The Mage Heir

by Kathryn Sommerlot

  Tatsu wasn’t sure that he ever thought he’d be back, but there they were, just the two of them. Tatsu rubbed absentmindedly at his bicep, wincing at the slight pinch of it.

  Yudai raised his eyebrows, amused, it seemed, by Tatsu’s staring. “Are you worried?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” Yudai said, and the honesty felt genuine. “I can’t predict what’s going to happen when we get there.”

  I can, Tatsu thought, and visions of Yudai’s body, broken and twisted by the overwhelming force of Nota’s magic, flashed before his eyes. It was almost enough to make him stall further—just one more day of sleeping through the desert sun, as if they could avoid the whole thing by keeping it at arm’s length.

  “What’s wrong?” Yudai asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Yudai snorted ungracefully. “Gods, you’re so bad with emotions.”

  “Well, sorry my father raised me in the woods,” Tatsu said.

  “Oh, don’t blame that. You’re the one who stayed there after he died.”

  “Shut up,” Tatsu said.

  He’d meant it as a joke, but Yudai went still and quiet. Afraid that he’d managed to break whatever was between them, he turned to find Yudai studying him.

  “Do you regret leaving?” Yudai asked. “Coming out here for me, was it the right choice?”

  “Yes. I mean, it was the right thing to do.”

  Yudai frowned. “But you lost everything.”

  “That wasn’t…” Tatsu struggled to find the words. “I wasn’t really living in the woods. It was more like… surviving. I thought if I just stayed by myself, the world would pass by around me and everything would just… keep going.”

  “So you’re saying that I brought you to life?”

  Tatsu groaned with more force than was necessary. “This is a great conversation to continue down if you want another black eye.”

  “I’m joking,” Yudai said with a laugh that warmed Tatsu’s blood. He reached over to take Yudai’s hand and was calmed, somewhat, by the reassuring squeeze of his fingers.

  “How long will it take to get through the pass?” he asked.

  “Four days, perhaps,” Yudai answered. “A week, maybe.”

  Then there were between four and seven days before Tatsu would watch his worst nightmare come true. His only hope was that Yudai could activate the siphon before he was overpowered—then, when the drain grabbed hold of what it needed, Nota would be unable to continue fighting. The siphon’s cure was Nota’s blood.

  The siphon’s cure was his mother’s blood.

  There was a sharp sort of twisting in his chest, beneath his sternum, and he rubbed at it unconsciously.

  “You’re frowning again,” Yudai said.

  “Never mind that,” Tatsu replied and dropped his hand back down to his side. “Let’s go. In the pass, we need to move during the day again.”

  “It’s a trade route that recently reopened,” Yudai said. “There’s going to be others there. We can’t avoid detection forever.”

  “But we can avoid being recognized. Keep the Joesarian linen wrapped over your head and hope that no one was in Runon years ago to remember your face.”

  Switching to a daytime routine was difficult only because by the end of the afternoon, as they trudged through the sand that grew sparser beneath their boots, Tatsu could barely keep his eyes open. The air around their heads cooled almost immediately and dropped down heavy with moisture gathered from the snow-capped mountains to either side of them. The Arani Pass was a graduated slope up from the desert banks and into the higher altitudes of Runon’s colder climate, and Tatsu was thankful that they didn’t see any others moving across the roads during the first part of the day.

  Returning to Runon was strange, given that the last time he’d been there, he’d never thought that he’d return. His actions in stealing Yudai out of the castle made him an enemy to both the former king and the current queen, and he wasn’t sure which one was worse: Yudai’s father’s wrath or his own mother’s indifferent attention.

  Either way, he knew he wouldn’t be welcome within the capital.

  “Can we rest?” Yudai asked, his voice strained as the sun at their backs began to fall back down behind the peaks.

  Tatsu had pushed them too hard while lost in his reverie. He stopped moving forward and spent some time searching for the best place to make camp, far enough away from the road so that their tent was unlikely to be seen in the dark. He was glad they had thought to change their clothing—his exposed skin was cool, but not yet cold, and the thicker weaves they’d donned in the last settlement were already worth the smaller portions of food.

