The Reluctant Mage Read online

  They entered the shuttered, lamplit council house. Its round wooden conference table was shoved into a corner, leaving the centre of the small room bare. Seeing them, the five village men with their cudgels stepped forward. Ewen nodded at them, a curt greeting. For many reasons, they couldn’t stay.

  “The king’s sons, we are. On the king’s business. Wait outside. If you’re needed, you’ll know. Be sure the door’s closed behind you.”

  The men glanced at each other and left, not one of them looking at their prisoner. Naked to the waist, the blighted man was roped to one of the table’s chairs, bound by his wrists, by his ankles, with coils of rope tight about his middle. His lean face was stubbled, his dark hair lank with sweat. His brown eyes showed their whites, gliding round and round in their sockets. Small, blood-filled pustules disfigured his narrow, sun-browned chest and belly. Some of the pustules had burst, dribbling reddish-black blood and thin yellow muck.

  Padrig slid his sharp dagger out of its sheath. “Are there words to say? Or do I stick him silent?”

  Hearing the furious pain in his voice, Ewen took a deep breath. Easily, so easily, he could scream his resentment and rage. The king was right to ask this—and yet, and yet…

  I’m sorry, little brother.

  “Ewen—if I’m doing this, I want to do it,” Padrig said, his fingers white about the dagger’s slender hilt. “So if there’s—”

  “Wait,” he said, and took hold of Padrig’s arm. “I need to think, I do.”

  “Think?” said Padrig, shaking free—but he let the dagger drop to his side.

  How will we know what ghosts are stirring beyond Vharne’s borders if we never wait long enough to ask a man who’s maybe seen one?

  That’s what he’d asked Tavin, and the swordmaster had given him short shrift in reply. But he’d been right. He knew he was right.

  This Jeyk’s one of ours, not an Iringan, but still there’s something he might know.

  Cautiously, he approached the man bound to the chair. “Jeyk. Jeyk. Can you hear me, Jeyk?”

  “Ewen? What are you doing?” Padrig protested. “Don’t talk to him. What if he understands you, and begs for his life? You want me to put him down while he’s begging, do you?”

  The man’s lolling head jerked up. Such a terrible madness in his wild eyes. “Calling me. Calling me. Let me go, you. He’s calling.”

  “Who’s calling you, Jeyk?” he asked softly. “Jeyk? What’s his name?”

  The man’s red-rimmed eyes narrowed to slits. “The power, the power!” he hissed, spittle flying. “Pathetic fool, on your knees!”

  “Ewen, enough,” said Padrig. “He’s lost his wits, he has. Don’t you see it?”

  Yes. I see it. Choked with sorrow, he stepped back. “Remember your drills in the tiltyard, do you? One thrust, sure and swift, between the ribs and angled up. There’s the heart, you’ll pierce it for sure.” Turning, he looked at his brother. “All your weight behind the thrust, Padrig. And when the hilt’s home you twist the blade, you do. Cut the heart to ribbons and that’s the end of him, it is.”

  Pale as milk, Padrig nodded. “I remember.”

  “And remember this too, you should. It’s a kindness you’re doing. His future’s black blood and running pus and his mind shredding to tatters. See that, you can. Padrig, you’re saving him.”

  Padrig stared. “Helps to think that, does it?”

  He owed his little brother nothing but the truth. “Not now. But it will.”

  When their faces come back to you, ghosts in the night.

  Breathing in harsh rasps, Padrig closed on the bound man. Halting before him, he took the blade in his left hand and wiped his right down the front of his dark green woollen coat.

  Ewen swallowed. “Count down his ribs, Padrig,” he said, staring at the bones beneath the madman’s taut skin. “Slide your blade between fourth and fifth, you should.”

  “Ewen…”

  “I’m right here, Padrig,” he said, blinking. “Time to do this, I say. Waiting won’t make it kinder.”

  Not for him, and not for you.

  Turned to stone with tension, Padrig was. Muscles like rock, the air scouring his lungs like grit. He took the blade back in his right hand. The bound man stared up at him, a moaning gibberish clogging his throat.

  “Hide his eyes,” Padrig whispered. “Please, Ewen? I can’t put him down with him looking at me. I can’t.”

  Don’t touch a brain-rotted man past what’s needful, Tavin said. Touch churns them, it does. Once they’re bound the only touch they need is the blade’s kiss, it is.

