A Blight of Mages

by Karen Miller

  Comfortably middle-aged Emmie from Hoyne, near the Flatlands, made a disbelieving sound. “Helpless? How could these Doranen ever be helpless?”

  “They’re flesh and blood,” said Bannet. “They make mistakes. Had to run, didn’t they?”

  Old Phryn snorted. “Pity they had to run here.”

  “Not if they save us from the drought, it’s not,” Emmie muttered. “There’s nine dead of it already, in Hoyne, and a score of others mortal sickly.”

  “Last night, Jervale,” said Boyde, before a brangle could start, “you were hard set against us giving up our singing. But what can we do if the Doranen want to magic it away?”

  “That’s a fair question,” said Bannet, as the others shared dismayed looks. “Ain’t none of us strong enough to stand against those mages. And I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “I might have an answer to that,” Emmie said slowly. “Born on the coast, I was. Bibford. Lived there half my life. Every season the fisherfolk gather to sing the sea. It’s a powerful song, and when you sing it with so many folk, you can get into strife. There’s a herbery most everyone drinks. Keeps the singing from sinking into you, doing all kinds of nasty mischief. Could be there’s a way to make it even stronger. Strong enough to fuddle a Doranen mage. I’m a herbery woman. I know about these things.”

  Looking at her, Jervale felt a great surge of affection. Felt it for all of them, these men and women he’d dreamed, who’d trusted him because he asked it… and for no other reason.

  “Before I drink any herbery muck,” said Boyde, “I want to know what you want of us, Jervale. You dragged us out here for a reason. Time to tell us what that is.”

  Even Bannet was nodding. And he couldn’t blame them.

  “I know things,” he said, after a moment. “But not everything. I can’t see every twist and turn in the road. But I know this. I know it. You and me, we were born to be the secret keepers of Lur’s magic. I know we’re tasked with the saving of this land. I know the day will come when what we know, what we’ve held onto, will make the difference between life and death for the Olken.” One by one, he looked at them. “And in your bones, I think you know it too. Why else did you let me drag you out here?”

  Silence, as they thought about that. As he thought about the other things he’d learned from last night’s dreams, that instinct told him they weren’t ready to hear of, like the other ways Lur would change and the other sacrifices they’d be making.

  Like the Innocent Mage.

  Oh, yes. He’d keep that truth to himself a good while yet.

  It was Bannet who spoke first. “That’s a mighty heavy burden, Jervale.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “And counting you, there’s only seven of us to carry it. That ain’t what I’d call a lot of folk to save Lur.”

  “Seven’s enough to start with,” he said. “But don’t fret. In time, we’ll have more. In time our Circle will have all the folk it needs.”

  Old Phryn rolled his eyes. “Our circle?”

  “The Doranen have their Council. And we’ll be a circle, so strong the strongest Doranen magic will never break it. No matter what.”

  “To our Circle,” said Emmie of Hoyne, and held out her hands. An acceptance. A challenge. A promise to stay true.

  Holding hands with them, in a circle, Jervale blinked back tears.

  I’ve done it, Bene. I ain’t mucked it up. Come what may, we’ll survive.

  At breakfast, Maris asked after Remmie.

  “He’s feeling poorly this morning,” Venette said, and patted her hand. Years on the Council kept the truth out of sight. “He’s staying abed. But I’ll tell him you were asking, my dear. That’s bound to cheer him up.”

  And Maris, for whom life had become such a wretched disappointment, nodded, believing her, and chatted with Mage Jarralt’s son instead.

  With her porridge bowl bravely emptied, Venette next took a turn about the camp. Not simply because she was avoiding Remmie’s sister, but because it was important Dorana’s mages knew she thought of them all the time. So she wandered and chatted and cuddled children and comforted the sad. Made a note of what her people needed, so she could approach Elder Chaffie later and ask for more help.

  So galling, to be made beggars. How she longed for it to end.

  The other reason to be social was to fill her mind so full there was no room in it for Remmie. No time to berate herself, wondering Did I do the right thing? She’d done what he wanted. She owed no apologies for that.

