by Karen Miller
Gar was outside the crypt, holding a candle-lantern and looking annoyed. “At last. Two hours, I said. Have you forgotten how to count?”
“I ain’t that late.”
“Late enough. Come on.”
He pushed open the crypt door and went inside. Asher stared after him, apprehension like a sea swell rising to swamp all other, harsher emotions. Then he followed.
In the royal family’s chamber three more candle-lanterns had been lit and placed around the small, chilly room. Flickering shadows danced up the white walls and over the flagstone floor. Balanced on Borne’s incomplete effigy was a creamy-white globe.
“What’s that thing?”
Gar glanced at it. “The Weather Orb. Come in, would you?”
Fascinated, repelled, Asher took half a step closer. “There’re colors in there ...”
“That’s the Weather Magic,” said Gar, withdrawing a battered, ancient-looking book from a satchel on the floor.
Asher nodded at it. “And what’s that?”
“A collection of spells and incantations specific to the role of Master Magician. I took it and the Orb from Durm’s study this afternoon. The rest of his books and papers are being boxed up and delivered to the Tower tonight. One month isn’t long, Asher. I don’t intend to waste a minute of it.”
He felt his guts cramp. “So you pinched Durm’s stuff. What’s that got to do with me?”
“Everything,” said Gar, impatient. “If you’re going to preserve Barl’s Wall you have to take on her Weather Magics. Or try to, anyway. I’ve no idea if the Transference will work with you saying it instead of a Master Magician. I’ve no idea if it’ll work on you at all, given you’re Olken. Still, we don’t have a choice. The attempt must be made. And in secret... hence us meeting here.”
Mouth dry, heart racing, he stared at the Orb. “And if this Transference don’t work? What happens to me?”
Gar shrugged. “I don’t know that either. But these magics come from Barl herself. I can’t believe she’d let them hurt someone. Kill them.”
Beneath the fear, a spark of anger. “She’s six centuries dead, Gar, and you never knew her. You got no idea what she would or wouldn’t let happen.”
Gar frowned at the floor, then looked up. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Probably.”
He tried to smile. “What about third?”
“Asher—-”
“Ah, sink it!” he said, and scrubbed a hand across his face. “Let’s just get it over with, eh?” Gar nodded. “Agreed.”
They sat facing each other on the flagstones. Gar held the Weather Orb and balanced the open spell book in his lap. “It’s only fair to warn you ... this might hurt.”
He rolled his eyes. “Now he tells me.”
“Since you can’t read Ancient Doranen I’ll recite the spell and you can repeat it after me. If what happened in the Weather Chamber holds true, that should trigger the Transference.”
“And if it don’t?”
A wintry amusement touched Gar’s face. “Then it’s hail King Conroyd.”
Asher glared at the pretty pearl-white Weather Orb. “Hurt how much, exactly?”
“I survived,” said Gar, and gave him the Orb.
It felt peculiarly heavy. Almost alive. Or aware. The colors swirling beneath its skin made his senses swim. Without conscious thought his fingers formed a cradle.
“That’s right,” said Gar. “Hold it just like that. No tighter, no looser. Close your eyes. Breathe. Good. Now ... are you ready?”
Asher felt the crypt’s cold air catch in his throat. Ready? No, he wasn’t bloody ready. How could anybody be ready for something like this? He grunted.
“All right,” said Gar, softly. There was a rustling of pages, a slithering of leather, as he picked up Durm’s book. “Repeat after me: Ha’rak dolanie maketh ...”
Heart booming, head spinning, Asher licked his dry lips and repeated the tongue-twisting words. “Ha ‘rak dolanie maketh...”
As he whispered the last syllable the Orb trembled in his grasp. He felt warmth. A humming energy. He opened his eyes, stared down at the maelstrom of gold and green and purple and crimson magics he held between his hands... and fell headlong into it. From some impossible distance he heard Gar’s voice and he echoed it, repeating the words he had no hope of understanding.
