To Catch A Sorcerer

The old mage chanted in an odd, high-pitched language.

He knelt next to Gray, his maroon robe pooling on the ground. He blocked the light.

Straggles of his grey hair came loose as he leant over Gray.

‘My head.’ Gray pressed his shaking hand against his temple. It was swollen and sticky. Gray could barely think through the haze of pain.

‘It’s quite bad,’ the old mage said. ‘I’ve stemmed the worst of it.’

His words floated around Gray’s foggy mind, not quite making sense. Rough straw poked through the back of his sweater. He must have been lying on a pallet. Luminescent slime dribbled down from a mossy pipe overhead. The room was cold and dank and … and had a horizontal slit window and a single locked door?

There was another person there, too. Gray watched her groggily. A girl was crumpled in the far corner, her face hidden beneath her arm, her fair hair twisted in the northern style, her clothes threadbare.

Someone wailed in the distance, the words too slurred to distinguish, and then a sharp, ‘Quiet, convict,’ in Lismerian silenced them.

Gray’s fingers curled. He wasn’t great with small spaces. ‘Am I … are we in prison?’

‘Yes. Underneath Krydon Hall.’

Gray blinked at him, trying to understand his words.

‘You were mugged,’ he said. ‘Clochaint knows why.’

‘Mugged?’ Gray slowly glanced down at his pants and dirty apron and scuffed boots – the left one held together with string.

‘Your – your wallet,’ said Gray. ‘I had it. You forgot it. I meant – I meant to give it back … They must have seen it.’ Gray swallowed. ‘Shit, I was stupid.’

‘Not stupid,’ said the old mage. ‘Just not street smart.’

It had definitely been stupid. Like, stupid-should-now-be-Gray’s-middle-name stupid.

Gray let go of his head and attempted to sit.

The old mage leant forward to stop him, and his grey beard coiled neatly around his neck. This close, Gray could see the faintest traces of rune tattoos over his eyebrow and down his neck. He folded his long legs underneath him with a groan.

‘You don’t have my wand, do you kiddo? I checked your pockets, but …’

‘Uh – no. No, sorry.’

He quirked his mouth. ‘How much do you remember?’

Everything came back in a rush – the awesome tip (now gone), the forgetful old mage (now sitting next to Gray in a prison cell), and Barin preoccupied with whisky. Barin and Harriette, dressed in black, already ready for Alistair’s funeral at three pm.

‘Shit.’ Gray struggled against the old mage, his vision blackening, and his stomach churning. ‘What’s the time?’

The old mage pressed him back with surprising strength. ‘Calm down.’

‘I can’t – I can’t be here. I can’t be here. What’s the time?’

He stretched his neck to look out of the narrow window, his eyes searching for the sun, his arm still pressed down on Gray. ‘Perhaps midday. Maybe one.’

Gray stopped struggling, clamping a hand over his eyes.

‘Somewhere to be, kiddo? Left a pie in the oven at that tavern of yours?’

Gray glanced down at his apron with the words The Tipsy Stag emblazoned across the middle. Barin would be pissed Gray’d blatantly disobeyed him. If he kicked Gray out of home, he was up the creek.

Gray held back a curse.

‘You remember anything?’ the mage prompted.

‘A pale guy in an old-fashioned tunic.’ Gray clenched his jaw. Gods. A single guy had clocked him out with one hit to the head with his fist. The blow had been way too hard and fast for Gray’s embarrassing defence skills. ‘But, why am I in prison?’

‘The overzealousness of the king’s soldiers is why. I told them I saw the whole thing, that you were mugged by that hooligan.’

Cold seeped into Gray’s lungs. ‘Yes?’

‘And that you must have had my wallet and wand.’ He saw the expression on Gray’s face, and he put out a placating hand. ‘I didn’t tell them you had stolen it, but they jumped to conclusions and demanded to see your papers.’

Gray kept very still. ‘My papers?’

His papers might hold up to professional scrutiny.

They might not.

‘They,’ said the old mage, ‘then thought I was with you -‘

‘Shit.’ Gray curled his fingers hard into the straw of the pallet. ‘I can explain to them you don’t know me.’

The old mage adjusted his legs underneath him, his wrinkled hands holding himself steady against the damp floor, turning his back half to Gray.

‘Very kind,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know if it’ll help. When things really started to get out of control I unleashed wandless magic. Accidentally, of course, but none-the-less ...’

Gray’s eyes bulged. ‘Oh.’

The old mage bowed his head.

He must have been very powerful to pull it off in the first place, but it was kind of a case of the more powerful the wandless magic, the more likely you end up dead.

