The Awakened Mage

by Karen Miller

  “You waited,” said Gar.

  “Course I bloody waited. You all right?”

  Gar’s eyebrows lifted. “Shouldn’t I be?”

  Dathne took a hesitant step forward. “Sir, if I may—if it’s not presumptuous—I’m sorry. Your family was deeply loved, and will be sorely missed. I know you’ll make a fine king, I don’t mean—it’s just—oh dear—”

  It was the first time Asher had ever seen her tongue-tied. Disconcerted, he watched as Gar stepped close, kissed her gently on the cheek and said, “I know. Thank you, Dathne. Now you should go home. It’s late, and I have more work for Asher.”

  She curtseyed again, then snatched up her basket. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Asher, we’ll speak again soon?”

  “Aye,” he said. “Soon.”

  In silence they watched her hurry away. With his head still turned, Gar said, “Do you know the worst thing about all this?”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “No.”

  “Everyone is so sorry. In such pain. For me, for themselves. I tell you, I’ve been wept on so much tonight my tunic is soaked right through. They tell me how their hearts are broken, they tell me how wonderful my family was, they think they’re giving me comfort but what they really want is for me to comfort them.” Gar laughed softly. Ballodair stuck his head over the stable door and whickered. Crossing to him, Gar smoothed a tangle from his forelock and gently tugged one curving ear. “So I do. I hold them in my arms, even though I know Darran for one would faint at the thought, and I let them weep against my chest and tell me how hurt they are that my family is dead. And then I give them the kiss of peace and promise that no harm will come to them or their children now that I am king. And they smile at me, because that’s really what they came to hear, and they go back to their living family and someone else steps forward to take their place.”

  “The Doranen do that?” he said, staring.

  Gar’s sideways smile was derisive. “What do you think?”

  After an uncomfortable pause, he cleared his throat. “You know I’m sorry, right?” Gar nodded. “Of course.”

  Another pause. He inspected his shirt cuffs, wondering what Gar was. waiting for. “That were quite the show you gave them out there tonight.”

  Gar shrugged. “I had to do something. They had to see I’m a cripple no longer. But sparkly lights and flower petals won’t hold them forever, Asher, Olken or Doranen. They believe in me now because they’re shocked and grieving and, as you say, I put on a convincing show. Unfortunately their belief won’t last long. Not without something more .. . tangible ... to back it up.”

  He pulled a face. Gar was right, drat it. “Ain’t much you can do about that.”

  “On the contrary,” sajd Gar. “I can call rain. And not just here in Dorana, but all over the kingdom.”

  He choked. “All over the kingdom! Are you mad? You ain’t never even called rain in a teacup!”

  “Not in a teacup, no. In a test globe. The principle is the same, it’s just a question of degree.”

  “Of degree? Have you lost your wits? Not even your da made it rain over an entire kingdom! You’ll kill yourself! Why not wait a day or so? See if Durm comes round. If he does, you can ask him what—”

  Gar’s look was dagger sharp. “I can’t afford to wait that long. I can’t afford to wait at all. If I don’t do something definitive the people will cease to believe in me and Lur will crumble into chaos and despair. Conroyd Jarralt will make his move and I’ll lose the crown my father spent his life serving. I’m calling rain, Asher. Tonight. And I want you with me when I do.”

  “Me?”

  “Who else?”

  He stepped back a pace, aghast. “Anybody but me!”

  “You’ll be quite safe, I promise.”

  “You don’t know that! You ain’t never done this before!”

  “True,” Gar conceded after a lengthy silence. “But for all things there must be a first time. For me, for Weather-Working, tonight is that time. Asher, I can do this alone. I just don’t want to.”

  And what about met he wanted to shout. What about what I want? He half turned away, hands clasped to the top of his head. As usual, what he wanted was about to go overboard with the fish guts. He turned back. “All right. Just this once. But you better not think I’ll be makin’ a habit of it, ‘cause—”

  “Good,” said Gar. “Now let’s hurry. I want the sky full of rain within the hour.”

