by Karen Miller
Darran’s pinched face was stiff with dislike, and something else. Something Asher couldn’t place. ‘Asher, be quiet. I am perfectly aware that the parade in your honour was requested by Their Majesties. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘Then what?’ said Asher impatiently. ‘I’m tryin’ to get out for a breath of fresh air, Darran, in case you haven’t noticed. Feels like I ain’t seen nowt but the inside of my own eyelids for six months, not six days.’
Darran’s thin cheeks stained red. ‘You really are the most impossible man it has ever been my misfortune to know,’ he snapped. ‘I merely wanted to say that in saving Prince Gar’s life at the risk of your own you demonstrated a courage and sense of honour I heretofore did not suspect you possessed.’
Asher thought about that for a moment. ‘Am I still dreamin’ or was that a compliment?’
Darran nodded. ‘Apparently. Though I’m beginning to wonder why.’
‘That makes two of us,’ said Asher, grinning. ‘Ain’t no need for compliments, Darran. I didn’t save him for you.’
Darran’s clasped hands clenched bloodless. ‘Nevertheless. You saved him.’
With a small shock Asher realised then that this wasn’t Darran somehow doing him a backhanded bad turn. The ole fool meant every word he was saying. And that was the thing in Darran’s expression he’d not been able to place: the bitter taste of swallowed pride. Bastard. He sighed. ‘I had to.’
Darran considered him in silence for a long time. ‘I see,’ he said at last. ‘Very well, then.’ He turned away. Paused, and turned back. ‘You realise, of course, this in no way implies that I suddenly approve of you, or have changed my opinion that at heart you remain a lawless ruffianly reprobate.’
‘Of course. Same as it don’t imply I reckon you’re anything but a dried-up old dog turd.’
Darran’s lips thinned in a smile. ‘Precisely.’
Honour mutually satisfied, they parted company.
Without making a conscious decision Asher found himself heading for the stables. The autumn air was crisp, the leaves on the trees all around him dying in a riot of crimson and gold. He took a deep, lung-filling breath and was overwhelmingly glad to be alive.
Of course, whether he was glad to be alive here, and not down on the coast, was another matter. Fresh grief stabbed him. Da. And Jed. Would there ever be a time when he could think of his father and his friend and not feel pain? It was hard to imagine. Da was dead … Jed was addled … and he was to blame.
‘Barl save us!’ Matt cried when Asher entered the stable yard, and dropped the bucket of feed he was carrying. ‘Look what the cat’s dragged in.’ All around the yard Matt’s lads shouted and whistled and catcalled. Matt strode to meet him and, to his extreme surprise, folded him in a ribcracking embrace. ‘Damn it, Asher, you scared fifty years out of me!’
Warmed, Asher returned the hug. ‘Sorry.’
With a final thump between the shoulderblades, Matt stepped back. ‘Dath said you were looking fine,’ he said, eyeing him critically. ‘And so you are. I heard there were people thinking healing thoughts for you. Barl must have been listening.’
Asher stared. There’d been City folk prayin’ for him? Damn. That was even worse than a bloody parade. ‘Cygnet all right?’
Matt laughed. ‘Cygnet’s fine. Ballodair too.’ Then his smile faded and he stared intently into Asher’s face. ‘I’m sorry about your father. It comes to all of us in time, no escape, but it’s still a bad blow.’
Especially when you helped it happen. ‘Aye.’ He shrugged. ‘But it’s happened. No point fratchin’ on it. I’m fine.’
Matt looked as though he didn’t believe him. One of the drawbacks of friends. ‘And what about staying in Dorana?’
So. Matt knew the whole of it. Somebody’s tongue must be tired of wagging. Gar. Dathne. Fools. Didn’t they have nowt better to do than sit around gossiping? Asher felt his expression harden. ‘I’m thinkin’ I might have a quiet word with my brothers on that score.’
Matt stared at him, uncertain. ‘What? You’re going back to Restharven? But I thought—’
‘You thought right, for now. But only for now. Fishin’s in my blood, Matt, same as horses are in yours. I ain’t givin’ it up. Not on Zeth’s say-so. It’ll take time, I know, but that’s fine. I’ll wait.’
‘For how long?’
