The Innocent Mage Read online

  He ate.

  The tastes! The textures! Sweet … soft … runny … crunchy … it was too much. Too much. After so long, an assault on the senses almost past bearing.

  Of course, there were certain drawbacks to being housed within flesh once more. For one he was enslaved to that flesh, was bound by its limitations, would have to tend its needs, dance to its desires – not all of which were as delightful as eating. But no matter. For the short time he’d be lodged here, he could manage.

  Of greater concern, but still no serious impediment, the matter of his reach and influence. He knew his own mind. He knew the captive Durm’s mind. All others were closed to him. After nearly six centuries of unfettered access to every thought, every whim, every dark dream of the men, women, children and demons in his domain, the stark silence had been, in the first hours of his occupation, distressing. But he was adjusting now to the ringing empty echoes. To the knowledge that in this place his powers were circumscribed. That any attempt to use them, to channel the vast arsenal of magic at his disposal, would melt the meat from Durm’s bones and in doing so destroy himself as well.

  And that was hardly part of the plan.

  It meant he could not afford to be overconfident. He would have to proceed cautiously. Carefully. Housed within this fleshy prison he was, for the first time in centuries, vulnerable. To accident and perhaps more than accident if he raised an unwise suspicion, or misjudged the temperature of a moment.

  Not that he rated the danger highly. These feeble halfwit child’s-play magicians were so far beneath him he had no need to read their minds to know their hearts. Their capricious faces would tell him everything he required to bring them to their knees before him.

  And bring them to their knees he would. Soon he would have the means to chastise these unruly children of Lur. To ripen this sweet plum of a place, that he might pluck it neatly from its nourishing branch and thereafter swallow it whole.

  So.

  Licking egg-yolk from his fork, he chuckled. Really, this was turning into something of a – now what was the word? Ah yes … a holiday.

  With his borrowed body bathed and dressed in a fresh robe, he went to the cupboard and withdrew from it an ancient wooden box hasped with silver. Placing it on the table by the window, he sat and considered it. Allowed himself a brief moment of gloating. Deep inside he felt Durm’s impotent fingernails, scratching, scratching, desperate to be let out. With a casual swipe of his will he silenced the fat fool and flipped open the box’s lid.

  Inside, a pearly white globe nestled on a bed of blue velvet. Swirling deep within its heart a flux of colours: gold and green and crimson and purple. One might even call it beautiful, if beauty mattered.

  ‘Barl, Barl, did you truly think you could defeat me? Six years … six hundred … six thousand … you should have known I would never let your treachery go unpunished.’

  Her fingerprints were all over the thing. Inside it, where the magic dwelled. He could smell them. Taste them. Feel them, like a breeze across his mind, an invisible caress. For six hundred years he had dreamed of confronting her. Vanquishing her. The discovery of the secret to prolonging life and intellect beyond a mere body had been theirs. All these long centuries he’d dreamed of meeting her face to face once more and bringing her to book for her narrow-minded rejection of the greatness he’d planned for both of them.

  But even there she had denied him. Spurned their great discovery. Spurned him. Instead of transmuting herself as they’d planned, as they’d promised, she’d squandered her own life in the making of this perfect little kingdom.

  In the creation of her damnable Wall, which had held him at bay for longer than any mortal had ever lived.

  And in doing so had cheated him, again. Rejected him, again. Defeated him …

  ‘Or so you thought, my love. Yet here I am, and here shall I stay, and here will I pull down your Wall and everything behind it you tried so hard to protect.’

  Ransacking Durm’s memories and devising his plan of conquest had been ridiculously simple. The key to the Wall’s destruction lay in the magics that held it together, that fed upon themselves and the ordered management of the weather within the kingdom. It was an endless, self-perpetuating cycle: the power of the weather lent power to the magic, just as the strength of the weather helped maintain the invisible bonds that held the Wall inviolate.

  Snap one link in the chain and Barl’s precious Wall would come tumbling down.

  All he had to do was take the Weather Magic into himself, find that one link, the one point that would yield most meekly to his coercion, and then he could just sit back and watch as Barl’s defiance unravelled and her defence of this place crumbled. And then he would stretch forth his hand upon the land … and his victory would at last be complete.