  ———

  In silence they rode back to the palace, but instead of continuing to the Tower they branched off towards a wooded expanse in the old palace grounds, where gardeners and lawn keepers no longer toiled and nature ran riot. Washed with pale traveling glimlight, the horses picked their cautious way along a narrow path that led directly into the heart of the tangled trees and undergrowth.

  “Here,” Gar said at last, and drew rein. “It’s best if we go on foot the rest of the way. The path is narrow and the trees grow quite thickly. Besides, horses are sometimes— disturbed—by the Weather Chamber.”

  “Oh, aye?” said Asher, sliding to the ground. “And what about fishermen?”

  Gar flung his leg over the pommel and jumped. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Well, I bloody would,” he said, and tied Cygnet’s reins to the nearest sturdy tree branch. “Fishermen are even more disturbed than horses. And don’t dismount like that, it’s dangerous. You could break your bloody neck.”

  Gar sighed. “I’ve been dismounting like that for years, Asher. Does my neck look broken to you?”

  “No, but there’s a first time for everything,” he retorted. “Or so I been told.”

  Gar tugged on Ballodair’s knotted reins and gave the horse a brisk pat. “Come on. The night’s not getting any younger.”

  Side by side they hurried along the narrow grassy path. The thin air had sharp nipping teeth, but Asher didn’t feel them. Noticing his shivers, Gar had conjured a coat for him right out of his wardrobe in the Tower and handed it over with such a look of self-satisfaction he’d had to grin, even though circumstances dictated that amusement was in pretty poor taste.

  Of course, so was arguing with the recently bereaved in pretty poor taste, but some things couldn’t be helped.

  “I still ain’t convinced this is a good idea.”

  “Of course it is. You said it yourself just this morning. I shouldn’t attempt WeatherWorking alone.”

  “But what if something goes wrong?”

  “You’ll fetch help, of course.”

  “Help. Right,” he said slowly. “Only, I reckon there might be a problem with that.”

  Gar looked mystified. “A problem?”

  “Aye! ‘Cause after they’ve helped you, it’s me they’ll be helpin’, right into the nearest empty cell down at the guardhouse.” Still Gar looked mystified. Asher could’ve hit him. “It’s forbidden for Olken to meddle in magic, or had you forgotten that? I mean, has the name Timon Spake completely slipped your mind? ‘Cause I’ll tell you right now it surely ain’t slipped mine!”

  Gar stopped. “I forget nothing about that day. And it offends me that you’d think I would.”

  “Well, I’m offended by the idea of gettin’ my head chopped off!” he retorted, wheeling round to face his idiot king.

  “Barl save me!” Gar snapped. “Nobody is going to chop your head off! And you won’t be meddling in magic, you’ll be protecting me while I perform my sacred duty as Lur’s WeatherWorker. You fool, you’re more likely to be awarded a medal!”

  “Tell that to Conroyd Jarralt!”

  With an impatient hiss Gar grabbed Asher’s arm with one hand and with the other pointed upwards. “Look at the gift Barl gave us. Go on. Look at it.”

  Heaving a sigh, scowling, Asher tilted his head back and looked up at the Wall. At the great and glowing wash of gold soaring into the star-studded sky beyond the tree-tops. Remote. Mysterious. Magnificent.

  “All right,” he said sourly, and tugged his arm free. “
I’m lookin’. So what? It’s the Wall, Gar. Same as it’s always been.”

  “Yes. The same, for more than six hundred years. And you’ve grown completely used to it, haven’t you? Hardly give it a thought from one week to another. And do you know why? Because you’ve never had a reason to doubt it would be there when you looked for it, any more than you doubt there’ll be air to breathe when you open your eyes after a good night’s sleep.”

  “Gar—”

  “What does the Wall mean to you, Asher? What do you see when you look at it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, baffled. “Safety. Prosperity.” He shrugged. “Magic.”

  Gar stared up at the golden mountains. “I see the altar upon which my father sacrificed his life. Upon which all of Lur’s WeatherWorkers have sacrificed themselves, generation upon generation, all the way back to Blessed Barl herself, whose life was given in the making of it. I see a sword, which starting tonight will cut me and bleed me one day at a time, until I have no blood left to shed. I see my life, and my death, and the pain-soaked days in between, offered as payment for the taking of a land that wasn’t ours, and the visitation of a danger that should have passed your people by and didn’t. Because of mine,” His gaze slid sideways then, before returning to the Wall. “That’s what I see, Asher.”

