Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  He felt surprisingly unbothered by that reflection.

  8

  Consulting the Master-Mage

  The Master-Mage, to Hope’s surprise, was happy to shift his schedule to accommodate her, even though she made it clear that what she wanted to see him about was a personal matter. She had not yet accepted his offer to work for the Institute.

  Patient closed his shop early and made the Threeday-evening trip up to Illene in time for their appointment. This time, she was waiting for him at the ferry wharf, and they took a cab to the university.

  The old mage greeted them with his usual face-creasing smile. Hope introduced Patient, simply by name, and the Master-Mage seated them at the small, round table where he had first encouraged Hope to take the job working for the Realmgold and her clever man. He joined then, and beamed from one to the other.

  “Am I to take it,” he said, “that this is your young man?”

  “Not exactly,” she said, at the same time as Patient said “Yes.”

  “Ah,” said the Master-Mage, losing some of his smile, which meant that he only looked kindly and cheerful rather than delighted. “I perceive there’s a story to be told.”

  “Yes,” said Hope. Her stomach roiled, not from the head injury this time, but from nervousness. “You see, when I cursed Faithful, there was splashback.”

  “Ah,” said the Master-Mage, losing his smile completely and keeping only the creases.

  “And it’s left me, well, it’s left me in much the same situation I intended to put Faithful in, but without, apparently, the self-limiting clause that if he lived up to his name he could regain his, um, function.”

  The Master-Mage said nothing in that way that encouraged further confession. Hope wondered if he’d taught it to Sincerity, who was, after all, his former student. As was Victory, in fact.

  “And now I’ve met Patient,” she continued. “And I like him. We’re friends. He’s nice-looking.” At this, Patient shifted uncomfortably and looked away, embarrassed. “I’m very fond of him. I like being with him, I feel safe and cared for. I… I think I’d like us to have a future together.” She took his hand, and he looked at her suddenly, like a dog who hears his master’s boots on the walk. “But what I don’t feel for him is, um…” She blushed ferociously.

  “I see,” said the Master-Mage, taking pity on her. “Mister Patient, can I ask, do you reciprocate all these sentiments that Hope has described?”

  “Yes, Master-Mage,” he said, sitting up straight. “And also, um, the ones that she…”

  “Quite. Well. Why didn’t you say anything before, my dear?” he asked Hope.

  “It… Well. Quite apart from being embarrassing in several different ways… You were so angry that I’d laid that curse.”

  Even in the absence of an actual smile, the Master-Mage’s face usually retained its cheerfulness. He had, after all, been holding it in that shape for more than 70 years. Watching it drain out of his features was rather like watching the façade of an historic building be wrecked by a storm.

  “You didn’t feel you could confide in me,” he said quietly.

  “No,” she said, even more quietly.

  “Hope,” he said, “I was genuinely angry with you when you made that mistake. I was upset that you’d employed your considerable gifts in such a trivial cause, and that I had to act harshly towards you, because such actions can’t be tolerated or excused. But I never thought that my anger would drive you away to that extent. You should have said something, Hope. If not then, at least later. It upsets me that you didn’t think you could trust me.”

  “Master-Mage, please. No. You were right to be angry. I was irresponsible and did something dangerous. And I should have known better than to be afraid of you.”

  “Yes,” he said, “you should.”

  “Master-Mage. Amiable,” she said, using his personal name as she took his wrinkled hand. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

  “Of course, Hope.” The smile made a tentative return to its accustomed position on his lips and in his eyes.

  “Well, then,” he said more briskly. “Having settled that, we need to get your problem dealt with. There’s an old student of mine that you should go and see. Works with bad oathbonds, mostly, so she knows a good bit about mindmagic as it relates to couples and their intimacy.” He rose, retrieved a small pad of paper and a pen from his desk, and scribbled a name and address. “If you say I sent you, she’ll fit you in.”

  “I imagine she’s busy,” said Hope, with a wry twist to her mouth.

  “She doesn’t lack for work,” he agreed. “Now. Was there anything else I could do for you? How’s the article coming on?”

  “Very slowly,” she admitted. “My head is still healing. I think it is getting better, but it’s a long process.”

  “Well, don’t you do too much,” said the old mage in his kindly voice. “Look after your talent. It’s a rare one, and we want to see you using it for many years to come. Take care of her,” he said to Patient, who nodded.

  “Thank you, Master-Mage,” said Hope, rising and touching his arm. Patient echoed her, and they left the neat office, favoured with the full, beaming smile of Hope’s elderly former mentor.

  The address he had given them was not far away, and they went and spoke to the mindhealer’s office manager. When she heard the Master-Mage’s name, she said, “Oh, yes, I’m sure Mindhealer Lily will fit you in somehow. Do you have a preference for time?”

  “Well,” said Patient, “I live in Redbridge, but I come up on Threeday evenings to see Hope. Would it be possible…?”

  “I’ll ask her,” said the little round woman, smiling at them from behind her spectacles. “You’ll get a letter in the next day or two.”

  “Thank you so much,” said Hope.