He grinned, feeling savage. ‘A few months. A year. As long as I have to. Sooner or later the tide always turns.’ He shrugged. Stared around the immaculate stable yard. ‘And in the meantime, if I can’t have the ocean I s’pose Dorana’ll do.’
Looking relieved, Matt slung an exuberant arm around his shoulders and shook him. ‘That’s the spirit.’
‘Get off me, y’great lummox!’ said Asher, fighting free. ‘Stop hangin’ round my neck like a girl and show me my poor bloody horse!’
‘Heard about your parade,’ Matt said as they headed for Cygnet’s stable. Asher speared him with a look. Matt looked back, innocently smiling. ‘It’s so exciting. Going to wear tinsel in your hair, are you? That should look pretty.’
‘There’ll be tinsel up your arse if you ain’t careful,’ said Asher darkly.
Matt mimed shock. ‘Asher! Now is that any way for the Hero of Dorana to talk?’
Asher stopped. Stared. ‘The what of where?’
Matt’s broad, weathered face split into a delighted smile. ‘That’s what they’re calling you, down in the City. Haven’t you heard?’
Asher hung his head. ‘I’m goin’ to kill Gar for this, I swear. I don’t know when, and I don’t know where, but I’m goin’ to bloody kill him.’
Matt just laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Returning to the Tower after half an hour of feeding Cygnet and Ballodair enough carrots and apples to rupture their guts, Asher could think of nothing but food and putting his feet up. But first he thought he should pay a call on Gar. The prince hadn’t looked well, and the last thing anybody needed was him flat on his back with a fever. For one thing it’d mean he’d have to take over all the work, and he wasn’t in the mood for that at all.
He banged on Gar’s library door for five minutes before it opened the width of three thin fingers. ‘What do you want?’ said the prince. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’
Asher winced: the words were slurred, spat into his face on a cloud of bad breath. ‘Let me in, Gar. I need your ear for a minute or so.’
Gar grinned, a ghastly revelation of teeth. ‘Give me a knife and you can have both of them, provided you go away afterwards and never bother me again.’
‘Gar!’
‘Just joking.’
‘Do I look amused to you? Open the bloody door, would you?’
Gar scowled, resisting. Then he stood aside grumpily. ‘One minute. Then I’m calling a guard.’
Just as grumpily, Asher shoved the door open and marched into the library. ‘What’s goin’ on, Gar? I mean, I know you like your books and all, but this is plain ridiculous!’
Gar returned to his desk, which was layered inches deep in paper and parchment and towered with piles of ancient-looking volumes, whose faded titles Asher couldn’t read. More books were piled row after row on the floor so there was hardly any space to walk. The library curtains were drawn. Just one lamp was lit. The room looked like a manky bear’s cave. Stank like one too, the air thick and overused. Fumbling through the mess, Gar withdrew a single sheet of paper and held it out.
Asher stared suspiciously. ‘What’s that?’
‘A list of people you’re to see tomorrow. I’m too busy. Find out what they want, give it to them if you can, tell them they’ll have to wait to see me if you can’t.’
Asher ran his eye down the list of names. Mistress Banfrey of the Milliners’ Guild. Meister Glospottle of the Dyers’ Guild. Captain Orrick – ‘What’s Pellen Orrick want?’ he asked, looking up.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Gar, pawing at his damned books again. ‘Something about crowd control f
or the parade, I think. It’s your parade, you sort it out.’
‘How many times do I have to say it, Gar? I don’t want a damned bloody stupid parade!’
‘It’s to be held the day after tomorrow by the way,’ Gar continued, pen raised. ‘Speak to Darran about the particulars. There’s no use asking me, I’m—’
‘Too busy,’ said Asher in disgust. ‘I’m gettin that. Gar, when were the last time you saw yourself in a mirror? You look like—’
‘I’m afraid you’ll be taking on quite a lot of extra responsibility for the next good while,’ said Gar, oblivious. ‘These books we’ve found are extraordinary, I can’t begin to tell you.’ He dipped the pen into the inkpot: it came up dry. ‘Oh.’ Discarding the pen, he picked up the pot and held it out. ‘I seem to have run out of ink. Would you mind—’
Asher snatched the pot from him and threw it across the room. ‘Yes, I’d bloody mind!’ he shouted. ‘Gar, what’s the matter with you?’
