Minor Mage

by T. Kingfisher

  Oliver felt heat rush to his cheeks. His heart pounded in his ears so loudly that for a moment he did not realize that it wasn’t just his heart, it was…

  Footsteps.

  The armadillo jumped up and leapt into the ferns. “Bandits!”

  Oliver caught a flash through the trees.

  Starlight.

  Off a knife.

  It’s Bill, oh god, it’s Bill, he’s going to see me, I can’t possibly run the only reason he hasn’t seen me is because I haven’t moved but he’s going to walk into this clearing and I’ll be sitting right here but if I run he’ll hear me—

  “Come on!” hissed the armadillo. “Move, move, move!”

  And then Oliver had an idea.

  His spellbook was gone, but he had gone over the invisibility spell a hundred times. He could have recited it in his sleep.

  He closed his eyes.

  “Oh no—!” said the armadillo. “Damnit, Oliver—”

  He tuned out his familiar, his surroundings, his fear. Bill was walking into the clearing, had probably already seen him, but that didn’t matter either.

  Concentrate. Concentrate. It hasn’t worked before, but it didn’t need to. It matters now. Just like the bar in the ghul’s barn. You can do magic when it counts.

  He said the words of the spell.

  He could feel the power around him, rising up out of the ground like mist. He could feel it wash over his skin, cool against his cheekbones and the backs of his hands.

  “Arista… pashtuk… n’gaah…”

  There were running footsteps and bellowing and the armadillo moaning, but none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was the power.

  Oliver spoke the last word. The power crackled through him and was gone. He felt scorched and purified. The air smelled of ozone.

  This must be what it feels like to be a real wizard…

  He opened his eyes.

  Bill was running towards him, his knife upraised. Oliver smiled. He was invisible. He had only to step aside and Bill would run right past him.

  He stepped to one side and… Bill locked eyes with him.

  Why can he see me?

  The only reason that he didn’t die at that moment was because the armadillo shot out of the bushes and in between Bill’s feet. The bandit went down with a roar. The armadillo yelped, rolled into a ball, and bounced several feet before coming to his feet.

  “…I’m not invisible?” said Oliver.

  “You’re going to be dead in a minute!” screamed the armadillo. “Now run!”

  Oliver ran.

  It took Bill a few minutes to get after him. Oliver could hear him limping through the trees. Apparently, he’d landed badly, or he was still hurt from the pig’s attack. He was still terrifyingly quick, though.

  “Gonna get you, rat!” he yelled, plowing through the undergrowth. “Gonna get you for what you did to the chief!”

  Even in full flight, Oliver found himself thinking What? I didn’t do anything to the chief! I didn’t even drug their food! It was all the hogs, not me!

  Bill did not seem interested in the finer points of logical debate.

  The armadillo had vanished. He couldn’t keep up with the pace. Oliver knew he’d catch up again, but in the meantime he had no idea where he was going and it was only a matter of time before he put his foot in a gopher hole in the dark, and why hadn’t the spell worked?

  I’m an idiot.

  He gritted his teeth. The armadillo had just told him he couldn’t do the invisibility spell.

  I didn’t want to admit that I was that bad at magic.

  Except… the armadillo had never told him he was bad at magic. His familiar had just told him to do the things he was good at.

  I’m definitely an idiot.

  And I’m still being an idiot. I don’t deserve to call myself a wizard.

  There was a tree ahead with an invitingly climbable trunk. Oliver didn’t even stop his run. He got a foot on the trunk and went up it to the second set of branches.

  Bill was a dozen steps behind him. He reached the base of the tree and grabbed for a low branch. His gold tooth glinted.

  “Got you now!”

  “Sure,” said Oliver.

  Bill lifted a foot to put on the trunk and found that his bootlaces were tied together.

  He stared at his feet in absolute bafflement, then let out a roar. Oliver took advantage of the delay to climb up to the next branch.

  I go high enough, and the branches won’t take his weight. Of course, that might not stop him…

  Bill chopped through his shoelaces with his knife, put his knife between his teeth, and put a foot on the trunk again.

