Magician by K.L. Noone
Chapter 8
The Great Hall of the rulers of the Mountain Marches stood sturdy and homespun atop its low hill, not much taller than its surrounding village and proud to be a part of the town. Cloud-puffs drifted from chimneys, the scents of baking bread and imminent rain and woodsmoke drenched the air, and the winding steps to the Hall’s carved doors sprawled out well-worn with company and openness. The kings and queens of the Marches were working monarchs, and did not stand on ceremony much, and generally welcomed any visitors who made the chilly arduous trek into the North.
Generally. In stone and wood and slanting roof-beams, the hall eyed Lorre and reserved judgement. He didn’t blame it; he would too.
The central village of the Crags—called, in the best literal-minded Marches tradition, King’s Gate—was larger than he recalled, and busier, and more intriguing. The world had in some ways grown smaller: he’d spotted market-stalls selling the usual radishes, leeks, candles, shoe-roses, local honey, but also spiced curry from Tifang in the eastern Middle Lands, and imported blue-and-white porcelain-ware, and multihued sea salts from the coast. Those last few were still unusual, but the curry-stall was certainly doing business; Lorre regarded the line of customers bemusedly.
Gareth said it wasn’t a real market-day, only a usual afternoon, and also everyone was being cautious under the current magical-bandit circumstances, and also the harvest was mostly in and the people preparing for winter, so it wouldn’t be that impressive even if it were an actual market-day; and his voice held a hint of apology as he said it.
Lorre said, “You realize it’s been fifty years since I’ve been here, and that was only to track down a book of magical herb-lore that somehow ended up gathering dust in your family library,” and glanced around at the knots and eddies of people. “They’re nervous.” The sensation trembled like the moment before a quake, like an acrobat wobbling on a high-wire line. It made his spine itch.
Gareth glanced around too. Took in the mood, the emotion, the edge of tension like partridges fearing capture: small and brown and framed by grey weather.
His people were out and about and uncowed, and the raids usually came at night, he’d said; but wariness lingered in the sets of shoulders, the backdrop of quick steps. Lorre knew, because Gareth had mentioned it, that trade had been affected: merchants traveling up to the Marches did not feel safe, with magical bandits on the road.
One or two people noticed and waved at him: recognizing their prince, calling hello, shouting a question or two. Gareth waved back, and called over, “Yes it’s good to be home, yes I’ve brought a friend to help, how’s young Elsie, and did someone go up and bring Old Jack his medicine yesterday?”
A tall plaid-draped young woman with bonfire-red hair shouted cheerfully back at her prince, “Tara did, no need to fret, he’s cranky as ever!” and gestured indistinctly with her bread-basket. “Elsie’s over with her aunt at the bookshop, she’d love to see you, and when’d you even get back to the North, we hadn’t heard!”
Someone else jumped in with, “Ah, he’s brought back magic, hasn’t he, of course he’s learned some sneaky tricks…” and general laughter happened, because it was teasing, though with an undercurrent of hope. Anxious Northern faces watched their prince, beneath familiar merriment.
Gareth held up both hands, laughing along. “I promise I’ve not learned magic. Though I have brought magical help. Tell Elsie I’ll be along to say hello tomorrow, all right? We’ve got to go up and speak to my brother, just now.”
A hand tossed an apple his way. He caught it neatly, to scattered applause; someone else said, “So your pretty friend’s here to help, is he?” and that was both hopeful and teasing as well, a plea tempered by vast amusement at their prince having brought, yes, a very pretty, apparently young, man home.
The apple-seller tossed one at Lorre, too, with, “If you’re here to help our Gareth we’re all grateful!” Lorre, not expecting flying fruit, caught it with an invisible lunge of magic, and wondered what percentage of that comment had been heartfelt relief, expressed via loving innuendo.
“They’ll have heard by now, up at the Hall,” observed the statuesque woman in plaid, and indeed if they hadn’t they would shortly: the news, in the form of an enthusiastic half-grown boy, was bounding up the short flat steps and ducking through the Hall’s open doors.
“Yes,” Gareth said. “We’ve got some things to talk about. But…for now…and you can tell everyone this’s coming from me…” He glanced at Lorre, back at his people. “We’ve got a way to know whether a raiding party’s on the way, at least. And there’s nothing at the moment. We’ll try to warn you. You can let everyone know that much.”
Murmurs began, a wondering muttering susurration. One or two people—including the tall spokeswoman, who put her head on one side and regarded Lorre thoughtfully—seemed to be thinking more about magic. Lorre began wondering which of the humorous or cautionary tales, legends, children’s storybooks, and ballads had made it up here, and in what form, and how they’d described the last Grand Sorcerer.
