A Blight of Mages

by Karen Miller

  “Don’t curse Venette,” he said, frowning. “She’s been a good and loyal friend.”

  “To you. Me, she’d happily see broken-legged in a ditch!”

  “Her loyalty to me extends to you, Barl. We are one and the same. Venette understands that.”

  Uncertain, Barl dabbled her fingers on the sheet. “You’re so sure we can trust her. But Morgan, while she doesn’t know everything, she knows enough to do us great harm.”

  “Not without harming herself as well,” he said, faintly smiling. “Trust me, my love. Venette is nothing if not a survivor. We are quite safe.”

  He’d known Venette Martain his whole life. It was hardly surprising, she supposed, that he’d trust her, defend her, even when they were at odds and she made it plain she cared not at all for some of his recent choices. The same way she trusted Remmie, even though they were at odds.

  Remmie.

  The look on his face, in his eyes, as he’d shouted. He’d often been impatient with her. But disgusted? Never. Not until now.

  Well, so am I disgusted. He wants the protection of magic without paying the price. He really is a hypocrite. Give me the roast beef, he says, but don’t show me the slaughterhouse. And under no circumstances invite the slaughterman to tea.

  “Barl?” Morgan took her hand again. “What is it?”

  Scant hours ago she’d railed at him for lying… or at least, withholding the truth. And now here she was with a secret of her own.

  Speaking of hypocrites…

  “It was Remmie who told me about Dorana’s strife,” she said, frowning at his fingers, wrapped around hers. “And the mage-mist.”

  Morgan shifted a little more upright. “I wondered when you were going to tell me.”

  She looked at him. “You knew?”

  “I guessed.”

  “We had a terrible fight. He’s gone back to Batava.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “He said he was going. And while we are very different, in one respect we’re the same. We say what we mean, and we mean what we say.”

  Morgan let go of her hand and stroked his fingers down her cheek. “He hurt you.”

  “He was angry.”

  “He hurt you.”

  “And if he did, it’s my problem,” she said sharply. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”

  His eyes glittered. “I beg to differ.”

  “Morgan.” She raised a warning finger at him. “No. He’s my brother.”

  “Mine also, if you and I now count ourselves family.”

  “Really?” She snorted. “Then what does that make Venette Martain, I wonder? My stepmama?”

  That surprised laughter from him. “She would be alarmed to hear it.”

  Barl lay back down beside him. Rested her palm on his chest. She could feel his heart beating, drumlike, through his skin. “Please, Morgan. Leave it be. We have enough to deal with.”

  Morgan didn’t answer. When she glanced up at him, she saw he was frowning. She felt her own heart thud harder.

  “He won’t betray me, Morgan. He won’t betray us. I promise.”

  Still, he didn’t answer. In the moonlight his face was suddenly cool and remote. Thud thud thud went her unsteady heart.

  “Morgan, you have to trust me on this, just as you expect me to trust Venette Martain on your say-so.”

  “Your brother lacks Venette’s incentive to keep his mouth shut.”

  “He doesn’t need an incentive! He loves me. That’s enough.”

  Morgan looked at her. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure! How can you—”

  “Are you sure?”

  Remmie’s sickened anger. The disgust in his eyes. Mouth dry, eyes burning, she nodded… and lied.

  “I told you. I’m sure.”

  “Very well,” said Morgan, after a moment. “But for his sake, my love, let us hope that you’re right.”

  She didn’t want to talk about this any more. Desperate for a change of subject, she returned to a different fear.

  “This notion of a grand working, to heal Dorana’s breaches. Do you think it will succeed?”

  “I don’t know,” said Morgan, shrugging. “It might.”

  “If it doesn’t, do you think the General Council will do more than make assurances? Try to appease Trindek and Feen and the rest to keep them from crossing over our borders?”

  His eyes darkened. “Play the role of meek supplicant, you mean? Kneel in the dirt at their feet mewling Please, please, we’ll do anything you say? Put your spears down, don’t hurt us?”