  Returning from the camp’s sick tents where a handful of mages still languished, recovering from the mountains, she saw Elder Chaffie hovering on the path between the village and the camp.

  “Lady Martain,” the Olken greeted her, with a small, respectful nod. “You look weary.”

  “As do you, Elder Chaffie,” Venette replied, feeling her blood leap. “I hope nothing is wrong.”

  The little Olken woman shifted her gaze to the makeshift camp, where all that remained of Dorana ate and drank and murmured… and lived.

  “We have made up our minds, Lady Martain. The mages of Dorana are welcome in Lur.”

  “Oh,” she said faintly. “Really? Well. That’s good. You’ve decided much faster than…” She cleared her throat. “Yes. That’s good.”

  To her surprise, Elder Chaffie laughed and patted her arm. “It ain’t a wonder you’re fuddled. Truth be told, I’m fuddled too. We’ll have a proper chinwag on it later. For now, I’ll leave you be.”

  If he’d been here, she’d have told Remmie first. But Remmie was gone… and so she went to tell his sister.

  Like a marble effigy, Barl sat silent and stonelike in her tent. Venette entered without asking, then dropped to a crouch beside the cot.

  “Barl? We have a new home. The Olken have said we can stay.”

  Not even a flicker of eyelash suggested Remmie’s sister had heard.

  “Barl!”

  The girl stirred. Looked up. Her eyes were full of contempt. “How can I ward Lur when Remmie’s not here? You fool, Venette. We suffered it all for nothing.”

  Stung, Venette took Barl’s shoulders and shook. “Not for nothing. Never for nothing. Besides, there’s time yet. If Remmie were stood beside me right now, you still wouldn’t be ready. So do what you have to do… and trust in your brother. He’ll come back before time’s run out. I know he will. And so should you.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me what I should know about Remmie!” said Barl, wrenching herself loose. “Get out of here. Get out, Venette! The sight of you makes me sick!”

  Shaken, Venette did as she was told, and left the girl alone.

  Two days after the Circle was formed, overcrowded Gribley began emptying of its extra Olken. Asked by Elder Chaffie to leave their chiming stones behind for the Doranen, Jervale and his new friends split theirs in two, gave half to Chaffie then cracked the other half into pieces, for swapping, so the Circle would remain unbroken. With that done, Jervale bid them farewell. Promised he’d chime them when he knew what next to say. What the Doranen planned to do. What that was he hoped to find out by speaking with Barl Lindin, before he left for home.

  Bannet decided to ride for a time with Boyde and Emmie, wanting a chance to know them better. “So it’s peace to you, Jervale,” he said. “Never doubt you’ve done what’s right.”

  “I don’t,” he said, returning his new friend’s hearty clap on the back. “And I thank you. I’d have walked a lonesome road, I reckon, without you at my side.”

  “And I’d have lived the rest of my life dull,” said Bannet. “Funny, ain’t it, how things turn out.”

  Halfway to the Doranen camp, Jervale crossed paths with Del of Westwailing. The tiny life within her set his instincts freshly ablaze.

  In the Final Days shall come the Innocent Mage…

  “I’m off,” she said, and gave him a friendly peck on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, Jervale.”

  It was
in him to warn her, but instinct stopped his tongue. Del was promised to a boy in Restharven. Folk would think the babe was early. No-one would know.

  Except for Tilly. When the time comes I’ll tell her. She’ll inherit my task.

  “Ride safely,” he told Del, and waved the lass out of sight.

  Then he went in search of Barl Lindin, but instead of finding her, he found Lady Martain.

  “I’m sorry,” the mage said. “She is busy. Good day.”

  There was no arguing with a Doranen. They were a haughty, arrogant lot. Never mind. He could wait. Barl Lindin was staying put, wasn’t she? He’d talk to her some other time… once Lur was safe, and green.

