Sorceress

by K. L. Noone

  William would be a good king. She knew he would: he’d be better than anyone suspected, she thought, with that unexpected kindness beneath cynicism and scandal, with the resolve and commitment that’d lead him to search for a sorceress in a storm and ask for aid.

  But Henry wasn’t a bad king, either; the realm prospered. And any civil war or rebellion or even quiet replacement of one monarch with another would cause upheaval.

  She knew Will had said no. She hadn’t had to ask; he’d told her as much, tone wry and frustrated and spiky as castle defenses. He wanted to be king, and if Henry ever chose to step aside he’d take the throne gladly, but he’d never betray his brother. The assassins he’d supposedly hired at various points had been paid not to complete the task, too; he’d thrown that in for her almost as an aside.

  She wondered what those ministers had thought of that answer. Some reevaluation would be happening, most likely: consideration of the Bastard’s actual priorities, beneath everyone’s assumptions about power and pleasure. The world, at least the piece of it that dwelt in the palace and murmured in council chambers and furtive hallways, would have changed when they returned.

  Of course, those murmurs would matter less if they succeeded. If she succeeded.

  She had a plan, or the outline of one. The shape of one. A sketch.

  Will had very plainly nearly asked about the choice to bring Merry along, but hadn’t, in the end; he evidently assumed that Lily knew what she was doing. This vote of confidence was both comforting and consequently unnerving. Lily had tried for a reassuring smile and hoped he was right.

  They’d brought no soldiers, no men-at-arms; none of those would’ve done any good. No armor, and no weapons. Only heavy cloaks against the rain.

  They crossed the moat, beyond the palace walls; Lily caught the flicker of dragonskin among leaves and bark and mist, amid shaggy trees. She said to William, “Stay here,” and added, seeing the protest in his eyes, “I need you to be able to come and get us if something goes wrong. Not caught in Lorre’s spell. Stay here. Please.”

  He did. But she felt his eyes on her back.

  The rain had lightened, but it still dampened her hair, her clothes, and clung like teardrops to her skin. Her footsteps made damp sounds over the grass, bending stems, crumpling soggy blades. Every lip-lick tasted like the ebbing storm. Like power.

  Like magic.

  She held her baby, a familiar beloved weight on one hip, and walked out into the field beyond the moat, where in summer the tournament games would mock life and death with the clash of arms, and stopped.

  The dragon came out to meet her.

  It shone like liquid light, like oil on water, the patterns of its iridescent scales changing and flowing. It moved like the slide of silk on skin, and the movement became hypnotic, bewitching, enthralling as sorcery.

  It stood a head above her, but the length of it extended into the shadows, so that she could not guess at its true size. The wings were folded, great sweeps of darkly glittering scale and bone.

  It still had Lorre’s eyes, the color of the midsummer sky. They dared her to come closer, to lose herself in the dragon’s gaze.

  Lily, facing that gaze, thought, in a moment of absolute clarity: please let this work.

  The dragon’s eyes swallowed her image and reflected it back.

  In those eyes she became a tiny scared stick figure of a woman, holding a smaller doll-like bundle in her arms; she became plain and thin and lined with all the care she hid behind her sorceress’ glamor.

  She had nowhere to run. She could not hide. She hadn’t tried; for this to work, she couldn’t.

  Yourself, she thought. What it shows you. Everything you imagine, everything you’ve ever imagined. The good, and the bad, and the possible, and the mundane.

  All her weaknesses paraded past, painted starkly in blue. All the fears and inadequacies, all the lonely nights, all the calluses on hands. All the certainty she’d carried for so long about her own power: that she would not be good enough. Too weak, barely eking out a living, and terrified every day that she’d fail. Terrified every night that the income from charms and cantrips wouldn’t be enough, that they’d go hungry again, the dull gnawing pains she remembered from childhood.

  Even before that, she’d been afraid. Even when Lorre had stopped in her village, and touched her shoulder and smiled, she’d been afraid: not of him, but of disappointing him. Of never being able to live up to his legend, as magician, as great power, as teacher and later lover.