  But this was his little brother Padrig asking him. This was Padrig’s blooding. He was scared.

  Told him I’d help, I did. What’s my word worth? Nothing?

  He didn’t want to ask Nairn for a cloth, and there was nothing in the council house to use for a blindfold, so he took out his dagger and sliced off the bottom of his linen shirt. Padrig watched him, speechless.

  “Bind his eyes now, I will,” he said. “And then, Padrig, you have to do it.”

  Padrig nodded. “I will.”

  Nairn’s friend Jeyk spat and swore and cursed as the linen was tied tight around his face.

  “Pity we can’t bind his jaw shut as well,” said Padrig.

  “No. That would make this—”

  “Butchery,” Padrig muttered. “I know that.”

  Heartsick, Ewen kissed his brother’s cheek. “Spirit guide your hand,” he whispered. “Be merciful. Be quick.”

  But Padrig was nervous. He didn’t thrust the blade home hard, he let it prick the bound man’s skin first, drawing blood. Jeyk let out a piercing howl and thrashed in the chair, startling Padrig a pace backwards.

  Ewen felt his fingers clench. “No, Padrig.” I should do this. I should. He’s not ready—but the king gave his command. “Padrig—”

  “I know!” Padrig shouted, his face flushed, and raised his dagger. “Stand fast, Ewen. I’ll do this, I will.”

  Fingers lightly touched to his own blade, Ewen watched his brother step close again to the bound man. Only this time Jeyk was ready, he knew his life was forfeit, and before Padrig’s blade could slide home to its hilt he was screaming and thrashing, the chair was tipping, tipping, and before they could stop it Jeyk crashed to the floor.

  The old timber chair split apart, and the blighted man, snarling, thrashed himself free.

  Ewen leapt for him as Padrig turned to the door. “Help in here!” his brother shouted. “Nairn! Nairn!”

  Howling, the blindfolded madman, still bound to bits of wood, flung around in a frenzy, wildly lashing out. A length of timber caught Ewen a crushing blow across his right forearm. He heard bone break. His legs buckled, dropping him poleaxed to his knees. As he struck the floor a bolt of pain seared through his body, making him cry out.

  “Ewen!” said Padrig, whipping round.

  Dizzy, his belly heaving, Ewen waved him back. “No, Padrig! See to Jeyk! Obey the king!”

  Torn, Padrig hesitated. Then the council house door banged open. Nairn tumbled through it, his five men with their cudgels at his heels. Half-blinded by suffocating, white-hot waves of pain, Ewen slumped to the floor, broken arm clutched across his chest, and watched as Padrig tried to blood himself by putting down the poor man Jeyk, who was lost to the blight.

  Three shallow cuts he managed, not one a killing blow. The pain of them only maddened the brain-rotted man further, making him howl and stumble and throw himself around the room. Twice he caught Padrig with the timber still bound to his wrists, hard enough to hurt him. Stricken with horror, Nairn and the five Eastern Vale men held back. Padrig landed a fourth blow, opening a deep wound across Jeyk’s spine. Screaming, the madman knocked the blade from Padrig’s loosened grasp.

  Ewen closed his eyes against a sting of tears. I’m sorry, Padrig. I’m sorry, Father. I failed. “Nairn!” he croaked. “You and your men—you have to take him!”

  “No!” Nairn protested. “Ewen—he�
��s my friend!”

  Useless, useless… Nearly biting through his lip, Ewen lurched to his feet. “You men! Take him! Or you’ll see the Eastern Vale under blight, you will!”

  Jeyk’s blindfold was sliding. He could see now, and he was lethal. Bloody tears streaked through his greyish stubble and all the pustules on his chest were burst. Slicked with blood and pus, stinking, he flailed and snarled, teeth bared and ready for biting, ready to spread his deadly, brain-rotting blight.

  Padrig’s dagger had slid beneath the council table. He was on his hands and knees under it, fighting to get the knife back.

  “Take him!” Ewen shouted—and the five frightened men with cudgels obeyed.

  Afterwards, with Jeyk’s pulped and broken body decently covered and taken away, and dirt spread over the pools of blood soaking into the council house’s wooden floor, Ewen sat silent while one of the Eastern Vale’s goodwives looked at his arm.

