by Alex Zak
A court mage is supposed to deal with curses, intrigues, and the occasional poisoned goblet.Aliens were not part of the job description. When a routine magical anomaly turns out to be a fragment of alien technology, the carefully balanced medieval world cracks open. Magic and science collide, the palace becomes a testing ground for forces no one understands, and the mage—accidentally—ends up as the only person capable of translating between spells, emperors, and visitors from the stars. The court reacts as courts always do: with fear, greed, denial, and very bad ideas. Nobles see weapons. Scholars see forbidden knowledge. The Emperor sees a threat to stability. And the mage sees something far worse: the realization that magic itself may be just a misunderstood interface to an ancient, non-human technology. As misunderstandings escalate and the line between sorcery and science blurs, the mage must survive palace politics, alien logic, and the unsettling truth about the origin of power in his world. Saving the empire may require breaking every rule—magical, political, and human. A witty, ironic blend of fantasy and science fiction, Mage at Court and the Aliens is a story about first contact, misplaced authority, and what happens when a perfectly ordinary magical court discovers it is not alone in the universe.
