Starlight, Ch. 1

Ch. 1: Evil on the Horizon

Every morning, I follow the same routine. After I wake up and clean my face and change into my clothes, I braid my hair. It takes hours to braid, brush out and tidy up. Then I wrap that braid around my head, and wrap a purple scarf over it, so nobody could ever see my hard work, taming my unruly auburn hair. Mages never let anybody see their hair. A Mage takes great pride in their hair. They never cut it, starting on the day they decide to start practicing magic. For me, that day was the first day of my life.

I was born to the King and Queen of Osmore, who desperately wanted a baby boy. Instead of being a decent man and not caring about my gender, as it had no role in my ability to rule a country, my father decided that instead of being an heir to the throne, I would be the great High Mage of Osmore, more powerful than any Mage to walk before me. He said the very thought of me would strike fear in our enemies, and no kingdom would dare threaten our rule. The funny part was that my father was right.

I have never once cut my hair, and I never will. That is a fact about me, about all mages. Another practice of the Mages was how they declared war. If a Mage’s country was at war, they would take off the scarves covering their hair and let everybody see. I had only been at war once when I was a little girl.

***

I was seven years old, just starting to learn battle magic and defensive spells. My father called me and my brothers into the meeting hall.

“Iriline, my sweet, there you are,” he told me, smiling pleasantly. It was suspicious when he was kind to me. I could not call him father, I could not sit with them at dinner, since they were the royal family, and I was simply the Great Mage. Still, it can with a few perks. I had my own throne, next to my parents so they could put me on display to visiting diplomats, while the princes had to stand at attention with the men in the military.

“When the diplomats from Eltrine arrive, I would like you to remove your scarf, so they may see your hair,” my father declared.

“Your Majesty, that is an act of war,” I told him, dipping my head slightly. I wasn’t supposed to talk to him like he was my father.

“Iriline, they have upset me. They have upset our allies. If we do not declare war, we will lose the allegiances my father worked so hard to build. You don’t want that, do you, Iriline?”

“No, your Majesty. I do not,” I told him, bowing my head.

“Do we finally get to see sister’s hair?” my youngest brother, Tetram, asked.

“That is not the point, my son. Not the point at all,”

Tetram mocked me after the meeting with the diplomats, and, finally being able to reach my hair, he yanked it and ran away. My brothers always had a certain affinity for making me angry.

When the diplomats arrived, my father looked very angry. I was scared when he was angry, but today, he was not angry with me. He lounged back in his throne, while the diplomats from Eltrine looked uneasy in the crowd below. There was a Mage with them, a pretty boy with dark skin and a green scarf wrapped around his head. He looked to be a little older than me.

They must have planned it out in advance, without my knowledge, because they seemed to know what was coming. My father gave me a hand gesture, and I rose from my seat. I unpinned the pink scarf I loved so much back then and pulled it off of my head. My hair, in its long braid, tumbled down from my head. The head diplomat gave the boy a gesture, and he, too, removed his scarf. He had black hair that was nowhere near as long as mine. He couldn’t have been practicing magic long. The sorrow on his pretty face mirrored my own. Neither of us believed there should be war.

For three straight weeks, I wore no scarf on my head, and my hair down. The war resolved itself when whatever Eltrine did to upset my father and his allies was undone. After that, I put my scarf back on and suffered my brothers bullying me about my unkempt and frizzled red hair.

***

Today was a different day. I followed my routine, braiding my hair, pinning it up, covering it with my scarf, and going up to the Mage’s tower. My mother was there, waiting for me.

“Good morning, Iriline. How are things today?” she questioned me. I was never particularly close with my parents after they dumped me off with some tutors and hoped I turned out well. Nobody ever treated me like a true member of the royal family. I was just Iriline, the Great Mage. My mother rarely talked to me. When she did, it was about a psychic reading she wanted to be done. On rare occasions, she would joke, and I would genuinely laugh, and I would wonder why we were never closer.

