The Reluctant Mage Page 38

  The sorcerer had everything meticulously planned. First, his winged beasts. A setback there, for two of the seven originally created had failed to return. He’d created two more and sent them back to the wilderness beyond Dorana’s borders. Next he’d created another ten winged dravas. His trusted emissaries, they were, his sharp eyes above the world. Within days of their departure a trickle of human tribute began arriving in Elvado from those nations lying closest to the border. Now the trickle was thickened to a flood. The city was coming alive again, slowly but surely, as more and more voices filled the ancient silence.

  A cheerful thing, provided no attention was paid to what the voices were saying.

  These flesh-and-blood tributes were like sheep now, all the same, herded and chivvied from place to place by their unforgiving dravas guards. But soon enough they’d be sorted into ranks. The most amenable would join the dravas in imposing law upon the rest. Of those remaining subordinate, the men and the children were destined for work and the women for breeding. And death awaited anyone who was foolish enough to resist.

  “After all,” Morg had said, so reasonable. “We must remember: I am a ruler. Therefore there must be those who are ruled.”

  “Of course, Master,” he’d replied, because what else could he say?”

  And Morg had smiled. “I’m glad you agree, Lord Garrick. For it’s you I’ll rely upon to see this task carried out. Not just here, in Elvado, but throughout all Dorana—and beyond.”

  Remembering that, Arlin shivered.

  “Yes, it is a magnificent sight, isn’t it?” said Morg, stirring beside him. “We spoke of grief before. I tell you truly, Arlin, it is a strange thing to realise that I was grieving. I gave up my body willingly. I embraced the power that came with its loss. But there can be no denying that there is pleasure in flesh.” He lifted his face to the cool sun, eyelids drifting closed, almost dreamy. “I remember when I took that fat fool Durm. My first mouthful of his breakfast? I thought I might die from the pleasure. I had forgotten, you see. And so I was reminded, the sensual life is not to be wholly despised. It cannot last. I must outgrow it in the end. But until I do…”

  He sounded so greedy. Arlin shivered again.

  Until you do, you are vulnerable. That’s the only hope I have left.

  “Master, since you have touched upon the matter—might I ask if any more pieces of your sundered self approach?”

  “Why?” said Morg, staring. “What is that to you?”

  An edge had returned to his voice. He was so quick to take offence. Again, a truth might best disarm him. So far it had proven the most reliable weapon.

  Arlin clasped his hands before him and lowered his head. “Master, forgive me. There is no greater honour than to be entrusted with their safety but—I confess, I would not be parted from the library. If you must know, I am drunk on the knowledge your books contain. And I have so much more to learn, that I might more perfectly serve you.”

  “Ah.” Relaxing, Morg smiled. “Then to answer you, Arlin, even as we speak the last surviving parts of my scattered self creep towards Dorana. And I am strong enough now to guide them without need of you as their shepherd.”

  He made no attempt to hide his relief, knowing Morg would misread it.

  So I still have time to learn how to unlock the warded books and find the spell that will destroy him.

  “Also creeping,” Morg added, “are the rulers of those subject nations who forgot, and will be reminded, that they are themselves ruled. And when the last paltry princeling has come crawling to my feet I will teach them all what they must learn in order to serve me.”

  He lifted his bowed head. “Of that, Master, I have no doubt.”

  “Therefore enjoy your solitude in the library, Lord Garrick, but be aware of this: soon I will ask you to curtail your pleasures there. For when my court is a true court again, when my kingdom is reconvened, remember there are other duties awaiting you.”

  He’d grown adept at disguising how he felt when Morg touched him. Smiling as the sorcerer laid a palm to his cheek, he looked and looked—but still could see nothing of Rafel in those dark, Olken eyes.

  “Master.”

  Morg turned aside, abruptly cold again. “Go, little man. Your ambition wearies me.”

  Always, always, it was the same: a smile followed by a blow. He bowed. “Master,” he murmured, and retreated.

  If he should discover some ancient text in the library proving to him that Morg and his father shared a common seed, nothing would have left him feeling less surprised.

