For a moment, the silence rang loudly in Wrayan’s ears. Then Nash turned to him with a look of alarm.
“What have you done to her?” he hissed.
“Saved her neck, probably,” Wrayan told him, trying to maintain an air of confidence he didn’t really feel. Despite the fact Marla was temporarily silenced, he wasn’t sure what he’d done to make it happen and really had no idea how to undo it. He turned on Nash, covering his uncertainty with impatience. “And your neck, too, incidentally. What were you thinking, Nash?”
“We were dancing and she said she wanted some air,” Nash explained, full of wounded innocence. “How was I supposed to know she wanted to lure me down here and beg me to save her from an unwanted marriage?”
“Oh, like you didn’t notice it’s the only thing everyone has been talking about in Greenharbour for the past week?”
“Will she be all right?” he asked, peering at Marla’s frozen form in the gloom. “She doesn’t appear to be breathing.”
“She’ll be fine. Why don’t you go and do something useful like find her nurse. Or help me get her back to her rooms before she can do anything else to harm the negotiations. Or herself.”
“Are you sure she’ll be all right?”
“Yes! Now go!”
Nash finally did as Wrayan asked and fled the wharf, heading for the palace at a run. Wrayan stared at Marla for a moment, fascinated by her pose, frozen halfway between words, her hands raised, mouth open, eyes blazing with indignation, caught between one moment and the next . . .
Then he let out a remorseful sigh and sent a thin thread of thought towards his master.
Kagan, he thought, with the mental equivalent of a heavy sigh. I’m afraid we have a problem . . .
chapter 12
D
ear gods, Wrayan! What have you done?”
Kagan straightened up and stared across the bed at his apprentice who was flanked by Nash Hawksword and Marla’s nurse, Lirena. They all looked confused, with the exception of Wrayan who managed to add guilt and a touch of remorse into his rather bemused expression.
Marla Wolfblade lay on the bed of her royal apartment, limp and unmoving, bathed in the warm pink light of the coming morning which streamed through the east-facing windows. Were it not for her warm flesh and healthy colour, Kagan might have pronounced her dead.
“I just . . . waved my arm,” Wrayan told him hesitantly.
“You just waved your arm? Gods, don’t even think of jumping up and down!”
“What’s wrong with her?” Lirena demanded. “Should I fetch the High Prince?”
“No!” Kagan ordered. “Nobody needs to know about this. Marla will be fine.”
“But you don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Lirena accused, hands on her hips. “Do you?”
“She’s just caught in a spell, that’s all.”
“What sort of spell?”
“The sort that does this to you, obviously,” Kagan snapped at the old nurse.
“You’re a fraud, old man. You have no idea what sort of spell she’s under,” Lirena concluded in disgust. “You’re just guessing.”
“Perhaps you could go and find some warm compresses, my lady?” Kagan suggested. “It might help revive her.”
Lirena looked reluctant to leave her mistress’s side, but the chance to be doing something even remotely useful was tempting. She hesitated for a long moment before nodding and stalking off towards the door, muttering about the dangers of playing with magic and interfering in something that should have remained the province of the gods.
“Do you think the compresses will help?” Nash asked anxiously as Lirena slammed the door behind her.
“I have no idea,” Kagan shrugged. “But they’ll keep Lirena occupied for a time. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Nash helped me carry Marla up here,” Wrayan explained.
“Does anybody in the palace not know about this?” He didn’t even want to think about the trouble ahead if someone had witnessed Wrayan and Nash carrying the unconscious princess to her room.
“We were careful,” Wrayan insisted. “Nobody saw us.”
“And you have no idea what you did?”
Wrayan shook his head helplessly. “It all happened so quickly. Marla was getting all worked up about ruining her reputation and she was shouting and—”
“Why was she shouting about ruining her reputation?” Kagan cut in anxiously. Dear gods, could this get any worse?
