A Blight of Mages

by Karen Miller

  She could hate him for being so easily cowed. “Remmie, you know my gifts. They’re your gifts too, if only you’d stretch yourself to use them. I am worthy of College acceptance. And if I have to shout until every stained-glass window in Elvado shatters, the mages who gatekeep the College will hear me. There’s greatness in me and I won’t let them ignore it.”

  “There’s something in you. And all I can say for certain is it’s not modesty.” He turned away again, fingers linked around the back of his neck. “Barl, I wish you’d think about this.”

  “I have. I’m going to petition the College to reconsider my application. I’ve got more experience now. Nearly three years worth.”

  Remmie glared at her over his shoulder. “If you had ten years more experience, it still wouldn’t matter. You were foolish to apply the first time, and you’ll be just as foolish to apply again.”

  He wasn’t going to talk her out of it. “So you say.”

  “And I’m right. You’re being hopelessly naïve, Barl. This is all moonbeams and dreamdust. And when you’re turned down again? How long before you let the disappointment goad you into some foolish loss of temper? How long before you’re dismissed from the artisanry and we’re homeless again and traipsing from district to district in search of work you’ll accept?”

  Guilt-struck, resentful, she stared at her brother. “You’re so sure they’ll reject me.”

  Instead of answering, he scuffed his booted toe through the lush grass verging Crackbone Lane. Then he sighed.

  “I’m sorry, Barl. I just don’t want you hurt.”

  “I won’t be.”

  Remmie frowned, his eyes chilling. “In other words, you’ll do what you want, like always. Fine. Write to the College. Ask them to admit you. But when your heart’s broken for good this time, Barl, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Chapter Four

  No,” said the old man, querulous, his voice a disgruntled wheeze. “Morgan, what is this nonsense? Are you fevered? Are you deaf? The energies as they exist, as you have combined them, are not compatible. They must be balanced counterclockwise, else the sigils, once confirmed, will not support the connecting incantation.”

  Morgan looked down so his father wouldn’t see how close he was to saying something unwise. A cutting retort danced on his tongue. The need to lash out, to remind his father he was a man, not a boy to be commanded or treated like an ignorant student, was almost overpowering.

  But he stayed silent. There’d be no profit in indulging his sorely tried temper. Hold tongue and endure: this was his life now and had been, almost without respite, for the past stifling eleven weeks. How much longer it would last he could not tell, nor could his father’s pother advise. Since his heart seizure, and the attack of palsy that followed it, Lord Danfey’s health had been gravely uncertain. His faculties were like a tide now at ebb, now on the rise, and while relieving his own feelings with an acidic retort might briefly satisfy, such self-indulgence would end only in estrangement… or worse.

  “Well?” his father demanded. “Do you understand what I am telling you, or must we return to the schoolroom so I might refresh your memory on the basics of sigil creation?”

  “No, my lord,” he said, and clasped his betraying hands behind his back. “I need no reminding. But if I might be permitted to explain—”

  “What?” His father glared. “School me, would you? When I was creating sigils at half your age?”

  “No, my lord. Of course not. But I fear I have not made clear my—”

  “School and condescend to me! And this is the conduct of a dutiful son, is it?”

  Morgan stared at his experiment. Cupped in their crucibles, the three barely coalesced sigils he struggled to confirm glittered in the intermittent sunlight shafting through his attic workroom’s plain round window. He could feel the latent power in them, feel the warp and weft of competing energies alternate hot then cold against his skin. The sigils would collapse soon, undone by the fragility of their incomplete creation.

  And I will lose near a whole month’s work, see Dorana creep closer to danger, for no other reason than a sick old man’s pique.

  He looked up. “My lord, if you would hear me out?”

  That same intermittent sunlight played across his father’s sunken, sallow cheeks and for a moment bleached the shadows beneath his bloodshot eyes. His drooping left eyelid twitched, an echo of past trouble. Perhaps a harbinger of more trouble to come. But to suggest as much would provoke a storm of abuse.

