The Reluctant Mage

by Karen Miller

  “No, you won’t,” said the swordmaster, and snapped the blade across his thigh.

  “Tavin!”

  “A shoddy swordsmith made that, he did,” said Tavin, eyeing the pieces of blade with disgust. “Child’s sword or not, it needed better tempering.”

  “I’ll temper you!” he retorted. “That blade was mine.”

  “And tempted, I was, to break it in half on your arse,” said the swordmaster. “Treat that horse of yours if it was injured the way you’re treating your arm, would you?”

  The man deserved his own blading. “Decide for myself how hard to work, I can! It’s not for you to tell me, Tavin.”

  Tavin’s face gentled. “And the Eastern Vale’s not yours for the blaming, Ewen. Padrig’s his own man. You didn’t trip him. He stumbled by himself.”

  “You’re not a brother, Tavin,” he said, teeth gritted. “You don’t understand.”

  Tavin held out both pieces of the broken sword. “I understand, son. But loving can’t mean saving. Some lessons get learned the hard way, they do.”

  And some should never be taught at all, Ewen thought.

  But he couldn’t say that out loud. Tavin was the king’s man and so was he. Loyalty to the crown came first, even before family.

  “Did you come here just to break my sword?” he said, taking back the pieces. “Or was there something useful you had for me?”

  “I came to see how you’re faring, I did,” said Tavin. “I’m barracks busy and it’s in the Hall you are, most days, polishing the king’s seat and scrawling your name on the bits of parchment that secretary shoves under your nose.”

  He made a small, impatient sound. “Don’t fault Clovis I’m not haunting the barracks. The king left a crown on my head, Tavin. It’s heavy.”

  “I know, boy,” said Tavin. Then he sighed again. “But I’m your swordmaster. Lean on me a bit, you could.”

  “I do,” he said, trying to smile. “Every choice I make, that’s your voice whispering in my ear.”

  “Not the king’s?” said Tavin, quiet.

  He felt his face heat. “And the king’s.”

  “Then if my voice weighs as much as the crown, boy, listen when I tell you a king needs two good arms to rule,” said Tavin, his face no longer gentle. “And it’s ruining your right arm, you are, not mixing rest with stabbing sand men!”

  The fire in his broken and cracked bones had burned out. Only a smoky discomfort remained. “It’s not so bad, Tav. I’ve got potions I’m swallowing.”

  “Ask the goodwife for a potion to put addled wits to right!” Tav retorted. “That’ll be a potion worth swallowing, that will.”

  Ewen dragged his left hand down his face, feeling the rasp of stubble he’d waited to scrape off. “I have to push myself, Tavin. You know it. Any moment of the day or night a scout could come riding, or a pigeon could return to its loft. One of your barracks men could stagger home with a tale. Any moment, the king could need me.” He dropped his broken sword to the tiltyard’s grass and held his mended arm out straight, willing it steady. “He’ll need me ready to fight for Vharne and the Vale, Tav, with my left hand and my right. I failed him with Padrig. I can’t fail him again.”

  This time it was Tavin who cursed. Then he punched the battered mannikin and turned away, heavy shoulders hunched to his ears. Cutting through the morning’s chilly silence, familiar barracks sounds: horses whickering, men shouting, dogs barking and wooden cartwheels clattering over cobbles.

  “The queen shouldn’t have died, Ewen,” he said at last, grief cracking his voice. “The king would know his sons better if his queen hadn’t died.”

  Lowering his arm, he felt his throat tighten. “It wasn’t that long ago, Tav. Padrig and I were years out of swaddle-cloths when we lost her.”

  “It was long enough,” said Tavin, turning back. “You needed him, boy, and he wasn’t to be found.”

  “Tavin—” He raised a warning hand. “It’s thin ice, this is. Let’s skate somewhere else.”

  The scar across Tavin’s weathered face tightened with the clenching of his jaw. “I’ll skate where I please. I’m old, and I’ve earned it. How can I do right by you and hold my tongue? If you’re wrong, boy, I have to tell you. I have to slap your skinny arse.”

  “You do that, Swordmaster,” he said, after a long, hard-breathing pause. “That’s what you do.”

  Tavin closed on him, took hold of his right wrist and pushed back his long woollen sleeve to the elbow. Purposeful fingers probed along the muscles of his forearm, testing the mettle of the mended bones beneath the skin. He tried hard not to wince.

