The Awakened Mage (17 page)

Gar’s lips twitched. “That’s better.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Oh, Asher…” Gar blinked his eyes open again. “You have no idea.”

But he did. Some idea anyway. He’d heard Gar’s screams, after all. Watched helpless as his friend writhed inside the power. Convulsed. Wept blood even as he laughed.

“Well…” Uncertain, he folded his arms. “For how long? For always? I mean, is this your life now? Nowt but blood and pain?”

With an effort, Gar pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “Yes.”

“But… you can’t do this every day,” he said, appalled. “You can’t bleed and hurt like this every day. How will you stand it?”

Gar shrugged. “The same way my father did, and my grandfather, and my great-grandmother, back and back and back till the dawn of our days here.”

“But you
can
‘t!”

“I must. What’s the alternative? Shirk my duty and hand the crown to Conroyd Jarralt?” Gar pulled a face. “I don’t think so. Besides, it’s not every day. Well. Not always. As I recall, my father sometimes had two days respite at a time, between Callings. Three even, in winter.” He smiled, remembering. “Winter is good.”

“Gar, nowt happens in winter. What about spring?”

The remembering smile faded then and Gar frowned at his knees. “Oh, spring. Yes. Spring is… not so good.”

“You fool, spring’ll
kill
you if this is just a taste of what’s to come!”

Gar shook his head. “No, it won’t. You’re forgetting this wasn’t a normal Working. Tonight I made it rain from one end of the kingdom to the other, and that’s not the way it’s usually done. Not even in the spring. You’re worrying over nothing. I’m fine, or I will be soon enough.” He stretched a hand out in front of him and flexed his fingers with only a small grimace. “See? The pain’s easing already.”

Asher snorted. “Even if you poked my eyes out I could tell you were lyin’. Gar—”

The outstretched fingers became a fist.
“Don’t.”
Then Gar’s icy gaze melted and the fist became a hand, became vulnerable fingers, trembling. “I am who I am, Asher. I was born for one reason and one reason alone. You can’t change that.”

Asher kicked one boot-heel against the floor, scuffing the polished parquetry. “All right,” he muttered grudgingly. “If you say so. You’re the king.”

“Yes,” said Gar. “I am.” In his voice, echoes of pain and a tired, replete satisfaction. “And now the king says, time to go home.”

“Not till I clean up the rest of that blood. You look like a slaughterhouse apprentice.” His gaze fell on the Chamber’s single cupboard. On impulse he crossed to it, opened the doors and inside found a pile of soft rags, a bowl and a stoppered vial. Looking back at Gar he said, “Seems like your da kept himself prepared.”

“Or Durm,” agreed Gar. “Bring them here.”

“There ain’t any water.”

Gar smiled. “Give me the bowl. I’ll take care of the water.”

He handed it over, then sank cross-legged to the floor and watched as Gar closed his eyes, spread his hand above the empty vessel and whispered something under his breath. A blue spark ignited in the space between clay and flesh. Gar grunted, his face contracting against new pain. The blue spark briefly danced then died… and the bowl began to fill with water from the bottom up, as though an invisible spigot had been opened.

Asher laughed. “How’d you do that?”

Gar gave him back the bowl. “Do you really want to know?”

Abruptly, he remembered who he was, and where he was, and what the penalties were for asking those kinds of questions. “No.”

“It’s all right,” said Gar. “I’ll answer. If you want the truth, it’ll be a relief to talk about it. With Durm… unwell, there’s nobody else to listen.”

Asher dipped his fingers in the water. It was warm. Wetting one of the soft cloths, wringing it out, he said, “Holze’d listen.”

Gar shook his head. “I can’t talk to Holze. Not about this. Not about any kind of magic. I can’t talk to any of them.”

He held out the cloth. “I s’pose not.”

“Holze may be a cleric, but he’s also on the Privy Council and friends with Jarralt,” said Gar, his voice muffled as he cleaned his face. “With all the prominent Doranen. If there was even the smallest suggestion I was unsure about the WeatherWorking, about
anything…”

He sighed. “I know. Goodbye King Gar, hello King Conroyd.” With a grunt, he unstoppered the vial from the cupboard. A pungent, eye-stinging stink wafted into the chamber. He spat out the cork, choking.

“I’m not drinking that,” said Gar.