“Go on with you,” Gareth said, “we’ll make some announcements tomorrow, Rowan, if you’d put that around, thanks…” His accent, Lorre noticed with some interest, had warmed and deepened: being home.
Rowan saluted them merrily with her bread, and the small gathering began to disperse; as they went up the steps, someone else shouted, “Speaking of warning, haven’t you told your poor friend about our weather, you get that young man some decent gloves before anything else!” to a last wave of widespread good humor.
Gareth yelled back, “I’ve got spares, Granny!” and put a hand on Lorre’s arm, not because the shallow stone steps required it but evidently just because. “Your hands aren’t cold, are they?”
“Fine. Granny?”
“Oh, not mine. Everyone’s. At least by adoption. She makes the deadliest local cider in the Crags and she’ll poke you with her cane if she thinks you need poking. Literal and metaphorical.”
“Sounds delightful.” Lorre listened to the tap of his own boot against a step, a flash of memory: himself in heavy blue embroidered robes, stride long and abrupt and never doubting his own right to be here, to walk right in and demand a book from the perplexed grandfatherly king…
Had that been a Donal? A Brian? In any case, that king, fifty years ago, almost definitely had been Gareth’s grandfather. He tried not to dwell on that thought.
The layout of the Great Hall hadn’t changed. The river still poured itself down from hills as a backdrop, leaping and darting over stone. The small stone-white Goddess-chapel sat a little behind the main building, slightly lower down the hill and serene with green leaves and grey memorial stones. Kitchen-gardens still sloped away from the house and down one side, full of carrots and cabbages and mint and lavender and more, plus a few green fluffy displays Lorre didn’t recognize. He knew them—he could see their shapes, taste their flavors, become them—but he didn’t know their names.
The wide open doors let in chilly mountain air and anyone with a question or problem, in need of advice or assistance. Their carvings—from local tales, all cattle-raids and magical cauldrons and the sleeping-curse of the Witch of West Yarrow, who Lorre remembered as a short-tempered irascible woman who’d hated interruptions—still bore history and stories and mountain pride like raised banners. The Hall was not in fact all that Great as far as size—only two stories, low and built to withstand Northern winters, hunkered down and shaggy and warm as a bear—but the central large room had high ceilings and a line of pillars and thick tapestries warming the walls, plus the massive hearth.
As they came in, the temperature changed: more welcoming, less sharp, firelit in defiance of looming ice. Lorre’s ears finally got warmer.
A few of the tapestries were new. So were the rugs, and the pile of two big woolly Crags-bred shepherd-dogs napping atop them.
So was the cozy desk and chair set-up near the hearth: several chairs, and what was obviously a working desk, with messages and a pot of tea and a woman leaning animatedly forward to say, “—and we’re needing better regulation of the quality of ale that’s coming up from the South these days, not that we’re at all worried about competition, but there’s no proper standard for those imports, and if they’re calling it a heavy porter, look—” to the scholarly young man on the other side, who was nodding and taking notes.
The throne still existed. It hulked in carven splendor at the center of the room, in an attitude that suggested it would be happy to wait until needed, with devoted wooden patience. Lorre looked at it, and then at the note-taking young man, and felt his eyebrows go up.
By the other side of the hearth, the other two occupants of the room were talking quietly; they both swung around as Gareth came in. Lorre unobtrusively faded back a step or two: watching.
The queen mother of the Mountain Marches, shorter than both her sons but with Gareth’s autumn hair, spun their way in a bundle of cold-defying grey-and-green plaid, half-mourning and still-young energy. “Gareth!” The man she’d been talking to, also short and soft and curly-haired, wore the thin multiple-strand woven collar of a priest, and the practical wool layers of someone who’d grown up in the North; he looked at his youngest prince and smiled.
Gareth ran over to hug his mother. Enthusiasm abounded. It spilled over and lit up the room like torches: fiercely glowing.
Lorre leaned a shoulder against the closest pillar. Crossed his arms. Eyed the priest, and also the fire. He did not expect to be on good terms with the former; he wanted to reach out and spin a ball of sparks into one hand, to play with it, to occupy his fingers.
The young man behind the desk hopped up and bounded over too, and more familial reunion happened. King Ardan, Lorre observed, was a taller paler version of his brother: the watercolor version, with lighter red-gold hair and hazel eyes and rolled-up shirtsleeves. They had the same nose, though, and the same expressive eyebrows, and the same ear-to-ear grin at seeing each other.
“Gar,” Dan said, hands on his brother’s shoulders, “the last we heard you were down South trying to hire a ship—you never sent word, it’s been nearly two months—”
Guilt, and love, and fondness, swept across Gareth’s face. “I couldn’t exactly post a letter at sea—and then I did find someone, someone amazing—you said I wouldn’t, and, guess what, you were wrong—” He ran a hand through his hair, shoved excitable strands back. “We’d’ve sent a message but it was easier just to come—he’s fantastic, he honestly is, let me introduce you—”
“You’re not even dressed for the weather! It’s going to storm!”