  Oliver was used to working with longer shoelaces, but laces were laces. In the split second that Bill’s left foot passed within an inch or two of his right, his severed bootlaces reached out like snakes and knotted around one another.

  There was a scream of rage from the base of the tree.

  “If you leave, I’ll let you go quietly!” shouted Oliver, with bravado he didn’t feel.

  He leaned over. Bill was getting up again. He had fallen down, thus revealing the primary flaw with keeping a knife in your teeth. The lower half of his face was a mask of blood.

  Bill tore his shoes off and began climbing in bare feet. He clenched the knife in his teeth again, though.

  Proving, I suppose, that learning from your mistakes is something that happens to other people…

  Oliver considered his options. Two spells to work with.

  He tried the shoelaces again. The laces of Bill’s jerkin knotted across the chest, but the bandit didn’t seem to notice.

  Oliver took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. “Pushme… pullme…”

  The target was obvious.

  The knife in Bill’s teeth began to shake and rattle violently. There was no finesse required. Oliver just banged on the blade with his invisible “foot” until Bill stopped climbing and wrenched the knife loose.

  “Don’t matter!” the bandit shouted. “Don’t matter! I’ll kill you with my bare hands, you freakish little wizard-rat!”

  He stabbed the knife into the tree-trunk and grabbed for the next branch. He was less than five feet from Oliver now.

  Oliver transferred his magical attention to the branch and began stomping on it. It was almost as heavy as the bar on the barn door had been, but at least he could see it, and with his hands on the bark, he felt as if he were touching it as well.

  Bill clutched at the shaking branch and shook himself. “Don’t… matter…” he panted.

  He’s still climbing. My god, what does it take to stop him?

  The bandit grabbed for Oliver’s branch. He slipped several times, but at last got a handhold.

  Oliver abandoned magic in favor of stomping on Bill’s fingers several times, very hard.

  Bill snarled and got his other hand up on the branch.

  He grabbed for Oliver’s trouser leg, caught a handful of fabric and pulled. Oliver tore free and grabbed for the tree trunk to steady himself.

  He doesn’t have to grab me; he just has to pull me off! At this height, I’ll splash when I hit the ground!

  “Pushme!” yelled Oliver desperately, trying to get around the other side of the tree trunk. “Pushme—pullme—!”

  He threw magic at Bill frantically, trying to repel him, trying to slow him—something! Down on the ground, the bandit’s discarded shoelaces had to be tied up in a knot the size of a fist.

  Bill got all the way onto the branch. He swung a fist at Oliver.

  The blow missed, but Oliver felt the air whistle by his ear as he ducked.

  The power was rising again, as it had before, when he tried to become invisible—but this time, Oliver didn’t wait to feel it washing over him. He grabbed at it with his mind.

  It was almost exactly like knocking a glass over with your elbow and grabbing for it before it hit the floor—except that it was mostly inside his head.


  Shoelaces! he thought frantically.

  There was a muffled cry from the other side of the trunk.

  Oliver leaned over, ready to throw himself downward and hope to catch a branch on the way.

  Bill’s hair had come alive.

  The thick, greasy locks had tied themselves together. Bill might not have noticed that—it probably wasn’t the first mat in his hair—but the tangles were also tied to his beard and the laces on his jerkin.

  As Oliver watched, Bill’s jerkin began to pull itself up around his ears, dragged by the rapidly knotting laces. The sleeves split as he flailed at it.

  Oliver had never tried pouring power into the shoelace spell before. It was so straightforward a spell that it would never had occurred to him to try.

  He was trying now.

  More! More! Tighter!

  Bill’s traitorous hair yanked the jerkin up over the bandit’s eyes.

  Oliver held his breath.

  Bill reached for the shirt, tore at it—and lost his balance.

  “Pushme, pullme!” screamed Oliver, switching spells so fast that he felt the familiar crack inside his head.

