A Blight of Mages

by Karen Miller

  That didn’t stop him from leading a series of workings, though. He claimed that practice made perfect, and with the workings to think about the mages of Elvado would not dwell on their grief. After four days of mass funerals, they needed something to distract them. And though the workings consistently failed, Maybe next time became their stubborn song.

  Barl paid his doings scant attention. Wouldn’t let him tell her the names of who’d lived, and who’d died. She didn’t need to know. Sickeningly aware of the ultimatum they were facing, she drove herself without mercy to find a way to ward Dorana. Snatched sleep when she had to. Dreamed of Morgan then, and wept.

  As instability spread inexorably through Dorana’s frightened districts, as more and more dwellings and buildings became unsafe, as the scourge of mage-mist swallowed more villages, and looked likely to swallow whole towns, mages of every ranking, made equal at last by the loss of their magework, abandoned their familiar lives and sought shelter in Elvado. The city was swiftly overrun. Makeshift encampments sprang up in every open space, filled parks and streets and laneways and spilled into the surrounding countryside.

  At the second full waxing of the moon, Barl told Dreen Brislyn to beg their angry neighbours for more time. Knowing a personal appeal might be their only hope, Lady Brislyn and her Council sued for a face-to-face meeting and returned from Brantone shaken, with a stark, unyielding message.

  The mages of Dorana have one more moon, and no longer.

  “Tell me you can do this, Mage Lindin,” Dreen Brislyn said, meeting with Barl in the College. “Because I’ve seen the intransigence of the nations ranged against us, and how many swords and spears and bows stand ready to chastise Dorana. It will be a slaughter. There is no forgiveness in these princes for what we have done. Their people suffer as ours suffer and they demand a swift, rough justice.”

  So weary she could barely speak, Barl pushed a note-covered sheet of paper across her workroom table. “This is the warding, Lady Brislyn. The College’s surviving mages and I have spent nearly two weeks pulling it apart for flaws. We can’t find any. In theory, we believe it will work.”

  “In theory,” Dreen Brislyn murmured, frowning over the incant.

  “Theory is all we have, until I put it into practice.”

  Dreen Brislyn looked up. “I have never seen an incant so complex. It seems to me impossible.” She sat back, shaking her head. “Can you do this?”

  “I can try.”

  “Mage Lindin…” Dreen Brislyn slid from her chair and paced the confines of the workroom. “When do you begin to construct it?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “You have everything you need? All the catalysts? Enough crucibles strong enough to contain these magics?”

  She’d scoured the College for every last pinch of azafris, susquinel, tilatantin and zife. With Venette Martain’s assistance had emptied every ranked mage’s home of their myriad supplies also. And every College crucible, warded to protect it from violent, dangerous magework, was stacked in the distant workroom she’d chosen for this task.

  “Yes, Lady Brislyn.”

  “Can you—should you—attempt this alone?”

  She was mad to be attempting it at all. “Remmie has agreed to help me.”

  “Your brother.” Dreen Brislyn sighed. “No-one else?”

  “No-one else can be spared. If I should fail, if something goes wrong…”

  “I understand. Well, thank you, Mage Lindin. On behalf of the General Council, I wish you good fortune. I’ll look to Venette to tell me how you get on.”

  As soon as she was alone again, Barl returned to the Danfey estate. Before going upstairs to Morgan, she visited Rumm in the Danfey family crypt. Venette Martain had seen him interred there, his plain, unadorned stone coffin a silent, painful reproach.

  “I’m sorry, Rumm,” she whispered, her hand flat to the coffin’s lid. He deserved his own effigy. When this was over, if she survived, she’d make him one. It was the least she could do. “We never intended any of this. You were a good man… and Morgan loved you.”

  Morgan.

  She couldn’t linger. If she was going to face him, she had to do it now.

  Dusk’s shrouding gloom lifted by glimfire, she retreated to the mansion. Climbed the stairs one by one, heartsick and light-headed. Pushing their—his—privy chamber door open, she saw at once that Venette Martain had already been and gone. An oil lamp burned a little distance from the bed, lifting the sumptuous room out of a growing darkness.

