Page 1 of Seducing the Sorcerer
Chapter 1
Fenn Todd woke in a patch of dry grass at the edge of a ditch, his mouth foul from last night’s rot-gut. His head pounded. In fact, everything hurt. He badly needed a piss. He rolled onto his back, squinting through the dusty brown leaves of an oak to the sun already high in the sky. The tree was unfamiliar. So was the ditch.
Hungover and lost. Again.
He had sworn not to do this to himself. He had sworn a hundred times.
And yet, what did it matter?
Nobody would be wondering what had happened to him. Nobody would be waiting.
For an hour or two last night he’d fallen in with a group of old soldiers. One had known the Isle of Mandillo from before the war, and this bloke had bought Fenn drinks and a meal besides. But then the soldiers had gone back to their barracks and Fenn had carried on drinking alone until the evening had disintegrated.
He could smell himself: stale sweat, a trace of vomit, the stink of despair. His stomach lurched queasily, then growled. Soon, he’d be hungry. He fumbled in his pockets but there wasn’t even a crust. Must have been right maggoty not to save anything from supper. No money either. Not a copper. Aye, well. This was an expensive hangover.
Boots not stolen though. That was something.
A warbler sang, the liquid notes like needles in his skull, although it was oddly quiet apart from that. Maybe he was outside the city walls. Perhaps in the back end of some public pleasure garden. Gods, but it felt as if a smith had his head between hammer and anvil. Why didn’t these magicians do something useful for once and invent a booze a man could drink without regret?
If only he could go back to sleep and never wake. If only he need not face this day, or any day, ever again. But the longer he lay here, the harder it would be to get up. He should go into town, get a drink from the water cart, start the daily search for a job. He rolled on his side and stood up, grunting as his aching legs took his weight. His forty-sixth birthday had been and gone sometime recently, but he felt at least ninety.
Flat brown fields and wilting woods spread to the horizon. So, where was the town of Enno? He never stayed long in any one place, but he’d had no plans to leave it. Yesterday he’d had work helping unload emergency food supplies brought in from the capital and he’d planned to try his luck at the square again today. He peered the other way. More fields. No town. Well, that was just grand, wasn’t it? He was even more lost than usual.
Dimly, like a half-remembered dream, he had a recollection of walking; walking through the night. Taking swigs from a bottle and walking some more. But why?
Oh.
Aye. He’d seen a horse. A beauty. A bright bay with an arch to her neck and that joyous way of moving that made the world seem, for a moment, not such a vile place. She’d put him in mind of Carnelian, one of the horses he’d seen to on the estate on Mandillo, and he’d had the stupid sentimental idea that she must be some relation. He’d longed to admire her, to stroke her glossy flanks, handle her delicate head and have her nose his hands and blow her sweet breath into his neck. And he’d wanted it so much and so drunkenly he’d followed her out of town and along the royal highway.
He’d lost her when her rider put her to a canter down a side road, but he’d carried on, doggedly, in the way of drunks who will not leave something alone. And then, had he hitched a ride in a hay cart? Surely, cut as he’d been—and filthy and ragged besides—no one would have picked him up? And yet he had a vague memory of a conversation with some red-faced farmer and the jolting and humming of a crystal-powered cart.
Well, this place was no worse than any other except for the lack of water. He tried to moisten his lips but his tongue was like leather. The ditch was dry but for a small puddle of bright green ooze. Small flies skated across the surface.
He wasn’t that desperate. Not yet.
He pissed behind the tree and set off along the road at a shamble. A haze of dust lay over the sun, and the countryside seemed to hunch as if waiting for a blow. It was the third year of drought. People said it was sorcery. They said the court sorcerer, Morgrim, had stolen all the rain clouds away by magic. What benefit a hungry, bone-dry country could be to a bloke like Morgrim, Fenn could not imagine, unless it gave the sorcerer pleasure to see folk suffer. And the government did nothing to get rid of the bloke. Maybe they were too scared of him. Or they were in on it too. Aye, that would be it. They were all rotten at the top.
If Fenn could find a village it would likely have a water cart like the one at Enno. Because maybe they weren’t all rotten at the top. This new Queen Aramella had been carting in water to the hardest hit areas. Anyone could get a drink from those. She’d emptied the royal grain stores too. Probably because she was young. Give her a few years, she’d soon be as bad as the rest. People said Morgrim would force her into marriage, for all he was twice her age. Or was it that he wanted to depose her and take the throne for himself? Whichever, that would soon put paid to things like free water and cheap bread.
Ah! There—a white farmhouse, set in a stone-walled yard and surrounded by the green rows of a vegetable garden. Next to the garden stood a pen containing half a dozen black cows. Water. Food.
Fenn reached the farm lane, lined with a post and rail fence. A neat painted sign read “to Rolling-Hill Farm”. Daft, since the whole area was flat as a frying pan. Ah, but the question was whether he should risk it? Tempers were short because of the drought; the tempers of farmers were especially frazzled. He’d had dogs set on him at farms just for showing his face.
But there were no signs of a village and his body was screaming for water. He walked along the lane. Up near the yard some bean vines seemed to have been trampled. Happen a cow had got loose? Perhaps he could offer to fix a fence.
At the yard entrance, he paused, half-hidden behind the stone wall. The house, solid and square with a flat roof, was set at the back of the yard. To the left stood a barn. No horses in it, naturally, just the dull metal sheen of a crystal-powered plough, a carriage and a couple of velocipedes. There was an acrid niff in the air and to the right a group of men stood around the remains of a small bonfire. That was brave—or bloody stupid—considering the conditions. The men, all young, were examining a clump of charred sacking. One of them was poking it with a stick.
A group of lads could be bad news. Fenn never courted violence, but there was something about him that made a certain kind of young buck always want to have a go. They saw an opponent, a brute, someone they could test themselves against, and right annoying it was too. Fenn nearly backed out of sight, but one of the lads glanced up, saw him and gave an exclamation. The group turned.
Fenn had no hat to remove. He stepped forwards and cleared his throat. “Good day to you.” It came out as a croak.
A man from the back came forward and Fenn relaxed, slightly. Because the man was older, about Fenn’s own age, and he moved with an air of authority that said he was the farmer. He had greying hair and a shrewd, lined face. He took in Fenn’s ragged beard, filthy shirt and patched coat. “What do you want?”
“Looking for work.”
The farmer shook his head. “I’ve enough men.”
“Do anything. Weeding, digging. Minding cows, fixing fences.” There was no point, but Fenn added, anyway, “I’m good with horses. Used to be a groom.”
