The Innocent Mage Read online

  ‘Well it ain’t my bloody fault either!’ shouted Asher. ‘But who cares? Reckon I’m about to get covered in shit anyway! First Westwailing Harbour, then him and his mouldy ole books and now this! Barl bloody knows where we’ll end up with this! You should’ve seen the look on that Fane’s face when all those flowers started sproutin’. I’m tellin’ you, if looks could kill I reckon we’d’ve had a head start on a bloody funeral!’

  ‘So …’ Dathne tried a sympathetic smile, to see if that would calm things down. ‘You’re going to be fairly occupied in the next little while.’

  The smile worked; Asher deflated, and kicked at the dirty ground. ‘Looks like.’

  She patted him on the arm. ‘Well, you know where I am if there’s anything I can do. He must be pleased.’

  He gave her a blank look. ‘Who?’

  ‘The prince. He must be pleased that at last he’s found his magic.’

  Asher shrugged. ‘S’pose. I ain’t seen him yet.’ He sighed. ‘I’d best get back. That ole Darran’s flappin’ about like a chicken with its head cut off and bloody Willer’s no use at all.’

  Dathne stared. ‘Since when have you been so concerned about Darran?’

  ‘I ain’t bloody concerned,’ said Asher. ‘But if the ole crow does hisself a mischief while he’s flappin’ you can bet your arse he’ll find a way to blame it on me!’

  As he stomped off down the alley, Dathne let her head fall against Matt’s shoulder. ‘Jervale protect us.’

  He nodded. ‘Dathne, I don’t like this.’

  She stepped away from him. ‘It’s not for you and me to like or dislike. It’s Prophecy working itself out. All we can do about it is be patient and see what happens next.’

  Matt turned away, hands fisted on his hips. ‘This can’t be natural. Magic comin’ on a Doranen so late in his life.’

  ‘It’s unusual, I grant you. But unusual doesn’t mean unnatural, Matt. You know as well as I their magic is a spiky thing, abrupt and uncomfortable. We can’t ever hope to fully understand it.’

  He wasn’t convinced. ‘These past days … I haven’t felt right.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t know, exactly,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not sure I can put it into words. But I feel the world around us, Dathne, and something’s changed.’

  ‘Changed how?’

  Frustrated, he tugged at his weskit. ‘I don’t know, I tell you. Look, I ain’t a Seer, like you. I’m not Jervale’s Heir. I don’t have visions and I can’t scry to save myself. All I’m good at are horses and … and … feeling the way the world is.’

  ‘And you think it feels different?’

  ‘I know it does. Different, and worse than different. Wrong. I just don’t know how, exactly.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something before now?’

  He shrugged. ‘I thought I was imagining it. I thought it was just jitters, after the storm. Losing Bellybone, and Thunder Crow. Worrying about Asher. It’s not like I can prove anything. How can you prove a feeling?’

  She sighed. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Matt. I’ve not felt what you have. But then, as you say, we’ve all got different talents. You’ve always been especially tuned to the natural world.’ She thought hard. ‘It could be you’ve sensed Gar’s blossoming. Whenever a Doranen child manifests his or her powers it changes the tune magic sings in this place. Being so much older, with his Doranen magic repressed for so long … perhaps that’s it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Matt said after a moment. ‘But what if it’s not?’

  Unfairly, she felt a stab of anger at him. As if she didn’t have enough to be losing sleep over. Then common sense reasserted itself. No point in having a voice of reason to hand if you stoppered its mouth every time it said something you didn’t like. ‘I’m going to sound like a corncrake, jabbering the same old song over and over again,’ she sighed. ‘But—’

  ‘I know,’ he said glumly. ‘We just have to wait. Well, like I said before – I hate bloody waiting.’

  ‘And so do I hate bloody waiting,’ she snapped, losing patience. ‘But we’re like a woman with child, Matt. We’ve had a long gestation and a false cramp or two and now we’re eager for our waters to break. Well, they’ll break when they’re ready and not before, and sticking a knife between our legs to hasten matters won’t do much beyond making us bloody and putting the whole damned business at risk. Is that what you want?’

  He was glaring. ‘Of course it ain’t.’