  Morg had chosen the Hall of Knowledge as his new palace.

  Walking its lofty halls and staircases and corridors to his refuge, the library, Arlin admired yet again the majesty and perfection of the sorcerer’s solitary mageworking. Stained glass and alabaster and marble and gold captured, reflected and enhanced the mid-afternoon sunlight. The air was soft with music, faint and lilting. A woman’s high, sweet lament.

  He wondered if it was some magical capturing of Barl from the ancient past. He didn’t dare ask.

  Some ten days had passed since taking residence here, and like the city, the palace was no longer deserted. Servants bowed as he swept past them, cowed by his golden hair and his gifted authority from the sorcerer. Morg’s dravas stood sentinel at every staircase, every door. By now so many of the beasts had been created, they teemed through Elvado like overgrown rats.

  The second day of his solitary mageworking in the city, with only his dravas escort for company, he’d tried to insinuate his own magic into one of the creatures. A dangerous act, but too tempting to ignore. The backlash had left him stunned and bleeding in the street.

  Terrified that Morg would know, would discover his insincere loyalty, he’d abandoned his mageworking and sought out the sorcerer.

  “Master, forgive me,” he’d said, abased on his knees. “The dravas would not heed my call for help. I thought only to bend it in service to me, that I might be a better servant.”

  Morg had accepted his apology, then made good on his promise of punishment.

  It was a full day before he could stand again, and another before he could return to his mageworking. If he’d not grown up under Rodyn Garrick’s roof, he had no doubt he’d have broken then and there.

  Thank you, Father.

  Bent now on finding a different way to thwart the sorcerer, upon entering the palace library he found the idiot Goose studiously polishing the round reading table that had graced Morg’s mansion. The idiot looked up as the door closed, dropped his cloth and beeswax and lurched a few steps towards him.

  “Arlin.”

  Yes, Rafel’s ruined friend was speaking again. Well. Mumbling. A word here. A word there. Never more than that. No actual conversation. Still no better than a dog, but useful. His cruel and casual tormenting of the half-wit kept Morg passingly amused—and lulled.

  But that was for show. In truth, with Pintte dead, he saw the idiot clothed and housed and fed and kept him away from the dravas, hoping that Rafel could see what he was doing. He needed Asher’s son to understand that Arlin Garrick merely played a part. That he was not Morg’s willing, compliant puppet. Because if Rafel gave up fighting, if he surrendered to his captivity…

  He’s supposed to be helping me. He swore himself Morg’s enemy. But all I see is Morg getting stronger by the day. What a fool I was to trust in an Olken’s strength.

  “Arlin,” the idiot Goose said again. His eyes were damp and anxious to please. The worst grief of Pintte’s death had passed. Adrift in a world he lacked the wit to comprehend, the man clung to any kindness he could find. Forgave those casual, deliberate cruelties because he knew enough to know that otherwise, he’d be alone.

  It was pathetic.

  “Thank you, Goose, yes, I do know my name,” he said, and slammed the library door behind him. “Be about your polishing, dolt. Your garbled blathering is more than I can bear. But leave that table. I want that table. Find yourself something else to polish.” />
  Flinching, Goose took his cloth and beeswax to the library’s other reading table and resumed his servant’s duties.

  Idiot. Ignoring him, Arlin selected one of the few unwarded books he’d not yet studied, slid into a beeswax-scented chair and opened it at random.

  Section Twenty-three: being a treatise regarding the efficacy of moon phases upon river tides: viz. the relative growth and retreat of lungbottom.

  Lungbottom?

  He flipped the book closed and read the faded, handwritten inscription on its papery leather cover. Herbal Decoctions. Oh. This was a pothering manual.

  He wasn’t studying to be a pother.

  Although—but no. It was unlikely in the extreme that Morg would have left him free to read a pothering manual that contained a recipe for a potion capable of harming him.

  “But there’s harm, and then there’s harm,” he murmured, fingers lightly tapping the book. After all, pothers weren’t perfect. They’d been known to give a man possets that failed to sit well side by side in the stomach. “I wonder…”

  “Arlin?” said the idiot Goose, startled, and fumbled the tin of beeswax.