  Whistling, dreaming of Bene, he harnessed his donkeys and pointed their long, grey noses towards home.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The impossible travel incant from the Hall of Knowledge’s most secret archives spat Remmie out a stone’s throw across the border into Dorana’s First district. Spat him out of its magework to sprawl in a pool of his own blood-tainted vomit. Dazed, racked with pain, he lay beneath the fading sky and tried to pull the pieces of his shattered mind together.

  Venette… Venette… what did we do?

  He had no way of knowing for certain, but it felt as though he’d been travelling for days. Days in the suspended otherness of incant magic. No wonder he felt pulverised. No wonder he felt half dead. Venette was right. To attempt this had been madness.

  But what a wonderful madness. To reach for something no mage has ever done before. To reach… and grasp it. This must be how Barl felt.

  Understanding that, he wept a little. Because now, for the first time, he truly understood her.

  And if I’d understood her sooner, would I be lying here now?

  Lying in an open field, beneath a fading sky, in a land still torn and twisted with blight.

  Although… not as badly as it was twisted when the Doranen fled their home. Despite the pain in his abused body, he could feel that much at least. Barl was right. Dorana was healing. In time its mages would be able to return.

  Provided I can kill Morgan. Provided he doesn’t kill me.

  His fingers were still wrapped about the hilt of his knife. Amazing. He tried to lift his arm, to look at the blade, but his bones had turned to straw and the straw was catching fire. Giving up in the face of such hot torment, he closed his eyes again and waited for it to pass.

  The next time he looked at the sky, it was morning.

  Damp with dew, skin chilled and muscles stiff, he fought to sit up. Won that small battle, and groggily looked around. Yes, he was still in an open field. Aside from grass and trees, he was the only living thing in it. But if he squinted north… if he strained his eyes…

  That glitter on the horizon. I think that’s Elvado.

  He heard himself groan. It was a long way to walk. And once he’d reached the city, he had further still to go before he reached the Danfey estate.

  Perhaps I’ll find a horse. It’s only been a few months, I can’t have forgotten how to ride.

  But until he found his horse, he’d be walking. And to do that, he had to stand.

  Swaying on his feet, head swimming, Remmie groaned again. He was hungry. But at least his time in the wilderness had taught him how to hunt and forage. Whatever else happened, he wasn’t going to starve.

  And if he thought about that, about hunting and foraging and filling his empty belly… then he’d be too busy to think of anything else.

  Like his sister. Like Danfey. Like dying here, alone.

  I had to do this, Barl. When you calm down, you’ll know I had to. I promised Mama I’d keep you safe, remember? And I always keep my word.

  Barl’s rage at her brother was so consuming, she wrote him out of her diary. Used an expunging incant on her scribblings to make it seem he never was. And if he came back… when he came back… she’d show him his absence. Thrust the diary beneath his nose and shout, You see? You weren’t missed!

  Because she missed him so badly, she woke in tears with every dawn.

  How could you, Remmie? How could you do this to me?

  She’d made her peace with Venette. Beneath the pain, she knew this was Remmie’s fault. Not hers. He’d have done this with or without the councillor’s help. At least with it, he had a chance.

  To get there in one piece. But how will he get back? If he survives the incant… the blight… Morgan… how will he get back in time?

  And that was the crux of it. As ever, for her, it came down to time. The Olken were running out of it. The drought was tightening its grip. And if she broke its stranglehold on Lur without raising the wall, then the warding incant she’d created would never see the light of day. The magics wouldn’t permit it.

  Which means if I break the drought first, and then Remmie fails, there will be nothing to stop Morgan… and all of us will die.

  And though she could hardly bear to think of it, there was a chance he’d fail.

  So now I must hope my brother murders the man I love. Loved. The man whose madness I helped create. The man who loves me, though his heart is made barren and his brilliant mind a ruin.

  And so, hoping, she would wait. Wait as long as she could. And while she waited, continue to create Lur’s future. The future she wouldn’t see if Remmie failed to murder Morgan… and, out of time, she was forced to raise the wall.

  With the inciting weather magic incants perfected, she turned her skills to what came next, the incants and protections that would keep Lur’s weather tame, the land in precarious balance, the warding powerful enough to hold Morgan at bay for the years it would take him to die of old age.

