, he hadn’t grown up. ‘Don’t climb the tree,’ she would say to little Lev, and five minutes later, he would have fallen out of the tree and broken his arm. “You’re racing in the steeplechase, I heard?” she asked, and watched his eyes light up.
“The Krakova Cup is being renamed Royal Cup this year, courtesy of the Shields, and I’m going to beat the snots out of them in front of their prince, on his birthday too.” Lev laughed.
“I heard you won last year.”
“And the two years before that,” he said, smug. “Rhytsar is undefeated. It’ll be his last race, and I mean to retire him victorious.”
Then he talked about his opponents, other lords who’d be racing in the cup, and their horses. Mostly Boyar Duma , it sounded like, the nine great houses of Fedosia, the nine houses of magic.
All magic was alchemy, the exchange of equal value, and the energy to perform the transmutation came from the gateway between the seen and the unseen. The gate was called dver, the source of all power. Though, in theory, anyone could perform alchemy with the correct symbology to harness the dver, the study was complex, taking hundreds of volumes of codices for the transmutation of each element. So, the houses specialized in a single element, and passed down their knowledge only to their own, making it inaccessible for the rest.
White Guard was the house of the sun because their element was the light. Due to the nature of their chosen element, they had side talents such as affecting plants, and in Lev’s case, playing with fire.
Light alchemy was often called spells, and out of all known alchemy, it was the most expensive to cast. Because spells sought to create something out of nothing, the exchange wasn’t equivalent in value and the deficiency was settled by gold. Lev’s trick with the candles, a spell called Dragon’s Breath, cost three ounces of gold, for instance. Spells affecting another’s choice, such as a memory spell, needed more than gold for it also needed consent.
There were two absolute things the alchemy couldn’t do. One was directly hindering the free will of God’s creatures. So, of the variety of potions sold at the market, none could make you fall in love, sadly. Two, no transmutation, no matter how clever, ended in more gold. Because gold created alchemy, you couldn’t use alchemy to create more of itself.
“The only horse I don’t know is Snowstorm,” Lev said.
Sofia had lost track because she knew none of the lords Lev spoke of. She recognized the houses as all Fedosians would but that was where her knowledge of court ended.
Perhaps seeing her confusion, Lev clarified, “Snowstorm is Aleksei’s horse. He’s the queen’s nephew. I’m unfamiliar with the gelding because Aleksei’s a sentinel and not allowed in any competition. But it’s the prince’s birthday, and the brat requested for his cousin to be included in the cup. So, the Boyar Duma made an exception this year.”
“Is that bad?” She asked about an unknown rider being in the race.
Lev laughed, gliding a finger over the rim of his wine cup. “I can’t stand him, and I can’t wait to wipe the racecourse with him in front of his fucken queen.”
“I hope you do.” Sofia smiled and ruffled his gold locks.