  She saw all of it. She had to. She had to know it.

  But she had always known it. And that knowledge was nothing new; it was a part of who she was, and who she’d been.

  And Merry, in her arms, gave a funny little cry, almost a hiccup, a baby-sound.

  And Lily found herself laughing, amazed and amused, heart-wounded and healing.

  That girl had been her: her self, her past. In some ways, that remained true, as it forever would be; but today she held her daughter, she’d built a life with her daughter, and she’d held the hand of the king’s brother, and she’d learned her sorcery from Lorre himself: not only learned it, but earned it.

  She loved Merry. She loved the art of healing: of giving hope to ragged farmers and ill children, or to perishing ground that might be restored, or to a king. She loved the glow and purr of her own power, deep down and firmly rooted as tree-trunks, brown and thick and entwined with the world.

  She thought, briefly, of Will’s eyes, that smoky changeable amber: rich and warm, arrogant and vulnerable, trusting her.

  She said to the dragon, “I know who you are.”

  The dragon could not speak in return, but it—he—did not retreat, and did not lash out, either.

  Lily said, “You taught me magic, once. You taught me how to listen to the birds, how to tell if berries were poisonous at a touch. How to heal, when I could. How to fight, if I had to.” Was something happening to the scales? The patterns made it impossible to tell.

  This time she said, “You taught me how to love. I remember that. And you taught me how to hate, too, when you left me. But it was a human thing to do.”

  She gave him words slowly, trying to infuse each phrase with her own small magic, just enough to underscore their importance, to make him listen. She offered them up threaded with enchantment, powered by all her hope and love and anger and fear. She held nothing back, because to do so would be to deny him the way home.

  “Merry,” she said, stroking her—their—daughter’s hair, gently keeping Merry from looking directly at the dragon. “Merlyn, our daughter, do you remember her? You named her. You were proud of her, of us. At first. Until we couldn’t be the magicians you wanted. You always did want magic before anything else.”

  No censure; she couldn’t afford that, not now. She was building an image, a man, the man she remembered. There was no room for old resentment, not if she wanted to save him. “She has your eyes, you know. I remember being so pleased with that, the way she looks like you.”

  The dragon’s scales danced and clashed like thunderclouds, and she thought that she could look away now if she wanted to. She did not.

  “We met in the summer, on a warm day, when you came to my village looking for the place where moonflowers grow. You had already been banished from Court for fighting with the old king, and we were all a little afraid of you. But you told me I could be beautiful. You told me I had a gift.” She smiled. “You like strawberries. And you hate being outside in the snow. And you’ll argue with anyone when you believe you’re right.”

  She took a breath, let it out. “Your name is Lorre.”

  And the scales shifted, glittering, moving in a dazzling storm, so blinding that Lily had to glance away, her eyes stinging.

  When she looked back the dragon was gone, leaving only the man.

  Lorre opened both eyes carefully, and sat up. He looked as perfect as Lily remembered, even now, all bare sun-kissed skin and eyes like crushed sapphires; despite t
heir current reddened settings, they shimmered like temptation. She’d always thought he resembled some fairy-tale prince come to life, too impossible to be real.

  He breathed, gazing at her, “Lily. When did you get so powerful?”

  She did not have an answer, or perhaps she did; the answer might have been just now, this moment, when I had to, or I always was and neither of us believed it, or my power isn’t yours, you reshape the world, and I care for it; but the quiet of the moment and the field and the ebbing thrum of magic did not require her to reply.

  Lorre’s eyes held hers as he got to his feet, but he did not ask for her help, and she did not offer. He stood, as always, a little taller than her own height, and even naked gave the impression that he was perfectly in command of himself and his surroundings. He gazed at his hands, turned them over: smooth skin, short nails, not scales or talons. Human.

  He started to speak, stopped, looked past her: Will hovered like a silent furious shadow behind her shoulder. Lorre, being himself, visibly considered responses, and rather surprisingly went with, “I am sorry.”

  Will said nothing.

