The Reluctant Mage

by Karen Miller

  So this was theft, this was. The beasts were stealing people from Vharne. But only the people strong enough to survive. Strong enough to be useful when they were put to work.

  A moan of horror from Deenie. Her clasping arms tightened, threatening his ribs. Behind him, the muttered cursing of his barracks men and a stifled sob from that Charis girl. He heard his own stricken breathing and his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

  Every story the king had told him—every tale Tavin shared in the bath house—they were brought to life before his eyes in that village.

  This is Morg’s world, this is. If he lives, this is his world.

  “Girl,” he said, belly churning. “Kill so many beasts from here, can you?”

  “Maybe,” Deenie said, full of doubt. “But I’d rather be closer.”

  Closer meant leaving the protection of the spirit path.

  “Deenie, no,” Charis protested, tearful. “It’s too dangerous. You can’t—”

  “Charis, I must.”

  For once he wanted to argue on Charis’s side. But then Deenie’s crushing hold vanished as she slid to the ground. He heard Charis gasp and raised his sword in warning. Clap tongue. But he didn’t look at her, or any of his barracks men. His gaze was pinned to Deenie. Slight. Fragile. Hardly more than a girl. Dark hair untidily braided, dressed head to toe in the leathers he’d worked so hard to supple for her, she stood on the shrouding spirit path, staring at the terror and slaughter before them.

  “Whatever happens, Ewen, don’t you interfere,” she said. She sounded like Tavin. “You might mean well but I promise, you’ll only be a ruction.”

  And then before he could answer, before he could change his mind, she stepped off the path.

  “You there!” she shouted, her voice clear and carrying. “You there! You beasts!”

  The villagers stopped their wailing. Confused, the beasts swung their heads, snuffling, talons clicking. Tails lashed.

  “You beasts!” Deenie shouted again, and swaggered towards them, a sorcerer, as though she owned the world.

  “Deenie—Deenie—what are you doing?”

  That was Charis’s frantic whisper, but he didn’t rake her for it. She was only putting his own dismay into words.

  “Beasts!” called Deenie, still swaggering. “Come and face me. Come and die.”

  One beast saw her. Its cloven hoof stamped the ground. The other beasts followed where it pointed and they all saw her. Snarls and clashing tusks. Horrible, animal growls. Then they abandoned their captives and walked towards Deenie. Slow. Hesitant. Snuffling the air.

  “No, you’re not dreaming,” Deenie taunted them. “I’m real. I wonder, is Morg listening? Is he watching? Well, sink me bloody sideways. He can watch. I don’t care.”

  Halting, she snapped her right hand high above her head, fingers spread wide. Every line of her girlish body proclaimed her rage. Then she clenched her spread fingers into a shaking fist—and a beast with dull blue hide and pronged horns and talons like small scythes dropped dead without a sound.

  The ten beasts surviving looked at their slain companion. Then they threw their inhuman heads back and howled. Hearing them, the villagers wailed in fresh terror.

  Deenie snapped up her left hand. Even though he couldn’t see her face, Ewen knew she was smiling. Knew that the mage in her was given free, furious rein.

  “You beasts,” she said again, her voice full of contempt. “This kingdom of Vharne has no need of you.”

  As she uttered her last word the beasts flung themselves at her in a howling, snarling rush.

  Holding her ground, Deenie clenched both her fists. Another beast fell. Another. Another. But that still left seven, it did, and they were closing on her… they were closing…

  “Captain, what are you doing, you—you noddyhead?” Charis demanded, still tearful. “Don’t sit there, help her!”

  “No,” Ewen said, not taking his eyes from Deenie. He was slicked with sweat down his ribs, down his spine. His horse was skittering, fretting beneath him. It remembered too well what happened the last time there were beasts. “She told me to stay put, she did. And I told you to clap tongue!”

  The girl’s angry protest cut short as Robb’s fretting horse whipped round on its haunches. His other barracks men were wrangling their animals too, but he couldn’t worry about that. He only had room in him for worry about Deenie.

  She still held her ground. Another two beasts collapsed, but the other five kept coming—and she was starting to shake.

