The Prodigal Mage: Fisherman’s Children Book One (14 page)

“The ole fart reached a goodly age,” he said softly, at last. “A better age than my da did, Barl rest his bones.”

Dathne’s fingertips traced idle patterns on his belly. “I wondered if you’d thought on that. But you never said, and I didn’t want to pry.”

He snorted. “First time for everythin’, eh?”

“Rogue,” she said, pinching him. “So. You made your peace with the dear old man?”

She’d not asked, before. It was one of the many things he loved about her, the way she could sit silent and wait till she knew he were ready to talk on things that mattered.

“Aye,” he said, feeling again Darran’s cold fingers in his hand. “We settled things.”

Her lips pressed against his chest. “Good. You travelled a strange road together, you and that persnickety fellow. You hurt each other on purpose, and not… but even so…”

It were funny, how she was so much harder than him but could still easily touch matters close to the heart, when he couldn’t.

“Don’t worry,” she added. There was a smile in her voice. “I ain’t about to get maudlin on you, Meister Asher.”

He thanked her with another kiss, slow and considering. She laughed, amusement whispering, and stroked her hand down his back, fingertips bumping from scar to scar.

“You spoke to Rafe?” she said, head settling on his shoulder. “I hope you did. I took Pellen and Deenie out so you’d have a moment with him alone.”

“Aye,” he said. “I spoke to him.”

“And?” she prompted, after a moment.

He sighed. “And he don’t much like bein’ held back, Dathne.”

“You think that’s news to me?” she said. “He’s wanted to run before he could walk ever since he snapped his fingers and called glimfire when he was barely a year old. What did you tell him?”

“I told him not to fret on what he felt. That it were important, but you and me, we were mindin’ it ’cause that’s our job, not his.”

“You know…” The gentle fingers scoring his skin ceased their movement, leaving him bereft. “We can’t hold him back forever. We don’t dare. The power in him will find its way to the surface, no matter how deeply we try to keep it buried.”

He felt his heart pound. Felt his hot blood flow cold, thinking on it. “I never said forever, Dath. But he’s a
spratling
. He’s
ten
. He’s got his whole life for magic. It can wait.”

“Can it?” she said, and wriggled until she was up on her elbows looking down at him. Moonlight turned her sharp face to silver, and shone mysterious in her dark, solemn eyes. “Asher, you and I, we’re children of the old kingdom. He’s a child of the new. Magic is his birthright. It’s the birthright of every Olken, if they choose to embrace it. And he’s made his choice, my love. He wants what he was born with, Olken and Doranen magic both. What we want… what
you
want… that’s not important. Child or not, we can’t ride roughshod over him.”

“Speak for y’self,” he retorted. “
I
bloody can. He’s my son. I’m his father.”

She let herself drop back to the feather mattress, and their blankets. “When you say things like that, Asher, I think you must sound like your brothers.”

The words stung him, as she knew they would. “That ain’t fair, Dath. I ain’t like Zeth and the rest of ’em. I don’t use my fists, and my belt, and I don’t scream at him neither. I don’t use him up and spit him out. No, and I ain’t like my da was, neither. He let grief turn him blind to what were goin’ on under his nose. But me, I ain’t blind, Dath. Rafe’s my life, you bloody
know
that. Ain’t nowt I won’t do for him.”

“Nowt but let him be himself,” she said gently. “Asher, he’s not you. He’s not—”

“Not what? Go on, Dath. Don’t say your tongue’s fallen out now.”

She lay quietly beside him, her moonlight face darkened with shadows. “Not afraid,” she said at last. “Not bitter. He’s living
his
life, not yours. And in his life magic’s a thing to be celebrated, not—not kicked aside.”

Her words stole his breath.

“My love, you can’t protect him,” she said, letting her hand rest atop his busy heart. “Not from this. Barl save us, Asher, we
tampered
with him, and he still felt what we felt. Like it or not, that’s the truth we have to swallow once and for all. Rafel’s a mage of power with Doranen magic in him. And nothing we can do will save him from that.”

He closed his eyes. “You ain’t never called me coward before. Not once. Not even at Veira’s cottage, and I was frighted to death then. You sayin’ I be a coward now ’cause I want to keep my son safe?”

“Being afraid and being a coward aren’t the same thing and you know it,” she snapped. “Don’t try to fratch me into a fight, Asher, just so you won’t have to talk about this. And he’s
our
son. Not yours alone.”

“Aye, he’s our son,” he said, sitting up. Her hand fell away from him but he didn’t feel the lack of it. “And there ain’t a body in this kingdom knows better than us what harm being a powerful mage can do. Do you want that for him? After what we lived through? What we dream on, ten years later? Is
that
what you want for him?”

“I want what you want,” she said. “Rafe happy. Lur safe.”

He flinched as her warm hand came to rest between his shoulder blades. “He reckons he’s hard done by, but he’s a spratling. He knows
nowt
. We let him muck about with magic, Dath, he’ll learn quick smart what unhappy’s about. He will. I swear—if I could rip his magic out of him with my bare hands, I would.”

A creaking of the bedboards as she sat up beside him. A caress of warmth, as she sighed across his bare skin and slid her arms around his ribs. “Oh,
Asher
.”

“Mayhap that Kerril can brew up a potion,” he said, staring through the chamber window at the moon, fat and full and boldly shining. “Some way of smotherin’ what’s bubblin’ in him, past—past what we’ve kept locked away safe. He’s too young for it, Dath. He ain’t ready for what it means.”

“I thought you were over this,” she murmured, her cheek resting against his spine. “Ten years is a long time. I thought… I hoped… Will you never accept who you are?
What
you are?”