  “Do I hear you aright?” said his father, derisive. “You’ll stand there and tell me, in the face of all accepted practice, that a clockwise balancing must be pursued?”

  “In this instance, yes,” he replied. “Since I am attempting to reconfigure a basic transmutation incant I must redistribute the energies antithetically, or risk—”

  “Risk blowing the roof off this mansion!” his father shouted. A thread of spittle glistened on his too-pale lips. “And you cannot expect me to remain sanguine about that.”

  “I admit the incant is volatile,” he said, choosing his words with continued care. “But worthwhile, I am convinced.”

  His father grimaced. “Worthwhile for what purpose? Do you say there is a sudden, overwhelming need for a new transmutation incant? No matter of urgency has reached my ears and reach me it would, though I am ridiculously confined to this estate.”

  “My lord…” Morgan swallowed a groan. Why must you turn this into an argument? Would you have me bar you from my work? “There is no immediate crisis, it’s true, but—”

  “But you will not accept constraint.” Pinching the bridge of his beakish nose, a familiar gesture of goaded self-control, his father breathed out hard. “And so we come to it. This new incantation, is it commissioned by the Council?”

  Telling his father a point-blank lie was out of the question. “No.”

  “Sanctioned, at least?”

  “No.”

  Heart seizure and palsy had left his father weakened, but still he managed to stamp about the attic with his fingers fisted. “Morgan, what are you thinking? There are prohibitions.”

  “That do not apply to me,” he pointed out. “As a member of the Council, I—”

  “Its junior member!” his father said, turning. “And newly seated. Do not let being chosen to demonstrate Sorvold’s confounded incant go to your head! If Brice Varen should learn of your experimenting I cannot imagine he will salute your daring. Rather he’ll wonder if the Council’s choice of you to replace Andwin Bellem was rash.”

  “That is your opinion, my lord,” he said, unable to keep the stiff offence from his tone. “I choose to see the matter differently.”

  “Yes, of course you do,” his father muttered. “And so leave me wondering if it’s any great surprise I am plagued by pothers when you persist in such reckless pursuits.”

  With a sigh of released energies, the crucible-cradled sigils on the cluttered workbench collapsed in a flare of blue light.

  “There!” said his father, triumphant. “You see? They did not hold, Morgan, and it was folly to dream they would. As my son, you should know better. As your father I expect better. You are a Danfey. There are standards to maintain.”

  Making sure to hide his dismay, and his resentment at being held accountable for his father’s ill health, Morgan looked away from the emptied crucibles with their faint blue smears of dissipated energy.

  “Forgive me,” he said, his throat tight. “I intended to please, not disappoint.”

  With halting, shuffled steps and a rustle of silk tunic, his father came close and tapped a finger to his cheek. “Perfect your magecraft within the bounds of law and I will be pleased.”

  A fresh prickle of resentment. “The law must bend itself to the weakest amongst us, not taking into account the strengths of greater mages.”

  “Mages such as yourself?”

  “Yes!” Morgan waved his hand across the emptied crucibles. “My lord, the choice is plain
. Either we remain mired in the familiar, dooming ourselves to stagnation, or we accept the challenge of the unfamiliar and push ourselves to greater heights.”

  Heights that will save us when the need arises.

  “Morgan—” His father pinched the bridge of his nose again. “Brahn Sorvold thought like that.”

  “I am not Brahn Sorvold!” he snapped, then took a deep breath to subdue his own temper. “My lord, I know what I’m doing.”

  “As do I!” said his father. “You tempt fate.”

  “No, my lord. I simply encourage it to smile on me. I am a councillor, it’s true, but the Danfey name can rise higher.”

  “And it can fall,” his father retorted. “Or be pushed, by those who do not relish your achievements. By mages who wait in the shadows for the chance to see you eclipsed.”

  He shook his head. “Small mages, my lord. Jealous and spiteful. As a Danfey should I fear them?”

