The Reluctant mage: Fisherman’s children

by Karen Miller

  Staggering like a drunken sailor, she chased after their small, errant boat. Rock after rock after boulder it banged into, tipping and spinning but still staying afloat. The further she pursued it the deeper the river grew, slowing her, dragging her, until she could hardly see and hardly breathe and all her body felt on fire.

  But it’s our clothes and our waterskins and our knives and Barl’s diary.

  The skiff surged ahead of her, carried along by the river. It surged past the race’s first scattering of rocks and swept towards the bend. As soon as the water was deep enough, Deenie started swimming. His little fish, Da had called her, when he wasn’t calling her his mouse.

  At last she caught up with the skiff—but only because half its boards were sprung loose and it was starting to wallow and sink.

  Lost in a haze of exhaustion, Deenie dragged herself over the sagging skiff’s side. One haversack she could rescue, only one. She had no hope of carrying two. Sloshing across the flooding floorboards, she reached the sheet of canvas, hauled it aside and dragged out her haversack, not Charis’s, because Barl’s diary was in it. Double stitched into oilskin, oh, praise Barl indeed. She found Charis’s knife, though, and shoved it into the haversack with her own. Pulled out half of her own clothes, making sure to keep her leathers, and shoved some of Charis’s on top of them instead. The empty waterskins were floating in the skiff now. She grabbed four and stuffed them on top of the clothes. And that was that. She’d run out of time.

  And then she remembered: Charis can’t swim. Half-shrugging on the haversack, she flailed and staggered and splashed her way to the rowlocks. One oar had slid free, the other was in pieces, floating, banging into the bench. She snatched up the biggest piece—it was the blade end, that was lucky—then managed to get herself back over the side and into the river just as the skiff began to go down for good.

  The weight of the haversack dragged her under with it.

  An odd moment, then. A kind of tired and wondering surrender. The river closed over her head and she remembered Darran’s story about Da and the king. Well, the prince, as he was then, down in Westwailing. The terrible storm. Prince Gar being knocked overboard and Da diving in after. Finding him. Saving him.

  He was a hero that day.

  Now here she was, all these long and terrible years later, and she was in the water. She was going to drown. And there was nobody to save her. She wasn’t a Prince Gar and she didn’t have a champion.

  Which means I’ll have to save myself, won’t I?

  A hot surge of fury flashed through her.

  I’m not drowning. Not today. I’m too busy.

  Kicking and thrashing, she flailed her way to the surface—still holding the haversack and the broken piece of oar. She mustn’t let go of either, because Rafel needed Barl’s diary and Charis couldn’t swim.

  You swim, Deenie. You’re a fish, not a mouse.

  She swam as far as she could and then she walked—staggered—through the shallows to the top of the race, where Charis was waiting. Sitting in the water, her back pressed against the boulder, looking terrified and furious and shivering cold all at once.

  “Deenie—” she said, gulping. “Deenie—where’s the skiff?”

  With a groan, she let the haversack slide off her aching shoulder. “Sunk to the riverbed, by now.”

  Horrified, Charis stared. “Deenie!”

  “Don’t look at me,” she said, her own teeth chattering. “This is all your fault. You’re the one who said sink me. Didn’t I tell you that was a bad idea?”

  No sound but rushing water. And then they both started to laugh.

  “It’s not funny, it’s not funny,” Charis wailed, rubbing her bruised shoulder. “Deenie, what are we going to do?”

  Deenie looked further up the river, at the low banks and the open fields and the thatching of woodland. “We’re going to get out of this horrible water. And once we’ve dried ourselves, and had a hot meal, a good night’s sleep, we’ll keep going on foot.”

  “On foot,” Charis said faintly. Then she frowned at the wet haversack dropped onto another, smaller rock. “Deenie, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but is that really all you managed to save?”

  “Sorry,” she said, shrugging. “Trust me, we’re lucky I saved this much.”

  Charis sighed. “I know.” And then she frowned at the stretch of river between them and the distant meadow. “How am I supposed to get to dry land?”

  “With this,” said Deenie, holding up the length of oar. “You’ll hold on to it and dog paddle. I’ll be right beside you, Charis. I won’t let you drown.”