  Lily said nothing, because that was Will’s answer; but she hadn’t expected the apology.

  Lorre tipped his head to one side, golden hair falling over one shoulder. Listening, Lily thought, to some sound only he could hear: the whisper and pulse of threads of sorcery in the air, the calls of birds and oceans and stones, or maybe only the noise and bustle of the world through human ears again. He added, “The king will be all right. I’ve—I can do that much from here.”

  He stopped, awkward. Lily wondered when he had learned to be awkward.

  She glanced at Will. Will glanced back—expression unreadable—and said, “You’ll come back with us and make sure.” The statement wanted to be a command but was not, quite; the knowledge of sorcerous danger hung in the gap.

  Lorre’s glance flickered like a butterfly: Lily, Merry, Lily, Will. One hand ran through that golden-coin tumble of hair, casual as a gesture on a rope bridge over a chasm. “Yes. It seems I will. And perhaps I could trouble you for clothing, once we arrive. I’ve no idea what happened to mine, and while I could certainly throw on an illusion or two, we’re currently standing in a field, and I expect you’d rather I not track mud all around your castle.”

  “I would rather,” Will said, “never see you again.”

  “Fair enough,” Lorre said, “but have you considered that you ordered me to come back with you?”

  “You’re still you,” Lily said. “Aren’t you.” This wasn’t a question; she suspected Lorre always would be. “Can’t you do anything about the mud? Being you.”

  “Probably,” Lorre said. “Your new lover might object. You have excellent taste, by the way, as far as the stronger brother. And he’s quite attractive, if you like the dark and smoldering type, which I haven’t tried for a few decades, mind you.”

  “We’re not—” Lily protested, and stopped: arguing with Lorre was futile at best. “We aren’t.” Though the word shivered through the air, amber and heated. It murmured suggestions like the touch of a hand, or a gift of tea, or of a heart.

  “You suggested that my own father have me killed,” Will said, avoiding the lovers question altogether; Lily was unsure how to interpret this. “As a threat to Henry’s inheritance.”

  “It was a compliment,” Lorre said. “Honestly. Humans. So difficult. Would you like me to do something about the mud or not? And can I borrow your cloak? Illusions aren’t terribly warm.” His eyes said something else, behind the flippancy; the surface layer matched the man Lily remembered, permanently in control of situations, arrogant as only the last great magician could be, sharp and bright as diamond edges.

  The Lorre she remembered would not have asked before using magic on the world, and would have been insulted by a need to make sure he’d in fact done what he’d said and cured the king, and would’ve never admitted to being cold.

  Will, she thought, heard that as well; or at least some emotion other than anger flickered in his gaze, for a second.

  What he said was, “I’d let you freeze,” but he’d already unfastened his cloak. When he tossed it that way, he made the throw as casual as Lorre’s deliberate tone, and Lily would’ve given even odds on whether he’d meant it to be catchable.

  Lorre, being Lorre, put out a hand and plucked fabric from the air without touching it; he flung the cloak around shoulders, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Thank you.”

  “If you’re both done,” Lily said. Her past and her present had collided; magic and desire and exhaustion and elation met and burst and tangled deep inside, a riot of emotion and uncertain futures.

  But they were alive. They were all alive.

  Merry blinked at Lorre and made a cheerful baby-noise, a fascinated coo; Lorre looked back, startled. “She’s bigger.”

  “Babies do that,” Lily said, at the same time as Will’s grumbled, “Babies grow, magician.” The laughter—sudden, euphoric, blowing away cobwebs, caught up in Lorre’s sigh, which she ignored, and Will’s eyes finding hers, which left her breathless—chased away the last of the rain.

  * * * *

  The swarm of milling noisy bodies around the royal chambers would have announced the king’s miraculous recovery even if Lily hadn’t known firsthand; the news had evidently raced like wildfire through the Court. The bodies scattered when Will, Lily, and Lorre appeared in the hall, no doubt due to the abrupt arrival of two magicians and the king’s half-brother. No one commented on rain-damp hair or the presence of a wide-eyed baby in one of the magicians’ arms; Lily, adjusting that baby-weight, had never thought Merry had much magical talent, but was beginning to reconsider. Merry had seen Lorre before all of them, even in dragon-shape, and stayed calm and interested and quiet, drinking everything in without fuss or complaint.