Cautiously, Asher sniffed. “One of Nix’s little concoctions. It pongs a bit like the one he gave me after gettin’ back from Westwailin’. Your da must’ve kept it here, for afterwards.” He held out the vial. “You might as well. I mean, you’re so weak right now I could just pinch your nose shut and tip it down your throat, but that’d be a mite undignified, I reckon. You know. Seein’ as how you’re king and all.”

Glaring balefully, Gar held out his hand. “I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, but I swear I’ll get you for this.”

Asher grinned. “.’Course you will. Just one swallow, mind. We got no idea how strong that muck is.”

Gar swallowed. Gagged. Thrust the vial blindly in

Asher’s direction and scrubbed at his mouth with the bloodstained rag. “And after I’ve got you,” he panted, spitting and hawking, “I’ll bloody well get Nix too!”

Asher restoppered the vial then inspected his friend. Whatever was in the pother’s vile sludge it was doing the trick. A little color was returning to Gar’s complexion and his hands were steadier. “Better?” he asked.

Gar grimaced. “Yes.”

Into the fallen silence, as the magic rain clouds thinned into memory over the map of Lur, he said, “So. Seems you are a WeatherWorker, just like your da.”

The faintest of smiles ghosted over Gar’s face. “Yes. And you know what that means.”

Asher let his head drop. Here it came. “I got a sneakin’ bloody suspicion.”

“There’s no one else I’d trust to be Olken Administrator,” said Gar. “And no one else I need more on my Privy Council. But I promise you this, Asher. When Durm is well again and I am settled into my rule, when I am married and the succession is assured, if you want to go back to your precious ocean I’ll make no attempt to stop you. And when you do leave, it will be as a fabulously wealthy man.”

Asher turned his head to stare at tiny Restharven, where tiny boats made of magic danced in the tiny harbor. With money and power and King Gar’s blessing his brothers would never stand in his way again. He’d return home inviolate, able to dictate his own destiny without interference.

And Dathne had offered to be his assistant…

He grinned. “Ah, sink it. Restharven ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

“Does that mean you accept?”

“Aye,” he said. “I accept.”

From her privileged position as a member of the elite royal staff, Dathne sat on her cushioned seat in Justice Hall and watched Barlsman Holze crown Gar as Lur’s new king.

A temporary dais had been erected at the front of the Hall, where usually the Law Giver sat and pronounced sentence. Draped in gold velvet, it shimmered richly in the glimlight called for the occasion.

Hands meekly clasped before him, Gar knelt on a crimson cushion at Holze’s feet as the Barlsman prayed over his bowed head. In contrast to the cleric’s jewel-crusted green and gold and crimson brocade robes, his gold-laden cap and the various holy rings clasping his fingers, Lur’s almost-crowned king was dressed starkly in white. He looked like a sapling willow stripped bare of bark. Young. Vulnerable. Unready for the burden fate had thrust upon him.

Beside her, dressed in the finest silks and brocades she’d ever seen him wear, Asher watched the ceremony

in anxious silence. Fretting, she suspected, on things going wrong at the very last moment. Worrying that all his hair-tearing work with Darran would somehow come to naught. She let her fingers drift to his arm and lightly squeezed. Smiled when he glanced at her. He smiled back, but without enthusiasm.

Holze spread his arms wide and tipped back his head. “O Blessed Barl, look down upon this man, your child in magic, and hear now his solemn oath, sworn in this place before you and all his people. Anoint him with your beneficence, pour your strength into his heart and guide him to truth and wisdom all the days of his life.”

Gar looked up then. Folded his hands across his heart. “Blessed Barl, from whom all life flows, I solemnly swear to serve you and the kingdom you gave us, Doranen and Olken alike, unto my last living breath. I will keep your children in peace and prosperity, Working the Weather, keeping your great Wall strong and upholding your laws without exception until my last drop of blood is shed. May magic desert me if I am untrue.”

Holze nodded at a waiting acolyte. The robed assistant stepped forward, bearing the WeatherWorker’s crown. Handed it to him. Dathne held her breath as the intricately wrought silver and copper and gold was lowered onto Gar’s bowed, waiting head.

Booming from the square outside, the City’s great Barl’s Clock tolled the stroke of midnight. Signaling the end of night… the start of day.

It was all very
symbolic.

A great sigh went up from the gathered witnesses: City guild meisters and mistresses, Captain Orrick, the General Council’s Doranen lords and ladies, mayors and mayoresses from the kingdom’s larger towns, select royal staff. Dathne saw in their faces the raw relief bubbling like stew in a hdded pot.
Praise Barl, praise Barl, now life can get back to normal…
She felt profoundly sorry.