  “My love…” Hesitant, she pulled a little away from him. “Can we blame them for their anger? If our magework endangers them, then—”

  “Endangers them?” In one swift movement he rolled out of the bed, to land lightly on his feet and start pacing their moonlit chamber. “Our magework enriches them. These petty, complaining nations have grown fat on Dorana’s magic. We sell them our incants and our expertise, we save them from pestilence and provide them with luxuries and all it costs them is coin while we bleed for the knowledge that fattens them. And you think it’s right that we kneel?”

  “Not right,” she murmured. “But prudent. At least until Dorana is healed. But if you mislike the notion so much, perhaps we should rethink our part in this.”

  He turned. “Our part?”

  “You said it yourself, Morgan. These breaches could be our doing. If we ceased working on these transmutations, if we—”

  “Are you mad?” he demanded. “Our mageworking is all that stands between Dorana and its destruction at the hands of these lesser nations. Great working or not, Dorana will heal itself soon enough. But even if it healed itself tomorrow, it would be too late. You know what the Feenish say about unseeing the seen. We have never appeared weak before… but thanks to the General Council, we appear weak now. And every potentate and princeling, every merchant, every peddler, will look at us differently until they are given a reason not to. Until they are reminded of their proper place in the world.”

  He was right, of course he was right, only…

  “My love, I’m not certain they’ll be reminded by transmuted chickens and hounds and calves.”

  Rage was smouldering in his eyes. “They will have far more to fear than that, Barl.”

  In the silvering moonlight his naked body was beautiful. But for once it didn’t stir her. Fear smothered desire.

  “I don’t—Morgan, what do you mean?”

  “I mean to save Dorana. I’ll need the attic to myself for a few days.”

  To himself? “Morgan—”

  “When I’m ready, I’ll show you what I’m working toward. In the meantime, you’ll have the library. There are books you’ve not yet read.”

  That was true. There were dozens. But since they’d found each other, Morgan had laid his heart and soul bare to her. He’d wept in her arms and shuddered his pleasure there, with abandon. She knew him better than any man alive, better even than Remmie, and Remmie was her other self.

  Why then do I look at him now and see a stranger?

  “Barl…” Morgan smiled, but the rage in his eyes still smouldered. “Please. Don’t be cross. This is nothing nefarious. I just need… a little time. I need you to trust me.”

  He was Morgan, her beloved. She had no reason to fear. She was being foolish. Girlish. She knew better than that. Morgan deserved better.

  “Of course,” she said. “Morgan, of course.”

  He leapt to the bed, laughing… and the stranger disappeared.

  Venette drove her buggy to Brice’s town house, to tell him of the previous night’s meeting with Morgan before going on to the College to spend another miserable day working with Bellamie Ranowen.

  The sun was barely an hour risen. Elvado’s residential streets were empty, not only because it was early, but because the city’s mages had begun to fear leaving their homes. Even Orwin had started to find reasons for dallying indoors. It broke her heart. Her husban
d was no coward… but the ever-present, ever-growing threat of mage-mist had beaten him. It was beating everyone, bruising all of Dorana with blows of dread. Yesterday, as they’d travelled from the Hall to the College, Dreen Brislyn had been unsparing in her descriptions of what Dorana’s other districts endured. Also unsparing was her silent contempt, that the Council of Mages stayed safe in Elvado… for the most part not having to face the suffering visited upon everyone else.

  She wished she could summon up some righteous, indignant anger. But Dreen Brislyn had good reason for her disdain. Between her and Morgan… and what she’d found at Morgan’s estate… she had passed an uncomfortable night.

  The flower she’d stolen sat on the buggy seat beside her, pink and cream and blue-striped… and wrong.

  Brice opened his door to her wrapped in a quilted dressing gown. “Venette.” Pained, he looked past her at the pale morning sky. “I should be surprised, I suppose. However—”

  “Let me in, Brice,” she said, and pushed the door. “I don’t need long and besides, the horse loathes being tied up while it’s harnessed to the buggy. If I’m here more than ten minutes it’ll pull free and trot home.”

