Magician by K.L. Noone

Chapter 4

The world got colder. Clouds drifted. Land faded out of sight. Currents changed: the chillier waters of the North, versus the sun-touched turquoise of the islands. Lorre sighed internally and huddled into his coat and kept his small fire going, light and heat amid oncoming grey. Gareth, with a not insignificant amount of tact, offered to make tea, and produced nectarines and sweet oranges with impressive regularity, and asked about catching fish.

“I can,” Lorre said. “I can just ask. More or less.”

“Oh. But you don’t have to—wait, if you haven’t yet, does that mean you don’t eat meat—”

Lorre these days felt a mild amount of guilt about doing that—calling something alive to him, purely for that specific purpose; he’d caused enough harm to others—but only a mild amount. He’d done far worse. “If you want I can do that now—”

“No, this is fine, we’ve got bread and cheese—” Gareth bit his lip. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“We’re not back to that, are we? You haven’t and I do eat meat, if that’s the best available option. Just say so, if you want something.”

“No,” Gareth said, and then went quiet for a few minutes. Their boat arrowed through silver currents, leaving ripples of speed like enchanted fletching. A hint of rain flavored the air.

Lorre nudged more heat into the fire, in its brass cup. A raindrop, two, hit the back of his hand.

Gareth said, “You don’t like doing it. Is that it?”

“Don’t you dare say I’m a good person.”

“I think worrying about it means you’re at least part of the way there.”

“And I think,” Lorre said, “you’re depressingly young.” The rain picked up; it splashed against his coat, his cheek, the wood of their boat. He felt his pulse jump in answer, catching the rhythm and sound: tides tugged at the threads of his magic for a moment. He did not particularly want to be wet, so he nudged at the air until a small swirling shield formed overhead, deflecting drops.

“You can control the weather.”

“Small-scale. It’s harder than you’d think. Or easier. The change isn’t hard, but it affects everything else, all the other…” He didn’t know how to explain, not to someone non-magical. “The tapestries. The weaving. The world.”

“Which is why you haven’t stopped the rain. Just pushed it over there. And also why the fish.”

“We’re not talking about the fish.”

“Maybe,” Gareth said, “I’m not as young as you think I am. How old are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not—”

“I’ve forgotten. Older than you. Decades. Centuries.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You…don’t?”

“I believe you’re older than I am,” Gareth said. “I believe you might not recall the exact year. If they had years, back then.”

“I can turn you into a toad.”

“I don’t believe you don’t remember anything about being young. About the decade, the time, what it was like. You must’ve had a family. A home.”

“I don’t—” Lorre began, and stopped, because it was a lie and he knew it and a magician’s words always had power. They burned in his throat, on his tongue, like scorched silver.

He looked away. Into the embers. Leaping flames shot sparks skyward. Heat seared his face. His eyes watered.

A spark flared, sizzled, faded. The fire crackled, a counterpoint to the rain around them.

Gareth said, “I’m sorry.” He hadn’t flinched from the sparks.

“I am older than you are,” Lorre said. “I’m older than almost everyone. Older than half the Middle Lands kingdoms, and the Goddess-Church, and probably the trees this boat’s made of. I’m not human, Gareth.”

Those princely chocolate-and-smoke eyes went a little wider at that, but Gareth only said, “You sound pretty human to me.”

“Half. Or—my father was. Human. As far as I know.” He picked up a splinter of fire, a stray fleck of amber; turned it around in his fingertips, understood the size and shape and heft of the light. He let go: it hung unsupported in the air, twirling gradually, held by his request. “I don’t remember much about being young.”

“You don’t have to tell me. If you don’t want to.” Gareth was watching the bit of flame as it danced, but then looked past it, at Lorre’s face. His gaze was open, honest, transparent. “It wasn’t a fair question. I really am sorry.”

“You don’t need to…” Lorre gave up on finding reasons, arguments. Let the fire-fleck flutter back to join its friends. “You don’t need to. Say it.”

Gareth gave him a little half-shrug plus head-tip—yes, but I do anyway—and said, “Tea?”

“Fine.”

A pause happened. Gareth found the kettle and Lorre talked water into being fresh instead of salt, with the susurration of the rain forming a backdrop. Gareth poured.

Lorre said, “I grew up in Averene. Only it wasn’t Averene, then. More a collection of squabbling baronies that kept trying to kill each other. My father liked roast pork and stabbing his enemies in the back, sometimes literally. My mother stayed with him for a season, a summer, and then she left. Into the river. I don’t mean she died. Have you heard the folk tale about the river maiden and the jealous baron? I was there. Well, technically I was the consequence.”

“The baron never sees her again,” Gareth said. “In the storybook versions I’ve heard, anyway. It’s not a happy story.”

“It’s all wrong anyway. Or not. I don’t know. I don’t even show up in the children’s tales, the ones tidied up for impressionable young minds. But, surprise, babies happen. Sometimes they get left on the baron’s barge by an angry wave. Or so someone told me. I can’t remember who. One of the castle maids, I think.”

“Did you ever see her again? Your mother?”

