A Blight of Mages

by Karen Miller

  I can bear it. I have to. It won’t be forever. Not even the Council could be that cruel.

  But what if they were? There was nobody to save her except Morgan Danfey. And if she failed to weaken his resolve… if this time next year she was still prisoned in his mansion, still polishing his staircase, still wrapped in the merciless chains of his magic…

  Breathing hard, she bit her lip and wrestled with the fear. If she wept, if she despaired, it meant the Council had won.

  The fragile moment passed. Cautious, she straightened and gave herself a little shake. Then she banished everything but the need to make the next length of banister shine. Oh… except she was forbidden to set foot past the third floor landing, wasn’t she?

  “But Dilys isn’t,” she murmured, threading the wax-soaked polishing rag through and through her honey scented fingers. “And for the moment, I’m her.”

  She looked up. The fourth floor was home to Morgan Danfey’s apartments. What if she slipped up there now, while she was unwatched? If she could gain entrance to his privy domain she’d be able to catch a glimpse of who he was when he was alone and felt safe. That would be useful. The more she knew of him, the easier it would be to find a way past his defences.

  And I have to break him, before the Council breaks me.

  Holding her breath, she listened again for any hint of Lord Danfey, the slightest creak of stair tread heralding Rumm’s approach. Silence. Beyond the third floor landing’s intricate stained-glass window, it was a glorious day. Filtered sunlight dappled her emerald and cobalt blue, patchworking the pale yellow linen skirt Remmie had sent her into a stained-glass echo.

  Remmie.

  Imagining her brother’s dismay, she pulled a face. “I have to go up there, Rem. If I don’t, just because Morgan Danfey said so, just because I’m afraid, then they really have won.”

  If Remmie were here, he’d scold her. Take her elbow and drag her downstairs. But he wasn’t. She was alone, and lonely, because the servants didn’t dare befriend her and Rumm didn’t care. Oh, how she missed her scolding brother. Only now, forbidden to see him, did she realise how much a part of her he’d become since their parents died. Remmie was the light to her shadow, the gentle hand on the string when she was the kite soaring heedless toward the sun.

  I wouldn’t be in this mess if I’d listened to him.

  But she hadn’t, and she was, and now she had to get herself out of it. Before she changed her mind or Rumm appeared, Barl lightly ran up the stairs.

  On the mansion’s fourth floor she felt the councillor’s absence more keenly than ever. As though he’d imprinted himself upon the unseen air, and now the air was starving for him. Testing the doors to his apartments, she found them both unwarded and unlocked. After one last downward look over the banister, she crept in.

  The outer room, his parlour, was ruthlessly neat. Cream walls. Heavy dark red velvet curtains, still drawn. A fireplace, laid with fresh fuel but unlit. Polished anfra floors adorned with one enormous green-and-bronze striped Brantish rug. A lamp table with a plain glimlamp on it, still burning. A dark brown leather couch and high-backed armchair, both comfortably battered. Beside the chair a reading table, piled with old, leatherbound books. Tiptoeing, she crossed to them and read their spines, quickly. Magework treatises, all seven, written by mages whose names she’d never heard of. But if she’d studied at the College she had no doubt she’d know them.

  Throttling resentment, she looked around the parlour. Neat and unremarkable, nothing more. If she hadn’t known this was the councillor’s room she never would have guessed. Perhaps his privy chamber would be more revealing.

  Clutching her polishing rag and tin of beeswax, she nudged its unlatched door ajar. Stood on the chamber’s threshold, warily listening for the sound of approaching footsteps, and peered through the narrow space between door and jamb.

  A sumptuously caparisoned bed, vast and unmade, with a flurry of clothing discarded across its rumpled dark blue counterpane. On the single bedside table an unlit glimlamp, another book and a woman’s portrait. She was approaching middle age. His mother, perhaps? There was a resemblance. More dark red velvet curtains, this time flung aside from the windowpanes to spill warm yellow sunlight into the room. Polished floorboards and rich rugs. Against one wall a long, low dresser scattered with papers, ink pots, used quills, an ebony and ivory comb and its matching brush… and a man’s hair clasp, beautifully enamelled in black and gold.

