The Sentinel Mage by Emily Gee Page A

What about it?”
    Petrus shrugged, chewing. “Everything. All I know is that it’ll kill everyone in the Seven Kingdoms. And that he’s the only one who can stop it.” He pointed at Prince Harkeld with his spoon.
    Dareus glanced at the prince. “Very well.” He put down his bowl. Behind him, water dripped steadily from the edge of the overhang. “It started nearly three hundred years ago, when the rulers of the Thirteen Kingdoms decided to purge this continent of mages. There were thirteen kingdoms back then, not seven; Osgaard hadn’t begun its expansion.”
    Petrus nodded.
    “Hatred of mages had been growing for some time. Admittedly, a few were abusing their powers, but mostly it was just rumors.”
    “What sort of rumors?”
    “Mages eating human flesh, procreating with animals—absolute nonsense, but you’ll find that people here still believe such things today.”
    Petrus glanced at Prince Harkeld. He appeared to be paying no attention to Dareus.
    “Some mages managed to flee across the ocean to the Allied Kingdoms,” Dareus said, picking up his mug. “But most didn’t. A lot of completely ordinary people were killed too, merely on the suspicion they had mage blood.” He lowered the mug without drinking. “The killing of suspected mages is a practice that continues to this day. They have a saying here: the only good mage is one that’s dead and burned.”
    Petrus grimaced, and then smoothed the expression from his face. Justen wasn’t a mage; he’d hear those words with nothing more than mild interest.
    “Witch,” Gerit said. “The only good witch is one that’s dead and burned.” He scowled. “They call us witches here.”
    “The wife and children of a mage named Ivek were among the first to die,” Dareus continued. “Ivek laid the curse as his revenge.”
    “What does it do?”
    “It strips people of their humanity.”
    “What?” Petrus wrinkled his brow. “It makes them into animals?”
    “Less than animals. They become maddened by blood lust. They’ll slaughter each other, just as Ivek’s family was slaughtered.”
    Petrus tried to react as if the tale was new to him. “But...all this happened three hundred years ago. Why didn’t the curse kill everyone then? Why now?”
    “The curse was dormant while it gathered power. It’s...as an analogy, imagine a pot of water over a fire. Ivek placed it there, but it’s taken this long for the water to boil.”
    “And only Prince Harkeld can put out the fire?”
    “Yes.”
    Petrus shoveled stew into his mouth and chewed, trying to think of another question. “How did the curse gather power?”
    “Ivek anchored it with three stones. You’ve seen a map of the Seven Kingdoms? You know that it’s roughly divided into three regions? North, east, west?”
    He nodded.
    “Ivek anchored the curse in each region. In the north, Ankeny. In the east, Sault. And here, in the west, Lundegaard, up on the Masse plateau. Each stone has been drawing power from the kingdom it’s anchored in.” Dareus laid his hand on the wet soil. “From the ground.”
    Petrus tried to look as if he didn’t already know this. “Did Ivek know it would take three hundred years for the curse to gather enough power?”
    “He thought it would take longer. We have some of his writings. He estimated four centuries.”
    Petrus lifted his eyebrows. “A slow revenge.”
    “He died knowing that everyone in the Seven Kingdoms—the Thirteen Kingdoms, then—would die, just as his family had.” Dareus shrugged. “It didn’t matter to him whether he witnessed it or not; he knew it would happen.”
    Gerit grunted. “He was mad.”
    No kidding. “How did he die?” Petrus asked.
    “The soldiers caught him in the end. Cut off his head, then burned him.”
    Petrus pushed the stew around his bowl. “And the curse is in Vaere now?”
    “Yes. Ivek crafted it to rise in the east and pass across the kingdoms until it set in the west, like the sun.”
    “Only much