He couldn’t stand. His bones were hollow, his muscles pulped. He could taste iron-salt blood, thick and wet on his lips. But Da hauled him up and somehow he managed not to fall. Managed to open his bleary, burning eyes.
Oh, shit.
The doomed fishing boat tossed on the edges of the whirlpool’s growing wake. The swirling defiant water was nigh on forty feet across now, thundering its hunger, growling to be fed.
“Work?” he croaked, cold with terror, as beneath their unsteady feet the skiff began to drift. “What work? Da, what can we do?”
“We can save them bloody idiots on that fishing boat, I reckon,” said Da. “Afore they manage to get ’emselves drowned.”
At her wits’ end trying to comfort Deenie, Dathne jumped near out of her skin when someone banged a fist on the inn’s chamber door.
“Meistress Dathne! Best you come quick!”
That was Silas, who’d taken over the Dancing Dolphin from his father, Hiram, dead these three years past. She glared at the closed door then bent again over her daughter, curled whimpering on the bed and shaking so hard the bed-frame’s timber creaked.
“Meistress Dathne!” Silas called again. “Be you in there?”
She pressed a kiss to Deenie’s brow then hurried to the door. Cracked it open a finger’s-width and tried to smooth away her frown. “Silas? What’s amiss? Only Deenie’s not feeling spry and—”
Silas was large and red of face, just like his father. “Trouble down the harbour, Meistress Dathne,” he said, his pouched eyes wide. “Seems your Asher’s neck-deep in it. And Rafel. The mayor sent someone to fetch you.”
Dathne swallowed a curse. Of course her men folk were neck deep in trouble. Where else would they be?
Who jumped first, I wonder? Or did they jump together, hand in hand?
She glanced at Deenie, who shivered and shook on the soft feather bed. “I can’t leave, Silas. My daughter’s—”
“Go, Mama,” said Deenie, her voice reed thin and trembling. “They might need you. I can’t help them. I’m useless.”
She waved her hand in a “just a moment” gesture at Silas, shoved the door shut and returned to the bed. “Don’t talk like that,” she scolded, smoothing Deenie’s sweat-damp hair. “You’re
not
useless. If you’re anything, you’re too sensitive. Deenie, I—”
Pansy eyes huge in her pale face, Deenie summoned an unsteady smile. “I’m not dying, Mama. I’m just—just a mouse. Go.”
A wave of angry misery surged through her. All she’d ever wanted was for prophecy to be over. She’d wanted peace and happiness for her family. Her children. Why couldn’t they have happiness? Why wouldn’t strife leave them alone?
Is this my fault? Has my past destroyed their hopes for the future?
“Mama…”
Fighting weak tears, she looked down. “What, mouse?”
“Please.
Go
.”
“I’ll not be long,” she promised, chafing her daughter’s cold hand. “If you need me call me for Silas and he’ll find where I am.”
The
someone
Westwailing’s mayor had sent to fetch her was a plump, anxious young Olken man who dithered in the Dolphin’s public lounge and nearly ran towards her as she came down the crooked stairs.
“Meistress Dathne! Praise Barl!”
Curse Barl more like it. “Who are you?” she snapped, heading for the front door.
The mayor’s young someone leapt after her. “Trotter. Phlim Trotter.”
“And what’s happened, Meister Trotter?”
“Looks like magic gone mad, Mayor Threeve says,” he said nervously, his voice low, as they left the inn and struck out towards the harbour. “And Asher—”
She flicked a glance at him, walking as fast as she could along Bait-man Alley without actually running. “I know. Silas said.”
“But that’s good,” Phlim Trotter added, breathless. “If there’s a man who can save us it’s the Innocent Mage.”
His simple faith should have warmed her
.
Instead she was winter-cold inside. Asher… Asher…
Indifferent to Phlim Trotter’s panting discomfort, Dathne swung hard left into the skinniest of laneways separating one alehouse from its neighbour, swished her way between a wall and a row of rubbish bins and shot out the other end of it into Seaswell High Street. The thoroughfare was buzzing, Westwailing’s homegrown and its visitors milling and agitating, staring down the township’s gentle slope towards the harbour. Ignoring Trotter’s ineffectual bleating, she leapt to the top step of a handily placed baker’s shop, shaded her eyes and fixed her anxious gaze on the distant water.
