Charis, her eyes beseeching.
Rafel, can you fix this?
Heavy with dread, he urged Firedragon faster.
The stallion’s long, easy strides swallowed the open road. He passed a handful of carts and carriages heading for the City, but with his hat pulled down and rain misting thickly no-one saw it was him. And then Firedragon threw his head up, ears pricking, pace slowing without being asked. Looming out of the gloom ahead, a motionless, solitary horse and rider. Rafel didn’t know the animal but he recognised the man sat unmoving in its saddle.
Arlin
.
Reaching him, Rafel pulled Firedragon to a plunging halt. Dorana City was a goodly distance behind him now, just its rooftops and the old palace visible above the gentle rise and fall of the rolling green countryside, dotted with yellow-tipped wild lampha bushes and bold scarlet frantins. Arlin and his horse stood on the Home Districts crossroad. Turn right and after ten leagues or so a traveller would come across the beehive district of Rumfylde. Turn left, and the Saffron Hills sweetly beckoned. Keep straight on and after days and days and a few round-aboutations, there’d be the coast.
“Rafel,” said Arlin, his pale hair darkened with rain and his pale eyes shadowed with unfriendly thoughts.
He smoothed a wet lock of Firedragon’s mane. He’d intended to ride towards Rumfylde, but Arlin was in the way. Of course. That was what Arlin did. He got in the way. But he wasn’t about to start something, ’cause they were alone and it didn’t pay to be careless where this Doranen was concerned. Not after what he’d glimpsed in the Council chamber.
He’s been hiding himself, like I have. Arlin bloody Garrick’s a sneaky little shit.
“Arlin,” he said, pleasantly enough. “You’re a long way from home on a wet day.”
Arlin lifted his bare head and stared quizzical at the clouded, weeping sky. “Very wet, yes. I wonder, can you tell me when it’s due to stop raining?”
“I reckon you know I can’t.”
Arlin’s lip curled in a sneer. “So much for being the new Asher.”
“Never said I was,” he replied, as Firedragon shorted, unsettled. “Only said I’d help, if I could.”
Arlin laughed. “
Help?
You think you can
help?
Like you helped in Westwailing?” He tipped his head, quizzical again. “I wonder how many more men and women must die from your helping them, Rafel.”
Sink me…
“Arlin—
I’m sorry
.”
“You expect me to believe that?” said Arlin, eyebrows lifting. “To believe you’re capable of remorse?”
It was no use. Talking to this blind fool was a waste of time Lur didn’t have. “No, Arlin,” he said tiredly. “I don’t.”
“Why are you out here, Rafel?” said Arlin, and kicked his brown horse closer. His eyes squinted against the relentless, drizzling rain. “Do you honestly expect me to buy this—this tarradiddle about you being able to
feel the earth?
”
Firedragon laid his ears flat back at Arlin’s stallion, ready to snap or strike. Scowling, Rafel jobbed the horse’s mouth in warning, not willing to back off. Arlin would see it as a victory, of sorts.
“You calling me a liar?” he said. “Just ’cause you Doranen are deaf, dumb and blind to the earth, I must be too? I thought that kind of arrogance died with Conroyd Jarralt.”
“You prate to me of arrogance?” Arlin snapped. “
You?
Son of the most arrogant man this kingdom ever birthed?”
“Arrogant or not he saved your bloody life. So you might want to swallow that nasty tongue of yours, Lord Garrick.”
Arlin’s teeth bared. “What I’ll swallow is your admission before the Council that you and your meddling father are responsible for all our current woes. You are
unnatural
. Both of you. It is
unnatural
that an Olken can wield Doranen magics. Not to mention insulting that you’d dare refer to yourselves as
mages
. The Doranen are mages. You Olken are—”
“I’ll tell you what we are, Arlin,” he said, as Firedragon began to dance on the spot. “We’re the folk as were rightfully born to this land. The folk as paid the price for
Doranen
arrogance. Six hundred bloody years kept down by you and yours. And if that ain’t enough, we’re the folk as saved you from Morg.
That’s
who we are,
my lord
.”
