The Mage Hunter - Chapter 1
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The air smelt burned. Cassida Rane ran his fingers along the highest bookshelf looking for dust, there was none. He paced across the room and pressed his fingers into the soil of a wilting plant. Dry as dust. A crack was working its way down the clay pot too, as if the last scrap of moisture had been drawn out of the clay. There was another scent, beneath the burn. 'You smell that?'
‘I smell old fire and…’ Athena said, her nostrils flared as she inhaled.
'Just making sure,' Cassida was never sure other Mage Hunters did smell the consequences, nor how long they lingered after such events, because not everyone could and there were other means of tracking. It was his job to train Athena, his job she knew what to look out for and when. 'Earth magic, you smell it beneath the burn?'
‘Yes, I have it now, smells like mushrooms fried in butter and garlic,' Athena leaned in the door way, her greatcloak shrouding her from her neck to her ankles. She was slender and appeared so even with the cloak over her. Her hair was pinned back and fastened into a coil at the nape of her neck, easier to raise the hood if need be. Her eyes darted around like a hawks, spotting every detail and weighing up its importance.
‘That’s the smell you want to focus on, don't get distracted by the burn, that will always be there. The pleasant scent can tell you the form of the conjuring and something about the practitioner,’ Cassida Rane jumped. The floorboards buckled and cracked beneath him as he landed in the dirt three foot below the suspended floor. 'I knew it,' he coughed in a plume of grit and dust. 'This was no child feeling his way around for the first time, this was an experienced practitioner.'
'How would such a specimen escape the Castrum's notice?' Athena asked, standing upright.
'You know better than to ask such questions without checking who is in ear shot.' A glint in the soil caught Cassida Rane's eye. He bent down and fished out a coin from the dirt. Light caught on the fangs of a coiled serpent on one side, he flipped it over and found a spiral of stars. What are you doing here? Cassida Rane thought. He hid the coin inside one of the many pockets of his greatcloak.
Athena made a show of checking the two room wooden house and the street outside, ‘A few busybodies but they’re across the street.’
‘The mage may never have used his abilities,’ Cassida Rane kept his voice low.
‘Then they wouldn't be experienced.’
‘They might have practised beyond the reach of the Castrum.’
'No such place exists.'
Cassida Rane smiled, 'If only that were true.’ His apprentice’s confidence in the Order of Mage Hunters was naive but heartwarming.
'So, how has this practitioner evaded notice?'
'Let's catch him and ask, the trail is warm. Blistering hot, in fact,' Cassida Rane leapt up out of the floorboards and darted for the door. A fair number of Arstar’s people flowed through the street outside, not enough to be busy but enough to mind one’s step. A few had gathered across the street and crowded round when Cassida Rane exited, though none dared speak to him while he was on official Castrum business and they kept a respectful distance. He hurried down the street, the onlookers parting for him.
Athena span about, having to do a little run to keep pace. 'Where to? I don't smell anything out here.'
'Not a smell, a sight.'
Magic had an odour, not the unpleasant charred air everyone picked up but something fragrant, intriguing, like a paramour standing at her door and reaching out. A taunt, an invitation, a dare. That aroma had ensnared many a good man and woman into drinking from the well of sorcery. But that was only the start of wizardry's effect on the world, once used it left a mark, a scar, visible to Mage Hunter's like Cassida Rane. The more powerful the conjuration, the deeper the scar.
'This is what you must learn Athena,' Cassida Rane stalked down the street following a slight tear in the air. It wasn't in the air exactly, it was more like the glare of the sun or heat haze that caused the air to quiver and malform. 'Look, directly ahead of us,' he stopped, rested his arm on her shoulder, crouched a little to match her height and pointed. 'Right there, see it?'
Athena squinted into nothing, turning her head right and left to look out the corner of her eye, 'I can't see anything.'
'You will. You must if you are to become a Mage Hunter of the Castrum.'
'How?'
Cassida Rane straightened. 'It is a matter of tuning your senses. Time and concentration is usually enough, though some recruits are naturally blind to it and will never become hunters.'
'Oh,' Athena frowned, staring at her boots. 'What happens with them?'
'Most leave, find a different path. Others stay on in more menial roles. The Castrum needs cooks, masons, smiths, and such.'
