A Blight of Mages

by Karen Miller

  Hearing his sharply indrawn breath, she remembered Remmie’s oft-repeated complaint.

  Barl, Barl, it isn’t what you say. It’s the way that you say it.

  “Councillor…” With an effort, she sweetened her approach. “I’ve no doubt that between us we can unpick this knot. But it would help if I could see for myself where you started.”

  Muttering under his breath, he crossed to the attic’s cupboard and took from it an old, rolled and tied sheet of parchment. Then he returned and spread it flat between them.

  “You will see,” he said, acerbic, “that in adapting Hartigan’s original construction I have done everything in accordance with Cylte’s rules of reworking.”

  “Cylte?” She shook her head. “I’ve not heard of him—or her.”

  “No?” He feigned shock. “You astound me. No intimate acquaintance with one of Dorana’s greatest innovators? And yet you presume to know where my magework has failed.”

  “I don’t presume anything!” she retorted. “I know, and if you’d climb down off your high horse, I’ll show you! Or can’t you bring yourself to admit when you’re wrong?”

  Another hissing, indrawn breath. “Mage Lindin—”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, raising one hand. “You’re right. That was rude.”

  “Very rude.”

  “And I said I was sorry! What are these rules you’ve been following? Can I see them?”

  With a glare and a finger-snap he summoned a battered book to his hand, leafed it open and thudded it to the workbench atop his notes and the old parchment, then paced the attic while she read through this Rubin Cylte’s rules.

  They were interesting enough. Most of his observations she’d already worked out for herself, as she made clocks for Arndel and new crystal for herself. Even in her early days as an artisan mage, serving her swift apprenticeship with Artisan Master Fabien, it seemed she’d instinctively understood most of what Cylte had to say.

  Except here… this is interesting. This is something I’d never considered.

  A new way of looking at internal syllabic rhythms, a twist upon her own, small discovery of contrapuntal give-and-take. And how exciting. How high did her blood leap, reading this scholarly work and seeing a sudden explosion of possibilities?

  This is what the College would’ve been. This is what Arndel and Hahren and the Council deny me.

  She smothered the familiar surge of resentment. All the roads she could’ve travelled, all the great work she could’ve done had she even once been encouraged instead of pushed aside as unworthy.

  I’m going to read this Mage Cylte’s book of learning. And when I’ve read it, I’ll read every other book in Morgan Danfey’s library. I’ll make this mansion my college. I’ll take for myself what they think they’ve kept from me.

  And then she’d teach what she’d learned to Remmie, and he’d teach his precious pupils, and the ranked mages’ guarded secrets would spread until every unranked mage in Dorana knew what those selfish men and women had tried to keep for themselves.

  “Mage Lindin?”

  Halted, Morgan Danfey was staring, his lips pinched with impatience. Beneath that, he looked tired. His eyes were shadowed with grief.

  His dying father.

  Crushing unwanted sympathy, she pushed Rubin Cylte’s rules aside and shuffled through the councillor’s notebook of preliminary calculations until she found the page where he’d scribbled the shape of the sigil he needed. A moment’s careful perusal gave her the answer she sought.

  “Come and look,” she said, beckoning. “And don’t feel so fretted. What’s gone wrong is as much Rubin Cylte’s fault as yours.”

  That made him laugh. “You criticise Cylte now? Mage Lindin—”

  “He didn’t think far enough ahead,” she said. “And neither did you.”

  Joining her at the workbench, Morgan Danfey stood discomfortingly close. Even while it was sleeping, the power in him roiled her. Set her skin atingle and heated her blood.

  She crushed awareness of that, too. Crushed awareness of him.

  “Where is the final mapping of your sigils? I can’t find it.”

  A hesitation, then he shrugged. “You won’t. I did not commit the successful sigils to paper.”

  “Really? I believe in making thorough notes, Councillor. What if you forget something?”

  He looked down his nose at her. “I won’t.”

  Ha. And he called her arrogant. “If you say so.” She pulled an empty crucible toward them. “Conjure the second sigil of your incant.”

