A Blight of Mages

by Karen Miller

  Troubled, Merrin rubbed his chin. “Seems these strangers found a way. Seems…” He shook his head. “They call ’emselves mages.”

  Blank stares around the hall. More lively discussion.

  “What’s a mage?” said Tam, whose baby was going to die. “And who’s telling us all this, Merrin? D’you say these mages speak our tongue? How likely is that?”

  “I’m told this by Elder Chaffie of Gribley village, in the Black Woods. As to how she knows their story, I couldn’t say. But she ain’t a liar.”

  And neither was Merrin. Since they all knew that, Tam said nothing more.

  “Chaffie’s sent a call to every hamlet and village,” Merrin added. “There’s decisions to be made, she says. So one of us’ll have to go.”

  “To the Black Woods?” said Mag, shocked. “Are you sunstruck?”

  No lively discussion this time, just an uproar. The furthest anyone in the hamlet ever travelled was four days to reach the winter fair at Bram. It had taken the best part of a year before folk stopped marvelling that Jervale was come from Tabstock, and that two weeks away.

  Beside him, Bene sighed. “Go on, then,” she murmured. “I know you have to.”

  He smiled, loving her, then wriggled out of his seat. When he couldn’t make himself heard, he climbed onto it and waved his arms till Merrin noticed and banged the meeting gong.

  When the uproar was died down to mutters and murmurs, Jervale climbed down off his seat. “I’ll go to Gribley, Merrin, and speak for the hamlet.”

  Merrin nodded, pleased. “And a fine speaker you’ll make, Jervale. You’ll take a chiming stone so we can talk on things, and the best cart, and the two strongest donkeys. As much food as we can spare you, which means you’ll need to eat but once a day.”

  He wasn’t eating much more than that now. He’d manage, and eke extra on the road. “Yes, Merrin.”

  “Chaffie’s all a-bustle. You’ll want to leave at first light. Bene, you’ll bide with this?”

  Bene held his hand, hard. “I’ll bide with it, Merrin. For I know Jervale will do the right thing.”

  Everyone clustered around him and Bene and Tilly, after. Slapping his shoulder. Wishing him luck. The shock of the news was yet to fade. It was a wonder the hall’s roof didn’t fall in, there was so much loud chatter. As they were leaving, at last, Merrin pulled him aside.

  “You be careful, Jervale,” he said, his expression serious. “Ask lots of questions. It’s a boggling thing, what’s happened, and a sad story these mages have told, right enough, but like our Mag noticed, it’s a story with holes in it.” He grimaced. “And I ain’t fond of holes.”

  Feeling a warm rush of affection, Jervale patted the old man’s arm. “Never fear, Merrin. I’ve my Tilly to think on. I’ll not bare our throats to any wolves.”

  Not if he could help it, anyway. Not unless his dreams told him to. And even then, not without a fight.

  Leaving Bene and Tilly was a misery. The whole hamlet gathered to see him go, and most everyone pressed a little something into his hands. A shrivelled apple. A boiled egg. A few elderly, withered carrots. Food they could hardly spare, that he couldn’t refuse for fear of hurting them. Tam and Rinna gave him a flask of precious barley wine. Kissing his wife for the last time, Jervale murmured into her ear.

  “Stay close to them, Bene. They’ll need you soon.”

  She pulled back, her eyes full of grief and understanding. Three babes, they’d lost. This was Tam and Rinna’s first.

  “Pa! Pa!” Tilly held out her arms, bouncing on Bene’s hip. “Kiss me, Pa! Kiss me!”

  He kissed his daughter, holding her tenderly and tight. She patted his cheek with her grubby little hand.

  “Go see the people, Pa. They’ve got yellow hair, like straw.”

  His heart thudded hard, sickening, but only Bene had heard. “Yes, Tilly, that’s right,” he whispered. “But never say that again. Never talk about the people. They’re our special secret.”

  “Pa,” she said, and hugged him. “Come home soon, Pa.”

  He drove out of the hamlet with his head high and his back straight, and didn’t weep ’til he was well out of sight.

