The Prodigal Mage: Fisherman’s Children Book One (41 page)

Tasting the air like his father, he let out a sharp sigh. Daft was right. Poxy Arlin’s father had the mages attacking the reef’s magics with a Doranen spell of coercion, designed to force things apart. Which was fine if they were looking to lift buried stones out of the earth or pull down an old brick wall, but they weren’t. Worse, he could still taste what was left of the first spell they’d tried, and now the leftover echoes of that compulsion spell were muddling with the coercion chant and—

“You feel that, Rafe?” said Da, one hand going to his head. “The reef’s pushin’ back.”

“Aye,” he gasped, his skin prickling with the loathsome touch of it. The pain was in him, too, spiking through his temples and deep into his chest. His belly heaved, and he spat saliva and bile mixed yellowish at his feet. “Barl’s mercy, is that Morg?”

Da was bent over, hands braced on his knees. “What be left of him. Rafe, don’t you give in to it. Don’t let his muck in you. Could be I might need you in a ticktock or three.”

“Why?” he said, and spat sickness again. “What are you going to—”

But Da wasn’t listening. Dropped to his knees, one hand braced on the skiff’s side, he was pouring his power towards the reef, trying to shore up what little remained of Barl’s sweetness. Pouring so
much
power, Rafel could hardly believe it. What was in his father made his own powers look paltry. All this was in Da? He’d never given a hint of it. In twenty years, not once.

How could he have this and not want it? He’s mad.

But even though Da was amazing, what he gave of himself wasn’t enough. Morg’s foul malevolence was too vile. Too strong. Not even Da’s power and the power of the Doranen mages in the fishing boat combined could smother the reef’s seething darkness. Letting blind instinct guide him he tried lending his own power, but compared to Da and the Doranen it was only a trickle. It was like pissing on flames let loose in a summer wheat field.

His father was breathing so hard now it sounded almost like groaning. With his belly still heaving and his mouth slicked sour, Rafel crabbed his way to the skiff’s bow.

“Da!
Da!
”

Blood was trickling from beneath his father’s closed eyelids, and out of his nostrils over his pressed-white lips. His fingers were bloodless on the side of the small boat, and every muscle in his rigid body shuddered.

Hunkering down, he threw one arm around his father’s shaking shoulders. “Da, it’s no good. We can’t do it. Stop, before you
kill
yourself.”

“No, Rafe…” Teeth chattering, Da cracked open one pain-filled eye. “We can. But you got to help me.”

“How?” he said, hearing his voice break. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

Da’s fingers anchored themselves in his shirt, and twisted. Tugged him close. “Rafe—” His voice was a choked whisper. “D’you trust me?”

What?
“Aye, Da! You know I do!”

Da nodded, coughing, a harsh, hacking sound. His twisted fingers tugged again. “Rafe, I’m sorry. You weren’t s’posed to find out. Not like this.”

He stared. “Find out what?
Da,
find out wh—”

And then he gasped as his father’s spread-fingered hand pressed hard to his face. A flash of heat, burning. A convulsion in his blood. A burst of power, incandescent, like a sunrise in his mind. He tried to pull away, tried to protest, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Now his blood was on fire, flames pumping through him with every beat of his heart. His bones caught fire—and still he couldn’t scream.

Shouting, Da snatched his hand away. Rafel felt himself fall backwards, felt his shoulders smack the skiff’s wet boards. Dazed, he stared at the blue sky, at the clouds scudding across it, set to blot out the sun.

And then he realised:
I’m different
.

Closing his eyes to the blue sky and the clouding sun, he turned his sight inwards—and discovered a cauldron of power he’d never dreamed might exist. It was terrifying. Glorious. Hot and bright and hungry… and his.

First came astonished pleasure. Then came the rage.

“Rafel!”
said Da, on his feet again and hauling him upright, his stubbled face ghastly behind its mask of smeared and trickled blood. “Hate me later. Hate me all you like, ’til I die an ole man—but first we got to help Garrick and them other fools afore it’s too late!”

He felt so betrayed, so wounded, he wanted to vomit, or weep. Wrenching himself free, he snatched at the skiff’s mast for balance and unleashed his woken senses on the world. Felt in a searing rush the unmuffled malevolence of Morg’s blight, saw its claws sunk deep in the heart of the reef, saw with his newly opened eyes how it strangled the tattered shreds of Barl’s miracle. Fed off them. Distorted them. Like a parasite consumed them.

Staggering, his mind reeling, he managed to keep his feet as the skiff rocked and juddered beneath them. The harbour’s waters were waking. Something terrible stirred. A dreadful wave of nausea rose and rolled through him.

“
Shit!
What—what—”

“Be you with me, Rafe?” Da demanded, breathing hard and heavy. “I need you with me, sprat. ’Cause any ticktock now—any ticktock—”

It seemed to him then that the whole world inhaled, and time stood still, and he was crushed to a pulp. He felt the reef’s magic, Morg’s magic, writhe and shudder in his twisting guts. He felt his blood catch fresh fire, freeze solid then burst burning from his eyes and nose. He heard himself shout. Heard Da shout. Felt the world exhale and magic rip through the water between the reef and the skiff. Their borrowed boat flew into the air, tossing them with it, then smashed again to the harbour’s wildly agitated surface.

His head smacked salty timber, knees and elbows striking hard too. Tossed beside him, his father grunted in pain. Battered and bruised, he scrambled upright and looked around. Da had the same idea. Clutching the skiff’s sides as it rocked and spun, they stared at the blue and yellow fishing boat flailing too far away. Her crew darted from stern to bow and back again, answering their captain’s faint shouts. Terrified in the cloud-striped sunshine, blond Doranen heads huddled close.

