The Innocent Mage (17 page)

But there were no books written about the Old Days ol the Olken. There couldn’t be. Almost no-one alive in these modern times knew that once, before the coming of the fair-haired Doranen with their brash and brutal magic, the Olken had possessed power of their own. A soft and singing earth magic that bound them to the land and to each othet without the need for mastery or control.

The only Olken who still recalled that magic, the way things used to be, belonged to the Circle. Sworn to secrecy and the scant words of a prophecy they didn’t understand but were willing to die for, they remembered. In silence and sad dreams they kept the buried truth alive.

The loss of her people’s heritage wrung Dathne’s heart, though it had happened centuries ago. She would nevei accept that what they’d lost — no, what they’d given away, surrendered, sold — was worthless, no matter how glittering the gift in exchange. How safe and secure the life that had replaced it. And she’d sworn a fierce vow that one day every last Olken man, woman and child would learn their true heritage, reclaim their power, and that the bookshops of Lur would abound with stories of their Old Days.

If, after the Final Days were ended, there were still bookshops. If there was still a Lur.

Impatient, Dathne turned away from the locked front door and the book display, tugging at her haphazardly braided hair. That was enough maudlin sentimentality for one day. She had dinner to prepare yet, and after that orders to wrap ready for the morning’s mail coach. With a swish of her skirts she headed out to the back of the shop and the staircase that led up to her small apartment.

The vision smote her halfway to the apartment door. Tripped her and sprawled her face down against the wooden stairs. She tried to rise. Failed, limbs leaden. She felt a tightness in her chest, heard a moan die in her throat. Her head moved restlessly against the scuffed timber, scraping her cheek. Her clutching fingers found splinters.

With her eyes shut tight and her mind a soundless scream of protest, she saw the future she’d been born to kill.

Hailstones of fire raining down from a sky the colour of dotted blood. Strong proud trees split asunder by spears of lightning. The River Gant rising, rising. Funnels of green cloud reaching thin, cruel fingers to pluck whole houses from the earth and fling them stone by stone by human hone into the howling winds. The Wall, pulsing, writhing, peat holes like some gross leprous disease turning it to tatters. Broken bleeding bodies flung heedless into piles, into holes. Discarded. Disdained. And pressing down upon her an enormous smothering weight, crushing the air from her lungs and strangling the pulse in her veins. Within it a baleful intelligence: malevolent, insatiable and infinitely patient, squatting like a toad. Watching. Waiting.

Gasping for air, Dathne wrenched herself free. The effort sent her sliding backwards down the stairs till she came to a bruised and spreadeagled stop on the floor of rkt bookshop’s workroom. Head and heart pounding, she stared at the worn blue carpet inches from her eyes and struggled to breathe, to forget, to remember. She fet befouled, her skin and soul smeared with the unspeakablt detritus of evil.

When at last her heartbeat and breathing slowed she sst up, pushing sweaty strands of hair out of her eyes.

‘Well,’ she said aloud, needing to hear her voice, any voice. Even a thin and frightened one. ‘They do say be careful what you wish for …’ Breathy laughter shook ha Threatened to collapse into sobs. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, hard.

She’d always known the end would be terrible. For years she’d glimpsed snatches of it. Received scanty images bad enough to wake her sweating in the middle of the night. The knowledge of their possible future, the ultimate culmination. of the Final Days, had dogged her like a shadow, visible only from the corner of her eye. But now she knew precisely the taste and sound and smell of what she and the others fought to prevent. Knew exactly box terrible, to the last drop of blood and the final, fading cry, Lur’s death would be. The fear of that fate was merciless: a serpent coiled in her belly, waiting to strike.

Cold, Matt called her.

He didn’t understand, and she could never explain it to him. There was only one way to defeat the serpent. Sheathe herself in ice. Freeze the tears that threatened when she thought of what would happen if she failed in her duty as Jervale’s Heir.

Freeze her heart.

Panting, she closed her eyes. A mistake. Images of death and destruction flared. Her stomach churned. Sour saliva flooded her mouth. Lurching to her feet she scrambled upstairs to her tiny privy and emptied her spasming belly of the stewed rabbit and poached greens she’d eaten for lunch,

Bile burned her throat, searing tears from her eyes. When at last she was empty she pressed her face into a damp towel. Swilled water round her mouth and spat it out.

