Rough Magic Read online

  Rough Magic

  A Tempest Tale

  Rough

  Magic

  CARYL CUDE MULLIN

  Second Story Press

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Mullin, Caryl Cude

  Rough magic / by Caryl Cude Mullin.

  ISBN 978-1-897187-63-0 I.

  Title.

  PS8576.U433R68 2009 jC813’.6 C2009-903081-0

  Copyright © 2009 by Caryl Cude Mullin

  Edited by Kathy Stinson

  Copyedited by Kathryn White

  Cover and text design by Melissa Kaita

  Cover photo by istockphoto

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.

  Published by

  SECOND STORY PRESS

  20 Maud Street, Suite 401

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  M5V 2M5

  www.secondstorypress.ca

  For Camryn, my own dragon girl, and for Riley, who works her gentle magic on me every day.

  Contents

  Act One Materia Prima

  I.i

  I.ii

  I.iii

  I.iv

  I.v

  I.vi

  I.vii

  I.viii

  I.ix

  I.x

  I.xi

  Act Two Sulfur Sun, Mercury Moon

  II.i

  II.ii

  II.iii

  II.iv

  II.v

  II.vi

  II.vii

  Act Three The Alchemist’s Furnace

  III.i

  III.ii

  III.iii

  III.iv

  III.v

  III.vi

  III.vii

  III.viii

  Act Four The Night Sea Journey

  IV.i

  IV.ii

  IV.iii

  IV.iv

  IV.v

  IV.vi

  IV.vii

  IV.viii

  IV.ix

  Act Five All That Glitters

  V.i

  V.ii

  V.iii

  V.iv

  V.v

  V.vi

  V.vii

  V.viii

  V.ix

  V.x

  V.xi

  Act One

  Materia Prima

  I.i.

  She stared into the brazier. A powdery mold of dead gray ashes lay in its base, but nothing else. It was a cold morning, and the servant was slow to arrive with the coals for her fire. Hunkering lower under her blanket didn’t help much. It was thin. She was thin. Even when she bundled it around herself, it didn’t make her very warm. She chewed her lip and frowned. “I’ll have the servant beaten for being so slow,” she said. She didn’t really mean it. It was something she would do, if she was a grown-up princess. She was only five. No one listened to her. “What’s the use of being a princess anyway,” she muttered. One day they’d obey her. Not like now. “They always come to me last,” she grumbled.

  She was right about that. If she’d been born a boy, things would be different. But she was next to useless as an heir. “The spare,” she’d heard them call her. They didn’t mind that she heard them say it, either. They’d smile, and sometimes ruffle her hair. She was a pretty child, so they indulged her. She could have made a favored plaything of herself, but she hated them. Stupid them.

  She grew colder and crosser with each passing minute. The shuffling sounds of the servants moving down the hall annoyed her. They were bringing coals and warm water to other rooms. It was deep winter. The world was old and flat and empty, and they’d left her here alone. Where was her nurse? Probably off giggling with that guard. They thought she didn’t notice, but she did. She noticed everything. “Stupid, stupid,” she repeated, this time aloud. “I’ll show them all.” And she glared at the charred dust of past fires lying in the brazier, making them her enemy, making them the servant to be beaten. Then, in the midst of her anger, she found a quiet place inside her that said, I know what to do.

  Everything she needed was inside her. The thought of fire joined the word, and her will brought them into being. In a breath of spoken air, the power blossomed out from her and became what she wanted.

  She stared into the dancing flames. They seemed watery, somehow. Pale. She willed them to be stronger, warmer. It was not enough. There was something she was missing. She frowned, her tongue poking past her lips in concentration. Of course. It was because of the ashes. The fire needed better meat to feed upon. She sifted the remnants in the brazier with her mind. The ashes held distant memories of the trees they once were. These coals had been olive branches, pruned to hold the vigor of the tree in its core.

  For an instant, she was within its wood. She felt squeezed, trapped. A dark shadow passed over her thoughts. There was a warning in this, something she did not understand. But she was not a fearful child. With a twist, she wrenched her mind free and pulled the memory forward into being once again.

  The brazier was filled with plump burning coals. The fire snapped and ate greedily, rich now in warmth. She smiled, pleased with herself, and basked in her new comfort. “That’s better,” she said. Her voice unraveled itself in her room. She remembered that she was still alone. What an idiotic nurse she had. Someone should have seen how clever she was. Then she yawned and let sleep itself cradle her. The flames dwindled down and the coals glowed quietly in their common, tame fashion.

  It was not much later when a servant hurried in, apologies and gossip bubbling from her lips. The queen had had a baby in the night. A boy, but it was sickly and the whole house was in an uproar. The servant was amazed to discover the princess sleeping contentedly by a warm brazier, her head resting in her arms and a smile on her lips. The servant was puzzled, but shrugged. The princess must have called out to someone else to make her fire after waiting so long. Oh well. She dumped her load of coals onto the pile already there. No one else needed them, not at this late hour. She pursed her lips and made a small snap of displeasure. It was shameful that the child had been left alone like this. She left to find the girl’s nurse.

