The Reluctant mage: Fisherman’s children

by Karen Miller

  “No,” he said tightly. “Don’t ask again.”

  “He’s right,” Charis whispered. “We can’t risk another child. Deenie, please, don’t look like that. This isn’t your fault and there’s nothing you can do.”

  No. There wasn’t. So much for her hope of them finding Rafel on their own and killing Morg. She wanted to lie down and weep her disappointment.

  Ewen dropped the saddle and saddle-bags and her haversack onto the road. Bending, she rummaged in the saddle-bags until she found the small clay pot of salve he used on the nicks and cuts and scrapes travelling had earned him. She took that, and a half-full waterskin and one of her shirts from the haversack and while his barracks men saw to their own unsaddling she wiped his bloodied face with the dampened shirt then packed his wounds with the salve. Every gentle touch hurt him, but he didn’t make a sound.

  “There,” she said, when she was done. Dropped the spoiled shirt and the emptied waterskin and tucked the salve-pot into her pocket. Barl’s diary was safely snug against her ribs. “Perhaps there’ll be a pother in Elvado who can pull those together with a stitch or two. Or maybe Morg will heal you. I believe he’s capricious.”

  “Man of Vharne!” the beast called. “Time to walk.”

  Ewen looked at her, his eyes gone from wild to desperate sad. “You and Charis, drop your knives and walk in the middle of us. The beasts don’t see you now. Keep it that way, I say.”

  Deenie nodded, feeling Charis’s fingers wrap cold around hers. No sniping at girls this time. There was death. There was brutality. In her blood the blight raged.

  It’s real. The journey’s over. We’re being taken to Morg.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  After seemingly endless hours, the dreadful day came to an end. The sun, reluctantly sinking, dragged twilight in its wake and the air cooled, slowly at first and then faster and faster until not even walking could keep the cold at bay. Darkness followed the brief twilight, stars like scattered chips of crystal. Sickle-thin and tilted, the moon hid Brantone in shadows.

  Captive, Deenie trudged with Charis, Ewen and his barracks men well behind the beasts and their Brant prisoners. It was a small, defiant gesture but the winged beast seemed indifferent. So long as they attempted no escape it was satisfied. Ewen trudged in silence, a few paces in front. What was there to say? Obeying his lost king, he was bringing Vharne to Morg. Despite the pain in his torn face he kept his head high and his shoulders back, he had that much pride in him—but inside, Deenie knew he was weeping. She could feel it.

  Inside, she was nothing but Morg’s burning blight.

  Every step was a battle to keep the darkness from swallowing her. The raw heat of Morg’s power tried to beat her to her knees. Had the reef been overwhelming? The reef had been nothing to this, mere candlelight to the sun.

  The night deepened and dragged on. They walked and they walked and the herding beasts showed no mercy, clashing tusks and flashing talons at the first hint of lagging. Terrified for their remaining children’s lives, the Brant prisoners passed their little ones from arm to arm to arm, not daring to let them fall behind. No-one dared to fall behind. When they stumbled, exhaustion crushing them, somehow they managed to find their feet and keep going.

  Courage or terror? Perhaps they were the same.

  Without glimfire Deenie couldn’t see Charis’s face, but she could feel her friend staunchly walking beside her. Sometimes their hands bumped, their fingers linked. Poor Charis. Sad as she’d been, she should have stayed in that graveyard, mourning her father.

  And should I have stayed in Billington, watching Da slowly die? Being the dutiful daughter and nursing him, like a pother?

  She didn’t have an answer for that. All she knew for certain was Da needed her to be brave, and that she had to save him. She knew she grieved for her mother and she knew she feared awfully for Rafe. All those feelings were a tangled complication, not one to be separated from the others. She was here now, walking, because of Da. Because of Mama and Rafel. Because she’d not been able to save one and needed the second to save the third.

  And then there was Morg.

  So full of blight, so battered and aching, she wasn’t sure she could feel him. She thought maybe all she was feeling was his terrible power, that he might be like a stone thrown in a pond—and all she could see of him was the ripples. But the stone was there, and waiting for her in the city of Elvado.

  “Deenie,” Charis whispered. “Are you all right?”