  “When it was splinted and bound I only used my left arm,” he said. “You were right. It needed strengthening. But Tav—”

  Tavin pulled his sleeve down and let go. Beneath his pinched brows his eyes were searching and intent. “Am I your swordmaster, Ewen? Do you listen to me?”

  “Do I—do you listen, Tavin? I just said—”

  With a hiss, Tavin fisted a handful of his shirt and tugged him close. “A week, you’ll rest it. A broken arm is more than knit bones, it is. It’s not your friend Tav who tells you this, Ewen. This is the swordmaster, this is, with the power to ban you from barracks if you disobey.”

  He blinked. “You’d ban me?”

  “Son…” With a twisted smile, Tavin released his shirt and lightly slapped his stubbled cheek. “What do you think?”

  I think you’re brother and father and best friend to me.

  Stooping, he picked up the two halves of his capriciously broken sword. “I think you owe me a new blade.”

  Tavin laughed, and led the way out of the tiltyard.

  A full day in the Hall followed his barracks bath and breakfast. To start with it was reading the missives ridden to the castle by messengers from all over the Vale and the scattered villages beyond, handed to him by the king’s secretary, Clovis. A meticulous man, he was, with his brain stuffed full of names and faces and the king’s decisions made eleven years before. And once the reading was done with, Clovis wrote down his answers and he signed them and pressed the king’s seal into a blob of soft blue wax.

  That took five hours, and then he ate a swift, lonely lunch.

  After lunch it was time to meet with the petitioners come to the castle to have their grievances and requests heard in person. Clovis sat with him for that too, whispering in his ear when whispering was warranted.

  Spirit’s grace, he’d have been lost without Clovis.

  Every man and woman he saw thought he could and would give them what they wanted. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he didn’t. He was Prince Ewen, not King Murdo, and he went his own way. Whatever his decision, Clovis faithfully recorded it in the enormous leather-and-brass-bound book kept for these matters. The secretary wrote with a slow, careful hand, and each petitioner had to initial the entry to show they understood what they had or hadn’t received. It was altogether sobering, what happened in this Hall.

  When the king dies, I’ll belong here for good.

  And that thought was more than sobering. Chilled him, it did.

  Spirit, let the king live a long time. I’d not swap the barracks and hard riding for my arse in this chair while I’m still a young man.

  So many troubles in the Vale, and in Vharne. Some of them were petty. Some broke his heart. A child drowned in a well left uncovered by some careless villager. A stray dog turned goat-worrier and who was going to pay? Hens ridden down by a heedless scout. The king would pay for that. The village brewer who sampled too much of his brew. Couldn’t the king stop him from singing? His braying dried up the cows’ milk and set babbies to howls.

  Problem after problem, all his to solve.

  Though he was speaking for his father, it was his mother he most thought of. Her commonsense wisdom that he remembered and passed along. Beyond the Hall’s unshuttered windows the afternoon slid through his fingers, slippery as Shyvie’s bath house soap. The light was starting to fade when Clovis checked his li
st of names put down for this day’s Hall.

  “One last petitioner, Highness,” he murmured discreetly. “A bridleway dispute in the village of—”

  And then the Hall’s heavy doors burst open and Tavin blundered in, his eyes wild with fear and grief. Two barracks men came close behind him—it was Ren and Evon—and they were holding a third man between them. Dressed in filthy, ragged clothes, hair darkened with dirt, his head lolled to his chest, hidden. His hands were bound before him and his bare and bloodied feet dragged across the Hall’s flagstoned floor.

  Ignoring the secretary’s shocked gasp, Ewen leapt down from the king’s seat. “Tavin? What’s this? Who is he? A wanderer? Is this a blighted man in the High Vale? Tavin, give me an answer!”

  There were tears in the swordmaster’s eyes. “Ewen. Boy. Best you sit down again, it is. Best you—”

  And then he didn’t need Tavin’s answer, because the captive man looked up, revealing a dirty, bruised face and bloodshot eyes of pale blue.

  Padrig.

  But that wasn’t possible. Padrig rode with the king, he was weeks and weeks away riding the rough country along the borders. He was hunting blighted men crossing into Vharne from Manemli and Ranoush.