  Staring at it, Barl felt her fingers twitch. Mages imbued their personal possessions with an imprint of their essence, their power. If she had Morgan Danfey’s hair clasp, perhaps it could give her some insight into the man. Only… if she were caught, the consequences would be dire. They’d call it stealing. They’d label her a thief.

  But I have to risk it. I need every advantage I can find.

  So she darted into the councillor’s privy chamber, whisked the hair clasp into her skirt pocket, and fled.

  Her heart was beating so hard and fast she had to stop part-way down the staircase and sag against the banister until she’d breathed herself calm again. Then she looked and listened down the stairs. Silence, still. A miracle of sorts. Lord Danfey must be sleeping. And perhaps Rumm had gone somewhere on an errand. Prompted by the notion, she looked back up to the fourth floor.

  Somewhere above her, beneath the mansion’s roof, was Morgan Danfey’s attic workroom, where he pursued his mysterious magework. She needed to see it. If she was going to learn the man, what better place to study him?

  Motionless as a doe in a thicket when the hounds sniff the air, she waited. Listened. The silence persisted. Not even a servant’s drabbling broke the hush. This might be her only chance.

  And if I don’t take it, I know I’ll be sorry.

  She tucked the tin of beeswax and the polishing rag in a shadowed corner of the third landing, then hurried back up the stairs. The councillor’s hair clasp bounced heavy in her pocket. Past the fourth floor landing the stair treads quickly narrowed, plunging into darkness without the smallest flicker of glimfire to light the way.

  The landing at the top of the last stair-flight was a miserly disc. Pausing, she listened again then, reassured, continued along the dark corridor. The uncarpeted wooden floor creaked, loud as a purloined shopkeeper’s shriek. She paused again, heart lambasting her ribs… but no, she was safe. Only the corridor was so gloomy she could hardly make out the wall right beside her, never mind the door that must lie at its end.

  Tentative, she walked on, trailing her fingertips at waist height along the old, rustling wallpaper. She felt bumps and blisters, little tears, a few gaps. The plaster beneath the paper was old and dry. Dusty. And then she stopped, abruptly, because in the darkness before her she could feel the attic door, a muffled whisper of power like a faint breeze against her skin. It was warded, which meant she couldn’t get into the workroom beyond.

  Unbidden, her fingers crept into her pocket to close around Morgan Danfey’s enamelled hair clasp. Another muffled whisper, the echo of an echo. Caught between the soundings she closed her eyes and felt his magic… even though she wasn’t meant to feel anything at all.

  And what does that mean? Why can I feel it? Why can I feel him when his binding won’t let me feel anyone or anything else?

  She didn’t know. Wasn’t even sure the why mattered. There might be a way she could use it to her advantage. That was what mattered.

  Cautious, she reached out her hand, brushed her fingertips against timber—and a crackle of glimfire skittered spider-like in warning. With a startled gasp she leapt back, dazzled by the glimpse of scarred, ancient wood and an age-mellowed brass handle. Raging through her, a chaos of impressions, snatches of magework, the intricate threads of the ward. Beneath her skin the binding shivered, a faint promise of pain.

  Spinning round, she bolted.

  Returned to the third floor landing, she scrabbled for the beeswax and rag. Safety and sanity lay in the humdrum task of polishing.

&nbs
p; Rumm found her there scant minutes later.

  “Mage Lindin,” he said, weighed down by a laden tea tray and halting a few stair-treads below her. “You are slow in your task. Finish it, quickly. Have you forgotten the library must also be tended?”

  “No, Master Rumm,” Barl murmured, glancing up, terrified he’d hear how breathless she was, see the guilty flush in her cheeks, and demand that she explain herself forthwith.

  But his gaze was pinned sideways to Lord Danfey’s closed doors. Behind his frown, the master servant was worried.

  “Be sure you’re gone when I come out again,” he said, not looking at her. “Or I’ll have to make a dilatory report of you to Councillor Danfey upon his return.”

  She hastily burnished the already-waxed newel post. “Yes, Master Rumm. I’m sorry, Master Rumm.”

  Not listening, either, he continued to the closed apartment doors and adroitly let himself in without dropping his lordship’s tea and cakes.

  As the door clicked shut, Barl thumped her damp forehead to the carved timber.

