Chương 25: The Imperial Bloodline (1)

"Up, boy. We've arrived." Teren opened his eyes to iron bars and late morning light. His hand went to his side before he realized he meant it to. He might not be in the alley anymore, but his body still remembered Rulven's blade. No wound. No blood. No knife under the ribs. No pain either, thankfully. He flexed his fingers next. The cut across his palm was gone. Only a slave's chains around his wrists were present. Teren let his hand fall back to his lap.

The conscription route had given him basic weapons training and taught him enough to make his next choice clear. Food and weapons could keep him alive longer. Training helped too. But the moment he showed even a tiny spark of magic in the wrong place, people decided he was a threat and tried to drag him away for questioning. Or worse. He needed to meet Edras again. Not because he trusted the old mage completely. But the archmage had seen the purple mana and reacted with surprise rather than fear.

He had asked questions instead of reaching for a weapon. If anyone could teach him how to control the purple fire, it was Edras. The problem was reaching that stage without triggering the explosive trap beneath the doorway again. But this time, maybe Teren could warn him before they crossed that threshold. He let the morning move as it had done before so many times. Dagan attacked the guards and was beaten into the dirt. The clerk asked the same questions, and Teren gave the answers that led him to the assay.

When his hand closed around the brass grip, he did not clamp down on his mana. Instead, he pushed as much of it as he could into the assay. He only hoped the old mage would arrive before the white fire came. The crystal flashed purple. The yard changed at once. Guards shouted. The yard-master went pale. Edras came running from the examination hall, hid the result beneath a claim of a faulty crystal producing a false color, ordered Teren's chains removed, and took him away in the same warded carriage.

Teren climbed into the carriage and took the seat opposite Edras. The door closed behind the old mage. Outside, the driver called to the horses, and the carriage began moving away from the intake compound. For a while, neither of them spoke. Teren watched the compound disappear through the narrow rear window. No white fire appeared between the buildings. No sudden heat reached him. The guards remained alive, the walls remained standing, and the carriage continued into the city.

Only when the compound was out of sight did some of the tension leave his shoulders. Edras had been watching him.

"You were looking for something back there." Teren turned from the window.

"I wasn't sure what was going to happen after the assay reacted like that."

"You said something similar before we entered the carriage." Edras leaned back against the seat.

"You were expecting fire." Teren hesitated, then nodded.

"It was just a feeling." The old mage did not look convinced, but he let the answer stand for now.

"What you did with the assay was reckless," he said instead.

"You forced far more mana into it than the device was built to measure."

"I... didn't know that."

"I gathered as much." Edras studied him for another moment.

"You truly had never sensed mana before today?"

"Not until I touched that thing."

"And yet you managed to force enough through it for me to feel the pulse from inside the examination hall." Teren looked down at his hand.

"I somehow knew what that thing felt like by then. I just pushed harder." Edras's eyes remained on him.

"That is not the part that concerns me most." Teren exhaled.

"The purple color?" A pause followed. Teren glanced toward the shuttered window, knowing he had to play the part of someone who was having this conversation for the very first time.

"Is it really that unusual?" Edras's expression changed slightly.

"Unusual is not the word I would use." He lowered his voice even though they were alone.

"I have spent most of my life studying magic, and I have never seen mana produce that color in person. I had stopped believing I ever would." Teren already knew where this conversation led. Even so, he kept his expression uncertain.

"Is it really that special?" Edras frowned at him.

"Why do you say that?" Teren waited a moment before answering. This was the part he had been thinking about since waking in the wagon.

"Because I've seen the same color before." The old mage became completely still.

"Where?" Teren looked at his palm.

"A few days ago, I think. I don't know the exact day. Everything before the wagon is... confused." Edras became alert.

"Where did you see that color? Who used it?" Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

"I didn't see someone else doing it." Teren raised his hand slightly.

"I did." Edras stared at him. Teren continued before the mage could interrupt.

"I'd never been able to use any kind of magic before. At least, I don't remember being able to. But I was in trouble. Life-and-death trouble. I thought I was gonna die." That part was true enough. He remembered the dark alley. Rulven's knife. The terror when the blade went into him. He was just changing the details to fit the story he needed Edras to believe.

"I tried to do something. Anything. And this little flame appeared in my hand. Purple, exactly like the crystal today. It wasn't large enough to help me much, but I managed to survive." Edras leaned forward.

"Can you produce it now?"

"I think so."

"You think so?"

"I've only done it a few times. It's not like I became an expert mage overnight." Edras reached across the carriage and pulled the curtains over both narrow windows. He checked the rear window as well, then placed two fingers against the wooden wall. Blue lines briefly spread beneath his fingertips before disappearing into the carriage panels.

"Show me." Teren looked at the closed curtains.

"What about the guards outside?"

"They cannot see through the carriage walls, and the ward will prevent anyone nearby from sensing any mana usage inside." Edras held out one hand.

"Do it." Teren took a slow breath. The first time the purple flame had appeared, he had been alone behind the barracks at night, experimenting with his mana in the darkness. The next time, he had managed a tiny flicker while he had been desperate and seconds from death, fighting for his life against Rulven. But he knew the feeling now. He reached inward, searching for the pressure beneath his skin. It came more easily than it once had.

