The Reluctant Mage Read online

  A shiver ran through her. But it wasn’t from the chilly damp. This time it was a warning. She stared at the sky. Fresh clouds were streaming into the kingdom from over the mountains, dark and ominous and blotting out the scattered patches of pale blue. A bad storm was coming.

  Her unwanted mage-sense leapt again, pricking her. Not a day went by now, sometimes not even an hour, when it didn’t niggle at her, complaining. Her only consolation was that out of desperation she’d cobbled together a few tricks, little ways to throttle her power, muffle the worst of it when it shouted for attention.

  But her control was far from perfect. And while her mage-sense no longer wrecked her the way she’d been wrecked down in Westwailing that terrible day Rodyn Garrick and his son and his ignorant friends had tried to break Dragonteeth Reef, still it caused her enough misery that some nights she sobbed into her pillow for the pain in her bones.

  Charis, though possessed of her own mage instincts, hadn’t noticed the shift in the air. She was mired in grief, blind to everything but her father’s grave.

  I do wish she’d stop coming here. It doesn’t do any good.

  But poor Charis, she wasn’t ready to leave her father behind. So many years had gone by since her mother died, and in the years that came after, it was just her and Uncle Pellen. Closer than peas in a pod, they’d been. Of course Charis missed him. Of course she felt bereft.

  Just like Mama’s bereft, even though Da’s not dead.

  But that was another thing she couldn’t think about, her mother so lost and withdrawn these days, and Da in his silent bed, breathing, swallowing gruel, and doing nothing else. Pother Kerril said she was baffled by his illness and couldn’t find a cure. For herself, she’d given up talking about the blight she could feel in her father. There wasn’t any point. Nobody believed her. At least it wasn’t growing any stronger. She could feel that much. It was all the good news she was likely to get.

  Overhead the dark grey and black clouds jostled, bullying each other as the temperature plunged.

  “Charis,” she said, calling softly. “Charis, it’s going to storm.”

  Charis pressed her hands to her face, smudging tears, then turned. These days there was never enough colour in her cheeks. “I know.”

  “We should go. There’s ague about the city and we don’t want to catch it.” Not when half the new headstones in this graveyard could be laid at its door.

  “A few more moments,” said Charis, her eyes tragic. “Just a few.”

  Deenie swallowed a sigh. “Only a few. And then, truly, we do have to go.”

  “You start walking,” said Charis. “I’ll catch up. Please, Deenie. You hover, and you know how I mislike it.”

  If I didn’t hover, Charis Orrick, you’d sit yourself down and never walk out of this place.

  “All right,” she said, reluctant. “But you have to come, Charis. Don’t make me turn back and drag you out of here.”

  Charis’s eyes flooded with fresh tears. “Don’t be mean to me, Deenie.”

  She loved Charis like a sister, but even so… “I’m not being mean. If you get agueish I’ll have to pother you. Neither of us wants that.”

  “I said I’ll come, and I’ll come,” Charis snapped, turning her back. “In a few moments.”

  Sink it. Deenie tugged her shawl tight and headed for the graveyard’s iron gates. The other mourners were leaving too, huddled into their coats and coverings and casting resentful glances at the lowering, leaden sky. Two of them, a mother and son it looked like, noticed her. The son, close to her own age, tugged his mother’s arm then veered between the headstones. The mother followed, her face protesting.

  “Meistress Deenie,” the son called out, a young man with eyes as tragic as Charis’s. “You are Meistress Deenie? The Innocent Mage’s daughter?”

  He and his mother reached her and stopped, so she had to stop too. She’d never laid eyes on either of them before. Could be they were country Olken fled into the city to escape the hardships further south. Since Da’s illness and Rafe’s leaving she didn’t often come down from the palace grounds. She didn’t like being stared at and whispered about because of what had happened to them. She didn’t like it when strangers wanted a word. But she couldn’t rebuff this polite young man or his mother, because Lur was in sore strife… and Asher and his family were the closest thing to royalty the kingdom had left.

  “One of the other visitors,” said the young man, vaguely gesturing. “He told us who you are. He was right, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she said, and let the small word tell him what she wasn’t supposed to say.

