A Magical Diagnosis
A magical diagnosis, of all things. To Gadrian, Diana's demand was absurd.
"Medical care is a physician's business. Petrora has advanced tremendously in the healing arts — finding the boy a good doctor would be no trouble at all."
No one stood before Gadrian and made demands so brazenly. Setting aside how rare it was to meet the man at all, he belonged squarely in the ranks of the ill-tempered. There had been more than one person who came to beg a favor and went home considerably worse for wear after Gadrian worked some strange spell on them.
"I don't want a doctor. I want a mage to examine him."
Ordinarily a single refusal sent people on their way, but perhaps because she was a child, Diana dug in her heels.
"If it's magical remedies you need, they lie scattered thick as weeds out there. There is no medicine the House of Ehrenberg cannot obtain."
"The medicines on the market don't work."
Diana spoke the truth. They had hunted down every cure imaginable and forced each one past Cassion's lips; magic potions had been no exception. But his body had rejected them all.
"Then try potions of a higher circle."
"We've tried every one up to the 7th Circle."
Cassion, silent until that moment, cut in. Diana turned to stare at him.
She had never once used the words magic potion when administering them to him. And yet here he was, citing the circles of the very potions he had swallowed.
How?
When her eyes asked the question, Cassion gave a small shrug and stretched a hand toward Gadrian.
"If even you, a mage, cannot discover what ails me, then I will rely on magic no longer. I will admit that there are things in this world magic cannot do."
Gadrian's brow rose a fraction, then settled again. A child, all unknowing, had just told a great archmage to concede the futility of magic. Generously speaking, these two were barely ten years old — and they had thrown down the gauntlet to him all the same.
Well, it was certainly entertaining to watch.
The corner of Gadrian's mouth curved, faint but unmistakable.
Reading a pulse was no great labor. A magical diagnosis was a simple thing: he poured his mana into the child's body, let it sweep through every vein and vessel, and diagnosed the illness from the mana that returned. Since the spell had to traverse each vessel in turn, the younger the patient, the less mana it consumed and the sooner it was done. For Gadrian, it posed no difficulty whatsoever.
If he walked into the conference hall now, he would inevitably end up sitting idle through the tiresome travel stories of whichever mages had arrived early. So Gadrian resolved to render a single act of service — to the children who had, if only briefly, given him a pleasant diversion.
"Very well."
He accepted readily and, without delay, took hold of both of Cassion's wrists. They were gaunt as twigs beneath his fingers, and he tried to soften his grip — only to find he could not. The instant he let a trickle of mana flow in, it was Gadrian who found himself held fast, his own mana streaming out of him, sucked steadily into Cassion.
Gadrian's face turned grave; Cassion's, by contrast, began to flush with color. No bystander could have told, but at that moment the two of them were playing tug-of-war with clasped hands — Gadrian to keep his power from being taken, Cassion to take it.
The victor, naturally, was Gadrian. He released Cassion's wrists. Only then did the pain reach Cassion's heart; with a strangled choke, he clutched at his chest.
"Your Highness!"
His body swayed under a pain more violent than any he had ever known, and Diana caught and steadied him.
"So he was born carrying a vicious illness."
Gadrian delivered his diagnosis. Diana lifted her head, still supporting Cassion against her.
Gadrian gave a low hum through his nose as he looked down at the two children. Cassion's face was contorted, every line of him crying out in pain, but knowing the agony would subside shortly, Gadrian took no special measures. High-grade mana had simply come flooding into a mana space that stood empty as a drum; the boy merely couldn't gather his wits.
He had come to Broom only because the frontrunner for director of the city's Mage Association branch was digging in his heels, flatly refusing the post — and here he had stumbled upon the most unexpected, oddly charming little brats instead.
Come to think of it, there was that old tale — that the Kingdom of Petrora was founded by the descendants of a dragon. The prevailing opinion calls it baseless rumor, since every member of the line, born one after another, has shown not a scrap of talent for magic.
The same fierce curiosity that had seized him while researching 8th-Circle magic stirred again. He would be staying in Petrora a good while, he suspected — and with that thought, he asked the two children:
"By the way — how did you know to come looking for me here?"
Diana paused to weigh her answer. Even she could see that tracking down Gadrian, appearing before him, and demanding a diagnosis out of nowhere was hardly the behavior of a child. That he would appear here at all had been a closely guarded secret.
I can hardly claim I knew because I've lived it once before.
But an outright lie wouldn't serve either — that shrewd-looking man was not one to let things slide.
"We heard many famous mages would be gathering here, so we came looking. As you can see, His Highness Cassion's condition is far from ordinary."
