The Reluctant Mage Read online

How can I? I was never so relieved in my life.

  “Master—”

  Morg cuffed the back of his head. Rafel’s loutish strength meant the blow hurt. “Look at me, Arlin Garrick, and tell me that’s so.”

  Slowly, his heart thudding again, he turned and looked at the sorcerer. Was this it? The moment of his death?

  If it is, I will not die craven. I am a Garrick, and a Garrick does not beg.

  “I can’t. And you know I can’t.”

  “Arlin, Arlin.” Morg’s soft laughter was frightening. “You are such a Doranen. So proud. So arrogant. I’ve missed that. It’s been far too long since I kept company with my own kind.”

  Uncertain, Arlin stared at him. This was a Morg he’d not seen before. As they journeyed through the miserable, blighted lands that stood between themselves and Lost Dorana, collecting a man here, a woman there, as he’d been forced to witness the deaths of those few poor knaves who’d hosted Morg’s shredded essence, the sorcerer had kept himself aloof. And though Morg had spent the days since their arrival at this estate supervising his prisoners, still he’d not spoken a word save for giving orders or uttering spells.

  This Morg was… unexpected.

  And though he was frightened, he was also curious. Filled to the brim with questions he never thought he’d ask. Perhaps then, with Morg in a talkative mood, he might take a small risk.

  “Does that mean I am allowed a question, Master?”

  Morg tipped his face to the pallid sun. “Yes, Arlin. You’re allowed. And since I’m feeling expansive I might even answer it.”

  He found it unsettling to see the small changes in Rafel’s face, now that a different intelligence ruled the Olken’s body. A quirked eyebrow here, a thin sneer of lips there, a head tilt… Even his voice was changed. It was less brusque. More mellifluous. No hint of pain showed in him anywhere.

  Forget Rafel, you fool. Forget him and his screaming. Think of him as dead.

  “Master, are there truly none of us left, save for the descendants of those mages who fled Dorana with Barl?”

  Morg slid his fingers through his hair, a languid gesture so at odds with Rafel’s blunt muscularity. “You’re wrong, you know,” he said, musing. “Rafel never lied. He had no idea of the power that’s in him. His father kept it a secret. If you could feel his resentment—his rage—about that?” Another laugh. “One might almost feel sorry for him.”

  Arlin had no desire to talk of Rafel or his misbegotten father. “Well, if you say he was truthful then of course I must believe it. Master—the Doranen?”

  Morg’s expression tightened, and he tutted impatiently. “Why does it matter?”

  “Because Dorana’s mages are a part of me, Master. They were my distant family, some of them. I used to think that if ever I found my way to this place I might meet someone whose face looked like mine.”

  “Family?” Morg shook his head. “It’s unimportant, Arlin. You’ve missed nothing. And no. None survived.”

  He did his best to hide his grief. “I see. Master—another question?”

  Morg sighed. “If you must.”

  “Are we—were we—the only mages in the world?”

  “Counting the Olken?”

  The Olken? “Do you count them, Master?” he said, shocked.

  “The only counting of Olken I intend,” said Morg, this time with a smile of greedy anticipation, “is the counting of skulls as they pile higher than Barl’s Mountains.”

  Arlin looked at the grass. Once that might have been something he would say. Even now, after everything, a part of him responded to the raw and ugly threat. But a greater part of him recoiled from it. The Olken were a peasant race, good for nothing but grubbing in the dirt. But even so…

  Morg was watching him closely again. “We could count skulls together.”

  “We could, Master,” he said, his throat dry. “So, there are no other mages?”

  “None.”

  Which meant no hope of an alliance against him. “Master, there is another question I’d ask you.”

  “One more,” said Morg, dangerous. “My patience wears thin.”

  Such casual menace. He felt his belly churn. “Master, where is everyone? You rid Dorana of its mages, but did no-one else live here? Is our homeland empty of people? Is the world empty?”

  “It’s true, the world is emptier than once it was,” said Morg, drifting to the nearest half-weeded flowerbed. He plucked a bronze blossom from its stem and brushed stubby petals over his cheek. “When I was myself, before, so long ago, even after I destroyed the Doranen, I ruled people. I ruled nations. Every land we travelled through, Arlin, and lands you’ve not seen, I ruled them all. And though eventually I left crude flesh behind, still I ruled. There were people and there were creatures. Fantastic beasts of my devising.” His face clenched in a scowl. “They perished when Asher murdered me.”