  He didn’t bother to glance up. “Be quiet. I’m not talking to you.”

  Pothering. Yes. As Morg said, he was flesh now—and he’d remain flesh for some time yet. Sorcerer or not, flesh was vulnerable to more than magic and knives.

  If I can learn herb lore—if I can discover a combination of potions to render him weak—

  Such an attack would be a drawn-out affair. First he’d have to learn which herbs he needed, then find them without his plan being discovered and then, last of all, manage to poison Morg with them. That was the greatest challenge of all. He was still warded against turning any magic against the sorcerer. But was herb lore magic? Would a potion trigger the ward? And was he warded against intent, as well as deed?

  He didn’t know. To find out he’d have to act, and in acting he might betray himself. So best he read the book first, and any others like it in the library. The ones that wouldn’t harm him. A tedious task, to be sure.

  I’m grasping at straws, of course. But if straws are all I have to grasp…

  He opened the book to its first page and began reading. Being a remedy for flatulence brought about by mutton fat. What? Surely the remedy was obvious—avoid the consumption of mutton.

  This, I’m afraid, will prove more than tedious.

  Time shuffled by. Beyond the library’s window, the day seeped towards sunset. The idiot Goose moved on from polishing the other table to polishing bookshelves. And then he started a grating, tuneless humming under his breath.

  Arlin slapped his palm to the table. “Idiot! How am I expected to concentrate when—”

  Startled again, clumsy Goose spun round. His hand struck a row of still-warded spell books and with a punch of power he was thrown screaming to the floor.

  “Goose!”

  Leaping for him, his chair overturned, Arlin felt a flash of pain as power from the discharged ward skimmed his exposed skin. The wash of sorcerous magic knocked him off his feet so that he landed on hip and elbow beside the stricken Olken. The idiot was whimpering, staring at his blistered fingers in shock.

  “Stop blathering,” he said roughly. “It could be worse. You could be dead. You would be, if Morg didn’t have such a care for me.” And the sorcerer must have a great care, or he’d have set the protective wards to killing strength. “So I saved your life, dolt. Have you wits enough left to be grateful for it, I wonder?”

  Idiot Goose, snivelling, held his fingers out like a child.

  “Yes, you fool, you’re hurt. I can see that, I’m not blind!” he snapped. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  A fat tear trickled down the idiot’s cheek.

  “I’m not a pother, Goose! I’ve read six pages of herbal remedies. If you were farting like a sheep I could help you. Perhaps next time you won’t beeswax the shelves!”

  Another tear. Then another. Mired in the half-wit’s baffled woe, a terrible hint of comprehension. Seeing it, Arlin felt a wave of sickness flood through him.

  “Enough, you useless, ignorant Olken! I’m not a nursemaid any more than I’m a pother! You’re a trifle singed, that’s all. It’s not the end of the world. You’re not dying. Now get back to your work and leave me to tend mine!”

  The dolt’s blisters were blood-tinged, angry scarlet welting down to his palm. Eyes anguished, he reached out his unhurt hand.

  Help me. Please help.

  Arlin shook Goose free of his sleeve and scrambled up. “Leave me be! Did I say for you to touch me? Did I say you could look at me? Pintte, Pintte, Pintte. Is that what you want?”

  When all else failed, that cursed fool’s name always cowed Rafel’s friend.

  The idiot Goose curled his arms over his head and wept.

  Curse it, curse it, curse all mages and magic.

  Heedless of the pothering book’s age and fragile paper, he blundered his way through the pages looking for something, anything, to shut the Olken up.

  Being a charm to soothe a minor wounding.

  He ripped the spell from the book, returned to the Olken and snatched at his hurt hand. The idiot cried out as though it were murder.

  “Fool!” Arlin hissed at him. “Do you want me to help you or not?”

  Eyes wide and tearful, Goose stopped struggling.

  “Good,” he said, fiercely. “Now hold still, you beast-witted dolt. And be quiet. Interrupt me and I could well burn you to cinders.”

  Goose hunched into himself, his trembling lips pressed tight.

