The Mage's Daughter: Book One: Discovery Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  The Mage’s Daughter, Discovery

  1st Edition

  Copyright © 2016 September LeRoy Clary

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover Design Contributors:rbvrbv/Bigstock.com

  Editor: Karen Clary

  Books by LeRoy Clary

  The 6th Ransom

  Blade of Lies: The Mica Silverthorne Story

  The Mage’s Daughter Series

  The Mage’s Daughter: Discovery

  The Mage’s Daughter: Enlightenment (Coming Winter, 2017)

  Dragon! Series

  Dragon! Book One: Stealing The Egg

  Dragon! Book Two: Gareth’s Revenge

  Dragon Clan Series

  Dragon Clan: In the Beginning

  Dragon Clan #1: Camilla’s Story

  Dragon Clan #2: Raymer’s Story

  Dragon Clan #3: Fleet’s Story

  Dragon Clan #4: Gray’s Story

  Dragon Clan #5: Tanner’s Story

  Dragon Clan #6: Anna’s Story

  Dragon Clan #7: Shill’s Story (Fall 2016)

  Contact LeRoy Clary at [email protected] or message him on Facebook at: LeRoy Clary's Facebook Page if you have questions and/or suggestions

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  TABLE OF CONTEXT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hannah paused from her morning duties and allowed her mind to drift. The kitchen gossipers intensified their whispered stories; the rumors of the Old Mage, and how he had once rested for a few days during his travels through Casselberry. Almost a year later she was born to an unwed mother. Those who remembered the Old Mage’s last visit said she looked like him.

  Of course, they said a lot of things. . . and that’s why they were gossips. Still, over the years Hannah had developed a mental shell hard enough to disregard the spurns, the nasty looks, the harsh whispers behind her back, and the assignment of the least desirable duties about the palace. Until her mother’s death over five years ago, her mother had managed to shield Hannah from the worst of them. Now the rumors intensified daily, especially in the last few days.

  “Daydreaming, Hannah?”

  The friendly question pulled her back from the idle thoughts. The owner of the voice leaned closer and winked in good humor, although the scars of the burned face still frightened Hannah, no matter how kindly the washerwoman treated her. Hannah sighed, “I’m just a little sleepy today.”

  “No wonder. I’ve always said the Overseer should put someone older in your job, dear. Little girls your age need their sleep; not being woken before dawn to light the stoves. What are you, twelve?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Even worse. It’s a shame the way they treat you.”

  Hannah smiled her thanks and loaded another piece of firewood into the nearest oven. The washerwoman usually had a friendly word when she delivered clean aprons and towels. Hannah remembered five years ago when she’d first taken over the fire duties in the breakfast kitchen. The job was simple: have the three brick ovens warmed and ready for cooking before the first cooks and bakers arrived near dawn.

  The older boys felled hardwood trees in the Dark Forest, transported the hefty logs, and split them into firewood, then stacked it against the south wall of the kitchen in neat cords. The cedar, the best wood for kindling, came from higher up on the mountain slopes, where the boys harvested tall trees and piled that wood near the rear door of the kitchen.

  “Stoke this one again, too,” a nasty-tempered woman with a sharp tongue snarled, pointing to the fire in her stove. “Getting too cold to use.” The thin woman stood aside waiting, hands on hips. She fried hard-bread for the servants in three separate shallow pans. They were small, flat, cakes with hard shells that servants ate while performing their morning duties, and they were standard morning meal for servants. People dunked them in milk, cream, or anything liquid to soften the bread enough to chew. Cooking hard-bread required a hotter fire than the other stoves. Hanna grabbed two pieces of firewood and stirred the coals until both pieces would fit through the black iron door. The fire instantly flamed higher, and she backed off from the heat.

  “’Bout time you did that, worthless little beggar,” the woman growled, pushing Hannah aside with her hip. “You know I need a hot fire.”

  Hannah smiled at her sweetly, and in a voice sure to carry throughout the kitchen to the other cooks said, “Maybe someday you can teach me to burn dough on a stove and call it hard-bread. It shouldn’t take long. Any fool can do it.”

  “Watch yer mouth, girl.”

  Hannah giggled as she moved out of reach. She ducked out the rear kitchen door where the small ax waited on the chopping block. Cedar rounds waited for splitting. Under her ax, each chunk of cedar turned into twenty or thirty smaller sticks of kindling. She followed the same routine each day, month after month. In the morning, the kindling went into the cold ovens on top of twigs she used to start the fires. A few scrapes of her fire starter usually produced enough sparks to light it. After the tinder had caught, she loaded cedar, and then the hardwood on top, and stood back while the ovens warmed the entire kitchen until the lazy morning cooks showed up.