  It had come as something of a surprise to learn that Durm did not possess the Weather Magics. He was their guardian, sworn to the tedious task in an unbroken line from Fuldred, the first Master Mage, appointed by Barl herself. Only the WeatherWorker, and the Weather-Worker-in-Waiting, were permitted to absorb the Weather Magics from the Orb. Not that more people couldn’t possess the magic. They just wouldn’t. Because Barl told them not to. The idea astounded him. Revolted him. Slaves. These lost Doranen were nothing but slaves who had placed the chains about their minds with their own hands and then had willingly swallowed the key.

  Well. Now he would swallow them.

  The Weather Magics were absorbed from the Orb intact and self-fulfilling. Whoever had them could immediately use them. Call rain and wind and sunshine and snow, with only a thought. Amazing. Hate her though he might, he conceded that Barl had created a miracle. But even so he would defeat her. After all, he was something of a miracle himself.

  With a great surge of satisfaction he removed the Orb from its box. It felt warm, peculiarly alive, all that vibrant, violent magic humming within its fragile shell. Helpless to resist, Durm had given him the words of the Transference spell. He summoned them now. Cupped the Orb in both hands, closed his eyes, spoke them aloud—

  —and was thrown across the room in a soundless explosion of heat and light and barrier magic. It seared his mind and scorched his skin and sent his disordered senses reeling. Echoing in his stunned mind, a whispering voice not heard for six hundred years.

  No, Morgan. This is not for you. This is never for you. Never … never … never.

  Gasping, retching, he barely made it to Durm’s small private privy before he lost his extravagant breakfast down the boghole. From a great distance deep inside he heard the fat fool laughing.

  When he was again himself, could stand on steady legs and walk, he returned to the study and stared at the discarded Orb, unsullied, undamaged, unplundered and abandoned on the floor. Barl had anticipated him. Assumed that somehow he would reach this place … or at least that he might. And because she knew him as no other body or mind had ever known him, she had devised a way to keep her precious Weather Magics away from him. Safe from him.

  A tidal wave of thick red hatred surged within him, robbed him of sight and hearing, clawed his fingers and tore at his throat.

  ‘Bitch! Slut! Treacherous whore! You think this will stop me? You will never stop me! I am Morg! I am invincible and your defeat is a foregone conclusion!’

  He picked up the Orb. Put it back in its box. Put the box back in its cupboard, and closed the doors.

  So. If he couldn’t bring down the Wall this way, he would bring it down in another. In the end the manner of its destruction wasn’t important. All that mattered was that he saw it destroyed.

  Slumped in a chair, he let his scheming thoughts wander. The key to his victory lay in manipulating the Weather Magics. In using them – their wielder – to bring down the Wall. The king was unassailable. Pointless to try and corrupt the girl, or take her over. Fane’s power was extraordinary, perhaps as fine as Barl’s had been, and she believed in protecting Barl’s Wall as fervently as the rest of them.

  Which l
eft only the cripple …

  Frustrated, he paced Durm’s untidy study. There was a way to use the boy, yes, at least in theory, but it would take so long. He’d not thought to spend more than days in this place and now he’d be here weeks. The notion was intensely irritating.

  But he could sustain a little irritation. Especially when the reward for patience was so great.

  And he was in no danger here, provided he remained undiscovered. The greater part of himself that he’d left behind the Wall would wait for his return, their rejoining. Soon enough he would be Morg again. Would slough off this binding vulnerable flesh and once more become immortal, invulnerable spirit.

  Soon enough, Barl’s Wall would come down.

  Some time later, after a second round of bathing and dressing, and fortified with his new plan, he ventured outside to find the king and queen. Thanks to Durm he knew every twist and turn of the palace, every face that passed him. This place was as familiar to him as the contours of his own mind.

  Their Majesties – Majesties! – were in the palace solar, lingering over breakfast. A pleasant room, with birds and flowers and spilling sunshine. Pink and cream and gold. Pretty colours. Pretty furnishings, too, plump and fringed and tasselled and sparkling in the warm light. How soft they were, in this place, in the delusions of their safety.