“Well, after she asked Nash to save her from Hablet—”
“Why was she asking you to save her from Hablet?” Kagan demanded of the young lord. “More to the point, what were you doing down on the wharf alone with the High Prince’s sister in the first place?” He quite liked Nash, but trouble seemed to follow him around like a faithful puppy. Not serious trouble as a rule; more the trouble one usually attributed to youthful high spirits than to deliberate malice, but it was still a matter for concern. Particularly when it left members of the High Prince’s family in a catatonic state.
“She wanted some air,” Nash told him, wounded by what Kagan was implying. “And we weren’t alone. Wrayan was there.”
“And what were you doing on the wharf?” he demanded of his apprentice. “I left you watching over Lecter Turon.”
“He’d retired for the evening. And Hablet had gone to bed, too. Anyway, you must have known I was there. That’s where your prankster found me.”
“What prankster?”
“That boy you had waiting for me down there claiming he was a god. The one you arranged to convince me I really am descended from the Harshini.”
“For pity’s sake!” Kagan exploded. “You just waved your arm and look what happened. I don’t need to hire pranksters to convince you of what you are! What I should be doing is hiring an assassin to have you taken out, you idiot boy, before you do any more damage!”
“But I didn’t mean to hurt her!”
“Is Wrayan a Harshini?” Nash asked, suddenly more interested in that little snippet than the fate of the princess.
“No!” the young sorcerer declared emphatically.
“He’s apparently got some Harshini blood in him,” Kagan admitted, paying no attention to Wrayan’s denial. “Not enough to be called Harshini, but enough to be an issue. Enough to do something like this.”
“Who’d have guessed,” Nash said, thoughtfully.
“Get that look off your face, young man.”
“What?”
“Only three people in the world know about my suspicions—you, me and Wrayan. If I hear so much as a whisper back from anybody else about it, I’ll cast a spell on you, Nashan Hawksword, that makes only women over eighty irresistible to you and you’ll spend the rest of your days salivating over sagging breasts that hang somewhere down around the knees.”
Despite the fact he had no hope of ever performing such a feat, Kagan delivered the threat with sufficient effect that Nash seemed quite sure he meant it.
“I’ll take the secret to my grave,” Nashan hurried to assure him. “I promise.”
“You’d better,” Kagan snarled, then turned his attention back to Wrayan.
“I’m not Harshini, Kagan,” Wrayan sighed. It was perhaps the ten-thousandth time he’d said that to his master since becoming an apprentice sorcerer. Kagan had been meaning to tell him that repeating a thing didn’t make it a fact.
“Of course you are,” Kagan said.
“If I was, Kagan,” Wrayan pointed out. “I’d be able to do a lot more than I can.”
“Do a lot more?” Kagan repeated, with a shake of his head. “You just waved your arm and look what happened to the princess!”
“Um . . . I may not be an expert on anything magical,” Nash ventured cautiously. “But . . . I mean . . . how would you know what a Harshini is, Kagan? Unless you count the rumours that keep cropping up about the Halfbreed still being around, there hasn’t been a Harshini seen or heard of in a hundred and fifty years or more.”
“Ex
actly!” Wrayan agreed. “When did you ever meet a Harshini to make a comparison?”
Kagan knew it wasn’t that Wrayan minded being a sorcerer, even an apprentice one, but he didn’t want to be earmarked as Kagan’s successor. In this city, where the Assassins’ Guild was so powerful it openly conducted business in its own headquarters barely five hundred feet from the entrance to the High Prince’s palace, it was never a good idea to be marked for greatness too early in life. Such notoriety inevitably meant one had only a small chance of living long enough to fulfil one’s destiny. Still, he had one surprise up his sleeve.
Kagan smiled smugly at the two young men. “I’ve met Brakandaran.”
Wrayan eyed his master sceptically. “Really?”
“Truly.”
“You never did,” Nash scoffed.
“I swear it’s true,” Kagan insisted. “It was on Marla’s seventh birthday.”
“How did you meet him, then?”
“Marla’s father was tied up with one of his many little wars so he sent me in his place to deliver her birthday present. Brakandaran was visiting High-castle at the same time.”
