by Karen Miller
Not soon enough, the world went away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Morg stood before Conroyd’s dressing-room mirror and admired the way his blue brocade dressing-gown brought out his eyes. Behind him, Conroyd’s wife continued to wail.
“But you can’t send me away!” Ethienne protested, perilously close to stamping her foot. “I’m the queen now, Conroyd! I belong in the palace!”
He sighed and smoothed his unbound blond hair. She belonged in a coffin buried six feet deep. “My dear, I know. And when the time is right the palace is where you’ll be. Where we both will be, with the House Jarralt falcon flying proudly above it. But until that time I want you out of Dorana, safe on our country estate with our sons to look after you.”
“How am I unsafe here? You’re the king!”
“I know,” he said, turning. Smiling. “But until the ttai-tor Asher is dead, the City will be filled with Olken from every corner of the kingdom, come to see him die and all doubtless unhappy with the curfew and other restrictions I’ve had to lay on them in the wake of his wickedness.”
She pouted. “Who cares if they’re unhappy? It’s their duty to obey you without question and if they don’t they should be arrested!”
“And they will be, my dear. But you’ve told me yourself how this business has upset the staff, and it will only get worse before it gets better. There’ll be no such upheaval on the estate. Besides,” he patted her cheek, “I must concentrate on my new, important duties, and you know what a distraction you are.”
That had her simpering, the silly cow. “Oh, Conroyd, dearest—”
“So, my pet, you’ll go? To please me?”
“And what of my pleasure?” she retorted, folding her arms. “I only like the country in the summer and anyway, I want to see that dreadful Asher die.”
Out of patience, he snapped his fingers before her petulant face. “Obedience.” All the lively argument drained away, leaving her pale and docile and, above all, silent.
What a shame he couldn’t so ensorcel every other Doranen in the kingdom. It would make things so much easier. Unfortunately, that was impossible. He’d have to find another way. It was vital he get rid of as many Doranen from the City as he could; the fewer magicians he had around him the better, for even the most rudimentary practitioners would begin to notice the Wall’s decline.
Provided, of course, he could achieve its demise. Un-sustained by WeatherWorking it would fall, eventually, but that would take too long. And too many questions would be asked in the meantime.
The Doranen, sheep or not, would notice his lack of WeatherWorking. Holze would certainly begin to agitate. Demand proof of his proficiency and the appointment of dead Durm’s replacement. And, if unsatisfied would doubtless rally the kingdom’s magicians against him.
There was only one solution. He had to find a way to thwart Barl’s will. To absorb her wretched Weather Magic into himself and unravel her Wall from within.
For if he didn’t...
First things first, however. He turned again to Conroyd’s wife. “You are leaving for the country, Ethienne. Willingly and with enthusiasm, eager to begin preparations for the creation of a new Doranen court.” A happy thought occurred, and he laughed out loud. “What’s more, as soon as you arrive at the estate you’ll invite as many of the City’s Doranen as can be accommodated to join you there, that they might assist you in those preparations. Make it a royal decree. You’ll enjoy that, and they won’t dare refuse.”
Ethienne nodded, witless and smiling. “Of course, Conroyd. Whatever you say, my dear.”
Not all the Doranen would go, of course. The damned councilors would stay, some of them, royal decree or not. Conroyd’s friends, for certain. But many would obey the summons, greedy for the chance to make themselves indispensable to the new regime.
And that would give him the time and space he needed to devise a way around Barl’s safeguards against him. To kill her Wall and her kingdom, once and for all.
———
Veira’s kitchen was small and cozy. The walls were painted a buttery yellow. The drawn curtains were blue.
The cupboards, the dresser, the table and chairs, all were crafted from mellow brown timber and carved with acorns and wheat sheaves and lambs. Dried herbs in bunches dangled invitingly overhead, scenting the air. Seated at the table, Dathne breathed in the muddled aromas of sage, of dilly-tip, rosemary, thyme and pods of tottle seeds, feeling oddly comforted. The stove in the corner wafted heat from its wood-filled pot belly. Standing before it, as though he’d grown up here, as though he belonged, Matt tipped fresh tea leaves into an old brown pot then filled it from a kettle boiling on the stove top. His back was to her, and he wouldn’t turn around.
