The Awakened Mage (70 page)

She felt like screaming herself. How much fear and sorrow could a body hold before it must spill out in a raging torrent?

Asher would not speak to her. Asher might well soon be dead.

She turned her head to stare at the slowly passing countryside, stuffing her knuckles in her mouth to dam the frightened grief. If he died … if he died without forgiving her… died believing then love was a he, nothing but pragmatics and a cold, hard using … how could she go on after? What would she say to the child?

Then child…

Unbidden, her fingers danced featherlight across her belly. Was it a boy or a girl? Would it have his eyes? Would she see him in the way it walked? Hear him in the sound of its laughter? Would it even be born? Or was it, like him, destined to die? Did death await them all in distant Dorana?

No.
She had to stop thinking like this or she’d be a drooling madwoman before ever they reached the City gates. There was hope, yet. There was always hope. She couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—believe that Prophecy had guided them so far only to abandon them at the end.

Please, please, don’t let him die.

The clickety-clack of busy needles distracted her and she glanced past Matt to Veira. The old woman was knitting.
Knitting.
As though she was at home in her kitchen or in front of the fireplace and these were ordinary times.

Veira looked up. “You fratched about our Mage and his friend tucked up behind us? Don’t be. They’ll not come to blows.”

“I know,” Dathne said. Tried to say nothing else, but the words were out before she could stop them. “Veira— he won’t have to use that killing spell, will he?”

In between them, Matt shook the waterlogged reins and kept his gaze pinned to the horses’ backs. If he was filled with fears too, he wasn’t letting them show. He’d gotten good at hiding his feelings lately. Once, she would’ve welcomed that, but now …

Now it just made her feel more alone. Veira hissed over a dropped scarlet stitch. “I hope not,” she said, making good her mistake. “I’ve taken steps to join him with the Circle so they can lend him strength when he needs it most.”

That got Matt’s attention; they exchanged startled glances. “When?” Dathne demanded. “And why aren’t Matt and I included?”

“It’s too dangerous for you and Matthias. The rest of the Circle is safe out of the way but we’re like to be in the thick of things, child. You’d just be a distraction to him.”

“Then how can we help him?” said Matt, frowning. “We can’t do nothing.”

Veira patted his knee. “I don’t know yet. We’ll just have to wait and see once we get there.”

Wait and see … wait and see … yes, but what? Victory, or a bloody defeat? The thought of Asher saying the terrible spell of UnMaking made her want to vomit. Damn Gar, anyway! Why did he have to find it? Why did he have to tell them?

Send me a vision, I beg you, Jervale. Show me he’s not ; going to die.

She closed her eyes then, and waited, but Jervale refused to oblige.
Bastard.
Eyes smarting, throat clogged with tears, she folded her arms across her middle. Let herself slump on the wagon’s uncomfortable seat and tipped her head sideways till it rested on Matt’s shoulder. He didn’t object.

She escaped into sleep, and restless unhelpful dreaming.

Dorana City was dying.

Morg stood on the roof of the emptied palace’s residential wing and watched its distant death throes, smiling. Behind him, against a sky of tarnished silver, Barl’s Wall was a coruscation of filthy, failing power, flogged in the wind like a tattered flag.

At last… at last… the bitch whore was beaten. Beneath his feet, an ominous rumble. The rooftop trembled as the palace swayed drunkenly on its foundations. Below him, the sounds of windows, breaking, of bricks and tiles falling to shatter in the buckling courtyards. In the gardens mighty trees groaned and shuddered, their roots tearing asunder the rain-softened ground. After six hundred years the earth was waking. Shrugging its shoulders as the bonds of magic were finally freed.

He heard screaming from the rooftops around him. Saw a few frantic Doranen, many more Olken: former councilors and advisors, palace servants, housemaids, butlers, running to and fro as their gentle world fell to pieces around them. They saw him.

“Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” they screamed, like children. “Help us!
Save
us!
^v

He raised a fist and stopped their heartbeats, each and every one. The noise was distracting. He wanted to savor victory uninterrupted.

A shadow touched his face and he looked up to see fresh clouds roiling, forming out of nothingness, out of the air, born of the wild and undirected Weather Magic he’d unbound from Barl’s Wall. They clotted the face of the faded sun, turning day to murky dusk.

