Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  She turned her mind from the uncomfortable silence and focused on making sure her power was safely buried deep inside of her. It was something she had figured out long ago how to do, out of necessity. She had promised her Pa that she wouldn’t use it, especially not where other people might notice. But she had been so scared when the bullets started flying she hadn’t been able to stop herself. She didn’t think she had done anything that anyone else could have seen. That nice stranger, Mr. Vendine, hadn’t acted like he’d noticed anything unusual. She wished she could either freely use her power or make it go away; having it and wanting to use it while knowing how wrong and dangerous it was made her feel torn in two sometimes. She could have used it to save Blake if she had been with him that day; that wouldn’t have been wrong, would it? Did magic always have to be evil?

  What was evil were the dreams she and a lot of other people had been having since Mr. Carden started paying men to dig up that ore for the scientists. Only they weren’t dreams; she was awake when the shadows came to her, whispering harsh-sounding words she didn’t understand, probing with cold fingers into the most private places of her mind and body, freezing her heart and lungs with terror as she lay staring into the dark of her room, unable to move or even to scream. Mr. Carden said his mining had nothing to do with it, but everyone knew that was bullshit. If it was something scientists wanted that was causing the terrors, why wasn’t science considered as evil as magic was? It just didn’t seem fair, somehow.

  When they got to the ranch house, Dobay rode out to check on some water tanks and Lainie took Mala to the stable. There, she tended the mare and gave her fresh water and feed, then took her purchases from the saddlebags and went to the kitchen door. She stuck her head under the pump there and pumped water, cold from under the ground, over her head, rinsing away the dust and sweat of the day.

  Feeling a little refreshed, she went to the workshed and found her father. “Here’s your nails, Pa.” She set the paper sack down on the bench.

  Burrett Banfrey didn’t look up from the harness he was mending. “Didn’t think it would take you so long.”

  “It’s hot, I was riding slow…” Now that she was safe at home, the tension inside of her finally burst in a flood of fear and relief. “Pa, there was another gunfight in town. I almost got caught in it.”

  “Another one? Who started it this time?”

  “Gobby. Who else?”

  “Damned fool. If he ever sets foot on my land again…”

  “I know, Pa. I told him. That’s how the fight started, someone else was telling him the same thing, and he didn’t like it. But it ended fast, and I’m okay.” She turned to leave the workshed. He hadn’t asked; she prayed he wasn’t going to ask. She would get away this time without having to lie to him or else get in trouble.

  “So what’d you do when the lead started flying?” Burrett asked.

  She stopped. Damn. She should have known he would ask. “I ducked behind a barrel. Prayed real hard.”

  “That all?”

  He knew. Somehow, he knew, and there was no point in trying to deny it. She sighed, dreading the argument that was sure to come. “I used magic to keep the bullets away.”

  Burrett slammed the awl he was using down onto the work table. “Dammit, Lainie, you’re gonna get yourself hanged one of these days, if anyone ever catches on to what you can do!”

  “I might have gotten killed anyway! If –” She caught herself, questioning the wisdom of saying what she was about to say. Well, she was already in for it anyway, so she might as well speak her mind. “If I’d been with Blake that day, I could have saved him.”

  Her father’s face crumpled with grief. “By all the gods, girl, I know you miss him, but I miss him more than you’ll ever know! And I’m glad you weren’t with him! You couldn’t have saved him, and if you tried you’d have just gotten yourself killed as well.”

  “But –” Lainie broke off. She thought of her brother; older, bigger, stronger than her, he had always been the one to protect her. But she had a power he never could have matched. “I could have protected him.”

  Burrett sighed, his shoulders slumping. “Maybe you could have, baby girl. Maybe you could have. But even if it meant we would still have Blake with us, don’t you ever talk about wanting to be like them – cruel, unnatural creatures that got no heart and no soul. Wizards just plain ain’t human. They’s even worse than the blueskins. To think of you becoming like that breaks my heart as bad as losing Blake, as bad as if you died too. Maybe even worse. Don’t do it, Lainie.”

