31. THE FIRST MAGE

  Twenty-one men and women stood out in the desert, all in a line, ready to be tested by the resistance.

  I stepped out from behind some bare scrub brushes and a lone dead tree. A hush came over the small group of would-be rebels, each watching me as I walked toward them wearing my long black duster and hat, my staff in my right hand.

  Today the heat felt oppressive and the humidity had fallen so low that any sweat evaporated into the air before it could cool the skin.

  I stepped up toward the group, walking down the line of them, and looking at each of them in the eyes before I said a word. I tried to offer a small smile, but this was deadly serious. We knew Uof was trying to get his people to infiltrate our ranks.

  “We know the world is dying because of Uof and The Motorized,” I said, slowly looking at each of them, one by one. “Maybe you've heard the stories? It's this simple: Our cause must succeed, or we’ll all die. We’ll die now, or we’ll die later. All of us. Including our kin and generations ahead of us will not be born. But we cannot trust you yet—any of you.”

  “I know you’ve each been through other tests of your loyalty already," I said. "But we have to be careful. If you prove yourself, we will teach you to fight, test you for magical ability, and train you to help the resistance. First, though, you all must test with me. Strip down to your underclothes. No hats, boots, cloaks, shirts, or pants. Do it now.”

  I looked down at the ground, and stood stock still in front of them, giving them a moment.

  After a few seconds of looking at each other wonderingly, each man and woman began to take off overcoats and hats and boots laying them in piles. They each stripped down to a thin layer of dirty underclothes and stood there, their skin warming up. The heat of the sun would begin to overheat their bodies in a matter of minutes, which each of them knew full well.

  Then I brought up my staff.

  I’d already imbued my Staff of Matter with enough matter to weave many spells. I began a weave using the staff and finished by pointing the staff toward a small wooden bowl sitting in the dirt.

  It was my simple water spell. Moving my arms in the well-rehearsed pattern I’d known and used most of my life. I directed the matter from the eagle toward the bowl and triggered the spell. The bowl immediately filled with water.

  “This is a very simple test,” I said, almost quietly. “You stand there, do not sit down. The first three people to come and get a drink of water out of this canteen will not be able to join us. We must know that you can stand up to threat and even torture for our cause. If we find that you can last and bear the heat, without water—then we’ll move on to phase two of the tests.”

  Then I sat down in the dirt, pulled my hat down a little, and waited. A few of our men stood nearby with canteens of water, keeping cool themselves.

  From under the brim of watched our twenty new recruits, knowing that Greer and Shade were doing the same thing with other groups of people in other parts of the desert. New recruits had begun to pour in to join us from all over the city and even from outside the city as news of our rebellion spread and took hold.

  Between the story we told about what we'd seen in the Factory all over Vale, and the brazen rescue of Ehren in the market in front of Uof himself, we'd caused quite a stir. Still, we knew that Uof’s agents would be part of this, and were likely here with us now, seeking to infiltrate our growing army. This test would not just prove loyalty, so much as strength, but we needed both.

  The real test of loyalty would come later.

  As I sat in the desert sand, waiting, I thought about the armies of the so-called First Mage. In the stories which were centuries old now, he was often called The Master of The Way, or simply, Mark, the First Mage. Legend said he was the one who had first begun to train others in magic, and codify the edicts of The Way, giving mages their tattoos when they'd reached a certain level of training. Stories told how he'd worked out the limits and laws of The Way alone, out in the desert during an extended quest to master the forces of the mysterious source of magic.

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  Prior to First Mage, there'd always been magic wielders, those who were smart enough or crazy enough to figure out how to cast a spell or two. In the legends, many of these early magicians were hermits, people who stayed away from society, living on the periphery and seeking the answers to the mysteries of the universe. Most of them only ever grasped thin strands of rudimentary magic and but never enough to know how it truly worked. Some even died as a result of their experiments with magic gone wrong.