With a grinding rumble the earth heaved again, vomiting gouts of steam and boiling mud. In the distance, in the City, he saw more buildings tumble. Imagined the horror, the terror, and was suffused with a blinding joy.

“Your Majesty? Your Majesty,” a small voice croaked behind him.

Without turning he said, “Go away, Willer.”

“But, Your
Majesty…”

So he did turn, impatiently, and looked at the pathetic thing bowing and scraping its way across the rooftop towards him.

“What?”

Willer stared at him, blotchy with fear and reeking of ale. “Captain Orrick sends an urgent message! Many streets are running like rivers and the water’s scouring everything from its path. There’s drowned dogs—wrecked carriages—furniture—” He choked on the horror. “People.
Children.”

He nodded. “Good.”

“Good?”
Stunned silent, the little worm groped to understand. “But, but, you’re the king! You’re the WeatherWorker!”

“Fool,” he said, contemptuous. “I am neither. I never was.”

Tears rose in the fat man’s eyes. “Please, Your Majesty. Captain Orrick begs you to come. Barlsman Holze, too. Survivors are gathered in the Square—they’re praying— but they need you.”

He sighed. “Go away, Willer.”

Sweating, weeping, the worm wrung its feeble hands. “Are you unwell, sir? Shall I fetch you a pother?”

Morg considered him. Witter, witter, witter. The bleatings of a sheep. “I wonder, was there a reason for you to be breathing?” he mused.

Willer goggled. Began to back away, very slowly. “Your Majesty?”

“No,” he decided. “No, you’ve served your tiny purpose.” He pointed a finger and froze the maggot where it stood. “But before I dispatch you, would you like to know what you’ve done? What miracle your little mind and petty jealousies have wrought in this misbegotten kingdom?”

Lifting his finger, he set the worm adrift in the damp and stagnant air. It shrieked. “No! No! Somebody! Help!”

“Look at it, Willer!” he invited. “The might and the majesty of your blessed Barl’s Wall! Do you see that it’s failing? Do you see that it’s
falling?
Do you know that you’re to blame?”

“Me, sir?
No,
sir!” the bobbing creature protested.

He laughed at the horror in its face. “Oh,
yes,
sir! For the only man with the power to stop me was Asher of Restharven, and thanks to you, he’s dead!”

The worm began flapping its arms, trying to force itself back to the roof. It looked ridiculous. “King Conroyd—
King Conroyd!”

“Not Conroyd,” he advised the worm gently. “Morg.”

Willer shrieked.
“Who?
No! You
can’t
be! That’s
impossible!’’

Breathing deep of the sulphurous air he flared power round his body hi a crimson nimbus. Laughed aloud at the terror, the dawning belief, in the little man’s eyes.

“Stop this,
stop
it!” the fool worm babbled. “Before it’s too late! Don’t you see? You’re killing the kingdom!”

“Of course I am. To be reborn all things must die.”

“No! No! I don’t
want
to die!” the wretched thing wailed. “Please don’t hurt me! Please put me down!”

“Put you down?” he echoed, smiling. “Certainly, Willer. Whatever you desire.”

And with a flick of his finger he spun sobbing Willer over the roof’s stone balustrade then released him to fall to the flagstones below … where he burst in a welter of blood and fat.

Overhead, the first bright spears of scarlet lightning lanced the billowing clouds, striking flesh and buildings with lethal force. The lurid sky writhed—and Barl’s dying Wall flailed in useless defiance.

Dreary in the daylight gloom, the wagon trundled onwards. The cloud-filled sky stretched on forever, spitting rain and snow in gusts and eddies, sometimes furious, sometimes sullen. The hours unspooled equally sullen. The wagon’s shivering passengers dwindled to silence. They saw not another soul as they traveled through the blighted, sodden countryside towards Dorana City.

Matt unhappily kept the horses moving, stopping only to let them drink and snatch a mouthful of grain. Morning surrendered to midday, surrendered to afternoon, surrendered to night.

“We won’t stop again till we reach the City,” decreed Veira, lighting torches to leaven the dark as Matt ran his hands over the tired horses and the others staggered about in the puddles and slop, stretching their tired legs and trying to get warm. “If you’re hungry, raid the baskets. If you must piss or otherwise, do your business quickly and run to catch up. There’s no time left for niceties or coddling.” She frowned at Darran. “Sorry, old man, but there’s no help for it.”

