They neither slowed nor flinched because they couldn’t feel what Layna and I could—a swell of power growing behind them at the edge of the Wall.
“They’re nearly here,” Layna said in a strained voice. “They’ll make it into our shield. Although it may not be strong enough.”
Diverted by this thought, she let me go and thrust her hand inside her gold robe, searching for another shield composition.
“The injured one won’t make it,” I said, my hands moving as fast as hers.
At my words, she looked back at me, her own hands stilling on the small roll of parchment she now held.
“No, don’t—” She lunged forward and tried to pry the scrap of paper I had retrieved from my hand, but she was too late.
Ripping it, I released the power stored inside the written composition, flicking it toward the still-unaware workers. The shield raced out to enfold them, reaching for the injured man just as whatever attack had been building at the Wall unleashed.
Raw power, stronger than the bolt which had hit our carriage, rolled toward us. It engulfed first the injured worker and then the others, only half of whom were within the guards’ shield.
The strength in the attack composition broke through the extra shield I had worked, but the wave of its power had already passed the injured man before his defenses failed. Layna, her eyes widening, ripped the composition still in her hand, surrounding all of us, including the five closer workers, in a second layer of shielding. This new protection held when the attack broke through her old one, the power of the unknown composition from the Wall dissipating into nothing. I still had no idea what it had been designed to do, and I was more than glad not to find out.
The commonborns had stopped, panting and regarding us with wide eyes. They may not have been able to feel the approaching power, but they could see the compositions in our hands and feel the tension radiating from our bodies.
I took several deep, steadying breaths, although I had undertaken no physical exertion. As a princess, I was always surrounded by guards and defenses. I had never before personally unleashed a shield composition in anything other than training.
“What were you thinking, Verene?” Layna snapped, clearly equally overcome by the unexpected emergency. It wasn’t like her to forget her usual formality. “We are here to protect you and are well-stocked with compositions. You, of all people, should know better than to use your own personal stores unless to protect yourself from direct and immediate threat.”
My sympathy for my guard fell away at the words you, of all people. I knew her concern was for me, but I didn’t need a reminder of why I was unlike any other royal charge she might have been assigned—unlike any other in history.
The other three royal guards who had accompanied us at the insistence of my parents had now drawn close. Each of them held a piece of parchment, their eyes focused on the distant Wall. If there was another threat, they would have us protected in layers of shielding before it could reach us.
The squad of commonborn guards in their red and gold uniforms formed a wider circle, enclosing us, the carriage, and the commonborn workers. They were my honor guard, but they had been chosen from among the Royal Guard’s finest.
The attention of the workers, however, was all focused on Layna and me. One of them stepped forward, visibly trembling as he looked from the royal insignia on the side of the carriage, to my white robe, to the golden circlet nestled in my dark hair.
He dropped to one knee, and the other workers all followed suit.
“P…Princess Verene,” he gasped. “Our apologies. We don’t know what happened.” He glanced over his shoulder to where the injured worker had apparently given up on joining us and sunk to the ground, his face white. “Johnson said something hit him, but none of us saw anything.” He glanced uneasily back toward the Wall.
I opened my mouth to assure him we were all unharmed and bid him relax, but Layna spoke first.
“That is because he was hit with a bolt of raw power,” she said. “A similar one to the missile that hit our carriage. I don’t know if they were targeted toward movement, or whether they just speared out in all directions and we were unlucky enough to be hit. The more relevant question is what were you doing working on an uncleared section of the Wall? Where is your mage?”
The man’s face whitened, his color now resembling his injured companion.
“Uncleared?” He licked his lips. “This section was supposed to be cleared. The mage assured us…” He pulled two torn scraps of parchment from an inside pocket. “I worked this myself, Your Highness.”
He held out the pieces to Layna, the movement highlighting the complex pattern of darker skin pigmentation around his wrist. He was one of the lucky sealed commonborns then, able to safely read and write and therefore to handle written compositions.
The captain stepped forward and retrieved the two halves of the parchment, holding them together so she could read the words of the now-released working. Her face grew darker, and she bit back a curse.
“I repeat, where is your mage?”
The man swallowed. “In Bronton, Sir. He came out this morning, but he doesn’t like to spend his whole day standing around in the fields. He always goes back to Bronton in the afternoons.”
“Does he now?” Layna asked, her dark voice laden with dire threats. “Then I think we had better continue on to Bronton.”
Chapter 2
I jumped in quickly, directing my words at the worker. “That is not your fault, however.” The poor man clearly expected some sort of terrible punishment for placing a member of the royal family at risk.
I peeked over Layna’s shoulder and scanned the composition, ignoring the clenching in my stomach. I never liked interacting with compositions—not when I was the only mage in history unable to create one.
Since the beginning of recorded history, the act of writing words had allowed humans to access power—power that could be shaped to an untold number of different tasks and purposes. But people had always been divided into two groups—those who could control the power the writing unleashed and those who could not. And for those who could not—the commonborns—any attempt to write would result in an uncontrolled explosion of pure power that brought death and destruction to the writer and all those around them.
And so, for uncounted generations, commonborns had been forbidden all access to the written word. Because everyone knew reading led to writing. With so many lives at stake, it was too dangerous to risk someone absentmindedly tracing a word with their finger or being tempted to test their limits. If commonborns never saw the written word, if they never read, then they could never write. We had an entire discipline of mages—the Seekers—whose role was to prevent any illicit access to words.
Meanwhile, those who could control the power—the mages—formed themselves into disciplines, learning how to strengthen and refine their natural control. They ruled Ardann—as they did Kallorway and the northern Sekali Empire—and their power allowed the kingdom to prosper. The growers and wind workers ensured the crops flourished. The creators built roads and public buildings, and the healers ran healing clinics that even commonborns could access for a fee. It was a system of vast inequality, but one dictated by birth not will.