  “I know, Pa. I know. But…” She thought of how good, how right, it felt to use her power. How much good she could do with it. Sometimes, even though she knew she shouldn’t, even though she didn’t really know what she was doing, she would let a little bit of it out, if she was doing a chore out on the ranch to make it easier, or just to enjoy the feel of it. But everyone said wizards were evil, wrong, unnatural. Was she right, or were they? If using her magic felt too good, might she get carried away and become evil herself? “Pa, because I got wizardly power, does that mean I also got no heart and no soul? That I’m not human?” She had never asked that before, and she waited, scared, for his answer.

  Burrett came over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. This was as close as he ever came to hugging her. “No, baby girl, that ain’t what it means. It’s when you decide to trade everything you are and everything you love for the sake of power that you become like that. You may think you can hold on to your own self and use your power at the same time, but you can’t. Sooner or later, it forces you to make a choice. And the ones who choose the power, who choose to become wizards, that’s when they lose everything else. The only way to make sure that don’t happen is to never use it, to act like it never existed.”

  He always sounded like he knew of what he spoke when he talked about wizards. He had come to the Wildings from Granadaia when he was twelve, so he had lived under the rule of the wizards, but it seemed like his knowing went deeper than that. Like it was personal. Lainie wanted to ask why that was, but her father always made it very clear that he didn’t care to discuss his old life in Granadaia. “We got it good here,” he always said. “Land of our own, a home no one can take away from us, good herds, and a good payout every year after the drive. There’s no point in thinking on the bad times.”

  Now, she didn’t want to argue with him or upset him any more than he already was, so she just said what she knew he wanted to hear. “Don’t worry, Pa. I don’t want to be like them.” And it was true, no matter how bad she wanted to use her power.

  He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Don’t you ever even start down that road, baby girl. That’s the safest way.”

  He turned back to his task, and Lainie left the workshed. Halfway to the house, she realized she hadn’t said anything to her Pa about Mr. Vendine. It was just as well; her Pa had enough on his mind without worrying about her walking about with handsome strangers, no matter how helpful they were. What was Mr. Vendine doing in Bitterbush Springs, anyway? And how long would he be in town? He didn’t strike her as being a no-good drifter like the fellows coming in to mine for Carden; he probably had better places to go and more interesting things to do than hang around here. Lainie sighed; she would probably never know.

  3

  SILAS WALKED INTO the Bootjack around noon the next day. It was less crowded than the Rusty Widow had been the afternoon before; most of the men who frequented it were probably working right then. Mercifully, no one was playing the large hammerbox that stood in the corner. As was his habit, Silas quickly checked for the presence of power or shields, and found none besides the occasional tiny, useless remnant passed down from a distant mage ancestor.

  As he stood in the doorway taking the lay of the land, he caught a number of curious stares directed his way. He had helped a rancher’s daughter the day before, but he was known to be staying at a boarding house that catered to miners and had surely been seen going into or comi
ng out of the Rusty Widow. Everyone would be wondering what side he was on; he hoped he could tread the middle ground well enough to avoid any unnecessary fights while he took care of the business that had brought him here.

  “Hey, stranger!” someone called to him. A wiry, red-haired man sitting at a table with three other men waved at him. He recognized the fellow as Dinsin, the man who had tackled Gobby the day before. He bore an impressive split lip and bruised jaw, but otherwise seemed undamaged. “You play cards, stranger?” Dinsin asked.

  Silas grinned. “Depends on how much you feel like losing.” Low chuckles answered this, and he pulled out a chair and sat down. A man with a fat cigar clenched in his teeth asked, “Do you mind me smoking?”

  Normally, Silas loathed the smell of tobacco, but, though the rules of card courtesy dictated there be no smoking at a card game if any of the players objected, he was too aware that he was a stranger in town and treading the thin edge of neutrality in the town feud to make himself into discommodious company. “Go on as you were,” he said.