“Oh, stop—”
“How’d you get onto the mountain roads without passing through Flowerdale or Rothsey?”
“I’ll explain, I promise—how’s it been here at home? Is everyone all right? What’s happened since I’ve been gone?”
Lorre felt eyes on himself, and stopped watching Gareth and his brother. The queen mother was regarding him silently, with folded arms amid layers of homespun warm plaid and metaphorical armor. The North preferred grey for mourning, and she wore it like a lifted shield: a woman who’d loved her husband, and who’d fight for her people with all her might. Her oldest might’ve become King, but she’d stood at her husband’s side for the years of that leadership, and remained here for her sons now. Her gaze took him in and judged him, elaborate coat and shining blond hair and uncallused hands and all.
Lorre had never liked being judged. He liked it even less when he was cold and unsettled by the passage of time and being ignored by Gareth, who belonged here.
He put out a hand. Took a fleck of dust, a swirl of twigs, a scuffle of wind, from outside the door. Held them above his fingertips, pressed heat and vitality and immensity into them, made them glow. Tiny scraps of light became incandescent, dancing above his hand.
The queen mother’s expression shifted, not with fear. Evaluating.
Lorre let the glow intensify. Smiled.
The small fluffy priest shifted weight, over by the fire: also looking at him, with some disbelieving dawning recognition. Good.
Gareth hadn’t looked round, being preoccupied with sibling banter and camaraderie. Lorre flicked his fingers and made sparks flare and crackle.
The queen mother said to him, “Yes, I know who you are.” Though her voice was quiet, the words rang like the peal of a bell.
Everyone else went silent, gradually; Dan grumbled to his brother, “—what do you mean, you didn’t have time to send a message ahead, you must’ve been in Whiskey Harbor a week ago if—” and skidded to a halt.
“It’s not a secret,” Lorre said to Gareth’s mother. “I know who I am, too.” The hall grew taut, tense, poised on a high-wire next word.
The fire muttered in orange and crimson. Thunder answered, a coil of prescient anticipation. Both dogs sat upright.
The weight of the hill, the land, thrummed under his feet. He could push it up, or down—he could lift this whole hall in a heartbeat, could make irritating suspicion shift to deserved awe in a queen mother’s eyes—
Gareth’s hall. Gareth’s home. And suspicion and awe were too familiar. Old wearying leaden emotions. Pulling at his bones.
Lorre closed his hand and let sparks die. That was as much of an apology as he was willing to offer, at the moment.
Gareth ducked away from brotherly affection and ran a step back to his side, which was either a declaration of allegiance or a terribly misguided attempt at support. “I asked him to come! Sorry, sorry, I should’ve introduced you—my mother, Queen Mother Agatha, I mean—Mum, Dan, this is—”
Gareth’s mother folded her arms. Her head-tip was Gareth’s, the same way her chocolate-and-nutmeg eyes were, and her mountain-rock unshakeability. “I know. So you asked him for help. And he came. Did you not think you’d be inviting trouble?”
“Someone explain this to me,” Dan said, eyeing his brother.
“The Sorcerer of Goldenfell,” Agatha said. “The Scourge of Penth. The Dragon of Averene.” Her tone wasn’t openly hostile, but not pleased either. Fair enough, Lorre concluded.
He said, “Pleased to make your acquaintance, and it’s always nice to be remembered. I’m Lorre.”
King Ardan’s mouth literally dropped open. Dreadful at concealment of emotions, both siblings. “You’re—”
“He’s here to help,” Gareth leapt in.
His mother, his brother, the priest, the brewmistress—who’d got up from her audience chair—and both dogs looked at him, with varying degrees of skepticism.
“I really am here to help,” Lorre contributed. Helpfully.
“You said you’d bring back aid,” Dan said to his brother, “but this…him…you said you’d find someone, but we never thought…Goddess, Gareth, how even…”
“He’s very persuasive,” Lorre pointed out. “Is there tea? Can I have some? By the way, I’m attempting to restore your eastern pastures. Grazing lands. Fields. Other farming terms. The ones you can see from the road, on the way in. They’re frostbitten, and even I can’t bring back the dead, but the land wants to be all right. I’m just giving it a path back, a bit faster…and I think it’s not all completely dead, so I can ask what’s left to grow…”
This wasn’t the simplest magic he’d ever done, though it was also neither the most difficult nor the most flashy, as far as showing off. He’d’ve preferred to go up and stick a hand in the soil and feel it, know it, shape himself into it; he could, from here, but the distance cost some extra effort.
