Legends of Australian Fantasy

by Jack

  ‘How are you ... ?’ she asked.

  ‘Same way I move a pot of sumi,’ he said. ‘Only this time I’m standing on it. Took some practice to keep my balance, though. Don’t worry. I’m used to it now. I won’t drop you.’

  ‘Drop me?’

  He grinned. ‘I’ve come to rescue you. Can’t have my sister in prison because of something she didn’t do.’

  ‘I don’t need rescuing,’ she told him. ‘When they realise you’re not coming to get me they’ll give up and let me go.’

  ‘But I have come to get you.’

  ‘And take me where?’

  ‘Away from here.’

  She shook her head. ‘They’ll find us, Tagin. Listen, I believe they won’t harm you if you give yourself up. They’ll give you a chance to prove that you’re innocent. Once they read your mind they’ll know you didn’t kill anyone, and they’ll let you go.’

  He smiled crookedly. ‘But I did kill Herrol. And most of his servants. And ...’ he looked down and shrugged.

  She followed his gaze, past the floating stone beneath his feet, and caught her breath. Three men lay on the ground below, their eyes open and staring. Dead. Had Tagin killed them? Of course he had. To save me. She felt guilt welling up, but pushed it away. The Guild had set a trap for him. If it had gone badly then it was hardly her fault.

  But it did mean her brother had killed. And once again admitted to killing his master.

  ‘Oh, Tagin,’ she heard herself say. ‘They’ll definitely execute you now. And me, if I come with you.’

  ‘They won’t find us,’ he told her, extending a hand.

  ‘But ...’ But I don’t want to leave and become a fugitive, she wanted to say. His eyes narrowed. She could see the first signs of suspicion and anger. His anger was always worst when he thought he’d been betrayed. Only this time he’s killed people. But he won’t kill me.

  Still, he might take his anger out on others. He’ll blame the Guild and my husband for turning me against him. She felt her heart sink. If I go with him, I might be able to persuade him otherwise. Steer him away from further trouble. From murdering people.

  It would mean leaving her life of comfort and safety.

  But he’s my brother. I’m the only one who can save him.

  Sighing, knowing that he did not comprehend what he asked her to sacrifice, she climbed up onto the window sill and took his hand. His face was transformed by a grin. Pulling her forward, he steadied her as she stepped onto the slab. She looked down as they began to descend.

  Lord Arfon was going to be so disappointed in her.

  * * * *

  Record of the 235th Year.

  The rogue apprentice has rescued his sister, killing two guards and Lord Towin in the process. Lord Towin’s death is a shock and loss to both his family and the Guild. He had so much potential, and his innovative study of the application of magic in shaping metals will be left unfinished.

  Towin’s death has roused and united the Guild. Apprentice Tagin has shown himself to have little moral character, willing to use higher magic as cruelly as the Sachakans did before the War. We cannot leave him to roam the world unchecked and unpunished. Lord Arfon believes that we must capture him and find out how he learned higher magic without the assistance of a teacher, but many of the others feel Tagin is too dangerous and must be killed at the soonest oppor

  * * * *

  Gilken let his pen hover over the page for a moment, listening to the expectant silence that came after the knock at his door. Then he finished the sentence, wiped the pen and set it aside. Rising from his chair, he sent a little magic out to the door to nudge the latch open and then tug the door inward.

  Lord Arfon nodded politely at him. ‘Record-keeper Gilken, may I speak with you?’

  ‘Of course, Lord Arfon,’ Gilken replied, waving to the comfortable chairs he kept in the room for visitors. ‘Would you like a drink of water?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Arfon sat down, his gaze distracted and a crease deepening between his brows. ‘I thought you should know that Lord Valin, Magician Loral and Lord Greyer haven’t been seen since last night’s meeting. You know they volunteered to search for Tagin, but I didn’t choose them?’

  ‘Yes.’ Gilken nodded to show he understood Arfon’s alarm. The young magicians had been friends of Lord Towin, the magician who had been guarding Indria, and were so outraged at the murder it was clear to all that if they’d found Tagin it was unlikely there’d be an apprentice alive to question and put to trial.

  Would that be so terrible? he asked himself. He considered how conflicted his feelings had been the previous night, at the meeting. While he felt the same sense of loss and anger at the murders as many of the magicians, he had been disturbed by the fierce, unquestioning drive for revenge raging among the magicians. We are supposed to be examples of calm and reason. And justice. Tagin deserves a trial.

  ‘You fear they will kill Tagin,’ Gilken said.

  Arfon looked at him. ‘Or in attempting their own search they will upset our arrangements for capturing him.’

  Gilken nodded again. He wants me to put something in the record, so that if the trio upset his plans and Tagin gets away, Argon and his helpers won’t be blamed. It is a pity that he feels the Guild might react that way, but he is no fool. If things go very wrong, people always look for someone to blame, and leaders always fall first.

  ‘I should make note of their absence,’ Gilken said, rising from this chair.

