The Reluctant Mage Read online

  “Let go,” said Charis, her eyes wide. Almost frightened. “You’re hurting me.”

  Sink it. She snatched her hand back. “I’m sorry. Charis, I’m sorry, I just—” She rubbed her stinging eyes. “I don’t see how I’m s’posed to fight Morg. If Da couldn’t beat him…”

  “You’ll find a way,” said Charis. Now her voice was wobbly. Now she sounded close to tears. “Only do you think Rafe’s his prisoner?”

  Oh, Charis, why d’you have to ask a question like that?

  “I don’t know.”

  But Charis could be slumskumbledy too. She wasn’t about to leave this alone.

  “When you dreamed him,” she persisted, “he was dressed all fine in velvets and jewels, you said. If he is Morg’s prisoner, he’d not be treated like that, would he? When Morg kept your papa prisoner—”

  Yes, Charis. He did dreadful things.

  Not that she was meant to know about it. A city guard, trying to impress her once, had spun her a few tales he’d heard of those days. She gone straight to Darran and asked. The ole trout said it was nonsense—but he’d not been able to keep the truth from his eyes.

  “Deenie?”

  “No,” she said, and had to clear her throat. “When I dreamed Rafe he didn’t look like a prisoner.”

  But when I dreamed him the second time I knew something was wrong. And when next I dreamed him, I couldn’t see him at all.

  Charis still didn’t know that, and she wasn’t going to tell her. Not when hope was hanging by a thread.

  “Well,” said Charis. “That’s something.” She knocked the piece of kindling against her knee, dislodging the dirt, then tossed it into the fire. “But he still might be in Dorana, Deenie. Don’t you think he might?”

  “You know Rafe,” she said, cautious. “If he found out Morg’s not dead he’d go after him.”

  “And what about Arlin Garrick?”

  Oh, Charis. One calamity at a time. “I don’t know.”

  “But you’re certain sure if we keep riding north with Captain Noddyhead and his barracks men, we’ll ride across Rafe?”

  Certain sure? How can I say? Sometimes it feels like I’m not certain sure of my own name. But Charis didn’t need to hear that either.

  This time she clasped Charis’s wrist gently. Felt her friend’s thudding, scudding pulse beneath her fingers. “We’ll find him. I promise.”

  “How?” Charis whispered. “When you can’t feel him any more?”

  Good question. Time for a hopeful lie. “It’s the blight, Charis. That’s why I’ve lost him. When we reach a spirit path we can ride, chances are I’ll be free of it again. And then I’ll go looking for him.”

  Charis made a little scoffing sound, her lips pinched. “Best you ask Captain Noddyhead first. If he thinks you’re doing sorcery on his precious spirit path he’ll have a tantrum.”

  Captain Noddyhead.

  Charis refused to call Ewen anything else. She’d taken against the red-haired, green-eyed king’s man, and never lost a chance to be prickly and rude. He stomached it well enough, but…

  I expect that’s the main reason he won’t let me spell his barracks men to understanding. He doesn’t want Charis to make him look bad.

  “You’re not being fair,” she chided, keeping her voice low. “He’s trying. But he’s not easy with magework—and you nagging him on it doesn’t much help.”

  “Not easy,” said Charis, scornful, and pulled her knees to her chest. “I notice he’s easy enough with it when it saves his life or fills his belly. He’s easy then, Deenie. Don’t deny it.”

  She couldn’t, because it was true. He made use of her mage-sense and her magic when he had to because it helped keep them safe. Didn’t mean he could be comfortable with it, though, after growing up in a land that hadn’t been lucky, like Lur, able to hide from Morg behind a wall of magic.

  “You’re so strict on him, Charis,” she said, watching Ewen grin at something his barracks man Robb said. “Honestly, I think he’s a bit like us. The Olken, I mean. The way we must’ve been before Barl. We’d never seen pushy magic until the Doranen came. Those Olken must’ve been frighted out of their wits. Ewen’s no different. He just needs a little time.”

  Charis rolled her eyes. “Hear yourself. Ewen. You dreamed him and you ride behind him and now you’re mooning over him. Deenie—”

  “Mooning?” Offended, Deenie tossed a clod of dirt. “Charis Orrick, I do not moon.”

