Page 65 of Seducing the Sorcerer
“I’m wet. It’s windy.”
“Aye.” Fenn had not left off scanning the sea and the ground. He checked behind them as well, just in case the thing had circled around through the sea. Morgrim said it couldn’t think, but maybe it was cunning enough for a trick like that. In a way, Fenn hoped it was coming after them, because then at least he’d know where it was. What if it was lurking in the ruined tower?
“You know where young Jasper was in all that?” Fenn asked.
“No. Gatehouse, probably.”
“Aye. Hopefully. God’s balls. You really have to go back?”
“Yes.”
“At least go somewhere else in the town. An inn or whatever. Tower ain’t safe anyway. Took a lot of hits. Won’t be weatherproof.”
“It repairs itself.”
“It...what?”
“Yes. Handy.”
Morgrim’s voice held a weariness that Fenn didn’t like. Maybe he’d been hit harder than he was letting on. And that wind felt icy when all a person’s clothes were wet. Better keep Morgrim talking.
“Handy?” Fenn repeated. “That what you call it? Blame great marvel more like.”
“Yes.”
“How does that work, then?”
“It’s old magic. Built in with the stones.”
“That what the name means? The Unket Tower? That it builds itself?”
“Unket’s just an old dialect word. It means eerie, unnatural.” Morgrim sounded more normal already. “It has its own ideas about what rooms you should have and where the windows and doors should be and so on. And sometimes it changes.”
“You wake up one morning and the door ain’t where you left it? Aye, I’d call that eerie.”
“You get used to it.”
“Place is bloody swarming with magic, ain’t it?”
“Yes. I love it. Even if I could leave, I wouldn’t.”
Morgrim’s voice was so much stronger that Fenn found himself saying, “Look, you want to tell me what happened now? With this river hex thing. Why couldn’t you magic it away? Hit it with a lightning bolt or whatever it is you do?”
There was another long pause.
“Couldn’t get the trick of it,” Morgrim said, finally, in the small quenched voice of a boy admitting to breaking a window.
Fenn remembered him using a similar phrase about the balefire on Mandillo. Aye, and Morgrim still felt guilty about that. Clearly Morgrim’s magic did not always happen in an instant. Time to change the subject.
“Think it’s safe to go back yet?” Fenn asked.
“If it’s coming for me, we should go from here soon anyway.”
“Fair point. Wait! What’s that? Look.”
A white thing was moving on the headland. The hex. From this distance it seemed weak and inconsequential, like a thread waving in the breeze. It must have slithered down the tower rock, crossed the narrow channel of sea at the bottom and made it up the cliff on the other side. It was still trying to get to Morgrim. Fenn thanked his stars he hadn’t tried to hide somewhere in the city and led the blame thing all through people’s parlours.
“We should go,” Fenn said.
