The Reluctant Mage Read online

  The storm aching in every one of her bones, Deenie tightened her arms around her pulled-up knees. “Don’t talk like that. How is it helpful, you talking like that?”

  Charis shrugged. “How else should I talk? You might not come down to the city, Deenie, but I do. I talk to people and I listen. Food’s growing scarce everywhere. We’ve got the kitchen gardens up at the Tower, and chickens, and we muddle along—but that’s not the same for the rest of Lur. Folk are hungry and frighted. The Council doesn’t know what to do, and the few Doranen who’ve not run back to hide on their country estates, their magic can’t fix any of it either. They’re as lost as we are, even if they won’t admit it.”

  She knew that. Didn’t she talk now and then with the Olken who came to work in the palace? They told her things. Of course, mostly they told her because they hoped she’d confide things to them in return, tell them about Asher and how he’d be up and about soon and saving them again. But she didn’t need their selfish secrets. They only told her what her mage-sense had already made clear.

  It’s all falling apart now, faster and faster, and if there’s someone in Lur who can stop it, well, I don’t know who that is.

  Another shiver ran through her. “Storm’s passing,” she said, relieved, and stood. “We should head home. Mama will be fretting.”

  Charis turned away from the window. “You go. I want to stay here tonight.”

  “Here?” Deenie frowned. “No, Charis. You can’t. I know you’re missing Uncle Pellen, but you don’t want to—”

  “Don’t you tell me what I want!” Charis retorted. “I think I know what I want better than you do, Deenie.”

  Hurt, she looked past Charis to the easing rain beyond the window. Was that a glimpse of blue sky or her tricky imagination?

  “You don’t have to have my room, Charis. I did offer you Rafe’s. We can swap. I don’t mind.”

  “I don’t want Rafe’s room!” said Charis, tears spilling. “Or yours. I want my room, Deenie, in my house. I want my Papa back. I want Lur the way it was, with sunshine, not storms. I want to trust the ground beneath my feet. I’m so tired of being afraid. I wake up afraid and I go to sleep afraid. I used to be happy. I used to laugh and dance and sing. I want to be that Charis again but I know—I know—I never can be. She’s dead and Papa’s dead and Lur is dying and Rafel’s lost and I can’t bear it… I can’t bear it…”

  “Oh, Charis,” said Deenie, and went to her, and held her friend as she sobbed. Not even at Uncle Pellen’s little funeral had Charis wept like this. She must’ve been saving up these tears ever since. “Please, Charis, don’t fratch yourself,” she murmured. “Things will get better. You’ll see. They will.”

  “You really are a terrible liar,” Charis said, hiccupping. “You shouldn’t even bother trying.”

  Deenie let go of her and stepped back. “You truly want to stay here?”

  “I do.”

  Sighing, she smoothed Charis’s damp hair. “All right. But only tonight, mind. Mama won’t have you staying here longer, Charis, and neither will I. What if there’s a tremor and the house falls on you, or it falls down a hole and takes you with it? It’s happened before. I’m not about to let it happen to you.”

  Charis’s teary eyes widened. “You can feel a tremor coming? Deenie—”

  What a shame she was such a bad liar. If she was more like Rafel she could say “yes” and make Charis come home with her, and then maybe by the morning she’d have forgotten this nonsense.

  She sighed. “No, not now. But there will be more tremors sometime and I don’t want you caught.”

  “I won’t be, I promise,” said Charis. Turning, she looked again out of the window. “The storm’s passed. You should go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Since there was no talking Charis out of staying, Deenie left her friend behind in her memory-crowded house and toiled up the long, puddled High Street to the palace grounds. The sky hadn’t cleared completely—a few clouds still remained, spitting sulky rain onto the city. By the time she passed through the open palace gates her feet were soaked to the ankles, her shoes horribly squishy. The day’s light was waning, the autumn night closing in. Now when she shivered it was from proper cold, not dread anticipation of wild, magic-born weather to come.

  “Mama,” she called, climbing the spiral staircase up to her parents’ apartment. “Mama, I’m home.”

  Mama didn’t reply. She never did. Any strength that was left in her these days, she saved for Da.