Veira must know of this. She must be told that what they faced, what they and Asher must fight, was an intelligence. A person … or something pretending to be a person. It was unclear, and too terrible to dwell upon, at least so soon after enduring its foetid touch. Nevertheless, Veira must know.

Somewhere beyond the fragile safety of Barl’s great Wall something … someo«e … was waiting. Not that Veira could do anything about it, of course, but it would be better if somebody else knew.

Less lonely.

Because she still felt unnerved and desolate she drank two full glasses of strong green wine, one straight after the other. Then, with warm lamplight dancing shadows on the walls of her small living room, she knelt by the fireplace and rummaged in the blanket box her mother had given her as a leaving-home gift. Buried at the bottom, beneath papers and letters and shawls with holes in she’d get around to mending one of these days, and frayed cushions she didn’t want to throw out, was her precious Circle Stone. Gently withdrawing the blanket-shrouded treasure she unwrapped it, put it on the low wooden table by the window and sank cross-legged to the floor.

To anyone unknowing it was just a lump of rough quartz crystal, cracked and crazed and more dull than shiny, but to her it was priceless, her link to Veira and, through her, the rest of their Circle: a conduit to comfort and sanity when the weight of being Jervale’s Heir grew too great for bearing. Her crystal and Veira’s were twins, halves of a whole, forever joined no matter how vast the distances between them.

Using the Stone was at once simple and challenging. She was Olken. Her secret magic was a subtle thing, a matter of insinuation and gentle cajolery, soft as a whisper amidstii drowning shouts of brash and bossy Doranen incantatioi Finding a quiet place in the chatter and noise of their majt was never easy: down the centuries its raucous echoes U soaked the City right down to the cobblestones. If she wen deaf tomorrow she’d still feel its thrum against her skin ail hear the racket of a thousand thousand charms ringiij inside her skull.

The only good thing about the Doranen’s loud was that it made detecting her a virtual impossibility. Somebody would have to be looking, and even then it ws unlikely they’d hear her hushed voice in all the din.

Despite the evening’s warmth, she shivered. ‘Don’t bei fool, Dathne,’ she said aloud. ‘How can anybody Ik looking? No Doranen alive or dead knows you exist.’

Which was just as well, given the consequences of discovery.

Closing her eyes, letting the lingering tension drain on of her neck and shoulders like rain sieving through sand, Dathne conjured Veira’s face before her inner eye. Round and wrinkled like an ageing apple. Framed in a tangle ol salt-streaked hair. Long bony nose. Dimpled chin. Eyes the colour of moss, which shimmered and shifted with hei mercurial moods, now snapping with temper, now softened with sympathy.

Her fingers caressed the crystal, seeking the subtle vibrations that would lead her to the inner road, dii pathway her thoughts would travel across the unknow miles that lay between her and Veira. The old woman’: whereabouts were a secret… just in case.

Perfect peace. Perfect harmony. Breathe in. Breathe out Thoughts like thistledown, floating on a breeze. Veira …

And Veira was with her. In the crystal, in her heart ant mind, a warm, quizzical presence that never failed to cah and encourage. Or scold, if it seemed that scolding wai called for.

It’s been three days, child. I was beginning to worry. I Dathne felt her lips move, framing each word as it winged I its way along the invisible connection joining her crystal to IVeira’s. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to concern you, I —’ She

pped. Was shamed by a sudden rush of emotion at the I sound and touch of the old woman’s voice. ‘Child, is aught amiss? There’s an echo of something wicked and wild in you tonight. What’s happened?’

Haltingly, Dathne told her. Reliving the vision broke ; sweat upon her brow and clenched her fingers around the I crystal. ‘I’ve never been given images like that before, Veira. ‘I’ve been praying to Jervale, asking him for guidance, but I never thought You have no doubts? It was the Final Days you were given?’

‘What else could it be?’ She shivered. ‘Veira … it was terrifying. How can I hope to prevail against such evil?’

Prevailing isn’t what you’re here for. That’s the Innocent Mage’s destiny, child. Yours is to see him safe to the moment when the battle is joined.

‘And how will he prevail? The mind I sensed, Veira, it was terrible! An evil beyond speaking! Asher’s untried, untested, completely unprepared!’

Then we must prepare him, child, to the best of our abilities. Stop fretting, it does no good. The cup is pressed to our lips now. All we can do is sip and swallow.