  You’re a nuisance. Leave me alone.

  The young man heard what she’d left unspoken, and didn’t care. “Your father, Meistress Deenie. How is he?”

  It seemed to her that every Olken in the kingdom thought they owned a piece of Da. Thought that because he was Olken too, and had saved them twice, it meant they could ask impertinent questions and act as though they knew him. If she thought for one heartbeat this young man’s question was about Da and not about how frighted he was, most likely she wouldn’t want to slap him.

  But it wasn’t, and she did. She clasped her hands behind her back. “He’s the same. He doesn’t change.”

  “We’re sorry to hear that,” said the young man’s mother. Her dark hair was streaked grey. She looked old and tired and very sad. “It’s a trial for your poor mam.”

  A cold wind whipped up, sudden and sniping. The gnarly mab trees in the graveyard rattled their bare branches and the last trickle of watery sunlight vanished.

  “Mama will be touched to know you think of her,” Deenie said, and tugged her shawl tight again. “Meistress, it’s closing in nasty. You might want to get safe indoors afore the clouds break.”

  The sad-eyed woman nodded. “I do.”

  But as she turned to go, her son held her back.

  “Meistress Deenie,” he said, fervent, something more dangerous than sorrow in his gaze. “What do the pothers say? Will your father wake in time to save us?”

  Months of misery sharpened her retort. “What gives you the right to ask me that? And why would you think I’d bandy words about my da with a rude young meister I never met in my life?”

  “There now, Phin, see what you’ve done?” the woman scolded. “She’s Asher’s daughter and you’ve riled her. Silly boy. You take me back to the hostelry.”

  The young man Phin flushed dark red. “No offence meant, Meistress Deenie. But we’re in a sorry way and I thought—I hoped—”

  “I know what you thought,” she snapped. “And what you hoped. But it’s not for you to think or hope anything when it comes to my da. Our wrack and ruin’s got naught to do with him.”

  “Come away, Phin,” the woman said, tugging him. “You want us outside when the clouds break?”

  Mother and son hurried to the graveyard gates. Deenie watched them go, her heart thumping. Tears prickled her eyes but she wasn’t going to let them fall. She wasn’t.

  “Your papa wouldn’t know you, Deenie, if he could see you now,” said Charis, behind her. “Not such a mouse these days, are you? You’ve grown cat claws and you’re not frighted to use them.”

  She scowled as Charis came to stand at her shoulder. “That young meister was rude. He asked about Da.”

  Charis’s delicately arched eyebrows lifted. “And that’s rude, is it?”

  “The way he asked? Aye, it is.”

  Grumbling high above them, the first ominous rumble of thunder. Charis looked at the threatening sky and grimaced.

  “We’ll never make it back to the Tower,” she said. “But if we run we’ll likely reach my house before we’re soaked.”

  Deenie could feel her friend’s trepidation. Charis hadn’t set foot under her own roof since the day Uncle Pellen died. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure I don’t want an ague,” said Charis. “And that’s all I’m sure of.”

  So they ran, slipping and sliding in th
e graveyard’s mud and on the city’s cobbled streets, their long skirts wrapping round their legs as they dodged carts and carriages and other Olken on foot.

  Almost, they out-ran the vicious storm.

  Not quite soaked through, they fell across the Orrick house’s threshold. Charis slammed the front door on the wind and the water. Deenie, her teeth chattering, conjured glimfire then collapsed onto the staircase and hugged her knees to her chest. She wasn’t cold, even though she was wet. It was the storm raging through her, in the sky and in the earth beneath the streets and houses of battered Dorana City.

  Charis sat on the staircase beside her and held her hand.

  To take her mind off her own troubles, Deenie tightened her fingers. “You all right, Charis?”

  “I should come back here for good,” Charis whispered. “I shouldn’t leave the house empty.”

  Deenie bumped her, shoulder to shoulder. “You can’t live in this big old place alone. How can you live here alone?”

  Hard rain slashed at the windows and drummed the tiled roof so far above their heads. More thunder rumbled and the glass panes rattled a warning. Charis whimpered a little.

  “I should be used to these storms by now,” she said. “But I’m not. I don’t think I ever will be. Deenie, are there tremors coming?”