  “Mama,” she said again, standing in Da’s open bedchamber doorway. “You should rest before supper. I’ll sit with him a while.”

  Still Mama didn’t answer. Small in the armchair beside Da’s bed, she held his hand gently, her gaze resting on his sleeping face. She always said she’d never been a beautiful woman, not even when she was young, but Da never saw that. To him she was the most beautiful woman in the world, especially when she was scolding him with fire in her eyes.

  Looking at her mother now, Deenie felt a sharp pain.

  These days her eyes are like burned-out coals. I can’t remember the last time I heard her laugh.

  Hiding her dismay, like always, she crossed the rug-covered floor to the bed. “Please, Mama. Go and rest.”

  Mama glanced up. “Deenie,” she said, her sorrow softening almost to a smile. “There you are. Is Charis with you?”

  “No, I’m on my lonesome. Charis is sleeping in her own bed tonight.”

  “Oh,” Mama said vaguely. “Well, I suppose that’s all right.”

  It struck her then, like a slap across the face: Mama looked worse than weary. She looked old. Old and frail and on the brink of surrender. Had she stopped believing that Da would recover? Was she like everyone else, thinking Rafel was long lost?

  I don’t know. I’m afraid to ask.

  But Mama couldn’t be giving up on them. She was Jervale’s Heir. Against the most terrible odds she’d seen prophecy fulfilled and Lur saved from a nightmare. Morg’s destruction was as much her doing as Da’s.

  What will I do, if Mama gives up?

  “Deenie? Is something amiss?”

  Swallowing hard, she shook her head. “No. Of course not. Mama, please, go and rest a while.”

  Mama’s brows pinched. “I’m fine.”

  “Mama—” But there was no point arguing. Her mother could be so stubborn, a real slumskumbledy wench. “Then go for a walk in the grounds. There’s still a little light left, and some fresh air will do you good. And I’d like to sit with Da for a while.”

  Now Mama did smile, properly. “Ah.”

  Deenie watched her lift Da’s hand to her lips and kiss it, then settle it carefully on the quilt. Not helping her out of the chair was hard, but Mama snapped whenever anyone tried to coddle her. Even though she needed coddling. Even though she’d become a shadow of herself.

  “Is there supper?”

  “I put an egg pie in the oven to slow-bake before I went out.”

  Mama squeezed her arm. “You’re a good girl, Deenie. If you need me, I’ll be taking that little walk.”

  “And afterwards, you’ll have a lie down before we eat?”

  “Deenie—”

  “Don’t fratch at me, Mama,” she whispered, her throat tight. “It’s just… you look tired.”

  “Do I?” Mama said at last, her gaze once more on Da. “Well, perhaps I am, a little. And if I am…” Her voice was suddenly pale, like winter sunlight. “I’ve got cause. Call me when the pie’s baked.”

  Alone with her father, Deenie sat in the chair by his bed. His hand when she picked it up felt cool and dry and disinterested. She had a dream that one day when she wrapped her warm, desperate fingers around his she’d feel them move and see his eyes fly open and hear his loving voice say, “Hello, mouse.”

  But he’d been lying here silent and still for so long. When was it foolish to keep on dreaming a dream?

  Overwhelmed, she stroked his silvering hair. He liked to keep it cropped close, bu
t Mama had let it grow so he’d not be bothered with scissors while he was poorly. He didn’t react to that touch either.

  “Hey, Da,” she said softly. “It’s me. Deenie.”

  Not even a tiny twitch of his eyelids. Mama didn’t speak to him, not any more. But she did. She had to. Though her voice hadn’t woken him yet, she wasn’t about to give up.

  Djelba logs burned in the chamber’s fireplace, a cheery crackling. The last tremor had tipped four of the palace’s oldest trees out of the earth. The nightbirds who’d roosted there had been so loudly offended, especially since the birds in the trees on either side refused to share their homes. The dispossessed nightbirds had flown away and not returned. Mayhap they’d found new lodgings. Mayhap they’d perished. Not even birds were safe in these troublesome times.

  “Da, I need your advice,” she said, watching the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest. “I don’t know what to do about Charis. She misses Uncle Pellen so much and I don’t know how to help her.”

  Da didn’t either. He never said a word.