  She hadn’t seen him since that terrible day in the library.

  “My love, how could you do this? You bitch, you slut, you treacherous whore…”

  Her betrayal of him was a brand seared into her soul.

  He looked so peaceful, lying there. Venette had seen him stripped of his passion-wrecked clothing and dressed soberly, properly, in dark blue silk. His arms lay quietly by his side. The magic that bound him was as fierce now as in the moment she’d trapped him in it.

  Leaving the glimfire to hover in the doorway, she crossed to the bed. Sat gently beside him and took his lax hand in hers. It was warm, the fingers pliable. His broad chest moved up and down. His unbound hair, like spun silk, drank the lamplight and glowed soft gold. His beautiful eyes were hidden from her. He couldn’t see her. He didn’t smile.

  After tonight, she might never see him again. All the things she’d come here meaning to say. The apologies. The excuses. The fervent declarations of love.

  She kissed him once, lightly, and left him to sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Next morning, after a painfully restless night, Barl wasn’t sure Remmie would come to her at the College, even though she’d asked him nicely, and even though he’d said he’d be there. Such a chasm had opened between them, anger and hurt and disappointment scouring away all the common ground of childhood and their years of sharing a home. It seemed he could not forgive her for Morgan, even though he’d forgiven her for so much else.

  In her smaller, petty moments she thought his resentments sprang from jealousy. He’d turned his back on love, for her sake, only to see her find a love larger than he could hope to dream of. So of course he resented that. Resented her. Of course he was bitter. At least, she told herself that was the reason when he mostly ignored her during her hasty meetings with him and Venette Martain and sometimes Dreen Brislyn, why he didn’t reply to her notes, and avoided every chance of seeing her in the scant, scattered moments they had to themselves.

  But in her heart she knew better, and always regretted the harsh thoughts afterwards. If Remmie was wounded, she had wounded him, and he had every right to his pain and carefully guarded distance. Besides, it wasn’t only his reluctance to face her that kept them apart. He was as busy as she, working hand in glove with Venette to keep the surviving mages of Elvado from drowning in dismay, or succumbing to hopelessness and surrendering to fear. In leading great workings in the most vulnerable areas of the city. The workings’ successes were few and haphazard, Dorana’s unravelling a stubborn foe, but even a tiny glimmer of progress kept hope alive.

  But although she was doubtful, her almost estranged brother did come, soon after sunrise. For a long time he stood silent in her College workroom, staring at the jars and bottles of catalysts, at the strict rows of crucibles, and her careful notes outlining the theories behind her warding incant’s creation, and the incant itself.

  Slumped behind her small desk she watched him, and felt her heart stutter at his appearance. So thin now, so pale, with a weariness ground bone-deep into his body. His hair was longer, and untidy, and though his faded blue linen clothes were clean they lacked his familiar jaunty flair. He looked older, and sadder, as though he’d given up the notion that the world could be a kind and joyful place.

  I did that to him. His unhappiness is my doing.

  But if she tried to apologise again, she’d only make him angry. He’d lost patience with her sorrow. These days he cared only for deeds, not hollow words…
and it was hard to blame him for that.

  At last he stirred, and ran a hand down his face. “Barl, this is madness,” he said, turning. “Forty-nine sigils? For a single incant? It’s too many. The strain will kill you.”

  She made herself smile at him. “Nonsense, Remmie. I’m far too busy to die.”

  “Don’t joke,” he said, folding his arms. His eyes were shadowed. “I’m frightened for you.”

  Was it wrong, to feel such pleasure hearing that? Probably. But it was the kindest thing he’d said to her in weeks. She had to cherish it. “I know. And I’m sorry. But that’s what the warding incant demands.”

  “Then concoct a different incant!”

  The rawness in his voice had her lacing her fingers together to still their trembling. “I can’t. There’s no time. Anyway, this is the right incant.”

