The Dragons of Dorcastle by Jack Campbell Read Free Book Online Page A

had shown no signs of threatening her. “We’ll have to wait until dark to have any chance of getting down there without being detected.”
    “Can you conceal yourself?” the Mage asked.
    “What?”
    “Can you conceal yourself?” the Mage repeated. “Use a spell to make yourself hard to see?”
    “You’ve got to be kidding,” Mari said. But the Mage appeared to be perfectly serious. “No. I’ve got dark clothes on. That’s as good as it gets.”
    “Then I should go alone. I can hide my presence, though with effort, and have a better chance of succeeding.”
    Mari regarded him. She was less concerned about being spotted than she was about physically collapsing during a climb down from here. That would make so much noise the bandits would hear it for certain. But if she stayed up here, the Mage would have a free hand down there. “How can I trust you, Mage Alain?” she said bluntly.
    The Mage stared outward. “I would not expect you to take the word of a Mage.”
    The word of a Mage
. She had heard that phrase often. Mechanics, and common folk, used it to mean something totally worthless.
    “I cannot think of any assurance I could offer you,” Mage Alain added.
    “You’re telling me there’s nothing that could make me trust you?” Mari asked.
    “No, I am saying that there is nothing I could say that could make you trust me.”
    She got it, then. He was telling her to judge him by his actions. But even those actions could have been driven by a desire to survive rather than good will toward her, which would make betraying her an easy thing for the Mage to contemplate. “I need to hear some words, anyway. Just give me one reason to trust you.”
    The Mage gazed back without visible emotion. “I want to…help.” He said the word again as if it were an unfamiliar thing, and she remembered his hesitation when she had been falling earlier, as if he were unsure what “help” meant.
    Mari nodded, trying not to show the wave of pity that hit her. “All right, I can understand wanting to help someone. But why do you want to help me? Our Guilds have been enemies for their entire histories, as far as I know.”
    “I do not understand it myself.” The young Mage looked down. “You saved my life. When I was ready to stand at the wagon and die because I could not think of anything else to do, you made me come with you. If you had not led us up the side of the pass I would have passed from this dream into the next already.”
    Her memories of those moments were obscured behind veils of fear, but Mari remembered the Mage seeming lost and indecisive, having to be ordered to follow her. “I thought you said dying didn’t matter. That everything is an illusion. Why do you care about living now?”
    The Mage almost frowned as he pondered the question. She was sure of it, even though the expression barely appeared. Finally he looked back at her. “There are many illusions I have not yet seen.”
    Though delivered without apparent emotion, the open humanity of the statement won her over. “All right. I’ll trust you.”
That will make a nice saying to engrave on my tombstone: She trusted a Mage. But it’s that or just give up
.
    Between the lingering heat, her thirst, and exhaustion, Mari found herself drifting in and out of consciousness as they waited for it to get fully dark and the movements of the bandits to subside. At one point she saw her best friend Alli sitting nearby, fiddling with the broken rifle that Mari had left on the ledge with the dead bandits. She didn’t seem to have changed in the two years since Mari had last seen her, aside from the fact that Alli was now wearing a Mechanics jacket like Mari’s.
What are you doing here?
Mari silently asked Alli.
    Fixing this rifle. You need it, right?
    Yeah. If anyone can fix it, you can. You always loved weapons, Alli
.
    Weapons are way safer than boys, Mari. What are you doing here with one?
    He’s not a boy. He’s a Mage.
    He’s a boy Mage, Mari.