  Asher frowned. Again, abruptly, Gar was a stranger. An unfamiliar spirit housed in prosaically familiar flesh. He shoved his chilly hands into his coat pockets. “D’you really reckon you can make it rain all over the kingdom?”

  With an effort, Gar tore his gaze away from that glowing wash of gold. “I reckon that if I don’t try, we’ll never know.” He started walking again and Asher fell into step beside him.

  Half a mile later the path ended, spilling like a riverlet into a small clearing ... at the center of which stood the kingdom’s Weather Chamber. Seeing it, Asher felt his feet stumble and his heart thud hard.

  According to history, Barl herself had built it from her own design and spent her last living days there as she invented and perfected the Weather Magic and the Wall that would keep Lur safe from predation until the end of time. Made of the same stone as Gar’s Tower, it was crowned with a domed glass roof and an uninterrupted view of the sky. There was no other palace building within sight or earshot. Light from the Wall seemed nearer here, brighter and more dense, as though the Chamber had some power to call it close. It splashed over the ancient bluestone blocks, roaring them to midnight life.

  He looked around. “There ain’t any guards.”

  Gar shook his head. “There’s no need. The Chamber’s steeped in magic. My father used to say it feels ... alive. Somehow it knows when it’s not alone. If any visitor comes here with ill will the door won’t open and no magic known to us can make it otherwise.”

  He stepped into the clearing. Asher took a deep, shuddering breath and followed.

  The chamber’s door was plain, unvarnished wood. No handle, no knocker, no keyhole or lock. Gar frowned, dredging memory.

  “I was just a child the last—the only—time I came here,” he murmured. “Durm had intended to bring me back soon, to expand my education ...” His lips tightened and he wiped his palms down the front of his black tunic. “Another plan smashed to pieces, along with everything else.” Throwing his head back he slapped his hands to the timber and pushed.

  The door remained shut.

  “It’s just stuck,” said Asher, breaking the white-hot silence. “Damp’s got it or somethin’.”

  “What damp?” said Gar through clenched teeth. “I haven’t made it rain yet.”

  He pushed again, harder. Again the door resisted him, creaking a little. Releasing a sobbing breath, Gar stepped back. Stared at the door, perplexed and angry and a little afraid. “Give way, damn you! I am the king and I will be admitted!” He struck the timber a blow with his fist. “Admit me! “ And then he stepped close once more. Rested his forehead against the door and stroked his fingers down the weathered grain like a coaxing lover. “Please,” he whispered. “Please... let me in... “

  Discomforted, Asher laughed. “It’s a door, Gar. Wood. It ain’t really alive. And even if it is, I don’t see any ears stickin’ out anywhere, do you? No way it can bloody hear you. I’m tellin’ you, it’s the damp.” To prove his point, he shoved against the closed door himself.

  It opened.

  “Bloody thing,” he said, scowling. “Playin’ hard to get, that’s all. If it is alive, I bet it’s female.”

  Gar tugged at the hem of his tunic. “No. It was some lingering damp, as you say.”

  Asher looked up. “How many stairs to the top, do you reckon?”

  “One hundred and thirty.”

  “Oh, my achin’ legs.”

  Gar sent the traveling glimfire ahead of them into the chamber’s entryway, and in muscle-burning silence they climbed to the solitary glass-domed chamber at the top of the tower. Gar opened its door unhindered, nodded Asher through and followed him inside. The bobbing glimfire cast their shadows on the floor in long thin lines. With a wave of his arm Gar swung the door closed again, then ignited fresh glimfire in the sconces attached to the curving walls. Shadows vanished and the chamber was revealed.

  The room was clean and cold, smelling faintly, lingeringly, of rain. The parquetry floor gleamed a dark red-brown, hundreds of timber strips laid end to end and side by side in a subtle, intricate pattern. Perhaps some fifty couples dancing would fit beneath the domed glass ceiling ... that was if the center of the floor had been empty.

  It wasn’t. Directly beneath the domed ceiling sat something that to Asher’s fascinated gaze looked like an overgrown child’s toy.