The prince stood so fast his chair tipped over. ‘With me? Nothing’s the matter with me! I’m busy, that’s all! Can’t you understand that? Has everyone become very stupid all of a sudden? First Darran, then Nix, now you?’ He waved his arm wildly at the room. ‘Look at all these books, Asher! They are the greatest find in the history of the kingdom! I have to catalogue them, I have to translate them, I have to—’
‘You have to stop. Afore you fall to pieces entirely.’ Shoving the list of appointments inside his shirt, he picked up the upended chair and pushed Gar into it. Stared down into his hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked face. ‘You’re halfway there already.’
For a long time Gar said nothing, just sat bolt upright on his chair wrestling with demons only he could see. Arms folded, expression as mulish as he could make it, Asher waited.
‘I do feel … a bit strange,’ Gar confessed at last, slumping a little and rubbing his hands up and down his arms. ‘Like my skin is crawling with invisible ants. As though there are hundreds and hundreds of tiny firecrackers going off inside my head. If I close my eyes I can see the explosions.’
‘See? I was right!’ said Asher. ‘Too much readin’ does rot your brain. Did you tell any of this to that ole bonebotherer?’
‘Nix?’ Gar shook his head, a kind of convulsive shudder. ‘No.’
‘Good. He’d prob’ly just give you something disgustin’ to drink.’ With a silent sigh, Asher hitched his hip onto the corner of the desk. ‘You’re a damn fool, Gar. You said already you ain’t been sleeping. When was the last time you ate something?’
Gar waved a vague hand. ‘Oh. I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I had a boiled egg yesterday.’
‘Look. I don’t care how bloody special these mouldy ole books are, no book is worth you workin’ yourself into a collapse over. You’ve got to get some rest now, or it’ll be your turn to spend a week in bed and then you’ll miss the damn parade. And if you think I’m goin’ through all that malarkey on my own, then you really have cracked.’
‘Miss the parade?’ Gar managed a small smile. ‘And the sight of you smiling and waving and wishing you were anywhere else in the kingdom? Hardly.’
‘Then you’d best have a bath and a bowl of soup and a good night’s sleep, eh?’
Gar turned back to his desk. Brushed his fingers across the nearest open book. ‘Yes. You’re right. I know. I’ll just finish this page and—’
Asher slammed the book shut. ‘Now.’
As he closed the library door behind them, one hand on Gar’s shoulder to prevent an attempted escape, Asher glanced through the banisters. Darran was standing on the staircase below them, halfway between floors, hands clasped neatly before him. His face was pinched into a worried frown. On seeing Gar the frown eased, just a little. Then he looked at Asher, and raised one eyebrow.
Asher rolled his eyes and kept on walking.
It was late when Dathne was at last able to contact Veira. After the visit with Asher there’d been shop business and errands, and supper with Matt to discuss where they were along Prophecy’s mysterious road.
The fact that she still didn’t know, and he couldn’t help her find out, was something she refused to dwell on.
‘Asher is woken, Veira, and taken no harm from his trials. Tell the Circle their healing was a success.’
It will lift their hearts to hear it, child.
‘Beyond that, I’ve nothing more to tell.’
Nothing? Veira sounded disappointed.
Well, so was she disappointed. Disappointed and guilty and stuck like a cow in the mire. ‘I’m sorry! If I could force matters, I would. I pray and I pray for Jervale to show me the next step, but there’s nothing. Just forebodings and unease.’
You knew Asher would return. We must satisfy ourselves with that for now.
‘No, Veira, I can’t. It’s not enough!’ The link between them trembled with the violence of her thoughts, her feelings. ‘Night after night I rack my brains trying to see the way forward, trying to understand how Asher can be the Innocent Mage. What it means that he is in the Usurper’s House. How it’s possible for the Wall to be brought down when not even the king’s cataclysmic fever disturbed it. We are in the Final Days, Veira, I know it in my bones, in my heart. Yet all remains unaltered. Life jogs along, just the same as ever it did. Now that they’re safe and the City is healed of damage and things are returning to normal, people have even started making jokes again. Jokes. As though any of this was funny!’
