Magician

Chapter 2

Chapter 2The carved-out curl of rock walls took shape and became Lorre’s small kitchen, a set of shelves, a kettle and a bottle of palm wine and a pile of colorful fruit. His home wavered, steadied, grew reassuringly perceptible. Magic-hewn cave-walls and window-openings bloomed; he knew where they were, and felt the landing in his bones.

His lungs filled. He let go of Gareth’s arm, put an unobtrusive hand on his driftwood table, straightened his shoulders. The stone lay cool against his toes, after the heat of the sand.

Gareth stood utterly still beside him and the table. Gazed at him wide-eyed, silenced, lips parted.

Lorre knew that look. Awe, amazement, stupefied reverence: he’d seen it all before.

He’d meant to stun the prince into a lack of further argument. He found, looking at Gareth’s face, that he did not prefer those competent leaf-brown eyes left wordless and worshipful.

He found his kettle, perched interestedly on a natural stone outcropping. “Tea, you said. I have…cinnamon and wild mallow, lemongrass and summer strawberry, and chamomile.” He touched the stone wall, the kettle, while talking; they sang to his fingers, tempted his taste buds, reminded him that he was this shape and this shape meant him, told him that he knew this place as more than a glittering web of light and potential.

“Lemongrass and strawberry—you do that every time?” Gareth’s voice was very quiet. A hush in Northern hills. A snowfall, muffling sound. But he had asked; he’d dared to ask the magician a question, even in the wake of power.

Lorre located the specified tea. The prince had picked his own personal favorite, no doubt a coincidence. “Normally it’s easier to just ask the air to be stairs for a moment.”

Gareth set the book—it’d inadvertently come along, being in his hand—on the table. He also remained bootless, not having had the chance to put them back on. His feet were bare and pale against stone. “I can do that for you. I mean the tea. Not the air. Does it hurt you? What you just did.”

“No,” Lorre said, surprised. “It’s not—no. It’s not a hurt. I can do anything; you know the stories, that’s why you’re here. And no, you can’t, about the tea. Unless you can get water out of a rock.”

“Can you?”

“That one’s easy.” It was. He’d drawn water up through the cliff already, filtering it and cleansing it; the small pool of it lay where he’d stored it, sealed in stone and casually heated by strands of magic, linking sun and light to clear fresh liquid. Lorre also liked hot baths, and saw no particular reason to give up comfort just because he was avoiding the universe on a tiny island.

He asked the water, with a touch, to emerge from stone; he asked the stone to give way, fingers invisibly nudging the lines of candlelight all around him. Water slid from rock, formed a stream, answered him and thus became him, in a way, for a moment; or he became it, filling the kettle, heating as he fed vitality into it.

Gareth was back to looking stunned. Lorre said, “You can find mugs,” and looked around. He thought he did have two; he’d found them in an old sea-chest underwater when he’d wanted them, and had reminded all the dirt and salt, everything that wasn’t a proper mug, to fall away and leave clean pewter.

The kitchen wasn’t precisely a mess, because he did tidy up after himself, but he also hadn’t bothered to carve out cupboards or drawers, and he was the only person living here. A clean plate balanced itself skillfully on a shelf between a fluffy pink flower in a bowl and a stray spoon, and a palm frond waltzed precariously on the table’s corner with a centuries-old scroll discussing the correct composition of ink for magical instructional texts; they all regarded Gareth with interest.

Gareth found both mugs, still very quiet. He looked down into steam as Lorre poured; clouds of lemon and strawberry kissed his cheeks, his long eyelashes. More strands of his autumn-leaf hair had come loose from the tie.

He said, “You can do anything. Can’t you?”

“Of course I can,” Lorre said, flippant. “Honey?”

“No. Thank you. Where do you even get—”

“I can call a passing merchant vessel over if I need it. They’ll never remember who they’ve traded with, after. Or where they put into port. But it is a trade. I have a lot of gold. Speaking of ships, how did you find me? This island’s meant to be…an island. Singular. Unplottable.”

“I went to our Goddess-chapel,” Gareth said, “and asked for help, and She didn’t, not exactly, but I was looking at the carvings, the stories, and I thought, if I could find the best magician in the world, so maybe that’d be an answer…I went down to Averene, to the capital, and asked about you at the Magicians’ School, but they wouldn’t answer any questions about you, so I went out to the Dark Quarter and gave a man a lot of silver in exchange for a map to what was supposed to be my heart’s desire, but that just kept pointing straight out into the ocean, and I thought, well, maybe it’s not working, but then again maybe you were out here somewhere, so I hired a boat—well, actually I hired on as crew, because I was sort of running out of silver by then, but they said they wanted to see if I actually found an island, and they laughed—”

“Anyone currently passing themselves off as a magician in the Dark Quarter has about the same amount of power as a thimble. A map to your heart’s desire? You expected that to work?”