  “The Weather Map,” said Gar, his expression avid. Hungry. Tinged with awe, and fear. “Barl’s incredible power laid bare. It’s a magical representation of the kingdom, down to the last hamlet and village.”

  Cautiously approaching, Asher saw he was right. There were Barl’s Mountains, with the Black Woods clustered at their feet. There was Dorana with its high, encircling wall, and the River Gant spreading silver fingers. The Saffron Hills. The Flatlands. All the places he and Gar had visited or passed through on their trip to Westwailing, as well as the kingdom’s other towns, villages, farms and hamlets, its orchards, vineyards and fields of wheat and barley, recreated in perfect miniature. He leaned closer and felt his stomach clench. There, exquisite and touchable and utterly out of reach, was his beloved Restharven.

  Without looking up, not wanting to tear his eyes away from even this small taste of home, he said, “How does it work?”

  “To be honest, I’m not exactly sure,” Gar admitted.

  Now he did look up. “You ain’t sure!”

  “Not about the how^ no,” said Gar. He sounded defensive. Looked annoyed. “Durm and I didn’t get this far.”

  Too bad. “But you’re sure it works.”

  Gar walked around the edges of his inherited kingdom, his gaze greedy. “Oh yes. It changes, even as the kingdom changes. Newly cultivated fields spring up, fallow fields fall into slumber. Land is sold, boundaries change, and you’ll know it just by looking here. Whatever happens in the land is reflected in this map.” Annoyance forgotten, his fingers skimmed the air above the toy towns, the wheatfields, the open meadows and the wooded glens. “Isn’t it magnificent?” he whispered.

  There was something so naked in his face Asher felt embarrassed. Love... longing ... avarice ... desire... or some strange alchemical blending of all those difficult emotions. It was too intimate a moment for observance.

  He looked up. Whether it was his imagination or some trick of the crystal-clear glass arching overhead he didn’t know, but the stars looked close enough to touch. The Wall too. Silver and gold, crushing him with beauty. He had to look down again, it was too much to bear. Gar still circled his little kingdom like a cat contemplating a bowl of cream, lost in a private reverie with his soul stripped bare, so he found something else to look at.

  The Chamber’s curving wall
s had long ago been soothed smooth and white with plaster, and fitted from floor to waist-height with sturdy cherry wood bookshelves and a single, double-doored cupboard. The shelves were burdened with leather-bound books, some thick, some slender, some ancient, some nearly new. The space between the ceiling and the first crammed shelf was covered like a child’s scrapbook with calendars, charts, diagrams, hand-scrawled notes on yellowing scraps of parchment, sketches, jottings ...

  Skimming their circular surface, he saw they were all in some way connected with the weather. Rainfall patterns, wind patterns, seasonal guides, planting guides, snowfall indicators. Notes concerning what crops were harvested when, and where, and how, and what each farmer needed to get the job done in a timely fashion. How much rain was needed to lush the grass in the horse-breeding Dingles district. How much snow the icegrape growers felt was just enough to nurture their precious vines. How deep down the River Gant should freeze for the very best of winter skating, and what was the best temperature for its careful melting come the spring. Not a single facet of Olken or Doranen life was missing. Everything thought of, everything cared for.

  When he’d come full circle, he looked at Gar. Shook his head. “I had no idea...”

  “Why should you?” said Gar. He’d stopped prowling round the map and was watching him instead. His face was comfortable again, all private feeling decendy tucked away. “WeatherWorking isn’t an Olken concern. It’s not even a Doranen concern. Only the WeatherWorker is required to shoulder this burden. To know its weight and import in the world. The balance is too delicate, the scope for disaster too great, for it to be otherwise.” He smiled. “A boat is less likely to capsize with only one hand on the tiller.”

  “It’s too much,” said Asher. “Too much for one man. Or woman.” He waved his hand at the crowded wall. “You thought Fane could do this? Little Fane? She never would’ve been strong enough. I could’ve near snapped her in half with my bare hands!”

  Gar’s pale face stilled, so it looked like a mask of marble. Asher, realizing what he’d just said, cursed under his breath. “Gar—I didn’t mean—look—”