The Awakened Mage (2 page)

Matt pointed. “Barl save me! Is that—”

“Aye!” said Asher, and swallowed sudden nausea.

Gar. Lying half in the road, half on its grassy border. Unconscious … or dead.

As one he and Matt hauled against their horses’ mouths and came to a squealing, grunting, head-tossing halt. Asher threw himself from his saddle and stumbled to Gar’s side, as Matt grabbed Cygnet’s reins to stop the horse from bolting.

“Well?”

Blood and dirt and the green smears of crushed grass marked Gar’s skin, his clothes. Shirt and breeches were torn. The flesh beneath them was torn.

“He’s alive,” Asher said shakily, fingers pressed to the leaping pulse beneath Gar’s jaw. Then he ran unsteady hands over the prince’s inert body. “Out cold, though. Could be his collarbone’s busted. And there’s cuts and bruises aplenty, too.” His fingers explored Gar’s skull. “Got some bumps on his noggin, but I don’t think his skull’s cracked.”

“Flesh and bone heal,” said Matt, and dragged a shirt sleeve across his wet face. “Praise Barl he’s not dead.”

“Aye,” said Asher, and took a moment, just a moment, to breathe. When he could, he looked up. Struggled for lightness. “Bloody Darran. He’ll be bleating ‘I told you so’ for a month of Barl’s Days now.”

Matt didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. “If the prince is here,” he said grimly, his horseman’s hands white-knuckled, “then where are the others?”

Their eyes met, dreading answers.

“Reckon we’d best find out,” said Asher. He shrugged off his jacket, folded it and settled Gar’s head gently back to the cushioned ground. Tried to arrange his left arm more comfortably, mindful of the hurt shoulder. “He’ll be right, by and by. Let’s go.”

Remounting, he jogged knee to knee with Matt round the next sweeping bend. Battled fear and a mounting sense of dread. Cygnet pinned his ears back, sensing trouble.

They found Durm next, sprawled in the middle of the road. As unconscious as Gar, but in an even bloodier and broken condition.

“Busted his arm, and his leg,” said Asher, feeling ill as he ran his hands over Dunn’s limbs. The Master Magician’s body was like a wet sack filled with smashed crockery. “Damn. Make that both legs. There be bits of bone stickin’ out everywhere. And his head’s laid open like a boiled egg for breakfast. It’s a miracle he ain’t leaked out all his blood like a bucket with a hole in it.”

Matt swallowed. “But he’s alive?”

“For now,” Asher said, and got wearily to his feet. Looked further down the road for the first time—and felt the world tilt around him.

“What?” said Matt, startled.

“The Eyrie,” he whispered, pointing, and had to steady himself against Cygnet’s solid shoulder.

Not even approaching dusk could hide it. The splintered gap in the timber fence at the edge of the Eyrie— wide enough for a carriage to gallop straight through.

Matt shook his head. “Barl save us. They can’t have.”

Asher didn’t want to believe it either. Sick fear made him more brutal than Matt deserved. “Then where’s the carriage? The horses? The family?”

“No. No, they
can’t
have,” Matt insisted. He sounded years younger, and close to tears.

“I reckon they did,” Asher replied, numb, and dropped his reins. Obedient, resigned, Cygnet lowered his head and tugged at the grass verge, bit jangling. Asher broke into a ragged run towards the edge of the lookout.

“Don’t,” said Matt. “We’re losing the light, you fool, it’s too dangerous!”

The voice of reason had no place here. He heard Matt curse, and slide off his own horse. Shout after him. “Asher, for the love of Barl, stay back! If they are down there, we can’t help them. If they went over the Eyrie they’re dead for sure!
Asher!
Are you listening?”

Heedless, he flung himself to the ground and peered over the drop. “I can see somethin’. Maybe a wheel. It’s hard to say. At any rate there’s a kind of ledge, stickin’ out.” He wriggled backwards and sat up. Stared at Matt. -“I don’t reckon they went all the way to the bottom. I’m goin’ down there.”

Appalled, Matt grabbed his shoulders, tried to drag him to his feet. “You
can’t!”

He wrenched himself free and stood. “Get back to the Tower, Matt. Tell Darran. Get help. We need pothers, wagons, ropes. Light.”

Matt stared. “I’m not leaving you alone here to do Barl knows what kind of craziness!”

