The Chronicles of Brendan Earle, Apprentice Mage.

Centaurs, Fauns and Things That Are Truly Impossible

Day Five

Memory Accession: Sample 764

Accession justification:

What lives do they lead outside? What is their experience? What is their world like? What can they tell me of music? I am interested to know the life of a musician, since I have become one.

Gigs in Glasgow, Liverpool, Newcastle and Leeds. Screaming crowds, the rush of a good performance, laughs in the pubs and parties and brain-murdering hangovers on mornings after. That night in Glasgow, where Denny threw up over the owner’s pet poodle, looked at the dog and said, ‘Ah don’t remember eatin’ that.’ Drums, drums and more drums. Motorway miles, swearing roadies, stale smells of cigs and gigs and farts. Like the man said though, ‘It’s nine for the travelling band, ten for doing it all again.’

This is the only working musician whose memories I have access to, though many of the original thousand play instruments. It is not what I expected. I have much to learn still. Every one of their lives is such a different world. This place is such a small sample of their possibilities.

Niall

The morning went well. Malaika’s group established the movements of all caravans taking food to Maldon’s forces in the field. It was clear he hadn’t thought of detailing adequate forces to protect them yet. So, more messages were dispatched to various Gards with suggestions for operations to disrupt the caravans. We could derail his efforts without loss of life, to either his people or ours, and get away with it.

I wanted to show his rogue Mages especially that his was the losing side. With any luck we’d get some of them deserting soon, either to join us or to run for Gates and get back to the safety of the other world. Of those two, I’d prefer the second every time, since at some stage Maldon would be trying to plant spies on us, if he hadn’t already.

Maldon had force of numbers over us; he’d always had. What allowed us to exist was the fact that we had the vast majority of Mages in the Land on our side, few though they ultimately were, and his armies could only put muscle against our magic. What kept us ahead on the Mages was the fact that his was the side of the bad guy.

His subject peoples were there for his benefit and were kept subject by force of arms. His mages had to contend with the fact that they were not liked, that their boss was paranoid around other mages and psychopathic around everyone. Our side had the hearts and minds of the Duergars, who knew where they were better off and that we’d never been known to turn friends into heaps of ash on bad days.

Historically, recruitment of mages had been done by our side. When Maldon broke away, it was his own power that enabled him to do it; his support among the mage community had been minimal. Mages who went to him were forced to accept that they weren’t there to do anyone any good. Having to return to the other world just as we did, they had the time to reflect on what they were doing and, more often than not, decided to stop doing it. We’d had some that had started in the Land on his side and then come over to us. There aren’t many people who can resist the lure of the Mage life, but they didn’t have to serve Maldon to get it. Conscripting Mages is like herding cats.

We hung at about the balance point. With the raw forces he had, he could almost overwhelm us, though the cost in lives on his side would be immense. He could never be sure, however, of not just getting bogged down in a war of attrition. The last war had been heading for that when his side started to mutiny at the scale of the losses and he’d had to pull back. Our better recruitment only served to stop him risking a bloody nose; we’d never reach a strength that’d allow us to push him back – there aren’t enough potential mages in the other world for that.