  Taking the hint, Arfon stood up. ‘Thank you. I will distract you no longer.’

  Gilken smiled. ‘Receiving information for the record is more necessity than distraction. And you are always welcome, Lord Arfon.’

  The young magician bent at the waist in a half bow, then left the room. Gilken sat down at his desk again and considered the last sentence he had written. Then he picked up his pen and resumed writing.

  * * * *

  Though she wanted to look away, to flee from the scene before her, Indria forced herself to look at the five bodies. Three magicians and two apprentices lay sprawled around the campfire — three men and two boys a few years older than Tagin. They looked as if they had fallen into a drunken sleep, but she knew better. Each bled from a small cut, through which her brother had taken their magic and their lives while they had been drugged. She wrapped her arms around the simple commoner’s tunic Tagin had brought for her as part of her rescue and disguise, and shivered.

  It had been her idea to let the magicians catch her, convince them she had been Tagin’s prisoner, then drug them so she and Tagin could gain some distance or even get them off their trail. She had bought the tincture at a market, pretending to be suffering from insomnia and women’s pains but wanting something that didn’t taste foul. As the herbalist had recommended, Indria had mixed it into the magicians’ wine, taking care not to make it too strong and risk poisoning them.

  But Tagin had decided it was too great an opportunity to pass up. He’d taken their power, and in doing so he’d killed them. And now he was dancing around the fire, crowing with triumph.

  ‘Too easy!’ he exclaimed. ‘And all it took was this.’ He slipped a hand into the pocket of his jacket and brought out the little bottle containing the drug. ‘Not a bit of magic wasted — none of mine, none of theirs, and now it’s all mine!’

  He grabbed her hands and whirled her about. Her foot caught on a fallen branch and she stumbled, so he stopped and steadied her. ‘Did you hear me?’ he asked. ‘Do you understand?’

  She nodded. ‘Not a bit wasted,’ she repeated. ‘And now they’re off our trail. We’ve gained ... how many days? How long do you think it’ll take before they’re found or missed?’

  ‘A few days.’ He shrugged. ‘More if I burn their bodies.’

  ‘Long enough for us to make it to the border, if we take their horses. We’ll have to hope the Elynes aren’t waiting for us.’ She looked at the dead magicians again and forced herself to see the situation with cold practicali
ty. ‘Are they carrying any money? We could buy passage on a ship. Head for Vin. Or Lonmar.’

  Tagin shook his head. A familiar mad gleam came into his eyes. ‘We’re not going to Vin, sister. Or Lonmar. Or Elyne. We’re going to Imardin.’

  ‘The city? But ...’

  His grip on her hands tightened. ‘Think of all the times we pretended we’d rule the world one day ...’ He laughed as she opened her mouth to protest. ‘Yes, I know it was a game, but I think ... I think it’s possible. We could change the world. We could make the Guild see that their rules and restrictions are wrong.’ He looked at her and his expression became serious. ‘It would be a way to make up for what I did. Which is all their fault, really.’

  ‘But ...’

  His face darkened suddenly, and he flung her hands away. ‘You don’t know what it was like, Indria. Every night, Herrol taking all my strength so I could barely do anything he’d taught me.’ Tagin flushed and turned from her, his head dropping so she could not see his face.

  ‘That’s the secret, you know,’ he said in a quieter voice. ‘The secret of higher magic. Masters take the strength from the apprentices, supposedly in exchange for their teaching. It seems fair at first. Strength in exchange for knowledge. But Herrol kept holding me back. When I started teaching myself — things in his own books — he was angry. He started taking extra power so I couldn’t try anything. I couldn’t learn anything.’ Tagin looked up at her, his gaze tortured and his face older than it had ever appeared before. ‘It doesn’t have to take ten years for an apprentice to become a higher magician. They hold us back — stop us from learning at our natural pace — so that they can take magic from us for longer.’

  Indria felt her heart twist. That might not be so bad for any ordinary apprentice, but for Tagin it would have been intolerable. He was clever. He learned quickly, and grew bored even faster. Herrol should have realised that. Should have rewarded Tagin for his initiative, not punished him.

  ‘But I’m going to reveal the lie,’ Tagin continued, straightening as determination filled him. ‘I’m going to make the Guild tell everyone the truth.’ His gaze shifted to the distance and he was silent a moment. Then his eyes snapped to her and he smiled. ‘We’re going to change the world, Indria, and this time it’s not a game. It’s real.’

  * * * *

  Record of the 235th Year.

  We now know that the three burned corpses found yesterday are the remains of Lord Valin, Magician Loral and Lord Greyer. They were identified by the charred scraps of their clothing brought back to the city.

  Today our minds have been buzzing with mental communications as magicians here and there have reported more terrible news. Nine of Arfon’s searchers and two apprentices had stopped at a Stayhouse for the evening. By the morning they, their servants, the Stayhouse owner and his wife, and many of the staff and customers at the Stayhouse, had perished. Most died in the fire that burned the building to the ground, but we suspect the magicians were first killed by Tagin and his sister as the pair were identified by those lucky enough to escape the blaze.