  “And the people? What happened to them when you… fell?”

  “I assume those in Dorana fled,” said Morg, shrugging. “Back to the lands whence their ancestors came.” Then he smiled, caressing his lips with the flower. “Where now they hide with their countrymen, thinking I’ll not notice them—the fools.”

  Arlin swallowed. “So you remember what happened? You remember your life? Even though you were—”

  “Dead?” Morg let the plucked blossom slip from his fingers. “I was never dead, Lord Garrick. I can’t be killed. At least—not for long.”

  Lord Garrick. The tone of Morg’s voice made the formal address an insult. “Master, all mortal things die.”

  “Yes, Arlin, but I am immortal,” Morg said gently. “I transmuted myself. And when I am whole again, then will I transmute again. I will leave this sorry prison of flesh and blood and bone—ruined, of course, for it’s the least Asher deserves—and once more I will spread myself upon the wind. The nations and kingdoms and principalities that once served me, they will be punished and then serve me again.”

  “And what of Lur? What of the Doranen there?”

  “Lur…” Morg said the name caressingly. “Barl’s unlikely refuge. The bitch whore was always lucky.” He shrugged. “Lur is dying. You know it. Rafel knows it. Rafel is sick with grief for that. Are you?”

  Was he? He’d grown up despising Lur as an unwanted place of exile, but was his contempt for the kingdom anything more than a habit? Had he only longed for Lost Dorana out of self-preservation, so he’d not be thrashed for disobedience and disloyalty?

  I don’t know.

  But this wasn’t the time or place to admit his doubt out loud.

  “Lur was a pretty place, once,” he said, with care. “Abundant. Peaceful. Over-run with Olken, but you can’t have everything. Even so, it was never our home. Dorana is our true home. Many Doranen harbour secret hopes of finding their way back.”

  “Tell me…” Morg plucked another flower, a yellow one this time, and petal by petal began to shred it. “If I spared their lives, Arlin—the Doranen of Lur. Would they agree to serve me? Bow down and do my bidding?”

  “Many would, Master,” he said, thinking of his father’s friends. Their greed for magic, their yearning for more. Given the chance to become true mages he had no doubt the Doranen like them would serve. “But some wouldn’t. You know they turned Barl into an object of worship? There are clerics and churches. They think she intercedes.”

  Morg sneered. “Interferes, more like it. Or she did. Yes, I remember. That creaking old woman—what was his name? Barlsman Holze. Loved the bitch like a moonsick calf, that one. But she’s dead, Arlin. And unlike me, she’s never coming back.” A sharp glance. “Rafel says you’re not a believer.”

  What an odd conversation this was proving to be. Arlin Garrick and the sorcerer Morg, chatting like old friends. Discussing theology. It had to be a dream.

  “No, Master,” he said, and meant it. “I’m not. Barl was a mage. There was nothing divine about her.”

  Never in his life had he seen Rafel smile the way Morg was using him t
o smile now. “Nothing whatever. Arlin, I think I like you.”

  Really? In that case, I think I’m going to be sick.

  “Master,” he said, after a moment. When he could trust himself. “The Doranen of Lur. Will you spare them?”

  Morg smiled, swift and sly. “I might.” Bits and pieces of yellow petals littered the grass at his feet. “If you behave yourself.”

  “And the Olken, Master?” His empty belly was churning again. “You’ll really slaughter them all?”

  This time Morg’s laughter was soft, and sinister. “Arlin, you’re too gullible. I promise you, the peasants are perfectly safe. I have plans for them.”

  Staring at the sorcerer, Arlin thought he saw Rafel trapped behind his own eyes and screaming. “Plans?”

  “I can feel them, you know,” Morg murmured, and tossed aside the petal-stripped flower. His chilly gaze turned soft and warm, lingering on distant Elvado. “Those scattered, tattered pieces of my self. If you were me, Arlin, you’d surely go mad. I was a mirror, and I shattered, and each shard contains me.”