  “Can I ask a little about the circumstances?” she said, with a glance at Hope’s face.

  “Uh… I’d rather just talk about it to the mindhealer,” said Hope. She had had her fill of awkward conversations for the day.

  “Of course,” said the woman, professionally neutral. “If you just leave your address, or addresses, I suppose, we’ll send out those letters when we have something for you.”

  “She wonders if I hit you,” said Patient, when they got outside.

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you see her look at your bruise?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t… oh.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t hit you, and we don’t need to worry about what she thinks.”

  “Still,” said Hope. “I don’t like anyone to think that of you.”

  Patient had to close his shop early again to make the appointment time, and they had to catch a cab. “This is getting expensive,” he couldn’t help remarking.

  “Oh, money isn’t a problem,” said Hope.

  “It’s not?”

  “No. Even though I’m off work now, the Realmgold still pays me, it’s in the contract. I just got my license payment for the last half-season, too, for the farspeakers and farviewers.”

  “And it’s enough…?”

  “It’s plentifully adequate. I’m paying for the mindhealer, by the way.”

  “We don’t discuss that?” He was more amused than annoyed, but, if he was honest with himself, still a little annoyed.

  “We can discuss it if you like, but as it’s me who has the problem, it seems only right for me to be the one to pay. You’re losing business, closing the shop early, and paying for the ferry trip. That’s enough.”

  She was clearly not in the mood to negotiate on this particular point, so he sat back in the cab seat and fell silent. She reached over and squeezed his hand, and he smiled at her. She looked nervous.

  “Worried?” he asked.

  “Just not very keen on going over the whole business again.”

  “I understand that,” he said.

  That, of course, was exactly what she had to do at the beginning of the session. Mindhealer Lily, a tall, slender woman with
intelligent eyes and a calm manner, moved rapidly from conventional pleasantries to asking why they had come. Hope, holding Patient’s hand the while, recounted the full, and now practiced, story of the events leading up to the curse, the incident itself and its aftermath. She described how she and Dignified had attempted to use an improved version of the Master-Mage’s brain machine to induce feelings of desire in her, and how that had led to immediate distress.

  “And now,” she said, “I’ve met Patient, and… it’s become important to resolve this. For him. For us.”

  “Have you tried any form of intimacy together?” asked Lily. She wasn’t taking notes, just sitting with an open, relaxed posture on a chair at an angle to their two chairs.

  “I kissed him when I was drunk about a shift-cycle ago,” said Hope.

  “What happened?”

  “Oathconflict. I fell down and hit my head.” She touched her bruise.

  “How much of that do you attribute to your drunkenness?”

  “Hard to say. I don’t remember it.”

  “She was notably drunk,” put in Patient. “Suggested we get a hotel room together, which was unlike her.”

  “I suggested that?” said Hope, forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.

  “Yes. And then you kissed me, and fell down…” he decided not to mention how he’d failed to save her, “and started having a fit. It was more than just a drunken fall, I think. I don’t have healer’s training, of course, but I was a village warden, and we’re taught the basics.”

  “I see,” said Lily. “You haven’t tried kissing since?”

  “No, I’ve been afraid to,” said Hope.

  “Or any other form of intimacy?”

  They looked at each other. He nodded for her to speak.

  “Ah, for the last two shift-cycles Patient has slept over at my flat on Threeday night and we’ve spent Fourday together. We… cuddle.”

  “Do you sleep in the same bed, or separately?”

  “In the same bed. But… we just… cuddle.”

  “Cuddling is an excellent form of intimacy,” noted the mindhealer. “I see plenty of couples who’d benefit from more of it. How do you find that?” she asked Patient. “Frustrating?”

  “Well, obviously I, um…”

  “You’re aroused?”

  “Yes,” he said, flushing a little. “But it’s all right, really. Nice, in fact. I like being close to her, even if that’s all we do.”

  “Well, that in itself is an excellent sign of health in the relationship,” said Lily, with a small smile that reached her eyes. “You’re committed to her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Faithful to her?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said, mildly insulted, but he supposed these questions had to be asked.

  After several more questions dealing with their prior sexual experience (of which Patient had effectively none; he had always been shy around women), the mindhealer gave a sharp nod. “I’d like to try something, if you’re agreeable,” she said.

  They nodded cautiously.

  “Mister Patient, would you please kiss Mistress Hope?”

  They looked at each other, startled, worried. Hope’s jaw firmed, after a moment, and she nodded. He leaned over and very gently kissed her lips. They were soft, but unresponsive.

  “How do you feel?” Lily asked Hope.

  “All right. Nervous, but no oathconflict.”

  “Any desire?”

  Hope glanced quickly at Patient, an apologetic look. “No.”

  “Very well. Perhaps you would like to kiss her again, more thoroughly this time?”

  Patient looked at her with a frown.

  “I promise you,” said the mindhealer, “I don’t suggest this for my own enjoyment.”

  Startled into a snort of amusement, despite everything, he turned his gaze to Hope instead. A little awkwardly — after all, his experience of kissing had doubled in the previous few heartbeats — he lifted his hand to her beautiful face and, with his palm against her cheek, gently directed her lips to his.