Darran nodded. “I understand,” he croaked, and climbed back in the wagon, out of the blighting wind.

“And when will we reach the City?” asked Dathne weakly, rattled almost to pieces and leaning against a wheel.

“An hour or two past sunrise, I’m thinking,” said Veira, and pulled a face. “Though I doubt we’ll be able to see it.”

For Asher, filled to bursting with the prickly magic of Gar’s killing spell and trapped in the prince’s unwelcome company, that end couldn’t come fast enough.

No matter it might bring with it his death.

For the first and likely last time in his life, Pellen Orrick felt desperate. Staring through his office’s broken windows he rubbed his pain-burned shoulder and struggled to hold back tears.

The dawn of a new day: the worst of his life. His beautiful City, elegant gracious Dorana, spread smashed and trampled before him. Every second building, it seemed, was collapsed or burning or burned out completely, belching greasy smoke, spilling ruined wares through splintered doorways and shattered shopfronts, even as dirty water swirled around the floors and up the doorjambs. Bulls and cows and horses and sheep and goats, once safely penned in the Livestock Quarter, milled and lowed and bleated through the streets with no one willing or able to pen them up again. Some of them slipped, plunged head first into running water or gaping cracks in the ground, and didn’t get up again.

There were more dead people than he’d thought to see in all his life. Crushed and smashed by falling masonry, bludgeoned and drowned by the rivers of debris-choked rainwater raging through the narrower streets. Some of the bodies were abandoned, others clutched hard in the arms of weeping loved ones. Olken and Doranen, this madness had spared neither. Nor had magic saved them.

Most of his guards had deserted their posts. Some had fled the City with family and friends, certain that just beyond the next bend, in the next town or village, lay safety, and sanity. The few who’d remained were dead or had gathered in the Square to pray, ignoring his pleas to uphold their duty and their oaths.

He couldn’t really blame them. If he’d had a family he might have discarded duty too. Run away or joined with the crowd crammed into the Square where Barlsman Holze all yesterday led beseeching prayers for deliverance.

But deliverance didn’t seem to be coming. Dorana was doomed, and the kingdom with it.

Weary almost beyond walking, he made his way downstairs to the guardhouse’s deserted main hall where Ox Bunder held steadfastly to his post.

“Captain!” Bunder frowned. “Where’s your sling, sir? That shoulder’s nowhere near to healed yet.”

“My shoulder’s the least of my troubles,” he replied tiredly. “Ox, you’ve a young family waiting. Why don’t you go? I’ll stay here, for all the good I can do.”

“No, sir,” Bunder said. Stubborn to the last. “I’ve got my duty.”

Before this he’d never much cared for Bunder; now his heart broke for love of him. “No, my friend, you’ve got your family. Go to them. That’s an order.” He held out his hand. “And good luck.”

Torn between guilt and relief, Bunder clasped his wrist. “Yes, sir. All right.”

Orrick walked out with him. His lovely City stank of burnt bones and death. Stopping at the guardhouse gates,’ he patted Bunder on the back and watched the man force his way through the milling throng, the frightened animals, the puddles and debris.

Scarlet lightning split the sky, spearing the ground with random vengeance. The Golden Cockerel burst apart. A score of people died then and there, pulped and broken by flying brick even as they ran screaming for shelter. But in the center of the Square, citizens with more faith than sense stood their ground, eyes fixed firmly on Holze on Barl’s Chapel steps, as they stubbornly followed the cleric’s desperate prayers.

Some folk even climbed into Supplicant’s Fountain. Clustered round Barl’s greenstone statue, they stroked and stroked her hands, her feet, the folds of her robe.

Begged her in high, shrill voices to protect them, save them, forgive them.

Forgive them for what? What sin could merit such harsh retribution? He was a guardsman, he knew crime when he met it. The people of Lur had done nothing,
nothing,
to warrant the horrors he’d witnessed. The carnage yet to come.

All his life he’d thought himself a man of faith. But what was it he believed in? A cold stone statue? A woman who’d died over six hundred years ago, at an age almost young enough to be his daughter? Magic?

For six long centuries the Olken had been told the Doranen were different. Stronger. Better. But the streets were littered with Doranen dead, as well as Olken. Their magic hadn’t saved them.