Oh, Jervale preserve us all.
Waterspouts were whipping across the wide harbour where the mage-workers’ distance-shrunk fishing boat plunged like a mad horse, close enough to the reef’s jagged teeth for the folk gathered in the street to be crying aloud their fear and consternation. Smaller still, a mere black dot, another boat. A skiff. It plunged just as madly through the harbour’s wild, thrashing water.
Dathne felt her heart seize.
I’m going to kill them.
Provided, of course, that the waterspouts or something worse didn’t kill her husband and son first. But perhaps they’d be all right… if Asher undid the binding on Rafel’s power.
Oh, Rafel. Will you forgive us?
Pushing that fear aside, she glanced down at Phlim Trotter, fraught on the pavement at the foot of the bakery steps. “Young man, can you run?”
“Run?” he echoed, his flushed face dripping sweat from mere walking. “Ah—”
“Never mind,” she said, and picked up her skirts. “And don’t worry, Meister Trotter. I’ll tell the mayor you did your best.”
Abandoning him, she ran.
When the third screaming Olken fisherman was flung overboard to drown in the whirlpool-churned harbour, Arlin gave up any hope of surviving.
Staggering on the smack’s pitching deck, furious with fear, his father was bellowing at the boat’s captain. “You’re the sailor, Hayle! Sail us away from here! Get us back to the pier!”
“I be tryin’!” Hayle shouted back, blood from a split eyebrow slicking his face ghastly red. He’d lashed a length of rope to the boat’s mast and wrapped its end around his wrist, an anchor to help him stay upright as the boat lurched and tossed and plunged. “Why don’t you help? Why ain’t there a Doranen spell to save all our hides?”
There was, of course. There were several incants designed to move a boat at will across water. Ain and the other two mages were desperately reciting them now—but they weren’t working. Morg’s leftover magic of ruination was too strong for them. The sigils sputtered to sparks and memory almost as soon as they flared into life.
“See to your own tasks, Hayle!” Father snarled. “Leave the matter of magic to your betters!”
“Sir,” said the captain, and returned to his men.
Arlin touched his father’s arm. “You have to let me do something. Why did you bring me if you won’t—”
“Not yet,” said Father. “I won’t have you revealed yet.”
“But
sir
—”
His father slapped him. “
Do as you’re told!
Have I nurtured you for twenty years to have you throw my efforts away now?”
Face stinging, Arlin shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Then stand here out of the way,” his father snapped. “The rest of us are equal to this task.”
He watched his father rejoin Ain and the others.
I hope so, for all our sakes.
Then he grabbed hold of the boat’s railing and stared with horrified fascination at the roaring whirlpool that had them trapped.
The dreadful thing was easily sixty feet across, large enough to swallow the fishing boat whole. And if by some miracle of magework they
weren’t
swallowed whole then the chances were good that their vessel would be smashed to flotsam against the reef, because even as the whirlpool sucked them inexorably towards it, a half-dozen randomly spawned waterspouts kept granting a cruel reprieve. Towering above them, moaning and howling as though they were alive, the wickedly capricious spouts thrust them left then right then left. Whipped them in sickening circles and tossed them clear of the water completely only to buffet them back into its wet, avid embrace.
He’d already vomited again, twice.
And then he nearly lost his balance as the smack lurched and heeled over. His feet slid out from under him, and only his desperate hold on the railing kept him from falling. He sent up a swift prayer, though he’d been taught their religion was a lie.
If you’re taking me, Barl, for pity’s sake take me fast.
The roar of the whirlpool and the keening of the waterspouts were so loud his ears felt buffeted almost to deafness. He was battered and bruised, knuckles skinned red raw, splinters in his palms, his cheeks, and forehead after being skidded from one side of the smack to the other, face down.
Burning through the pain he felt a sudden spike of anger.