  It felt strange to be sleeping under the stars again after so long in the desert sun. After their tent was readied, Tatsu lay down on the skins and there was only a second of delay before Yudai slid in beside him, curling up at Tatsu’s side with his head on Tatsu’s chest.

  “Warmer this way,” Yudai murmured, and Tatsu didn’t mind the lie. It felt good to wrap his arms around Yudai’s shoulders, like maybe he’d be able to keep Yudai after what lay ahead of them. When he’d first pulled Yudai out of the chair in Yuse’s castle, the man had been little more than skin and bones; Tatsu was glad that Yudai’s muscles had grown and recovered, his biceps softly rounding. If Tatsu let his fingertips hesitate too long against Yudai’s joints, at least Yudai had the good sense not to point it out.

  “What does the siphon feel like now?” Tatsu asked.

  “Mm?” From the pause, it seemed that Yudai had already drifted off. “The siphon? Like… I’m hungry, but I’m not. It’s a bit like a pulling inside that wants to be let out.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  Yudai shook his head, which bumped his forehead against Tatsu’s chin. “No. It’s just… strange.”

  Perhaps there was something within the siphon’s desire that knew they were getting closer to the end goal. Tatsu’s arms tightened around Yudai’s form.

  There was less than a week before he would finally meet his mother, the woman that he’d dreamed about and imagined his whole life. There was less than a week before Yudai would try to use the siphon to drain her energy dry and leave her a husk, gasping for life.

  The siphon’s cure was his mother’s blood.

  Against his shoulder, Yudai began to snore lightly. Tatsu held up his recovering hand, and even though he couldn’t see it in the darkness of the tent, he knew the lines of his palm and the curve of his fingers—the callouses on the sides from years of hunting and skinning, and the way the skin of his knuckles folded over itself. Nota’s blood ran hot through his veins, and Hysus had said that the siphon needed the blood coded into it in order to break the rest of the barriers.

  Yudai couldn’t win without full control of his abilities, and the answer to his problem was thudding against Tatsu’s eardrums.

  Tatsu closed his fingers into a tight fist and brought his hand back down against his chest, squeezing his eyes shut. Perhaps Yudai hadn’t realized it. Or, perhaps he’d already arrived at the same conclusion and dismissed it because of his feelings. But Tatsu knew the only way that Yudai would win was with all of his magic, the same magic denied because of the siphon billowing up through his bones and pressing against his flesh.

  In less than a week, either Yudai would die at Nota’s hand, or he would drain her dry, and the only way to ensure that the latter happened was to get around the siphon’s barrier to his magic.

  Tatsu knew as his heart hammered out a terrified, angry rhythm against his lungs that his choice would be to ensure that Yudai lived, even if it meant letting his own corpse be the one left brittle and desiccated to rot in the Turend Mountains.

  They passed a small caravan of traders the next day who gave them a brief, uninterested glance before continuing on. The second group they encountered seemed more intrigued, but perhaps because Tatsu and Yudai were the only ones on the road walking towards Runon instead of away from it. Neither asked
any questions, and Tatsu watched them both roll out of sight just to be sure that there was no lingering suspicions that urged the traders to turn back.

  Yudai quieted as they drew closer to Runon.

  Hunting was better once they were back in the trees and the mountains, although the winter wind had driven off most of their prey. Tatsu did manage to get a winter hare, which he skinned and cooked with care to save all the meaty pieces he could, the first fresh food they’d had in at least a week.

  By nightfall on the third day, there was no time left. Already Tatsu could see roofs nestled against the mountainsides in the distance that signaled their arrival into Runon’s borders. Instead of finding a small alcove tucked away from the road, Tatsu spent the better part of an hour moving up the mountains themselves, picking his way across the jagged outcroppings. He’d paid a good deal of attention to the markings they’d already come across after returning to his element, and there were several tracks that indicated that a bear and her cubs had spent their summer in the area before moving on. He knew there had to be a cave nearby, and from the look of the tracks, it was long since empty. His instincts were right; above the road, he found an abandoned den, one wall covered with long scratch marks and a curtain of cobwebs hanging down from the entrance.