“Brakandaran the Halfbreed was a guest at Highcastle,” Nash repeated, shaking his head. “Just popped in for a visit, did he?”
“He wasn’t there openly,” Kagan explained, a little exasperated that both Nash and Wrayan refused to believe him. “He was posing as an itinerant farm worker.”
“Then how do you know it was Brakandaran?”
“Garel’s present to his daughter was a sorcerer-bred stallion,” Kagan explained. “A stupid present for a seven-year-old girl, but then the late High Prince was never renowned for his wisdom—”
“Bit like the current one, actually,” Nash cut in.
Kagan glared at him before he continued. “It was a devilish beast. Nobody had a chance of controlling it, certainly not a girl who’d just mastered riding her pony. But she insisted on riding him, and of course he bolted. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so helpless. We just stood there and watched as the High Prince’s only daughter clung to the saddle, screaming at the top of her lungs, while the horse headed at a dead gallop towards the fence line and the cliff beyond it. Then out of nowhere this farmhand appeared and stepped in the path of the beast. I felt his power, Wrayan, even as far away as I was. I could actually feel it. For a man with no real talent of his own, that’s saying something, let me tell you. It sent a chill down my spine. The horse suddenly slowed, and then stopped. Then it turned around and followed this stranger back to the stables, meek as a lamb.”
“Did he say anything?” Wrayan asked incredulously.
“Not much. He refused all offers to reward him for saving the princess. Just helped her out of the saddle, patted her on the head and told her she was a brave girl, and simply walked away.”
“Didn’t you go after him?”
“Of course I did.”
“And . . . ?”
“I begged him to tell me who he was. Told him I’d felt him drawing Harshini magic. He laughed at me and told me I was imagining things. So I pointed out that I was High Arrion of the Sorcerers’ Collective and that I wasn’t imagining anything; that I’d been around magic long enough to know it for what it was and that everyone could feel him touching the source from halfway across the paddock, I was simply the only one who knew it for what it was. I was awestruck by the idea, as you can imagine. It was the first time in my life I’d felt true magic at work. I think I was on my knees by then. At that point he just smiled and shrugged, told me to stop grovelling and asked me to keep the news that I’d just met a Harshini to myself.”
“Did he say anything else?” Nash asked.
“When I called him ‘Divine One’ he told me he wasn’t and that I should simply call him Brak.”
“And you never said anything about meeting him? To anyone?”
“I promised him I wouldn’t.”
“So why are you telling us?”
“Because I’ve felt the touch of a true Harshini, Wrayan Lightfinger. Don’t ask me how it happened, or how far back in your ancestry it goes, but somehow, a pickpocket’s son from the slums of Krakandar has Harshini blood in him. It’s more than being an Innate. You can actually touch the source.”
Wrayan shook his head. “That’s absurd. And even if it was true, how come you’ve never mentioned meeting Brakandaran before now?”
“Because I don’t think it ever really occurred to me what makes you so different. Not until you waved your arm and froze the High Prince’s sister.”
“It’s not possible, Kagan.”
“On the contrary, my boy. What was your father? A thief?”
“A pickpocket,” Wrayan corrected. “There’s quite a difference.”
Kagan shrugged. “Well, I don’t see the distinction myself. But don’t you see? With your rather dubious ancestry, it’s more than just possible. Nash can tell you his family history for the past thousand years. How far back can you trace your family? One generation? Two at a pinch? You’ve no idea of the blood running in your veins.”
“There was a time when halfbreeds were common enough,” Nash reminded Wrayan, obviously warming to the idea of his friend being Harshini. “Until the Sisterhood wiped them out, at any rate.”
“Exactly!” Kagan declared. “It’s not hard to imagine a halfbreed spending the night with a Krakandar whore who went on to become your great-great-grandmother, or something.”
“So now you’re calling my grandmother a whore?”
“She was, wasn’t she?”