  That’d be a question for the future, though; they were already moving into Henry’s bedchamber, sweeping gossiping dukes and viscountesses and palace maids and footmen out of the way. Will went straight to the bed; Henry was sitting up, awake and pink-cheeked and perplexed but insistent, and saying, “Will? What happened, what did you do, are you all right, what did you have to do to save me—”

  His brother sat right down on the bed and interrupted with, “Nothing you need to worry about—tell me you’re all right—”

  “I’m fine, except now I’m worried that you did something stupid—”

  Lily drifted back toward the doorway, the outer chamber; she leaned against the wall, letting the last vestiges of tattered glamor dissolve. Merry was heavy in her arms, and she wanted to smile, and she was happy for them: both brothers, now complaining about each other being overprotective, overflowing with relieved affection.

  “See,” Lorre commented, arriving beside her. “Everyone’s fine.” He’d found proper clothing somewhere, not an illusion this time as far as Lily could tell. The blue fabric matched his eyes. He’d also brought or found or conjured up a wheeled bassinet; Lily set the baby down gratefully amid overeager old-fashioned white lace ruffles, and wondered where Lorre had found it, and why he’d thought to do so.

  She said, “Why?”

  “Babies need…things?” Lorre waved a hand. “I do know that much.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Yes.” Lorre propped a shoulder against the wall beside her. No one’d bothered to try arresting him; no one could, and everyone knew it. The hordes of fearful inquisitive faces watched from the outer door to the royal chambers; nobody’d dared to follow them. “I know. And you know the answer.”

  “I don’t know whether I believe it.”

  “Even I can get lost.” Lorre glanced back into the bedroom, and down, for an instant: eyes tracing a royal-purple carpet-pattern, loops and swirls. “I wouldn’t believe it either, of course.”

  “I’d believe you did it on purpose. So will they. Revenge. The old king.” Everything, she thought. Everything you might’ve meant. You didn’t. But you mig
ht have.

  “You know better than that,” Lorre said, a little sadly. “You found me, in there. You know.”

  “I know you didn’t mean to hurt Henry,” Lily said. “I can tell Will—them. But they wouldn’t understand why you’d do it in the first place. Why a dragon.”

  Lorre managed a shrug, lazy and feline and effortless, without moving. “Because I could. Because I wanted to see if I could. To be a creature of so much power, even if I did end up lost in it, for a little while. You understand that much, love. You used to dream of it too.”

  “I used to,” Lily said. He deserved the answer, and the honesty. “Not now.”

  “No. You dream of other things now.” His smile was, as it’d always been, wickedly sensual, though the sensuality was more teasing than inviting; his gaze went pointedly to the bedroom. “So does he, I think.”

  Lily couldn’t not look, even knowing it was only provocation. But she caught amber eyes glancing her way—Will had turned, and was watching them—and she bit a lip and felt her cheeks go pink; but the emotion was true, not hidden under a mask, and she liked it.

  Lorre grinned. “So you’ll end up with a king’s brother, and you’ll have saved the king himself, and the Court will love you. But you still also saved me.”

  “That might have been a mistake,” Lily muttered, half under her breath, and was surprised to hear him laugh.

  “The royal family might agree with you, love. But I’m not worried. After all, you’ll be here. And I’d trust you to save me again.” His tone was light, but his eyes were serious. “I meant it about the Court.”

  “They won’t. They don’t trust magic.”

  “They’ll trust you. You’ve proven yourself. And you’re not me.”

  “Well,” Lily muttered, “that’s certainly true.”

  “They could use a magician here. To stop…things like this…from happening again. Someone who could do what I couldn’t, years ago. Who could teach them not to fear magic anymore.” They both contemplated the suspicious expressions in the hallways outside, and he added dryly, “That might be the hardest part.”