Arden (Mages of the Flame #1) FIRST DRAFT

Part 16: Magic

"Giving you a way out."

"I thought you were getting me out because you were my counsel."

"We don't have time for that, I think. You have upset a number of people since you arrived with that message. Half the city thinks you are here to bring down the Mages and the other half thinks you are here to betray the rebellion."

"Sorry, what did you say?"

"I know you have a better question for me than that."

"Which side are you on?"

"You see? But the real question is, which side are you on?"

"I'm not on a side."

"Everyone takes a side, Bronwyn, whether they want to or not, whether they know it or not. Two days ago you didn't even know there was another side. Now you do. The Mages call it a rebellion, the rebels call themselves loyalists. And you have been so far away from everything going on in the last three years you have no idea what to do or who to believe."

"I believe the Mages. You're a Mage!"

"Not every Mage wants the Mages is power. Not every loyalist is ungifted." He nodded at the book in her hands. Tell me what you learned."

"What, now?"

"Tell me."

"Uh, Sallus talks about the training the king has to undergo from the time he can read. All the things he has to learn as a prince."

"Such as?"

"You're rushing me."

"Such as?" he repeated.

"Uh, legal and ethical dilemmas, diplomacy, government, the rule of law as example and principle and not inviolate rules. Is that it?"

"And what were you taught as a Mage?"

Bronwyn looked at the book in her hands. "The same thing?"

"Exactly the same thing?"

"Yes," she said with only a slight hesitation. "And we're taught about our power and how to use it."

"The right way to use it?"

"Of course."

"Because it your gift gives you rights? Because you, by an accident of birth, have a power no-one else can have."

"Yes?"

Chester grabbed the bars of the cell and hissed through them. "Then how are you any different from a king?"

"It's completely different!"

"Do you care about your work, Bronwyn? The people you judge and help. The messages you deliver?"

"Of course I do?"

"Why?"

"Because that's what I was taught. Because it's right."

"Who taught you?"

"What?"

"Who taught you to be like that? Your Mage training? Your apprenticeship? Or is that just who you are? You had ten years with your parents before you came here. Who shaped the Bronwyn that arrived here as a child? And who took that child and taught her about power and control and rights? Can't you see what the Mages are doing as they take power?

"They are trying to restore Arden! To make it better."

"And then what? Will they leave? Will they turn over the government to someone else? Or are they building a world which needs Mages to rule. A world only Mages will be qualified to govern? Are they building a government which can thrive without them, or one which needs them and no-one else. When the only people to rule are Mages, and Mages are those born with the gifts, how is this different from the monarchy they claimed to despise?"