King's Son, Magic's Son Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  CHAPTER XXX

  CHAPTER XXXI

  CHAPTER XXXII

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  CHAPTER XXXV

  GLOSSARY

  TORN BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

  Having won her at great peril, young Aidan, a powerful but not very ambitious magician, would be content to enjoy the fruits of peace with Ailanna, his Faerie love. But Aidan's dying mother has revealed to him that he is half brother to the King--and requires of him that he provide magical aid to his embattled royal brother. Aidan perforce must yield to this dying maternal wish.

  Alas, to win Ailanna in the first place, Aidan has also sworn a mighty oath to the Lord of Faerie. Caught between these conflicting vows, torn between the mortal world and the lands of Faerie, Aidan is about to learn the perils, even for a magician, of serving two masters....

  KING'S SON, MAGIC'S SON

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1994 by Josepha Sherman

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  ISBN: 0-671-87602-3

  Cover art by Clyde Caldwell

  First printing, June 1994

  Distributed by Paramount 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

  Printed in the United States of America

  Electronic version by Baen Books

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-447-5

  CHAPTER I

  BEGINNINGS

  I am Aidan ap Nia, Aidan, Nia's son, and I am brother to a king.

  Half-brother. My mother was no queen nor fine court lady, but Nia, a wild witch-woman of Cymra, that you beyond our borders call the West Country. And the way of my begetting was this:

  King Estmere, the first of his name, was a widower, his wife the queen having died in the bearing of his son and heir. And even after a year had passed, the king still mourned that poor lady greatly. At last, desperately hoping to beat down his grief, he wildly went hunting in the secret forests and ancient downs of Cymra, that stubborn, independent land between his kingdom and the Great Sea, went all heedless of the legendry that placed a shimmering of old, old magic there.

  And as he rode with reckless haste, a thick gray mist arose about King Estmere, soft as silk, chill as the death of hope. The king lost all trace of his hunting companions, lost indeed all traces of the warm and living world.

  How long he wandered in that soft gray twin to death, I don't know. But at last the king stumbled onto my mother's hut. And by then that simple hut must have seemed a palace to him in his relief, and its black-eyed owner a queen.

  So King Estmere stayed with her that night while the mist lapped close about the hut like a blanket to shut out the world. And he forgot his sorrow for a time. . . .

  But in the morning, his companions came hunting for him. And Nia sent him away.

  So, in the due course of things I was born, a babe with the black hair and tapering black eyes of my mother, though with little else of her in my features.

  It was a good place, that small corner of the west lands. There was my mother's thatched-roof hut itself, with its earthen floor hard-packed and smooth as stone and its scents of clean herbs and spices. Outside the hut, there was the ancient woodland, with trees so old and mighty my young arms couldn't span their rough-barked trunks. There was dim green forest light and golden dapplings of sunshine, there were birds and beasts and none to harm me. For the early years of life I ran wild in wood and down as any happy, healthy young creature, secure in my witch-mother's love, safe under the mantle of her spells.

  I learned much in those youthful days without realizing I was being taught (all but magic; I wasn't old enough yet to be trusted with Power), hungrily absorbing the ways and lore of our land. Though we led a solitary life, seldom seeing other folk, I knew the names and ways of every ceremony of the turning year, knew the proper way to honor the spirit of an apple tree with food and drink or keep evil from the door with rosemary and garlic. I learned tales from the first coming of humanity to the West Country in the long-ago-that-was. A small, dark, mystic folk, those, whose origin is lost in time but whose blood ran in my mother's veins and in my own. They and all successive waves had come, in peace or violence, determined to master the land. All in turn had been mastered by it, settling into that ancient place, living by its rhythm, worshipping y Duwies, the Goddess, which means worshipping the fierce, wondrous All that is Creation.

  I learned speech, too, of course, not merely Cymraeth, our native tongue, but Anglic, that newer language common to the lands lying just to the east (where, it was rumored, men no longer worshipped the Goddess but followed a triple male deity), brought by merchants and the last, failed wave of invaders into the region five generations back. Anglic was a language less melodic, maybe, than our own, but simpler in the speaking: Cymraeth has twenty words for "yes" alone, each with its own shade of meaning. At the time I did wonder a little at my mother's insistence I become fluent in both languages, since the only other humans I saw were farm folk, set in their ways and speaking only the old tongue. But learning languages has never been too difficult a chore to me, and I quickly grew as comfortably bilingual as any other Cymraen child, though I thought (and think) in Cymraeth.