  She couldn’t feel them. As a rule she could feel the earth’s ructions, shuddering her bones before ever they shuddered the streets and the city’s buildings and everywhere else in poor ruined Lur.

  “No. All’s quiet this time.”

  Sighing, Charis pressed her other hand to her eyes. “Good. Oh, that’s good.”

  “Yes, it is,” she agreed. “They spasm me something awful, and I’m sick of Pother Kerril’s nasty potions. Especially since they don’t work so well any more.”

  The last tremors had rattled them six days ago, bad ones that ripped up half of Cherry Street and all of Princess Way and put most of the Livestock Quarter in a hole. Not that much trading went on there now, but even so. And there was bad damage in the Home Districts too, many of the few remaining, unblighted apple orchards twisted to rotting fruit and farmhouses flattened to damp dust and rubble. Even with Kerril’s possets she’d felt all of it, the earth’s pain and the city’s fear too, escaping its wall and running wild in the country.

  “Deenie…” Charis’s voice was wobbly. “Maybe I could come back here if you came with me.”

  She stared. “Leave Mama in the Tower alone with Da, you mean? Oh, Charis. I couldn’t.”

  “Then what will I do?” Charis wailed. “I can’t live there with you forever, can I?”

  Deenie slid her arm around Charis’s slender shoulders. “It won’t be forever. Not the rest of your life. Just a while longer. Charis, you can’t stay here on your lonesome. It’s not safe.”

  “It’s not safe to leave the house empty,” Charis retorted. “Every time I come past here I think I’ll see the windows broken or the door off its hinges or—”

  “Don’t be a goose,” she said, and gave Charis a little shake. “You know that won’t happen. The City Guards come by regular to make sure there’s no mischief.”

  Charis took hold of the banister and pulled to gain her feet. “And they’ll come by more often if they know I’m living here again. For Papa’s sake they’ll make sure I’m unharmed.” She trod the three steps down to the floor then turned. “Deenie, I miss him. And I—I feel close to him here.”

  Well. It was better than feeling close to him in the graveyard, but she still didn’t like the notion… “I know you do. Only Charis—he’s gone. You can’t be a rabbit and bury yourself here.”

  “Why can’t I?” said Charis, mutinous. “You bury yourself in the Tower, missing Rafe.”

  She heard her breath catch. “That’s not fair.”

  “Isn’t it? Why isn’t it?” said Charis, her damp cheeks pink. “It’s what you do. It’s been months and months since Rafel crossed the mountains, Deenie, and I only need my fingers to count how many times you’ve set foot out of the Tower. So don’t tell me you’ve not been hiding.”

  Rafe. “Mama needs me, Charis,” she protested. “You know she needs me. Da can’t be left, someone has to sit with him, and it can’t always be her. You should understand that better than anyone.”

  Charis nearly stamped her foot. “And you should understand that I want to be alone a bit! I want to be alone in my house and remember Papa and me laughing here and—and—” Face crumpling, she dropped to the staircase’s bottom step. “Deenie, why don’t you ever talk of Rafel? You never so much as mention his name.”

  “Oh, Charis.” Deenie pressed her forehead to her knees. “I can’t. It hurts to talk of him. Even saying his name is like stabbing myself with a knife.”

  “I don’t care!” said Charis. “Deenie, you don’t even say if he’s still alive. Is he? Please, at least tell me that much!”

  “Yes, he’s alive,” she said, lifting her head sharply. “If I thought he wasn’t, if—if I felt he wasn’t, don’t you think I’d have said so? Do you think I’d keep a truth like that secret?”

  “I don’t know!” said Charis, wildly. “You’re so far away these days, Deenie. Almost a stranger. You’ve gone somewhere I can’t reach you.”

  Stung close to tears by Charis’s resentful misery, she had to look away. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know what’s happening to Lur hurts you,” Charis said, still upset. “I know you have to drink Kerril’s horrible possets to dull what you feel, and they make you sick and drowsy, but—Deenie, I miss you, too. All my life, after Mama died, there was Papa and there was you and there was Rafel. And now—”

  Beyond the windows, the storm battered the city. They could hear the rainwater rushing off the roof, and down the sloping street past the front path and gate. In the gloom and the glimlight, just the two of them, it felt like being alone in the world.