Arlin looked skyward again, the rain falling steadily onto his face. “Morg was twenty years ago, Rafel. He’s dead and gone. The buried past. What can you do to save us now, you and your precious Olken magic? Can you restore the weather to its former perfection? Can you undo the damage your father wrought, interfering with Barl’s brilliant workings?
Can you make this cursed rain stop?
”
He forced himself to breathe slowly, feeling the stirrings of an unwise rage. “You’re full of shit, Arlin. You always were, from our first day in school. Spew it somewhere else, why don’t you? I’ve got a job to do, as assigned by the Council.”
Easing his hold on the reins, he nudged Firedragon a step sideways so he could get past bloody Arlin and make tracks for Rumfylde. But Arlin put his hand out, catching Firedragon’s bridle. The horse stopped, grunting a protest.
“Lur is on the brink of chaos, Rafel,” said Arlin, his voice soft with menace. “You know it.
I
know it.
And
we know you can’t save it. You must stand before the Council and admit that. You must—”
“Forget what
I
must,” he said, as Firedragon jerked and tussled to get free. “
You
take your bloody hand off my horse’s bridle or so help me—”
“You’ll what?” Arlin sneered. “What will you do, Rafel?”
Rafel smiled. Bollocks to being careful. Arlin was asking for it.
“This
.
”
With a snap of his fingers he severed the girth on Arlin’s saddle, and in the next breath cracked three stones lying in the grass by the side of the road. The shards slapped Arlin’s horse on its fat dappled rump. Squealing, the beast bucked and bolted… and Arlin, still in his saddle, tumbled to the ground.
“You
bastard!
” Arlin shouted, sprawling, his fine clothes splotched and splattered with mud. “That was assault. Assault with
magic
. I’ll see you thrown in the Guardhouse, Rafel. I’ll see you destroyed in Justice Hall. I’ll have you charged with attempted murder
and
the murder of my father!”
Laughing, Rafel rode past him. “You can try, Arlin,” he said, over his shoulder. “But I’m Asher’s son, remember? And you’re the son of the man who wrecked the reef in Westwailing. So maybe you might want to think on that a bit.”
Ignoring Arlin’s furious shouting he dug his heels into Firedragon’s flanks, and they galloped towards Rumfylde leaving the Doranen lordling to catch an ague, or walk home on blisters, or both.
He didn’t care.
For three long, wet days he wandered through the Home Districts. Lur was weeping. Suffering. Bleeding from the deep wounds the Weather Magic, in its death throes, had gouged in the earth. He felt its pain in the waterlogged orchards, with their ripely rotting fruit, in the beehives, grimly droning, in the fields of drenched sheep and milch cows, and in the tilled soil screaming on the edge of hearing.
At first he thought he might go mad from it. The onslaught was brutal. Inescapable. Was this how Deenie felt? Haunted? Battered? No hope of respite, not a single moment’s peace?
Poor little mouse. I never realised.
But gradually his senses numbed—and he welcomed their deadening. It meant that finally he could snatch a little sleep. Everywhere he travelled he kept himself to himself. Kept his hat pulled low and didn’t give his real name. Everywhere he travelled he eavesdropped, shameless. In alehouses and markets and the inns where he stayed, he minded his own business and listened to the locals gossip. Not every Olken he encountered had magic, and of those who did, not many were powerful. He didn’t stumble across one man, woman or child who felt the earth’s tumult as keenly as he did… but many were feeling it. Felt ill, and afraid.
On the fourth day he visited Riddleton, a village on the furthest edge of the Home Districts, sat at the feet of the Saffron Hills. The land thereabouts was prime grazing country, where some of the best cattle in Lur were raised. Riddleton was a sleepy place, tucked far from the City, mostly overlooked ’cept twice a year when the big Livestock Markets were held. Out here, with the Saffron Hills rising, a gentle echo of Barl’s savagely splendid mountains, with more open countryside than the rest of the Home Districts’ hemmed-in fields and clustered cottages, Lur’s torment shouted loudest of all.