Deep within, some secret place he never knew existed seemed to ... open. Unfold, the way a rose unfolds its petals at the first kind kiss of the sun. The Orb was glowing so brightly he shouldn’t have been able to look at it, but he could. He could see right into the heart of it, and it felt like staring into the heart of magic itself. Images poured into the newly opened space within him, and with them came words ... knowledge ... Power.
He could feel his chest heaving, his breath rasping. The Orb’s heat and light burst free of their shell, rushed through his skin like hot sweet wine through cheesecloth and now he was the Orb, glowing with magic, his bones were burning with it and the world had turned crimson and gold.
There was no pain.
Gar was still speaking; standing on the rim of this brand-new world he could hear his friend’s voice, drifting towards him from a vast distance. He let the words float into his ambit. Breathed them in and breathed them out again as though they were incense, or the smoke from one of Dathne’s scented candles. The power pouring into him swelled like a wave racing in from the ocean, deep and strong and impossible to control. He felt like a child again. Remembered the time Da tossed him over the side of then fishing boat and into the water, so he’d learn how to swim.
“Don’t fight her, boy! You’ll never win! Let go, just let go! She’ll hold you like a woman if you let her! Let go...”
He let go now, as he had then. Let the wave of power take him, lift him, drag him deep under and throw him up high. He heard himself cry out, a sound of wonder an( despair. A fountain of words welled into his mouth ant he shouted them for all the world to hear. A final surge of magic speared him like a javelin of fire. For one brief exulting moment he knew himself invincible ...
... and then the fire faded. The power snuffed out like a pinched candle. He was a man again, not magic made flesh, and the Orb in his trembling hands was nothing more than a bauble.
He could have wept.
When at last he stirred, Gar was staring at him as though they’d never met. “There was no pain for you... was there?”
He shook his head. Slowly, awareness returned. That was a lantern. He sat on the floor. Above him lay the quiet stone faces of dead people. He felt light enough to fly Weighed down with impossible knowledge.
“Do you know that at the end you were saying the last words of the Transference spell with me, not after me?”
Carefully, he returned the Orb to Gar. “If you say so. can’t remember... it’s a blur.”
Gar stood. His face was cold, all emotion smothered like a river under ice. “There’s one more thing we have to do.”
He slumped against the nearest coffin, groaning “What? Gar, I don’t want to do anythin’ else. Not tonight I’m knackered. All my insides are turned upside down and my head’s near to burstin’ open there’s so much stuff been crammed in it.”
Gar’s answer was to look in his satchel and remove a small pottery bowl filled with damp soil. “There’s a seed in here,” he said, holding it out. “Make it sprout.”
“Make it sprout?” Asher stared. “Why?”
“As a test. We need to be sure the Transference worked.”
“I ain’t a bloody gardener! I don’t know how to—”
“Yes, you do!” said Gar. Leaned down, grabbed him by one arm and hauled him to his feet. “It’s in you now, as it once was in me.”
“Ow! Leave off!” he protested as Gar tapped him ungently on the side of the head to make his point.
“Just think of the seed, Asher. Imagine it bursting into life. Magic will do the rest.”
Scowling,
he snatched the dirt-filled bowl and glared into it. His mind was blank. Think of the seed. He held his breath, screwed up his face and imagined green and growing things. Words floated to the surface of his mind and flirted there like sea foam on the ocean.
Talineth vo sussura. Sussura. Sussura.
He parted his lips and let them escape.
Melting heat. A javelin of fire. A flaring of crimson and gold. The bowl vibrated. Even as he gasped in pain, felt something warm and wet trickle from his nostrils and over his lips, the moist dirt shivered. Shimmered. Erupted like a waterspout. Something slender and green unfolded from the dark earth, leapt to life in a riot of yellow and blue. He cried out. His fingers lost their tenuous hold of the bowl, let it slip and fall. It shattered on the crypt’s stone floor, spilling dirt, spitting shards of clay.
The flower he’d given birth to kept growing. Breathless and disbelieving he watched as its stem broadened, budded, as the buds opened, as the blue and yellow petals uncurled and doused the air with perfume, as its tangle of roots tangled further. At long last it stopped growing and instead lay like a miracle at his feet.