  “You make it sound simple,” said Charis, trying to smile.

  Deenie shrugged again. There was no point sweetening the truth. “Well, it’s not. But you’ll manage. You’re a mayor’s daughter, remember? A hero’s daughter. You don’t have a choice.”

  And manage Charis did. Barely. It was a cruel trial for both of them. It wasn’t such a great stretch from the end of the shallow, treacherous race to the first section of river bank that was low enough for them to climb up, but they were both shatteringly tired, bruised and cold and dazed with shock. And the waterlogged haversack didn’t make things any easier.

  On hands and knees, heads hanging, streaming water, they crawled over the bank and into the river’s bordering field. There, in the pale warmth of the slowly sinking sun, they sprawled face-down in the grass and laughed and wept in turns.

  At last Deenie sat up, and poked Charis in the ribs. “Come on, Meistress Orrick. Stir your stumps. We can’t stay here all night.”

  Whimpering, Charis rolled over. “I think I have to. I don’t have any bones left. They dissolved in the river.”

  Ignoring that, Deenie squinted across the field towards the nearest huddle of trees. “There’ll be dead branches there. We can start a fire. I swear, I could sleep on a bed of hot coals.”

  “I tell you I can’t move a finger,” said Charis, groaning again. “I’m one big bruise from my head to my toes.”

  “So am I. So what?” Grunting, Deenie bit by bit pushed to her feet. “Charis, come on. If we don’t warm ourselves soon we’re going to catch our death of ague.”

  Stiff and cold they trudged to the straggle of trees, with the haversack hung on the piece of broken oar and carried between them. There was dead wood aplenty. They made a fire and laughed at the heat of it. There were rabbits, too. Stifling the regret, because it couldn’t be helped, Deenie called them, and killed them, and while Charis skinned, gutted and jointed the poor things she upended the haversack and spread its contents out to dry.

  “What’s that?” said Charis, pointing. “I’ve not seen it before.”

  Sink it. The diary. Wrapped and stitched in the double layer of oilskin, it had survived its river-dunking intact.

  “Charis…” Deenie chewed at her lip. “If I ask you to forget you saw it, could you? Would you?”

  Flickered with flames and shadows, Charis looked at her steadily, in silence. Of a sudden she seemed older, and burdened with cares. Then she nodded. “Yes.”

  “It’s nothing bad,” she added. “Only—it might be safest if I keep it secret a while longer.”

  Another silence. Then Charis smiled, dimpled and swift. “Was I dreaming or did I see a hint of roofs, from the river?”

  Bless her. “I saw them too. With luck we’ll find a village with people in it who can tell us where we are.”

  “Yes,” said Charis, suddenly doubtful. “Only they won’t speak Olken.”

  Yet another problem. I’m sinking tired of problems. “We’ll manage somehow. Is that rabbit cooked yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Charis. “Hold your horses.”

  The stars came out as, at last, they ate their fill. When they couldn’t swallow another bite, they piled the fire high with all the dead branches they could find and, too tired to care that they slept on nothing but hard ground, curled up in the billowing warmth and plunged straightaway into sleep.

 
Hours later, in the deep chill of night, Deenie roused with her mage-sense roiling. Opened her scratchy eyes and saw that she and Charis were no longer alone.

  She could hardly breathe past the stench of blight.

  “Charis.” She sat up slowly, staring at the four shadowy figures at the very edge of the slumbering fire. They weren’t moving. They just stood there. Mumbling. A sound to stand the hair on the back of her neck. “Charis, please. Wake up.”

  Charis muttered. Whimpered, then groaned. “What? Oh, oh, everything hurts. Everything—”

  “Charis, hush,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “And stay still. We don’t want to startle them.”

  “Startle who?” said Charis. “What are you—” And then she sucked in a sharp breath. “Barl save us. Who are they? And what’s wrong with them?”

  “I don’t know,” she murmured. “All I’m sure of is they’re blighted. And I think… not in their right wits.”

  Inch by inch, Charis crept out her hand. “Deenie, what do they want?”