  Yudai looked around the cave with tightly knotted eyebrows. “Are you worried about someone finding us? I know we’re close, but this is quite the hike up from the road. I doubt anyone else’ll be able to find a place like this.”

  “You can never be too careful,” Tatsu said, but the lie came out weak. He turned away to busy himself with making a fire in case Yudai caught it.

  Outside the cave were several bushes with thick branches they could eat provided they boiled and softened the bark, along with a few handfuls of bright red berries. Together, they made a thin but filling stew.

  “You’re planning something,” Yudai said after they’d finished eating. “Why did you bring us to this cave? The side of the road would have been fine, and you know it. No one has given us a second glance.”

  Tatsu poked at the fire embers with a stick, chewing on his bottom lip until Yudai, visibly frustrated with the silence, jabbed him in the arm with his index finger.

  “What’s going on?” Yudai asked.

  “You’re not going to be able to defeat Nota without the full use of your magic.”

  Yudai’s expression darkened, but he said nothing.

  “You’re walking into your death,” Tatsu said.

  “I’m not,” Yudai insisted. “I can win even if I don’t have all my abilities.”

  “How?”

  Yudai’s mouth twisted into a scowl and he ducked his head down, picking at the bits of dirt and rock left by the summer bears.

  “There’s a way that you can get your magic back—”

  “No,” Yudai cut him off, head snapping back up. “That’s not an option.”

  Then Yudai had already reached the same conclusion. Tatsu’s mouth twisted into a rueful smile despite himself.

  “Seems like an obvious solution, doesn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t seem like anything other than a horrible idea,” Yudai replied, and his tone rose.

  “The siphon needs Nota’s blood.”

  Yudai stood suddenly, nearly tripping into the side of the fire, and put his hands over his ears like he could block the whole thing out. “Stop it. I’m not listening to this. This is stupid.”

  “Yudai, you know this is the only way you’ll be able to win.”

  Yudai stalked to the mouth of the cave and stared out at the darkness. One hand shifted from his ear to his mouth, fingers curving around his jaw as he stood motionless for several long, tense moments.

  “You brought us here to this cave because you planned this,” he said, breaking the silence. He turned to face Tatsu again. “You brought me here to drain you.”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “How long?” Yudai demanded. “How long have you been planning this? How long has this been your end goal? Is this why you came with me?”

  “Yudai.” Tatsu put his hands out, palms up in surrender. “Don’t do this. It’s only been since we made it to the pass that I knew what I had to do—”

  “What I had to do!”

  Tatsu sighed. “It’s the only way.”

  “No,” Yudai said, but all the fight seemed to go out of him. His shoulders dropped down, hunching in on themselves as his face fell down to the cradle of his hands. “Please don’t ask me to do this. Please don’t ask me to kill you.”

  “You won’t,” Tatsu said. “You don’t have to take everything.”

  “Tatsu, I can’t. I can’t do this to you. You’re the only person I’ve…” He didn’t finish, biting down on his bottom lip.

  “Don’t you think there’s a reason that I ended up here with you?” Tatsu asked. “Out of all the things that could have happened, that it was this?”

  Yudai rubbed his face, dragging his fingers down his cheeks and leaving angry red marks trailing behind. “Don’t say that. We didn’t happen for this. I refuse to believe that.”

  “I don’t want to watch you die,” Tatsu said.

  “And I don’t want to watch you die.”

  Yudai’s teeth rolled over his bottom lip until the flesh was swollen and torn. In front of Tatsu’s boots, the fire crackled and popped and blackened the still-green branches he’d fed it.

  “I trust you,” Tatsu said as gently as he could.

  Yudai shook his head. “I need time to… process this. Give me time to think.”

  “We don’t have that much time.”

  “A day,” Yudai insisted and wouldn’t meet Tatsu’s gaze. “Give me a day to make a decision.”