“And what am I, Dath? A fisherman who ain’t allowed the sea. A fisherman brimful of magic, who never once asked for it. A da who can’t protect his son from pain. A da who gave him that pain, who bloody
poisoned
him with—”

“Asher,
stop
it!” she said, and tightened her arms till his ribs creaked. “This is grief talking. This is your nerves on edge because of what you felt in the Weather Chamber. Your imagination’s run rampant, dreading the worst with no good reason. You’re being foolish. It’s not like you.”

On a deep breath he turned, and pulled her into his arms. Buried his face in her hair, buried his fears in the feel of her, soft yielding flesh over bones of diamond and gold.

“Hush, my love, hush,” she murmured, her warm hands gentling him. “We’ll be all right. Rafe will be all right. Whatever we’re facing we’ll survive it. You’re the Innocent Mage, my love. You were born to prevail.”

Because he loved her, because she ruled him, he showed her his face. “You sure on that? You promise?”

Tears shimmered in her eyes. “I promise.”

They made love again, not tenderly. And afterwards, spent and panting, waited a long time for sleep to claim them.

“You called them Circle folk here yet?” he asked, hearing his voice slur. “We got to get things sorted, Dath.”

Her unbound hair tickled his skin as she slowly shook her head. “Tomorrow,” she said, drowsy. “I’ll send word to them tomorrow. With Darran at rest I can think clearly now.”

He hadn’t meant to nag. “Right. Tomorrow.”

“You mustn’t fret,” she whispered, on the brink of sleep. “They’ll come, and we’ll sit down together and see what’s what. There’s an answer to this mystery and they’ll help us find it.”

Drowsy himself, he drifted his fingers to the old faded scar on his chest. Felt the shard of Circle crystal he still carried within him, that he could’ve had cut out a hundred times over… but didn’t.

“Aye,” he said. “Aye, we’ll find it.”

And didn’t know if he believed that, or not.

H
eart thudding, Rafel closed Da’s library door behind him. He wasn’t meant to be in here. Not without Da or Mama. He wasn’t meant to know what Da kept in the big trunk under the window. And he
definitely
wasn’t s’posed to faddle with it.

But here he was. Alone in Da’s library where he wasn’t meant to be. ’Cause it was in his head like a worm in an apple, to have a looksee in that trunk full of books and scrolls on Doranen magic.

Two days after they put Darran in the royal crypt he’d overheard Da talking to Uncle Pellen on some bit of Doranen magic or other he had to rule on in Justice Hall, saying as how he’d been studying what Durm said on it in the privy diaries the master magician had left behind. Uncle Pellen had muttered how the thought of those magics being writ down to fall into the wrong hands made him awful nervous. And
Da
had said how Uncle Pellen weren’t to fret, for they were kept safe and tight in his library trunk where no eyes but his would ever see ’em.

That was all he’d overhead, ’cause Da and Uncle Pellen had started walking down the Tower stairs again on their way out to the stables. But he’d not been able to forget what was said. Could hardly sleep for wondering what more he could learn about Doranen magic, that he couldn’t pinch off Arlin. That Da wouldn’t tell him, even though he
ought
to.

Every time Da wouldn’t, he felt better about his terrible secret.

Then, a week after he overheard Da and Uncle Pellen talking their business, out of the blue came this one chance to have a looksee for himself. With Da and Mama gone early to visit Uncle Pellen, and Deenie spending the day with Charis, Cluny to mind them, and no more stickybeaking Darran in the Tower, Barl rest him, and this his one day of the week let out of school, he could sneak into Da’s library and have a rummage through that trunk of magic. ’Cause the spells he pinched from Arlin, they were all right but they weren’t
big
spells. And he really,
really
wanted to try a big spell.

So even though he knew this was bad, he waited till no-one was nearby and slid into Da’s library like an eel into waterweeds. And if a teeny tiny part of him felt ashamed of doing this behind Da’s back, when Da trusted him? Well. He wasn’t going to think about that. What was one more secret? Besides. He wouldn’t have to sneak, would he, if Da would keep his promise, and talk magic.

The mysterious trunk had a lock on it.

Not an ordinary lock, neither, with a brass key to turn it. No, this lock was made of Doranen magic. He could feel its buzziness in his mind, behind his eyes, where he always felt it. Scowling, Rafel thumped to the carpet in front of the trunk. Not one spell he’d ever pinched off Arlin would do the trick.

Sink it.

He closed his eyes. Sat very still and quiet. Let the buzziness in his mind tell him what the lock looked like… and maybe how it could be undone. Inside his head he saw it as a big ball of string, looped and knotted and stuck through with thorns. But if he tugged
this
bit—then
this
bit—and got it loose and wiggly right
there
—

With an odd kind of springiness, the trunk’s Doranen-magic lock gave way. Shocked, Rafel opened his eyes. He’d
done
it. All by himself, without even one of Arlin’s pinched spells to help him. And the feeling of it, the way the magic made his blood thick and hot, the way it made him feel strong and—and—
invincible
. Not one of Arlin’s spells had ever made him feel like
this,
like a
real mage
. He was Rafel of Dorana, and he’d fuddled Da’s lock.

If Da finds out he’ll bloody fuddle me.

But he was too cockahoop to fret on that right now. Hurrying, ’cause chances were one of the Tower maids would get down to dusting this floor pretty soon, he lifted the trunk’s lid and gazed greedily at its contents.

All the books! And the scrolls! All the secret Doranen magic!

Careful, since Da would notice if the trunk’s contents were messed about too much, he poked and prodded his way through the forbidden treasure. Read a bit here, a bit there, understanding some of it. Not all. Not most of it. Feeling the buzziness in his mind stir stronger and louder. Feeling his fingers
itch,
wanting so much to play.