The first woman ever admitted to a prestigious order of mages unravels a secret conspiracy that could change the practice of magic forever, in this standalone dark fantasy from the author of For twenty years, Sciona has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry at the University of Magics and Industry. When Sciona finally passes the qualifying exam and becomes a highmage, she finds her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues are determined to make her feel unwelcome--and, instead of a qualified lab assistant, they give her a janitor. What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was not always a janitor. Ten years ago, he was a nomadic hunter who lost his family on their perilous journey from the wild plains to the city. But now he sees the opportunity to understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland, and keep the privileged in power. At first, mage and outsider have a fractious relationship. But working together, they uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever--if it doesn’t get them killed first.

Autorentext

M. L. Wang

Leseprobe
**1

A Field of Flowers**

Thomil had taken the long way back from scouting. Against his better judgment, he let down his wolfskin hood and welcomed the wind’s needles as he pressed through the howling dark. Thomil’s gods were in this cold, as they were in the snow and the crocus stem promise of color fast asleep beneath the freeze. If this was the last time they ever wrapped their arms around him, he wanted to feel it.

What was left of Thomil’s tribe waited in a huddle at the edge of Lake Tiran. Massed in the dark, the Caldonnae were alarmingly small against the expanse of ice. Of the several scouts who had peeled from the group to look out for direwolves, snow lions, and rival tribes, Thomil was the last to rejoin the clan, his return bringing their number to forty—forty people left of a nation that had once numbered in the tens of thousands.

“No pursuers,” Beyern said as Thomil passed him. It wasn’t a question. The lead hunter inferred everything he needed from Thomil’s body language.

With life ever dwindling across the plains of the Kwen, scouting for danger had come to feel more like a formality than a necessary precaution. It had been six months since the Caldonnae had encountered another clan and years since Thomil had seen a direwolf. The most prolific killer on these plains didn’t stalk on earthly feet, and the best scout in the Kwen could never sense it coming.

“Join your family.” Beyern nodded to where Maeva and Arras leaned into each other in the dark. “And put your hood up, fool.”

“Yes, Uncle.” Thomil smiled and drew his hood over his numb ears, trying not to think that this might be the last time Beyern ever snapped at him.

Maeva was quiet as Thomil slipped into a crouch at her side. Thomil had been taller than his older sister for half a decade now, but to him, she would always be a shelter, a hearth light when all other love had gone from the world. She met his eyes, then turned to the glow beyond the lake, inviting him to follow her gaze and share her hope.

Everything about the country on the far shore was alien—the buildings taller than any tree, the spires piercing the sky like teeth, the boom and whir of machinery. The city of Tiran would never be home, but it was a chance at survival. Magical shielding glittered around the metal metropolis, forming a dome that stretched from the sun-eating mountain range in the west to the lower barrows in the east. That bright work of sorcery protected those inside from winter and Blight—everything that had driven the Caldonnae to the brink of extinction.

“Are you ready?” Arras asked, because that was the kind of inane question he liked to ask.

“No.” Thomil tried not to sound exasperated with his sister’s husband, but really, how ready could a person ever be for near-certain death? And if not death, then the enormity of the unknown. The plains of the Kwen were the only mother Thomil had ever known—brutal but comprehensible if one had the stillness to listen and learn her mysteries. Even as he beheld the city across the lake, his mind couldn’t accept the idea that safety could lie within the incomprehensible sorcery on the other side of that barrier.

Maeva reached over and squeezed Thomil’s hand, her grip as reassuring as it had been when they were children and he came crying to her with nightmares of wolves with many mouths. He wanted to slip his deerskin mitten off and grasp her hand in earnest, in case this was the last time. But there was a silent agreement among the Caldonnae not to say goodbye. They had to keep believing, however irrationally, that they would all live to see the sunrise.

“Thomil,” Maeva said with the soft confidence that told him she could see straight to the doubts massing beneath his composure. “The worthwhile run is never the short one.” Old hunters’ wisdom, based on the days it could take to track and hunt the largest prey—followed by the kind of abstract wisdom only an elder sister like Maeva could give: “You know we’re not running from oblivion. We’re running toward hope.”

Maeva and Arras’s daughter mumbled sleepily on her father’s shoulder, and Maeva betrayed her own anxiety by clutching Thomil’s hand a little tighter.

“And you know Carra’s going to be all right,” Thomil said, wanting to return his sister’s reassurances. “If nothing else, Arras can run.”

“Was that a veiled dig at my intelligence?” Arras raised a bushy red eyebrow at Thomil.

“Was it veiled?”

“I swear, little brother, if my girl wasn’t sleeping, I’d deck you so hard.”

“I know.” Thomil grinned up at his broad slab of a brother-in-law. “Why do you think I waited until she was asleep?”

It was a stupid exchange, but it got Maeva to laugh. And that was all that mattered: that their last moments as a family here on this shoreline be warm ones.

“It’s nearly time.” Elder Sertha’s voice creaked like an oak above the murmurs between family members. “Get the blood moving in your legs.”

“Leave your tools and weapons,” Beyern added. “They’re just deadweight.”

As instructed, Thomil unslung his bow and quiver and set them in the snow. The simple act of lifting hands off weapons was harder than he had expected. For a thousand years, the Caldonnae had defined themselves by their hunting prowess. Leaving their bows and spears behind felt like the final concession that they were no longer the apex predators their ancestors had been.

“Up.” Beyern walked along the shoreline, pulling the sickly and sleepy to their feet. “It’s not getting any colder tonight. If the ice at the warm end is ever going to hold, it will be now.”

Already, the sliver of returning sunlight had conspired with the warmth from the barrier to weaken the lake ice between the plains and the city of Tiran. Eventually, the heat of summer would melt the impassable snowdrifts at the feet of the mountains, opening marginally safer land avenues into Tiran, but even the most optimistic among the Caldonnae knew the tribe wouldn’t last until then. Blight had taken too many of the animals they hunted and the summer crops they would have stored to hold them through the Deep Night.

Crossing the lake now was their only chance.

Four-year-old …