“Barl save me,” breathed Gar. “Germinate the seed, I said, not turn the crypt into a greenhouse.” He shook his head in wonder, and envy. “Who are you, Asher? What are you?”
Asher stared at the flower, feeling such a brangle of things—fear, elation, horror, joy—that for a moment he forgot how to speak. “You’re the history student,” he said when his tongue at last obeyed him. “You tell me.”
Gar’s face tightened. “I wish I could.”
He busied himself collecting the Orb and the book and stowing them safely back in the satchel. Turned then to picking up the shards of broken pottery and putting them in there too. His movements were savagely self-controlled.
Asher bent to help him. Gar struck his hand away. “I’m not helpless.”
He stepped back. “I never said you were.”
“But you thought it!”
“I never did. Gar—”
“Helpless! Useless! Defective!” On the last word Gar’s voice cracked, his face twisted and he turned away.
Knotted with unwanted sympathy, all Asher could do was wait. Gone was the proud and powerful king who’d walked amongst his people in the market square, comforting and being comforted, wearing his magical birthright like a mantle of crimson and gold. In that man’s place this born-again cripple, brought low by grief and fate and a bewildered anger that his life could take such an unkind turn. That against every belief and expectation an Olken could possess the magic he’d longed for so passionately all his life. That had manifested without warning then deserted him without rhyme or reason, leaving him emptied, hollowed, not even a shadow of his other, grander self.
At long last Gar regained his self-control. “I’m sorry.”
Asher patted Gar’s shoulder, feeling awkward. “Don’t be.”
“It’s late. We should go. But first...” Painfully, Gar looked at his father’s mutilated marble face. “The effigy. If I gave you the incantation would you ... I don’t want anyone to see... it’s dangerous. For both of us. And disrespectful to him.”
Asher sighed. He didn’t want to. The less magic he used, the happier he’d be. But—
He let Gar give him the words he needed and remolded Borne’s disfigured features as though they were made of butter, not marble. Then he banished the spilled dirt and the riotous plant he’d created into the woods that ringed the crypt.
“Thank you,” said Gar. Subdued. Withdrawn. “I’m grateful.”
“Prove it,” he said. “Find me a way out of this.” Gar nodded. Touched his fingertips to his father’s perfect effigy. “I’ll try.”
———
Deaf to all of Darran’s entreaties, Gar had decided upon a private interment for his family. Six sober City guards removed the bodies from the palace’s east wing, watched by Conroyd Jarralt, members of the General Council, Pellen Orrick and a host of palace and Tower staff who’d gathered in silent respect on the lawn bordering the gravel driveway.
Asher, standing with Dathne and Darran and Willer, chewed on his hp and bullied his face into some semblance of stern discipline. Bloody funerals. He hated them. He and Dathne had attended Coachman Matcher’s four days after the accident as official representatives of the king, and what a weeping and a wailing that had been. The dreams he’d had that night. His mother’s funeral. His father’s death and the funeral he’d been denied. Poor addled Jed, as good as dead.
Now this.
Holze walked behind the sad procession of coffins, weighted down with his most ornate robes of office, offering his prayers for the dead royals in a clear, carrying voice. Beside him walked Gar, silent, swathed head to toe in deepest black. For the first time since his ascension to the throne his clothes were embroidered with the sword-and-thunderbolt symbol of House Torvig. On his collar points, his shirt cuffs and over his heart. Another battle with Darran, that had been, one Gar had wisely lost The reigning monarch always wore his or her house insignia.
Even if it did make him feel like a fraud.
As the lowering sun threw shadows across the surrounding gardens, Pellen’s boys slid the three coffins neatly into the back of the glossy black hearse, closed its rear doors, then fell into place well behind Gar and Holze. Matt picked up the black horses’ reins and his whip and soberly moved away from the palace, down the tree-lined drive that would lead them, eventually, to the crypt Equally sober, Gar, Holze and the guards followed in its wake. Holze was still praying.