Hush, child. You’ll make yourself ill with such fretting.
She was already ill. Churned up and quivering. ‘I feel like I’m somehow suspended between breaths,’ she said, fists pressed against her chest where her heart was racing. ‘As though the storm was an inhalation. Any moment now the world will need to exhale again, and when it does … when it does …’ Cross-legged on the floor before her Circle Stone, she began to rock. ‘I need to be ready. I need to know what to do, how to react, and I don’t, Veira. I don’t. And I’m so afraid it will mean the ruin of us all. What if I’m wrong about him, Veira, and he’s not the Innocent Mage after all? What if I’ve been wrong about everything?’
Foolish. You are foolish, Dathne. These are but the fancies of an overtired mind. He is who you have named him. And when the time comes you will know exactly what to do and how to react. Why else would you be Jervale’s Heir?
There were tears in her eyes, welling, burning, flowing down her cheeks. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
I do. Trust me, if for the moment you cannot trust yourself.
Angrily she smeared her cheeks dry. ‘It’s hard. Even with Matt, even with you … I feel so alone.’
You are not alone, child. You are never alone. The Circle stands with you always.
A rolling wave of love flowed through the link between them. Dathne gasped, feeling it fill her, feeling it smother the strident voices of fear and doubt. Her eyes stopped burning. Her racing heart slowed. Her distress eased, so she could sit still once more with her hands quiescent in her lap. ‘I wish I could meet you, Veira,’ she whispered. ‘On the outside, I mean. In the flesh.’
Warmth. Pleasure. When the time comes, child, you will. Now go to bed. Get some sleep. Trust Prophecy.
Breaking the link, Dathne did as she was told. Went to bed, tried to sleep … and found she couldn’t.
Instead she lay awake staring at the ceiling. Waiting for the sound of the world exhaling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Morg reclined in the royal touring carriage in the company of the king, the queen and the princess and considered the excited, flag-waving natives that lined the street on either side of them. A sturdy people, these Olken. Little more than peasants, of course, dirt-grubbers and third-rate merchants, magickless as rocks. But sturdy. And he liked a good sturdy peasant. They made excellent raw material for demons.
The ranks of his demon armies would swell like the belly of a pregnant sow once all these cheering Olken were put to better use.
‘Asher! Asher! Barl’s
blessings on Asher!’ cried the crowd.
Riding at the head of the official procession, directly in front of the touring carriage and marching band and the other coaches carrying the rest of the Privy Council, was the prince, all decked out in his best silk and leather, with the sunshine glinting off a silver circlet rammed onto his unworthy head. As they’d gathered before the start of the parade he’d overheard the cripple bemoaning the loss of some other pointless trapping of rank and had been hard put not to hit him. You’re a cripple, he’d wanted to shout. Don’t you understand? This crown or that one, it makes no difference. Dip you head to toe in molten gold and stick rubies big as hen’s eggs where your eyes used to be, you’d still be nothing but dross.
But he’d held his tongue. There’d be time for harsh truths later.
Beside the cripple rode his brutish peasant friend, object of the crowd’s adoration. Reason for this ridiculous procession through the streets of Dorana. Although, to be fair, he couldn’t really begrudge the lout his moment of glory. For one thing, without him the cripple would surely be dead and his own plans of conquest severely disarrayed; and for another, this was likely to be the last glorious moment of the peasant’s life. Feeling magnanimous, Morg smiled. Let him savour it while he could.
‘Enjoying yourself after all, Durm?’ said the king, his voice raised to carry over the exuberant blasting of trumpets. ‘I told you it wouldn’t be so bad.’
‘You did indeed, Your Majesty,’ Morg replied. ‘And as usual, you were right. May I say it’s a beautiful day for a parade?’
The king offered him a small mocking bow. ‘I do my humble best.’
The crowd continued to shout. ‘Hail Asher! Hail the Hero of Dorana!’ they chanted, and threw flowers and streamers and handfuls of rice.
‘Poor Asher,’ said the queen, stifling an unbecoming giggle and nodding at the lout as he sat his horse ahead of them. ‘Even the back of his head looks embarrassed. Perhaps we should have thought of another way to thank him, Borne.’