  Oh, Remmie. That was a near one.

  Mouth dry, palms damp, she wrapped the waxy rag round the tin then made her way on shaking legs down the staircase. In her blood, on her skin, she could still feel the snap and sizzle of Morgan Danfey’s magic. What a mercy he’d not barred entry to his workroom with a killing ward. Some mages did. Sometimes there were… accidents. Perhaps she should think twice before further meddling, just in case.

  Thinking that, she almost missed her footing, nearly tumbled haggy-scaggy down the last few stairs.

  What am I, a coward? If I falter now, if I let danger deter me, then in a few days or a week I’ll wake to find myself no better than Dilys the housemaid, magickless and meek.

  Sickened by her moment of weakness, she fetched a duster from the cleaning cupboard, to do sister duty with the beeswax, then hurried to the mansion’s ground floor library. This would be first time she was permitted inside.

  “Oh,” she breathed, in the doorway, staring. “Oh, Remmie.”

  Reverent as any Brantish priest on a pilgrimage, Barl eased the door closed behind her and stepped further into the room. A well-worn leather reading chair, twin to the chair in Morgan Danfey’s privy parlour. Two large reading tables. Two glimlamps, unlit. There was only one window, framed in heavy velvet drapes of dark blue. They were drawn back to let the day spill nowhere but over the polished parquetry.

  And books.

  Shelf after shelf of them, filling all the wall space between the gleaming anfra floor and the lofty, corniced ceiling. Leatherbound and loose-leaf, some brass-spined, some plain, stitched and riveted, slender and fat, ancient and youthful. Whispers and chuckles and shouts of precious, wonderful knowledge. Barl felt herself smile for the first time since arriving in Elvado. A proper smile, a genuine smile, joy rising within her like sugar sap in the spring. In all her life she’d never seen so many books. She felt like a child again, when all the world was new.

  “Oh, Remmie,” she sighed. “I wish you were here. You’d love this library.”

  She was meant to be dusting and polishing, and she would, but first…

  Wandering along the shelves, she kissed the books with her fingertips and feasted her avid gaze on their titles. Ruminations upon the Philosophy of Magework. Herbal Decoctions. Bilramin’s Treatise on Wardings. A Pother’s Guide to Elementary Healing. Practical Translocations. The Student’s Handbook. Purging Antithetical Energies. Tostig’s History of the Sigil.

  The desire to tug one of them free of its brethren and immerse herself in the words had her shivering as hard as Morgan Danfey’s attic ward. Even if she couldn’t put the words into practice, just to pretend, for a moment, that she was still a proper mage… She’d denied herself that pleasure in his privy chamber, but she had the time now. She could afford to briefly indulge.

  Except what if simply reading about incants triggered her binding?

  Scalding resentment stole her sight. On a deep, shuddering breath she looked around at the books.

  “One day I will read you,” she murmured. “One day all of your secrets will belong to me.”

  And with the promise made, she started to dust.

  After dusting and beeswaxing the library and snatching her servant’s lunch—bread, cheese and pickles, how exciting—there were more chores in the kitchen. Carrots and potatoes to peel, pots to scrub. The roasting pit needed emptying of stinking, fatty ash and gobbets of charred meat and splintered bone. She nearly lost her bread, cheese and pickles over that. Once Verrick had done with gutting wild rabbit fresh-caught in the woodland she took the discarded heads and limbs and viscera out to the mansion’s kennels so Yan, the kennel man, could boil them up for the councillor’s hounds. He took the stripped, bloody pelts too, to turn into winter gloves. Then she scrubbed the kitchen bench from red back to white, pretending not to see how Verrick was delighted to be spared the bloody task.

  Morgan Danfey’s library seemed an entire world away.

  Last task of all, she inspected the poultry coop again. Hens, it seemed, had a habit of dropping eggs wherever and whenever they felt like… and of dropping dead without the courtesy of a warning first thing in the day.

  She didn’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed that the stink of all those chickens didn’t seem so bad any more.