  “It’s Goose Martin you like, I thought,” said Charis, darkly. “Fickle, are you?”

  And that was a hurtful thing to say. With Goose gone across the mountains and most likely dead in the blighted lands. “Charis!”

  The firelight played fitfully over Charis’s discomfited face. “I’m sorry. That came out wrong. I didn’t mean—” She hunched her shoulders, cross with herself. “It’s just there’s a lot Captain Noddyhead’s not telling us, Deenie.”

  Her cheeks were still hot over that crack about Goose. “Like what?” she said, showing a little scorn of her own.

  “Like why is he so fratched about finding wanderers?” said Charis, leaning close. “I’d think we’d want to keep as far away from them as we can. They’re horrible. They’re dangerous. But how many times a day does he ask if you can sense one?”

  “A few,” she muttered.

  “More than a few, and I’d like to know why. You should ask him, Deenie.”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  He wouldn’t tell me. But you already don’t like him, so I’m not about to make things worse.

  “He’s worried for Vharne, Charis. Like you say, those wanderers are dangerous. He’s worried for the people they can hurt.”

  Charis knew her too well. Eyes narrow, she didn’t even try to hide her doubt. “Hmm. I still think there’s more to it than that. Perhaps if we stumble across a wanderer between here and the northern borders we’ll find out why Captain Noddyhead’s really so worried.”

  “Perhaps,” Deenie sighed. “But I hope we don’t. I’d rather I never saw one of those creatures again.”

  “And I’d rather your Ewen told us the truth,” Charis replied. “I know I’m not Asher’s daughter and my mother wasn’t Jervale’s Heir, but my papa was City Captain and mayor and a canny, canny man and Deenie, I take after him. So could be for once you’ll listen to me.”

  “Charis, that’s not fair,” she protested. “I always listen to you.”

  “And then you go your own way!”

  Ewen and his barracks men had finished dicing and were settling to sleep. Their campfire was banked, their saddle-bags plumped up for pillows. The night’s first lookout had taken his post at the edge of the clearing, sword drawn. High overhead, the moon shone like a new-minted trin, small and silver amongst the stars.

  Deenie pulled a log from their pile of firewood and fed it to their own campfire. “It’s late, Charis. Best we put our heads down.”

  Grumbling, Charis took the hint. Moments after she closed her eyes, she was snoring—but Deenie couldn’t rest. Not because she was cold or uncomfortable. Ewen had given them the sleep-sacks belonging to his two barracks men killed by the beasts in that village, so they were as protected as they could be.

  No. She couldn’t rest because her mind churned without respite, dully thudding with her fears. Rafel. Da. Morg. And Lur. What kind of new strife was the kingdom in now? Had there been more storms? More tremors? Was anything left of Dorana City? In all her life she’d never felt so helpless or alone.

  I’ve come such a long way and nothing’s any better. If anything, things are worse. Oh, where are you, Rafel? I’m here. Find me. Please.

  Sighing, shifting, she curled herself tight and tried to will herself to sleep. It didn’t work. And then, sink her sideways, she needed to pee.

  Passing the horse-line on her stealthy way back from the sheltering woodland, in the light of her tiny ball of glimfire she saw two of the barracks horses had tangled their head-collar buckles
. Ears flattened, heads tossing, they were about to make a fuss.

  “Here now, here now,” she said, reaching for them. “Don’t you do that. You’ll have the whole camp in a kerfuffle.”

  Caught up with freeing the silly things, she nearly shrieked when she felt a touch to her shoulder from behind. Spinning round, she lost her balance and had to clutch at Ewen’s arm.

  “Suck on a blowfish, why don’t you!” she gasped. “Weren’t you never taught not to sneak up on people?”

  His green-gold eyes gleamed in the pinprick of hovering glimlight. “I wasn’t sneaking.”

  “No? Well, it felt like sneaking!”

  Embarrassed, she turned back to the horses and busied her fingers with their head-collars. Barely up to his shoulder, she reached. He was Doranen tall and he liked to use that. She could feel her heart thudding, and not just from startlement. And she could feel him smiling, teasingly amused.

  “What woke you?”