  The man with the cigar gathered up the cards that were scattered on the table, shuffled them, and started dealing them out. “We play pretty small,” the dealer said. “Not like the games over at the Rusty Widow, eh?” He raised a bushy eyebrow at Silas.

  “I don’t know,” Silas said. “I didn’t play. Just had a beer and some supper. Asked a few questions. When a man rides into town and finds himself in the middle of a gunfight, he’s going to be curious.”

  The dealer finished his task, and all five men at the table picked up their hands. Silas found himself in possession of a pretty decent hand, maybe even a winner. He frowned to hide the fact that he was pleased, and started making a show of trying to arrange his cards in satisfactory groups of three.

  “Also saw that you’re staying at Mundy’s,” said a man with a big mustache with curled and waxed points. Winnard, it was; the first man to be shot in the fight the day before. His right arm was in a sling, but otherwise he too seemed well enough.

  “Saloons are too noisy, and I saw the hotel’s still under construction. Is there another boarding house in town?”

  “Well, no, there isn’t,” Winnard admitted.

  A house lady in orange satin and white lace brought over a tray of tankards and stayed to watch the game, flirt, and offer refills when the drinks ran dry. Silas and the other players spent the next few minutes drinking their beer, studying their cards, and plotting their strategies. The beer was better than that stuff he’d been served at the Rusty Widow; maybe he was judged deserving of better beer and friendlier treatment here at the Bootjack because he had helped Miss Banfrey. Her wide eyes and shy smile came into his mind again, along with the memory of the telling-down and rude gesture she had given Gobby. An appealing mix of sweet and spirited, that girl was.

  “Place your bets,” the dealer said, and Silas cleared his mind to concentrate on the card game. The players began tossing coins onto a tin plate in the middle of the table, and Silas added his wager of two drinas. Given the current state of his funds, he was glad the stakes were small.

  Once all the bets were in, the players laid down their first threes. Silas played his second-best card, the Star Mage, but lost the first round. Dinsin, the winner, took a portion of his winnings from the plate, leaving the rest of the money as his next bet, and the other players adjusted their wagers. Silas reduced his bet to one drina five pennies, and picked out another three-card combination from the cards in his hand. He was still holding the Moon Dragon, one of the highest-ranking cards, but he would save it for later, until the other players had played their best cards. Instead, this round he played three other strong cards, the Moon Queen, the Air Demon, and the Fire Crone.

  And lost again.

  “Well, gentlemen,” he said in the lull after that round while the next bets and plays were being considered, “I can tell you I didn’t come here to choose sides in your feud. I’m just passing through, looking for someone who I heard was over this way. I just couldn’t help but be a little curious about why people in this town are trying to kill each other.”

  “So’d the fellas over at the Widow tell you what a bunch of greedy bastards us ranch folk are for wantin’ a share of the money for this ore they’re digging up on our land?” Dinsin asked.

  “They mentioned it. I don’t think what you fellas want is so unreasonable, though it didn’t seem the time and place to say so.”

  “Unreasonable, damn!” Winnard exclaimed. “You know what it does when they dig that stuff up? Poisons the water for ten measures all around, and ruins the grass. Not to mention the holes they leave. I lost five sheep in those holes in just the last two months.”

  “That’s ’cause sheep are damn stupid,” Dinsin said. “I’ve only lost one steer down a miner’s pit in the last two months. Prob’ly worth twenty of those sheep, though.”

  “Used to be the cattlemen and the sheep growers who hated each other,” the dealer said to Silas. “If the miners done one good thing, it’s put an end to that fight. For the most part.”

  Silas placed his bet. High, because he had a straight suit to play this round – Air Warrior, Air Merchant, and Air Hunter. The others placed their bets, then the cards were laid down. Silas lost again. Winnard grinned as he collected his winnings from the plate.