  ‘Well, then. It’s getting late. Best you go and tend your horses and leave me to decide when we’ve waited long enough. Seeing as how I am Jervale’s Heir.’

  That earned her an even dirtier look. ‘Fine.’ He bowed. ‘As madam desires.’

  She let him go unhindered. His ruffled feathers would smooth soon enough. In the meantime, she’d take some time to sink herself in meditation and see if she couldn’t sense for herself whatever it was he had felt … and been so unnerved by.

  In the end Gar sent everyone away. His parents. Durm. Nix. Especially Nix. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, it was a miracle. But dear Barl save him, he needed solitude. Time. A chance to breathe and come to terms with this tumultuous reshaping of his life. He couldn’t imagine feeling any more shocked and disarrayed than if he’d woken one day and looked in the mirror to find himself female.

  Escaping to his private garden, where he could be sure of undisturbed privacy, he sat on a carved wooden bench in the late afternoon sunshine and let the perfumed air caress his skin. Let the birds in the trees around him sing and soothe his overwrought mind.

  I am a magician. A true Doranen. My father’s son, at last.

  He wasn’t sure if it was safe to feel so much joy at once. Could mere flesh contain it? Surely not. Surely any moment now his skin must burst and all his joy come pouring out, as golden and as glowing as the magic that burned and bubbled in his blood. In a heartbeat, in the blink of an eye, he was remade. Reborn. And nothing would ever be the same again.

  As though to prove it he snapped his fingers and conjured a glowing ball of glimfire. Obedient, opalescent and there, right before his eyes, simply because he wished it, the coalesced magic bobbed on the breeze.

  Suddenly, one just wasn’t enough.

  He conjured a second ball. Then a third. Conjured more, until twenty balls of glimfire hovered in the air above him. Enchanted, he conjured them different colours. With a thought, nothing more. The ease of it stole his breath anew. Then he made them dance. Simply, at first, as he sought to find the balance of energy that would keep them under his control. Then more daringly, and more daringly still, until they looped and swirled and flirted like live things, butterflies or birds or some other, magical creatures, celebrating his great good fortune.

  Then, without warning, the multicoloured balls of glimfire exploded into black smoke. He cried out in shock and protest and sudden fear as through the drifting remnants of his dancing glimfire Fane crossed the close-clipped lawn towards him, her crimson cloak billowing about her like blood. Her face was obdurate, carved in stone. There was no joy in her at all.

  He leapt to his feet, furious. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘You think magic’s a game? Is that what you think?’

  Heart pounding, he watched her halt before him. ‘No. Of course I don’t.’

  ‘You think it’s all pretty lights and showing off?’

  There was pain in her eyes, as well as fury and disgust and something else he couldn’t define. He let his own pain show in return. ‘I don’t understand you, Fane. Why can’t you be pleased for me?’

  She laughed. ‘Are you truly so stupid?’

  ‘I must be. You’ll have to explain it to me. Explain why my own sister, my only sister, whom I love, though sometimes she makes it hard, could so resent my miracle.’

  She didn’t answer him straightaway. Pushed past him to the garden bench and sat on it, arms extended along the back, face tipped back to drink the sunshine. He stood there, watching h
er. Waiting.

  ‘On my fifth birthday,’ she said at last, eyes closed, ‘Durm took me to watch Papa work the Weather Magic. The blood and the pain scared me so much he had to take me out of the Weather Chamber and slap me into silence. When I finally stopped screaming, do you know what he said to me?’

  Aching, Gar shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘He said, “You are this kingdom’s only hope. One day it will be your duty to call the rain and the snow, to sing the seeds in springtime and slumber the earth in winter. In doing this you will keep the Wall strong so that no harm can come to us from beyond the mountains. But if you fail, or deny your destiny, the Wall will fall and with it every man, woman and child in the kingdom. Abandon your childish dreams and desires, Fane. You are no ordinary girl, and your life has never been your own.”’

  ‘That was—’ He stopped. Cleared his throat. ‘That was cruel. He shouldn’t have done that.’

  She opened her eyes; they were sharp with derision. ‘Of course he should. He was right. I was born to be a WeatherWorker. So every day since that one I have sweated and bled and wept, learning how to be one. How to be this kingdom’s only hope.’ She slid off the bench, sinuously, and in her pellucid eyes stirred something dark and dangerous. ‘I tell you this, brother. I did not sweat and bleed and weep in vain.’