Still, he could reach out to touch the wounded lonely ground, and the small sparks of clinging green life; he could cup it in an intangible hand and know it, the same shared sun-heated energy that ran through his veins, which meant it was him and he was it and therefore it was also alive, the way he was alive; he was only transferring a bit of self over there and drawing it up to the surface, into blades of grass and hay and healthy earth…
He forgot for a moment that he had lungs, and wanted sunlight on his skin instead, and twining roots, and fresh running water; he wondered suddenly why he felt dizzy, and then remembered about bodies and air.
Gareth caught his arm. Firm, stalwart, concerned. An earthwork. “Are you—”
“Fine,” Lorre said. “I’m not a pasture. Though you may want to go and check on it.”
Dan lifted both eyebrows, and went to the nearest window facing the hills. And then swung around, mouth and eyes open with astonishment.
“Breathe,” Gareth demanded, hand now checking his pulse. “And sit down. Headache? And, here, I’ll get tea—you’re here and real and not a blade of grass—”
Lorre said, “You’re very real, I think I’ve said before,” and let Gareth push him into an overstuffed chair, less because he needed it than because Gareth seemed to. “I know I’m me.”
“You stopped breathing,” Gareth said. “And you already brought us here, this morning—and you’re holding that bandit-detection spell you mentioned—”
He’d actually forgotten that one, though it remained ongoing, of course. The mild headache was less of a surprise, in that case.
King Ardan sank down on the arm of the opposite chair, long legs stretched out. “You brought back life. To a dead field. From here, without even seeing it.”
“It wasn’t quite dead.” Lorre waved a hand. Gareth put a cup of tea into it. The tea was strong, the unfortunately hearty Lower Crags blend, but had a lot of sugar, because Gareth remembered how sweet he liked it. “It would’ve healed, I think. Eventually. Not soon. But you can have it back now.”
Dan ran both hands through his hair, making it stick up in pale russet spikes.
The queen mother was watching Lorre; she said, “Have you hurt yourself, doing that?”
Lorre tried and failed to not laugh. “Hardly.”
“Good.” She glanced around, said to the wide-eyed priest and brewmistress, “A moment, if you would?” and waited while they ducked away through the open doors.
“Well.” Dan looked after them, as they went. “That news’ll travel fast.”
“It would have in any case.” Agatha considered her younger son, who was now hovering next to Lorre’s chair, hand on Lorre’s shoulder. “You do know what you’ve done, the pair of you? We’ll have every monarch and magician in the Middle Lands at our door, wondering what we’re planning with the former Grand Sorcerer.”
Gareth’s hand tightened, a flinch that Lorre recognized. But conviction remained. “He warned me. I would’ve asked anyway. We need the help.”
“And you’re sharing his bed.” She said it evenly, without accusation but with resignation, eyes flicking to Gareth’s hand on Lorre’s shoulder.
Gareth’s older brother, clearly not having guessed that part, almost fell off the arm of his chair.
Agatha finished, one last heavy stone weighing down the question to her son, “Was that the bargain? Yourself, for his assistance?”
“Oh no,” Dan breathed. “Gar, you know we wouldn’t’ve asked—we’d never have you make that sacrifice—we’ll find a way to release you, I swear. I could take your place, or—”
An icicle spiked through Lorre’s temple, sharp and nasty. He took a breath, let it out.
“You’re really not all right.” Gareth bent down over him worriedly. “I’ve never seen you hurt.”
“I’m not,” Lorre said. “It’s just this. Humans. Being human. Listen—” He got up, impatient, aching, aware that he could use some food or a moment to breathe or a place where he did not have to hear that he’d taken advantage of Gareth, who was loyal and generous and steadfast and uncomplicated.
He had done precisely that, in so many ways. Being vastly older. More cynical. More powerful. More inclined to give in and indulge his desires. He knew.
He said, to Gareth’s astonished family, to Gareth himself, who was still hovering, “I’m going to be a river for a minute. Or a rock. Gareth asked me to help and I said yes, because he’s the sort of hero I would follow anywhere, if I ever followed anyone. He loves you and your mountain goats enough to walk up to a dragon and offer to make tea, to offer anything I’d accept, and he believes in people enough that I couldn’t say no, and you should be thanking him a thousand times over. No, we didn’t make the bargain you’re thinking, and no, you can’t take his place. As if you could. I’ll be back soon.”
“I know you will.” Gareth’s eyes were unhappy, apprehensive, but he managed a smile. His family was silent, taking this in. “You don’t lie to me.”
Lorre nodded, because it was true and because the words were making his headache worse, and went to the window, swung old thick glass up and out, and fled the Great Hall on a lift of storm-wind.