'But that's--'
'Not what you signed up for. I know, but it is a possibility. Though find solace in that it is unlikely. People blind to the scars of magic are uncommon, almost as uncommon as mages themselves.'
'A balance? Can those who are blind become mages?' Athena asked, stringing loose ideas together.
'No they cannot,' Cassida Rane said, confirming her idea of balance. The balance of people who could use magic and those who could not even see its effects was real, those in the middle, where Mage Hunters mostly came from, were the majority. Small amounts of magic would be open to them if they chose but not enough to cause a problem, unlike a full blood mage. There were subtleties, Cassida Rane knew, but one thing at a time. 'Follow me, the mage who caused this is close.'
Cassida Rane followed the hazy trail, the consequence that washed off a wizard utilising their influence over the arcane. The streets of Arstar rose around him, the solid red sandstone buildings older than the empire that ruled them. The cracked cobbles, the gaps packed with stray sand, thudded under his hobnail boots. It amazed him that people never saw the after effects of sorcery, those that did were invited to the Castrum, though few could without training and those scant few who were invited would not be allowed to decline. An Arstari man, tall and bronze skinned, walked right through the haze in front of Cassida Rane. He didn't flinch, shiver, or break into a sweat. Nothing. The man was completely numb to the scar. Cassida Rane felt energised as he tracked the haze, jittery even. A feeling he had only managed to replicate when hunting a mage in the desert republics and he had tried a bitter black beverage he'd never learnt the name of. Sleep evaded him then, it would evade him this night too.
The trail swerved off the main avenue and down a lane before vanishing inside a window, there the haze split into a greenish twist heading through the building and out a door and a yellow streak that climbed the stairs.
Cassida Rane paused. Athena scrambled over the window sill, 'Why have you stopped?'
'The trail split. There were two mages, not one. Two...' Mages rarely worked together, the risk of discovery was too great, the trust required to reveal ones true identity to someone else who could easily turn you over to the Castrum was a risk almost no mage was willing to take. But here were two, and Athena couldn't see the trails yet. 'Upstairs,' Cassida Rane jolted into a sprint, leaping up the stairs two at a time until he hit a locked door at the summit. A small unshuttered window looked over the city, blue curtains shifting in the humid breeze. 'Do you have your lockpicks?'
'Of course,' Athena reached inside one of the many pockets of her greatcloak.
'Open this door,' Cassida Rane stepped aside, leaning over the sill to admire Arstar unfurled before him. The red brick buildings rolled on for miles, almost to the horizon, the blue slate rooves shimmered in the heat of the sun.
The lock clicked and Athena was inside.
'Wait,' Cassida Rane hissed, but it was too late. His apprentice went in first, prepared for precisely nothing.
The trail, the scar in the world, ended in a thick coil of sulphuric yellow hovering over a dead man. His body lay on the floorboards, one arm twisted at the elbow, a femur broken causing his leg to stick out oddly. His skin was withered, as if dead for years, the eyes hollowed out.
'Found the mage,' Athena said.
'We will discuss your entry tactics later but for now we have one of our mages, the other is still on the loose,' Cassida Rane knelt down beside the corpse. It was still warm. 'This was witchcraft, recent too, but there's no trail... unless,' Cassida Rane stormed down the stairs. 'Stay here!' he shouted up at Athena.
Cassida Rane sprinted through the house and out through the door, following the green swirl that lingered in the air. Anything viewed through the after effects lost its definition and shifted unnaturally, contorting on itself. He was never sure if this was a mere trick of the light or magic residue attempting to distort creation further. The trail led down a lane and onto a busy street. Carts wheeled too and fro selling steamed buns, baked pastries, fresh fruit, roasted meat, mead, and everything else a hungry man could desire. Workers, fresh from the construction sites, were milling about, clogging the street as they ate and swapped stories or planned which pub they'd frequent later that evening. The sheer number of people was a weight that distorted the trail, the influence of them all even if they only had a crumb of power diffused the residue of magic. He chased as far as he could until the trail vanished into a vapour, a thousand tendrils leading nowhere. Cassida Rane cursed.
'Mage Hunter!' a voice called from behind.
Cassida Rane spun around. The crowds of workers had parted and a man, over six foot tall, stood with a knife to Athena's throat.