  Because she knew, oh she knew, that until time claimed him he would stop at nothing to reach her. Though for some reason his dream sendings had ceased of late, she didn’t need them to know.

  There was also the question of who would magework the weather day in and day out, once the warding wall was raised. But the answer was obvious. She chose Venette as the weather magic’s first guardian. Who followed next would be Venette’s choice, in consultation with the new Council, when it was formed.

  Since the weather magics were too dangerous to leave unguarded and easily absorbed, she used Olken crystal as a repository for the incants and sigils and protected them with copious wardings. Drove herself to the brink of breaking, for the powerful incants resisted their caging.

  After careful thought, she crafted another incant, this one to let a mage see through Lur’s wall, once it was raised. For a locked room without a window was not a safe thing.

  As she laboured over her legacy, waiting and hoping for Remmie to return, she left Venette to take charge of everything else. The forming of a new Council. The finding of a place for the Doranen to create their own township. The creation of the incant that would blank the Olken’s magic from their minds and memories, as though it had never been. A difficult decision, that was… but Lur was better safe than sorry. There was the code of justice that would allow Doranen and Olken to live side by side in peace. And a second code, the Doranen code, that would ensure no ruinous magics would ever be used again. That meant they must sift through their history of mageworks, deciding what to discard and what to keep.

  And in their careful sifting, become better mages than they had been.

  All of that, Barl left to Venette. Trusting her to do what was right, as she was trusted to make them safe. She worked, she ate, and in brief snatches she slept. Because time was running out, Morgan still lived, she was sure of it… and Remmie hadn’t returned.

  Bound in Barl’s magic, bound with cruelty and failed love, Morgan turns his swiftly growing strength to the destruction of her warding. It is almost completed, his ruin of her plan to hold him, constrain him, deny him what is his. Every thought turns towards freedom. He has no time to touch her mind. But he can wait. He is patient. A pleasure deferred is a pleasure prolonged. It is a lesson she has taught him, a lesson he has learned—

  The shock of the knife
sliding into his chest was so great, Morgan almost lost his grasp of Barl’s final, frayed binding incant. The invading blade was long and narrow and brutally sharp. He’d felt a blade like that before. Once. A lifetime ago, it seemed. When someone had tried to murder his darling. His dravas. The mageworked child of his heart.

  Now, as then, he repudiated the insult. Used Dorana’s tainted, transformed magics to heal his rudely pierced flesh. And as he did so, rage surged through him.

  Who seeks my life? Who dares raise a hand to Morgan Danfey?

  The fury released him. Burst him free of Barl’s restraint. Burst his dravas free of bondage with him. He felt them stir and wake. Heard a wild shout of triumph. Felt the blood pump through his veins. A flare of light as his eyes opened. A hoarse gasp as he breathed free air. Sickening confusion. Where was he? And then he recognised the curtains. The chamber. This was the Danfey estate. His mansion. His bed.

  And that is my beloved’s brother. Remmie Lindin. Holding a knife.

  With an oiled ease that pleased him, no harm taken from his captivity, he rolled from the bed and onto his feet. Noted that he was dressed in silk, but barefoot. Felt the new length of his hair. Barl’s would-be murderous brother was staring, shocked eyes wide in his pinched, bloodless face. He was very thin, and he favoured one leg. His face was scarred, a line of pink, puckered flesh spoiling the beauty he shared with his sister.

  My, my. How long have I been bound?

  “Barl said you were breaking free. I didn’t want to believe it.”

  Barl’s brother sounded hoarse, shattered with surprise. With grief. But surely if anyone deserved to be griefstruck, it was Morgan Danfey. Betrayed. Abandoned. Discarded by the woman he’d loved more than his life.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Well, Remmie. You stayed behind to kill me?”

  “No. I came back.”

  “Came back?” He smiled. “From where?”

  Remmie’s jaw clenched. He was frightened, but not running. That was, of course, preferable. The killing of cowards was no sport at all.