  Almost halfway to the Black Woods he joined up with two others making the same long trip. It was good to have company after nearly three weeks on the road with only the donkeys to talk to, his dreams to steal sleep and Lur’s suffering lands to fret him. So far now from the hamlet, he’d hoped to see a sign that there’d been a little rain somewhere. That the long drought was easing. That the threat of famine was in retreat.

  But no.

  “I don’t recall things ever being so grim,” said Bannet of Salting village, astride his dusty, ribby horse. “These mages come to us for help? We can’t help ourselves. We can’t hardly feed our own children. What makes ’em think we can feed theirs?”

  Jervale slapped his reins against the donkeys’ peaky rumps. “Salting village thinks to turn ’em away?”

  Bannet shrugged. “Salting village wants to know more about ’em.”

  Riding a spit ahead of them on her own underfed nag was Del, from the southern fishing village of Westwailing. She was a comely lass, with a bright flirting in her eye. Something about her made Jervale stare. He couldn’t hammer a nail into it. He only knew that his bones jumped every time she spoke.

  “Lur’s fishing folk don’t much care for the notion of feedin’ strangers,” she said, scornful, shifting round in her saddle. “Every elder I’m speakin’ for told me to tell these mages the same thing. Go back where you came from. Lur’s got fratches of its own.” She shrugged. “So that’s what I’ll tell ’em. Too sinkin’ bad if they don’t like it.”

  “Jervale, your face says you reckon they won’t,” said Bannet, uneasy. “What are we riding into, d’you say?”

  He found them companionable, but he wasn’t about to trust them with his dreams. “I try not to think on it, Bannet. We’ll learn what’s what when we get to Gribley.”

  Three of them travelling together found it easier to forage food. Their earth-singing was stronger in a chorus, their interweaving voices helping to drown out the earth’s piteous groans. They charmed rabbits and wild pigeons and even fish from a puddling lake. But even so, they could feel Lur’s changes, a slow dying beneath its parched, brown skin. It seemed likely these strange mages would end up sorry they’d come.

  I know we will, Jervale thought morosely, woken yet again out of violent dreams.

  And that was the worst of it. Huddled on the cold ground under his blanket, listening to Bannet snore and Del stir restless on his other side, and the donkeys and the horses rattling their hobbles, he tucked his fingers into his armpits and tried to forget what he’d seen.

  But how can I forget all that blood? How am I meant not to remember black hail and crimson lightning?

  He didn’t know. He only knew he had to stop it from happening. Or else why did he dream?

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

  Anguished, Barl twisted and moaned on her rough, lonely cot.

  “This binding won’t hold me forever, Barl. You know I’ll break free of it. You know I will find you.”

  Sobbing, breathless, she hid her face in her hands. “If I can’t see you, Morgan, then you can’t see me.”

  It was a child’s way of thinking. She heard him laugh, vicious with pain. “You cannot hide from me. I live in your soul.”

  “No,” she said, weeping. “That’s not true.”

  “You left me, Barl. You left me.” He sounded heartbroken. Bereft. “How could you do that when I love you more than life?”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “We all have a choice, my love. And every choice has a consequence. You’re going to learn that, soon enough.”

  “No!” she shouted, tumbling out of her makeshift bed. And then she gasped as glimfire ignited, leavening the dark.

  “Morgan again?” said Remmie tiredly, ducking in
side her tent. The glimfire came in with him, cheerful as a firefly. “Barl, you should take a sleeping posset.”

  She shook her head. “I tried. It doesn’t help. He still finds me.” A shudder. “He always finds me.”

  The first time, in Benbarsk, she’d thought it was a dream. But then she’d heard him while she was waking… and realised no, it was real. Somehow he’d found a way to cross the vast distance between them. Her warded binding was weakening. One day, he’d break free.

  And when that day comes…

  He was mad now. He was a madman. Whenever his mind touched hers she could feel its warped twisting. Those terrible catalysts he’d used to create the beasting incant. The night he’d spent using it, killing all those mages and his soul along with them.

  Our magic destroyed him. Justice save me, he’s past saving.

  If she’d been alone, she’d have howled her grief aloud.

  Remmie eased her back onto the cot, then sat cross-legged beside her on the felt matting floor. “It’ll be light soon. Or as light as it gets in these sun-forsaken woods. You’re tired, Barl. Rest.”