  ‘Durm!’ the king said. ‘Come. Sit.’ There was something vaguely familiar about him. Chances were he was descended directly from Ryal Torvig; the nose was the same, the mouth, and a trick of the eye. Ryal, who’d promised loyalty and delivered betrayal. Ryal, who’d died screaming amidst his own entrails. But it would seem his whore had survived after all, to breed on. A pity.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ asked the queen.

  ‘Thank you, yes.’ He sat. ‘Forgive the interruption but I needed to speak with you. I have been thinking.’

  The king plucked a hothouse strawberry from its bowl. Plump and ripely red, it looked delicious. ‘About?’

  ‘Barl.’ He felt his emptied stomach spasm. The bitch, the slut, the treacherous whore. ‘And her library.’

  ‘Durm?’ the queen asked, teacup paused at her lips. ‘Are you all right?’

  On a deep breath he relaxed. Unclenched his fingers. ‘Of course. A touch of indigestion.’

  The king favoured him with a wicked grin. ‘Shall I call for Nix? He has so many potions …’

  Durm would smile at that, so he curved his lips. ‘That won’t be necessary. But I am touched by the thought.’

  ‘I thought you might be.’ The king bit into another succulent strawberry: pink juice dribbled down his chin and the queen, laughing, dabbed him clean with her napkin. ‘So, you’ve been thinking about the library. And?’

  ‘And I fear that yesterday I allowed my zeal to override my better judgement,’ he continued, and assumed a suitably apologetic expression. ‘Your better judgement.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Blessed Barl in her infinite wisdom hid that chamber, and those books, for reasons we cannot fathom. I fear we were wrong to ignore that wisdom.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ said the king after a lengthy silence. ‘What’s brought about this abrupt change of heart?’

  ‘The thought that we may yet discover treatises of ancient Doranen magic.’

  Exchanging glances with the queen, the king leaned forward. The hothouse strawberries were forgotten now. ‘I thought you wanted to find them.’

  ‘I did. In truth, part of me still does. But the danger of doing so far outweighs the benefits. If such magics were discovered … if they were to fall into the wrong hands … the Wall itself may be destroyed, Borne, and that is unthinkable.’ For them, at least. For himself, he’d been dreaming, plotting and planning little else for centuries.

  The king frowned. ‘Whose “wrong hands” concern you the most?’

  ‘My own,’ said Morg. Seasoning Durm’s voice with a rueful, courageous honesty, he continued, ‘I’m afraid that if I found such magics, if I discovered a book with our arcane heritage writ large upon its pages, I would not resist the temptation to use it. I fear that my zeal and, regrettably, my arrogance—’

  ‘Arrogance?’ the king protested. ‘Durm, what—’

  ‘Please, old friend!’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Can you truly sit there and smile in my eye and say I am not arrogant? I am, and we both know it. And I know that my arrogance would indeed overrun my more temperate self, and that in so doing I would bring about calamity and woe.’

  ‘This is arrant nonsense!’ the king retorted. ‘You would never, never—’

  He lifted a hand to halt the passionate spate of words. ‘It is an unwise man, Majesty, who claims “never”. I think you told me that once.’

  The king’s pale face was flushed with temper. ‘I grant you’re a passionate man, Durm. Confident in your abilities, as well you should be, because they’re prodigious. But you would never, and yes I use the word, not unwisely, never betray me or my kingdom. And if you think I’m going to sit here and listen to you malign yourself in such a fashion, you—’

  ‘Borne,’ said the queen, and laid a gentle finger on his wrist. ‘Let him finish.’

  Which was interesting. Little ranting Durm knew the queen did not like him overmuch but kept her peace for the sake of her husband. For himself, he found her reservations amusing, springing as they did from her unreasoning love of that mewling monstrosity she called a son and a suspicion that Durm had no real respect for her at all.