Damn it, what was wrong with the man? Couldn’t he _seel _”You got to, Matt,” he insisted. “Like you say, we’re losing the light. If they are down there and they ain’t all dead, we can’t wait till mornin’ to find out. They’d never last the night.”

“You can’t think anyone could
survive
this?”

“There’s only one way to find out. Now what say you stop wastin’ time, eh? Might be they are all dead down there, but we got livin’ folk hurt up here, and I don’t know how long that maggoty ole Dunn’s goin’ to keep breathing without a good pother to help him. I’ll be fine, Matt. Just
go.”

Matt’s expression was anguished. “Asher, no . . . you can’t risk yourself. You mustn’t. I’ll do it.” . “You can’t. You’re near on a foot taller than me and two stone heavier, at least. I don’t know how safe the ground is on the side of that mountain, but a lighter man’s got to have a better chance.” Matt just stared at him, begging to be hit. “Look, you stupid bastard, every minute we stand here arguin’ is a minute wasted. Just get on your bloody horse, would you, and ride!”

Matt shook his head. “Asher—”

Out of time and patience, he leapt forward and shoved Matt in the chest, hard. “You need me to make it an order? Fine! It’s an order!
Go!”

Matt was beaten, and he knew it. “All right,” he said, despairing. “But be careful. I’ve got Dathne to answer to, remember, and she’ll skin me alive if anything happens to you.”

“And
I’ll
skin you alive if you don’t get out of here,” he retorted. ‘Tie Cygnet to a tree so he don’t follow you. I ain’t keen on walkin’ back to the Tower.”

“Promise me I won’t regret this,” said Matt, backing away. His scowl would’ve turned fresh milk.

“See you soon.”

Matt stopped. “Asher—”

“Sink me, do I have to throw you on the damned horse mys—”

“No, wait!” Matt said, holding up his hands.
“Wait.
What about Matcher?”

He lowered his fists. “What about ‘im?”

“He’s got a family, they’ll worry, start a fuss—”

Damn. Matt was right. “Stall ‘em. Send a lad with a message to say he’s got himself delayed at the palace. That should hold his wife till we can—”

“You mean
lie
to her? Asher, I can’t!”

Barl bloody save him from decent men. “You have to. We got to keep this as secret as we can for as long as we can, Matt.
Think.
If we don’t keep her fooled for the next little while—”

“All right,” said Matt. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll lie.” His face twisted, as though he tasted something bitter. Almost to himself he added, “I’m getting good at it.”

There wasn’t time to puzzle out what he meant. “Hurry, Matt. Please.”

He watched his friend run back to the horses; anchored Cygnet to a sturdy sapling then vault into his own saddle. The urgent hoof beats, retreating, echoed round the valley. Then, under a dusking sky lavished lavender and crimson and gold, Asher eased himself over the edge of Salbert’s Eyrie.

It was a sinkin’ long way down to the hidden valley floor.

Don’t look, then, you pukin’ fool. Take it one step at a time. You can do that, can’t you? One bloody step at a time.

The rock-strewn ground at first sloped gradually, deceptively. Beneath his boot heels gravel and loose earth, so that he slipped and slid and skidded, stripping skin from his hands as he grappled stunted bushes and sharp-sided boulders to slow his descent. His eyes stung with sweat and his mouth clogged dry with fear. The air was tangy and fresh, no crowded City smells tainting, flavoring. It struck chill through his thin silk shirt, goosebumping his sweat-sticky flesh.

Further down into the valley he went, and then further still. Every dislodged rock and pebble rang sound and echo from the vast space below and around him. Startled birds took to the air, harshly protesting, or scolded him invisibly from the Eyrie’s dense encroaching foliage.

He reached a small cliff, a sheer-faced drop of some five feet that looked to give way first to a sharply sloped terrace and from there to a natural platform jutting out over the depths of the valley. Most of the platform itself was obscured by shadow and rocky outcrops, but he was sure now he could see the edge of a wheel, tip-tilted into the air.

If the carriage had landed anywhere other than the hidden valley floor, it would be there. Beyond the edge of the platform was nothing but empty space and the shrieking of eagles.

Five feet. He’d jumped off walls as high without thinking twice. Jumped laughing. Now, belly-down and crawling, he eased himself feet first and backwards over the edge, tapping his toes for cracks in the cliff face, burying his ragged, bloody fingernails in the loose shale as he scrabbled for purchase.