“I don’t understand it,” she said, slumping partly against the wall, partly over the tiny table. The cushion on the chair was a blessing after the hard bench seat of Veira’s wagon. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming here?”
Matt said nothing. Veira, setting out plates, glanced at him. The look was as good as a poke with an elbow. He shrugged. Said, over his shoulder, “We weren’t on speaking terms, remember?”
She frowned, not liking the reminder. “But how did you know where Viera lived? Even I didn’t know where she lived! Not until she told me!”
“And I told him too,” said Veira. She’d shed her hooded cloak since coming inside; plump and comfortable, she was layered in a patchwork of blue cotton and black felt and bright scarlet sheep’s-wool; her long gray hah was coiled round and round the back of her head like an elderly sleeping snake. Slivers of silver-bound jet dangled from her soft earlobes and her fingers were burdened with rings. Her eyes, dark brown and lively, were narrowed now in sharp consideration. “Did you think you were the only one with a Circle Stone, child?”
Shocked, Dathne sat up. “Well, of course not... but I didn’t think—” She stared accusingly at Matt’s stubborn back. “You were spying on me?”
“Tcha!” said Veira, disparaging. “Spying. Twice, I’ve spoken to Matthias since you and he fell in together. I called him, to make sure I could, and after that stayed silent, hearing not a whisper until he reached out and told me he needed to hide.”
She let her gaze rest broodingly between Matt’s shoulderblades. Wanted him to feel its weight. “And was that all you told her?”
He refused to turn. Pretended he had to guard the waiting mugs in case they sprouted wings and flew away. “I told her everything. I had to. You wouldn’t.”
She wanted to leap from her seat and beat her fists . against him. “You had no right! I’m the Heir, not you. It was for me to tell, in my own time and in my own way! You’ve resented my feelings for Asher ever since you learned of them. Maybe he was right. Maybe you are jealous! You—”
He did turn then, his face white with temper and tiredness. “Jealous? Don’t flatter yourself! Believe me, Asher’s welcome to you, high-handed, self-opinionated slum-skumbledy woman that you are! So convinced that you’re invincible, just ‘cause you’re the Heir! Well, you’re not invincible. You didn’t see this coming. You didn’t see he had their magic in him, and maybe none of ours. And you wouldn’t listen when I said, over and over, he needed to be told. If we’d told him, he wouldn’t be in this mess!”
For a moment she could hardly breathe. Matt never spoke to her like this. Nobody spoke to her like this. “You don’t know that!” she spat back at him. “You don’t know anything! Telling him might’ve made things worse!”
“How could they be worse?” he shouted. “Asher’s going to die”
“Now that’s enough,” said Veira, and slapped her palm down sharp on the table. “Both of you. I’m too old for all this brangling and besides, it won’t change what’s happened. There’s been mistakes on both sides that can’t be unmade now.” Her kindly face was tight with disapproval. “Dathne, you’ve no business flying at Matthias. Yes, he told me all your muddle-headed doings, and then spent twice as long again making excus
es for you. He’s been a good and loyal friend, my girl. Better than you’ve deserved.”
H6t with shame and angry embarrassment, Dathne stared at the knobbly pine-board floor. Couldn’t bring herself to look at Matt. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. Her voice sounded very small in the cottage’s kitchen. Small, and unremarkable. Not the voice of an all-seeing prophet at all. She lifted her gaze. “I’m just tired, and worried. I’m glad Matt came to you, Veira. He’d have been in danger, else.”
Veira sniffed. “Oh, he’s still in danger, child. We’re all of us in danger.” She looked again to Matt. “That tea ready yet, my boy?”
“Nearly,” he said, and pulled out a chair at the table for her. “Sit. I’ll do the rest. Biscuits as well?”
Veira settied herself in the seat with a sigh. “Of course biscuits. Tea ain’t tea without biscuits.”
Briefly grinning, he opened a nearby cupboard and pulled down a large corked clay jar glazed red and blue.