“Just as well as they can be,” I said. My mother looked a lot like me if I had cut my hair. Her hair went down to only her shoulders and was fluffy instead of frizzled. She had an angular face and a long nose, with deep-set spring-green eyes. At times, she appeared haunted. That was another difference between us. I had my father's blue eyes.

“Iriline, my dearest girl, I have a favor to ask of you,” she said. I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

“What can I do for you?” I said, pulling out a chair at my table. I took great pride in my tower. I had every spellbook, every potion, and every ingredient neatly organized on shelves. I had three lanterns, hanging from chains to light my tower, and a workbench in the corner. I had a small table where I did consultations and psychic readings, with two chairs. Both were made of a dark wood, lined with a soft purple cloth. My workbench in the corner was worn and stained, but the top was neat. It was a lighter wood than the chairs and the table, the varnish had been rubbed off, and I didn’t feel like lugging it all the way down the tower to redo it. I had a small stack of my journals, full of my experiments and thoughts on current events. I had a mortar and pestle, a wood board to cut on, a small case containing my knives, measuring equipment, and a few jars of commonly used spell ingredients.

“Does my hair seem less red to you, Iriline?” my mother did that when she talked. Purposely using my name more often than she should, to pretend she cared for me.

“It looks the same as always,” I told her.

“I’ve just been feeling so old. Don’t you have any magic creams or potions to make my skin clearer? Or my hair more vibrant?”

“What, did Father threaten to leave you for a younger woman?” I chuckled. She jokingly hit me on the shoulder and chuckled along with me.

“We both know he could never accomplish that,” she said. For a moment I forgot that she didn’t like me, and I wasn't supposed to like her. In another world, we are friends, who laugh about the male-dominated society that needs to make sure we are lesser than.

“Well, I could make your hair glow, or I could give you a shapeshifting spell, but that only lasts a day or two,”

“I mean, I could pull off glowing hair, couldn’t I?” I smiled.

“I think we should stick to psychic readings, Mom,” she looked startled by the unfamiliar word, Mom. I’d make a note of that. Queen Ulai does not like being called mom. I pulled the ingredients for the psychic reading off the shelf. For psychic readings, you would need a quartz stone, smoothed by the sea, a pinch of ash from a fire burned for seven days, and a bunch of dried pine needles.

I would place the quartz stone in the middle of the table, then I would sit my subject down in a chair across from me. I would use my thumb to wipe the ash across their forehead and lay some pine needles in front of them. Once my mother asked what these things represented. I told her that the needles were from an evergreen, everlasting. You need something everlasting to see the future. The ash represented the past. You have to acknowledge the past to accept the future. And the quartz was just a conduit, to run my magic through so I didn’t kill whoever sat across from me with raw power.

My mother had done this a million times before and knew the drill by now. She placed one hand on top of the quartz stone, and one over the pine needles. I placed both of my hands on the quartz.

“Visus, visus, visus, ore lan da mihi aspectum. Videam quae occulta sunt,” I said. The quartz glowed as my raw energy ran through it. I shut my eyes to let the visions in. First I saw a caravan of five, no, maybe six people. They were traveling west, towards us.

“Six people are coming to the kingdom, in a caravan,” I told my mother, remembering she couldn’t see what I saw.

“They have boxes piled high in the back of their wagon, they’re hiding something,”

“Well what is it?” my mother asked.

“Weapons, many of them. Swords and daggers mostly,”

“Are they planning an attack?”

“I have no idea what they are doing. I can’t hear, I can only see. Oh, now one of them is opening a map, no wait it’s not a map. It’s a building's floor plan. It’s our floor plan,” The vision broke off, away from me. Sometimes the psychic readings don’t end up being about the person I’m reading, but an important event in their lives. I just wondered how these people were important to my mother. All I could gather is that they were on their way here. She didn’t even bother wiping the ash off her forehead before she hurried out the door.

“They are coming for us. The King must know. Thank you,” she called out as she ran down the hallway, her heels clicking sharply on the stone. I sighed.

“Bye Mother,” I whispered as she turned the corner and hurried down the stairs.