“No. Never. I tried, once. I do remember that. It was springtime and my father wanted me to poison a priest, I forget why. I went down to the river and threw myself in—don’t look like that, I knew I could breathe. I thought she’d come, if I begged hard enough.”

“Wait,” Gareth said. “Your father what?”

“Oh, he always wanted me to do magic for him.” Lorre looked down into tea, let steam brush his face, gazed at lemon-scented herb-sweet liquid instead of the past. “We knew I was powerful from the start. I’ve always been what I am. I honestly can’t recall most of what he asked me to do; it’s been way too long for that. I only remember that one because it was the first time he’d asked me whether I could kill someone with magic, and I knew I could, but I didn’t think it was fair. I’d done everything else—gold, earthquakes, sudden crop failures on a rival’s estate, whatever else it was—and he told me he’d throw me out and have me burned as an abomination if I didn’t do this one too.”

“How old were you?”

“Do you know, I don’t actually know. Young enough that he hadn’t married me off to anyone, old enough that I’d overheard him talking about it. He wanted magical grandchildren. But I don’t know the year.”

Gareth’s jaw clenched. “That’s horrible.”

“Hero,” Lorre said. “The world’s not fair. And no rescue’s ever guaranteed.”

“No,” Gareth said. “No, of course not, but—but you don’t believe that. You can’t. You came with me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lorre said. “It’s just…you were there. And persistent. And you had a book.”

“It matters.” Gareth’s eyes were stubborn as farmland, as freshly tilled earth. “Maybe not to you, but to me. My people. Everyone you’ll help. They matter. Don’t say that’s not real.”

“You’re certainly real.”

“You didn’t agree to do it,” Gareth said. “Murdering the priest.” It wasn’t a question.

“No,” Lorre said. “But don’t think it was a firm moral stance. I didn’t like my father, either, and it didn’t feel honorable. That doesn’t mean I’ve never killed anyone.”

“I know you have, if even half those stories’re true.”

“All of them,” Lorre said. “Or none of them. Or it depends on which way you face.” He felt tired, suddenly: old as his bones really were, ancient and weary. “I want to be a bird for a while. Or a cloud. I’ll come back, don’t worry.”

“A cloud…” Gareth’s face transformed, full of awe.

“Stop thinking about me like that.” He pushed himself to his feet, held out a hand; needed to be someone, something, lighter and less weighty and unbroken for a moment. A shimmer of light. A leap of heron. A gull on the wind, unthinking, airy, borne aloft.

He felt the magic shift and rise and pull at his edges, instinctive and easy as ever. He wanted, he craved, he yearned; it answered and took shape.

It did not hurt, because it never did, not unless he was truly exhausted and forcing himself past his limits. That was something else he’d never known how to explain: the simplicity of it, the letting go, the flowing. The motion lived forever just under his skin; he fell into the form he wanted, because he wanted it, body arching and curving and becoming. He did not guide it, much; he felt the soft blooming brush of feathers, the quick tip of his head, the sweep of wings—

He leapt upward, landed on the air, tumbled into flight. His clothing fell away; Gareth had stood up abruptly and was gazing upward, a short auburn-haired prince amazed by a firebird in the storm.

Lorre had not entirely intended to be a firebird, but he liked color and plumage, and the wingspan was good. He dove through breeze and rain, felt drops against his feathers, flung himself higher. The past and the weariness vanished; he knew the beat of his wings, the freedom of the sky, the crash of thunder and the rush of racing past waves. He did not have to be anything Gareth saw in him, any stories the world might tell. Not now, not for this moment.

He burst out from clouds, up above them, trailing storm-drops like streamers from his wings. He balanced on the currents, alone above the world.

Hanging suspended amid a pearlescent grey sky, drenched in water and cool air, he let even that go. Let the lines and borders of this shape begin to dissolve and melt and expand.

He vanished into air, clouds, water, lightning: he felt the raindrops, was each raindrop, a tiny quivering point of life. He moved with the waves, coiling and rocking and endless and vast. He crackled with energy, poised for a sizzling white-hot burst; the bolt flew, brilliant, and the bit of Lorre that was lightning shuddered in ecstatic release.

He drank it all in the way the ocean drank up the storm, down below: connected, singing, spread out and transcendent.

Somewhere people moved, brighter quicker points of life, scarlet and topaz and ruby and tawny gold; they built bridges, sold bacon, danced in a meadow, wrote a sonnet, made love, taught children their letters. They were everything he was, too, and everything he wasn’t, because he never had been precisely one of them.

He could reach out and touch them, if he wanted. Focus might be difficult, at a distance, but he could make someone’s field sprout unexpectedly faster or ask a river to rise, and it probably would, because it was him also, in a far-off sort of way.

He wondered vaguely about bandits. What did they do with the goats and the cheeses and whatever else they’d been taking from the farms? Perhaps he could find out. But he’d have to know which little human torchlights meant bandits, as such, first.

One particular glimmer nagged at his attention. Not because it was noisy; the opposite, in fact.