Weary after so much time in the saddle, worn down by the ceaseless rain, sometimes drizzling, sometimes heavy, he ambled with Firedragon along the hedge-rowed lanes leading to the village. The constant scraping of earth-distress against his nerves set his teeth on edge, muttered pain behind his tired eyes. Firedragon, sensing his disquiet, broke into a shuffling jog-trot, wet tail swishing, slapping his flanks. Every bone aching, he eased the horse back to a walk. In the fields on either side of them rust-red, black spotted Saffron cattle grazed the wet grass. If they could feel the earth’s misery they gave no sign of it. He envied them their dumb beast ignorance.
Once in Riddleton village, he took a room at the Speckled Rooster. Saw bedraggled Firedragon settled in a warm, dry stable with a hot mash, then took himself off to tramp the dripping streets and boggy laneways. To bully his beaten senses into reading the sorry earth one more time.
This would be his last night away from home. He’d learned what he’d needed to learn, what the Council had sent him to learn. But he knew, his heart sinking, they’d not want to hear what he had to say…
Barl save us. Mama was right. This can’t be fixed. The damage is gone too deep.
The thought bludgeoned him to a halt. He had to fall against a handy tree-trunk and wait for the shivering to pass. Lur was
dying
. He couldn’t see for unshed tears.
What do I do, Da? How do I tell Mama and Deenie?
Da. The shard of talking stone sat in his pocket, but it hadn’t stirred once. He chose to believe that meant his father hadn’t stopped breathing. Surely Mama would call for him if Da slipped away. She was fratched, she thought him reckless, but she’d not punish him like that. And any road… if Da had died, he surely would’ve felt it.
He pushed off the tree-trunk and kept on walking, barely taking in the patchwork of market gardens on either side of him, carrots and corn and beans and peas. Bedraggled and wilted, but grimly holding on. Sobbing through his blood, Lur’s curdling pain. Such a good thing Deenie was safe at home in Dorana, deadened with Kerril’s elixirs. If Da was right, and magic was a curse, then his poor mousy sister was its worst victim.
Wandering aimless through the village, ignoring the glances from folk as were curious about strangers, he felt his thoughts slide from Deenie to Goose like rocks down a riverbank.
I never asked Deenie if she was sweet on him. Never told her what he told me. Doesn’t matter. They can work it out themselves when he gets back. ’Cause he’s bloody coming back. I don’t care the Council’s not heard from Pintte or Baden. That could be any reason. And anyway, I’ve been on the road for days. By the time I get home, they’ll have heard something. There’ll be word from the expedition by the time I ride through the gates
.
There had to be.
’
Cause if there wasn’t…
And suddenly he was too tired to keep on walking. Too tired, too disheartened, too sick of what he felt. So he headed back to the inn. He wanted to sleep. To forget. To dream that Lur was thriving, just for a little while. For one last night.
’
Cause in the morning he’d have to ride back to Dorana and tell the Council there was no hope.
Sink me bloody sideways, Da. How did we come to this?
He took to his bed soon after supper, but didn’t stay asleep for long. Wrenched from uneasy slumber into storm-wracked wakefulness, he blinked muzzily at his chamber ceiling as lightning cracked like whip-shot and thunder rumbled and rolled. The Speckled Rooster shuddered under the onslaught, window-panes rattling. Through the closed door he heard a young child scream.
“Meister Tamly,” the innkeeper greeted him. “A wild night.”
“Gamble,” he said, scrambled into his damp clothes and tumbled downstairs to the shabby, glimlit parlour. “You all right?”
Gamble shrugged. He was a slight man, with grey streaks at his temples and a fondness for loudly spotted weskits. “I’m not dead yet.”
Rafel stared through the parlour’s bobble-paned windows at the pounding rain, at the blizzard of stripped foliage, at the torrents of water gushing through the laneway outside, all the storm’s destruction lit in silvery fits and bursts.
“Barl preserve us,” said Gamble, bowing his head.
“You can feel it, can’t you?” he said, his stomach churning, his hands clenched to fists in his pockets, where nobody could see them. In his bones, a painful drumming. “The last tatters of power tearing loose in the earth.”
“Sure I don’t know what you mean, sir,” said Gamble, carefully toneless. “Sir, might be you’ll feel happier in your chamber with the curtains drawn, like the other guests.”
“Gamble…” He sighed. “When I told you I was Ned Tamly, a farm manager looking to buy a new bull? I lied. I’m Rafel of Dorana. Asher’s son.”