The Prodigal Mage: Fisherman’s Children Book One (17 page)

R
afel swallowed. Goose sounded so frighted he was sorry he’d said anything. Sorry he’d made the fishes dance, and the riverpond make shapes, and told his friend his burning coal secret. “I don’t know. Prob’ly it’s nowt, Goose. Prob’ly I’m being a girl.”

“Prob’ly,” said Goose, and tried to laugh. But it didn’t work. He tugged some grass, too, and stared down the sloping riverbank to where Stag and his pony stood in the meadow side by side, rump to nose, dozing and swishing each other’s biting flies.

Just like us. Best friends.

“Rafe…” Goose whispered. Still staring someplace else. “What you felt. It’s real, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Aye.”

“And—and it means Lur’s in trouble?”

For the first time ever, he was sorry he could feel things. “I ain’t sure, Goose. Prob’ly.”

“You frighted?” said Goose, letting his tugged grass slip through his fingers.

“No!”

Goose rubbed his eyes. “Me too.”

“I ain’t!” he insisted, and banged a fist on his knee. “Ain’t nowt to be frighted on. My da, he’ll fix it. That’s what he does.”

“I could help,” said Goose, almost a whisper. “I could try feeling it. If you want, Rafe. Then we could—”

Rafel scrambled to his feet. “No, Goose. Don’t you dare. You might do yourself a mischief.”

“You don’t have to say that,” said Goose, glaring up at him. “You don’t have to be like that. I know I can’t crack stones, like you can, or make fish jump into the air just by thinking. But I’ve got magic, Rafe. I can do things. I can—”

“No!”
he said again.
Sink me, if I get Goose hurt
… “I told you, Goose. It feels bad. You’d hate it.
I
hate it. I wish—” But he didn’t want to say that. “You might feel it one day, Goose. By chance. When you’re doing your own magics. But don’t you go looking for it. Reckon that’d get us both walloped, if my da or yours found out.”

Goose sighed. He almost always gave in when they fratched. “Don’t bite, Rafe. I only wanted to help.”

“I know.” Then he frowned. “Goose, if you want to help, swear you won’t tell anyone about this. Not ever.”

“I swear,” said Goose. “But are you going to tell your parents?”

“I have to,” he said, nodding. “I promised. Only—not all of it. I won’t tell them you know. That’s got to be our secret.”

“Our secret,” said Goose, all solemn. “I swear.”

Relieved, he flopped himself back onto the riverbank. “And I swear I’ll never tell about the beer.”

Fizzy with relief, they grinned at each other.

“Hey,” said Goose, and again dug his fingers inside his leather jerkin. Pulled out the lumpily folded parchment he’d been safekeeping. “Want this back?”

Tollin’s adventures! He’d clean forgotten, what with the earth crying out and nearly getting himself drownded. “Thanks.”

“What is it?” said Goose with a wicked snicker. “A love letter from Charis?”

Ever since he once saw Uncle Pellen’s Charis making google-eyes at him, Goose thought it was funny to niggle on it. Rafel used his Doranen magic to push his friend flat on his back.

Take that!
“No. It ain’t.”

Goose howled in protest, kicking at the sky. Then he sat up. “So what is it?”

Finished unfolding the parchment, he laid it flat on the grass and smoothed out its wrinkles, gently. There was prob’ly Doranen magic to make it good as new, but he didn’t know it. He would one day, though. One day he’d know it all.

He looked up. “It’s the story of what Tollin and the others found when they crossed over the mountains.”

Goose’s mouth dropped open. “It never is!”

“Is too.”

“Where did you get it?” Goose breathed.

He almost told. Almost. The boasting words were tickling the tip of his tongue. But then he swallowed them. “Best I don’t tell you, Goose,” he said, his sly smile dying. “Not ’cause I don’t trust you!” he added quickly, as Goose’s face fell. “It’s just… best you don’t know.”

Goose’s eyes opened so wide he looked like a string-puppet. “Oh, Rafel. What did you do?” He swallowed. “Something… Doranen?”