  And there, little magician, do we find ourselves in agreement, and nobody is more surprised than I to discover we share a toehold of common ground! This queen is no queen at all; your king is blinded by love. And not just for her. For the cripple, too. But let’s not be too harsh towards our little princeling, eh? He is, after all, the tool of your destruction and is to be cherished. At least for now.

  The king said, subsiding, ‘He can talk until crows grow on corn stalks, Dana. It still won’t make him right.’

  ‘Do you say he doesn’t know his own heart?’ she countered. ‘Why then have you called for his counsel all these years if you so easily mistrust what he says?’

  There was a dangerous glitter in the king’s eye. It made him look more than ever like long-dead Ryal. ‘I think you’d best speak plainly, madam.’

  ‘Plainly, then, you should stop bellowing and hear him out,’ the queen snapped. ‘Yesterday you were the one saying the library should remain unbreached. Now Durm is agreeing with you, a little late perhaps, but still. Tell me what there is in this to mislike!’

  ‘I mislike,’ the king said dangerously, ‘that he would sit there and accuse himself of foul, unspeakable treachery. Even more do I mislike the fact that you don’t defend him, even from himself!’

  How tedious. As if he had time for wedded spats. ‘Dear friends,’ he raised both hands placatingly. ‘Please do not disagree on my account. Your loyalty moves me almost to tears, Borne, but in this the queen has the right of it. Allow me to know myself and my personal demons a little better than you.’

  ‘You are no traitor,’ said the king. ‘My life upon it. I cannot believe you would ever put your own desires above the welfare of this kingdom. I will not believe it, even if Barl herself should come back from the grave to tell me in person.’

  ‘Well, I expect you’re right,’ said Morg, as deep within the darkness trapped Durm wept, inconsolable. ‘But can you understand I prefer not to put that belief to the test?’

  ‘Yes,’ the queen said. ‘Of course we can understand. We do understand. The library will be sealed and the secret of its existence will die with us.’

  Well, that much was certainly true. He turned to the king. ‘Borne?’

  ‘I confess,’ the king said slowly, ‘that I spent an uneasy night. I had bad dreams. Not because I mistrust you. Every argument you made yesterday holds true in the light of a new morning. And yet …’

  ‘Precisely,’ he said, smiling. ‘In the harsh light of day, doubts outweigh daring. C
ountless thousands of lives depend on us. You were right all along, Borne. The risk is too great.’

  ‘So be it.’ The king grimaced. ‘Fane will be desolate.’

  Ah yes. The magical prodigy. He was looking forward to meeting her: Durm considered her quite amazing. ‘I will deal with Fane,’ he said. ‘As WeatherWorker-in-Waiting, she will understand that we act with the kingdom’s best interests at heart.’

  ‘And what of Gar?’ said the queen. ‘Borne, he’ll be devastated. All those books. You said he could study them, you named him—’

  ‘I know,’ said the king. ‘It can’t be helped.’

  ‘A compromise, perhaps,’ Morg suggested. ‘It’s clear that what we found yesterday is harmless. His Highness could safely take those books and translate them to his heart’s content. If it’s made known that those texts comprised the extent of the discovery, all should be well.’

  ‘An excellent idea,’ approved the queen.

  The king nodded. ‘I agree. And it would be a shame to come away from this empty-handed.’ Sighing, he frowned at the bowl of strawberries.

  Finally succumbing to temptation Morg reached for one, though his purged belly was still uneasy. The flavour exploded on his tongue, sweet, so sweet. He almost moaned aloud. When he could speak: ‘Might I make another suggestion?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the king.

  ‘Let me be the one to tell the prince of this decision. It will distress him, and since I’m the one responsible for it, it’s only fair that I bear the brunt of his displeasure.’

  ‘Like Fane, he will understand,’ the queen said sharply. ‘Gar is no fool.’

  A matter for debate, surely. But he smiled at the queen, and spread his hands wide. ‘That was not my meaning, Majesty. Forgive me if I was unclear.’

  ‘Doubtless it’s cowardly of me but – very well,’ said the king. ‘By all means, break the bad news to Gar.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Morg, and smiled. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Majesty, I’ll do so directly. When a plan is decided there seems little point in delay. Don’t you agree?’