The Innocent Mage (50 page)

He will not die.

Dathne sat up. Reached for her Circle Stone and called to Veira. ‘He is returned.’

The old woman’s relief shuddered through the link between them. It is soon, then.

‘Yes. The waiting is almost over. The air itself oppresses me, Veira. My skin crawls like an anthill and my nights writhe like a nest of snakes. We are wounded, we are wounded, and soon the blood must flow.’

And he is ready?

‘He is ill. Prophecy has used him harshly. Body and heart are bruised, and will take time mending. I thought the Circle might —’

A wise suggestion, child. Share him with me now, that I might call for a healing.

So she thought of Asher. Unchained her memory and opened her heart. When it was done:

Oh, child. Child. Dathne …

She felt impatience. Stifled it. ‘I know. It can’t be helped. It doesn’t matter. It makes no difference.’

No difference? Not to you, mayhap, but —

‘Not to him, either. I won’t let it. He’ll never know.’

So far away, Veira sighed. / pray you’re right. Child, the Circle will hold him safe. I have said so. Be at peace now,

for as long as peace can last. Which wasn’t long, thought Dathne, breaking the link, if foresight served her. Which most likely it did. ‘ It always had before now.

Gar was standing in the Tower lobby, sorting through the pile of mail and messages that had been delivered just before breakfast, when his father came through the open doors.

‘Demoted to post boy, are we?’ Borne asked, grinning. There was clean, fresh colour in the king’s face. A vitality to his demeanour Gar hadn’t seen for … well, come to think of it, not for a very long time. To see it now, to see iim whole and happy: it was a joy as sharp as pain.

‘Apparently,’ he replied, grinning back. ‘It seems I miss Darran more than I anticipated.’ ‘Never mind. He’ll be home soon.’

Gar pulled a face. ‘Not soon enough. But please, I implore you, don’t ever tell him I said so.’

‘Your secret is safe with me,’ his father promised. ‘Is there anything urgent? Matters that must be tended to immediately?’

He glanced again at the accumulated correspondence. ‘No. Another report from Darran, as it happens. Things proceed well, he says. I thought to discuss the matter at length at this afternoon’s Privy Council meeting.’

His father nodded. ‘I look forward to hearing the details.’ Then he glanced sideways, up the Tower’s spiral staircase. ‘And how is your assistant this morning?’

Gar followed his father’s gaze. Frowned. ‘There’s no change. Nix has been and gone already. He assures me Asher’s prolonged stupor is nothing more serious than the protest of an overstrained mind and body. The fever has abated somewhat and his wounds are healing cleanly. He just won’t wake up.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t want to.’

‘I thought of that,’ said Gar unhappily. ‘I can only hope you’re wrong. One life is dead to him, it’s true, but he’s spent the last year making a new life here in Dorana. That life still lives and breathes. Awaits him. He’s needed.’

Borne nodded. ‘He knows that. And when he’s ready to face that life again, he’ll wake. Have faith in good Pother Nix. I’m living proof he’s a miracle worker, after all. Without his passion for herb lore, for combining Doranen healing magics with old Olken remedies …”

‘You’d be dead, like King Drokas and Queen Ninia.’ Gar shivered. The mere thought made him ill. Calamity had come too close this time. He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘WeatherWorking is so cruel. Sometimes I wonder why Barl —’

His father smiled, sadly. ‘Because she had to. There was no other way. The natural energies her magics control are vast, Gar. Intricate. And the paradise they’ve bought us must be paid for.’

He could no longer hide his pain. Even though he’d sworn never to reveal it. These last days had been too hard. ‘Paid for with your blood?’

‘Yes,’ his father said simply. ‘It’s our side of the pact, my son. Our way of thanking the Olken people for giving us a home when our own lay in ashes behind us.’

‘I know, I know, but —’

‘Gar, I’m not here to debate history or its consequences,’ his father said firmly. T have news. Something’s been discovered. Something I think you might find … intriguing.’

Smothering sorrow, Gar stared at his father. In that ascetic face, excitement. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What have you found?’

The king crooked his finger. ‘Come, and I’ll show you.’

Largely uninhabited since the massive building works undertaken by Queen Antra at the turn of the last century, the Old Palace baked its crumbling stoneworks in the autumn sunshine and dreamed of its glory days, dead and gone.