He stared at the uncrumpled parchment spread on the grass, feeling the fizzy triumph of breaking Da’s lock. Feeling the stir behind his eyes where his Doranen magic lived. He wanted to tell Goose so
bad
…

’Cept I can’t. Ain’t nobody meant to know about that trunk and what’s in it. That’s Da’s secret. It ain’t mine to tell
.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What counts is I found the parchment. And I’ll read it to you, only—”

“Rafel,” said Goose solemnly, “I won’t never, ever tell. Not ever. Not even if Arlin Garrick pokes me full of pins.”

He scowled. Arlin Garrick was the kind of Doranen who’d do worse than poke pins if he thought he could get away with it. “You better not, Goose. This has to be just ours.”

“It will be!” said Goose. “Catch me telling Arlin Garrick anything.”

True. They might go to the same City school, him and Goose and Arlin Garrick and the other Doranen boys, but that didn’t mean nowt. Didn’t mean they had to
like
each other.
Which is good. ’Cause we don’t.
He’d never pinch spells from a boy he liked.

“So what’s it say?” said Goose eagerly, nudging the parchment. “Start reading. And when you’re done, we can be explorers!”

Being explorers was one of their favourite games. “You still want to do that?” he said, leaving the parchment where it was. “When you’re growed up? Ain’t you going to be a brewer, like your da?”

“No law says I can’t be both,” said Goose. Then he grinned. “When I’m growed up I’ll brew the best beer and ale in Lur and take it over the mountains to sell. I’ll be the richest brewer in Lur, I will. No, I’ll be the richest Olken in Lur. The richest
man
in Lur. That’ll be me. I’ll be so rich, that Arlin Garrick, he’ll have to bow when I ride by.”

“Ha!” he said. “Only way you’ll get Arlin Garrick to bend in the middle is if you kick him in the chestnuts.”

Goose’s grin got wider. “I could do that, too. Wearing boots made of solid gold.”

The thought was so naughty they crowed and rolled around on the grass for a bit. Their amusement startled the ponies, and that made them laugh even harder. But the laughter dribbled dry eventually, until it was just them sprawling silent under the warm sun. Slowly but surely, the fear of what he’d felt faded.

“So go on, then,” said Goose, breaking the hush. “Read it. ’Cause I want to know what really happened to Tollin and the others. I want to know why most likely I never will get to sell my beer and ale on the other side of the mountains.”

His clothes gently steaming, his damp hair full of grass, Rafel reached for the stolen parchment. Held it up between his face and the sky, so he wasn’t squinting into the sun.

And started reading.

Tired of waiting for the kettle to boil a second time, Pellen Orrick was sorely tempted to ask Asher if he’d stir the water along. Just a bit. But he refrained, because asking Asher for a frivolous use of his magic would do nothing to sweeten his friend’s sour mood. Three hours this morning, they’d spent, he and Asher and Dathne, thrashing through the dangers that may or may not lie in wait for the kingdom, reaching no firm conclusions or decisions, certain of only one thing: that should the worst come to pass then surely every man, woman and child in Lur—Doranen as well as Olken—would look to Asher of Restharven for rescue.

And is he sour because he resents the assumption… or because he knows he has no hope of saving us?

He’d not asked the question, though it did crowd his thoughts. He was ashamed of himself for thinking it. Ashamed that despite knowing what he knew, knowing the sacrifices Asher had already made, he could even consider asking for more. And perhaps, if he only had himself to worry about, he wouldn’t be ready to ask. Wouldn’t have the thought in his head at all.

But I’m a father now, and that makes the difference. There’s nothing I won’t do to see Charis kept safe.

Once he’d believed his devotion to Dorana City, and to Lur, was the fiercest thing he would ever feel. And now he knew that devotion was water-weak compared with the fury that rose in him at the thought of harm coming to his only child.

The kettle boiled, at last. But as he poured the steaming water into the second teapot, refreshments for his newly arrived guests, he heard Asher suck in a sharp, pained breath—and looked up.

“What? Asher, what’s amiss?”

Stood by the kitchen window, brooding through the open curtains at Ibby’s run-to-seed garden, Asher shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between tight thumb and forefinger. A grunt of discomfort escaped him, and he hunched over a little as though tormented by a belly-gripe.

