The Prodigal Mage: Fisherman’s Children Book One (39 page)

“Figure of speech, that was. You’ll need a helpin’ hand to do this. Don’t fret, Rafe. I’ll see you right.”

“I ain’t fretting,” he said. “I just—” He shook his head, baffled. “I don’t understand, Da. You won’t help Garrick and the others break the reef, and you won’t let me help them break it, but you’ll risk yourself—you’ll risk
me
—to save them when it goes wrong. How does that work?”

“I d’know,” said Da, shrugging. “It just does.”

“Da
—
”

“Rafe, it just does.” Da turned then, and gently shook his shoulder. “This were always goin’ to end bloody, sprat. But doin’ it
my
way, that means when it be all said and done, folks’ll know you had nowt to do with the blood. They’ll know all you did was try to save some lives. And that be the
only
thing that matters.”

Something in Da’s voice, in his eyes, made his heart thud. He nodded. “All right.”

“Rafel…” Da cleared his throat. “Y’know I love you, eh? Y’know I’d bloody walk through fire for you?”

They’d had a fratched time of it lately, one way or another. Snapping and snarling and glowering, all at odds. Lectures on Charis. Brangles over magic. Seemed lately they couldn’t find even two sweet words to swap.

“Aye,” he said, when he could trust himself. “Course I do. Same as I would for you, Da. Any day. All day.”

Overhead the gulls whirled and wailed, their harsh voices smothering the cheerful music gusting to them from shore. Small waves slapped at the pier. Crawling in his blood, the rotten magic in the reef.

“So. What now?”

“Now, sprat? We wait,” said Da. He sounded angry—and resigned. “And we cross every one of our fingers, besides. ’Cause there’s you, and there’s me, and there ain’t nobody else.”

A
rlin
. For the love of Barl,
must
you disgrace me?”

Belly still churning even though he’d just emptied it, Arlin wiped his mouth on his fouled silk sleeve. “Sorry, sir,” he muttered. “But I can’t help it. I—”

“Hold your tongue,” his father commanded. “And get control of yourself. You can start by letting go of that rail. The weather’s fine yet you’re acting as though we’re sailing through a storm.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and unclamped his fingers from the fishing boat’s side. Made himself stand upright, even as the cramps in his gut demanded he bend himself double and upend his stomach’s lining onto the slimy, fish-scaled deck.

Casting him a last look of disgust his father walked away, rejoining Sarle Baden, Ennet Vail and Ain—Lady Freidin—in the fishing boat’s blunt bow. Barl’s tits, the smack stank of rotten guts. Why wouldn’t he be puking with that stench fouling his nostrils and throat with every breath? And the weather might be stormless but the waves beneath the boat’s hull were rhythmic and relentless, rolling… rolling…

With an anguished moan he threw himself over the railing again, as his retching body tried to turn inside out and his eyeballs strained so hard he thought they’d burst.

“Not to worry,” said a nearby fisherman, coiling a tarred rope. “Ain’t every man as takes to the water, young lord.”

Arlin eased off the rail and glowered at him. “Who asked you? Sail the boat, clod, and mind your own business.”

The Olken blinked, his face smoothing blank. “Aye. Right you are, then. Sorry to interrupt. Sir.”

Ignorant fool. The trouble with Olken was they had no respect. Not any more. Not since they started considering themselves
equals
. His father was right about one thing, at least: Durm’s stupidity had done more than see the Wall destroyed. It had destroyed a way of life. Destroyed centuries of obedience, of acceptance that the Doranen were naturally superior and always would be—pathetic pretensions to Olken magic notwithstanding.

Lur’s ruined now. Let the Olken have it. Somewhere beyond these shores there’s a land fit for the Doranen. Not our ancestral homeland. Father’s wrong about that, old Dorana is surely long lost to us. But there is somewhere. And once that cursed reef’s broken we’ll quit this Olken-ridden wasteland and find it.