  Help her, spirit. Help her.

  If he stepped off the path, if the beasts caught scent and sight of him, she’d be fighting to protect him and kill them at the same time.

  She’d die faster if I put my sword in her now, she would.

  So he stayed put. It nearly killed him.

  The last five hideous beasts were almost on top of her. Heartsick, he watched Deenie shudder then sink to her knees. On an anguished cry her slender body convulsed, small fists battering the air.

  And then her fisted fingers flew apart.

  The beasts dropped dead in their tracks, rolling and sliding across the tussocky grass. Feebly Deenie tumbled herself out of the way. After that it was a race between him and Charis, to see who reached her first.

  “Oh, look,” Deenie murmured at last, cradled against him. “It’s Captain Noddyhead.”

  Charis, who’d run slower, was chafing Deenie’s hand. “You—you noggin,” she scolded, weeping. “You slumskumbledy wench! If your da was here—if he could see you—”

  Deenie’s face was death-white. Blood trickled from her half-closed eyes like tears. “Clap tongue, Charis,” she said, trying to smile. “You’re worse than ole Darran.”

  “I don’t care,” Charis retorted. “Deenie, all those beasts!” She spared a look at their gruesome, scattered corpses. “I can scarce believe it. You. Deenie the mouse. Deenie the beast-slayer, we’ll have to call you now. All the people you saved! Captain Noddyhead will have to tell his king to give you a procession.” She turned. “You can do that, can’t you?”

  Ewen smothered a smile. “I can ask him, I can. Fair to say he’d say yes, I think.”

  “There!” said Charis. And then she sobbed. “Deenie, I swear, if ever you fright me like that again…”

  Deenie gave her friend’s hand a little pat. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  Ridden off the spirit path, Robb and the other barracks men kept a respectful distance but Ewen could feel their awestruck stares. Sorcery under a blue sky. And he thought they were unsettled by the king’s son with a sorcerer in his arms.

  And I’m not? I am. How is this my life?

  “Robb,” he said, quietly, with a glance behind him. “Ride on. See to the villagers. I’ll be there, I will.”

  “Captain,” Robb said, and led the barracks men to their duty. Their horses squealed and shied as they trotted past the dead beasts.

  “Ewen…”

  He looked down into Deenie’s horribly pale face. “Lie still, girl. It’s proper coggled, you are.” Then he frowned, relief frosting with fear. “Eleven beasts, Deenie. D’you think the sorcerer felt that?”

  With an effort she touched her fingers to his unshaven chin. “I don’t know. Let’s hope not.”

  He captured her fingers in his. “It’s a debt, I owe you. Saved my people, you did.”

  “Well—” She coughed, wincing. “In that case, could be you’ll forget me and Charis are trespassing.”

  He laughed at her, so thankful. She laughed with him. Then she wept. And then pulled out of his arms and heaved her breakfast onto the grass.

  They stayed to help the villagers burn their dead, and bury the beasts in the woodland. Charis left Deenie to sit quiet on the grass, warmed by a patch of sunshine, while she busied herself tending the hurt and frightened as best she could. Deenie wanted to help her, but Charis would have none of it.

  For once, Ewen found himself agreeing with the girl.

  By the time the
burying was done and the burnings started, and Charis had used up all the village’s salves and ointments on the wounded, the afternoon was almost slipped away. The villagers begged them to camp the night, because they were grateful—and in case more beasts came.

  “One night,” Ewen said, talking private with Robb, near where they’d helped bury the beasts. Smoke was curling from the new funeral pits dug beyond the village, and the clean woodland air was miserably tainted with death. “But we ride on come sunrise.”

  “Agreed,” said Robb, his lean face and balding head coated with ash and sweat and dirt. “Think they’ll spare us a bath, do you?”

  His Dirk sounded wistful. He didn’t chide. He was feeling desperate to be clean himself. “A good thought, it is, but I don’t want these folk run out of water.”