  “One bone broken, one cracked,” she said, then bound his arm between two split boards and strapped it tight to his body so he could bear the long ride home. After that she went away, and that left him with Nairn.

  “They’ll not get over this, they won’t!” his mother’s cousin said, shaking. “Those men. They’re ruined, Ewen, thanks to you and your brother. I’m ruined. It’ll be with me ’til I die, that bloody slaughter!”

  And me. “Nairn—” He hurt so much, he wanted to be sick. The goodwife had given him nothing for the pain. “I’m sorry. Send to the king. Complain of me and Padrig. We’ll hold our tongues, we will. The fault here is ours.”

  “Send to the king?” Nairn snorted. “The man my cousin wed with, he never had time for me. You and your brother, go back to the High Vale, Ewen. Don’t show your faces in the Eastern Vale again.”

  Dismissed, Ewen made his way through the village’s angry silence, past men and women who hated him now, and found his brother at Nairn’s stable with the horses. They were saddled and ready.

  “It’s a full moon tonight,” Padrig said, his face bloodless still. The bruise on his cheek, from one of the blighted man’s wild blows, stood out in stark green and purple relief. “We can ride after sunset.”

  “Padrig—”

  His brother turned his back. “Swallow your tongue, Ewen. Unless there’s a word you know to undo what’s been done.”

  “Padrig,” he said again, sighing. But that was all he said. It was too soon, and his brother was too raw.

  Full of every kind of pain a man could suffer, he clambered awkward into his saddle, and with Padrig beside him rode away from the Eastern Vale.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Bright sunlight, warm and sparkling on a fountain. A pond. A mansion. It’s smaller than King Gar’s seagull-white palace, but almost as grand. Cautious, she looks around. The gardens are familiar. She’s been here before.

  A man stands on the mansion’s balcony. Sunlight on his jewels. Gold on his fingers. Gold on his brow. His tunic is rich purple, his breeches midnight black. He turns and looks at her. His brown eyes warm in a smile.

  Rafel. It’s Rafel. He’s safe. He’s not screaming.

  But then she realises, no. This isn’t her brother, though this man wears his face. Those might be his eyes, and those his lips when he smile, still—it’s not Rafel.

  Without warning, a shadow crosses him. The smile dies, and his warm eyes turn cold.

  “Who is it, watching me? Who dares to look?”

  She feels the menace of him, sharp and piercing. She’s frozen to her marrow and paralysed with fear.

  Don’t see me—don’t see me—I’m not here. I’m a dream.

  But as she wrenches herself free, before this terrible man can truly see her, she hears a faint voice crying for help.

  “Deenie, it’s me. Deenie, I’m here. Deenie, please, help me. You have to help me, before it’s too late. Deenie… please…”

  “Deenie! Deenie! Deenie, for the love of Barl, wake up!”

  Wrenched gasping from sleep, mizzily confused, Deenie opened her mouth to fratch at Charis for shouting—then gasped again as a new and different pain speared through her.

  “Deenie!” Charis said again, clutching an oil lamp. In the glowing yellow light her face was blanched with terror. “Oh, praise Barl. Deenie, I—”

  A bone-rattling crash of thunder overhead smashed Charis’s words to silence, and the chamber lit up crimson as lightning stabbed the night.

  “Deenie, is this it?” said Charis, into the ringing silence that followed. “Have we reached the end?”

  Teeth chattering, Deenie shoved back her blankets and slid out of bed. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” She felt as though she’d swallowed a bucket of burning coals, pain searing through her with every shaking breath. Rafel. “You mustn’t go to pieces, Charis. I can’t—”

  Another crash of thunder. More flaring light. And then the rain came, full of spite and hail. She staggered to the uncurtained chamber window and looked out. Lumps of ice smashed into the glass panes, smashed against the Tower’s stone walls and gouged holes in the unkempt lawn below. The raging night was lit in crimson fits and bursts, turning the pouring rain to blood.

  “Oh, Deenie,” Charis whispered, creeping to join her. “I think this is the end.” She sobbed. “I’m not a brilliant mage like you or Rafel, but I can feel it. Our poor kingdom’s trying to tear itself apart—and we’re going to die!”

  Deenie reached for her hand and held on tight. “Don’t say that, Charis. It’s not the end, it’s just a bad storm, and—”

  And then she screamed, a breathless cry, because the pain shooting through her was—was—

  Am I dying? Is this what dying feels like?