  “I don’t know that either, Charis,” she said, and tried not to snap. “Why would you think I’d know?”

  Charis swallowed another whimper. “Have they been watching us since we got here?”

  She stared, her heart madly thudding, as the four shadows melted closer. Then she crept out her own hand and took hold of Charis’s, hard. “No. I swear, I never felt them. But look where the moon is. We’ve been asleep for hours. They could’ve come from miles away. From that village, maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe they smelled the smoke. Or the cooking rabbits.”

  Charis nodded. “Maybe. But what do they want?”

  The shadowy figures melted closer again, so close this time that the firelight lit their faces. Their bodies. With the blight roiling in her, curdling and foul, Deenie made herself look at what it had done to them.

  Open sores. Running pus. Pulpy gangrenous flesh hanging off them in strips. Four of them, all women. Mostly naked, wholly putrid. The stench of their corruption made Charis turn her head and retch.

  Frozen, feeling just as sick, Deenie couldn’t ease her own belly. Looking at them, feeling them, she could hardly breathe.

  This is what Da’s fighting. If he wasn’t Da… if he wasn’t Asher of Restharven, the Innocent Mage… this is what he would have become. This is how he would have died.

  She didn’t know how she knew it. She only knew it was true. And the truth was a dagger, plunged between her ribs.

  The tallest blighted woman gargled horribly, deep in her throat. Coughed. Spat. Teeth landed at her feet. “And he will come in splendour,” she said, her voice grating. “He is mighty. The world will weep blood for him.”

  “Weep blood,” the other three women mumbled, red pus dripping from their wounds. “Blood. Blood.”

  Eyes rolling, the tall woman tried to raise her rotting, stinking arms. “And in the morning of the last days there was a blood red sun,” she crowed. “The sundered parts all came together and oh there was a joining and the world rejoiced.”

  “Deenie—” Charis’s voice shook. “Have you any idea what they’re saying? I can’t make head or tail of it.”

  Stunned, Deenie listened to her thundering heart. “Can’t you? That’s funny. I can understand every word.”

  Except it wasn’t funny. It was terrible.

  The reef magic again. It must be. Oh, Da. What am I now?

  The horribly rotted woman let out a keening cry. “He’s calling us! He’s calling! We must be whole!”

  And as though that were some kind of command, or a signal, she and her companions again began to shuffle forward.

  “Deenie!” said Charis, and scrambled backwards as fast as she could. “Barl’s mercy, we mustn’t let them touch us. Deenie—”

  It was a nightmare come to life, those four disgusting creatures shambling predatory towards them, their eyes no longer human, blight hanging round them like a shroud.

  “Deenie, we can’t try to outrun them,” said Charis, close to tears. “It’s pitch black past the fire. We’ll fall and break our necks.”

  “I know.”

  “Can you—Deenie, I think you have to—”

  But Charis couldn’t say it, and neither could she. Not out loud.

  Kill them? With magic? As though they were rabbits?

  She felt her belly heave. No. How could she? That would change her worse than anything Dragonteeth Reef had done. Morg had killed with magic.

  I can’t turn into him.

  “Deenie!” Charis cried. “Deenie, do something! Please!”

  The rotted creatures were spreading out, trying to circle them like a pack of hunting dogs trapping prey. Her eyes flooded with tears, blurring. Sobs crowded her throat.

  Da… Da… what do I do? Mama? Help me!

  But she was on her own.

  So she reached for her changed mage-sense and killed the rotting people like rabbits. And afterwards sat with Charis in the firelight, silently weeping and waiting for dawn.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  You wish to serve me, little Doranen? Little Lord Garrick? Very well. You can serve me. But first we must see to your sadly inadequate education.”

  So Morg had told Arlin, grandly, upon his servant’s return with more gathered pieces of himself. After he had consumed and then carelessly discarded them.

  He was growing very strong.