Teren drew a small amount toward his palm, trying not to let it surge away from him. A tiny purple flame appeared above his fingers. The old mage drew in a sharp breath.

"The imperial bloodline still lives..." The flame was hardly impressive. Smaller than the flame of a candle, and unsteady enough that it leaned sideways before straightening again. Edras stared at it anyway. For a few seconds, the old mage said nothing. The flame wavered. Teren concentrated on keeping it alive.

"Enough," Edras said at last. Teren cut off the mana. The purple flame vanished. Edras continued staring at his empty hand.

"So it really is that special," Teren said. The mage looked up at him.

"Do not create that flame where anyone can see you."

"Trust me, I wasn't planning to."

"I mean it. No one. Not a guard, not another mage, not someone you think you can trust because they seem friendly. No one." Teren lowered his hand.

"Why?" Edras sat back slowly. The explanation that followed was similar to the one Teren remembered from the previous loop. The mage told him that purple mana and purple flame had belonged to the Corvadryn bloodline, a dynasty believed to have died out when the thousand-year-old Corvadryn Empire came to an end more than a century ago. No one outside the imperial dynasty had ever been known to produce purple mana or purple flame. Teren looked down at his hand as if seeing it differently now.

"So that crystal reacted like that because I'm descended from them?"

"That is what I believe."

"An imperial dynasty that has been dead for more than a century. And yet, I somehow have their blood..." Teren looked at the mage.

"Are you sure that nobody else can make a flame that color?"

"Not outside the Corvadryn bloodline. If you can create it—as you just proved—then whatever else remains uncertain, your connection to that line is not. If you were trying to deceive me, you would need knowledge and control far beyond what I can sense from you." That was reassuring for more than one reason. Teren did not have to pretend very hard that he barely understood what he was doing. When it came to controlling the purple flame, he genuinely didn't.

"Even then, you could not have produced that flame," Edras added.

"Nobody could. And people have tried—powerful mages, even archmages. Some believed that if they could reproduce Corvadryn fire, they might also gain whatever allowed the old imperial line to bond with dragons." Teren frowned.

"Where are the dragons, anyway? I haven't seen even one, and I've never heard anyone talk as if they're still around."

"Nobody knows now. Dragons have not been seen for more than a century. Not since the last known Corvadryn died. Whatever understanding existed between them and the imperial line, the dragons seem to have chosen to withdraw somewhere beyond the reach of anyone who went looking for them." Teren looked down at his hand. What kind of bond had existed between the Corvadryns and the dragons? And if the dragons had disappeared when the bloodline died out, where had they gone?

Would they come back now, if that bloodline had survived after all? Although, perhaps it was better if they didn't come back anytime soon. Teren already had enough problems—and enough people trying to kill him—without also having to wonder what the dragons might want from the first Corvadryn to appear in more than a century. Edras looked at him.

"Who saw the flame the first time? When you made it to protect yourself?" Teren had expected the question. If only he could explain to someone about the time loop he was trapped in. He shook his head and gave Edras the explanation he had worked out on the way here.

"I'm not really sure. I don't know if anyone did." Edras seemed to be thinking for a moment.

"That might become dangerous for you. If anyone saw that flame and understood even part of what it meant, we have to assume the secret may already be compromised. Try to remember." Teren immediately thought of the white fire. Someone or something in Karthane had recognized the purple assay result quickly enough to try to kill everyone who had seen it. He still had no idea who that person was, or how they had known what the color meant.

For a moment, he considered asking Edras whether he knew anyone capable of using white fire. But there was no way to explain why Teren was asking that without revealing things he could not possibly know.

"Well, it was dark. I was still being held near the village where the slavers had taken me before the journey here. I got separated from the others for a while and someone came after me." Teren paused, keeping the lie as close to the truth as he could.

"I didn't see their faces clearly. I don't know whether anyone else was nearby when the flame appeared." Edras frowned.

"Which village?" Teren gave him what little he knew about the place from things he had heard the other slaves mention across the previous loops.

"Hm... I will have someone make quiet inquiries," Edras said.

"Nothing that mentions you or the flame. I want to know whether any unusual rumors have started there." Teren just nodded, knowing the mage wouldn't find anything there. Edras pulled one curtain aside by an inch and looked outside before letting it fall again.

"I still intend to test you properly when we reach my compound." Teren should have expected that.

"Even after seeing the flame?"

"The flame tells me enough to take this seriously but it does not tell me everything." Edras looked at him again.

"I have instruments that can confirm the mana signature under controlled conditions. And there is one device in particular that can identify old magical bloodlines with far greater precision." The lineage resonator.

"Is there any risk in doing the test?"

"If used properly, no." Teren kept his face still. That was almost funny to hear after what had happened the last time he used the resonator. Teren looked toward the covered window instead. He would let Edras perform every test that stayed above ground. The more evidence the mage had, the less reason he would have to doubt Teren when he finally refused the one that mattered.

The carriage continued through Karthane for over an hour, passed through another wall and guarded gate, and then began climbing toward the palace hill. Teren had seen the route before, so he paid little attention to the markets and stone mansions they passed. He noticed the fortified dungeon entrance when it appeared on the hillside, then the palace walls above them, with a few broad-hulled airships moving slowly through the sky nearby.

Eventually, the carriage turned onto the quieter road leading to Edras's research compound.