  With a sigh Brice stood back, one hand gesturing her inside. “By all means.”

  He kept her standing in his town house lobby, and did not offer her tea. “I’m to take it you’ve already spoken to Morgan? How did he receive the news?”

  It would serve Brice right if she told him the truth, that Morgan had laughed, genuinely disinterested in the Council’s opinion of… well, everything. But since that might cause trouble for Morgan, she was tactful.

  “He is disappointed.”

  “Disappointed enough to mend his ways, do you think?”

  “Alas.” She sighed. “He is still besotted with the girl. Until his infatuation dies, Brice, there is nothing to be done.”

  Brice grunted, then considered her with tired eyes abruptly sharpened with suspicion. “Venette, do I need to remind you where your loyalties lie?”

  That alarming flower was still in the buggy. Almost she’d brought it in with her, so Brice could examine it, so the burden of its existence might rest with someone else, but…

  I was friends with Morgan’s mother years before my first smile at Brice. I’m not about to throw her son to the wolves. Not if I don’t have to. And not if I can somehow save him from himself.

  “Of course you don’t, Lord Varen. And it’s insulting that you’d ask.”

  Brice’s eyebrow lifted. “My apologies, Lady Martain.”

  “I also wanted to let you know that, after careful consideration, Bellamie Ranowen feels a great working might be of use. Assuming, of course, the incants can be persuaded to take. There’s every chance they won’t. But just in case, since time is not on our side, I gave Lady Brislyn the Council’s permission to begin sending the right mages here from the other districts.”

  “I see,” said Brice. “And if I dispute that decision?”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Then, Brice, you’d be a fool.”

  Instead of answering, Brice moved to the front door and held it open. “I’ll warn those at the Hall who need to know that Elvado is about to be overrun with visitors.”

  “Thank you,” she said, as she passed him. “If you need me, my lord, you know where I’ll be.”

  Returned to the College, so eerily empty of students, Venette found Bellamie Ranowen in her cramped privy workroom and handed her the flower taken from Morgan’s estate.

  “Bellamie. What do you make of this?”

  Haggard of face, like every mage in the College who toiled to save Dorana, Bellamie inspected the incanted bloom.

  “It’s not a natural flower,” she said at last, her voice gravelly with exhaustion. “It’s been transmuted.”

  Venette felt her skin crawl. Oh, Morgan. “Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure,” said Bellamie, running her fingertips over the flower’s pretty petals. “The incant’s imprint has faded, but it’s quite unmistakable.”

  And horribly distinctive. Morgan’s signature was all over it. She’d felt it as she walked into the mansion and saw the vase of fresh flowers on the small table beside the staircase. Felt it again as, seeing herself out, she’d taken one and hidden it inside her tunic.

  Bellamie was shaking her head. “Even attempting this kind of transmutation is against the law, of course. Every mage knows that. And I am horrified that someone would so blatantly ignore the restriction.”

  “But,” Venette said, and couldn’t help a grim smile.

  “Oh, yes, but,” Bellamie breathed, very close to admiration. “The magework is extraordinary.” She looked up. “Where did you get this? Who made it? Do you know?”

  “It… came to me in the course of my Council duties,” Venette said, after a moment. “More than that I cannot divulge.”

  “Of course. I understand,” said Bellamie, still examining the flower. “Extraordinary. According to every authority on transmutation that I’ve read, this kind of magework is held to be impossible.”

  Justice save us all, Morgan. What were you thinking?

  “Well, it would appear that every authority is wrong.”

  “Yes,” Bellamie said slowly. “Venette, may I keep this?”

  There was an odd note in her voice now. A tension in her haggard face. Her fingers had tightened on the flower’s slender stem.

  Venette felt a fresh thrill of alarm. “Bellamie?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just—” She shook her head again, sharply this time. “No. I’d rather not speak without being certain. Look, do you mind going to help Jerot? He’s mixing catalysts. I’ll come and find you when I’m done.”

  “Done with what?”

  “I told you, I’d rather not say!”