  Chores completed, her servant’s supper of mutton, potato and carrot eaten in solitary silence, she retreated to her cupboard of a room to lose herself in the one book Remmie had managed to squeeze in amongst her clothes. Not a magework book, of course. Just a silly story about a brave Feenish warrior queen fighting to regain her lost throne. Doubtless it was all a nonsense, nothing to do with Feenish history. Since Dorana’s mages rarely travelled to other lands, the writer of this tale had most likely relied on wild imagination leavened with generous helpings of trader gossip. It didn’t matter. It was only a story, and it helped to pass the time.

  But as she read, her fingers strayed to Morgan Danfey’s enamelled hair clasp, slipped for safety under her pillow. Letting the book fall open on her chest, she closed her eyes and listened for the councillor’s echoes. Waited, her mouth dry, for the waking of his binding. To her great relief the cruel incant stayed asleep… even as she felt her bound mage-sense warm to the memory of his magic, trapped within his black and gold trinket.

  Subtle, it was, and intricate… yet at the same time bold. The councillor painted his power in wide brush strokes, and with delicate finesse. Again she was assailed by that odd sense of the familiar, with the conviction she wasn’t encountering anything new, only meeting an old friend. She’d never felt like this before. There was no explaining the mystery. All she knew for certain was it left her feeling… less alone.

  She fell asleep almost smiling, with the clasp held loosely in her fingers and the oil lamp still burning…

  … and woke out of wild magework dreaming into darkness, consumed by incandescent flame.

  The pain was just as bad the second time.

  Knowing what it was, Barl managed not to panic. Instead she buried her face in her pillow, sank her teeth into its meagre depths and screamed out her torment as her fingers clutched the sides of her mattress to breaking point.

  She didn’t call for someone to help her. Lord Danfey was the only mage in the mansion, and he’d never help her. Most likely he’d laugh. Besides, she needed to know how long the binding would punish her and what state she’d be in when the punishment ended. Remaining ignorant was pointless. Only knowledge would set her free.

  But the price of gaining that knowledge…

  Though it felt unending, in truth the pain passed quite swiftly. More swiftly than before, at least, since she’d not set off the Danfey estate’s border wards. With one final, vicious stab the binding released her. Whimpering, Barl unclenched her fingers, spat out her horrible mouthful of pillow and, muscle by aching muscle, rolled onto her back. Her ragged breathing filled the small cupboard room. Tears slicked her icy face
and her raw throat burned with the memory of screams. She couldn’t even comfort herself with a little light. It seemed the oil in the lamp had burned itself up while she slept.

  She’d not dreamed of clock-making this time. Instead she’d found herself in the cottage garden with Remmie, down by the duck pond. Together they’d created fantastical, brilliant glimfire constellations for his class. Had played with the magic, the way they’d played when they were children. Laughing. Teasing. No fear. No suffering. Only the pure joy of creation, the splendour of power pouring through them like wine.

  For one magical moment, she’d thought the dream was real. Then the binding had woken… and plunged her into pain.

  Staring at the darkness, she felt her skin crawl. The thought of falling back to sleep was a gibbering fear. But how was she supposed to stay awake for as long as she was kept a prisoner in this place?

  “I can’t do it, Remmie,” she whispered, too tired now to fight the rising despair. “I can’t endure this torment over and over without end. Because it won’t end, I know it. How am I meant to stop dreaming? Does the Council expect me to posset myself into a drooling, mindless stupor?”

  She didn’t know the councillors well enough to be sure, but she thought they might. And she thought Morgan Danfey might stay silent to protect himself from their wrath.

  Or perhaps the binding would finish her. If she was kept trammelled long enough, perhaps Morgan Danfey’s incant would change her for good. Kill her power, steal her hard-won knowledge, truly make of her another Dilys. And if that were so, there’d be no more fabulous clocks or constellations, no chance to explore the length and breadth of her talent, to become the greatest artisan mage Dorana had ever seen.

  Choking, she pressed cold hands to her face as shudder after shudder convulsed through her, the binding’s parting slap at a naughty, disobedient child.

  I can’t let that happen. I’m no-one, I’m nothing, if I’m not a mage.

  At last the shudders faded. As she dragged her sheet and blanket back up to her shoulders, she heard something clatter to the floor. Morgan Danfey’s hair clasp. When her fingers closed around the smooth, cool enamel she gasped, feeling his power call once again to hers.