  Her thoughts returned to her past, as they had more and more, lately. The daily drudgery usually sedated her thinking enough she only needed to determine which of the three stoves needed more wood and when; a mindless task. But if she stood and idly watched the fires, someone always gave her another task. During slack times she’d learned to leave the kitchen and pretend to split kindling or other work. Quick peeks into the kitchen told her how the fires burned, and the cooks were quick enough to let her know if any burned low.

  The whispers and rumors she usually ignored had caught her attention this morning. She spent more time inside, listening without showing interest. Today’s rumors said the Old Mage was arriving for a visit.

  “A dozen years since his last time passing through here,” one
gnarled old Cook confirmed the rumor.

  Another glanced at Hannah making sure she heard, then replied, louder than necessary so all would hear, “Easy to know how long since he’d been here. Just look at how tall Hannah is and you know.”

  The nasty one who made hard-bread glanced at Hannah and flashed an almost toothless smile, and said, “I wonder what he’ll leave behind for us this time? A sister or brother for Hannah?”

  The poorly concealed whispers were always loud enough for Hannah’s ears, but not the Overseer who wandered about his rounds often. Today a nervous edge came with the remarks of the news that made the cooks irritable. But no matter, she wanted to hear it all. Within the harsh words were kernels of truth. Since her mother’s death, there was nobody else to ask and get the truth. But if it were true, what they said about the Old Mage and her mother, Hannah decided that the Old Mage might arrive at the palace and sweep her away in his carriage to a life of luxury and wealth. That daydream had been constant for over a year.

  She also daydreamed that she was the lost daughter of a foreign prince, the offspring of a wealthy silk merchant, or the youngest daughter of a breeder of majestic dancing horses. She heard of people riding on the backs of dragons and defeating armies of trolls with flashing swords, too. But the rumors and tales of the Old Mage and her mother persisted, and now he was coming to the castle. She would manage to get a good look at him and decide for herself if they looked alike, one way or another. Of course, he was older. At least the rumors said he was old, and she would have to adjust her opinion of his looks by his age as she tried to imagine him at her age.

  For the last five years, only a younger Mage-in-training had visited the Earl’s Palace and met with him for the magical needs of the castle and surrounding farms. The Young Mage handled the routine feats of magic needed to keep the vermin from the grain storage, the illnesses from the drinking water, and insects from the crops. He provided rain in summer for the crops, but not too much. Younger mages sometimes called down a deluge and could not stop the water. She’d seen him arrogantly strolling about the grounds in his black silk robe several times, a thin boy of perhaps twenty-five years, but still a boy from all appearances, youthful, pale, and weak looking. Even his beard struggled to grow.

  “Wot can be so fascinating on that little ax yer looking at?” The orphan boy known as ‘Cleanup’ asked her, standing a few steps away. He leaned on his flat-bladed shovel handle. Cleanup was near her age, worked in the horse stalls, but any horse apples or spills into the streets of the palace were his concern. That job gave him the freedom to roam the entire palace yards, roads, and squares at will. As long as he carried his ‘cleanup’ bucket and shovel nobody questioned or detained him.

  “Just thinking.”

  “’Bout what?” he asked, chewing on a piece of yellow straw.

  She lowered her voice, “Have you heard the Old Mage is coming?”

  “Your father?” he responded, not mincing words and obviously surprised at the question. “Nope hadn’t heard, but it’s about time a full Mage came around if you ask me.”

  A cook popped her head out the door, and her eyes found Hannah. “More wood.”

  “Right away,” Hannah said without turning her head to see which Cook it had been. “They say he’s coming today, but who knows?”

  “Did you ever have another father?” Cleanup asked.

  “I said, more wood.” The cook repeated her demand louder and spun on her heel. She entered the kitchen without waiting to see if Hannah followed.

  Hannah shook her head, “Never had one that lived with us, so it has to be him.”

  “Just because you were born in the spring after the Mage left the summer before don’t mean nothing. There're two hundred more men that live here in this castle, and any one of them can be your father from what I hear.”

  She stiffened. “My mother was a Lady, a friend of the Earl’s wife, the Countess.”

  “So you always remind us, but even ladies get lonely. Your mother died more than five years ago, but that was a long time ago. Maybe it’s time you thought of other things, huh?”

  Hannah grabbed three chunks of firewood and headed inside. Cleanup was right. Her mother had promised to tell her who her father was on the day she turned twelve years old. Then she died well before. Without a mother or father, or even a Royal sponsor, Hannah found herself appointed a kitchen fire-tender at age seven. No one was going to tell her the real story about her past, so she relied on the rumors.

  She wanted to know the truth. Was that too much to ask? The only one who could tell her the whole truth was her father. If he was a mage, so be it. If she managed to meet with him and identify herself, he might be persuaded to speak to her.

