The Void Mage (The Familiar and Mage Book 2) Read online

  Published by Raconteur House

  Murfreesboro, TN

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE VOID MAGE

  Book Two of Familiar and the Mage

  A Raconteur House book/ published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2017 by Honor Raconteur

  Cover by Katie Griffin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information address: www.raconteurhouse.com

  Other books by Honor Raconteur

  Published by Raconteur House

  THE ADVENT MAGE CYCLE

  Book One: Jaunten

  Book Two: Magus

  Book Three: Advent

  Book Four: Balancer

  ADVENT MAGE NOVELS

  Advent Mage Compendium

  The Dragon’s Mage

  The Lost Mage

  Warlords Rising

  Warlords Ascending*

  SINGLE TITLES

  Special Forces 01

  The Midnight Quest

  Kingslayer

  FAMILIAR AND THE MAGE

  The Human Familiar

  The Void Mage

  THE ARTIFACTOR SERIES

  The Child Prince

  The Dreamer’s Curse

  The Scofflaw Magician

  The Canard Case

  DEEPWOODS SAGA

  Deepwoods

  Blackstone

  Fallen Ward

  Origins

  KINGMAKERS

  Arrows of Change

  Arrows of Promise

  Arrows of Revolution

  GÆLDERCRÆFT FORCES

  Call to Quarters

  *Upcoming

  Bannen lay sprawled on his back across the bed, eyes closed, tired and strained. “I love my family.”

  I watched him, amused and feeling his same exhaustion after two weeks of visiting his parents’ house. “Who are you trying to convince?”

  “Me.”

  Snorting, I hauled his bag up onto the bed and started unloading it. On top of him. Because I was NOT doing his laundry. He didn’t even flinch, much less budge. So it was going to be like that, eh? “I thought, after the first trip, that they would settle down some. Not be as….”

  “Anxious? Energetic? Crazy? Have I ever mentioned how grateful I am that you summoned me and then refused to let me go?”

  “You can stand to mention it more often,” I responded, laughing, although I fully understood why. His family could be, well, more than overwhelming. Their intentions were good, but the culture dictated that anyone older than Bannen had some say in how he should live his life, and considering he was one of the youngest in his family…it meant that a lot of people had advice, most of it conflicting, and he ended up being pulled in a dozen different directions at once.

  “Believe it or not,” he added, still firmly not moving, “being bound to you helps. It used to be worse.”

  I shuddered at the idea of ‘worse.’ Not that his family wasn’t loving, they were. Just smothering. So, so smothering. “No wonder you were desperate enough to stow away.”

  “You understand now.”

  “Rena!” Mary called from the other room.

  I knew that tone. It meant she had work for me to do. “She can’t possibly have a job lined up for us, we barely got back this morning!”

  Bannen lurched upright enough to grab me, hauling me down on top of him and the dirty clothes, startling a squeal out of my mouth. “If we’re very still and quiet, maybe she’ll think we’re sleeping and leave us alone,” he stage-whispered.

  Like that would work. I wriggled a little, trying not to plant an elbow anywhere sensitive. “Bannen. You know that isn’t going to work.”

  “If I wish really, really hard and ignore her, I bet it will.”

  “Do you listen to the things that come out of your mouth?” I asked, exasperated.

  “Not really, no, I have people like you for that.”

  “RENA!”

  “See, told you it wouldn’t work.” I wriggled, squirmed, and managed to get free of him this time (mostly because he let me go). Of course, he let me go so he didn’t have to get up himself, because we both knew that if Mary couldn’t get me on the first two tries, her third attempt would be through Bannen. She was predictable that way.

  Sighing, I pushed myself up and out the door, not feeling any motivation to work at all. I wanted nothing more than peace and quiet, but Mary’s summons likely meant neither for my immediate future. I stepped into the kitchen, already resigned. “Yes?”

  Mary sat at the table, a letter in her hands and a frown deepening her brow. “I just received a message from an old colleague. Another shard has popped up north of Heaberlin, near the Rainbow River Line.”

  I winced. Train lines crisscrossed throughout the inhabited world, but the Rainbow River Line saw more traffic than most because of the Rainbow River being a natural tourist attraction. Especially at this time of the year, the river would be in full color, and would attract people from around the world. I didn’t like it when shards appeared anywhere near large bodies of people—it was a disaster waiting to happen.

  “Jonas says here that someone managed to contain it fairly quickly, but you know how those shards push the barriers to the breaking point. I think you need to get over there quickly and deal with it before we lose a lot of people.”

  While I didn’t dislike using my magic to destroy things, shards were not one of my favorite things to tackle. The last time Bannen and I did it, we’d been mostly on our own. The only reason why we managed to destroy it was that the shard hadn’t grown to any real size. Even then it had been tough. “A barrier is up around it? Does he mention by whom?”

  “He doesn’t mention that. Jonas is not known for his verbosity.” Mary put the letter on the table, clearly worried. “Still, what he does say disturbs me. He reports that there’re multiple shards all over now, literally in every country, and no one’s found any way to combat it. They’re just containing it.”