Looking around the abandoned west wing’s deserted central courtyard, Gar recalled the solitary childhood games he’d played here. The empty chambers and echoing corridors had been his private kingdom. Such fantastic dreams he’d woven, fashioned out of rooms piled high with discarded furniture, chests of fabulously outdated clothing, statues and knick-knacks and all manner of mysterious, grown-up things. He’d not been back here in years. The place looked sad now, not alluring. Weeds had long since taken over the flowerbeds he’d once so industriously tended, growing roses and snapdragons for his mother, and creeping wartsease slowly strangled the little row of plumple trees he’d raised for fruit, crisp and juicy and all his own. There were even some gaps in the courtyard walls, where bricks had tumbled is a result of the recent earth tremors.

‘It’s just through here,’ said the king. ‘In the old kitchen courtyard. Mind your step now, the ground is uneven in places.’

Gar stared at his father. ‘What in Barl’s name were you doing poking around the Old Palace grounds?’

They squeezed through a half-rotten doorway in the central courtyard wall. ‘I wasn’t. One of the palace cooks made the discovery while searching for her runaway cat. Instead of finding the wretched creature she found this.’

This was a huge, gaping hole in the middle of the old kitchen courtyard. The sunshine shafting into it over the roofline of the surrounding buildings revealed, faintly, some kind of chamber far below their feet. It seemed to be lined with shelves. More shelves crammed side by side across the space beneath the ruined ceiling. And on every shelf, books.

It was impossible to tell exactly how large the chamber was, but Gar suspected it was a goodly size; the free-standing bookcases stretched beyond the edges of the breach. Aside from that obvious damage, the rest of the old kitchen courtyard appeared intact.

‘Barl save us,’ Gar said as he and his father skirted the hole to join the queen, Durm and Fane, who were standing together a prudent distance from the lip of the rent in the ground.

‘Extraordinary, isn’t it?’ said the king, jubilant. ‘And to think —’

‘At last!’ the princess cried. ‘Durm was just saying you must have found another hole and fallen into it.’

Smiling indulgently, the Master Magician rapped her on the head with his knuckles. ‘I most certainly was not, madam.’

She grinned at him. ‘Well, you were thinking so. Don’t try and deny it, I know you too well!’

As the others laughed, Gar sighed. He and his sister had hardly spoken since his return from Westwailing. Partly it was because he’d been immersed in emergency meetings with his father and both Councils. Also he’d spent a great many hours asleep, recovering from the gruelling crosscountry ride. Some of it was because, whenever he could, he’d been sitting with Asher hoping his friend would grow tired of the history book he’d been reading aloud and sit bolt upright, demanding that Gar give over natterin’ afore his bloody ears fell off in self-defence.

It hadn’t happened yet, but he remained cautiously optimistic.

But he couldn’t blame all of the silence between him and Fane on work and worry. More and more, it seemed of late, they simply had less and less to say to one another … and they’d never had a great deal in common to start with. The distance between them was troubling. If in truth the king had perished, his sister would now be his queen. And their strained relationship would have made his life a hundred times harder than it already was.

It was time and past time that he found a way to cross the abyss that separated them. One day, Barl pray long hence, she would be the kingdom’s WeatherWorker and he would have to bow his knee to her in solemn obedience. Between now and that day he had to find a way to her goodwill. Because if he didn’t…

She was frowning at him. ‘What are you staring at?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, with a lightness he was far from feeling. ‘You look most becoming in that dress. The colour suits you.’

‘Doesn’t it?’ said the queen, smiling. ‘I must order a bolt of the fabric for myself.’

Fane twitched her skirts of deep primrose silk. She appeared pleased by the compliment… and suspicious too. Typical. ‘There’s something you want?’

Gar stifled his mother’s protest with a glance, and smiled. ‘Yes, actually,’ he said, seizing the moment. ‘Lunch.’

‘With me?’

‘No, with your lap-dog. Of course with you.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

He kept his tone light, though his fingers itched to shake her. ‘Can’t a man ask his sister to lunch without first facing a stern interrogation?’

‘Of course he can,’ said Dana before Fane could answer. ‘What a lovely idea, Gar. You can make it a picnic. I’ll have the kitchen prepare a special basket for you. Would you like chicken, or —’

‘My love,’ said the king, slipping his arm around her shoulders, ‘I think if we don’t turn our attentions to this mysterious chamber at our feet, Durm is going to erupt with impatience.’