  They fell asleep on separate sides of the fire, and the empty space at Tatsu’s side was a keen, aching loss. He slept restlessly, waking with every noise floating in from the trees outside, and if he focused too hard on what he’d asked Yudai to do, his entire body seized in terror. He spent long stretches of time staring up at the ceiling of the cave, willing his heart to slow and the panic to ease, but none of his internal pleading seemed to matter.

  It wasn’t until Yudai got up and moved around the fire, crossing the space between them to slide down to the ground at Tatsu’s side, that the tightness in Tatsu’s chest lessened. If it was to be Tatsu’s last night, then that was how he’d like to go: curled around Yudai’s warmth with his face nuzzled into the curve of his shoulder.

  Tatsu spent the next day combing the sides of the cliffs and dipping down into the trees in a hunt, but in the end was able to catch only a small ground squirrel in his makeshift snare. As he was cleaning and smoking the few bits of meat he could glean off the creature, there was no sign of Yudai in the cave. Tatsu didn’t worry until after he’d finished, when the sun was beginning to set, and then he set out past the jagged den entrance; instead of going down towards the thicker, still-green trees lining the road, he went up. There was a small path of mostly deep-wedged boulders sturdy enough to hold weight, and he picked across them until he came to a larger, wider outcropping that curved around the side of the rock.

  He found Yudai perched on the side of the ledge with his legs dangling down over the side, a precarious seat that looked wildly unsteady.

  “The sun is going down soon,” Tatsu said, pausing a few paces behind where Yudai was sitting. “Are you going to come back inside?”

  “Maybe.”

  Tatsu shifted back against the smoother slope of the rock face behind him, further away from the drop Yudai seemed unconcerned about.

  “You’re probably right to be angry with me,” Tatsu said. “I suppose I’m not leaving you much of a choice.”

  “No,” was Yudai’s answer, though Tatsu was unsure if it was agreement or not.

  “I didn’t expect this to happen.”

  Yudai sighed then, long and deep and infinitely weary. “I know. I’m just…”

  His voice trailed off, and Tatsu waited for
a few moments before prompting, “Just what?”

  “I’m tired of this happening,” Yudai said. “I’m tired of these being my choices. I know it’s stupid to complain about it being unfair, but there’s really no other way to describe it. I just… I just want to live without these shadows hanging over my head.”

  “You’re a king. I’m not sure that you can live like that.”

  He expected an argument, but Yudai just sighed again. “Maybe you’re right.”

  When Yudai still made no effort to move, Tatsu asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “I hate you for suggesting this.” Yudai’s voice was hoarse and low. “I hate you for wanting me to do this. But most of all, I hate you for being right. This is the only way I can beat Nota.”

  “She’ll kill you otherwise.”

  “Yes,” Yudai agreed. “She will.”

  Despite the entire situation being of his own design, Tatsu’s fingers ran very cold. He thought he’d been prepared to face his potential end. He thought he’d been at peace with his choices. But faced with the reality of it, the feeling bubbling within was far different than he’d expected, a desperate sort of fear he could neither predict nor control.

  “I trust you,” Tatsu said, because it bore repeating. “You won’t hurt me if you can control it.”

  Yudai pushed himself up to his feet, toes hanging off the edge of the cliffside entirely before he took two steps backwards onto the more solid rock. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply as his throat bobbed, and then opened them again. When he met Tatsu’s eyes, his gaze was piercing.

  “Why are you offering me this?” he asked.

  “You know why.” Tatsu reached his hand out. “Come inside.”

  Yudai didn’t fight against Tatsu leading him back into the cave. He seemed to have lost his will to argue anything further. The fire was still crackling with the new branches, and Tatsu sat down on the far side of it. The den would have to do, and he was hopeful that it would keep them far enough from the road while he recovered from the aftermath. He didn’t know what the siphon would do, or what the lingering effects might be if Yudai cut it off before it consumed entirely. Perhaps there would be nothing, or perhaps…