“To help Dan,” Gareth said, forgetting briefly to call his brother King Ardan. “To try to protect the Marches. Yes, of course I hoped it’d work. What else would my heart’s desire be? That’s why I’m here.”

“Someone rescue me from all heroes,” Lorre grumbled into his tea. “Maps and quests and misguided hope…”

“But it did work,” Gareth pointed out, obviously not aware of polite etiquette involving the ignoring of sarcastic asides. “I found you. And I must be doing well enough at your tests. No one else has ever got this far.”

“How would you know whether they had?”

“You’d’ve helped them. We’d’ve heard.”

“Not,” Lorre said, “if they only got this far, and I devoured them at the last moment,” and gave the prince a smile, with teeth.

He’d once been a dragon, after all.

Gareth swallowed. Hard. But he did not look away. “I know who you are. Is that what you plan to do? Eat me?” His tone said I’m pretty sure not but I’m just checking, burnished with the gleam of Northern accent.

“Maybe it’s the price for my assistance.” Lorre twirled a fingertip in the air above his own tea; steam rose, danced, formed a sailing ship, blew away. “You. Belonging to me. Metaphorical consumption. Or even literal. Would you pay that price?”

Gareth breathed in, breathed out. His hands had tightened around his mug of tea. But his eyes were absolutely unflinching, earth-brown and honest. “Yes.”

Lorre blinked at him. That’d come with no hesitation at all. No wavering. “…yes?”

“Yes. Whatever you ask. I’ll do it.” Gareth paused. “I would ask…I know I can’t bargain, your terms are your terms, but…if there’s a price, I want to pay it all. Nothing from my brother or my people. The Marches mostly have goats in any case. Goats and mountains and turnips. Nothing you’d want. Please.”

“What on this or any other world would I do with a goat? Don’t answer that,” Lorre added hastily, because Gareth had opened his mouth, “it’s rhetorical and I do know about the existence of cheese. What would I do with you?”

Pink rose across Gareth’s cheekbones; he was still young, and technically a prince even if the Marches consisted of goat’s milk and rocks, and he had clearly not expected to have to explain his own worth as a bargaining chip.

But, to his credit, he answered steadily. “Anything you want. If you could use someone to—to help with magical experiments, or to organize your library, I’ll do that. If you need someone to go on a quest and bring back a powerful artifact, I’ll do that. If you want me to churn butter or wash dishes I can do that. I know how to make oat-cakes and fry trout and scrub wine stains out of a good linen shirt. If there’s something I don’t know, I can learn.”

“Why do you think I’m in need of a housekeeper and cook?”

Gareth glanced around. “Why’s there a fork being a bookmark in that encyclopedia?”

“It wants to be there. What if I ask you to sacrifice someone? To, in a word, kill them? As part of your service to me.”

A very small crack appeared in Gareth’s expression: a line between dark eyebrows, a clench of heroic jaw. “I’d rather you didn’t ask.”

“I’m certain you would.”

“I’ve never—I’ve gone out on border patrol, of course, with the bandits around, but—I’ve only ever been in one skirmish. And no one died. I know you could make me do your bidding. And I did say whatever you ask. But I think…in any case I think I’d be more useful in some other way.”

Lorre let that sentence hang in the air a moment. And then leaned in, lifted eyebrows, and murmured, “What other uses might I have for a muscular young man, do you think?”

He watched Gareth’s face. Thoroughly terrible at concealment, this prince: everything transparent. Interestingly enough, Gareth went from astonished to cherry-red blushing in what had to be record time, not without a glance at Lorre himself, followed by some ferocious staring into tea.

Lorre, entertained, waited.

“Um.” Gareth emerged from the shelter of his mug. His cheeks were still flushed. “Yes. If that’s—if you would want—I said anything. I’ll do that too. I just—” He stopped, blushed more, straightened his shoulders: squaring up to the idea. “Of course you’re lonely. Being alone. Here. Yes, of course, I see. I wouldn’t mind.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“No one,” Gareth said, earnest, “should be lonely. I’d like to help. If that would help.”

“You even mean it.”

“Of course I do!”

“Of all the idiotic self-sacrificing heroes—” Lorre stared at him, flailed a hand in wordless bafflement, scrabbled for words. “That’s not a bargain!”

“Oh.” Gareth’s eyebrows tugged together. “Why not? Also, did you know you just waved a hand through the kettle?”

He’d felt vague heat. Hadn’t registered the presence of solidity. Too busy dissolving into frustration. “I meant to. I’m not human. You’d still offer to warm my bed?”