  Yes, she was tired. But how could she rest when she was so heartsick it was hard to breathe?

  Remmie and I, we are two of only one thousand, seven hundred and sixty-four living Doranen, that we know of for certain. Before we abandoned Dorana there were at least a hundred times as many.

  Memory taunted her with the faces she’d never see again. Ibbitha. Master Arndel and his artisans. Lady Grie with her careless favours. Barton Haye and Remmie’s pupils. All left behind or dead or swallowed by the hostile lands beyond Dorana.

  But her sorrow was nothing compared to Remmie’s. Poor Remmie. Having found his Irielle, he’d lost her again. The girl from Granley had perished in the slaughter near Vharne. He never spoke of her. Whatever grief he felt remained locked in his heart. But despite that, somehow he’d forgiven her, for everything. Irielle. Morgan. All their dead and maimed. The nightmares. The hauntings. The loss of home and hope.

  Overwhelmed, she let the tears fall.

  “Don’t, Barl,” Remmie said gently. He was her other self, and always knew. “What’s done is done. And you know, I’ve been thinking. We’ve been gone a long time now. Dorana could be healing. It might not be ruined after all. And a lot of people stayed behind.”

  The horror of the dream—or whatever it was—crashed over her. “To face what, when Morgan is free? Remmie, when he breaks my binding he’ll—”

  “You don’t know he’ll break it,” Remmie said quickly. “Barl, don’t—”

  “But I do know,” she said, shivering again. “Why else did I push Venette until she agreed we should keep running, risk those terrible mountains, if I wasn’t sure he was a danger?”

  Remmie dropped his gaze. And because she was his other self, and always knew, she knew what it was he’d not allow himself to say.

  Why did it take you so long to see the truth of him? Why did so many of us have to die before you’d believe?

  The answers were a whip, flogging her. She couldn’t bear to give them a voice. Instead she touched his knee.

  “You should be in bed, Remmie. You’re as tired as I am.”

  “I was helping Pother Ranmer. Barl…” He looked up. “Someone else has died.”

  She should weep for the loss. But after so many deaths her soul felt as dry as this dry land they’d stumbled into.

  “Who was it?” she said at last. “Don’t say another child.”

  Because too many children had perished already. Dorana’s sad future, buried in tiny little graves.

  “It was Councillor Horbeck.”

  Oh. Well, yes. Once blood-rot set in, there was little anyone could do, even a skilled pother like Ranmer. Ever since the councillor fell off that treacherous mountain ledge, she’d known it was simply a matter of time. And with Horbeck dead, so too died the General Council. Dreen Brislyn had perished in Benbarsk. Mauled by a bear. Perhaps when they were settled in their new home they’d create a new council. That was what civilised people did, after all.

  “But I’m not going to fret on it,” Remmie added. “We still have Venette to lead us. The Council of Mages lives on in her. And we have you, Barl.”

  “No, we have you. How many times must I say it, Remmie? Don’t look for me to play councillor. I’m not about to tell other mages what to do. Not when—”

  Not when I’m responsible for their plight.

  “All right, all right,” he said, hands lifting. “I’m too tired to argue.”

  Fine. Then they could talk about something that had been puzzling her.

  “Remmie. This place. Lur. There’s another power here, in the bones of the land. Separate from the power we feel everywhere else, as mages. And it’s not like anything I’ve ever felt before. When I touch it I feel… different.” But that sounded like nonsense. She scrubbed her face with her hands. “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s all in my mind.”

  “No, I feel it too,” said Remmie, sighing. “And so does Venette, I think. Maybe some of the others, though many of us are still so ill and injured and weak, it might be weeks before we can be sure.” He bit his lip. “What d’you think it means?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. We ran from Dorana because of my mistakes, Remmie. And we’re in Lur because Venette—because everyone—trusted me. I won’t have brought us here to die.”

  “You can’t think this power is dangerous. Not to us.”

  “Why? Because we’re the vaunted mages of Dorana?” She snorted. “Now who’s being arrogant? Surely I’ve proven we’re as vulnerable to magic as any magickless race.”