  She realised then she’d been whimpering. Letting the pain and fear and doubt escape her throat.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered back. “Don’t fratch on me, Charis. And don’t fret. No matter what happens, we’ll find our way home. You’ll see.”

  Charis’s breathing hitched. “You promise?”

  “Yes, Charis.” She linked their fingers again. “I promise.”

  “And so do I promise,” Ewen whispered over his shoulder—though he had to know as well as she did that the words were empty bravado. “Now clap tongue, girls. We don’t want trouble.”

  “Captain Noddyhead,” Charis grumbled. But this time there was a surprising affection in her voice.

  Ewen. Dark red hair and green-gold eyes. Tall and splendid and dreamed for a reason. Holding on to that, Deenie kept walking, desperately searching for Rafel…

  … as the blight roared louder and louder in her blood, turning every step into a torment. Trying to beat her into pulp.

  Marching through empty, open countryside, under a distant, indifferent night sky, they reached another deserted township just after dawn. There the winged beast let them rest for a while, hunkered by the road-side in a scarlet hum of exhaustion. Then its beast underlings watered them from a central well, a few prisoners at a time. After that, their raging thirsts slaked, they were bullied onto the road again.

  “And what use is giving us water?” Charis muttered. “When we’re about to drop dead for want of food?”

  “We’ll die parched before we die starved, we will,” said Ewen. “Clap tongue, girl. Don’t give them reason to look at us now.”

  As Charis opened her mouth to scold him, beasts or no beasts, Deenie clasped her wrist. “He’s right,” she said, so tired. “And any road, Dorana’s not far away. They’ll feed us there. They must do. We won’t be any use to them dead.”

  They were walking three abreast now, with Robb and the other barracks men on their heels. As Charis doubted under her breath, Ewen took hold of her elbow.

  “Dorana’s close? It’s sure of that, you are?”

  Glancing up at him, she felt her heart thud harder. Churned beneath his courage there was so much grief and fear—and she could no more ease him free of its pain than he could save her from suffering with the blight.

  “I’m sure,” she said, blinking the sting from her eyes.

  “And your brother?”

  If she let him see her face, answering, he’d read the lie. She knew it, because he’d come to know her. On her other side, Charis tensed. She looked ahead, to the huddle of Brant prisoners.

  Oh, Da. This might get tricky. “I think—”

  “You need to stop being such a noddyhead,” Charis snapped. “She’ll know where to find him once we reach Elvado. Prodding her on him now doesn’t do any good. Besides, she’s too tired to feel much of anything but blight. Isn’t that so, Deenie?”

  Bless you, Charis. “It is bad,” she admitted. Ashamed of herself, but having to, she let the blight’s brutal pain tremble her voice. “That’s how I know Dorana’s close.”

  To her surprise, Ewen slid his fingers around hers. They felt cold. Or maybe it was her. “Could be a shame you ever helped me, Deenie. Could be when you dreamed me, it was a nightmare you dreamed.”

  “No,” she said, as the blight beat fiercely in her blood. “Don’t ever say that. This isn’t over, Ewen. We’ve not reached the end of our road. You have to stay strong. How can I do this if you don’t stay strong?”

  “Giddyca
kes,” said Charis, pretending to clear her throat.

  So much for blessing Charis. She flicked her friend a dark look. Clap tongue, you. “I mean it, Ewen. Charis and I need you. So do Robb and your barracks men. You can’t lose hope now. You don’t have the right.”

  He let go of her hand. “A tongue like a dagger you’ve got, girl.”

  “She has,” agreed Charis. “And if you don’t talk nonsense she won’t sharpen it on you. All right?”

  And with that smartly settled they trudged on, their thoughts their own.

  The sun was sinking towards their second night as Morg’s captives when Deenie felt something new stir beneath the beating blight. Still walking beside her, limping a little now, without complaint, Charis caught her breath.

  “Deenie! What is that? Am I imagining things, or is it Doranen?”

  Shocked, she looked at her friend. “You can feel it too?”

  “Feel what?” said Ewen, his hand reaching for the sword he’d been forced to leave behind. “Deenie—”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, her eyes half-closed, her pain-dulled mage-sense reaching. “Some kind of magical barrier, I think.”