The cramps in his belly had finally eased. Turning his face into the salt-soaked breeze he sucked in a deep breath and waited, but his belly stayed quiet. Perhaps the worst was finally over. Profoundly hoping so, he made his unsteady way forward to his father, who stood in serious, low-voiced conversation with his companions, all three mages close friends and allies in the notion that Lur had nothing to offer the Doranen any more. The Olken mayor stood with them, deluded into thinking he was relevant to the morning’s events. He wasn’t. For all the good his magic would do, he might just as well as spit on Dragonteeth Reef.

But he’s useful, so we tolerate him. His ignorant antipathy towards the Doranen plays neatly into Father’s plans
.

Father favoured him with a cold smile as he reached the bow. “Good. We’re nearly there, Arlin. Are you clear on how this working is to proceed?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, nodding. “My lords, my lady,” he added to the others. “Meister Mayor. My apologies. Something tainted in what I was served for breakfast, I fear.”

Indifferent murmurs from Baden and Vail, who rarely had any time for him. An affronted stare from Pintte. And Lady Freidin—Ain—nodded, unsmiling. She never smiled at him. For eight years she’d been his secret tutor, taught him everything she knew, helped him discover the length and breadth of his talents—and how better to hide them—and never once had she smiled. He was over his childish infatuation with her, of course. But still. One smile. Was it too much to ask?

Shading his eyes, Arlin looked across the stretch of water in front of them to the foam and froth of ocean breaking over the reef. Hardly distant at all now. The wind had picked up, and the fishing boat was making good time. Beyond the reef the waterspouts danced, capricious and deadly, and whirlpools yawned with deep, wide mouths. Their churning roar sounded a low, predatory warning.

He felt his guts clench again, and ruthlessly banished the fear.
I am ready for this. I am a great mage.
And he was eager, so eager, to prove that were true. He’d waited in the shadows long enough.

Fernel Pintte cleared his throat. “As you know, sirs, madam, we Olken have a particular affinity for all things natural,” he announced. “Since my arrival in Westwailing I have been focusing my thoughts and feelings upon Dragonteeth Reef. I am comfortably certain that we have chosen its most vulnerable section. And as you battle the poisons Barl and Morg left behind I shall lend you my strength in prayer, so we can achieve victory.”

In private Father called Dorana’s mayor a shrill pipsqueak—but now he smiled, at his most frostily genial, and offered Pintte a polite half-bow. “Your help will be most welcome, Meister Mayor. The task before us is daunting.”

Pintte’s eyes narrowed. “But achievable, yes?”

“Oh yes,” said Father, the merest hint of an edge to his voice. To be questioned over magic by an
Olken?
That was an insult keen as any sharp blade. “I assure you, Meister Mayor, our goal is quite achievable. We do not seek to destroy
all
the magic still sunk in the reef. Just this small stretch of it.”

“Precisely,” said Pintte. “That’s all you’re asked to do.”

Father’s lips curved again, but his eyes were chips of blue ice. “I suggest you find somewhere unobtrusive to sit now, sir, so you can lend us your prayers undisturbed. We must prepare for the working.”

From the look on his face Pintte cared not at all for being dismissed, but he was truly a fool if he thought he belonged here with real mages. He withdrew, and Father beckoned everyone closer.

“Make no mistake,” he said, his sweeping gaze cold with purpose, “this working will test us as we have never before been tested. Barl and Morg between them have set a challenge that doubtless would’ve daunted King Borne himself, or Durm. But we are equal to the task. The future of every Doranen trapped in this misbegotten backwater depends upon us, therefore we
must
be equal to it. Follow my lead. Tread where I tread. Do not let yourselves run ahead of me. Especially
you,
Arlin.”

He dropped his betraying gaze to the tilting deck. Father was always doing that. Had done it ever since he could remember: diminished him in public even as he boasted of his son’s prowess in private, to those he trusted. He knew why, of course. It was to preserve their secret.