As soon as they were gone from sight, sobs broke out amongst the crowd. Asher glanced around, saw weeping Olken, weeping Doranen. Not Jarralt, of course. Even if he was genuinely grieved he’d never lower himself to show it in public. But the Doranen members of the General Council, they seemed not to have such scruples. They grieved without reservation, as did the Olken guild leaders. There were even tears on Pellen’s cheeks. Of course the royal staff were awash with misery. Beside him, Willer had surrendered to soggy hiccups and Darran was practically howhng into his handkerchief.
Dathne, her eyes bright, touched his sleeve. “They’re sheep in search of a shepherd, Asher. You should say something.”
He didn’t want to. Hated drawing attention to himself, especially with Conroyd Jarralt watching, but she was right. And Darran was in no fit state, blubbing like a baby.
“My lords and ladies, good guild meisters and mistresses, gentlefolk all,” he called, raising a hand to attract their attention. “This sad day sees the end of an era in our kingdom. As His Majesty goes to bid his private farewells, let us remove to the palace’s Hall of Meetings to partake of refreshments and shared memories in honor of King Borne, Queen Dana and the Princess Fane.”
A moment of surprised silence, of exchanged looks and lifted eyebrows. Then those nearest the palace began to drift towards it. Darran, damply composed now, plucked at his elbow. “That was well said, Asher. Very well said indeed.”
“You sound surprised.”
Darran’s chin lifted. “I am. Now—”
“Asher,” said Conroyd Jarralt, suddenly at his elbow and icily civil. “A word.”
He bowed. “Of course, my lord.”
“In private.”
“Certainly.” He turned to Dathne. “I’ll see you inside.”
She withdrew, taking Darran and Willer with her and sparing him a swift, sympathetic smile over her shoulder. He didn’t dare acknowledge it. Instead he surrendered to Jarralt’s frigid scrutiny.
Contemptuous of social niceties, Jarralt said, “When does the king intend to appoint his new Master Magician?”
“My lord, he has one already.”
Jarralt’s color heightened. “Durm is nothing but a breathing carcass.” His voice was pitched low, for intimacy. “And Gar’s sentimental attachment to him places all of us in danger. You have his ear, fisherman. Bend it. Advise our king that further delay in the matter of Durm’s replacement will lead to questions I’m
sure he’d prefer weren’t asked.”
Asher clasped his hands behind his back, so Jarralt wouldn’t see fists. “Is that a threat?”
“A warning,” said Jarralt, and smiled. “I will not see this kingdom imperiled by a boy whose judgment has already proven ... questionable. He gave an undertaking before witnesses that this matter would be resolved.”
“And it will be, my lord. In his time. Not yours.”
The smile widened. “Indeed. But time is not infinite. Time . . . runs out. Listen carefully, Meister Administrator. That sound you hear is the swift approach of a last chance.”
Bastard. Bastard. Asher manufactured a smile of his own. “Really? Seems more to me like the sound of a man puttin’ a noose round his own neck.”
Jarralt laughed. “Were I you, Asher, I’d not be so swift to speak of nooses and necks. You have my warning. Do with it what you will... and be prepared to reap the consequences.”
Fighting nausea, he watched Jarralt saunter across the manicured lawn and into the palace.
It was some time before he could bring himself to follow.
———
Flickered by candlelight, Gar listened to Holze’s footsteps retreating. To the crypt’s inner door banging closed. To the faint echoes of the heavy brass-bound outer door booming shut. He crossed the small, crowded chamber and pushed its heavy oak door until it thudded home against the jamb. Then he turned and slumped against it.
“So. Here we are then. Alone at last.”
Someone giggled. After a startled moment he realized it was him. He slapped a hand across his mouth to stifle the shocking sound.
The cold stone coffins, full-bellied now with bodies, graced with those beautiful marble effigies, sat silent before him.
“I won’t stay long,” he said after a little while. “I know you want to sleep. It’s just... there’s something I’d like to ask you. Just a little matter I’d like to see cleared up. Now that you’re safely here, in your new home, and we’re sure not to be overheard. You don’t mind, do you? No, I didn’t think you would.”