  “No, it’s more like a bell on a shop door,” said Charis. “The kind your mother’s bookshop had, Deenie. Somebody wants to know when there’s a mage come a-calling.”

  “I think you’re right, Charis,” she murmured. “It’s pure Doranen magic. Not blighted. And I think it’s been in place for a very long time.”

  “Then—”

  “Yes,” she said, and opened her eyes wide. “We’ve reached Lost Dorana.”

  Even as she spoke, the winged beast flapped into the dusk-darkened air, hissing commands. The herding beasts roared and lashed their tails and clashed their tusks, cowering the Brant captives to a ragged stop. As they stopped too, keeping their careful distance from the others, Ewen spared a warning glance at his barracks men—keep your heads down, no trouble—then looked at her.

  “How far is Elvado, Deenie? Can you tell?”

  For the last hour or so she’d felt a colder, sharper shadow in the blight, as though at last the shape of that thrown stone was being revealed. The shadow was Morg, she had no doubt. And that could only mean one thing.

  “It’s not far now, Ewen,” she murmured. “This will be over soon.”

  In more ways than one. Because the conviction had been growing in her, as they walked and walked and walked, that with Rafe’s fate a mystery and all their plans sunk by this captivity, the only sure way of defeating the sorcerer was if she used Barl’s terrible words of UnMaking herself. She didn’t want to. Every time she thought on it, the notion brought her close to retching. But for the life of her, she couldn’t think of any other way.

  Charis will be so fratched with me when she finds out.

  “Deenie?” said Charis, suddenly sharp with suspicion. “What’s wrong?”

  Only everything. “My head hurts. And I’m hungry.”

  Charis snorted. “That makes two of us. I wonder—”

  “Clap tongue,” said Ewen, urgently. “Girls—”

  The winged beast was approaching, talons scraping the mud-brick road. Deenie exchanged a look with Charis, then grabbed her wrist and ducked them behind Robb and the other barracks men. The barracks men closed up tight, doing their best to keep them unnoticed.

  “Pretend this is Lur in the old days, Charis,” she muttered. “Pretend you had no idea there was magic in you. Push it deep. Close enough, this creature might be able to sniff us out. And I don’t think that’ll do us much good.”

  Then she took her own advice, sluggishly scrambling to bury her mage-sense before Morg’s dreadful beast reached them.

  With a leathery rustle of wings and a leering, sneering smile the creature halted before Ewen. “Man of Vharne,” it said, hissing. “Here is Dorana. Here is where you will kneel to Morg. I fly for my Master. The dravas stay. The dravas kill disobedience. You understand?”

  “I understand,” said Ewen. He sounded grim and resigned. His torn face was hurting him again, the pain humming in his voice. “And how is that, I say? How can a beast know the speech of my people?”

  The winged beast laughed. “Morg speaks all tongues. I speak with Morg’s tongue.”

  Ewen came dangerously close to spitting. “Sorcery?”

  “You say,” said the winged beast, and laughed again. “I go.”

  With a flapping of its wings, the beast leapt into the air. Dregs of daylight showed its oddly graceful retreat, a dark spiralling shape flying north, higher and higher and finally gone.

  Warily, Deenie stepped out from behind Robb. “Now what?”

  “Asking me, are you?” Ewen stared at the beasts—the dravas—left behind to guard the captives. The creatures showed no sign of goading everyone back to walking, which was odd. “A waste of breath, that is.”

  She flinched. He sounded so beaten. “Ewen—” She risked her hand on his arm. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “No?” A sudden fierce light glittered in his eyes. “What do you know, girl? Of me? Of Vharne? How do you—”

  “Hold,” said Robb, his head tipped to one side. “Captain? Hear something, I can.”

  And then they all heard it: wooden wheels creaking and a rhythmic clopping of horse hooves, coming closer.

  Ewen stepped to the very edge of the road, risking punishment from the guarding beasts. The nearest one gave him a hard stare, barbed tail lashing, but no more than that when it saw he was simply looking ahead.

  “Carts,” he said, self-contained again. “Three of them. It seems we’re driving to Elvado, we are.”