But it still hurt.

“Yes, sir.”

“It is vital that we maintain our focus, no matter what unfolds around us,” his father continued. “Unless we press against the reef’s weak spot with our conjoined wills, undiluted, we will not break through the barrier that keeps us from the world. It will take every last drop of our sweat and power to collapse the whirlpools and the waterspouts along this stretch of reef. But once we have done so—” Father’s face lit with a rare, genuine smile. “Then it will be a simple matter of destroying the reef itself, giving us access to open water. And then—
then
—”

Behind them, one of the Olken sailors shouted. “Reef ho! Reef ho, Captain!”

They all pushed to the bow’s railing, and saw that the sailor had not mistaken the case. Directly ahead of them lay Dragonteeth Reef, foamed with breaking water, spray spitting high into the air. Beyond it, magic-spawned waterspouts and whirlpools. Even as they stared two more towering spouts spumed into life, whipping up from the ocean’s restless surface. As those two were born three others further out died, collapsing with great wet slaps across the reef and into the surging salt water. Droning ceaseless beneath them, the ravenous whirlpools.

“Lord Garrick! A word!”

Father turned. “Yes, Hayle?”

The fishing boat’s captain was a young man, short and muscled and crusted with salt. Something indefinable about him was reminiscent of Rafel’s father. An air, an attitude, an indifference that grated the nerves. Olken arrogance: it was a hard thing to stomach.

“Can you do what you do from here?” the captain demanded, standing before them with his fists on his hips and his booted feet spread wide. “Only this be the end of mild water we’ve reached. Here on in, the whirlpools and the spouts be set to rile things up. And I ain’t lookin’ to have my boat driven onto the Teeth and smashed to matchsticks.”

Father looked back to the reef, frowning. Was it too far away for the working? Doranen magic was strong. But was it strong enough to reach from here?

“If this is the best you can do,” said Father, grudging, “then so be it. We will just have to compensate for your inadequacy, won’t we?”

The Olken captain’s eyes squinted in a frown. “How long d’you think to take on this?”

“How long?” Father spread his hands. “As long as we require. Hayle, we seek to free Lur from the last bondage of Morg’s evil. Do you mean to suggest you’ve somewhere more important to be?”

“We’ll heave to, then,” said the Olken, his face stained dark red. “And sit tight.”

Father turned his back on the fool, dismissing him. Then he raised a beckoning hand. “Arlin.”

As the boat’s captain retreated, barking orders to the crew, he stepped close. “Father?”

“Time to prepare ourselves,” he said quietly. “We’re close enough. Open yourself and tell me what you feel.”

Aside from seasick, you mean?
But if he gave the thought a voice Father would banish him to twiddle his thumbs with Pintte.
You need me now. I’ll not jeopardise that
. So he closed his eyes, ignoring the shouts and running feet of the fishermen as they obeyed their captain’s orders, pushed away the lingering nausea in his emptied belly and focused on the reef. Loosened his rigorously guarded senses and reached out to taste its magic.

“Faugh!”
he exclaimed, revolted, and stared at his father in shock. “That—but it’s
foul
. I—I can’t taste
any
of Barl’s sweetness. Does aught of her workings survive?”

His father nodded. “It does.” Even his intimidating composure seemed shaken. Around them, their fellow mages looked equally dismayed. “But only barely. Morg’s magic has had twenty years to infect this place. Like a pestilence it has multiplied. It should’ve been mage-worked at the first.”

“I thought Asher tried.”

“He did,” said his father. “He tried, and he failed. And then after Holze failed soon after, and Asher told the day’s Council that it
couldn’t
be done, they believed him without question.” Father’s face twisted. “Because he was the Innocent Mage. Because he killed Morg. Because—because—” Rage was choking his voice. “Because twenty years ago we let guilt addle our reason and turn us into
milkmaids
.”