  She tucked a leather strap-end into its buckle. “Not beasts or wanderers. Any road, I wasn’t asleep.”

  “Only a day or two from the border, we are,” he said. “If we ride hard and strike no trouble.”

  “And when we reach it?”

  “Depends on what we find, that does.”

  There was nothing more she could fiddle with on the horses’ head-collars. She had to face him or risk looking like a ninny.

  “What do you think we’ll find?” she said, turning.

  Ewen shrugged, painted with shadows. “Don’t know. Beasts, most like, I say.”

  “Beasts.” She shivered, feeling bleak. “Will you want me to kill them?”

  “They’re beasts, girl,” he said, as though the question was foolish.

  The barracks horse beside her snorted, shaking its head. She stroked its brown cheek. “They used to be people.”

  “Used to be,” he said. “They’re monsters now, they are.”

  “I know. But still…”

  “Deenie—” He took her arm and pulled her round. “They’re monsters.”

  “I know!” she said, smacking him loose. “And if we run foul of any more and they threaten us then yes—Captain, I’ll kill them. But I don’t have to like it, do I? Besides, I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

  He didn’t much care for contradiction. “You say?”

  “Yes, I say!” she retorted, and poked his chest with her finger. “They’re more than monsters, Ewen. They’re Morg’s monsters. He made them and he’s a sorcerer. So, what if he can feel when they die? What if he can find us out here because I’m romping through the rough killing his beasts with magework?”

  Arms folded, he brooded down at her. The glimlight showed her his dark red hair tied back in a tail, and his gleaming, suspicious eyes. “And is that a true thing?” he asked at last. “Or is it a thing you say because you don’t like to kill?”

  So, he was twisty when he wanted to be. “Could be both.”

  He snorted. “Could be—but is it?”

  She didn’t want to talk about herself. She wanted to make him see that she was right. “You’re a brave man, Ewen,” she said, trying to coax. “But are you foolish, too? Do you risk your barracks men on a whim?”

  “No.” He sounded insulted. “That’s a girlish question for a mage who’s ridden leagues behind me.”

  “Oh, do stop using ‘girlish’ to pay back a slight,” she snapped. “Or you’ll prove Charis true with her Captain Noddyhead nonsense.”

  And though he was fratched, that made him laugh. “She doesn’t like me, your friend.”

  “She doesn’t trust you. Our home is so far behind us, Ewen.”

  “It is,” he agreed. Then his lips curved, very faintly. “But you trust me, you do.”

  After four days of snatched conversation with this man she’d almost forgotten that it was Doranen magic, Barl’s magic, that let them understand each other. But every so often her ear caught an odd inflection and it reminded her that his tongue was a long way from hers.

  Even with his faint smile, his eyes were grave. “You trust me because you dreamed me?”

  And wouldn’t she like to make him forget that.

  “ ’Cause once or twice I went to bed on a full stomach,” she said, glowering. “If I think hard on it, I’ll prob’ly recall it was a bogwight I dreamed of and I just mixed you up.”

  “Bogwight,” he said, and his faint smile blossomed into a grin. Her heart thudded again. “Girl, you should do better than that, you should.” But then he turned grave again. “You’re troubled because the killing’s done with magic, I say.”

  He hardly knew her. How could he know her so well?

  “I told you before, Ewen. Rafe’s the mage in my family. Him and Da. The power in them’s special.” She felt her lips tremble. “The killing? That’s not meant to be in me. But something happened, and I’m changed.”

  She waited for him to ask how, but he didn’t. Instead he hesitated, then smoothed a strand of unruly hair from her cheek. “Want me to say I’m sorry for that, do you? When I’m standing here breathing instead of being burned to ashes, like my men?”

  Burned to ashes. Those funeral fires in the abandoned village had been horrible. Riding through the rough, in the fresh air, sometimes she thought she smelled them again. Smelled the thick, hot stink of dead, burning men.

  “No.”

  “Want me to be sorry that you found a way to eat so you’re not starved to a pile of bones, you and Charis?”

  “No.”

  “Girl,” he said, softly. “Why can’t you sleep?”

  She blinked back the stinging tears. “Why can’t you?”

  “I was sleeping. You woke me, you did. Deenie…”

  There was still so much she didn’t dare tell him. But he’d sniff out a lie. “I’m frighted for my brother.”