  Not so long ago, she’d have crushed an unranked mage who dared speak to her like that. But times had changed.

  And not for the better.

  “All right,” she said, at her most reasonable. “How long before you can say?”

  Bellamie tossed the flower onto the nearby workbench, as though its stem had stung her. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. It might be several days.”

  Several days? Oh, what have you done, Morgan? What has she found? “Very well, Bellamie. I’ll be with Jerot, if there’s anything I can do.”

  Pacing the attic, Morgan stepped over his makeshift mattress, heedless of thirst, of hunger, of all bodily cravings. Four days since he’d bathed or shaved or slept in his bed. Touched Barl. Eaten food at a table. It didn’t matter. He needed none of those things. He had all he needed: an obliterating rage. That they would dare to threaten Dorana, these foreign, magickless princelings and potentates. Their audacity left him breathless.

  His workbench was covered in pages of scribbled notes. Yet another reworking of Hartigan’s reworked incant. Its ultimate reworking, the dream he’d been dreaming every since the thought had first crept into his mind.

  We are not safe.

  What he attempted was beyond anything he and Barl had achieved so far. Complex and dangerous, it would test him to his newly found limits. But to protect Dorana, to strike down these belligerent, ungrateful little nations, he would gladly bleed himself almost dry.

  But not Barl. He wouldn’t risk her. Besides, she’d already done her part. She had been his catalyst. He was a mage remade because of her.

  Catalysts.

  Frustrated, he swung about and glared at his many empty glass jars and bottles. He ran through his supplies so quickly now. And until they were replenished he was at a standstill. Unable to risk Venette again, he’d tasked Rumm to part with any amount of coin, meet every demand his source might make, no matter how outrageous.

  I will spend myself to poverty, if that is what it takes.

  Fired with fresh resolve, he returned to his workbench. Gathered his sheets of notes and prepared to go through the reworked incant again, step by step, in search of the slightest imperfection.

  We have
so little time left. I cannot, must not, fail.

  Barl didn’t need Rumm to tap on the library door or clear his throat for her to know he was standing there. Cat-footed or not, she could always sense his presence.

  Sighing, she paused her pen in mid-syllable. Didn’t look up. “Yes?”

  Rumm took the question as leave to enter. “Mage Lindin. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

  “But?”

  “But I was wondering if—”

  “No, Rumm. He’s not come down and he won’t until he’s finished.” With another sigh she did lift her gaze, to see Rumm’s ordinarily disciplined face creased with worry. “You know as well as I do, he’ll go his own way and there’s nothing you or I can say about it.”

  “Yes, Mage Lindin. It’s his own way that concerns me.”

  She put the pen down. That was as close to criticism as she’d ever heard Rumm tread. “Aren’t you used to this by now? How long have you been in the Danfeys’ service?”

  “Since I was fourteen,” Rumm said. “So there’s nothing you can tell me of him that I don’t already know. Mage Lindin, these catalysts he’s got me chasing. Some of them—I’ve no idea what incants he’s brewing and it’s not my place to ask, only—” He shook his head. “Azafris is bad enough. But this time he’s after domish too, and gribb, and crushed crulin leaf. I might not be a mage, but I’ve made it my business to learn a few things. I tell you, this concerns me.”

  One of the first books she’d studied was Banlid’s Complete Guide to Catalysts. Rumm’s list was indeed alarming. Domish, gribb and crulin leaf were even more volatile than azafris. Banlid warned that their use should be avoided if another catalyst could be used. Their use had, in some cases, led to mental instability and a disordering of the wits.

  But those affected were lesser mages. Not Morgan.

  Besides, he would never forgive her if she sided with Rumm in his doubting.

  “You’ve no reason to fret,” she said, schooling herself to careless confidence. “His lordship is more than capable. Now go find a length of banister to polish, or something.”

  Rumm’s expression chilled to its customary servant’s mask. “Mage Lindin.”

  As he reached the door she added, “Rumm. These catalysts. I know they’re quite rare. Have you managed to procure them?”