  He began softly, tentatively, but was soon moving his lips across his beloved’s with barely-restrained passion. For her part, she joined in after the first few moments, responding to him, though without his enthusiasm. He broke the kiss eventually, and sat back, looking into her eyes. She gave him a little smile that lasted for a fraction of a heartbeat, and they turned their attention to the mindhealer.

  “How was that?” she said. “Did you feel anything, Hope?”

  “Sorry, no. I mean, it was… No.” A little shard of sharp ice seemed to jab into the back of each of Patient’s eyes at this confession.

  “But you also didn’t go into oathconflict. Interesting.”

  “What do you think it means?” asked Hope.

  “The other time, you were drunk, yes? Disinhibited.”

  “As disinhibited as a dockworker,” confirmed Patient, which earned him the tiniest of slaps on the arm.

  “You’re familiar, of course, as a Mage-Minor, with trancework,” the mindhealer went on.

  “Of course,” said Hope.

  “I’d like to try some, get you disinhibited, and then try the kiss again.”

  Again, they checked with each other by eye, and she nodded. “All right.”

  Patient watched in fascination as Lily unhurriedly cast a mindspell. It was clearly one she had cast many times, and Hope settled into the chair with a small sigh. Her face was relaxed, and she looked several years younger than her already young age.

  “Now, Mister Patient, if you please.”

  He leaned over and began the third kiss. This time, Hope began to return it almost immediately. He took it slowly and gently, and when she reached across and seized his arm to pull him in closer, he eased back and broke the contact.

  “Mmm,” said Hope.

  “Pleasant?” asked Lily.

  “Nice,” Hope replied, in the dreamy, blurry voice of the entranced.

  “All right,” said the mindhealer. “Good. Now, there are two ways we can go from here. Either I can lift the mindspell and we can try that again in your usual state of consciousness, and see if the effect continues, or, and this is the riskier course, we can see how far we can push things without triggering the oathconflict.”

  “I don’t want her hurt,” said Patient, surprising himself with his own firm tone.

  “It’s all right,” said Hope, still in that dreamy voice.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” said Patient, “I don’t know much about mindmagic. Is she competent to decide things like that while she’s in that state?”

  “Yes,” said both women.

  “Well,” he said, “all right.” He didn’t really agree, but Hope knew more than he did, and had more to lose. He leaned in again.

  This kiss started out warm and heated rapidly. This time, he was the one holding back, at least at first. Hope took hold of his bicep for stability and pressed her face hard against his. Their lips locked, then flexed in all directions, exploring. He forgot the mindhealer and focussed only on Hope.

  Her lips wrapped around his upper lip and sucked. Startled, he sucked her lower lip, at which she pressed forward urgently. Abruptly, she stiffened, and her eyes went wide. Her mouth tore away from his, and she began twitching, her eyes rolling back into her head.

  “Help her!” he yelled, meaning “get her on the ground where she can’t hurt herself,” but the mindhealer began another chant. Hope’s spasms eased, and as the chant continued, she slumped bonelessly and he struggled to hold her upright.

  Lily stood, walked over, and laid her hand on Hope’s head. She closed her eyes and concentrated, then opened them and said, “Hope.” She followed this with an Elvish word. Hope sighed, and opened her eyes, blinking rapidly.

  “What happened?” she muttered.

  “You triggered,” he said.

  “Curse it,” she said, clutching her head.

  “Headache?”

  “Yes. Nasty one.”

&
nbsp; “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault.” That was more generous than Patient was inclined to be, and he gave the mindhealer a small frown.

  “I’ll get you something for that,” said Lily. “Here.” She produced a small wood-and-bone talisman, which Hope glanced at, then held to her forehead.

  “You want some willow tea as well?”

  “Please.”

  While Lily brewed the tea on a small burner at the back of the office, Patient watched Hope with concern, holding her free hand. She looked up at him and gave a feeble smile.

  “That was a good kiss,” she said. “Right up until it wasn’t.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Stop apologising. My choice. I knew what would happen eventually. I’m surprised we got so far.”

  “Me too, actually. You seemed… passionate.”

  “Yes. Puts paid to one worry.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “Well,” she said, reluctantly, “I was a little afraid… just a little, mind you… that when I got rid of the curse, I might still not feel… passionate about you. Even though I like you so much.”

  “I see,” he said, after a moment.

  “Sorry. Stupid of me to worry.”

  “Not at all. I think that’s a very reasonable concern.” He knew his tone was stiff, insulted.

  “Patient,” she sighed, “not because of you. You’re wonderful. It’s just… I’ve only had one lover, and truth to tell, I didn’t really feel… he didn’t excite me that much, you know? I mean, I did… things with him, but he enjoyed it a lot more than I did.”

  “How old was this man?” Lily put in, from across the room.

  “Barely a man, really. Nineteen?”

  Lily gave a wry smile. “Nineteen-year-old men are typically very inadequate lovers. They’re self-absorbed and insensitive, more often than not, and don’t particularly care whether their partner has a good time, or know how to give them one.”