I had plans. I had dreams. I don’t want to die.
Something touched his knee. Turning, looking down, he saw whey-faced Fernel Pintte huddled amidst a tangle of fishing nets. The Olken’s head was split open. Blood dripped off his nose. “You said this wouldn’t happen,” he moaned. “You Doranen, you
swore
on Barl’s legacy this—”
The Olken captain’s sudden shouting distracted him. Swinging round, Arlin looked to where the man pointed. It was a small boat, rolling towards them in line with the reef, seemingly unaffected by whirlpool or waterspout. But how was that possible?
“Asher!” Hayle cried. “It be Asher the Innocent Mage, come to save us!” Then his face changed. “The bloody fool, he’s like to kill hisself. I fear there ain’t no-one can save us now, not even him.”
What?
Asher? But—but—was Rafel with him? Ignoring Pintte’s querulous bleating—let the fool bleed to death or go overboard; who would care?—he let go of the railing and risked what was left of his life staggering to the other side of the boat. Flung himself onto its railing, held on tight and stared at the onrushing plain canvas sail. Two men stood in the battered shallow hull beneath it, both dark haired. One his father’s age, one his own. He felt his belly clutch hard.
I think I’d rather die than be rescued by Rafel.
His father left his friends to their desperate spellcasting and joined him.
“Look at him,” said Father, through tightly gritted teeth. “
Asher
. Flouting his unnatural talents.”
Arlin shook his head, bemused. “How is he doing that? How is he able to control that skiff and the water so easily when you—” A sideways glance at his father stopped him. “When Ain and the others can’t—”
“Wipe the admiration and envy off your face, boy!” his father spat. “No Olken should be able to wield Doranen magic. The man’s an abomination.”
Of course he was. But if there was any chance Asher could save them…
Because I can’t. I’m not even permitted to try.
Asher’s skiff was close enough now for him to make out the Olkens’ faces. What could be seen of them beneath slick fresh blood was pale with strain. Father and son stood side by side in the bow, Asher’s right hand anchored to Rafel’s left shoulder, Rafel’s left hand holding tight to his father’s right. Their eyes were slitted with fierce concentration, and they rode the racing boat as easily as if they stood upon Westwailing’s stolid stone pier.
Arlin felt the power coursing between them. Felt their common bond and their unity of purpose. Rafel was taller. His father was thinner. But they were two men with one heart and one mind.
Barl’s tits, how he hated them.
The fishermen who’d not yet drowned were laughing and shouting, feet drumming the deck. Captain Hayle leaned dangerously over the side of his boat. Cupped his hands to his mouth and sucked deep lungfuls of salty air.
“Don’t come no closer, Asher, or you’ll be caught along of us!”
Neither Asher nor Rafel replied. They were too busy fighting the wild water and the coils of filthy magic still pouring off the lethal, sharp-toothed reef. Magic that had been mostly sleeping, until he and Father and the others had woken it to violent life.
So this is our fault. Asher was right, curse him. We never should’ve attempted to break magic’s hold on the reef.
“Asher!” Hayle shouted. “Go back while y’can! Ain’t no point you bein’ drownded along with us!”
Could Asher and Rafel even hear the man? Arlin doubted it, with waves smashing on the reef and spray flying and that cursed whirlpool roaring and fresh waterspouts keening to life even as older ones died.
Asher raised his left arm, fingers pointing at the nearest waterspout, and a stream of raw power poured out of his body. The waterspout touched by Asher’s power collapsed in gouts of foam and spray.
Hayle led his fishermen in a ragged cheer. Arlin could easily have cheered, himself. He could feel the echo of Asher’s power in his own flesh and bones, overwhelming. Exhilarating. The Olken might be an abomination but he’d bought them a reprieve, however short-lived. Beside him, Father leaned precariously over the railing, narrowed gaze hungry, thin lips peeled back in a furious grimace.
The skiff continued its racing progress as Asher collapsed every waterspout he could reach. How powerful was he, then, if he could foil the reef’s poisoned magics and guide his boat at the same time?