  That’s not Padrig. It can’t be.

  “Ewen,” said the swordmaster, his voice gravelly with distress. “It’s your brother. Boy, I tell you, best you sit down.”

  He felt his eyes narrow, even as his heart threatened to break his ribs. “It’s not ‘boy’ here, Swordmaster. In this Hall I’m the king. Ren—Evon—take your hands off the prince. And cut his bindings! He’s not a criminal.”

  The barracks men looked to Tavin.

  “Highness, they can’t do that,” said Tavin, his voice still rough. “He’s not safe.”

  “Not safe?” he echoed. “Are you mad, Tavin? It’s Padrig.” Pulling his dagger from its sheath on his belt, he leapt the distance to the barracks men and his little brother. Not so little these days, almost a man full-grown he was, and robustly muscled. Or he had been. He’d been muscled when he rode from the Vale with the king. But now… “Let him go, I said. Are you listening? Give him to me!”

  Ren and Evon had to obey him. In this Hall he was the king. As they let go and stepped aside, he whipped his blade through the rope knotted around Padrig’s chafed wrists.

  “Padrig!” he said, sinking to the cold floor with this shrunken man, his little brother, held tight in his arms. “Padrig, look at me. Here I am. It’s Ewen, Padrig. Look at me. Come on. Don’t say you’re still angry. Don’t be angry, Padrig, please.”

  But Padrig wouldn’t talk to him. He wouldn’t look at him. He was like the mannikin in the tiltyard, a human shape filled with sand.

  Ewen shook him. “Padrig!”

  Now Tavin was kneeling beside him, one strong hand on his shoulder. He could scarcely feel it. “Highness, your brother’s brain-rotted. For all our sakes, have a care.”

  He couldn’t see anything. His eyes were full of tears. Padrig. “No, he’s not, Tavin. Something else has happened, it has.”

  “Ewen—”

  “He’s not rotted!”

  From the corner of his eye he saw Ren and Evon flinch, saw Clovis startle and Tavin bow his head. He ignored all of them. Fools. What did they know?

  “Who found him, Tav? Ren and Evon?”

  “That’s right,” said the swordmaster. “Halfway between our northern borders and the Vale.”

  “No sign of the king?”

  “None.”

  And what did that mean? Was their father dead? “We must ride out to find him, Swordmaster.”

  “Highness, we will. Ewen—”

  Ignoring Tavin, he dropped his dagger to the flagstones and chafed Padrig’s cold, dry hands. “Come on, you little snot. I’m talking to you. It’s not polite to ignore your big brother. What are you doing back here on your lonesome? Where’s the king? Where are our cousins, and the barracks men who rode out with you? Padrig? Padrig, look at me!”

  Pillowed on his chest, Padrig’s head rolled. Then his crusted eyelids lifted. His eyes, their mother’s eyes, were cloudy in their depths. His fleshless face was stubbled, his rasping breath foul.

  “And in the last days there was a blood-red sun rising,” he whispered. “The sundered parts all came together and oh there was a joining and the blighted world rejoiced.”

  “See?” said Tavin, his voice breaking. “Told you, I did. Brain-rotted. Not a word of sense out of him. Ewen—son—”

  He knew what Tavin wanted to say. “Don’t,” he snapped. “You eat those words, Swordmaster. This is my brother.”

  Tavin loosened the grip on his shoulder and shifted until their eyes met. “This was your brother, Ewen, but it’s a carcass now. It’s wearing his face but Padrig is gone, he is. Boy, you know what happens next. You know what’s to become of him. You know what’s the right and merciful thing to do.”

  No. No. “Padrig,” he said, and pressed his hand to his brother’s cheek. “Padrig, it’s me. It’s Ewen. Please, Padrig. Talk sense to me. Prove our grizzled swordmaster wrong.”

  Padrig’s eyes rolled like a bull’s. When he was a little boy he used to make faces to frighten the servants. Here now was a face to frighten men. To frighten kings and older brothers. To break them down to tears.

  “Bow down,” said Padrig, his cracked and bloodied lips peeling back from his teeth. “Kneel. Bow down. Don’t you know who is coming? Don’t you know who calls? You weak fools. Bow down.”