  Oh, that’s gonna be a nosebleed…

  Bill fell.

  Branches snapped. There was a flat, final thud. It didn’t seem nearly loud enough to Oliver. Maybe the ringing in his ears was drowning it out.

  Silence.

  Oliver clung to the tree with his face pressed into the bark, breathing in wet, sobbing gasps. He knew that he should keep climbing up or climb down or something… he didn’t know what, but something, not sitting here practically biting the bark off the tree to keep from screaming…

  The armadillo called, “Come down around the other side of the tree.”

  The armadillo. Eglamarck. Yes. His familiar. His friend. Yes. Oliver took a steadying breath.

  “Is he dead?” he asked.

  The armadillo was silent for a moment, then repeated, “Come down around the other side of the tree,” and Oliver knew.

  He put his forehead against the damp trunk and breathed for a minute.

  Then, because nothing would be gained by staying up the tree, he scrabbled downward until he reached the ground.

  He could see one of Bill’s boots. He carefully didn’t look any higher. He’d seen a dead body before, but it had been the old wizard, and he’d been sitting in his chair, peacefully gone, not dead by violence.

  “Are we—should we bury him?” he asked.

  “We don’t have time,” said the armadillo. “The ghuls won’t bury us if they catch us. Come on, hurry.”

  The armadillo was right. Oliver knew he was right. It just didn’t seem right.

  But what else can I do? Oliver couldn’t give someone last rites, like a priest, and there weren’t any sin-eaters around. Bill had probably had a lot more sins than anybody could choke down anyway.

  For a mad moment, all he could think of was Vezzo slaughtering hogs. Oliver had helped many times—not with the slaughter, but scraping the bristles, which was a long, hot, tedious job that required four people working in shifts. When Vezzo did it, he was fast and kind. The hog would squeal once, in surprise, not pain, and then fall down and not move again. And then Vezzo would lay one of his big blood-stained farmer’s hands on the hog’s flank and say, “Thank you.”

  Oliver had seen him thank any number of pigs that way and every time, he would swear, the farmer meant it. He understood what he was taking, and he was grateful.

  Bill’s not a hog. That’s not how it works. But I don’t know what else I can do, and I have to do something!

  Oliver took a deep breath. He walked around the tree and put his hand on Bill’s shoe. The jerkin was still up over the bandit’s face.

  He said, “Thank you.” It was the wrong thing to say, completely the wrong thing, but he didn’t have any other words. All the other words would have been worse. His voice was very high, but it didn’t crack. And then he followed the armadillo into the woods, looking for another place to hide.

  “So here is my plan,” said Oliver, a few hours later. “We lead the ghuls onto Stern’s men, then in the confusion, you go and bite through Trebastion’s ropes.” He tried to think of something else to add, because this seemed very short for a proper plan. “Um. Then we run away.”

  “This is a terrible plan,” said the armadillo. “The ghuls are faster than you are, and my teeth aren’t made for sawing through ropes.”

  Oliver wanted to be offended, but in good conscience, he couldn’t. “I know.” He sagged. “It’s the best I can come up with.”

  The armadillo nudged his hand with his snout. “And I can’t think of a better one,” he admitted.

  “You can’t?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Darn.” Oliver had rather been hoping that the armadillo would have a brilliant idea, or at least one that didn’t involve the ghuls. He felt very strange about leading the ghuls onto other people. It seemed much more wicked than having the pigs attack the bandits. Pigs were pigs. They were just something that happened, almost a natural disaster, like tornadoes or sinkholes. The ghuls were unnatural and evil.

  He wouldn’t mind if the ghuls ate Mayor Stern, but he wasn’t sure how he’d feel if they hurt the other men. They had gone along with Stern, true, but they were more like the villagers back home than really evil. They were normal people roped into a bad business, that was all.

  They watched Trebastion get beaten and they didn’t stop it, he reminded himself.

  Yes, but is that really enough to merit getting attacked by flesh-eating monsters?

  “I can hear you dithering,” said the armadillo.