At times like these, the fifty-fifty strategy was supreme. Half truth, half lie. Broadly speaking, Gadrian counted as a famous mage too, didn't he?
Though "a mage without rival" would be the more precise description.
Gadrian studied Diana for a long moment with an unreadable gaze — then laughed softly. Something in his manner said he would let it pass this once, and Diana relaxed.
"And who was it that thought to go looking for a mage?"
Coming to find not just any mage but him meant they had realized Cassion's illness was, in some form, bound to magic.
Magical pathology was an exceedingly high-order discipline — little researched, its materials scarce. The children had come on their own, so one could only infer they had worked it out themselves, and that was no small feat.
If an adult had told them, they would never have sent the children alone. And he is a prince, no less. Had the royal family known, King Karman would have contacted me directly.
There was clearly something these children were keeping to themselves.
"It was me. I figured it out."
"I confess I'm curious how you managed it. But dear me — it seems our time is up."
The ring on Diana's finger had begun to flash and flicker, which meant the effect concealing them from the watch would soon wear off entirely.
"You'll be thrown bodily from the hall. Mind you don't hurt yourselves in the fall."
"Then His Highness Cassion — could you tell me the treatment for—"
With time pressing, Diana's words were cut off midway. Her body and Cassion's were flung outward, beyond the walls.
"I shall pay a visit to the palace before long."
Gadrian's answer came belatedly, to no one at all.
Three days had passed since we attended the mages' festival.
That day, Cassion and I had met Gadrian and come away with certainty: his illness was no ordinary affliction, but something tied to magic.
He never did tell us exactly what the illness was. But a man like that taking an interest and promising to come find us said enough on its own.
If the illness was born of magic, only a mage could treat it. And since every potion we had tried had failed, it would take a mage of truly extraordinary skill.
And Gadrian was the perfect man for the job.
Which left only the question of how to win him over. I was racking my brains when—
"Dayson sent a gift, I hear?"
Cassion asked the question between sips of the mystery vegetable juice Flac had brought him.
"Ah, a gift? Did I get one? ... Oh! I did."
"You receive a gift and can't even remember it?"
Cassion's tone had gone sharp. It's not even a gift from him. What are you so prickly about?
I took out my handkerchief and wiped the vegetable juice from the corners of his mouth. He snatched it from me and scrubbed at his lips instead. It had hardly been any time at all since the scales disappeared — he had no business mistreating those lips now.
"It's not that I can't remember. It just doesn't come to mind. It means nothing to me. I haven't even opened it."
When we had crossed paths with Dayson and Bella at the festival grounds after leaving Gadrian, their arms had been stuffed full of purchases. They had shopped on without ever noticing we'd vanished; when they finally ran into us, they demanded to know where on earth we'd been, more like an interrogation than a question. We fobbed them off with a story about briefly losing our way.
Dayson and Bella had been utterly dazzled by all the wondrous magic on display, so they let it go without pressing us further about where we'd gone or what we'd done. The guards, for their part, knew perfectly well that losing track of us was an inexcusable failure, and kept their mouths shut.
Our meeting with Gadrian remained a secret shared by me, by Cassion — and by Gadrian himself.
And by the time we returned home, Dayson's gift had arrived. Apparently, among everything he had been toting in both arms, there had been something meant for me. The reason I had clean forgotten he'd sent anything was simple enough: a gift from Dayson held nothing worth remembering.
"By the way, Your Highness — don't we each have something we ought to say to the other?"
"Say about what?"
I handed the glass Cassion had emptied to Flac, and waited until he had carried it out before going on.
"Why weren't you the least bit surprised? When I took you to a mage. And when Mage Gadrian examined you — you were in pain, weren't you? Tell me in detail exactly what that felt like."
Cassion seemed to replay the scene for a moment.
"First — you've startled me more times than I can count. I'm used to it. That's not the same as not being surprised. Second, I vaguely guessed you took me to the mage for my treatment. And when Gadrian treated me — it was agony, but it felt like strength was pouring into my body. Does that answer it?"
"Not quite. Has it ever occurred to you that you might be a mage yourself?"
Cassion flinched at my question. That flinch settled it: on some level, he had known all along that he might be a mage. He simply hadn't said a word to anyone. Not even to me.
Perhaps my gaze had turned fierce, because Cassion shot me a wary look.
"I wasn't sure... so I didn't say anything. And besides, even if I were a mage, this body would struggle to manifest so much as 1st-Circle magic."
People assume mages grow frail from nothing but study, but manifesting magic demanded enormous physical strength. That was why ailing mages struggled to cast anything of real power — and why they died young.
I understood Cassion's heart well enough not to press further. Instead, I asked a different question.
"When did you first begin to think you might be a mage?"