  Nodding, he shifted his gaze across the campsite, where his barracks men were changing lookouts. “Deenie, what’ll you do if he’s not in Elvado?”

  She pinched her lips. “Keep on looking.”

  “And if he is there, but he can’t help you bring down the sorcerer?”

  “Who says I’m after Morg?”

  “You said it, in that village. Changed your mind, have you?”

  If only she could. “No.”

  “So—if your brother can’t help you?”

  “You think I’m lying about his magework?”

  Ewen’s leathers creaked in the midnight silence as his knuckles came up to brush her cheek. “I think things go wrong, I do. If there’s no brother waiting, take the sorcerer on your own, can you?”

  The question made her flash ice-cold.

  Take Morg alone? Not even Da could do that. He needed King Gar’s help.

  Except—no, he didn’t. He’d had the spell to kill Morg. He’d had Barl’s Words of UnMaking. He could have used them by himself and died, killing Morg, only King Gar wouldn’t let him.

  And was that why Morg didn’t die? ’Cause when the king jiggered the spell, it turns out he jiggered it wrong?

  She’d never asked herself that before. Then again, she’d never had to. But some horrible deep instinct told her she’d found the truth, by accident.

  And now I’ve got the diary. I’ve got the proper Words of UnMaking.

  “What is it?” said Ewen. “Deenie, what’s wrong?”

  She stood before him, shivering, feeling hot tears crowd her eyes. Rafel. If she found him and told him she had Barl’s diary, with that spell in it, he’d take it from her and UnMake himself to destroy Morg. ’Cause he was Asher’s son and he’d not been able to save Da when the Weather Magic went wrong.

  He blames himself for that. So he’ll kill himself saying sorry.

  “Deenie!” said Ewen, and took her by the shoulders. “Say something! Girl, it’s spooking me, you are!”

  She couldn’t speak. Her knees wanted to buckle, and drop her to the ground.

  Oh, Da. What do I do? Keep the diary a secret from him and let
Morg go his merry way? Give it to him, and watch him die? Or not try to find him at all—and confront Morg alone and speak the Words of UnMaking myself?

  She didn’t know. Overcome, she rested her head against Ewen’s chest and sobbed.

  Arms closing tight, he pulled her hard against him. He smelled of greased leather and horse and sweat. It was familiar. Reassuring. She liked it. She liked him.

  And ain’t that a madness? When he’s from Vharne, and I’m not?

  “Don’t be crying, Deenie,” he said, pleading. “We’ll find your brother, we will.”

  “I know!”

  “Then, girl, why are you crying?”

  She shoved away and punched a fist to his leather-clad ribs. “I’m not. And don’t call me girl!”

  Smiling again, he touched a fingertip to her spilled tears. “Deenie…”

  Another truth. A pain to drown her. “I miss my mother.”

  He pulled her close again. “Ah. Girl, that’s a thing to weep for, it is. There’s no shame in shedding tears for dead family.”

  She could feel his heartbeat, muffled beneath her cheek. Feel the blood pounding through her own veins, hot and swift. He was making her feel a lot more than safe.

  I was wrong. This ain’t madness. I’m meant to be here, with him.

  She closed her eyes. “Who did you lose, Ewen?”

  A long silence. Somewhere in the surrounding woodland an owl screeched. The night’s chill was deepening and if he hadn’t been holding her, prob’ly she’d feel cold. The horses in the horse-line shifted and stamped.

  “Padrig,” he said, his voice low, full of memory and hurt. “My brother.”

  “Oh.” She wriggled her arms round him. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

  “Sorcery, it was,” he said, after another long silence. “Nothing to be done.”

  Sorcery? Then no wonder he was wary. No wonder he was anxious about beasts and wanderers and keeping his men safe.

  The wonder is he trusts me at all when he knows I’m a mage and my da and brother mages too. When I could kill him with a thought.

  “Ewen, you mustn’t worry,” she said, and tipped her head back to meet his eyes. “I’ll keep us all safe ’til we find the spirit path you’re looking for. Any beasts we ride across, I’ll kill them. I won’t blink. Wanderers, too, I promise. I already—”