  Oliver sighed. “I’m having second thoughts,” he admitted.

  “You’re well past second. Fourth or fifth by now, I’d say.”

  “This isn’t right.”

  “No,” said the armadillo. He tapped his claws on a tree root. “We can still leave, you know. Call this whole thing a wash and go up to the Rainblades.”

  “We can’t leave Trebastion!”

  “Sure, we can,” said the armadillo. “No one will stop us. No one will even know, except Trebastion, and he won’t know for very long.”

  Oliver stared at him, horrified.

  The armadillo snorted. “Well, there’s your answer. No, it’s not right. It’s also not right to let your friend get slowly taken apart by Stern. But those men aren’t going to stop him, which means that they’re in our way.”

  It seemed to Oliver that things were more complicated than that, or at least they should be more complicated than that… and yet, the armadillo was right. It was that or leave Trebastion to be killed. Probably tortured to death.

  “All right,” he said wearily. “Where do we find the ghuls?”

  Finding the ghuls was easy. The armadillo thought privately that it was too easy, that the forest itself was rejecting the creatures, tearing at them with twigs and thorns, turning stones and branches underfoot. They left a trail nearly as wide as the pigs, stinking of too-sweet ghul-scent.

  The thought seemed ridiculous on the face of it, but Harkhound was not like other forests. The armadillo remembered that strange aftertaste, like a shadow on his tongue, and the flash of red that Oliver claimed to have seen. Perhaps not so ridiculous after all.

  “Oliver?” he said, pausing in the middle of the trail, nostrils flared.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you… ah…” He scuffed at his nose with his claws, embarrassed to be asking. “Tell the forest we’re trying to get rid of them?”

  To his wizard’s credit, Oliver didn’t argue. He just said “Okay, I’ll try,” and leaned against a tree. The armadillo could hear him thinking at the woods, like a conversation in the next room, although Oliver was so loud that he could make out the words anyway: WE’RE TRYING TO GET RID OF THE GHULS. CAN YOU HELP US?

  That last bit was a good addition. Eglamarck wouldn’t have thought of it. He’d have been content to ask the forest to stay out of their way.
It came of being a social species, he supposed. Armadillos didn’t often ask other armadillos for help.

  Probably it was pointless. Probably the woods weren’t that smart, or didn’t speak human, or…

  The taste of leafmould flooded his mouth, so strong and earthy that he nearly spat. Branches sighed overhead.

  … or he was wrong.

  Well, if Oliver was right and the ghost of the farmer’s wife was haunting the woods, it stood to reason that human ghosts thought like humans, not like armadillos. Good enough.

  “All right,” he whispered. “We’re clear on the plan?”

  “Clear,” whispered Oliver.

  There was a very good chance that they were both going to die. Eglamarck knew this. He also knew that humans usually liked to say things under such circumstances, as if saying words might ward off death or make it more palatable. He waited.

  A hand came down and rubbed between his ears. “You’re a good familiar,” Oliver whispered.

  “You’re a good wizard,” said the armadillo gruffly. “Now go throw a rock at the ghuls and let’s get this over with.”

  Oliver crept within range of the ghuls. They were still awake, which he didn’t like. It was close to dawn and they had bedded down, but he’d been hoping that they’d already be asleep. The extra few seconds as they woke up might be crucial.

  Still, they didn’t dare wait another day. Mayor Stern would move, probably several miles at least, and there was no way that Oliver could hope to lead the ghuls for miles. And Trebastion might not be able to take any more of Stern’s abuse, even if they stayed in the same place.

  Oliver screwed up his courage, picked up a rock, and flung it at the ghuls.

  He didn’t wait to see if he had hit one. He turned and sprinted away.

  Querulous noises rose from the dark behind him. The Bryerlys—or whatever the Brylerlys had become—had definitely noticed the rock.

  He didn’t waste time. They were faster than he was, he was sure of it. His only advantage was surprise and an armadillo.

  THEY’RE AFTER ME he thought, as loud as he could.