The Heart of Magic

 Scraps of sailcloth floated next to wooden detritus scorched almost to charcoal. Boxes of fruit had burst in the sinking, filling the air with an alluring scent, a sweetness wafting incongruously over what must have been the grave of many men. However, the one thing the prince had expected to find among the flotsam was absent. He picked at the question like an old scab: where were the bodies?

“Something about this feels wrong,” he said.

Asphodel said nothing. He looked at her, then stared, shocked at how pale she was. Her eyes were unfocused and her hands tightly gripped the railing at the deck's edge. When he pulled her away it felt as though her skin was made of ice.

“Are you well?” he asked, ushering her to the stairs that led below decks, then to their accommodations, such as they were. She went along numbly. He settled her into a hammock in the hope that reclining would improve her condition.

“What's happened to you?” Neteth asked, and this time she seemed to hear.

“The dead were calling to me.”

“The ones who died on that ship? What do they want with you?”

“They showed me the attack. Three sorcerers descended on them, burned the ship, and carried the crew off to some distant aerie, both living and dead. Some of their shades yet linger.”

“Then I was right and those ravens are familiars,” said Neteth. “We must do something.”

“This is why I couldn't say you were right. You would have grabbed a bow and tried to shoot them down right away, and then what? You're too impulsive for this sort of work.” The witch's voice was weak, but it seemed to Neteth more from tiredness than any harm.

“I hate to stay idle when we may at any moment suffer the same fate as them.”

“I'll think of some way to drive them off. Give me a little time.”

“Did the shades tell you anything that might help?”

“Very little. They did take note of you, though. They said they smelled royal blood,” she said, noting the spark in his eyes at this revelation. “They told me you could be a great man if you learned to master your passions.”

“Did they? What else did they tell you?”

“They said...” Asphodel concentrated intently as though dredging the depths of her memory for some arcane secret. “They said you'll swallow any mystical pap I feed you.”

Neteth stared a moment, then laughed, and that sound seemed to enliven the witch so that she looked just as she had before.

“I didn't know you had a sense of humor,” he said.

“Well, I wasn't sure there's a person under that royal upbringing.”

“Can they really foretell the future?” he asked more seriously.

“So I've heard. Divination is an obscure thing. I never learned much of it.”

“If I hadn't seen your power for myself I'd almost think you were playing me for a fool. What does it feel like? Magic, I mean.”

At first she laughed before realizing what a penetrating question is truly was. She didn't have much occasion to think about it, being so familiar with the answer that it was hard to put into words. It had twined itself inextricably into her being and she could no more separated it than an adult can live again the time before speech and memory. She knew of magi who spoke of their past as if it had happened to someone else and their elevation had, in like manner as a cicada casting off its shell, altered the substance of their being. Such was the compact that authored their power. Others no longer lived in any ordinary sense but lingered ghostlike at the far fringes of human experience and their nature was more alien to her than her own to the young prince.

“People think magic is signs and incantations and waving of arms. But those things are only how you persuade magic. It flows and changes,” she said. “Sometimes it's like spiced wine, bitter and hot. At times it feels wild and free, like a forest after rain, at others like a whisper in darkness. It can be a cold, cruel thing even as you know it's part of you. But none can understand the heart of magic.”

Neteth listened to all this, questions forming and dissolving inside him, unsure of how to respond. He sensed that such candor was a rare thing for her, not to be answered recklessly. He wanted to tell her many things, that despite what he had said before he harbored a deep curiosity about her religion and that no matter what moral judgment might be rendered against it he wanted to know that way of experiencing the world. He wanted to know all things that a ruler should, not in any distant, intellectual sense, but as one who has seen them with his own eyes and forged his own truth on the anvil of life. He had learned much but experienced little. But every man is born with equal capacity for knowledge, as two blocks of clay of the same size might be molded into matching vessels, but the procession of days lends to us forms unique and unequal so that a man beyond a certain age cannot expand his worldview without breaking. So he wanted to say, but he could not give the sentiment life without sounding foolish to himself.

“What of blood? Does that persuade magic as well?” he asked.

“It does,” and as Asphodel said this it was as though a curtain fell between them.

“I doubt not its effectiveness. There is power in sacrifice, to be sure. But what is effective cannot always be right. Many men died aboard that other ship. Were they born to be prey for others, as a gazelle to a lion? I think,” Neteth said softly, “to see others in such a way takes something from the one who kills them as well.”

“Aren't you a killer yourself?” Asphodel asked.

“I am.” He considered his words and this time the rest came to him easily. “To you I may appear a hypocrite because I'm prepared to inherit a throne won by blood and sustained by it. Certainly I will have to fight to pass it on to my own son someday. Part of the burden of leadership is that one must be ready to kill, swiftly and remorselessly. Every victory, every worthy accomplishment of man must be built on a foundation of bodies. But that does not change that life is beautiful. It is a gift. It should be preserved when possible, nurtured and honored... not thrown away carelessly for momentary gain.”

Having thus explained himself, there was little he could do but hope she took his sincerity in the same spirit with which it was given. He did not know when her opinion had begun to matter to him. Soon they would part ways, he told himself, and of what value would her assessment be then? What would he carry home with him, if indeed it was his fate to return? And to what benefit?

“I can hide us from them,” she said at last. “For a while, at least. Maybe long enough to get out of this net.”

And he believed her. For all that he had been raised to believe otherwise, he believed her.