  “I’ll ask,” Robb said, pleased. Then he sobered. “Highness—Captain—”

  “I know,” he said. “If more beasts come, they’ll be taken. Robb, what can I do? They turned down my offer of a place in the Vale, they did. I can’t stay to protect them and I can’t command them to leave. Not when I’m a plain barracks man.”

  “No,” said Robb sadly. “They’ll take their chances.” Then he looked to where Charis kept Deenie company. “That was a sight, that was. All those beasts the girl dropped dead.”

  “Settled with it, are you?”

  Robb grimaced. “Highness, it’s sorcery.”

  “And she saved a village with it, she did. She saved us.”

  “This time,” Robb muttered. “I’ll see about those baths, I will.”

  Ewen frowned after him a moment, then crossed the open ground to Deenie.

  “Don’t fratch her, you,” Charis said, under her breath, leaving. “She’s still feeling it. In fact if you want to be useful, Captain Noddyhead, make her shift onto the spirit path. She won’t listen to me.”

  “You mustn’t mind Charis, truly,” Deenie said, with a wan smile. “She’s practically my sister.”

  He sat beside her, pleased to ease his aching bones. “She’s right, she is. You still look coggled.”

  “Coggled. What a funny word.”

  “No funnier than fratched, I say,” he said, wanting to tease her into feeling better.

  But she wasn’t listening. Instead she’d turned to stare past the village, towards the north. “We’re almost at the border now, aren’t we?”

  “Almost. Late the day after tomorrow, I say. How do you know?”

  “Oh…” She shivered. “I can feel it. Blight and sorcery, growing so thick, so fast, they hurt my heart.”

  “You should listen to that Charis, you should, and sit on the spirit path,” he said, half-rising, alarmed.

  Her cold fingers closed around his wrist. “No. I need to feel this. For a little while, any road. I need to know what I’ll be fighting.” She let go of him and pointed towards the north-east. “That way, we need to ride. That way’s Dorana… and Elvado.”

  He stared, of a sudden feeling churned, like Robb. “Certain of that, you are?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice small and tight. “I’m a drum, Ewen, and the blight beats me so hard my bones are shaking.”

  Girl… girl… “Deenie, sit on the path. It’s coggled, you are.”

  She gave him a barracks look. “And it’s coggled I’ll be once the spirit paths run out. So I might as well get used to it, Captain. There’s nothing to be done, you know. Morg’s workings, they sicken me. They always have.”

  But Morg never ruled her land, she said, so how could that be? What hadn’t she told him? So much trust he’d given her but really, what did he know?

  I know she makes my heart race, she does. I know she’s the fiercest beast-slayer Vharne’s ever seen. Her father’s sick, her mother died and she loves her brother. But it’s risking Vharne, I am, trusting her. I need to know more than that.

  Eleven beasts buried, killed with a word.

  “Girl, who are you?”

  “I don’t—” She blinked at him. “Ewen, I told you.”

  He wasn’t going to let her coggle him, with her sweet eyes and her lilting voice. “Your name, you told me. Where you come from. Tells me nothing, that does. How many Olken can kill beasts with a word?”

  She shrank into herself like a blossom touched with frost. “Ewen—”

  His turn to grab her wrist, but not to link fingers or to kiss her sweet, callused palm. “How many?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, sitting still. “But I think—just me.”

  “Why not Charis? She’s a mage, she is, you say.”

  “Ewen, we’ve talked on this,” she said, bewildered. Or pretending. “Olken magic, it’s—it’s like the spirit path. It’s warm and gentle and it can’t be used to hurt.”

  “But girl, you’re Olken! If that’s true, how can you kill?”

  “I can’t tell you how, Ewen,” she said softly. “Because I don’t know.”

  He’d stake his life she wasn’t lying. Only—“Then tell me this, you can. Why didn’t Morg ruin Lur like he ruined Vharne and Iringa and the rest?”

  Her eyes turned cold, like a sorcerer. “You’ll have to ask him. I wasn’t there at the time. Ewen, let go of me. You’re hurting my wrist.”

  And now she was lying, even as she told him the truth. Her refusal to trust him jabbed, like a knife-point. Not even eleven dead beasts made it easier.