  He stared at her, helpless. ‘Fane, you have to believe me, I’m not interested in usurping your place. I don’t want to be the next WeatherWorker.’

  Her tapering fingers became talons and her beautiful face twisted into ugliness, contorted with hate and despair and a lifetime of remembered whispers. ‘Liar! You think I don’t know what you’re planning? Of course I know. There’s only room for one cripple in this family, Gar, we both know that. And now that you’ve got your precious magic you’re going to make sure I’m it! Well, it’s not going to happen. Do you hear me? I won’t let you cripple me! I’ll kill you first!’

  Gar felt sick, all joy congealed into sorrow. ‘Fane, this is ridiculous. You don’t want to kill me. And even if you did, you couldn’t.’

  ‘No?’ she spat. ‘I think you’d be surprised at what I can do, brother.’ Clapping her hands hard she conjured glimfire. No pretty coloured sphere, but a brute red thing pulsing scarlet with her pain and untamed fury. She aimed it at him, pelted it, and the air sizzled in its wake.

  Startled, he raised a hand in self-defence. Thought desperately of shields and barriers and quenching rain. It wasn’t enough, or he lacked the skill. Her glimfire scorched him, blistered flesh and singed silk before exploding into a shower of blood-red sparks. ‘Hey! Fane, stop it! You know this is against the law! You know the penalty for duelling with magic! Do you want to cause a scandal? Do you want to bring the king down here?’

  Clap clap, went his little sister’s hands. Clap, clap, clap. ‘No,’ she cried as balls of scarlet glimfire erupted into life around her. ‘I want everything to be the way it was! You bastard, you bastard! Why couldn’t you have stayed a bloody cripple! Why didn’t he let you drown?’

  His heart broke. ‘Fane! Fane, listen to me—’

  ‘No, I won’t listen!’ she screamed. ‘Why should I listen? What can you say that I could possibly want to hear?’

  He tried again to reach her. Not because he thought he could, but because he had no other choice. ‘Fane. Please. I’m begging you, stop now before it’s too late. Before you go too far. It doesn’t have to be like this. I love you. We can work our problems out …’

  She screamed again, a wordless outpouring of vitriol and hate. Her hands flung wide, her eyes blazed blue in her chalk-white face … and suddenly the sky was raining fire.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Somehow Gar deflected her flaming rage. Managed this time to explode the balls of glimfire she hurled at him before they could touch his exposed and vulnerable flesh. Given no choice he hurled his own fire back at her in wild self-defence. He had no idea where the magic came from, it just welled out of that secret place inside him that nobody, not even Durm, had ever suspected he possessed.

  ‘Fane, for the love of Barl, stop this!’ he shouted as the air filled with noxious smoke and exploding glimfire, his and hers. The sound of it boomed around his small walled bower, rocketed from brick to brick and sent the songbirds screaming into the sky. ‘Fane! Are you mad? There are laws!’

  But she was beyond reason, beyond hearing. Almost, he realised, staring heartsick into her venomous eyes, beyond sanity.

  Her wild attack intensified. It was impossible to destroy all the fireballs she flung at him; those he failed to extinguish engulfed trees, garden benches, flowerbeds. The smoke thickened till she was reduced to a crimson nightmare shadow spewing hate and fire. He defended himself as best he could but she was much more practised than he. Raw talent was no match for years and years of training.

  If this didn’t stop soon one of them was going to die.

  He thought he heard distant voices, shouting. The madness had to end now, before death and scandal overtook them. The sweat of desperation and fear poured down his face.

  She was the most powerful magician born since Barl, or so Durm said. How in the name of their blessed saviour was he supposed to stop her?

  ‘Imagine a rose,’ Durm had told him, and he had, and in his hand he’d held a rose. Now he imagined a whip of glimfire, snapping and curling at his command.

  ‘Bastard!’ Fane shrieked as it lashed around her ankles and tugged her flailing to the grass. She retaliated with a whip of her own and, unburdened by scruples or any kind of reason, aimed for his hands, his throat, his eyes. He couldn’t deflect all her strikes.