  Taken into the mansion’s locked library, a place forbidden him ’til then upon pain of gruesome death, Arlin had watched in silence as Morg first extinguished a powerful general warding, then perused the chamber’s serried ranks of shelves. Continued to watch as he trailed his fingers along the books’ old and mottled spines. Tapping one. Tapping another one. Leaving the next untouched. Leaving half a shelf. A whole shelf. There seemed to be no pattern or reason behind his choices. The spine of every book he touched glowed with a crimson sigil. When he was finished perhaps three-quarters of the books were marked.

  “And those books you may not touch, Arlin,” Morg told him. “The rest are made safe.”

  He didn’t ask what would happen if he touched a protected book. The answer was in the gleam lurking deep in Morg’s eyes.

  Without asking permission, assuming permission was granted by the fact that he stood in the library, he plucked a safe book from the nearest shelf and let it fall open in his hands. Could Morg see them trembling? Most likely. But that didn’t matter. Let the sorcerer mock him. Let him laugh. Let him sneer. These were books of magic the likes of which his father had dreamed his whole life.

  And me. I dreamed them. I wanted this too.

  “It’s not the complete sum of our knowledge,” said Morg. “Barl and her cowardly dupes managed to steal some volumes away with them when they ran.”

  He looked up. “Durm’s secret library?”

  “Yes,” said Morg, smiling thinly. “Are the books still there?”

  “No,” he said, and felt the touch of bitter rage. “The collection was ordered destroyed, after—”

  “After Asher killed me. And Lur’s Doranen destroyed it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So.” Morg sneered. “The cowardly blood breeds true.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. Not a single Doranen voice had been raised against that infamous act. Not even his father had dared to protest it, at least not in public. Of course in private he’d condemned it every day of his life.

  “And would you have spoken up, Arlin?” Morg asked, idly curious. “Had you not been a puling infant in your cradle? Would you have decried such wanton destruction?”

  The trick, he’d learned, was not in lying to the sorcerer. That was fruitless. The trick was in telling him a truth that would serve as a lie. Or else the plain truth, if no harm could come of it.

  “I don’t know,” he said, feeling the weight of the precious book of magic in his hands, his wrists, his forearms. “I like to think I would have. I like to think I’m not a coward. But th
ose days were confused. Feelings ran dangerously high. There were Olken who thought all Doranen should be put to death.”

  Morg smiled again. “Because of me?”

  “Yes, Master. Because of you.”

  “And yet they weren’t. Why was that?”

  “Asher wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Asher.” Morg’s face twisted to ugliness. It always did when anyone spoke the fisherman’s name. “His misguided compassion will be his undoing. I look forward to rousing him from his stupor so I might gift him with the death he deserves.”

  Arlin looked down at the book again, so Morg might not see his eyes. Years of childhood study meant he could read the text’s original Doranen easily enough. Its ink was faded, the thick paper mottled with age. Apparently this book was a treatise on the question of low-level transformations. Nothing like beast-making, though. Nothing at all that could be used to do the sorcerer harm. Not that he could anyway, so carefully warded as he was.

  Morg waved his hand, indicating every permissible book in the library. There were dozens. “Unless I send for you, Arlin, remain here at all times. Complete your education. An ignorant man is of no use to me. But I warn you. No experimenting. Theory only. I’ll tell you when the time is ripe for you to spread your little wings.”

  “Yes, Master,” he’d said, bowing, and had happily obeyed.

  Outside the mansion, days and days of time passed. Within its walls, however, passing time held no meaning. Human servants changed the linens on his bed, saw him with clean clothes and hot baths. They cooked him meals which the idiot Goose brought to him on trays in the library, shaking with terror because he’d watched the necessary killing of Fernel Pintte. He wished they wouldn’t send Goose, but he knew better than to complain.

  Every time the idiot looked at him, he felt Fernel Pintte die.

  He neither saw nor heard Morg. The sorcerer remained secluded in his eyrie, incomprehensible. Unknowable. Waiting for a summons, Arlin steeped himself in ancient magics. The texts he’d been given to study covered an astonishing range of subjects. Translocations. Transmutations. The harnessing and coercion of natural powers: wind, lightning, water, fire, even the powers locked deep in the earth. He learned methods of working that would let a mage melt rock and flow it into any shape of his desire. Shift mountains. Freeze rivers. Think sand into glass and that glass into lofty towers.