And, unless you were an Auguste, definitely illegal.

Gray inched away from him. ‘Do you do wandless magic often?’

‘No.’

‘You just did it on me,’ Gray said, slowly realising. ‘You healed …’

‘Yes.’

He turned his back to Gray. Gray tried to focus on breathing in and out. The walls were not moving in on him.

The mage glanced back at Gray reluctantly. ‘Hey. You all right?’

Gray meant to explain to him that he only wasn’t good with small spaces, and that he needed to be out by three pm, but instead out came a sound that sounded entirely too much like a gasp. Gray turned away, mortified, rolling to face the wall.

The mage eased Gray back, his hand on his shoulder. ‘Breathe.’

Gray struggled to inhale.

Why the fuck did he feel like he was about to die?

He needed to pull it together, he really-

‘Talk to me, kiddo. Tell me your name.’

‘Gray.’

‘Calm yourself.’

Gray knew what the kingdom did to unregistered mages. And he knew the sorcerer Wilde was waiting - waiting for any Griffin to return, to show up again. All it would take was one loose-lipped guard.

Gray wasn’t ready for him, yet.

Gray inhaled again.

‘There you go. Keep breathing.’ He clumsily patted Gray’s face. ‘I’m Branbright.’

Gray had heard his name before, but his thinking was too muddy to pinpoint where.

His skin grew hot and his stomach churned. ‘Uh-‘ His body shook and he was about to toss whatever he had left in his stomach. ‘Pardon.’

Gray staggered to his feet, and was sick in the corner, his hand pressed against the cold wall to prop himself up. He stayed facing the corner, growing cold, his dark hair clinging to the sweat on his face and neck.

‘Finished, kiddo?’

Gray nodded and slipped down the wall to sit. There was a lump in his back pocket. His notebook with his not-written farewell note for Alistair.

‘I need to be out by 3pm,’ Gray muttered.

‘You should lie down.’ He got Gray’s arm in a gentle hold.

Gray eyed the other prisoner curiously. ‘Who ..?’

‘She was in here when we arrived. She hasn’t moved.’

Raucous laughter sounded a way off outside the cell and then broke out into a chorus of a folk song Gray had never heard before.

‘The soldiers are having fun,’ Branbright said.

A strange sensation wafted through Gray’s mind. Soldiers? Guarding the prison?

‘Where are the Krydon guards?’ he said.

‘Not here, kiddo.’

He clasped his cool fingers around Gray’s wrist, right underneath where he wore his frayed leather band. Branbright’s fingernails were long, thick, and yellowed, and made Gray think of the Gallow’s Alley lullaby. His memory slowly clunked into place.

‘Did you say your name was Branbright?’ Gray said.

‘Ah. Yes.’

This man was dangerous. A sorcerer. He’d been involved in a civil war between halflings and humans twenty years ago, and had caused a load of damage to an ancient library and burial ground.

Gray shifted, so that some of his hair fell free from its tie, and partially hid his face.

‘Your pulse is very fast,’ said Branbright. ‘I’m a little worried.’

Gray slipped his hand free. ‘I’m fine.’

Branbright kept his gaze downcast, his withered mouth in a firm line.

‘I’ll speak to the soldiers,’ he said. ‘I might be able to get you some medicine.’

‘No,’ Gray said, ‘Not them.’

But he was too busy pressing his face against the window in the door to listen.

He shouted for the soldiers.

Gray screwed his eyes shut against the sound of the loud conversation and hoped that they knew enough about Branbright not to egg him into losing control of his magic.

The next thing Gray knew he was being propped up by a cursing soldier, and Gray choked on some foul-tasting tonic, and Branbright peered into his eyes, pulling them open. Then, strangely, Branbright checked Gray’s teeth and hair.

Gray brushed him away.

‘Well, sorcerer?’ demanded the soldier, his voice in Gray’s ear, dropping a vial to the ground with a clatter. ‘What is he?’

‘I can’t be sure …’ said Branbright.

‘Get sure.’

A second soldier hovered. ‘Look yourself, Pickering. We need to give Major answers and they better be correct, or else we’ll answer for it. The icy bastard.’

A third soldier came in.

Then, more. More. One was so damn young, he couldn’t have been any older than Alistair, and he had a huge tear in the knee of his trousers. One had a tattoo on his cheek of the mark from one of the most famous underworld gangs in Lismere.

And one stunk like cigarettes. His mud-crusted boots blurred in Gray’s periphery. His face swam into focus through Gray’s watery eyes.

This soldier tilted his head, looking at Gray. He stepped closer. ‘Hello, stray.’