  “Then am I truly speaking to Morg?” he said, after another long hesitation. “If I ventured back into the world beyond Dorana, would I meet you in the wilderness? Would we then have this same conversation? If you’re sundered how many Morgs are out there?”

  “Arlin…” Morg patted his cheek. “You know, Rafel thinks you’re quite the mage but I’m not so sure. Think, my doughty little Doranen. Put you in a room full of mirrors and how many Lord Garricks exist?”

  “One,” he said. “Just one.”

  “Exactly,” said Morg. This time the pat on his cheek was more like a slap. “Now don’t ask me any more stupid questions or I’ll change my mind about talking to you. And I enjoy talking to you, Arlin. After centuries of silence and these past years of incompletion I find this return to humanity surprisingly refreshing.” He grimaced. “Well, now I do. Now that I’ve a body worth wearing. Although Conroyd was a good fit. For a while. ’Til he betrayed me. He was better than Durm, at least. That fat old fool was gross.”

  “Master, why didn’t you choose me?”

  The question was slipped off his tongue before he could swallow it. Not that he regretted Morg’s choice, but there was no use in denying his pricked pride. That Morg had chosen Rafel, an Olken, over one of his own kind…

  If Father had a grave he’d be spinning in it.

  “I had my reasons,” said Morg, his voice flat and cold.

  “Master,” he said quickly, and made sure to bow his head. Morg might have kept himself mostly separate on the journey here, but that wasn’t the same as keeping his nature secret. The sorcerer was capricious and nasty and thought nothing of using magic to punish in ways that made sight and hearing a curse.

  Silence, as Morg closed his eyes and tasted the world. “There’s another one coming,” he murmured. “Only a small piece of me in her. She’s a whisper, this vessel. Weak and faltering, like all women.” His eyes opened. “I have work to do here. You can fetch her to me, Arlin.”

  He felt his jaw sag. “Me?”

  “Yes, Arlin. You,” said Morg, mildly enough. “This is a world of flesh we live in. Until I transmute I must live in it as flesh, which means I cannot be in many places at once. So you will fetch myself to me, Lord Garrick, and you will safely bring me home.”

  “Master, you’d trust me to—”

  “Trust?” Morg struck him, hard. “No. Not yet. You’ll be warded and escorted. I am not a fool.”

  Face burning, Arlin bowed his head again. “Master.”

  “Come,” said Morg, and turned for the mansion. “It won’t hurt for you to see this.”

  Mutely compliant, all his fears rewoken, he followed the sorcerer back into the mansion and downstairs to the extensive honeycomb of cellars which were given over to housing both the Olken and the dribs and drabs of humanity they’d collected during the journey to Dorana. Twenty-two souls in all, eight women and the rest men, from three different lands with only an odd, cobbled-together muddle of the Doranen tongue between them. Morg had yoked each prisoner with severe compulsions, which made it safe to send the strongest, nimblest men into the woodland to hunt game. Those five men he left untouched, but six of the other men and four of the women he singled out.

  “Come,” he said, and snapped his fingers. “Arlin, you can herd them from behind.”

  Weeping, obedient to the magic branded in them, the chosen captives followed Morg upstairs to the mansion’s empty entrance hall where they huddled like sheep.

  “Stand out of the way now, Arlin,” the sorcerer commanded. “I don’t want you caught in the nimbus. You’re far too pretty a man for this.”

  Arlin backed against the nearest wall, feeling his palms slick and his breathing quicken. Something dark and dangerous curdled the air. Power was building, like a storm sweeping in. His exposed skin tingled. The hair stirred on his head. Morg was laughing as the snivelling captives cowered. One by one he touched them, and whispered, and moments later they changed.

  Remembering the stories he’d heard of the day Asher killed Morg, Arlin felt his eyes stretch wide. Here was pure Doranen magic, savage and primal and unapologetic. Fascinated, revolted, he watched the chosen men and women sprout hides and scales and tails and horns. Watched their skin deepen to animal colours of grey, brown, chestnut, brindle. Heard them scream and grunt and snuffle, lose their speech and every vestige of humanity.