  He let go. “And Rafel? Found him yet, have you?”

  “No,” she said, hugging herself. “But I will. And when I do, he’ll help us.”

  Now she sounded sick and weary. A long way she and Charis had come to find this brother of hers, but if he wasn’t to be found…

  Or if he’s found, and found wanting, we’ll not defeat the sorcerer. Killing beasts is one thing. But killing Morg? She can’t do it. Not alone. So it’s kneeling at his feet, I’ll be. And then I’ll be giving him Vharne and its people. The ones he hasn’t already stolen, that is.

  “Ewen…”

  He looked down at her fingertips, touching his knee. Looked up to see her eyes warm again.

  “If I frighted you killing those beasts,” she said softly, “if that’s why you’re so fratched of a sudden, I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better, I frighted myself.”

  She’d frightened him spitless, but he’d never admit it. He scowled. “You’d best be right about your brother, I say.”

  “I am.”

  “Then, girl, you can swear to me, on your life, he’s the mage to kill Morg.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t understand, Ewen. I thought you trusted me.”

  He wanted to, so hard it hurt him, but in truth he didn’t know. Not with all her secrets crowding the air between them. He wished he’d not left Tavin behind in the Vale.

  “It’s a barracks man, I am, girl,” he said heavily. “I trust my swordmaster’s training and my sword.”

  “Then Ewen, think of me as your sword,” she whispered, and pressed her hands to his. “Think of me as the blade in your fist.”

  Eleven beasts buried, killed with a word.

  And if she’s my sword that means Vharne’s saved, does it?

  “Fine,” he said, sharply nodding. “You’re my sword. But Deenie—if you cut me? I’ll break you in two, I will.”

  It broke her heart to leave the villagers behind. She couldn’t understand why Ewen didn’t bully them back to his Vale, to safety. Explaining how the spirit path could help them wasn’t enough. They couldn’t live on it, could they? And sooner or later it was likely more beasts would find them.

  “And when they do,” Ewen said curtly, “those villagers’ll run to the path and hide ’til the beasts leave, won’t they? This is Vharne, girl. We do things our way, not yours.”

  Oh, he was so fratched. Partly because he knew that path or no path the villagers wouldn’t survive even one beast for long—but mostly because he knew she’d not told him the whole truth.

  “Tell him to suck on a blowfish,” said Charis, niggling t
hat horrible conversation out of her as Ewen and his men saddled their horses. “Who’s Captain Noddyhead to complain, I ask you, when there’s eleven beasts buried in those woods thanks to you!”

  And although that made her laugh, she knew it wasn’t so simple.

  In sour silence Ewen led his barracks men away from the village, and in resigned silence she rode piggyback behind him. At least she had the spirit path to blunt the growing pain roiled up by the blight. And at least, according to his funny little map, that respite would last all the way to Vharne’s border.

  Except it didn’t.

  Some two hours before sunset after a relentless day of riding, the path came to a shattering end, just as if they’d ridden over a cliff. The malevolent, creeping power of the blight struck her so hard that she let go of surly Ewen and tumbled like a rag doll from his horse to the bare, stony ground.

  “Stop!” Charis shouted, smacking Robb on his shoulder. But then she didn’t wait for him to listen, she just slithered backwards over his horse’s rump, the way she always got off, and rushed over. “Deenie! What’s happening? Why has it gone so wrong?”

  Her travel-worn leathers had mostly saved her from cuts and bruises, but her left hand was scraped a bit. Shaking the sting out of it, she let Charis pull her back to her feet.

  “It’s Morg’s blight,” she said, and pressed a fist to her churning belly. “It’s creeping, Charis. I think it’s eaten away the spirit path.”

  “What are you saying, girl?” Ewen demanded, kicking his horse close. They’d all had a welcome bath in the village and he’d scraped off most of his beard. It was odd seeing his face again. Thinner now, with his eyes seeming greener than ever. “The path’s eaten away? But I’m standing on it, aren’t I?”

  Loyal Charis glowered at him. “And if we explain, Captain Noddyhead, will you believe us? Or accuse us of playing some nefarious trick?”