  Deenie shook out her damp skirt. “He’s alive, Charis. I promise. Rafel’s alive.”

  “How do you know?” Charis whispered.

  “I just do,” she said, shrugging. “I can’t tell you where he is and I don’t know what he’s doing, but I know he’s alive.” She rapped her knuckles to her chest. “I can feel him. In here.”

  “Oh,” said Charis, her voice wobbly again. “Oh, praise Barl.”

  So at least Charis felt better.

  But I don’t. It’s not enough to know he’s alive. I want to know what’s happening. I want to know when he’s coming home. If he could magic those stupid Councillors back to Dorana, why can’t he find a way to tell us what’s going on? If he’s such a powerful mage why does he let us torment ourselves with worry?

  She loved Rafel. She did. But at times she thought she hated him, too.

  “I’m sorry, Deenie,” Charis said, her voice still small. “I don’t mean to go on at you.”

  Her head was pounding, hammers of pain beating at her temples. Despite months of constant storms and tremors, still Barl’s Weather Magic wasn’t shaken loose from Lur. It clung to the earth like a tattered autumn leaf to a tree, stubbornly refusing to abandon its home.

  “It’s all right.”

  “Sometimes—” Charis took in a deep, shivering breath. “Sometimes I can’t believe what’s happening to Lur. Why would Barl let this go on? Why doesn’t she intercede? In chapel Barlsman Jaffee says we’re being tested and to prevail we must stay strong in our faith and observe Barl’s Laws but—” She bit her bottom lip. “Deenie, the chapels have never been so full, yet nothing changes. What is Barl waiting for, do you think?”

  Though she was two years older, sometimes Charis seemed very young. “You still believe in Barl?”

  “Well, yes,” said Charis, uncertain. “Don’t you?”

  Deenie pulled a face. “I stopped thinking of her as anything but a dead Doranen mage long ago. I think Arlin Garrick’s horrible father was right. Jaffee’s talk of Barl saving us is nonsense.”

  “Deenie!” Shocked, Charis shoved to her
feet again. “It’s wicked to say things like that.”

  “Truly? Well, I don’t care,” she said, feeling her face scrunch into a scowl, the way Da’s did when he was fratched. The way it used to. Da. “I don’t see how sitting around waiting for Barl to save us has done Lur much good, do you?”

  “What choice do we have?” said Charis. “No matter how bad things get here, we’ve nowhere to run. Olken and Doranen, we’re all of us stuck between the mountains and the reef. The only hope we’ve got is Barl.”

  “And Rafel,” Deenie reminded her. “He’s out there trying to save us, Charis. Him and Arlin Garrick. If Arlin’s still alive. I can’t tell about him.”

  “Rafel,” said Charis. Her voice broke on his name. “Oh, Deenie. All this time without word. What if he’s in trouble? What if he needs help?”

  Then he’s on his own, Charis. There’s nothing we can do.

  But she couldn’t say that aloud. “He’ll be fine. He’s Rafel.”

  “And Lur?” said Charis, still fearful. “Deenie, how long do we have before the kingdom’s utterly ruined? Do you know? Can you tell?”

  Not for certain, but she had a nasty suspicion. Only she couldn’t share those fears either, even though if she did she’d maybe not feel so alone. Da would want her to be strong, even though she was his tiddy timid mouse. So she had to be, didn’t she? For him, for Mama, for Charis—and for Rafe.

  I wish there was someone to be strong for me.

  “Deenie?”

  Stirred out of bleak thought, she looked at her friend. “I can’t say how long we’ve got, Charis. And I can’t say what’ll happen when time runs out.”

  Charis crossed to the entrance hall’s window and rested her hand against it, palm-first and spread-fingered. “The whole world’s weeping,” she said, sorrowful. “That’s what it looks like. I heard someone say yesterday almost a third of the kingdom’s gone under water, with the Gant and the riverlets breaking their banks in so many places. I wonder…” Now she rested her forehead against the glass. “Will we drown first, or die of hunger? Or will the ground open up and swallow us instead?”