  When he was finished, Morg turned. “Your escort,” he said. His eyes were shining, his face flushed. “And because I do like you, Arlin, here’s a word to the wise. Even if you knew the words to undo this working, you never could. Accustom yourself to the truth, my little lord. You’re mine, as they are mine. As the world was mine and will be again. You’ll ride to fetch the summoned vessel and your escort will run with you. Beware. My dravas never sleep. They do not tire. They obey me, and only me. Take the best horse and find the road we came in on. Follow it without turning. You’ll meet the woman within a day.”

  He bowed. “Yes, Master. I’ll just fetch water and some food to—”

  “No, Arlin,” said Morg, approaching. The men and women—the dravas—followed him slavishly with their inhumanly human eyes. “You won’t need them. And you’ll not flirt with the notion of running, either.”

  The heat that seared through him as Morg sank a spell into his flesh was part pain and part pleasure. Stirred, humiliated, he stared at the floor.

  “That will keep you,” said Morg, indifferent. “Go now. Don’t stop. And remember this, Arlin: I will see you through my dravas’ eyes. Should you displease me, on your return I will thrash you so hard you’ll think your father’s beatings were a kiss.”

  He knows about that? How can he know about that? Rafel never knew.

  Shamefully, his legs trembled. “Master,” he whispered. “There’ll be no need.”

  He escaped from the entrance hall and the look in Morg’s eyes, retreating to the field behind the mansion where their motley horses were kept. There might be stables, but there was no straw for bedding and no corn for their feed. The dravas followed him, claws and hooves clicking on the mansion’s stone floor and then thudding and scratching on the grass. A kind of feral intelligence glowed in their sunken, bestial eyes. They had fangs and talons. They could kill him with a blow. Would Morg command them to kill him?

  He might, if I lifted a hand against them. If I lifted a hand to him I’m certain he would. Watching them tear me to pieces would be more amusing than killing me himself. They are my keepers as he is my keeper. He’s diminished and I can’t touch him. He’s diminished… and I’m terrified.

  And yet Asher had defeated him. Remembering that, for the first time in his life he felt admiration for Rafel’s father. Then, on the heels of admiration came a dreadful, crushing grief.

  The world is lost again. The Innocent Mage has come and gone and now there’s no-one. Morg is reborn and not a soul can defeat him.

  Despairing, watched by th
e dravas, Arlin clung to the field’s crooked gatepost and wept.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dorana City’s Olken graveyard was woefully crowded, these days.

  Hanging back so Charis could at least pretend she was alone with her father, Deenie let her blurry gaze wander the new headstones shoved higgledy-piggledy into every spare space between the older, ordered rows of graves. Though the sky was patchily clouded, for once it wasn’t raining—but so much rain had fallen of late that some of the headstones were starting to sag. Soon they’d be falling flat, squelching into the soggy ground. And if the weather didn’t soon clear for good then the soggy ground would turn to muddy soup, surely, and coffins would rise out of their holes and wash away down the graveyard hill into the living city below.

  She pinched herself.

  Stop it. You’re being morbid. Think of Charis and her grief.

  Not quite two months had trudged by since poor Uncle Pellen breathed his last. He’d held on for much longer than anyone expected. Just on a month after Rafe left home she’d overheard Pother Kerril talking to Mama, saying as how she daily thought to get word that the old gentleman had gone, or was going, but days and days passed, turned into weeks, and more weeks followed, became months—and Dorana City’s former mayor clung to life, refusing to die.

  But then, because even Uncle Pellen had to let go in the end, he did die, and things in Lur were so awful by then that his funeral had been swift and plain and hardly noticed. Not like Darran’s, say, or the funeral for the royal family he used to tell her and Rafe about, when they were small.

  Deenie felt her throat clutch tight. Rafe. Blinking hard to keep the tears at bay, she pinched herself again. She mustn’t think of her lost brother. At least not here, in this cold, miserable place crowded with sagging headstones, and weeping mourners who placed sad sprigs of flowers on the wet ground then went home alone and bewildered by the world’s capricious cruelty. And not when Charis stood half a stone’s throw away, either.

  Two months? That’s nothing. That’s no time at all. She doesn’t need me here, weeping. Charis needs a strong friend, not Deenie the mouse.