  “An’ then there’s the night terrors,” said the fifth man, taking up the conversation again between rounds. He was a tall, thin fellow with strings of gray hair combed across his bald scalp. “People waking up in the night bein’ strangled or crushed, or the breath bein’ sucked right out of them, or bein’ frozed near to death. Feels like a real person there, though they can’t see nothin’ but shadows. Doesn’t happen to everyone, but enough that we know they ain’t making it up.”

  “My wife says she was woken up one night by one of ’em, er, seeming to have its way with her,” the dealer said in a hushed voice. “Begging your pardon, mentioning her like that, but she’s not the only one, I’ve heard.”

  “Now, Holus, you aren’t trying to scare our stranger with those ghost stories, are you?”

  Silas looked up at the sound of the deep, genial voice. Sure enough, Carden was standing there, his black suit sharp and immaculate, a grin across his handsome, hearty face that didn’t quite touch the hard look in his eyes. Quickly, without letting his own shield down too much, Silas checked him for power or shields, and found nothing.

  “Cat killed a rat an’ dragged it in,” the thin, balding man muttered under his breath. Then he said out loud to Carden, “Holus ain’t saying nothin’ but the truth, an’ neither am I. Been all kinds of strange and terrible things going on, an’ most folks can’t help noticing it started right after you started paying big money for that ore that you won’t tell no one what it is.”

  “Ranchers tend to be a superstitious bunch,” Carden said to Silas. “Of course, there’s all those blueskins holed up in the hills and mountains. They’ve got a powerful form of magic, and everyone knows how much they hate the Granadaians who’ve come and taken over their land.”

  “I always thought they don’t care what we do, as long as we leave them alone an’ keep to the flatlands,” Winnard said. “No one here goes up into the hills and mountains, so they shouldn’t have any complaints.”

  “What makes you think they don’t care?” Carden asked. “And think of the things they could do with that magic they have. Some say they’re even stronger than the Granadaian wizards.”

  The barkeep, a burly man in shirtsleeves, walked over. “No one here really cares what you think, Carden. You want to buy a drink an’ shut up while you drink it, fine. You want to stand around blathering your opinions, go across the street where they’re fool enough to listen to you.”

  Silence dropped into the saloon like a stone. A few men’s hands moved furtively towards their guns. The barkeep crossed his massive arms across his chest and stared, unblinking, at Carden. Silas held his breath and braced himself for a fight.


  Finally Carden tipped his hat and smiled. “I won’t impose my presence any longer on folk who find it unpleasant. Good day to you.”

  He left, and the tension slowly bled from the room as guns slid back into holsters and conversation resumed. Silas played the last four rounds of the card game without even trying to win, wasting his Moon Dragon on a combo with the Water Harlot and the Fire Death.

  After the game, he left the saloon and walked over to the stable to check on Abenar. Ore that was being sold to foreign scientists, he thought, and strange apparitions that weren’t just one person’s imaginings. Could they be connected to the dark, alien power he had sensed? And Carden, who was profiting from the ore, was trying to deflect suspicions about it onto the local blueskins. The few A’ayimat Silas had encountered in the last five years had seemed to prefer to ignore the settlers as long as the settlers stayed out of their territories, as defined in the Compact that had been established thirty years ago. What reason would the local clans have to work dark and frightening magic on the settlers here? Or was it a rogue mage causing the night terrors, to disrupt Carden’s mining operation?

  Silas was on to something big. He knew it; he knew that feeling of excitement that danced inside of him and ran up his spine. For his next step, he would take another look at the one person with magical talent he had found in this town, to see if she could shed any light on those strange apparitions – and to bring up the subject of the difficult decision she was going to have to make.

  THE SECOND MORNING after the shootout, Lainie tied Mala to a post outside the mercantile and looked at the list she had written on a scrap of paper. It contained five or six things her father had meant to tell her to get the other day but had forgotten. This wasn’t the first time he had done that; ever since Blake’s death, he had been distracted and forgetful.