  He shook his head. “There has to be another.”

  “You mean you want there to be,” she said, gently. “But there isn’t. I’ve not been twiddling my thumbs, Remmie. I have exhausted every other imaginable possibility. You know that as well as I do, so let’s not waste time arguing.”

  He glowered at her, hating that she was right, then tapped the single sheet of paper on which the incant was neatly written. “Who else has seen this?”

  “Lady Martain. Lady Brislyn. The College’s remaining mages.”

  “And they all agree this is the only way?”

  “Yes.” With a lot of arm-twisting. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. “Remmie—”

  Turning away, he dragged his hand down his face again. “And what if they’re wrong? What if you’re wrong? You are the only mage we have whose magework is reliable. If we lose you to this madness—”

  “You still have Morgan.”

  She waited for him to shout at her for that, but he only sighed. “That’s a dream, Barl. Forget it.”

  “You always said that me setting foot in this College was a dream, too, and look! Here I am, with my own privy workroom and more magework to occupy me than I know what to do with!”

  He spun round, his pained eyes wide with disbelief. “You can joke about this?”

  “Remmie…” Bracing her hands on the desk, she pushed achingly to her feet. “If there is a joke here, you have to see it’s on me. You have to see I’m the joke. A bad one. Please, let’s not fight any more. I asked you here because the warding incant is ready, but I don’t dare attempt its creation on my own. And there’s no-one else I want beside me as I do.”

  Except Morgan.

  The tightening of his lips told her he knew she’d not spoken the entire truth, but instead of challenging her on it he crossed to the workroom’s small, stained-glass window and stared down into the empty courtyard below. There’d been a garden there once, but mage-mist had ravaged it to rotting slime. Every time she felt like giving up she made herself look at it. Made herself remember the ruination that was Rumm, and the sound of talons clicking on the Council chamber floor. Reminded herself, forcefully, that she didn’t have the luxury of giving up.

  “D’you remember when we were five, and you tried to incant your way off the roof?” Remmie said eventually, his back still turned. “You mistimed the sigil and knocked out two front teeth and Pa was so angry over you disobeying him that once he was certain you’d not really hurt yourself he paddled your behind until you shrieked the leaves off the trees in the front garden.”

  “Yes, Remmie. I remember,” she said, pulling a face. “Thank you so much for reminding me.”

  Unsmiling, he looked over his shoulder at her. “Do yourself a mischief over this incant and I’ll paddle you, Barl. I swear it.”

  Eyes stinging, sick with nerves, she moved to the workbench. Forty-nine sigils. No mage in history had ever attempted to create so many for a single incant. Well, she’d spent her life claiming she was a great mage.

  And now the time has come to prove it.

  Forty-nine sigils. Their completion took her nearly three days and in nearly three days Remmie did not leave her side. She cursed him. She cuffed him. Once she threw a crucible at him. It made no difference. “Do your worst. I’m not leaving,” he said, and kept his word, and stayed. Did her bidding like an apprentice, kept anxious Venette Martain and the College’s mages at bay, brought her food and drink, listened as she cursed the difficulties of her enormous task and encouraged her in those moments when she thought she’d have to admit defeat.

  He wanted her to rest after the forty-ninth sigil was confirmed, but she couldn’t. How could she? The spreading mage-mist had beaten Dorana to its knees, and all along their borders the warriors of Ranoush and Trindek and Brantone and Manemli and Feen waited with their sharp spears and swords. She could feel Dorana’s time running out, running down like a clock whose central incant was failing.

  Besides, she was so weary now that if she stopped, she might never start again.

  The warding incant she’d devised contained one hundred and sixty-eight syllables. Three layers of harmonics. Fourteen bridges. Eight reversals. It took the principles of eleven different warding incants she’d found in Morgan’s library and knitted them together with seven the College mages had shown her, and five from the Hall of Knowledge’s archives. With forty-nine sigils to ignite and then bind the incant, the inherent power contained within her creation was more devastating than that of any incant ever before devised. She was mad even to attempt it. Mad to think she could ward an entire country. Mad and arrogant… which, according to Remmie and Arndel and the rest, were her two defining features.