Took a crock of honey from another, teaspoons from a drawer and a pitcher of milk from a cool-box set under the sink, and placed them on the table.
Dathne stared. “Well! You’ve made yourself at home!”
Frowning again, he turned away to gently swill the tea inside its pot. “I had to, didn’t I? Seeing I was kicked out of my own.”
She flushed. “Matt—”
Veira rapped her knuckles on the tabletop. “No more, I said! Rivers don’t flow backwards.”
Reproved, Dathne closed her lips tight and looked at Matt instead as he busied himself with pouring the brewed tea. Despite everything it was good to see him, large and practical in Veira’s little kitchen. He’d lost his scent of horses. Smelled now of honey-pine and beeswax. His face was thinner, though, carved with lines she’d never seen before. And there was a sadness in him that was also new. Her doing. She felt her throat constrict, and turned to Veira.
“So ... you know everything?”
Veira’s eyebrows lifted. “Everything Matthias knew, yes. Which I’ll warrant’s not the same as everything there is to know. I’ve no doubt there’re things you kept from him as well as me.”
There was a look in Veira’s eyes that made her squirm. “Nothing important, I promise. Veira... what I did. It wasn’t for me.” Handing out the tea-filled mugs, Matt made a small, disbelieving sound. Her cheeks burned. “All right. Not wholly for me. I hoped that if Asher and I were ... close ... intimate ... he’d believe he could finally trust me. Confide his secrets. Then I’d know how best to proceed. Prophecy’s proven unreliable, Veira. Unclear, and even ambiguous. And it’s never been constant I couldn’t see where it was leading us.”
“So you told yourself it led to that young man’s mattress,” retorted Veira. “Which is where you’ve always wanted to travel.”
“Veira!”
“She’s right, Dath, and you know it” Matt said sharply. “We’ll not solve a thing if we can’t face the truth unflinching.”
She didn’t want to think about that. “You don’t seem very surprised, Veira. That I—that we—Asher and me, that we—”
Shrugging, Veira peered into her steaming mug. Splashed in some milk and a dollop of honey. “It’s true I ain’t the Heir no more than Matthias, but I’ve still got a good pair of eyes in my head and a knack or three of my own,” she said, stirring. “I could tell which way the wind was blowing.”
“Then why didn’t you stop me, if Matt’s right and it was such a terrible thing to do?”
“Did I say he was right?” said Veira, and exchanged glances with him as he passed her a plate piled high with almond biscuits. “Did I say it was terrible? I don’t recall saying that. We still don’t know where this will end.”
“We’ve got a pretty good idea,” Matt said, glowering, and leaned against the kitchen bench.
Instead of answering, Veira dipped a biscuit in her milky tea and ate it with lip-smacking relish. “Drink up, child,” she said mildly. “And then you’ll do some scrying and we’ll see what we can see.”
Dathne felt herself shrink with fear. She had no desire for tea. “Scrying? For Asher? Veira, I can’t. Not tonight. I’m so tired. Maybe tomorrow—”
“Yes, tonight,” the old woman said, eyebrows pulled low. “Before sunrise. I’ve tried but I can’t seem to find him. Matthias says you never fail, no matter what the distance.”
She glared at helpful Matt. He shrugged, his eyes cool and contained as he took a sip from his own mug. There was an empty chair beside her; he could’ve sat down if he’d wanted ...
Pain, quick and sharp. Such a gulf between them, greater than ever before. Could they cross it? Rebuild their bridges? Or was their friendship dead and buried, as Asher might soon be dead and buried?
Of course she wanted to see where Asher was. How he was. She was desperate to know ...
She was terrified of what she’d find out.
“You must, child,” said Veira, relentless. “Knowledge is power.”
“All right,” she said grudgingly, making no effort to be pleasant. “If you insist.”
They finished their tea and their biscuits and Veira brought out her scrying basin. Prepared the water, the tanal leaf, vervle, cloysies’ tears and moon-rot. When everything was ready Dathne looked at her and at Matt and said, still tetchy, “I’ll make no promises in this. He might well be beyond me.”
“All I ask is that you try, child,” said Veira. “That’s all I’ll ever ask.”