  She tightened her fingers around his. “So how are you feeling, Da?”

  When he didn’t answer, she woke her mage-sense and sent it questing inside him for the deep blight only she could feel. Hoped—prayed—that this time she’d not find it.

  But no. There it was, a dark, rippling curtain dropped between him and the world. Oh, how she hated that blight. Her hatred was so fierce it made her feel sick. And guilt twisted through her, for not knowing how to save him from it.

  “Keep fighting, Da,” she whispered. “Please. You mustn’t let it win. I’ll find a way to free you. I will. You just have to hold on.”

  His sunken eyes shifted behind their closed, translucent lids. She held her breath.

  Open them, Da. Look at me. I’m here.

  But he didn’t.

  She kissed his forehead, feeling him cool and so far away. Then she told him of her day, glossing over the part where yet again she’d mucked about with Doranen magic. She had to keep that from him. All her life he’d done his best to protect her from mage doings. He’d be cross and disappointed if he knew what she’d been up to.

  But I have to try, Da. Could be one of these days I’ll finally get a Doranen spell to work three times out of three, not just one. And if I do, I might be able to help Lur.

  After that she read to him for a while, one of Mama’s sloppy old Doranen love stories she used to pretend she despised. Then her empty belly started rumbling. Supper time. And after supper Kerril’s novice assistant Pother Ulys would come and sit with him partway through the night, so there could be a little sleep for her and Mama.

  “Da,” she said, leaning close. “Our Rafel’s still out there somewhere. He is. I can feel him. Don’t you lose hope, Da. I haven’t. I won’t.”

  It was safe to leave him alone for a short stretch here and there, so she smoothed his undisturbed blankets, kissed him again, then went down to the Tower kitchen to slice the egg pie for supper. After making sure Mama ate hers and drank her mulled wine with some sleeping herbs dropped in it, she greeted Pother Ulys and after that at last fell into Rafe’s bed for a snatch of rest. Worn out from the storm, and other people’s turbulent emotions, she tumbled swiftly into sleep.

  And for the first time since he rode away, dreamed of her missing brother.

  CHAPTER THREE

  You dreamed him?” Charis squealed. “Deenie! Could you see where he was? Is he unharmed? Did he speak to you? What did he say? Is he coming home? Deenie—”

  Grabbing Charis’s arm, Deenie hustled her out of the Tower foyer and down the wide sandstone steps to the untidy gravel forecourt, and kept on hustling until they reached the tree-lined carriageway leading to the stables. There she dragged Charis behind a djelba’s sheltering trunk. Leaves fallen from the nearby piplins were drifted against its exposed, knobbled roots, and rustled as she and Charis scuffed amongst them.

  With a look round to be sure it was safe to speak, she gave Charis’s arm a little shake. “Hush. You know how voices carry in there, and Tibby’s come to help me clean today.”

  Momentarily chastened, Charis smoothed her plain green linen sleeve. “Sorry. But Deenie—”

  “I can’t have Mama knowing I dreamed him,” she said, hearing herself fierce and unfriendly. She didn’t care. “I can’t have her stirred about, Charis. If she knows that much she’ll want to know everything and I can’t—I can’t tell her—”

  “Tell her what, Deenie? Please—” Now it was Charis’s turn to take hold and shake. “You’re frighting me.”

  Sink it. “Not here,” she muttered, as she spied Pother Kerril approaching along the main carriageway up to the Tower. “We’ll take a wander to somewhere private and I’ll tell you. Just let me speak with Kerril first. Wait.”

  Feeling Charis’s alarmed stare on her back, she hurried to meet the pother.

  Kerril greeted her with a frown. “Deenie. You’re looking peaked this morning.”

  Trust the eagle-eyed Doranen pother to notice. “Really? Because I feel fine. There’s no need to fratch over me.”

  Kerril’s fingers drummed the bulky leather satchel slung against her hip. “No need? Deenie, you’re a young girl cooped up in a Tower with one parent ailing and the other pushed far past her limit, you’ve a brother lost in the wilderness and on your shoulders is the weight of a kingdom you can’t help. So don’t stand there and tell me you’re fine.”

  Yes, well, when you put it like that. “It’s the way things are,” she said, shrugging. “I can’t change them, so I have to live with them. We all do.”