  So how could she fail?

  Weaving sigil and syllable into an indivisible whole took her another two days and many, many false starts. When at long last she felt the warding incant coalesce, she burst into tears then fainted. But only for a few moments. She woke to find herself on the workroom floor, with Remmie shaking her and shouting.

  “Oh, hush,” she croaked, shakily sitting up. “I’m fine. Go and fetch Lady Martain. She’ll want to see this for herself.”

  “Rest first,” he said, smoothing the tangled hair from her face. “We’ve waited this long, we can wait a while longer.”

  Heart thudding unsteadily against her ribs, she covered his hand with hers. “No, Remmie. We can’t.”

  His eyes darkened. “I suppose not,” he said, and pulled back. Levered himself to standing, the strain of the past days making his movements stiff and ungainly, turning him into an old man. “Well… bathe yourself, at least. Find clean clothes, and brush your hair. The state you’re in, Barl, you hardly inspire confidence.”

  It was a callous sort of kindness, but she was feeling too bruised, and too grateful, to object. When he returned not quite an hour later, their dire predicament slowing everything down, she’d managed a hasty sponge bath and dragged on a peach-coloured silk tunic that wasn’t too badly the worse for wear.

  “Mage Lindin,” said Venette Martain, entering the workroom. “Remmie tells me you’ve succeeded in creating your incant.”

  The loss of her husband had marked the elegant, self-possessed councillor. Her hair was clean enough, but lank. Her slender frame had thinned to scrawny. And her eyes, once so swift to fill with scornful disdain, now filled with tears at unexpected moments. She wore dead Orwin’s ring on a chain around her neck, and could not know how often her fingers strayed to it when her mind was occupied with other things. Between her and Remmie there had grown a comfortable rapport. He called her Venette, and never hesitated to disagree with her if he felt disagreement was warranted.

  “Lady Martain,” Barl said, nodding. I’m not jealous. I’m not. “Yes, the incant’s completed. But whether it’s a success or not remains to be seen.”

  Venette Martain glanced up from the map on the workbench, which after days of deliberation they’d marked with the intended locations of the border incant’s wardstones. “I received word from Dreen Brislyn last night. The General Council is on its way to Elvado, along with as many families as they could convince to leave their ho
mes.”

  “Things are so bad in the Second district?” said Remmie, leaning against the wall, arms folded, his expression brooding.

  Venette Martain sighed. “They are. Of course, they’re not much better here, and we’re already woefully overcrowded. But I could hardly tell the General Council it’s not welcome, could I?”

  “Perhaps it’s for the best,” said Remmie. “Lady Drislyn can take my place in leading the workings.”

  “Why? Where will you be?”

  “With Barl. She can’t ward Dorana on her own, Venette.”

  “Of course she can. She has to. There’s no other mage to ignite the incant.”

  Relegated to the role of lamp post, Barl watched them stare at each other.

  “That’s true,” Remmie said, straightening. “As far as it goes. But Dorana is dangerous. She’ll need another pair of eyes while she’s mageworking.”

  “Even if she does, they don’t have to be yours!”

  “No, but I want them to be. Venette, she’s my sister. I don’t care to trust her life to anyone else.”

  “And I don’t care if you do or don’t,” Venette Martain retorted. “You are needed here, Remmie. The mages of Elvado see you and they feel heartened. I can’t afford to have them lose heart in your absence.”

  Barl smiled to hear the woman’s praise, even as Remmie dismissed it with a scowl. She might be the better mage, but Remmie was the one who’d been gifted with a knack for wrangling people. It warmed her to find he hadn’t lost it, to know that he was important, and needed, held in such great esteem.

  “The same could be said of you, my lady,” Remmie said, in the tone of voice that should have warned Venette Martain that the argument was already lost. “As the Council of Mages’ last mage, your authority is trusted and absolute, your lightest word the law.”