  I.ii.

  Every day for a week after that Sycorax lit her own fire in the morning. She looked forward to waking up and making the flames dance. It always took a handful of courage, because each day she had to face the grinding panic of calling forth the wood for the coals. But the rest of it was easy, glorious. Now she could change the colors of the flames, too. The fire was a toy.

  But no one saw her new game. No one paid her any attention at all, anymore. They were all in a lather over her new brother. She couldn’t see why. “He’s going to die anyway,” she said to her nurse.

  “Hush now, don’t say such evil,” her nurse gasped, horror all over her face like the grease from her supper. Nurse always smelled like roast lamb. It made Sycorax’s nose twitch. She supposed that the silly guard must like the sheepy stink. He certainly grinned a great deal whenever he saw them.

  “It isn’t evil, it’s the truth,” she retorted. “I see it in the fire every morning. He doesn’t belong here. He was made for the next world. Only strong people can live here. Like me,” she added proudly.

  Nurse stopped brushing her hair and grasped her by the shoulders. “What is this that you are saying, child? Be true now, no tales here. Do you see what is to come in the fire’s light?”

  Sycorax tried to shift away from her nurse’s hold, but the woman gripped her forcefully. “Only the morning fire,” she said sulkily. “Only in the f
ire that I make, when the flames come and dance. They show me.” Sycorax grinned tightly over her small sharp teeth. “They show me lots of things,” she added.

  Her nurse stepped away from her, staring. Sycorax still smiled, tasting the woman’s fear. Now she knows I’m a princess, she thought. But it wasn’t so much fun, really, to be looked at like that. As though she was something horrible. And then her nurse turned and ran from the room.

  Sycorax was afraid, then. Would she get in trouble, real trouble, for saying the baby would die? It was true. She shouldn’t be punished for saying the truth. But she remembered the time she called her aunt a swine, and her nurse had hit her with the hairbrush many times for saying so. That was true, too. Her aunt was always eating and grunted softly whenever she had to sit or rise. “Piggy, piggy,” she said now, to make herself brave.

  There were voices in the corridor. Above them she heard the shrilling of her nurse, but there were men’s voices too. Sycorax twisted her skirt in her hands, but otherwise did not move. She was a princess. They could not hurt her.

  The room filled with people. She recognized some of them. They were her father’s wizards. One of them, a great wide dark-bearded man, crouched down before her and stared into her eyes. “Your nurse has been telling us odd tales,” he said, calmly, with a smile on his lips. He was curious, but she could see his doubting thoughts.

  The others had encircled them, and together they poked at her with their minds. She didn’t like it and pushed them away. The high wizard before her fell back on his heels. The rest began to babble and gasp. One of the women cried. Her white doughy face crumpled up and got all blotchy. Sycorax stared at the red spots on the woman’s face, at the tears flowing over her wobbly cheeks. She’d never seen a grown-up person cry before. It made her look like a child. “Stop that,” she said. And the woman stopped crying. She had no choice.

  The youngest wizard, a man who had just stopped being a boy, ran out of the room. She knew that he was running to her father. Sycorax thought that she had never seen anything so funny as the sight of his bare feet slapping on the floor. He was so flustered that he didn’t even notice his shoes had fallen off. Not by accident, though. She’d made it happen. She wondered what else she could do.

  Her life was utterly changed. Everyone noticed her now. The wizards came each morning to watch her make the fire, to hear what she saw in the flame. Her father, the king, sent for her every day. She would stand in the throne room and people would bow to her. Her nurse’s guard friend never grinned at her anymore. He stared straight ahead, like a statue. He was afraid of her.

  The whole castle was in such a state about her power that they hardly noticed when the small brother died, slipping quietly away from the ties of life. His mother keened, but she was mostly alone in her grief. She was only a second wife, anyway. They didn’t need her anymore. King Aedes had married her so that he could have a son. But he didn’t need a son anymore, either. It was too bad that the boy had died, but he’d been ill from birth. Not like the princess. Most powerful magic user ever, they whispered, and thanked the gods for such a protector.

  That’s what she was now. A protector. She liked it. She liked being important. The other wizards tried to teach her, but she already knew everything. They soon had to learn from her. They had to work and sweat in their spellcasting. Not her. “She breathes magic,” she heard one of them say. “We are truly blessed.”

  She never told them everything that she saw in the fire, though. She didn’t understand most of it. She kept seeing her father. He was old, unkempt, crazed. She only told them the good things she saw. The rich harvests. The city they would build. They would smile, and praise her.

  But her nurse suspected something. “Tell me what else you see,” she asked, one night when they were alone.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Sycorax replied, and turned away in her bed.

  The nurse didn’t ask again. She pulled the blanket, the new, thicker blanket, up over the girl. “Sleep well,” she said.

  The next day the nurse died. It was a funny accident. She slipped and fell down some stairs.

  Sycorax did not know what to feel, but now she was truly alone.

  I.iii.

  The feasting had gone on for three days now. Sycorax was tired of it. “I can’t wait until it’s over,” she kept saying to her husband.