  Easy lessons, those. But as I grew older and began to show some signs of reason, Nia took me in hand as her apprentice. It began like this:

  I was home with a runny nose and a scratchy throat— even magic has no power over the mundane little illnesses—and feeling very sorry for myself. My mother was gone off to tend a farmer with a badly broken leg; at the time, I had waved her away, feeling very manly, insisting he needed her help more than I. But now I was only a lonely little boy. Worse, the fire in our central hearth wasn't burning hotly enough. Get up and gather more firewood? I didn't want to leave my warm bed. But when I reached out and tried to poke the fire up with a stick, I prodded so enthusiastically that the fading flame went out altogether.

  For a moment I just stared in horror. Then I scrambled to the hearth and began blowing frantically at the last embers.

  Nothing. The fire was good and truly dead.

  Shivering in the rapidly growing chill, I hugged my arms to me and looked helplessly about. What now? I couldn't simply relight the fire with flint and steel; there weren't any. When one has a magical mother, one gets used to seeing fires fit with no more than a flash of will: will that I didn't yet know how to control.

  The hut grew colder. I snatched a blanket about me, heart pounding. My mother would return before night; she'd promised me that, and Cymraen folk never lie. But the day was chill, and I had he
ard stories about folks dying from exposure. Here I was, already weakened by illness . . . Suddenly overwhelmed by the specters of my own imaginings, I nearly sobbed aloud. Would she return to find nothing but a pathetic, blanket-wrapped corpse?

  I never did have much patience for self-pitying folk, even then. All at once I was so angry at myself for this silliness that I forgot to be afraid. Was I nothing but a helpless babe wailing for his mother? No!

  "I won't give up like this! I won't!"

  A surge of sheer, stubborn energy raced through me. And I felt something stir deep within my being, a new, hot, dazzling strength like nothing I had ever felt before. I stared at the dead fire and said with perfect certainty:

  "You—will—light!"

  The dazzling power flashed from me to the wood. It blazed up into a blinding fountain of wild flame, and I fell back, tangled in the blanket, staring at what I'd just done in sheer disbelief. Then, with a yelp of alarm, I untangled myself and set about hastily beating out the flames before they could set the whole hut burning.

  Just when I'd gotten them back under control, I heard the faintest chuckle from the doorway. My mother had returned, blue woolen cloak and gown fluttering about her in the wind, black hair loose and wild. Her eyes fairly glowed with eerie Power. "You are my son more than his after all," she murmured.

  "I . . . don't understand."

  "Your father was a good man, but he was no magician. I wasn't sure you had inherited anything more than scraps of my magic. But now your own Power has come on you, and even sooner than mine with me." She shook her head, smiling faintly. "I couldn't even begin to focus such a blast of will till sometime after my first bleeding. You do know what all this means, boy?"

  I shivered with a delicious mixture of excitement and fear. "That I'm going to be a witch, too?"

  She stirred impatiently. "The farm folk placed that name on me. Witch, wizard, magician: those are only names. You shall be a wielder of magic."

  Just then I sneezed. The arcane light left her eyes, forced out by maternal concern. "Enough, Aidan. Back to bed with you."

  And for a time I was glad to still be young enough to be tucked into bed and fussed over. But I couldn't forget what had happened, and at last had to ask:

  "Does this mean I'll have to go off by myself and live in my own hut?"

  My mother laughed. "Bless you, child, no. Not unless you wish it." She sat beside me. "I chose this solitude because I enjoy it. I find living close to other folk too disturbing, because I'm forever sensing their emotions quivering through my mind. But your magic will be shaped by you, to you. Who knows? There's a wide and wondrous world out there beyond the forest, and one day you may find yourself preferring to live in a village, even a city."

  Of course I started to swear a boy's light, thoughtless oath that I would never leave her, but Nia waved me to silence.

  "A vow once spoken is sacred, not to be broken. You know that."

  "Yes, but—"

  "I know you mean well. But I won't have you forswear yourself. No human can truly see the future, boy. But I suspect your destiny just may take you far from here."

  "But . . ."

  "Hush." She pulled the blankets up about my throat. "Enough talking, now. Go to sleep."

  The next day my lessons in the ways of magic began in earnest. They weren't easy. Nor was my mother a gentle teacher.

  "What is the true source of our Power, Aidan?"

  "I . . . uh . . ."

  "Come, boy, think! Some fools say magic only comes from Evil, from the sacrifice of innocents or studying grimoires bound in human skin."

  I winced. "That's sick!"

  Nia gave me a hint of a dour smile. "It is, indeed. But there really are some people who, though born without a spark of true magic, are still so hungry for power and Power that they're willing to try such obscenities. Book-sorcerers, learning their spells by rote." Her voice dripped contempt. "Forget about them. They aren't worth our thoughts. Now come, Aidan. Name the true source of our Power."

  I hesitated. "Y Duwies?"

  "Och, yes, of course, the Goddess is the source of everything that exists. That's not what I meant. Most of the force behind our magic comes from within, from our own minds, our own life-forces, shaped into useful form by will and inner strength."