Pellen put down the kettle. “Asher, are you sick? Should I call for—”

“Asher,” said Dathne, hurrying into the kitchen from the parlour, where she’d been talking with those four members of the old Olken Circle who’d travelled to Dorana circumspect to meet with them. “Did you feel that?”

Asher nodded, his eyes slitted against whatever ailed him. “Aye. Nasty.”

“We all felt it,” said Dathne. “Asher—”

Pellen raised a hand. “I didn’t feel a thing. Are you talking about—”

“Aye,” said Asher. “What I told you in the stable yard. That wrongness in the earth. It’s back.”

“Oh.”

Sometimes, over the years, as he watched his fellow-Olken discover their long-buried powers, watched them revel in Olken magic, he’d felt a pang that their joy was denied him. Not often. Just sometimes. But now, with Asher and Dathne so clearly distressed, he found himself grateful that magic, for him, was little more than a fizzle. He’d lived for years without it quite happily. He didn’t need it to make him a whole man.

Dathne gnawed at her bottom lip. “Rafel, Asher. Do you think he—”

“Prob’ly,” said Asher. “He’s felt it othertimes. We’ll ask him at supper.”

He blinked in surprise.
Rafel
could feel whatever was going on, too? Asher had kept that quiet. But Rafe was just a boy, barely tutored in magic. And if
he
could feel it…

Charis’s night-terrors. What if I’m wrong? What if it’s not Ibby she’s missing after all? What if—

With an effort he strangled his leaping imagination. If he wasn’t careful he’d smother his daughter. Little ones had bad dreams. No need to alarm himself into conniptions.

“At supper?” said Dathne. “I’d rather ask him now.” Fretting, she wrapped her arms about her narrow ribs. “But we’ve let him romp off on his pony for the day, without a care in the world. I hope he’s all right. If this is going to keep happening, if we can’t know when or where this feeling will strike, he might not be safe. Asher—”

“Hush,” said Asher, and pulled her to him. “Can’t keep Rafe cooped up in the Tower, Dath. Can’t stop him racin’ about the countryside with his friends. He’s a boy. He’s got to
be
a boy.”

She tugged free of his embrace. “But he’s not just a boy, is he? Not an ordinary boy, at any rate.”

“He is for now,” said Asher, insistent. “He is so long as we don’t start treatin’ him different.”

“He
is
different, Asher!” Dathne retorted. “And you not wanting it to be so doesn’t change a thing.”

Asher’s face darkened. “He’s only different if we let him be, Dath. Only if we think on him that way. And I won’t do it. I ain’t about to ruin his spratlin’ days with fuss and malarkey and makin’ him feel that he ain’t like his friends. Pushing him to do magic that he ain’t ready for. That he don’t need.”

A reluctant eavesdropper, Pellen looked away. There was such pain in Asher’s voice. Nothing to do with whatever trouble threatened Lur, and everything to do with being Rafel’s father. Pain in Dathne too, and fear. So much of it they’d forgotten where they were. That he was listening. But what did they mean about their son being different? This was the first he’d heard of it…

His guardsman curiosity reprehensibly piqued, he cleared his throat. “Ah—friends—”

Startled out of acrimony, they stared at him. Then they exchanged mutely horrified looks. Asher, his discomfited dismay forgotten, cleared his throat.

“Pellen—”

And suddenly he was ashamed again. He had no right to expect confidences. After all, he’d not told them about Charis, had he? “Never mind,” he said. “No explanation’s needed. Family business is family business.”

“It ain’t that we don’t trust you,” said Asher, suddenly awkward. “You know better than that. It’s complicated, is all.”

“But we will explain,” Dathne added. “We never meant to keep it from you forever. As Asher says—it’s complicated.”

Their assurances warmed him. In the wrenching aftermath of Ibby’s loss, ill-equipped to deal with grief and a baby and every grand dream smashed to jagged pieces, he knew he’d been in danger of foundering completely. Dathne and Asher had eased him. Sheltered him. Saved him, in truth, from too much strong drink and silence.

He shrugged. “When you’re ready. Let’s leap one hurdle at a time, eh? I’m not as spry as I used to be.”