“There was nothing to do but make camp before nightfall. Nights in the mountains are chilly no matter the season. We discussed all that had come to pass, especially the attitude of the villagers. If a new lodge were to be built, we realized it would have to be done with our very own hands. We’d also have to start fresh, start collecting a new library and the equipment necessary in the practice of the art. Some of the knowledge in the library was irreplaceable, but we were determined to start again. We hoped the villagers would eventually come to accept us as they once had and develop the agreeable relationship we previously enjoyed. What we did not expect was murder in the night.”
SACRIFICES
Dale leaned forward, eager for Merdigen to continue, but the mage slumped in his chair as if in pain.
“What happened?” she prompted.
“Some of the villagers came during the dark of night while we slept and started killing us.” His voice was muffled. “They killed us, though we had never used our gifts of magic for ill, never for violence.”
“Why?” Dale asked, horrified. “Why did they do it?”
He lifted his head and gazed at her. His face looked awful, gray and shadowed. “Tell me,” he said, “why there is a spell of concealment over your Rider brooch.”
“What?” Dale’s fingers went to the gold brooch, touching its angles and contours, reassured by its familiar shape and texture. And she shrugged. “It’s always been this way. I was told that it was a way of identifying a true Rider from those who were false.” As she said it, it suddenly did not seem like an adequate explanation.
“Do the mundanes, er, the non-Riders around you, know of Rider magic?”
“No. It’s not something we discuss. The king and his advisors know, of course, and I suspect the Weapons do as well.”
Merdigen shuddered. “Yes,” he murmured, “the Black Shields would. Now tell me why you do not openly discuss your abilities.”
“Because,” Dale said, “its…magic isn’t accepted. People don’t like it. It reminds them of the terrible things Mornhavon did during the Long War.”
“Hmph. Once those badges of office were worn proudly and unhidden, but things changed. Imagine the atmosphere just after the war—the fear, the anger, the hatred of all things magical.”
Dale had not lived through that time as Merdigen had, nor was her knowledge of the history great, but she began to understand. It didn’t take much to imagine the fear and suspicion of people who had endured a hundred years of war led by one endowed with enormous powers, powers that were used as a weapon that took lives, leveled towns, and created monstrosities. If magic was held with suspicion today, back then it must have been despised.
The League may have defeated Mornhavon, but the Sacoridians had been a beaten people, reduced to the very lowest levels of humanity able to survive and carry on. She could only imagine how King Jonaeus had fought to retain his control over the ragged country. Opportunists must have swooped in like carrion birds to wrest power from him: warlords, mercenaries, his own subjects. In this environment, something had to take the blame for all the woes that troubled the land.
“Your brooches were known in those days for what they were: devices to augment your innate abilities. Those who were against all magic demanded the brooches be destroyed, along with many other artifacts of magic. Under great pressure from these powerful individuals, the king had no choice but to acquiesce.”
“But—” Dale gripped her brooch all the harder.
Merdigen’s lips curled into an ironic smile. “And thus it was believed the brooches were destroyed. The real brooches, however, received a spell of concealment and the Riders retained their abilities, but they’ve remained a well-kept secret, and for good reason.”
Dale wondered what kind of danger her ancestral Riders had been in simply because they possessed minor magical abilities that emerged only when coupled with the brooches. The opponents to magic must have judged the Riders harmless once their brooches were amputated from them. And this after all the Riders had done against Mornhavon in the service of their country.
“Yes,” Merdigen said, “they came for us, those who feared and hated us. You referred to the Scourge as a disease, a disease that started taking lives at the end of the war. True, there was plague that spread among the population and claimed lives, but there was another that selectively culled those with magical talents, or those suspected of having them. It was not that they sickened, but that they were persecuted; persecuted by those who had not slaked the hatred in their hearts during the war. They believed magic to be the root of evil, and its elimination the remedy to every ill. Things would improve once the evil magic was cleansed from the land—the cleansing, they believed, would end starvation and poverty and the country would arise from the devastation. The fanatics spoke with bold voices and the promise of better days easily bought by the elimination of magic. Many rushed to their cause, and across the land thousands were murdered.”
This was a part of history Dale had never learned, not even during her Green Rider training. She had always heard of the Scourge in terms of illness and plague, not in terms of persecution. She had always thought the end of the Long War brought celebration and light, but now she saw just how devastated her ancestors had been. Peace was not something to celebrate, but something to survive.
Merdigen conjured himself another ale and looked weary. He drank deeply from his mug and said, “A very bleak time, and all the while the king struggled to hold the country together. Perhaps that was a greater battle than those he fought in the Long War. Though I might have railed against him and cursed his name during my exile on the Island of Sorrows, I began to see him for the leader he truly was. But that is jumping ahead in the tale.”