  “No, no, no, don’t say that!” he begged, and smoothed the strands of filthy hair out of Padrig’s mad eyes. “Padrig, don’t talk like that. You’ll give folk the wrong idea, you will. Listen to me. Hear my voice. You’re in the Vale. You’re in the Hall. This is me holding you. Padrig, please—”

  “Ewen,” said Tavin, as Clovis and the barracks men retreated, their fear clotting the Hall’s air and dimming its light. “He can’t hear you. There’s no understanding in him. Not any more.”

  “No!” he shouted, glaring. “I don’t believe that. He needs rest, he needs a goodwife. Clovis, send for the—”

  “It’s too late for potions!” Tavin shouted back. Leaning forward he ripped open Padrig’s tattered coat and shirt, baring his chest. “Look! He’s half-gone already!”

  The flesh of Padrig’s torso was a mass of rotting pulp and pus. Seeing it, Ewen choked.

  Spirit, no. Please, no.

  But there was no point in praying. Tavin was right. It was too late.

  Padrig.

  Easing his right arm free of his brother, he held out his hand. Tavin plucked the fallen dagger from the flagstones, then hesitated.

  “Ewen… let me.”

  He shook his head. “No. He’s my brother.”

  “And that’s why I should—”

  “I said no.”

  Silenced, Tavin laid the slender dagger’s hilt across his palm. The weight of it made his mended bones ache. It was a good blade. A sharp blade. His brother shouldn’t feel a thing.

  I have to do this. I have to. Padrig’s already dead.

  And it could be worse. It could be. There could be five men with cudgels.

  Sick with rage and grief and guilt, he pricked the dagger’s point between his brother’s jutting ribs and pushed. The hilt thudded home. Padrig died without a sound.

  And so it’s punished, I am, for that man Jeyk in the Eastern Vale.

  Clovis started weeping.

  Heedless of danger, Ewen touched his fingertips to the thread of blood on Padrig’s lips. “You know what to do now, Tavin. Do it. The king’s lost, he is. We have to find him.”

  “Highness,” said Tavin, his voice empty, and rose mountainous to his feet.

  Mercifully they left him, Tavin and Clovis and the two barracks men. He sat on the Hall’s cold flagstoned floor holding his brother, staring at Padrig’s still face until the day died and the light with it, and everything was dark.

  At sunrise he and Tavin burned Padrig in the pit
, where every ruler of Vharne and his family had been burned since the first days of their ancient land. When it was done, the leaping flames died down to embers, all but a fistful of Padrig’s ashes were scooped into the beautiful blue ceramic jar, made for him the day of his birth, and sealed inside it with scented white beeswax. That left-behind fistful of ash was mixed with the fistfuls of every other man, woman and child that had ever been given to the fire. Mixed with their mother, who had died too young. Those ashes stayed in the pit, for memory.

  It was only the two of them. Him and Tavin. A burning was private, even for a king’s son.

  The pit was sited on top of the Vale’s highest hill. It had a roof but no walls, and the cold breeze playing beneath it blew away the scented smoke of Padrig’s fire. Holding the beautiful death jar, still feeling his brother’s dead weight in his arms, Ewen stared at the new day’s pale, flooding light. Watched as it gilded the scattered cottages, the grazing farm horses, and the bold stone castle with its barracks and tiltyard and bath house and stables and barns. Gilded the Vale folk stirred out of bed early, and toiling.

  The king’s folk, they are. My folk ’til he’s found. If he’s found. And if he’s not…

  Beside him, Tavin sighed. “You had a bad night, boy.”

  “I killed my brother, Swordmaster. What kind of a night should I have had, do you say?”

  Tavin gave him a hard look, but held his tongue on that. “You’re feeling well enough?”

  “I’m not blighted, Tav, if that’s where you’re dangling.”

  Another hard look. “Sure of it, are you?”

  “Tav—” Ewen schooled himself. “He was halfway rotted. His chance to blight me was long past.”

  “Ha,” Tavin grunted. “Most like. But you’ll not blame me for being cautious, you won’t.”

  No, he wouldn’t. But he was done talking of Padrig.

  “So, now we ride to find the king,” said Tavin, seeing it. “Who will you leave behind to sit in the king’s seat? You’ve a handful to choose from, I say. Though best not your cousin.”

  “You’ve never warmed to Ivyn,” he said. “When will you confide the reason?”

  “Need to confide for not liking a man, do I?”