  His lips pinched at that. “Barl, if we’re in danger here it’s the same danger the Olken face.”

  And that much was true. Nearly all the talk of the Black Woods villagers was about Lur’s drought, its worsening famine, the growing fear that rain might not fall again before it was too late. True, there were underground springs but they were starting to run dry. Even the abundant Black Woods were showing the strain… especially now, with so many Doranen mouths to feed.

  But if she thought about that, about a natural calamity she had no power to undo, she’d curl into a ball and weep herself into oblivion. She considered another puzzle instead.

  “I wonder how it is these Olken don’t realise they’re mages?”

  “But they aren’t,” Remmie said, surprised. “They have no magework. Not even glimfire.”

  “They have an affinity with the land. You must have felt that, too. Doesn’t that make them mages?”

  Stifling a yawn, he shook his head. “No more than a fly having wings makes it a falcon.”

  And perhaps he was right. But she couldn’t shake the odd feeling that there was something important in this. Something she shouldn’t ignore.

  “Go to bed, Remmie. You need sleep.”

  He stood, laboriously. Stared down at her, his brows pinched. “So do you.”

  He was so thin. So unlike his Doranen self. The Olken had scrounged clothes for him, tatty roughspun and tanned hides. The trousers were too short. These Olken weren’t a tall people. His pale, bare ankles looked so vulnerable. Easy to snap. His face looked vulnerable, too. Months ago he’d hacked his hair short because, in the wilderness, long hair got in the way. A fading pink scar ran in a puckered line from the corner of his left eye down his cheek, where a Feenish warrior had caught him with the tip of his sword. And coming over the mountains he’d missed his footing and nearly plunged to his death. The fall hurt his hip, and now he walked with a limp. And his eyes… they were so sad. Crowded with the things he’d seen, and memories of the people he would never see again.

  “Sleep through the day, Rem,” she said, her throat tight. “You might as well. We’ve nowhere to be.”

  “I will if you will,” he retorted, and left her.

  Since he’d taken his glimfire with her, she conjured her own. Then she rummaged in her satchel for the battered diary she’d
kept during their flight from Dorana.

  It was a rambling, disjointed thing. Odds and ends of observations as they fought their way south. A scribbling of incants and sigils that she didn’t want to forget and hadn’t been able to carry with her in books or scrolls. Old, obscure warbeast incants she’d found in papers taken from the Hall by one of its archivists. Caught alone, once, she’d used them in Manemli. Dreadful things. Dreadful. With the archivist spitted on a Trindeki spear, she’d copied the incants to the diary then burned that page without compunction. She trusted herself with destructive magework. Nobody else. On other pages she’d scribbled ideas for new incants. Not because she thought she’d have the chance to create them, but because it was one way to stop herself from going mad.

  Most helpful of all, the ancient incant used between races so that strangers might speak. That one she had from a College scholar. She was dead now too. Snake bite in the mountains. The Black Woods’ villagers already had the benefit of the incant, and in time every Olken in Lur would receive it. There could be no misunderstandings between the Doranen and their hosts.

  Using borrowed ink and quill, she made a note of her thoughts about the power she felt in this land. About the Olken and what she could feel in them. Then, suddenly restless, she tossed the diary aside. Slid off the cot, tugged back the felt matting between herself and the ground, and stretched out with her palm pressed lightly to the dry dirt. Straight away she felt that humming of unfamiliar power. Sighed as it whispered through her flesh and bones. It was warm. It was gentle. Not like brash Doranen magic. But still, there was a depth to it. A strength. A promise.

  But a promise of what?

  What if I could find a way to meld Doranen and Olken magics? Would that give me enough power to keep Morgan at bay?

  She didn’t know. But it was an idea she had to explore, because Morgan was coming. She knew it with a suffocating certainty. A smothering dread. And she knew that without help, she had no hope of defeating him.

  When at last she stirred out of thought, her mind whirling with an idea so fantastic she wondered if she’d gone mad, tree-filtered daylight crept through the tent’s drawn flap and she could hear the rise and fall of adult voices in their makeshift camp. The higher, welcome voices of the children who’d survived. Stiff and hungry, she picked herself up and went in search of an unused privy hole.