  All here are shocked by this tragic loss of life.

  * * * *

  Gilken paused. His mind crowded with questions, but he always tried (and often failed) to keep speculation to a minimum in his reporting. Records should be strictly factual. Had the searchers come upon Tagin and his sister, and if so, was their attempt to capture them a catastrophic failure? Why did none of them report the encounter to the Guild via mental communication before they died? He could not help but think the location of the two groups of perished magicians was significant. The bodies of the three young magicians were found further from the city than the Stayhouse. Instead of fleeing after the first encounter, Tagin and Indria had turned and headed toward the city.

  Almost as though Tagin is hunting magicians, not the other way around.

  But he couldn’t write that in the record. With a shudder, he wiped his pen, set it down and went to bed hoping for a night uninterrupted by mental calls reporting ill news, or nightmares.

  * * * *

  When Indria had turned herself in to the first three magicians, they’d decided not to tell the Guild in case Tagin heard their mental conversation and their intention to sneak up on him. It had surprised her to learn that any mental communication could be overheard by all other magicians. She’d wondered why they bothered to use it at all.

  The second group had no reason to contact other magicians — they had fallen asleep from the drug Tagin had forced the innkeeper to add to their drinks, and never knew they’d just eaten their last meal.

  However, the third lot of magicians to fall foul of Tagin’s grand plan did not die silently.

  To Indria’s relief, Tagin hadn’t told her to approach and drug the four magicians they’d seen at the village. Instead they’d watched the men buy food and a bottle of wine, then followed them at a distance. The four did not have any apprentices with them, she’d noted. As dusk greyed the landscape, the magicians had stopped to eat their meal, though they remained on their horses. Tagin and Indria had tied their own horses to a fence post out of sight, then crept closer, hidden by a stone wall.

  Bringing out the bottle of poison, Tagin had somehow taken a large drop of it out of the bottle with magic. The drop floated up in the air to hover above the magicians. Indria had watched, heart racing and wondering how they could not have noticed it.

  Then one of the magicians had brought out wine to share around. The droplet had shot downward and into the wine bottle so fast that none of them had seen it. The magicians had begun taking it in turns to drink straight from the bottle.

  It had seemed a needless risk to keep peering over the wall at the men, so Tagin and Indria had slipped away to reclaim their mounts. That had been their mistake, Indria realised. The magicians had ridden on for several minutes before the drug began to take effect. As they began to fall from their saddles, Tagin confidently rode up to them, grinning widely. But one magician did not fall. One magician hadn’t drunk from the bottle, or else had drunk too little, and that magician had attacked Tagin. The strike had knocked Tagin from his horse, and the animal had raced off down the road. ‘Get out of range!’ Tagin had shouted to Indria, so she’d raced off to shelter behind a copse of trees.

  It was hard to tell what was happening, watching the battle from a distance. Night was advancing, and she caught flashes of light and booming noises, but only glimpses of her brother and the magician. Her heart pounded, and she felt sick.

  Don’t kill him, she pleaded silently at the magician.

  Suddenly all went black. For a long moment there was only darkness and silence, then a figure appeared, lit by his own magic. It waved at her, beckoning. She felt a rush of relief as she recognised it. Guilt followed as she realised the magician must be dead. Then something else stirred. Something darker.

  Dread.

  Tagin was alive and well, but so were his plans. Until she could talk him out of them, more people would die. Sighing, she urged her horse out of the copse toward the site of the battle. The dust was settling now. Tagin was crouching beside one of the unconscious men. Perhaps she could talk him into letting them live.

  But before she had moved far from the trees a flame suddenly shot up from the ground, twice as high as the trees, and she felt heat on her skin. Her horse started and she clung to its back, heart pounding. What was that? Tagin shouted — though it sounded more like a curse than surprise or pain. Another flash of light burned the night. She felt her horse tense, ready to leap into a run, and quickly hauled on the reins. It danced in a circle, slowly settling at she talked to it soothingly. She looked toward Tagin to see him standing near where the flames had come from. He turned away and started toward her.

  When he reached her, he frowned up at her.

  ‘Are you sure that’s the same poison you bought last time?’

  She nodded, then shrugged. ‘It smells the same.’

  Tagin scowled. ‘Two of them died from
it before I got a chance to take their power. That’s what the light was — the last of their magic released from their bodies when they died. Good thing I was shielding.’

  A shock went through Indria, despite knowing that he would have killed them anyway. She thought of the size of the drop of poison Tagin had put into the wine. Much bigger than the single drop per person she’d used before. Had he used too much?

  ‘Maybe it’s stronger,’ she suggested. ‘Maybe the ones we drugged before this would have died too, if you’d been delayed this long.’ The herbalist was very insistent that I not use too much.

  He nodded. ‘I’ve used too much power in the fight.’ He looked up at her, his expression thoughtful. ‘I’m a strong magician, so as my sister it’s possible you have strong powers, too.’