  Stamos smiled at her patiently every time. He was fifteen years older than she was, his soft, thin hair graying, wisdom etched in every line of his face. The news of their engagement had been greeted with a mixture of surprise and humor. Publically he was heralded as a rock of stability, but she saw through the empty diplomacy. He was the third son of a smaller house. In the past people would stare blankly when his name was mentioned. It had never been mentioned very often. Their betrothal had led to a panicked maneuvering of alliances. Everyone wanted to catch the favor of the new Prince Consort.

  He seemed oblivious to the social uproar around him. She liked him for that. He was a small hollow of calm ground on a plain ravaged by whirlwinds.

  But even that was not why she had married him. She chose him because he was kind. It wasn’t a learned kindness, either. It was the fabric of his soul. It was all he knew how to be. It was her fervent, secret hope that he would lead her onto a better path than the one that haunted her visions. The one that ended with her complete despair.

  He smoothed the tension from her forehead. “Keep frowning like that and you’ll be as furrowed as I am in no time,” he teased. “Enjoy yourself. You’ve earned this reward. Your father is strong, his throne secure, the land is safe and prosperous, the people admire you.”

  “The people admire my father. They’re terrified of me. And I didn’t miss you calling yourself my ‘reward.’”

  He grinned and pulled on a loose lock of her hair. Stamos knew how to take her words lightly. “They’re still grateful for the party. You should be as well. You’re eighteen years old, married to a pillar of wisdom, and your long happy life is stretched out before you.”

  His words were a statement, but she knew they held a question. It was the same question behind every pair of eyes that ever looked into her own.

  What will become of me?

  She might be only eighteen years old, but for thirteen years she had been facing and ignoring the same desperate plea. It had left her jaded. Six years ago when a courtier asked her to read his fortune she had barked, “You will live. And when you are done with that, you will die.” No one had ever asked her the question since, but it was still there, faltering on the tip of every tongue.

  She brushed it away. “I thought I married a man, not a pillar,” she said. Her words stumbled. It was a poor joke.

  “Lucky woman, you have both,” he said, and nibbled at her neck in a way that irritated her even while it made her laugh. She let him swallow her up in an embrace.

  The celebrations did end, in time. Sycorax grew accustomed to Stamos’ quiet shadow in the corner of her life. She reminded herself that she ought to be happy. Her country had been at peace for so long, a generation. Her father’s people had become comfortable, even prosperous. Buildings were springing up that celebrated architecture rather than fortification.

  Her spells had made the country so, and kept it so. But it was a gem whose gleam was now perceived and valued from afar. Rulers of distant empires rubbed their avaricious hands and increased their armies. The name of her land began to appear on maps that once had left it unmarked and overlooked.

  Sycorax was not afraid of any of them. Her power was greater than any army. But she would have to be ruthless to keep them out, and she knew that making such magics, even as a defense, would poison her soul.

  She knew it from experience, though no one guessed. She was the Wizard Royal, the Great Protectoress, the Heir Apparent.

  Murderer is what the flames called her.

  Sycorax shook her head and turned her thoughts away. She would write her own fate. A wave of fatigue swept over her. That had
been growing more common lately. “It’s only natural,” the physicians told her. “You’ll need to rest so the child within you grows strong.”

  Child. Sycorax pulled back her shoulders and stood straighter. She didn’t know how to be a mother. The whole idea was faintly ridiculous, though she was the only one who seemed to think so. The birth of an heir was a great comfort to her father and her people.

  Sycorax’s own mother had died bringing her into the world. She wasn’t worried about that. There were simple magics that any wise woman could do. Herbs and water and soothing words were all that were needed. Her foolish mother had been afraid of magic and had banished it from the birthroom. So the queen had perished, while Sycorax lived, wizardry in her bones.

  Sycorax rubbed her swollen abdomen. It was a daughter that grew inside her. She refused to see beyond that. When the morning flames tried to show her more, she snuffed them away. It was a foolishness of her own, no doubt. Knowledge was a tool. A weapon, whispered an imp in her mind. She wouldn’t listen to that either.

  “I protect my people,” she said aloud. Her voice was harsh, rasping. She had been silent too long, alone too long. Stamos was somewhere nearby; she felt his anxiety slithering under the door like an autumn draft. She was keeping him away. He was so pleased about the child. “I’ll be a father!” he had crowed. So ignorant and naive, like a child with a new toy sword announcing he is going to war.

  Did he not realize that his child would also be hers?

  “I protect my people,” she whispered again.

  Her father – old, blind, mad, decrepit – sitting on a crumbling throne.

  Sycorax shook her head again and began to walk around the room. The rhythm of her steps brought quiet to her mind.

  Stamos would worry if he saw her. He didn’t like it when she paced like a beast in a cage.

  I.iv.

  Stamos named the child Thalia. It had seemed laughable to Sycorax that such a red, screeching thing should have a name at all, let alone one taken from a muse. “The muse of comedy,” Stamos had replied, as though that made it reasonable. “Besides, it’s a beautiful name, and she’s a beautiful girl.”