So she tried. A part of her so fearful, a part of her with hope. Deep in the tanal leaf’s languorous grasp, she seasoned the scrying water and opened her heart. Sent forth her questing mind. Asher. Asher. Asher.
Moments later she found him. Huddled. Hurting. Caged like an animal and abused by the very people he was born to save. Weeping, she told Veira and Matt what she saw in the basin and heard them gasp in turn. “We must help him,” she whispered as the tears coursed down her face. “We must save him. Can we save him? Is there time?”
“That’s a question I can’t answer,” said Veira as she put her arms round Dathne’s shoulders. “Not yet. But I promise you this much, child. We’ll try.”
———
“We must save him. Can we save him? Is there time?”
Tossed and turned by Dathne’s desperate questions, Veira rose before dawn and tiptoed into her little kitchen to make a cup of tea. How odd, to be creeping thief-like about the cottage she’d lived in solitary for twenty-seven years. But she knew already that Matthias was a light sleeper; years of living with horses and their capricious maladies had honed him to startling alertness. She didn’t know about Dathne yet, but chances were the child slept just as shallow. And since just now she needed quiet and time alone with her own bleak thoughts, it was best she played the mouse.
She lit a single candle, then the fire in her stove to boil the kettle. Outside the window darkness mantled her yard, the forest, the mountains. Barl’s Wall was a whisper of gold, lost amongst the stars. Sometimes it was easy to forget it was there. Or that she was here because of it, tied to a scattered group of not-quite-strangers whose lives she could end with one unthinking mistake. Who knew her but not each other and willingly lived with danger for the sake of an ancient prophecy and a life that had vanished centuries before they were born. Their courage had her weeping, if she let it.
Guardianship of the Circle had come to her three months before her thirty-sixth birthday. Married at twenty to a lovely boy whose face she no longer remembered, widowed childless at twenty-three, she’d not had the heart to woo or wed again. At least, for a long time she’d thought it was sorrow.
After her Great-Aunt Tilda had died, though, leaving her a mysterious box and a legacy she still had cause to curse, she wondered if that wasn’t Prophecy working its will upon her. Dabbling its fingers in her private doings long before it needed her. Keeping her ready for the day when it did.
For this day, when dark decisions must be made so that an even darker future might not come to pass.
> The kettle took a deep breath and started whistling. She whisked it off the stove top and made her mug of tea. Cradling it between fingers just beginning to feel the pinches of age, she sank into a chair at the table to rest her I elbows and brood on matters like to break her heart.
After sending Matthias and Dathne to their beds scant hours earlier, she’d reached out to another Circle member, Gilda Hartshorn, to confirm the truth of Dathne’s scrying. A seamstress in Dorana City, Gilda sewed often for staff up at the palace and in the City guardhouse. She had a genius for gossip and inspiring confidences.
It’s true, it’s true, all true, Gilda had told her. Asher’s due to die at midnight Barl’s Day. A proclamation from the new king, Conroyd Jarralt.
Prompted by unfathomable instinct, knowing they’d need all the help they could find to rescue him, she’d told Gilda the truth about Asher. Shocked, then tearful, Gilda had demanded, But he’s guarded day and night and there’s a crowd around him no matter what the hour! Veira, Veira, what shall we do?
Gilda knew no more of Dathne and Matt than they knew about her, and still it was best things stayed that way. So she’d settled the seamstress’s fears with a calm assurance three parts a lie, then climbed in her bed to sleep. She was sixty-three years old now, and nowhere near spry. And the journey to collect Dathne had shaken her bones to aching.
Sleep hadn’t come, though. She’d told Dathne she had an inkling of an idea on how to save their Innocent Mage, and she did. But that idea was dreadful. Merciless. Uncaring of hearts broken, lives lost, futures trampled. Doubtless it came from Prophecy itself, which accounted for its coldness. It also might account for coincidence: that of all the people who could be the key to Asher’s freedom, it was her flesh and blood. Her sister’s son. A boy grown now to manhood who she’d brought into the Circle against her will. Against all bonds of family. Against the voice in her heart crying, No. Don’t. Choose another.