  Deep in the earth, a tremor was building.

  “Charis—” She felt herself sink to the floor. “We have to get out. Go put some clothes on, as many layers as you can, then meet me in Da’s room. Go on now. Hurry.”

  Charis let go of her hand. “Deenie, what are you—”

  “Hurry!” she shouted, and slapped at Charis to make her run.

  Alone again, she clutched at the windowsill and dragged herself, whimpering, onto her feet. Charis had taken the lamp with her, so she summoned glimfire. The pain of that made her eyes pop wide. When she could trust that she’d not fall down again, she shuffled to her wardrobe. Every step was a torment. The storm outside was nothing, nothing, to the storm in her flesh, and the storm outside was terrible. Rolling crashes of thunder like a rockslide in the sky. Whipcracks of lightning, torrents of rain. Rattle rattle smashing of hail on stone and glass.

  The pain behind her eyes was stealing her sight. Blinking, unsteady, hands shaking and heart drubbing, she pulled off her nightshirt and battled into some smalls then leather trews and a wool longshirt and then two proper shirts over that. She pulled on her thickest wool skirt next, belted a leather coat around her, then dragged two pairs of socks on her feet and laced herself into her stoutest leather boots, wincing. Bulky and clumsy, she looked at the rest of her clothes in the wardrobe. Turned and looked through the window at the raging storm. Closed her eyes, and felt the earth clutching tighter and tighter, holding its breath.

  So she took up her chamber footstool and smashed it through the glass, then snatched the hairbrush from her dresser and cleared the frame of splinters and shards. And then she pitched every stitch and shoe and boot she owned out of the Tower to the pummelled, hail-strewn grass below. Last of all she hauled out from hiding the stout wooden chest where she kept all her coin. How Rafe used to tease her for not keeping her trins and cuicks in the palace treasury. But she never liked other people knowing where to put hands on her small wealth, saved nice and regular ever since she was a tiddy sprat.

  And I was right, Rafe, wasn’t I? It’s a good thing this money ain’t up at the palace.

  Emptying those hoarded trins and cuicks into her largest leather satchel, she felt a sob catch in her throat. Rafe. But there wasn’t time to think of him or puzzle through her horrible dream. That wo
uld have to wait ’til later, ’til everyone in the Tower was safe.

  She didn’t dare throw the heavy satchel out of the window after all her clothes, so she dragged its wide strap over her shoulders, rested its clinking bulk against her right hip, and stood. Dizzy with the dream and the storm, groaning as she felt the earth’s rising agitation, she staggered out of her chamber and took the spiral staircase to Da. Charis was there with Mama and Pother Ulys, who’d again come to sit with her father to give Mama some rest. Glimfire dimmed and shone and dimmed again as the crimson lightning flashed and died.

  “Deenie!” said Mama, seeing her in the doorway. “What’s this? Charis says—”

  “Not now, Mama. We’ve got to go,” she said, staring at Da. He lay still enough beneath his blankets, but even from a distance she could feel the blight in him, raging. As though the wild storm called to it. “There’s a tremor coming. A bad one. We can’t be in the Tower when it strikes.”

  “You’re sure?” said Mama. “This isn’t just another of your whirligig dreams?”

  She looked up. Shadows smudged beneath her mother’s eyes. In the fitful light she looked more frail than ever, and there was a bewildered softness in her face. It made her look like a stranger.

  “No, Mama. It’s real. Can’t you feel it?”

  Her mother pressed her thin hands to her head. “Yes. A little. I’m not—I’m feeling rather—Ulys gave me a posset.” With an effort, she shook herself to a sluggish sharpness. “Deenie—”

  “Mama,” she said, and left the safety of the doorway. The roiling in her was so awful now that walking was like stabbing knives through her feet. But she couldn’t mind it. She reached her mother, took both her wrists and tugged her gently away from Da’s bed. “Fratch at me downstairs, as much as you like. But right now we have to leave the Tower. Please, Mama? Will you trust me?”

  Mama stared at her. “You used to be so timid, Deenie. Where did our little mouse go?”

  On a sob, she pulled her mother close in a swift hug. “Someone did a spell, Mama, and I turned into a cat.” Letting go, she turned. “Pother Ulys—”