‘And if that’s poison in the cup? What then?’

Then, child, we die.

‘Veira!’

Hush. I can hear your bones rattling from here. If there was no hope of victory we would not know what we know, or have been given the tasks that bend our backs and break our hearts. You are Jervale’s Heir, child. It is your duty to resist despair. Tell me of Asher. What news?

Reprimanded and comforted both at once, Dathne wrenched her mind away from the vision and thought instead of Asher. ‘It was announced in chapel yesterday, i Highness is officially named Olken Administrator a Asher is appointed his assistant. Although apparently pleases the prince to tease him with the title of Champion,

And does it please Asher as well?

Dathne felt herself smile. ‘From the look on his k when he told me, no, I don’t think it does. A gaggle of roy: heralds rode out this morning to spread word of tk appointments to the rest of the kingdom. Asher’s about ti become the most famous Olken in Lur … and I don’t tfiinl that much pleases him either.’

The link hummed with Veira’s fat satisfaction. Butt does please me. So. He is taken into the Usurper’s Houst Prophecy continues.

‘Veira … I don’t know what to do next. How to proceed.’

You must do nothing.

She felt impatient anxiety ripple through her. ‘I can’t do nothing.’

Then wait. Waiting is not nothing. Waiting is what tk Circle has done for six hundred years. Waiting has brought j us safely to the here and now. It will serve.

‘But I’m not the only one waiting! And I can’t see what comes next. There must be a way forward from here, I just j can’t see what it is, or how I should arrange matters.’

What makes you think you are the one to arrange I matters?

‘Of course I am! The vision —’

An irritated snort. The vision is but part of the mosaic, child. It is important, I grant you. But so is Askrt important, and the prince, and any number of puzzle pii yet to be revealed. You must not let yourself be intimidated by dreams. They are sent to guide and inform you, not render you helpless with fear. Forewarned is forearmed j the saying, and so, now we are forearmed. We know now j something of the taste and texture of that which will oppose us, and this is all to the good. Be content with that, child, doom rushes towards us fast enough without we raise the kst in hurrying to greet it halfway.

Dathne felt her ribs expand and contract in a sigh. ‘I know.’

Now tell me, what of our good friend Matthias? The thought of Matt made her frown. ‘He holds. Just.’ You sound uncertain.

She shook her head, even though Veira couldn’t see the gesture. ‘No. Not of him. Not exactly.’ Then what, exactly?

‘He refuses to abandon this unwise friendship with Asher. I’ve told him it’s madness but he won’t listen. He’s going to be hurt, I know it, but nothing I say will sway him. I tell you, Veira, I’m sorely tempted to take his hammer and hit him over the head with it until he sees sense!’

Are friends like pebbles on the road, child, so numerous they can be kicked aside uncaring?

Dathne let her own tone sharpen to match Veira’s. ‘The butcher who befriends the lamb is a fool, and worse than a fool, for might not a family starve if for love he can’t use his knife at the appointed hour?’

True. But consider this … what if we talk not of butchers, but shepherds?

‘The shepherd delivers his lambs to market, knowing it’s the butcher’s money he’ll put in his purse when they’re sold. In the end, it’s the same.’

Veira sighed like a ghost, frost in the invisible air. Be not htrsh with good Matthias, child. Can you say for certain he is wrong in this? 1 know I cannot. You are not the gatekeeper of wisdom nor the sole one among us with a purpose. Until the song is sung and the musicians have all gone home, not even you can tell which notes made the

Rebuked again. Not harshly, but even so. Stinging, Dathne felt her head bow. ‘You are wise, Veira.’

A whispering chuckle. ‘I am old. Sometimes it amounts to the same thing. Will you tell Matthias of this new vision.’

Dathne hesitated. She’d seen Matt weep for a dead baby sparrow dropped out of its nest. His heart was too soft: try as he might, he couldn’t freeze it.

‘No. There’s no need. It’s enough that I’ve told you. Anil besides, he won’t have any more idea than I do right ws how we’re supposed to stop it from happening.’ Fear chilled her all over again. ‘Veira —’

Child, do not fret. We have trusted Prophecy so far, mi so far it has not led us astray. I think we can — Wait, tk Basingdown crystal calls me. Do you stay indoors tonight!