  The charm was four phrases and a sigil, repeated three times. Resentfully Arlin chanted them and painted magic on the air. The power caught. The charm ignited. Goose’s angry, welted blisters vanished.

  Well. Look at that. Perhaps I missed my calling, Father. Perhaps you should’ve made me into a pother.

  “Idiot,” he said to the astonished Olken. “Anyone would think you’d not seen magic before.”

  Leaving the fool to his servile polishing, he tossed the ripped page of pothering charms onto the table then turned to brood at the rows of books Morg had warded. Their sigiled spines glowed, silently taunting.

  It irked him beyond measure, knowing that a pompous fool like Durm had once managed to break a ward near as powerful as these. His father had never called King Borne’s Master Magician anything but a toad. And to be found wanting against a toad was nigh impossible to stomach.

  There is a way to unravel these wardings. There must be. I am steeped in Morg’s magics from dawn ’til dusk. I have spent weeks mageworking beside him. Together we remade Elvado. I know him. I stink of him. These bindings will not stand against me. They can’t.

  The difficulty was that no two of Morg’s warded books shared a single binding. So were he to break even one ward, a hundred more must be broken after, each one of them different. If the answer to Morg’s destruction lay somewhere in this library, then every book the sorcerer wanted kept secret had to be laid bare.

  And I can’t even open one.

  He winced, memory waking. The sharp pain of his father’s chastising hand whenever he dared admit a weakness or doubt. He was Doranen, and a Garrick. There was no weakness. There was no doubt.

  Rafel had brought incants with him, over the mountains. Ancient Doranen magic he’d had no business possessing, remnants of Barl that hadn’t been destroyed. Morg had those parchments now. Might they hold a solution to his current dilemma? It was possible. But even if they did, Morg would never let him see them. Perhaps in time, as he continued to prove himself trustworthy, he’d be granted the privilege.

  But how much time? And by then would it be too late? With every new sunrise the sorcerer drew closer to invulnerability.

  Ruthlessly he crushed the first faint stirrings of desperation. He was Arlin Garrick, a Doranen mage. One of the greatest ever born. All that prattle of prophecy, of Olken born to save the world? Idiot lies. The Olken had failed
, hadn’t they? First Asher and then his arrogant son. Touted Lur’s champions… and in their wake nothing but death and destruction. Waterspouts and whirlpools and a father dragged to his death.

  The burden weighs on me now. Arlin Garrick called to greatness.

  And he would answer. He had to.

  I cannot fail.

  In silence, in solitude, Morg drifted through his palace. And for the first time since his exile in the blighted lands ended, he was quietly alone. No other voice disturbing him, screaming in his mind.

  First it had been Sarle Baden, that shrill, disbelieving Doranen. After so long as little more than a memory on the wind, he’d needed to hear a mage’s voice again. He’d spent so long sundered, fragmented. A shattered mosaic of himself. He had dim memories of the magickless bodies he’d taken before Sarle. But one by one each frail, worthless vessel had failed him. And everywhere he was, every scattered piece of himself had felt every small death whenever a temporary host died. When a sundered part of himself died. Terrible. Annihilating. The grief had burned him worse than acid, over and over and over again, year after year after desperate, endless year.

  Not until Sarle Baden had he found a true home.

  But in the end even Sarle had disappointed. It seemed Doranen blood flowed like water these days. Well. Except for Arlin’s. Little Lord Garrick had a touch of the old days’ fire in him. A whisper of true power.

  And yet, compared to Rafel, Arlin’s power is like mist.

  Asher’s son, in the wilderness. Asher’s son, defying the blight. Asher’s son, with a power to eclipse even his own, when he’d been a man.

  Asher’s son.

  Without Rafel to ride he’d have ridden to his death months ago.

  He remembered Asher, of course. How could he forget that blunt, arrogant Olken and his little blond friend? The eunuch prince. The neuter king. It pleased him enormously to know that Asher had killed Gar to kill him. To know that Asher had suffered for that murder every day since. To know that while he had risen, triumphant, Asher’s friend mouldered in his grave.