“So that is what you want?”

“No!” Lorre got a hand on the mug of tea before it could leap upward in response to his reaction. He’d thought he’d been learning control.

And that thought, those memories, hit like ice. Consequences right down his back, chilling his spine. Everything he’d done, and now tried not to do.

He shut his eyes, and breathed in, and out. Magic shivered and scurried and sang along all the strings of his being: little swinging swaying bolts of light reached out to other lights, caught the threads of the universe, wanted to play.

He made himself feel the hardness of his mug of tea, taste the salt and honey of the air, recognize his chest expanding with an inhale.

Himself. Real. Not a stream or a seagull or a sun-flare made of gold.

Something touched his arm. A weight. Fingers, a palm, the calluses of someone who wasn’t a farmer by trade but who’d learned how to do the same work his people did. Gareth’s voice said cautiously, “Er…are you certain you’re all right? Is there anything I can do?”

Lorre opened both eyes. “Why would you do that?” Gareth had leaned across the table to touch him, and had left the hand resting on Lorre’s bare forearm, just at the edge of his robe’s sleeve.

“Why would I offer?” Gareth’s eyebrows lifted: a genuine smile popped up. “Because everyone needs help sometimes? My mother always says so.”

“I meant, why would you touch a sorcerer who could turn you into a mouse.”

“Because I’m fairly sure you won’t.” Gareth moved the hand. Put it back around his mug, fiddling with the handle. “And because you might’ve needed me for that. An anchor. Or not. I don’t know what magicians need. I just thought I’d try.”

“You just thought you’d try.”

“I came to ask you for help,” Gareth said. “Because everyone needs help, sometimes. And our people are being hurt. Mountain villages raided, herds and stores taken in the night, grazing grounds iced over or blocked by avalanches, merchant caravans attacked on the road. We can’t fight back. We don’t know how to fight magic. I’ll give you anything. And I’ll help you, if you need it. Not because I’ve made a vow to serve you—though I will, I’ll swear to the Goddess or on my mother’s life or whatever oath you want—but because it’s the right thing to do. The same way I hope you’d help us. Please.”

“I can’t,” Lorre said. “I—I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“No. I mean it’s complicated. It’s not what you think.”

“I think,” Gareth said, “that I had to explain to little Elsie Carrol that her father wouldn’t be coming home, because he tried to stand guard in the night and something he couldn’t fight off froze him solid. Her mother died two years ago from the summer fever. Elsie’s ten.”

“Why did you have to—”

“Who else should? Dan’s their king, I’m their prince, we’re the ones who’re there. We’re there for them.” Gareth’s eyes were smoky chocolate now, angry not entirely at Lorre but on behalf of his people’s pain. “We help bring in the harvest and buy a round at the tavern when someone has a baby and try to do the best we can when someone needs justice or a judgement or a road repaired. I can’t fight magic in the night, but I can hug a little girl who’s lost her father, and then maybe I can go and find someone who does know how to fight magic. We’re supposed to be able to help. That’s what princes are for.” He stopped, breathless and impassioned; he visibly reached for calm, took a shaky breath, let it go. “But you don’t care. Or you don’t want to care. You could save us with a thought, and you won’t.”

“It’s not that,” Lorre said. “It’s not.”

Gareth’s hand clamped down around the mug. “Isn’t it?”

“I can’t—” Lorre ran a hand through his hair, tugging golden strands, feeling utterly and perilously human for once: at a loss for a response. Every one of Gareth’s words stung. Lancets into raw wounds. Salt across unhealed burns. “Why do you think I’m here? Away from everyone? Alone?”

“I know you don’t want distractions,” Gareth said. “I knew you’d left the—the whole world, I suppose. But I thought…if the cause was right, if it was important enough…if someone proved to you that they were serious, that it mattered…”

“I’m not a hero,” Lorre said. “Ask anyone. Ask the Grand Sorceress. You said you know who I am. I’m not what you need. I’m—” He saw the slump in Gareth’s shoulders; he saw the ache in dark eyes, the resignation, the hurt.

The kitchen tasted of strawberry tea, with honey. Sunlight spilled in through a window, framed in rock, and traced light across the table, almost up to Gareth’s arm. Sensible clothing, preparation, and generosity; and, Lorre noticed all over again, bare feet.

Because Gareth hadn’t had time to put boots on. Because he, Lorre, had been showing off, and had swept them both up here.

He’d hurt someone, again. He hadn’t meant to. He’d tried not to. He’d thought, if he could remove himself from other people—

But that hadn’t worked. Nothing he did could change that outcome, it seemed.