  “Like they do with Toh’sellor.” Now there was a disturbing thought. Toh’sellor had started out small as well. If the shards were left alone long enough, they’d take up mountains and valleys, eventually growing past the point of containment. They were like leprosy, slowly spreading and killing everything in their path.

  I had destroyed the shards as we’d heard of them—three in total over the past two years. Waiting for news seemed to me the wrong tactic, because really, could I afford to take my time with these things? Maybe I should be actively hunting them down. They seemed to be appearing more frequently if there was now one in every country. “Do we know where they all are?”

  Mary shook her head grimly. “He didn’t give me specific locations aside from this one.”

  Bannen slipped into the kitchen, wrapping me up in a hug, arms around my waist and chin on my shoulder. I smiled as I leaned back against him, just for a moment, because hugs from Bannen are pretty much irresistible. “Did you hear?”

  “I heard shards and trouble and came running,” he said, breath puffing against the side of my neck, making my skin shiver. “Where’s this one?”

  “North of Heaberlin, alon
g the Rainbow River Line,” Mary answered.

  Bannen whistled lowly. “Ouch. Not a good location. Not that any location is good for a shard, but this one is definitely worse than others. I take it we’re doing another field trip?”

  Mary creaked up to her feet, coming to put a hand on both of our shoulders. “No. No field trip. I’ve kept you here longer than I needed to, as I love having the two of you in my house, but I don’t have anything left to teach Rena.”

  I blinked at her, startled. “You mean I’m done?”

  “There’s no grand ceremony here,” Mary informed me gently, stroking my hair for a moment, the gesture warm. “No fancy pins or the like. We Void Mages have our own patterns. We keep a record, passed down from one generation to the next, that details what we’ve learned, just in case any of us cannot teach the younglings. You’ve seen me write in one of them.”

  So that’s what that leather-bound book had been. I’d wondered. “Yes, I have.”

  “That book is yours now,” she informed me. “I’ll hand it over officially when you are done with the shards, and have found a house for the two of you to move into.”

  That assumed I knew where I wanted to move to. Corcoran…did not seem like a good option anymore. I tilted my head so that I could glance toward Bannen, biting the inside of my lip. No, not a good idea in many respects. After visiting Z’gher, I categorically refused to live anywhere near Bannen’s family. I wasn’t sure who would snap first—me or him—but either way it wouldn’t be pretty. “When we figure that out, I’ll let you know. Thank you, Master.”

  Mary had the gentlest, proudest smile on her face. “You’re your own woman now, Rena. A mage in every sense of the word. You choose if you wish to take this job or not.”

  That didn’t even take consideration on my part. “Master Mary, I absolutely refuse to let Toh’sellor gain any foothold in this world. Of course we’re going.”

  “Good thing I sharpened my swords yesterday,” Bannen said to no one in particular. “We leaving now?”

  I turned in his arms, knowing very well the expression I’d find—one of wolfish anticipation. Catching his chin with my fingers, I waggled his face a little back and forth, teasing him. “You got anything better to do?”

  “Not a blessed thing.”

  I rubbed my hands together, more for warmth than in anticipation. Still a mite chilly in Heaberlin even in late spring, enough so that I almost put my coat back on. But no, I’d need to be as flexible as possible soon and fighting always got the blood pumping. I’d be fine. Rena stood next to me, lips pursed as she panned her head. I’d braided her hair for her earlier, in that wrap-around crown she preferred, and while her coat kept her warm enough, the chill left the tips of her ears pink. I loved it when I could braid her hair. After two years, our bond wasn’t as jumpy or demanding as it used to be, but it still liked regular contact with her.

  “Can you tell who’s in charge of the barrier?” she asked.

  “Nope,” I responded, popping the p, “but I see lots of nice people in blue uniforms. Maybe one of them would know?”

  Rena rolled her eyes expressively. “Thank you for that brilliance, darling.”

  “Anytime, sweet-cheeks.”

  Muttering to herself about snarky familiars, she plowed ahead through the crowd, head up and searching. Sometimes she rose on tiptoe to get a better vantage point, grey eyes intent as she examined one person after another, searching for the person in charge. Nothing of the emblems or the uniforms seemed to indicate who had charge of the barrier itself and the uniformed men and women gathered in front of it. I saw many a report and clipboard, people conferring with each other or trying to maintain a safe line to keep civilians back. Perhaps because this shard of Toh’sellor was so new, it had a lot of gawkers gathered around the barrier. The minions—mostly made of trees, plants, and a few random farm animals—certainly made it a freak show. I supposed it only made sense for people to be curious. It did surprise me people still lingered, as it had taken a full day by train to get here, and I would have expected the novelty to wane by now. Then again, the shard had popped up outside of the city limits, within clear view of the train station, the line, and the city, but far enough out that it hadn’t caught more than farm animals and some trees. Perhaps these people were just passing through and chose to step outside the train for a moment to get a look.