  “And that’s true enough,” Kerril murmured. She glanced at the cloud-scattered sky, and then at the scars the latest tremors had left behind: uneven folds and ripples in the earth, gaping holes where trees used to be, aimlessly tumbled sections of the wall around the mostly empty stables. “But I mislike it, Deenie, you trapped alone in this sad place.”

  “I’m not alone,” she protested. “With Da and Mama and Charis, and the folk who come in and out to help me keep the Tower to rights—how can you call me alone?”

  Kerril wore her silver-gilt hair pulled back from her narrow face. It made her frowns seem all the more severe. “You know what I mean, Deenie. This is no life for a young lass. I think it’s time you—”

  “No,” she said, and stepped back. Leave me be, you bothersome woman. “I’ll not do that. Pother Kerril, I did ask you not to ask me again.”

  Kerril sighed. “Deenie, I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t try to change your mind. I know the notion distresses you, but—”

  “This isn’t about me,” she said. “It’s about Da. You think I don’t know how much easier my life would be if I convinced Mama to let you put him in a Barlshouse hospice? I can’t do that. I won’t give him to strangers, even if they’re Barl’s strangers. He’s my da.”

  “And if your da weren’t so broken,” said Pother Kerril, gently cruel, “would he let you break yourself over him?”

  She met Kerril’s compassionate gaze with the stony strength she’d never known was in her. The strength she hadn’t needed until Rafel went away.

  “Pother Kerril, please,” she said. “I don’t want to fratch with you. Your care for Da means a great deal to me. If it turns out I can’t do right by him, I’ll tell you. But until that day comes…”

  Which it won’t. I swear. I’ll never abandon him.

  Grudging, Kerril nodded. “Until that day, then. Deenie, you’re Asher’s daughter and no mistake.” It wasn’t entirely a compliment, the way she said it. Then her gaze shifted. “How is Charis faring?”

  There was so much she could say to that, but to speak would be a kind of betrayal. “She misses Uncle Pellen.”

  “Grief has as many faces as there are folk who grieve,” said Kerril. “And for some it takes a goodly while before they can let themselves believe the loss. Be patient with her, Deenie. Charis will find her way.”

  She wanted to believe the
pother so badly. “You think so?”

  “I know so,” said Kerril firmly. “And now I’ll see to your father. I’ve brought fresh herbs for his gruel, and some strengthening possets.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Pother Kerril—”

  Kerril paused. “Yes, Deenie?”

  “It means something, doesn’t it, that Da hasn’t—that he’s not—” She swallowed. She never could bring herself to say those words out loud. “He’s still with us, after all this time. He takes his gruel and tea. He’s not wasted away entirely. I’m not coddling myself, am I? It does mean something?”

  “It means your father is the most stubborn man breathing,” said Kerril. Then she sighed again. “But if there’s more meaning to it than that, Deenie, I’m sorry. I can’t say.”

  Discouraged, she left Kerril to make her way into the Tower and returned to Charis, who was hopping with impatience.

  “Come along,” she said, as Charis opened her mouth. “We’ll take a wander through the palace grounds.”

  But really there was only one place where she knew for certain they’d not be disturbed or overheard. She couldn’t risk them walking the grounds’ public pathways, because with Lur in so much strife folk came up every day from the city to loiter in the Garden of Remembrance and whisper prayers. And then there were the comings and goings from the palace where the secretaries and messengers and coin counters worked, busier than ever these days with so much trouble to contain.

  “Deenie, where are we going?” Charis asked for the third time as they left the palace’s cultivated grounds behind and struck out into its woodland. “And if you say ‘you’ll see when we get there’ again I declare I will smack you!”

  One of the earth’s great upheavals had struck all along this section of tangled, brambled path. “Mind yourself here,” Deenie warned as she stumbled and staggered through the ruts. “If you turn your ankle I’ll never carry you back to the Tower.”

  Cursing under her breath, Charis stopped. “That’s it. I’ll not take another step until you—”

  “Sink it, Charis, what does it matter where we’re going?” she demanded, spinning round. “Somewhere peaceful, somewhere private. Why do you have to be such a ninny about it?”