  He conjured it, then saw it caught safe in the crucible. Deeply impressed, though she’d rather cut her hand off than let him see it, Barl took a deep breath then opened herself to the sigil’s volatile energies. Something sourly acrid caught the back of her throat.

  “What’s that?” she said, recoiling. “It’s disgusting.”

  Councillor Danfey laughed again. “So there is something you don’t know? I count myself amazed.”

  Let him scoff all he liked. He still needed her, whether he’d ever admit the truth or not. As fascinated as she was alarmed, she leaned a little closer to the sigil.

  “What is it?”

  “Azafris. Rare, expensive and unpredictable. Like you, I think, Mage Lindin.”

  A note in Morgan Danfey’s voice shocked her. Not scorn. Not impatience. Instead she heard affection. Startled, she looked at him… and felt her blood thicken like syrup. His face, his eyes, were unguarded, and in them she could now see something other than grief. Fresh heat flashed through her, dangerously close to pleasure.

  No.

  He had a beautiful mind to match his beautiful face, but if she let either seduce her then he would win.

  She tapped his notes. “I need pen and paper.”

  He fetched them for her from the cupboard, and watched without comment as she fiddled his sigil’s construction, feeling her way through the changes that were needed for it to perform in seamless tandem with the transmutation incant he’d reworked.

  “There,” she said, breathless, when at last she was done. “There’s an odd gap that won’t close, but even so it will hold. Although…”

  “I know,” he said as she bit her lip, suddenly uncertain as she stared at her reworkings. “There is a small instability within the harmonics.”

  “One that might well cause counter-instabilities elsewhere,” she said. “Have you considered that?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “And I think that just as a pond ripples then stills after a thrown stone, so will the syllabic harmonics smooth themselves out.”

  “Hmm.” She tapped the notebook, thinking, then nodded. “Yes. Doubtless, you’re right. So. Remake your sigil, Councillor. And then we’ll see, won’t we, if I’m as good as I say.”

  Her turn to watch, then, as he gathered the catalytic agents he needed for the task. Stepped well out of the way, she drank in his neat, precise ordering of the workbench. Shivered a little to feel the slow building of his power. She’d never constructed such a complex sigil before. Never thought to harness so many disparate elements and energies. What he was attempting…

  He’s mad even to think of it. But it’s a wonderful madness. I want to be mad like that.

  He laughed when the reworked sigil coalesced and hung in the air before him, shining. She’d never imagined he could sound so joyful or carefree.

  “Now try the full incant,” she suggested. “I think you’ll find the sigils and syllables will mesh properly now.”

  Nodding, barely aware of her, the councillor banished the summoned sigil and began the incant from its beginning. Inscribed the air with the first sigil. Watched it blossom and hold. Recited the first syllables of his new incant. Smiled as the sigiled air tightened, vibrating. He summoned the second sigil. Completed the incant.

  And the tightened air rippled in a soundless explosion of power.

  Gasping, Barl staggered. A good thing the attic was
tightly warded, else the ignition of the incant would have rocked the mansion to its cellars. The councillor staggered too. But as the incant wasn’t grounded in an actual working, the effect passed off swiftly.

  He turned to her, his face so alight, so alive, she couldn’t breathe. “I don’t believe it! How did you—how could you—”

  Before she could answer, he kissed her.

  His warm, slender hands, framing her face. His soft lips, his sweet lips, covering hers. Never in her life had she been kissed like this. She felt her arms drop to her sides, abandoned. Felt every muscle soften and go limp. Heard herself sigh her longing into his mouth. She dragged her eyes open so she could perish in his gaze.

  Then swallowed a protest as he let go of her and stepped back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “That was wrong.”

  Yes it was, completely wrong. A terrible mistake.

  You idiot, Barl, you idiot. To let yourself feel for him? How much power over you does he need?

  Willing her heart to calm, she cleared her throat. “It’s all right, Councillor. You were caught up in the moment. We’ll not regard it.”

  He clasped his hands behind his back, as though they’d be safer there. “No. We won’t.”