  Her mother had been a lady, from a minor Royal family and the last of her line. She spent nearly every day instructing Hannah also to be a lady, and telling her tales of far off lands in other kingdoms, and of how to serve Royalty of higher status. She taught her letters and the basics of reading, but Hannah remembered very little of it.

  Instead of playing with the other children of the castle, she had spent her days listening to her mother teach her until she became ill. Death swiftly followed, and without parents, Hannah found herself unwanted by Royalty and despised by jealous servants.

  The idea of identifying herself to the Old Mage in itself was almost a joke and a childhood fantasy at best. Fire-tenders for morning kitchens do not speak to Royalty, and certainly, do not talk to important mages, let alone to elder mages so important they dealt directly with kings and earls. She knew it for what it was, yet couldn’t get the idea out of her stubborn head. Everyone said she was single-minded.

  Hannah stoked the fires and when satisfied with the results, peeked outside to the rear courtyard, but Cleanup had already left to gather more horse apples. She split more kindling to have something to do and placed it beside each stove for the morning. The kindling piles were larger than normal, but she worked hard to quell a nervous energy that had overtaken her. A food server playfully slapped the back of her head as she waltzed by, and then pretended she didn’t know what happened, to the amusement of the rest of the staff. Hannah took note of her, and the thin slippers she wore. The next load of firewood she dropped from her struggling arms would land on those pretty slippers.

  Falcon, the overseer for all of the kitchens, stormed into the breakfast kitchen and made his daily inspection as he passed by each stove, sometimes sampling the food. He stopped at the doorway and turned, holding up his arms to draw the attention of everyone. “All right, if they haven’t eaten by now, they’ll make do with mid-day dinner and go hungry until then. Get this place cleaned up and don’t take all day to do it. We require your help at the supper kitchens today. All of you.”

  “That means you too, Missy Hannah,” a thin woman who usually burned the meat for any meal, hissed from the side of her mouth as if she was in charge. The woman had a habit of disappearing between working the morning kitchen and the supper preparation, and thought herself better than other cooks.

  Never trust a skinny cook. Her mother had told her often. Hannah raised her voice so the Overseer would hear. “To make sure I don’t get lost along the way, I’m going to follow you, Darla. I’ll do my best to stay very close.”

  The Overseer hid his smile behind the back of his hand. Hannah had just taken over part of his duties. He had once told her in private he appreciated her quick tongue because it often made his job easier, especially if she was not addressing him. But the thin woman called Darla cast her a scowl, and one of the other cooks flinched at the evilness it contained.

  But, if the woman had left her alone, Hannah would have remained silent. Lately, she had observed a measured increase in the respect others paid to her. Word was getting around. Mess with Hannah and you could expect retaliation.

  Falcon started to leave by the rear door, but turned again, as if he had forgotten to tell them something. His eyes slipped past Hannah as if she was not there. “Toda
y the whole staff will work late into the evening to prepare for the banquet. We are cooking a feast for a welcoming meal this evening.” He paused to allow the groans to die out, or at least, diminish. Again, his eyes refused to notice Hannah, looking over her head, as if he intentionally refused to acknowledge her obvious presence. “The King’s Mage has arrived, and there will be a celebration and feast.”

  Hannah’s heart beat faster as she drew in a breath. The rumors were true. She felt all eyes shift to her, and heard a few whispers. But she held her face passive, waiting for the rude comments to begin. She didn’t have to wait long. As soon as Falcon stepped out of the doorway and away from earshot, they started, not even having the decency to whisper.

  “So you’re gonna see your father tonight, are you?”

  “Are you going to eat dinner with him? Sit at his table?”

  “Too bad your mother isn’t here to bed him again. I heard he always wished for a son.”

  There were more taunts she didn’t hear in the murmured drone. Hannah closed her ears and allowed her mind to ask herself many of the same questions. While the gossip flowers were in full bloom, as if they were spring tulips, she would see the man at the center of her shame and hurt, the one who threw her away to work the kitchens. She didn’t know if she should kiss the Mage or plunge a dagger into his heart if she met him. He deserved the latter if he was her father. Not because of the mistreatment of her, but because of all the vicious remarks that had been directed at her mother. However, like her mother, Hannah held her tongue, refusing to be baited by the cruel remarks. Her gut told her that some day, she would even the score.

  She went outside and stood in the shade beside the chopping block, drawing in the cooler air and calming herself while she split another pile of kindling large enough to last for days. Revenge didn’t fit into her plans. No, she had another, more direct path to take, if she mustered the nerve. That was because she had a secret beyond guessing who her father might be. She already knew who it was.