  “Praise Barl,” said Charis, close to moaning with relief. “Because my feet are falling off.”

  Stepping back again, mindful of the staring beast, Ewen frowned. “You praise this Barl a lot, you do.”

  Deenie shrugged, pretending indifference. Sink it, Charis. “It’s a figure of speech, is all. Just like you say ‘spirit’, I think.”

  “That’s right,” said Charis, sniffing. “Any road, why do you care who I praise? Or curse, for that matter.”

  Ewen gave her a barracks look. “And why do you bite me, girl, every chance you get?”

  “Don’t ask silly questions and I’ll not have reason to bite, will I?” Charis retorted, no hint of affection in her voice now. “I swear, you’re as bad as Deenie with all your bossing.”

  For once Deenie didn’t care that they squabbled, if it meant no more awkward questions about the woman Morg had loved. Only that staring beast was staring harder, hearing them, and the lashing of its barbed tail signalled a rising danger.

  If it attacks I can’t kill it. Even if I could reveal myself I’m too tired. I hurt too much.

  “Ewen—Charis—hush.”

  And if that was her being bossy, so be it.

  They fell silent, glowering at each other. And then the squabble was forgotten, just like mention of Barl, because the carts were almost on them and the beasts were beating and roaring their captives into groups, heedless of families desperate to keep together.

  “Deenie!” Turning, her wide eyes desperate, Charis reached out. “If we’re separated, if they—”

  It didn’t bear thinking of. “I’ll find you,” she promised. “Charis, I won’t see you abandoned. I swear.”

  And she wouldn’t, not even if she had to die killing Morg. Somehow she’d make sure Ewen cared for Charis, whether Charis wanted his caring or not.

  But it turned out they’d feared for nothing, because the beasts did no worse than herd them into the last cart, along with a handful of weeping Brant captives. It seemed the man of Vharne and his people were to be afforded a rough kind of respect. The silent human slaves driving the carts turned them around, one after the other, and headed back the way they’d come. Urged into a steady trot, the horses’ hooves sounded loud in the chilly, gathering dusk. Loud too was the clicking and scraping of the beasts’ hooves and taloned feet on the road as they escorted their captives
at an easy jog.

  There were baskets of bread and cheese, and a barrel of water, in the cart that carried them towards Elvado.

  “Well,” said Charis, cheering a little. “At least we won’t starve.”

  Deenie tried hard to smile. “Yes. At least there’s that.”

  Briskly taking charge, Charis began sharing out the food to the Brant captives and Ewen’s barracks men. Though her own belly was growling empty, Deenie eyed the dry bread and stinking cheese with misgiving. The blight’s constant churning made the notion of food seem unwise.

  Ewen leaned close, his lips almost touching her cheek. “You’re hiding something, you are. What haven’t you told Charis? What haven’t you told me?”

  She shook her head, feeling so unwell. So sad. “Nothing that can make the slightest bit of difference.”

  He tensed and pulled away from her, full of hurt and doubt. “You say.”

  “Ewen, please don’t fratch at me,” she whispered. “Please… just hold my hand.”

  For one horrible moment she thought he’d refuse her. But then he sighed, and took her hand in his, and didn’t fratch at her again.

  And the carts full of captives drove through the darkness, to Elvado.

  If I live to be one thousand… if Morg lets me live that long… I know I shall never accustom myself to this.

  Naked and hairless, with elongated limbs and leathery wings and gleaming eyes—oh, their eyes—the sorcerer’s most trusted, most intelligent dravas stood before Arlin in the Hall of Knowledge chamber Morg had granted him as his own.

  “Lord Garrick,” said the beast, most recently returned from Brantone. “It is done. The last summoned leader sits below in the Master’s dungeons.”

  Ah. Morg would be pleased. He was pleased. Of late the sorcerer had been growing dangerously impatient. “And the slaves? They are brought to Elvado in the numbers I commanded?”

  The dravas dipped its head. “Lord Garrick, they are brought. They are held in the slave pens. See them for yourself.”

  Yes, he’d have to, though the stench sickened him and the misery kept him awake afterwards. “And what of the Master’s final, precious vessels?”