  Her kissed lips were aching. Her heart wouldn’t calm. He had a beautiful mind and a beautiful face and he stirred something within her that she’d never known was there.

  But it doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. I’m here for me. For the magework. I’m not here for him.

  “So,” she said, and raised a deliberately provocative eyebrow. “I was right. About the sigil and the syllables and Rubin Cylte being wrong.”

  “Yes, you were right.” He offered a small, not quite mocking bow. “Mage Lindin, you are an extraordinary talent.”

  She could easily hate herself, that she cared for his compliment. “Then perhaps you’ll not be so quick to doubt me next time.”

  “Next time?” he murmured. “You think there’ll be a next time?”

  “I hope so. I live for my magework, as you live for yours. As different as we are, it’s one thing we share. And it seems you and I work well together. It would be a shame to waste that.”

  And for as long as I’m kept prisoner here, I’ll turn captivity to my advantage. I won’t have had my life ruined for nothing.

  Silence, as they stared at each other. And then Morgan Danfey’s expression chilled toward wariness. “You do not ask why I am so determined to rework Hartigan’s transmutation incant.”

  “I’m curious, of course,” she said, shrugging. “But if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.”

  “That seems unusually restrained of you, Mage Lindin.”

  “I’m trying to turn over a new leaf.”

  Eyes shadowed with more than grief, he smoothed a wrinkle in his sleeve. “Not even my father knows what you’ve learned here tonight.”

  “Is that your clumsy way of telling me I’m trusted?”

  He slapped the workbench. “Do not joke on this! It is no laughing matter!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Councillor, I do know what it means, that you’ve shared this work with me. You’ve given me a weapon. But I won’t use it against you.”

  He sneered. “Because you want to save your brother.”

  There was no point denying it. “And because what you do here is marvellous. Your incants…” Her fingers brushed his notebooks. “They’re marvellous. I want to be a part of them. Is that so wrong?”

  Without shifting his gaze from her face, he summoned to hand a newly plucked flower, intact from bud to root. From the garden bed by the stables, she thought. Tanamies grew in profusion there. The blossom’s lightly fragrant, pale pink petals were brushed with droplets of dew. Little clots of damp soil rattled to the attic floor.

  Gravely, he held it out to her.

  “Go on,” he said, when she hesitated. “It won’t bite. And neither will I.”

  Her fingers brushed against his as she took the flower. The touch shivered her, and rushed blood to her cheeks. She saw him feel it. Saw him smile. But before she could change her mind, give the flower back, turn away, he burned the air with sigils and trembled it with words.

  The power of his transmutation incant roared through her like a storm.

  “Oh!” she cried, delighted, as the tanamie quivered, and rippled… and changed. Became a flower of slender crimson petals narrowly striped with gold-edged purple, its fragrance deep and rich. “Now the incant makes sense. That gap between the ninth and thirteenth syllables, that’s where you specify how the transmutation subject is to be changed.” Amazing. Inspired. His new flower was beautiful.

  His new flower…

  “I know,” he said, as she stared at him. “The transmutation of living things is forbidden. But a flower isn’t really alive, is it? And some rules must be broken for a greater good to prevail.”

  She would never argue against that, but even so… “Councillor, you play with fire.”

  “Are you going to burn me?”

  “I told you already. No.”

  He was watching her closely, his eyes half-lidded. “Compared to what I have done, your transgression is nothing. You’d be forgiven in a heartbeat if you brought my sins to light. You might even be rewarded with a place in the College. After all, we let Bellamie Ranowen teach there… and like you, she is unranked.”

  She threw the flower at him. “Yes, I’m unranked, but that doesn’t mean I have no honour. I’m not in the habit of buying and selling other mages’ secrets! And if you think I am, then—”

  “Shall I tell you what I think?” Stooping, he picked up the thrown flower. “I think that without you, Barl Lindin, my incant was doomed. I think we were meant to find each other. I think that together, we can remake the world.”

  He was standing so close she could feel his power, hot as the sun. She could feel her cold, bitter memories thaw and warm and melt.