If he fell… if he fell…

Safely down, he had to stop, still holding onto the cliff edge, sucking air, near paralyzed with fright. That sharp little needle had returned and was jabbing, jabbing. His ribs hurt, and his lungs and his head. All the cuts and scratches on his fingers, his palms, his cheek and his knee burned, bleeding.

Time passed.

Eventually recovered, the needle withdrawn and his various pains subsided, he let go of the cliff. Turned inch by tiny inch to press his shoulderblades against the rock and look where next to tread … and felt his heart crack wide with grief.

So. His eyes had not misled him.

It was indeed a wheel, and more than a wheel. It was two wheels, and most of an ornate, painted carriage. It was a brown horse, and sundered harness, and a man, and a woman, and a girl.

He closed his eyes, choking. Saw a broken mast and another broken man.

“Da,” he whispered. “Oh, Da…”

Ice cold to the marrow, shaking, he continued his descent.

There was blood everywhere, much of it spilled from the shattered horse. Splashed across the rocks, pooled in the hollows, congealing beneath the stunted, scrubby bushes that clung to life on this last ledge before the dreadful drop to the valley floor, it soaked the air in a scarlet pungency.

Staring over the platform’s edge Asher saw treetops like a carpet and the white specks of birds, wheeling. There was no sign of the second carriage horse or Coachman Matcher. A fine fellow, he was. Had been. Married with two children, son and daughter. Peytr was allergic to horses and Lillie had the finest pair’ of hands on the reins the City had ever seen.

Or so said Matcher, her doting father.

Despairing, he turned away from the pitiless chasm yawning at his feet and faced instead the death he could see. Smell. Touch.

Borne was pinned beneath the splintered remnants of the carriage. His long lean body had been crushed to a thinness, and one side of his face was caved in. He looked as though he wore a bright red wig. Dana lay some three feet to his left, impaled through chest and abdomen by branches smashed into javelins. The impact had twisted her so that she lay half on her side, with her fine-boned

face turned away. It meant he couldn’t see her eyes. He was glad.

And Fane … beautiful, brilliant, impossible Fane had been flung almost to the very edge of the narrow rock shelf; one slender white hand, unmarked, dangled out into space, the diamonds on her fingers catching fire in the sun’s sinking light. Her cheek rested on that outstretched arm, she might have been sleeping, only sleeping, anyone finding her so might think her whole and unharmed … if they did not see the jellied crimson pool beneath her slender torso, or the eerie translucence of her lovely unpowdered face. Her eyes were half open, wholly unseeing; the lashes, darkened by some magic known only to women, thick and long and bewitchingly alluring, as she had been alluring, lay a tracery of shadow upon her delicate skin.

There was a fly, crawling between her softly parted lips.

For the longest time he just stood there, waiting.
In a moment, one of ‘em will move. In a moment, one of ‘em will breathe. Or blink. In a moment, I’ll wake up and all this will be nowt but a damned stupid ale-born dream.

In a moment.

He came to understand, at last, that there were no more moments. That not one of them would move, or breathe, or blink again. That he was already awake, and this was not a dream.

Memories came then, glowing like embers at the heart of a dying fire.
“Welcome, Asher. My son speaks so highly of you I just know we ‘11 be the greatest of friends.”
Dana, Queen of Lur. Accepting his untutored bow and clumsy greeting as though he’d gifted her with perfumed roses and a diamond beyond price or purchase. Her unconstrained laughter, her listening silences. The way her eyes smiled in even the gravest of moments, a smile that said I
know you. I trust you. Trust me.

Borne, his sallow cheeks silvered with tears.
“What does my kingdom hold that I can give you? He is my precious son and you saved him. For his mother. For me. For us all. You’ve lost your father, I’m told. I grieve with you. Shall I stand in his stead, Asher? Offer you a father’s words of wisdom if ever you need to hear them spoken? May I do that? Let me.”

And Fane, who smiled only if she thought it might do some damage. Who never knew herself well enough to know that beneath malice lay desire. Who was beautiful in every single way, save the one that mattered most.

Dead, dead and dead.

Bludgeoned to tearless silence, he stayed with them until to stay longer would be foolish. Stayed until the cold and dark from the valley floor crept up and over the lip of the ledge and sank icy teeth into his flesh. Until he remembered the last living member of this family, who had yet to be told he was the last.

Remembering that, he left them, reluctantly, and slowly climbed back up the side of the mountain.