  Soon he began to sting, to burn, to bleed. Began to lose his temper as a lifetime of buried resentments boiled to the surface of his carefully cultivated facade. Spoilt brat. Rotten bitch. Never happy unless she was humiliating him. Taunting him. Hurting him. Whatever had he done to her to deserve such unkind treatment? Nothing. All he’d ever done was try to love her. Understand her. Forgive her. Defend her to their mother, their father, even though her words and deeds were so often indefensible.

  With a supreme effort he evaded another strike and wrapped his lash of glimfire round her body, pinning her arms to her sides. She cried out, fingers spasming, and her own whip fell from her fingers to dissolve on the ground in a puff of acrid smoke. She cried out again as he hauled her towards him across the charred and stinking grass. As he seized her by the shoulders and forced her backwards against the rough trunk of the nearest tree. She kicked and cursed him as he framed her face in his hands, palms flat and pressing, holding her so she could look nowhere but into his anguished eyes.

  ‘Bitch!’ he panted. Sobbed, nearly. ‘What is wrong with you? All I ever wanted was for you to care like I cared! To be my sister as I was your brother. Why is that so hard? Why is that so much to ask? Why in Barl’s name do you hate me so much?’

  She was crying, her contorted face screwed up with rage and hurt. ‘Why do you think, you stupid bastard? Because they never wanted me! Not for me. Not for myself. Only because you were a failure! The only reason I exist is because you were born defective! And now here you are, reborn a magician … so what’s to become of me?’

  Her mewling self-pity was his undoing. His fingers tightened on her face, nails digging into her soft flesh. ‘Who cares?’ he hissed. ‘So you’re not the only one with magic, so what? Do you think the world will cease its spinning? Do you expect the Wall to shatter and our lives to end in blood and fire, all because of me? Because at last, at last, Barl has delivered me my magic? My birthright? Do you think what I now have diminishes you? Little sister, you preen yourself too proudly!’

  Her eyes were wide, the pupils cavernous. Flooding tears washed the soot and smoke from her ice-white cheeks. Through distorted lips she choked, ‘Gar – let go – you’re hurting me! You’re hurting me!’

  ‘Merciful Barl!’ he shouted, blind and deaf to her pleading. ‘You are the most selfish creature alive! Have you even given one minute
’s thought to what I’m going through? To what I’ve gone through my whole life? No, of course you haven’t. Because no matter what happens, no matter who is suffering, at the end of the day you’re the only one who matters. You! You! You! And you have the temerity to complain that I’m hurting you?’

  Untrammelled at last, his rage would have overpowered him, would have clutched his fingers round her throat and shaken her till she wept her penitence and begged for his mercy, or suffocated.

  They were saved from disaster by Asher.

  ‘You damned bloody idiot!’ his friend bellowed, hauling him bodily away from Fane, one strong arm anchored round his chest and arm. ‘Are you out of your mind? What are you doin’? You tryin’ to kill her?’

  Gasping, swearing, he struggled free of Asher’s grasp. ‘Keep out of this! Go away! It’s none of your business and you wouldn’t understand anyway!’

  ‘I wouldn’t?’ said Asher, glaring. ‘Me? With my bloody brothers?’

  Panting, Gar dragged his charred sleeve across his gritty, sweat-stained face. The rage was still in him, burning, yearning. He throttled the impulse to flatten Asher where he stood. ‘That’s different!’

  Asher’s expression was profoundly sceptical. ‘Aye. Right. I forgot. Royalty’s got a better class of family strife.’ He shook his head. ‘What were you thinkin’, Gar? Half the bloody Tower’s heard the two of you goin’ at each other like alley cats! Darran’s pissed his panties twice over! What’s got into you? Has all that newfangled magic gone and burned up what little common sense you were born with?’ He flung out a hand towards Fane. ‘She may be sixteen and a pain in the arse, y’fool, but she’s still little more than a child! And she’s your bloody sister!’

  As though waking from a nightmare Gar turned and looked at Fane. She’d slid down the tree trunk and was folded at its base, face pressed into the battered ground, weeping fit to break a brother’s heart. Fury fled, and sanity abruptly returned. Flooded with sudden shame and self-loathing he went to her. Fell to his knees at her side and gathered her into his arms. For one searing moment she resisted him … then crumpled against his chest.