Barlsman Holze began reciting the traditional WeatherWorker’s Blessing above the head of still-kneeling Gar. Glancing sideways, she saw Darran wipe away a surreptitious tear, dear old fusspot that he was. A stickler for protocol, inevitably irritated by someone like Asher, but a good man.

Not like Willer.

Further along the pew in which they sat, Willer hunched in his finery hke a dyspeptic peacock. Still sulking, the repellent little tick. Everything Asher had ever said about the slug was true. That he could actually think he’d be named Olken Administrator, or even the assistant! Was he mad as well as horrible? And the way he’d acted ever since the announcement of her appointment. Snide. Sneering. Uncooperative. He’d better get over his snit soon or Asher would dismiss him no matter how many more excuses Darran found for him.

Sick of the sight of him, she let her gaze wander elsewhere. Darran wasn’t the only one moved to tears: royal staff who’d known their new king as a babe in his cradle, as a toddler tumbling about the corridors of the palace and getting into mischief like any normal small child; guild officials who’d come to know him so closely this past year, and maybe mourned his loss to magic; noble Doranen, perhaps regretting that late-blossoming power and the madcap dreams it killed … or dreaming instead of a nubile daughter’s chances of being crowned queen. They all had tears on their cheeks.

So many faces. So many hidden thoughts. So many lives that would wildly unravel once Prophecy was fulfilled.

Her grim musings were interrupted as Holze reached down and drew Gar to his feet. Turned the new king to face his silent subjects. Raised his arms and cried: “Behold a miracle! Behold our virtuous king, by Barl’s great grace, Gar the First, WeatherWorker of Lur!”

Now the assembled witnesses were getting to their feet, cheering. Well. Mostly cheering. Dathne scrambled to copy them.

Beside her, clapping along with everybody else, Asher leaned close.

“Barl bloody save me,” he said as, moved almost to tears, King Gar stood before them and accepted the rapturous acclaim. ‘Wow life’s goin’ to get interesting!”

The unkempt, ill-favored denizens of the Green Goose were in diabolical form, rollicking and carousing and tipping their mugs of beer over their shrieking neighbors’ heads then laughing as though they’d just done something terribly clever and hysterically funny.

Funny?
Willer sank further into his obscure comer seat, hugged his fourth tankard of ale closer to his chest and sneered. It wasn’t in the least bit funny. It was puerile. Juvenile. No, no, that was far too old for this unruly mob. It was infantile. Yes. Infantile and… and… mortifying. These rowdy sots were royal servants. His colleagues, loosely speaking.
Very
loosely. Supposedly they were the cream of Lur’s Olken population. Yet here they were carrying on like ignorant farmhands at a barn dance, getting drunk and singing bawdy songs out of tune and generally making fools of themselves.

Morg smite them all, was this any way to celebrate the crowning of a king?

And what was there to celebrate anyway? The day Gar’s family had carelessly fallen off the side of a mountain more than just a carriage had been wrecked. More than people had died. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but he knew it now. His future had been wrecked too. His dreams had died, as bloodily as any king.

Quivering with overwhelming indignation, Willer swallowed another mouthful of his admittedly excellent ale.

He couldn’t understand it. How could Barl have
done
this to him?

Another inebriated toast to the new king rattled the inn’s smoke-soaked rafters. He winced. What in Barl’s name had brought him into this den of iniquity? He didn’t belong in here, he belonged in the Golden Cockerel where the only interruption one ever experienced was the gentle throat-clearing of the waiter, asking if sir required more wine. There was violin music in the Cockerel. There was an exquisite silk-swathed soprano in the Cockerel. There was cut glass and pohshed silverware and fine dining in the Cockerel. What had he been
thinking,
coming here?

A sly little voice inside his head answered,
You were thinking that in here you’d be safe. In here, you wouldn’t have to laugh, and smile, and wear a brave face. In here, you could be invisible.

Which wasn’t the case at the Cockerel. He was well known there. Lauded and fawned on and minced after, importuned and flattered and visible. Anonymity there was impossible. Worse, waiting for him in the refined atmosphere of the Cockerel were his genteel royal colleagues, the other secretaries and assistant secretaries and undersecretaries and junior royal apothecaries who also frequented Dorana’s most fashionable establishment.