'Going to let your little apprentice die on her first trip?'
'It's not my first--' Athena received a swift jab to the ribs.
'Silence.'
Cassida Rane was impassive waiting for the mage to reveal his Focus, his own hands reaching inside his greatcloak.
'Don't move,' the mage spat. He wore a hooded garment with embroidered edges. His boots were worn and muddy and he had at least a weeks worth of stubble on his chin. The knife was pressed against Athena's neck, the curved tip catching her earlobe. She was rigid with terror.
Cassida Rane went still, 'As you wish.'
'You don't want to hunt me, you have no idea who I'm involved with and for your sake you should keep it that way,' he shoved Athena forward and sprinted away. He flicked something from his pocket, a glistening object, and the air around him swirled to create a thick fog.
Cassida Rane rushed to catch Athena as she stumbled, 'You hurt?'
She shook her head.
The Mage Hunter dashed into the fog, ankacite sword at the ready but the mage was gone leaving only his green haze of a trail. He paused then returned to Athena, sheathing his sword to the relief of the crowd of onlookers. Various stages of shock were playing out around him. Murmurs of “mage” and “mage hunter” began to spread and soon the whole city would know he was present. Any mage in the area would vanish underground until long after he had left now. 'Come on, let's deal with that corpse,' Cassida Rane took Athena by the arm and headed back to the withered mage to investigate how he had died.
Athena swayed with each step. 'He didn't use any magic, I don't think so anyway. He came in through the window, hit me over the head before I could draw my sword or do anything.'
'It's my fault, I shouldn't have left you behind.'
'But you should be able to. I need to be capable if I'm to be a Mage Hunter,' Athena growled.
Cassida Rane knew she was right but he still felt responsible for almost getting her killed, 'You're right and the first thing we need to review is entering locked rooms and searching for assailants.'
Athena snatched her arm back, 'Good... good.' There was a sadness to her eyes but she held back the thoughts that spawned the expression.
Cassida Rane carried on to through the door and up the stairs to find the corpse exactly where he'd left it. He checked the man's pockets but there was nothing, then his boots and there was nothing there either. The pocket on the mage's coat was stretched out, the fabric deformed from many years of carrying something, 'Something is missing. Check the room, maybe he stashed what he had.'
Athena began searching the room, beginning at the wall by the door opening drawers and chests, then looking underneath them. She came to a small bed with a straw mattress. There was nothing underneath it. She drew her knife and slit the sackcloth open and pulled the straw out, with one handful a clunk hit the floorboards.
Cassida Rane reached for what hid in the straw, he found a small leather pouch stuffed with coins. Silver coins with serpents on one side. Scrip of the Cartographers' Guild. He found the coin that he discovered back at the house earlier in the day, it was the same. 'What is a mage doing with a pouch of map maker scrip?'
Athena scrutinised the cloth she'd gutted. 'The stitching is different here,' she held out a section of the seam. 'Might not be his.'
Cassida Rane slid the pouch into the dead mage's pocket, the bulge in the wool filling out. 'Too coincidental. What good is this to a mage anyway?' he retrieved the purse of coins.
'Cartographers' Guild offer a lot of services to their members. They have a fine tool blacksmith, a carriage network, clothing, all kinds of things only available with those Silver Serpents,' Athena said. 'Doesn't the Castrum use the map makers a lot?'
'We do but I've never had any dealings with them in a long while as I don't spend much time in the Castrum,' Cassida Rane stashed the purse of scrip in his greatcloak, along with the one he found in the dirt beneath the house. 'Though now, I have to visit the Cartographers, ask a few questions. I know someone who can help, I was apprenticed there before joining the Castrum. Only for a season before I was discovered. Hopefully there are no ill sentiments.’
‘You were a map maker?’
‘Ha! Not likely. Never left the lecture hall, wasn’t there long enough before a master of the Castrum came and took me away. I didn’t have a choice, not that I would have refused. Mage hunting is far more invigorating than cartography.’
‘A lot more dangerous,’ Athena added, her eyes going vacant.
Cassida Rane stared at the ceiling, there wasn’t anything he could say to that, not yet anyway, so he chose to move past it, for now, 'Well, we're done here. Let us return to the Castrum.'
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