Chapter 7

  After finishing off the bowl of stew, I stood up and walked to the corner of the room. I donned my hat and long black coat, and checked my pockets, finding everything where it had been.

  I took a few steps around the room, relieved to find the pain in my side had lessened, especially now with food in my stomach. Taking a deep breath, I scanned the room for something to drink but found nothing. Drawing my pack from the floor, I withdrew my cup and a small rock.

  I performed my simple granite-to-water spell, and drank it down.

  As I finished the water, Dirk stepped into the room.

  “I’m glad to see you awake,” he said, his face grim as he drew a chair toward me. I sat down on the bed.

  “Dirk, thank you for helping me,” I grunted, putting my cup away into my pack, and smiling carefully. “I believe I owe you a favor.”

  He contemplated this comment, hope flickering briefly in his eyes before fading, his expression hardening.

  “I’m not sure what can be done,” Dirk said. “Vale is no longer a place for your kind, and it’s certainly not a place for an aging, wounded mage.”

  I nodded as he continued.

  “Mage, if I may call you that, they’re out looking for you. They’re ransacking the entire city, inside and out. We’ve already lost some of our tunnels and hiding places. No one has come to Vale and performed magic in the city as brazenly as you did—not in decades,” Dirk sighed. “The motorized are angry, turning over every bed, basement, and hidden door. Eventually, they’ll find this place.”

  I blinked at him. This was to be expected. “So we need to move quickly, then, yes?”

  “Yes,” Dirk said. “The men you attacked out in the desert — one of them didn’t make it. A thug named Marken. Now, Marken was a bad man, but no one in Vale kills Uof’s men.”

  “Tell me about Uof. I’ve heard the stories — but they can’t all be true.”

  Dirk nodded and glanced around, ensuring no one was listening, seemingly out of habit.

  “Uof controls the city, the thugs, the Motorized, the markets, how and when people get fed — everything.”

  “And his men took your son, does that place any suspicion on you?” I asked. “Surely, they must be watching you.”

  “Not really, at least not yet,” Dirk replied, looking down. “Well, perhaps some. I’ve had to publicly disavow him to keep my tailor’s shop open. I’ve been keeping my head down, going out much less.”

  “So, where is your son now?”

  Dirk shook his head. “Bend was taken eight days ago, and I followed his captors into the city. Bend is the last among us who tried to follow The Way of the Mark. He has the spark and was the only one who could make the spells work. That’s why they took him.”

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  “Bend? How old was — I mean, how old is he?”

  “Eighteen.”

  From what little I’d seen in this city, the kid was likely dead already.

  “Have you seen him since?” I asked.

  Dirk shook his head, leaning back in the chair.

  “I can show you where they took him — at first.”

  I took a deep breath, contemplating Dirk. He wore a close-cropped tuft of light blond hair, graying at the temples, and looked at me with a craggy, sun-worn face. His clothes were those of a poor tailor, yet his hands showed signs of hard labor every day of his life. Dirk must have had a second job, or he spent most of his free time building tunnels and shelters under the city for the whatever resistance remained in Vale.

  “Dirk, thank you for your help,” I said, coughing lightly. “In coming here, I sought to find someone of the Way. That was my sole purpose — as I need to pass on what I’ve learned over many decades. If your son is still alive, I will do everything I can find him.”

  “Praise the Creator,” Dirk whispered with a small shudder, and it was then I could see the fear in him.

  I clasped his shoulder and smiled as warmly as I could. “I can’t guarantee what has happened to him, but I will find him.”

  “Thank you,” Dirk stammered. “You know, there are others here who seek to follow the Way and may have the gift, but none have been branded with the mark like Bend. There is no one left to train them. I can’t make it work — I don’t have the gift.”

  “Only a four or five in a hundred people have the spark, Dirk.”

  “Do you have it?” he asked me carefully, looking up. “The Mark? Lissa says you wear it, but other than my son and his mentor, who has been dead now for years, I haven’t seen it on anyone else.”

  I nodded slowly, and slightly embarrassed, I opened the buttons on my shirt.

  The tattoo over my heart consisted of the swirling crest of The Way of the Mark in blue-black ink. The crest was a simple teardrop-shaped shield with four unique symbols in the four quadrants of the shield itself.

  Above the shield, a phrase that read in the ancient tongue “Of the Mark,” and down the sides, swirling vines. This part of the Mark was the same for every tattoo I’d seen on a mage.

  Each mage of the Way earned four symbols inside their shield, based on their talents and chosen areas of study. In my early years training with The Way, the tattoos represented a private matter for mages, and they only showed them to close, trusted friends. After so many years of training though, some mages grew proud of their areas of study, so they showed them off to other mages and outsiders alike, training shirtless, wearing their tattoos like badges of honor.

  However, as the Motorized spread across the land and began to persecute every mage they found, the tattoos became a way of tracking down and proving someone had trained in The Way.

  In fact, the marks had became a curse.

  Inscribed inside the shield on my chest, was the symbol of a book, then a single water drop, a sword, which was actually quite rare, and a map bearing a series of lines.

  Dirk’s eyes went wide with wonder.

  “A sword?” he said with a question. “I thought the Way was primarily a defensive path.”

  “Some of us, though rare in the ranks of The Way, trained specifically in the arts of war,” I replied, though Dirk didn’t know that this was my least sure area of study — I hadn’t used the war spells very often throughout my years of travel. One might say I was rusty as there had been almost no mages trained in this emphasis when I first began to study.

  “It’s not a common mark. I’ve only met two others in all my many years with the sword. Both of them are long since dead.”

  “And the map?” he asked.

  “Geography and mapmaking,” I said. This was my standard answer to throw off curiosity. But in actuality, I’d earned this symbol for geography, mapmaking, and military strategy and battle tactics.

  “What symbols did your son earn?” I asked, buttoning up my shirt.

  “He only had one symbol in his shield,” Dirk said, a hint of pride in his words. “He hadn’t earned any others yet. It was the symbol of three logs and fire, signifying ‘survival.’ The last mage who came through Vale many years ago trained him in various desert and mountain survival spells. At least that’s what Bend told me.”

  I hope Bend is using those skills now, I thought.

  Dirk’s face darkened as he thought about his son. He couldn’t afford to hope, but when he looked at me again, there was a glimmer in his eyes.

  He nodded.

  “Come, I will show you what we have to work with. Also, the others would like to meet you.”

  I stood up and followed Dirk to the door.