  I think that together, we can remake the world.

  Her cold, bitter memories were trickling down her face. “Councillor—”

  Smiling, beautiful, he pressed his palm to her cheek. She felt herself lean into him. Fall into him. Fall.

  “Morgan. Barl, call me Morgan. Say it. I want my name on your lips.”

  “Morgan,” she whispered. “Morgan Danfey.”

  “Louder,” he commanded. “Shout it. Shatter the ceiling. The midnight sky.”

  So she shouted it, laughing.

  “Morgan. Morgan. Morgan.”

  And knew, as he laughed with her, that there was no going back.

  Not far enough past dawn, Morgan was roused from a pleasurable dream of crimson and purple flowers by Rumm, roughly shaking his shoulder.

  “Sir—sir—come quickly. It’s his lordship.”

  Almost half an hour later, Pother Ranmer was in the mansion, shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, straightening. “His lordship has indeed taken another turn for the worse.”

  Savage with fear, Morgan stared down at his father, so still and sickly pale against the pillows. “Thank you, I had noticed. The question is, Ranmer, how do you intend to fix this?”

  Ranmer looked up from rummaging in his leather bag of pills and potions. “Councillor?”

  He jerked his head toward the chamber door. “Outside.”

  “Sir, I understand this is hard,” said Ranmer, once they were alone in the sitting room. “You feel angry and helpless, which is only natural. But you must understand, sir, your father—”

  “Is dying,” he said, crossing to the window and pulling back its heavy curtains. The sun was well-risen, and a day of obligations awaited. “I know. But he must not die yet. It is his dearest wish to see me married and the father of a son. I would grant him as much of that wish as I can. So you will see that he at least stands at my wedding. Do I make myself plain?”

  Ranmer snorted. “Quite plain. And now I shall make my own position equally clear. I can make you no pr
omises. I am not some Brantish charlatan, waving a bottle of coloured water claiming it comes from a secret spring and can defy the laws of nature. I will do everything in my power to help Lord Danfey, but you must accept that my power has limits.”

  “I do,” Morgan said, and rubbed his burning eyes. “Now return to him, Ranmer. I cannot stay, I have Council business. Leave your instructions with Rumm. He’ll see they’re carried out.”

  “Sir,” said the pother, and did as he was told.

  Swallowing a groan, Morgan slumped against the windowsill. How swiftly joy turned to misery these days.

  My lord, your timing is execrable.

  A door opened behind him. “Sir?”

  He bit back a curse. None of this was Rumm’s fault. “What is it?”

  “A note’s arrived, sir. From Lady Martain.”

  Venette? But this was the last day of the Garrick house party. What could she want? Turning, he held out his hand. Rumm crossed the floor and gave it to him, his face schooled more severely than ever.

  “If I might ask, sir. His lordship?”

  Morgan shrugged. “Ranmer’s with him.”

  He cracked the seal on Venette’s note and flipped the folded paper open.

  Come early to the meeting. I would have private words.

  “Sir?” Ever alert, Rumm stepped forward. “Is there trouble?”

  So. She’d abandoned the Garricks too. He closed his fingers on the note, crushing it. “No. Wait here for Ranmer’s instructions, Rumm. I must leave for the Hall.”

  “Of course, sir,” Rumm murmured. “Was there anything else?”

  Pausing at the door, Morgan half-turned his head. “Mage Lindin. How is she occupied?”

  “She is tending the poultry,” Rumm said, after a moment. Every word was ice-laden with his disapproval of her lenient treatment. “Unsupervised. Sir.”

  He gave the man a sharp look. “Mind yourself, Rumm. Prisoned here or not, Barl Lindin is still a mage.”

  And that was cruel of him, reminding Rumm of his failing, but Rumm was crippled. A servant. He could never be permitted to place himself too high.

  “Sir,” Rumm said again, properly subdued.

  “I’ll be back later. You know where to send for me, should—” Morgan watched his fingers whiten on the door handle. “You know where to send.”