He remembered a fight with Lily, abruptly: an early fight, before they’d ever had a child, before Lorre had left and Lily’d gone on to become the Grand Sorceress Liliana. You run, she’d said. You tell people they’re wrong and stupid, you test boundaries and you argue with kings, you turn the day into night just to see if you can, and then you leave without ever facing any consequences. Who’d try to make you, anyway? No one ever could. So you never stay.

She hadn’t even shouted. Not that time. She’d sounded sad. And he’d been surprised: of course he’d argue with someone who was wrong, of course he’d test the depths of his power to see what might be possible, of course he’d move on to the next challenge after that.

Younger him, Lorre thought—not for the first time—had been just as much of an i***t as every hero he’d ever met, only in a different way.

He’d thought coming to this island was facing the consequences. If he was that dangerous, if he was the peril, surely he ought to remove that peril. The best for everyone. Logical.

But it hadn’t been. And the shadow in Gareth’s eyes, the funeral behind shining rich brown color, admonished him.

Lorre didn’t know much about the Mountain Marches. A tiny independent kingdom. Not wealthy. Rich in goats and rocks and devoted princes, apparently.

He had no particular reason to care. He had every reason not to intervene: putting himself and his power back into play would shift the balance of the world, politically, magically, diplomatically, personally. As far as the bandits having a magician, Lily and her newly rebuilt School could likely handle that, assuming Gareth’s brother made a formal request for aid. The greatest sorcerer in history did not fight mountain bandits over goat-theft, and probably shouldn’t, for all those political and diplomatic reasons.

He eyed the sun-stripe on the table. It said nothing, noncommittal. Gareth also said nothing, just scrubbed both hands over his face: weary, losing hope, exhausted.

Gareth had reached out to him. Had put a hand on his arm, heedless of potential danger. Had wanted to help.

Lorre said, looking over through sunlight, “It’s not a bargain.”

Gareth lifted his head, startled. Another loop of auburn hair slid out of its confinement and forward into his face.

“It’s not a bargain,” Lorre said, “because it isn’t. You don’t owe me anything. And, for the record, I wouldn’t ask you to warm my bed if you were in some sort of service to me. Not that I’m asking now, either. I’ve always preferred partners who aren’t doing it out of obligation or pity or some sort of entirely unjustified fear that I’ll make them impotent if they say no. I don’t know where that rumor started; I’ve never even done that. Not that I wouldn’t, but I didn’t. In any case, you don’t owe me your bed or anything else.”

“You wouldn’t do that…” Gareth paused. Dawn came up over freshly-tilled earth, in his gaze: hope warring with night. “You said it wasn’t a bargain. And I don’t owe you. But…does that mean…”

“No promises. I’m historically terrible at negotiation, and I tend to annoy kings and queens and chief ministers and priestesses. But I do know something about magic.”

“You’re going to help us,” Gareth breathed. “You.”

“I’m going,” Lorre said, a bit mournfully, “to miss being warm.”

“But…why?”

“Because you live someplace with a thoroughly unreasonable amount of winter?”

“I meant why would you—”

“I know,” Lorre said. “Let’s say it’s just because I’ve decided to. Magicians. Whimsical. Capricious. All of that. We’ll leave in, oh, two hours. I need time to pack. And to regret losing my favorite winter coat, seventy years ago. No one makes dye that exact shade of blue anymore. Would you like your boots? And your pack? Here you are.”

Gareth regarded the abrupt arrival of his possessions with the expression of someone getting used to extraordinary happenings but nevertheless fascinated each time. “What shade of blue?”

“Periwinkle flower, crushed lapis lazuli, and a touch of indigo. Hand-dyed in a lovely workshop in Variennes that’s been gone for at least fifty years by now, and of course I left most of my wardrobe behind when getting thrown out, and I did try to get it back but they’d burned everything. Actually it’ll be closer to three hours. I need time to make us a boat.”

“To make—” Gareth visibly decided to let that one go. “Can I help?”

“Not with the boat. We could use provisions. Nectarines, bread, water, whatever else you want. I’ll seal this place temporarily when we’re gone, but that won’t do much for preserving the fruit and such, so you might as well bring it. Besides, I like nectarines.”

“I still don’t know why,” Gareth said. “I mean why you’re helping us. Me. What changed your mind?”

“I told you not to ask.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Didn’t I? I meant to. I could turn you into a mouse just for the practice.”

“Thank you,” Gareth said. “I don’t know how to say it—what would be enough—anything you want. Thank you.”

“I haven’t done anything yet,” Lorre said, “don’t,” and turned to go into the other room, wondering when he’d last seen his own boots. As he turned, he saw Gareth picking up a nectarine, gazing at it, eyes soft with wonder.