A heartbeat later he cried out, because a whirlpool was forming right before his stinging eyes, in the stretch of whipped-up water between the fishing smack and the reef. In
Westwailing Harbour,
where they’d always been safe. The surge was small but steadily growing, the harbour’s waters spinning… and spinning… and as he watched, dry-mouthed with horror, he saw the blue and yellow fishing boat begin drifting towards it.

“Rafel!” said Da, and reached for his arm. His fingers, taking hold, felt desperate. “We got to stop that bloody thing. We can’t have whirlpools in the harbour. It’ll be the end of everything, sprat.”

“Stop it?”
he said, the heel of his right hand pressed to the side of his head against the spike of pain stabbing through his skull. “How?”

“I don’t know,” said Da, teeth gritted. “But we got to
try
.”

Head pounding, he stared at his father, who’d lied to him. Betrayed him. “Da, there ain’t no way we can—”

Da’s fingers closed so hard on his wrist it felt like the bone might break. “You wanted to know what it were like, facin’ Morg? You wanted to know how I felt that day?
This
be how I felt, Rafel.
This
be what it were like. You piss your pants. You shit y’self.
This
is why I told ’em to leave well enough alone.”

With a shrieking scream a waterspout whipped into life a long stone’s throw from the bow of their skiff. Another shrieking scream and there were two waterspouts—then three—then four. The skiff rocked and spun like a paper boat on a millrace as the spraying spume swiftly soaked them to the skin.

Too far away, too close, the whirlpool whirled wider.

Rafel dragged his sopping sleeve across his face.
We’re going to die. Sink me, we’ll bloody drown or get sucked down that thing or ripped to bitty pieces by a waterspout.
He turned to his father, not knowing what he’d find. Saw anger. Saw revulsion. Saw pity. Saw fear.

And then saw the face of the Innocent Mage.

P
ower blasted from Da’s outstretched fingers in a stream of burning light. Touched the nearest waterspout, which collapsed in a gouting wave. Touched the next, the next, the last. As their skiff stopped its wild lurching, Da fell across the rower’s seat.

“
Da!”
Rafel shouted, reaching for him.

“I be fine, sprat,” Da grunted, shoving to his feet. Fresh blood slicked his face, muddling with the salt water. He looked like someone had tried to skin him alive. A good thing Mama weren’t here to see it. She really would skin him. She might skin him yet.

If I don’t do it first.

His newly woken powers seethed.

“Rafe,” said Da, his voice rough and rasping. “You know when Doranen mages do a working, sometimes not all of ’em say the spells. Sometimes they just let ’emselves be used. You know that?”

He nodded, distracted. The whirlpool was maybe twenty feet across now, roaring louder. Though the smack’s crew was fighting hard, they couldn’t keep their boat from drifting towards its widening mouth. They’d never survive the encounter. They’d be smashed to splinters.

“Rafe,”
said Da. “Listen!”

He glanced sideways. “What?”

“Sprat, I need to use you. It’ll take more power than what’s in me to fuddle that bloody whirlpool.”

“We can do it together,” he said. “Teach me the—”

“There ain’t time.” Blood-slicked face twisting, Da cupped the back of his neck. “And there ain’t time for me to do this gentle, neither. Rafe, it’s goin’ to hurt. Are you with me?”

He looked again to the fishing boat. The waterspouts had tossed the skiff a good bit closer—to the smack, the reef and the growing whirlpool. As the smack’s crew fought their desperate battle, Fernel bloody Pintte dangled over the side, wildly gesturing. Rodyn Garrick, sopping, his long blond hair plastered wet to his skull, stood with poxy Arlin, tall and thin and wet through, his yellow hair short like most young Doranen wore it these days. Along with the other mages they were throwing spells at that howling hole in the ocean. For all the good they were doing they might as well be throwing flowers. Or turds.

Da’s cupping fingers tightened. “
Rafe
. Are you with me?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Da,” he said, slicked with cold sweat. “Just do it while we still can.”

“Right,” said Da, nodding. “Might be best you sit all the way down.”

So he bumped his arse to the skiff’s rough floorboards, and let his hands fall loose into his lap. Kept on staring at the helpless, drifting smack. At Arlin, who was going to spit blood when he found out who helped save him.

Ha
.

Da’s left hand came to rest gently on his head. “Here we go. Don’t fight it. You’ll feed bad but you won’t die.”

At first he felt nothing but an oddly warm sensation, as his father pointed towards the viciously expanding whirlpool, whispering under his breath. Then Da traced a sigil on the wet-salt air, which caught fire and burned with a strong, wild scent.

Power surged. Magic stirred. Rafel took a deep breath. Da whispered again, and drew another sigil, and now he felt a kind of collapsing, as though he were a blown-up pig’s bladder with a pinprick in it, slowly losing air. Another deep breath. Another fiery sigil. Then he felt a stabbing pain behind his eyes—and suddenly he was bleeding magic. And it hurt… Barl’s tits, it
hurt
…

Dimly he was aware of Da raging against the whirlpool. Dimly he could hear someone moaning and realised:
That’s me
. The trickle of power leaving him widened… widened further… and suddenly Da was pulling magic from him in a white-hot flood. He choked a scream in his throat.

Da was cursing the whirlpool now, cursing Morg and even Barl. Rafel cursed with him, shuddering with the pain. Then Da dropped to the floor of the skiff, retching for air, and the terrible outpouring of his magic stopped.

“It ain’t workin’,” Da gasped. “All them whirlpools feed on each other, and they feed off that bloody reef too. I ain’t strong enough to break ’em.”

So—was that it? Had they failed?

“Come on, sprat,” said Da, coughing. “On your feet. We still got work to do.”