That glimmer was calm as a tree-root, deep and settled, all acorn-brown and smoky garnet, and was currently sitting on a small boat in the ocean, warming hands over Lorre’s own magical fire and reading a book. It’d folded Lorre’s clothing, too, and set the stack neatly near the warmth.

Without entirely meaning to, Lorre swung back into himself and out of clouds and lightning; he slid down through raindrops, pulling pieces in, coalescing. He landed with both feet bare on the deck, and hair getting into his eyes; he shook his head to make it stop doing that.

He said, “You’re reading.”

“You said you’d be back.” Gareth glanced up from the book, finger marking his place; whatever else he’d been about to say died on his lips. His cheeks gathered color, vivid.

Lorre picked up his shirt from the pile. “You were warming my clothes.”

“I thought you might be cold.” Gareth was now fixedly staring at Lorre’s left shoulder, determinedly avoiding anything lower. “I thought…it might be nice. And warm. And good. I mean it would feel good. Having warm things. If I were cold.”

“You’re not wrong.” Lorre pulled on trousers, long coat, socks and boots. His hair fell over one shoulder; he touched it, asked it to braid itself. “It does feel nice. Thank you.”

Gareth made a very small sound, hand lifting, dropping.

“Question, or comment?”

“Nothing. Neither. I—never mind.”

“Hmm.” Lorre stretched out across the closest bench, lounging under a rain-shield and firelight, bones and muscles more contented in themselves. He missed sunshine and warm sand, but for now he thought he could stay here, restlessness soothed. Their boat leapt over waves. “You weren’t at all worried that I’d leave?”

“No,” Gareth said. “You said not to worry.”

“And I don’t lie to you. Right.”

Gareth set the book aside. “It really is who you are. Magic.”

“Like I’ve told everyone.”

“I know that,” Gareth said, “every story says so, I knew that, but…you just are. Like breathing.”

“And I told you I’m not human.”

“Is that why it’s been hard for you to teach?” Gareth shifted to face him more fully in the fireglow, under the pattering rain. Drops spun off the side, away from Lorre’s lazily whirling shield. “To work with other magicians, I mean. The folk stories, the ballads—they say you get impatient, or arrogant, or bored, and you go off and leave apprentices alone to get into trouble, you get tired of running the school and you leave it to someone else, you have a fight with a companion and leave them behind. But that’s not right, is it? You can’t tell them how they should light a candle or what to do to find a hidden wellspring, because you don’t do magic. You are.”

Lorre lay very still, sprawled across his bench; after a second he said, “Yes,” and it hurt in an unexpected way, like being seen when he’d thought he was invisible, like being stabbed by compassion, like the shock of the first time he’d stepped off a cliff and onto air.

Something had held him up, then. The world had known him and carried his weight, though he had not directly asked it to.

“The ballads aren’t right,” Gareth said. “They don’t do you justice.”

“Oh, they do.” Lorre waved a hand. “I am impatient and arrogant. I’m awful at actually running a school. And I get bored. I’m terrible company for any length of time. I’ll be astonished if you still want my assistance, given another day.”

Gareth looked exactly like someone about to protest, to argue, but that isn’t FAIR, in the face of the contrary; he looked like someone who still believed in fairness, and who thought that Lorre deserved it. He opened his mouth.

“Don’t say it isn’t fair,” Lorre said. “What is? Anyway I’ve always been an awful teacher, they’re all thoroughly right about that, I don’t know how I do anything. And I don’t know how anyone more human does anything, either.”

“There’s no one else like you,” Gareth said. “No one else, not ever—” Abruptly he got up, and came over to Lorre’s side of the fire; he sat down on the deck, just barely fitting his shoulders between the bench and the brazier, close enough for a kiss if Lorre sat up. Light turned his hair to copper and bronze.

“There’ve been a few,” Lorre said, not moving. “Throughout history. A tree-maiden in love with a prince, a river-spirit paying a visit to a pretty farmer’s daughter, the resultant children, that sort of thing. It obviously happens. No one else I ever even heard about, though, in even my personally extensive lifetime. I did look, for a while.”

“I’m not sure I’d’ve been brave enough to ask for your help,” Gareth said. “If I’d thought about it more.”

“You?” Lorre propped himself up on an elbow. “Of course you would. You’d’ve come and found me and told me your goats needed my assistance, so you weren’t leaving without me.”

Gareth laughed, though he looked somewhat apologetic, after. “I wish I could do more. Give you more. Anything you want.”

“If there’s something I need from the North, I’ll ask you. I might want cheese. Or award-winning carrot cake. Or ale. Or copies of whatever books you’ve got that I might’ve not read.”

“You can have anything in the library. Want me to make more tea? I’ve got cheese, too. In my pack.”

“Of course you do,” Lorre said. “Why not? Feed me, fuss over me, keep me warm.”

“I can do that,” Gareth said, quick and sincere; and rather to his own surprise Lorre had to look up at the clouds for a moment, because his cheeks had warmed with some sort of half-embarrassed perplexing emotion. The clouds boomed thunder down, amused.