“Well . . . yes . . . but that’s not a very nice thing to say, Kagan. And it doesn’t actually help us much.”
Kagan’s shoulders slumped in agreement. The lad was right. Knowing it was probably Harshini magic that had caused Marla’s state wasn’t a great deal of help in solving their dilemma. “Can you remember nothing of what you did?”
“I recall wishing she would stop. I just wanted her to quiet down.” Wrayan shrugged. “I just remember thinking if only she’d stop. And then she did.”
“So why can’t you undo it by waving your arm and thinking if only she’d start up again?” Nash asked.
Kagan shook his head in despair. “Out!”
“Don’t you need my help?”
“Not unless you’ve become a magician in the last hour. Or can come up with a better suggestion than that.”
“Actually, he might be right,” Wrayan suggested. “Something like that might just undo the spell.”
“It might not, either,” Kagan warned. “And I’d rather you didn’t experiment with your uncontrollable powers on the High Prince’s only sister.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“Nothing, for the time being,” Kagan announced. “For all we know, this is simply temporary and it will wear off on its own in a few hours.”
“And if it isn’t temporary?” Wrayan asked nervously.
“Then we scour the libraries, Wrayan,” Kagan told him. “If what you’ve done is a result of using Harshini power, perhaps there’s something, somewhere, that explains how this works.”
“I’m truly sorry, Kagan. I never meant any harm.”
“I know.” The High Arrion sat down wearily on the bed and took Marla’s limp hand in his. There was no pulse at her wrist, but the flesh was warm and sprang back readily when pressed. She was definitely alive, but nobody had been confronted with genuine Harshini magic for more than a hundred years. Not unless you counted his own encounter with Brakandaran the Half-breed. But that was nearly nine years ago and there was little chance of Lord Brakandaran magically appearing to save the day this time.
Kagan was at a loss. Nobody remained alive—certainly nobody Kagan could contact—who could explain what had happened to Marla. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it would take to restore her.
“Is there anything I can do?” Wrayan asked.
“You could try praying, Wrayan,” Kagan suggested heavily. “You could pray.”
chapter 13
O
ne of the advantages of being an Innate sorcerer was the ability to go without sleep for extended periods of time. Alija wasn’t sure why this was so. She just knew that simply reaching for the source revitalised her and allowed her to carry on as if she’d had a full night’s sleep. It was frustrating, though. There was so much more she should have been able to do, but with the Harshini gone, there was nobody left to teach her.
Innates had always been rare, even when the Harshini were still around. Before Alija, the last recorded Innate discovered by the Collective was over sixty years ago. And now there were two of them, if you believed the rumours about Wrayan Lightfinger. That meant there were at least two people in the Sorcerers’ Collective who could actually wield real magic. The rest of them got by working spells (which were unsuccessful, often as not) and dabbling in politics, which was the reason most sorcerers gravitated towards the Collective.
Power was power, whatever the source.
Alija considered them all abominations. They were not what the Harshini wanted, not what the Harshini intended. Not the reason the Collective existed.
Back in the old days, before the Sisters of the Blade in Medalon turned on the Harshini and effectively eradicated them, the Collective had been a centre of learning. Magical learning. The magic wielded by the Sorcerers’ Collective had been real magic in those days, not the tricks and illusions they used now. The High Arrion had been chosen for his or her strength, not family connections. Time had robbed Alija of the opportunity to reach her full potential. She was born a couple of hundred years too late.
But that wasn’t going to stop her fulfilling what she saw as her mission in life. She would see the Collective restored to its former power. She intended to make certain future generations of sorcerers were chosen because of their ability, not their political ambition. And she was going to ensure Hythria remained a strong and independent nation, a situation unlikely to occur while that idiot Lernen Wolfblade was High Prince. She was a Patriot, after all.
Alija walked to the window and looked down over the bay. The palace was visible across the harbour, the last of the party lights being put out by the slaves as dawn approached. They could have stayed at the palace, but Alija preferred their townhouse. It was more private. She trusted the slaves here.
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