  “As a Danfey you should fear nothing,” said his father, with all the strength left to him. “But prudence is a survival trait, Morgan, not a fault. Dorana’s mages are bound by rules for good reason. Magework kills the careless without compunction! And a father should not be asked to bury his only son.”

  He had to harden his heart against the pain in his father’s voice. But even as he felt that echo of distress, he felt a fresh wash of resentment drown it.

  Perhaps not, my lord. But should an only son be held prisoner by his father’s unfounded fears?

  And they were unfounded. Magework might well be dangerous, but he was not that overpraised sot Brahn Sorvold. Besides, success and timidity could not leap to achievement’s summit hand in hand. His father should know that it was unjust of him, to demand in one breath that he bring honour to the Danfey name, then in the next berate him for being too bold.

  “Morgan…” Lord Danfey’s clawed left hand gestured at the roomy attic. “Why do you lock yourself away in here for days on end, in pursuit of new incants, when those you’ve already perfected still await Council ratification? You wish to impress me? Get your patents and you can be sure, I will be impressed!”

  “I assure you, my lord,” he said, wincing, “I have done all within my power on that score. Now I must wait. And in the meantime—”

  “Yes, Morgan, I know! In the meantime you are determined to pursue these new incantations, these—these experiments of yours—to whatever end awaits you. A father’s broken heart is no counterweight to your ambition.”

  And that was a monstrously unfair thing to say.

  “My lord, you wrong me. Did I care for you as little as you seem to think, would I have remained on this estate these past weeks of your confinement? Would I have abandoned the Council duties so recently placed upon me, risking censure? Risking worse?”

  His father plucked a kerchief from his sleeve and dabbed his loosened lips dry of spittle. “No.”

  “Indeed, no. And you’re peevish to say otherwise.”

  “Peevish?” His father’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a word for a dutiful son to use against his father, is it?”

  Of course not, but of a sudden he was in a mood to be contrary. “It is when a dutiful son is smarting.”

  Instead of answering that, his father picked up the nearest emptied crucible and trailed a fingertip through its blue smear of wasted power. After a long silence, he put it down and frowned at his stained skin.

  “Why do you want to create a new transmutation incant, Morgan?”

  He answered readily, but not entirely honestly. He had to. Presented with the whole truth, Greve Danfey would mock and scold.

  “To see if I can.”

  “To see if you can,” his father murmured, looking up. Not even the after effects of recent illness could dull the sharpness of his regard. “And what manner of difference would it make, did you succeed?”

  It wasn’t only mockery and criticism that concerned him. His father was weakened, wandering in purpose, and might easily betray a confidence. That would likely see him ruined.

  “I don’t know, my lord. I won’t, until I’ve succeeded.”

  And I will succeed, you may be sure of that.

  Harsh glare softening, his father wiped his finger free of blue residue then tucked the stained kerchief back into his sleeve. “Even as a child, Morgan, you were never satisfied. You were born hungry, not for the wetnurse’s milk but for every experience to be wrung from the world.”

  He couldn’t fathom if that was compliment or complaint. Wary, he made sure to remain dutifully deferential.

  “Do you say that is a fault, my lord?”

  “I say what I said before,” his father replied. “A prudent man is not to be despised. You may run to your destination, or you may walk. Running is faster but in walking one has time to see the journey’s pitfalls. To notice those traps laid for the unwary.”

  Morgan hid his growing irritation behind a smile. “True. But will you accuse me of arrogance if I say I can avoid pitfalls and leap traps as I run?”

  “Accuse?” His father laughed, the sound slurred with weariness. “No. To accuse implies the chance of innocence. In this case I must declare it, for you are guilty through and through.”

  “And is that a fault?”

  Another slurred laugh. “Show me a modest mage and I’ll show you a charlatan. Arrogance a fault? Never. Without arrogance no mage would cast his first incantation.”

  “And yet you are displeased with me.”

  “Not for this,” his father said, jerking his chin at the workbench and the stained crucibles. “Though I do question your flouting of the rules. No, your magework could never displease me, Morgan. But it can frighten me. It does frighten me.”