Dana laughed. ‘Of course.’

Ignoring the calculating looks Fane was shooting him from beneath her carefully lowered lashes, Gar inched a little closer to the edge of the hole and peered downwards.

‘It looks like a study. Or a library. But what’s a library doing here, practically smack bang beneath the Old Palace kitchens? Beneath anything?’

‘You’re the historian of the family,’ said his father. ‘You don’t recall any mention in palace archives about this study or library or whatever it may be?’

‘No,’ said Gar after a moment’s furious thought. ‘Nothing comes to mind.’

‘Don’t you think it’s strange,’ Fane said suddenly, ‘that despite this enormous hole in the ground there’s no rubble or dirt down there? Or in the courtyard. At least, nothing that looks fresh.’

‘I wonder,’ Dana said slowly. Moving sideways to the nearest stretch of courtyard wall she picked up an ancient, moss-covered lump of rock. Took aim and tossed it at the hole in the ground. There was a vicious crack of sound, a flash of brilliant blue light and a noxious puff of smoke as the stone exploded.

‘A shield,’ said Durm, his eyes glittering. ‘Barl’s eyeteeth, the chamber has a shield.’

For once, Dana made no complaint about swearing.

Borne stared at his Master Magician. ‘Why would a library needed shielding?’

‘It’s obvious,’ said Fane. ‘Because it isn’t an ordinary library.’ She was lit up from within, on fire with excitement. ‘Papa, Durm — do you know what this is? Do you realise what we’ve found?’

Gar sighed. ‘Fane … no. I’m sorry, but it can’t be.’

She turned on him. ‘Why not?’

Helplessly he looked at her. For all her powers she was still a child, and subject to a child’s flights of fancy. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, but … ‘Because the idea is nothing more than romantic nonsense,’ he said as kindly as he could. ‘A fairy tale. At best it’s completely unsubstantiated rumour. There’s no proof, none at all, that Barl’s so-called “lost library” ever existed.’

‘It wouldn’t matter to you even if there was proof,’ his sister retorted. ‘What use would a library filled with arcane magical texts be to you? For all we know you’ve come across hundreds of references and you’ve ignored every one of them because either you don’t care or you couldn’t understand what they meant. Both, probably.’

Gar took a deep breath and kept his tone reasonable. Academic. Adult. ‘Fane, I know what this means to you. I know you want it to be true. You’ve been fascinated with Barl and Morgan and the doom of the Doranen ever since you were a little girl and I used to read you your bedtime story. But no documents from the time of the Great Flight or the Arrival have survived to the present day. All we’ve got are oral accounts, recorded years after the fact. A friend of a friend of a friend of a servant who used to clean Barl’s boots told me. That kind of thing. We don’t know that Barl left behind so much as a note for the kitchen, let alone books of ancient and powerful spells. Certainly not a whole library’s worth of them.’

Fane pointed at their feet. Her face was flushed with temper. ‘You don’t call that proof?’

‘I call it a hole in the ground. Beyond that we don’t know anything.’

‘Nor will we,’ said Durm sharply, ‘until we enter the chamber itself and make a thorough examination of its contents.’

Borne nodded. ‘Exactly. My love …’ He turned to Dana. ‘You’ve a knack for finding things. Would you care to nose out the way into this mysterious library for us?’

The queen lowered her unhappy gaze from Gar and Fane to the breached courtyard. Sadness gave way to a sense of purpose. ‘I can certainly try.’ She managed a small smile. ‘No promises, mind.’ Stretching out her palm, she closed her eyes and whispered under her breath. The air above her hand quivered. Thickened. Coalesced into a small orange ball of energy.

For a moment the questor hovered there, like a hunting dog uncertain of the scent. Then it leapt upwards, swooped over the hole at their feet, circling, buzzing like a bee — and darted through the main door opening onto the kitchen courtyard.

‘After it!’ Borne cried.

Acrimony forgotten, they hurtled in pursuit.

The queen’s questor led them through deserted kitchens, along dusty corridors and down rickety staircases. After a few minutes Durm conjured glimfire to light their way. On and on they hurried until they reached an enormous echoing meat larder where once, years and years before, whole sides of beef and mutton and venison, plucked pheasants, ducks, geese, swans and peacocks had hung from polished hooks dangling from the ceiling. The hooks remained, tarnished and dulled by age.