  "But I've seen you use potions for some of your spells," I argued. "Yes, and I've watched you work some of them standing barefoot on bare earth, too."

  "Of course. It would be the worst conceit to think ourselves the only source of magic. There's Power to be had in anything of nature, most surely in the immense life-force that is our world. Assuming," she added drily, "you have the skill and humility that lets you tap into that boundless force of Earth without burning out your mind. Remember that point, boy: wielding Power is intoxicating, but calling up too much Earth-force is suicide. One small, mortal magician can't fight the Earth Herself and survive."

  I had no intention of ever playing with anything so perilous. "But what happens if you rely only on your own inner strength? That could still be dangerous, couldn't it? I mean, if you got too tired."

  "Exactly. Draw out too much of your inner force, deplete your body's strength too far and . . ." She shrugged expressively. "Nobody ever said our Art was without its perils. A wielder of magic must never ever lose control if he would live. It's as simple as that."

  Did her warnings frighten me? Of course. Did they discourage me? Of course not! In the years that followed, I devoured knowledge as a wolf devours meat, learning the proper names of things, the languages of bird and beast, what it is the trees are singing when the breeze stirs them, and what news the wild winds bear. Many a night I went to my bed weary to the heart with the weight of learning—but so filled with wonder I couldn't sleep.

  Of course some spells came more easily than others. The charm for invisibility, for instance (or rather, for the illusion of invisibility), is a fairly simple one, once the mind is trained, a trick of will that lets the untrained glance slide blindly past you as though your flesh had genuinely turned to air. The charm for shape-shifting is another matter, since what you're trying to achieve isn't illusion but true physical change. It demands fine control of strength and will.

  Of course, in my young pride I thought nothing of that. After all, hadn't I watched my mother slide smoothly from woman to beast to bird till I burned with envy? But when I tried the spell, fire blazed down every nerve and muscle till I lost my hold on magic and fell helplessly to the ground, sobbing for breath.

  "It hurts!"

  "Of course it does." My mother's voice was annoyingly calm. "The greater spells always do. The trick of it is to ignore the pain."

  But try and try though I did, I couldn't manage that.

  "Ah well," my mother murmured as I gnawed my hp in frustration. "You'll learn with time. At least you know the way of the spell should you ever need it. Hey now, don't sulk! You're mastering enough other magics. Forget about this one for now."

  That, of course, was all I needed to hear to make me swear to master it. Aching with wounded pride, insecure as only a half-grown boy could be, I went off into the forest so she wouldn't see me fail. Watching a small herd of deer browsing unconcernedly, I set about trying to imitate their shapes till I was too sore and exhausted to think straight and sat down despondent in the middle of the field.

  And felt someone watching me. I looked sharply up from the crumpled, miserable heap into which I'd fallen to find a young stag staring down at me. In my overwrought state, I could have sworn he was mocking me. That was the final blow to my damaged pride, that even an animal should laugh at me— "I'll teach you!" I hissed. "You're coming home with me, stag—for dinner!"

  And I sent tne full surge of my will out to snare the animal mind and control it. For a moment, savage delight in my own magic blazed through me, overwhelming all else. As I pulled the stag forward with my mind, step by helpless step, I felt the cruel, horrible joy the strong can feel in abusing the weak.

 
But then something seemed to crumple within me. All at once I was flooded by the stag's emotion: terror, an agony of terror that burned from the wild, white-rimmed eyes, the bewildered, heartrending terror of an innocent creature caught by—

  By evil. Evil knowingly, wantonly done.

  "No! Duwies glân, no! What am I doing?" The sadistic joy fled. Shaking with self-disgust, I let my net of will fall. "Get out of here!" I shouted at the dazed stag.

  He didn't move.

  "Go on, get out of here!" I hurled pebbles, twigs, anything I could snatch from the forest floor. "Oh please, I'm sony . . . I didn't mean . . . go away . . ."

  He was never going to move. I had damaged his mind, and now I would have to kill him out of mercy, and bear the weight of his death forever. . . .

  But then, to my breathless relief, the stag shook himself, blinked, and bounded away, leaving behind him only the stench of his fear. Sobbing, I turned and ran for home. There my mother found me, dry-eyed by that point but still sick at heart, and sat by my side. Shaking, not daring to look her in the face, I told her what I'd done.

  There was a long silence. Bewildered, I glanced at her.

  "Aren't you going to punish me?"

  "No. Your own heart did that."

  "But . . ."

  "Think of the Threefold Law, Aidan. What does it say?"

  It was one of the first rules I had learned. "That all good a magician does is returned to him threefold. All evil, too. . . ." I remembered how I'd been flooded with the stag's terror, and buried my face in my hands. "Duwies glân. . . ."

  What if I had killed the stag?

  What if the stag had been a man? What if I had killed him? I groaned. "Am I damned?"