  “Good thing it didn’t appear in the town itself.”

  “You have no idea how grateful I am for that,” Rena stated grimly. “It’s too close to the town for comfort as it is.”

  “I hear that.”

  As we got closer, I saw the patches on the arms of the uniforms and my eyebrows shot up. “They’re MISD.”

  Rena paused for a moment, also truly paying attention for the first time. “What’s the Magical Intercontinental Specialist Division doing here?”

  “Beats me.” I’d heard they were digging into these outcroppings of Toh’sellor but we hadn’t run into any of them until this point—not in person, at least, although they had put the barrier up around the first shard Rena had destroyed. The MISD were not a large organization, but they had the backing of every country, serving as the magical troubleshooters of the world. Well, not just magical problems; to be fair they handle any situation that crossed over one country’s borders. Sometimes they were called in if the country just didn’t have the experts to handle the situation. It took a very unique skillset to handle the responsibilities of an MISD agent and because of that, they only hired on the best of the best, so problems like this probably spread them pretty thin. The MISD had taken charge of Toh’sellor almost immediately after it had appeared, but that wasn’t the bulk of what they did, I knew that; however, seeing them here meant they had made the shards more of a priority than simple containment. I didn’t know if that was a bad sign or not, but I had an ominous feeling in my gut that said it was.

  My mage got that look in her eye that usually meant a lot of work in my immediate future. She locked onto a target and headed straight for him. He looked rather nondescript, neither handsome nor plain, dark hair neat and combed back, features even, skin tan after long hours of being in the sun. He did have a coat on, one that perfectly matched his uniform, and even then he looked a little cold with a ruddy hue to his cheeks. He took in Rena with surprise, head canted a little as if she had just presented him with some puzzle.

  I knew what that look meant. Every mage that had never seen a Void Mage before looked like that. From what I had been told, Rena’s magic looks very, very weird.

  Rena presented a hand to him, a professional smile on her face. “Magus Renata Rocci. You are?”

  At her name, his dark eyes went wide. “You’re Renata Rocci?”

  Why did this man know my mage? “Well, she was this morning, when I last checked. Don’t think that’s changed in the past, oh, three hours.”

  He turned to give me a piercing look. “That makes you Bannen Hach.”

  “Okay, see, when you say things like that, it makes me really, really curious on why you know us. Like, uncomfortable and curious, because to be honest it’s a little creepy.”

  Was that a smile playing at the corners of his mouth? “Magus Rocci, Master Bannen, a pleasure. I’m Specialist Woods of the MISD. We’ve heard reports about you. If I’m correct, then you’ve already taken out three other shards of Toh’sellor.”

  “Four,” Rena corrected with a cocky smile.

  The way his eyes narrowed, not in surprise but speculation, made me think he had suspected as much. “We’ve been looking for you ever since the first report rolled in. You’ve been amazingly hard to locate, Magus.”

  “My master’s fault,” Rena admitted easily. “She lives in an absurdly remote location.”

  “Boonies, is what she means,” I translated dryly.

  “Master?” Woods repeated neutrally.

  “My magic is strange enough it took two masters to train me up.” Rena was already getting sidetracked, I could tell by th
e way her head kept turning toward the barrier. “Specialist…Woods? Is that right? Oh good. Specialist Woods, no offense, but can we talk about all of this later? I’d really like to get in there and actually take the shard out quickly. We discovered that the more time it has to grow, the more of a bear it is.”

  “Of course, Magus, I’m amiable to that. You’re not planning on going in alone, are you?”

  I took in the size of the dome, the number of monsters that I could see just from here, and winced at that idea. “Sards, I sure hope not! It’s just little ’ole me protecting this cute bundle of destruction. Woods, can’t I borrow some of your people?”

  That was the right response. Woods visibly relaxed. “I actually have a team forming up now, as we wanted to do reconnaissance. We’re waiting on two of our Specialists to arrive before we go in. I expect them any minute. If you can wait for them?”

  Rena and I exchanged a glance and identical shrugs. “Sure,” we said in unison.

  “Excellent. Please, wait here, I’ll check to see how close to readiness we are.” He took off in a quick step that bordered a lope.

  Lowering my voice, I stepped into Rena’s personal space to murmur, “Now what’s all of this about?”

  “Good question,” she responded in an equally low tone. “I’m not surprised the MISD has reports on us; actually I’d be more surprised if they didn’t, considering I’m the first threat Toh’sellor has ever seen. But the other four times, no MISD agents were around, and no one stopped us to talk, or really got information on how I did anything. I’d gathered the impression they were, well, not indifferent, but….”

  I knew where she was going with this. “Not interested enough to ask questions? Just glad that your magic worked.”

  “Something like that. And now we have intense interest. The sudden reversal is throwing me for a loop.” She stared hard in the direction where Woods had disappeared. “I wonder if their interest is going to mean we’ll be offered a short-term contract to take all of these shards of Toh’sellor out?”