  Mark, the First Mage changed all that. He sought out those with any sort of magical ability and trained up the first Spellcasters, an army of warrior mages who had mastered specific disciplines of The Way. They all trained in the arts of war and swordplay as well. The Spellcasters became famous for their raw ability to fight, use magic in a variety of ways to help others, and for the creation of untold new spells, the secrets of which they kept to themselves. As a result, Mark’s Spellcasters toppled tyrants, lent their strength to various causes, and spread their arts around the world, beginning a renaissance period in the history of mankind.

  I’d never been hopeful enough to dream about an army of mages, but our numbers were surging so I kept thinking of Mark and the Spellcasters. If five percentage of people showed varying levels of magical ability, we could build a small, but focused army of mages quite quickly while our resistance fighters grew even faster. We were all eager to gather and train more to help us battle against Uof and The Motorized—now that he'd shown his face, our urgency had ratcheted up fast.

  After forty-five minutes or so, someone caved in.

  A young man who began the test with pasty white skin, had earned himself a sunburn in a short amount of time, and fell to his knees breathing hard, his body overheating. A few moments later, he crawled to the water bowl, which of course, was already empty.

  His face fell when he realized that the bowl no longer held water. One of our men gave him a canteen, helped him dress, and escorted him away.

  Phase two began immediately after we had sent three people home. Weakened from the first test, the remaining men and women now stood with their clothes on, drinking from our canteens to rehydrate, most of them looking exhausted, their faces reddened. This was exactly the state of mind and body that we wanted them in for the next test.

  I stood back up.

  “The next phase of our test is an interview. With me,” I said. “You will tell me why you are here. That is all.”

  I pointed to the first person in the line of eighteen remaining volunteers, a young woman who looked determined and focused. Maybe even angry.

  “You go first,” I said.

  She came over and we both sat down on the dirt, facing one another. As she sat, using matter from the head of my staff, I wove a fast spell, too quickly for anyone to see—binding her words to truth. This was a test that could detect deception, though they wouldn’t realize that until afterward.

  She looked me in the eyes, and I smiled, trying to put her at ease. Her face looked hardened, her eyes fierce. She’d seen some hard things in her life.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “Leandra,” she said.

  “Why are you here Leandra?”

  After one full day of rigorous testing, we gained over two hundred and fifty men and women for our resistance forces, all of whom we tested for magical ability. We found twenty-two more men and women who never realized they had the ability to use magic and could learn to follow The Way of the Mark. The ranks of our Spellcasters grew.

  We also found a dozen spies who we could be certain sought to infiltrate our ranks, sent by Uof or one of his generals. We discovered each of them, imprisoning some of them immediately, while sending someone to tail a few of them to gather whatever intelligence we could.

  While Dirk and his men trained the regulars, readying them to be part of the resistance army, Bend, Greer, Shade, Ehren, and I took our future mages along with some of the mages we'd rescued, out into the desert immediately to begin training.

  We split into smaller groups and started the mages out on simple spells—transforming matter into water and fire and wind. In several days, we identified the strengths and weaknesses and discovered those who conjured the most powerful spells like Greer and those who had the ability or desire to create new spells like Shade.

  Other mages found their greatest gifting in the art of imbuing magic into an item or creating talismans. The mages chained up in Uof’s Factory were doing this day in and day out to create motorized hybrid weapons. In essence, they were creating talismans, of a sort. We separated the Talismanic Mages out from the other Mages and had them begin to learn the little that I knew of this art form. Then they began imbuing everyone’s weapon of choice with a variety of powers to help in the coming battles.

  As a result of our swelling ranks, rare matter became even more precious. Each of our men scoured the city for rare matter and metals of any kind—we began breaking up any motorized tools and weapons to use for spells.

  As a result, the city experienced a drought of sorts.

  Meanwhile, Dirk and Bend set up regular lookout rotations set up in Percy’s hiding spot, watching Uof and The Factory. With the intelligence we gained, we knew that Uof came out to The Factory most mornings, though later in the day, he often disappeared to the North and West, beyond where we could see.

  This was a mystery I was determined to solve.