  “My lord—” He stepped closer. “There is nothing to fear. My skills are more than equal to this small task.”

  His father raised an eyebrow. “Or so you believe.”

  “My lord, belief implies uncertainty. I have no doubts.”

  “And perhaps I would be less frightened if you did.”

  With an effort Morgan kept himself relaxed. This is his weakness talking. He has grown an old man before my eyes. “If you are unsettled, my lord, I suspect there is more than magework to blame. It is past time we sat down to luncheon. Ranmer was most particular that you pay close attention to your belly.”

  “My belly is my business,” his father said, scowling. “None of yours, nor of any meddling pother.”

  “Meddling Ranmer saved your life, my lord. We would both be well-served did you not forget that.”

  His father grunted, not liking the reproof but knowing better than to contradict bald fact.

  “Besides,” he added, coaxing, “if your private belly is not growling, mine is. And I would not sit at the table in solitary splendour. Shall we adjourn to the dining room?”

  He braced himself for a tart reply, but instead his father looked around the attic workroom. “You are a fine mage, Morgan. I expect you will achieve feats no other mage in our history has even dreamed of attempting. But you would do well not to dismiss my call for caution as the ramblings of a decrepit.”

  “My lord, I do not,” he said, prepared to tell that one lie. “Your advice is always welcome.”

  His father sniffed. “But rarely heeded.”

  And there was the tartness he’d been expecting. Best sweeten the old man before their relationship soured entirely. “If you’re in the mood for dispensing advice, my lord, I would appreciate your wisdom regarding my work here. After luncheon, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps,” said his father, grudging. Pretending indifference, though the gleam of pleasure in his eye said otherwise. “If you are determined to chart this course.”

  “I am,” he said, pretending apology. “I must, if I would stay true to myself as a man and a mage.”

  “Yes,” his father said, with a heavy sigh. “That would be the crux of it… and on that head I cannot complain.”

  So in better accord they made their way downstairs to the dining room, whe
re servants brought them their delayed midday repast. Scarcely tasting his own meal of cold chicken and dressed greens, from the corner of his eye Morgan watched his father’s half-hearted attempt to empty his bowl. Watched the old man’s shaking hand spill the soup from his spoon onto the tablecloth and down the broad napkin tucked into his padded brocade tunic.

  It was a painful sight but he could not spare himself, no matter how much he might wish to or how deeply he ached for even a single day’s respite. He could not hand his father’s care to another. Lord Danfey’s dignity would not permit it. And in truth, neither would his own. Pother Ranmer he could trust never to speak of his father’s weakened condition, the occasional instability of intellect, but no other man or woman than that.

  It wasn’t only a question of dignity. Greve Danfey had enemies, and his plight could be—would be—used against him, to hurt him and his son. Only a fool handed an adversary a weapon.

  And of all the things I am, a fool is not amongst them.

  With an exclamation of disgust his father let the spoon drop, plucked the napkin free and hurled it to the floor, then slumped in dour, frustrated silence. Knowing that to speak now would do no good, Morgan finished his own meal, drained his goblet of wine, dabbed his lips clean and pushed his emptied plate away. Only then did he look to his morose father.

  The unconsumed pea and ham soup was growing cold, a thin skin congealing across its porridgy green surface. Already today Lord Danfey had refused his breakfast. He could not be permitted to refuse luncheon as well, for beneath his padded tunic he was close to skin and bone. So if he must once again be fed like a babe, so be it. No loving son could sit idly by as his father willfully starved.

  “Perhaps one more mouthful, my lord,” he murmured, picking up the spoon and dipping it into the bowl. “So I can make a good report to Pother Ranmer when next he visits.”

  With a feeble wave of one hand his father sent bowl and spoon flying across the chamber. The heavily aromatic soup splashed tablecloth, wall, floor and Feenish rug indiscriminately, painting Lord Danfey’s displeasure wide for all Dorana to see.