The Magic Mines of Asharim

by Pauline M. Ross

  That made me laugh, more from relief than amusement. “What treasures did you have in mind?”

  “Wine!” There was amusement in his voice.

  “Then you will be disappointed. There is none here. The barrels are too heavy for the mules.”

  “Ah, that I understand. But there may be some in the cellars.” He spun round to face me, walking backwards, and again I found him impossible to read. The emptiness in his mind made him as smooth and featureless to me as the stone flags beneath our feet. I could make out the gentle burble of the flickers in his pockets, but from Xando himself there was nothing. It was as if I were blind.

  Shaking my head, I tried to clear my thoughts. I mustn’t let him unnerve me. He was only a man, after all, and this was not Mesanthia. He had no power over me.

  “I have seen everything in the stores,” I said. “There is no wine, only a kind of ale and some dreadful fruit concoction.”

  “No, not Chendria’s stores. I was thinking of the cellars around the town, in the houses. There may be wine tucked away in a forgotten corner somewhere. Have you been into any of them?”

  “No, that never crossed my mind. I cannot see—” It was bewildering. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would put wine in any of the houses, and if it had been forgotten, then most likely it would be undrinkable.

  He tilted his head to one side, birdlike. “Why so puzzled? You do know what this place is, I take it?”

  “It’s an old mining town,” I said curtly. His questions annoyed me, when I couldn’t guess his intent. “What else?”

  “It is a ghae ssharh. Do you understand what that is?”

  “It means a refuge.”

  “Of course, but a special kind. Like the Sraeh.”

  “The Tre’annatha homeland?” My head was spinning. What did that have to do with Twisted Rock?

  “The homeland, yes. It was – is – a refuge, a place designed to protect its inhabitants from the worst ravages of the Catastrophe.”

  “The Catastrophe?” My first thought was that he was crazy, but this place was strange, I could hardly deny it. As for the homeland – I had never been there, naturally, and the Tre’annatha themselves never spoke of it, but there were rumours.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to have this surreal conversation, not when I was so unsettled by him. Was he joking? Teasing me? Provoking me? Or simply trying to force me to admit to knowledge of these things? Better not to allow myself to be distracted.

  “There are some large houses on the next main street, the sort that might have wine cellars.”

  “Ah!” He beamed at me with an expression of pleasure that was impossible to misread. “Will you show me the way, if you please?”

  I led him through the town, the streets filled with sunshine, and we spent a pleasant hour exploring. There was no wine, but numerous other delights – fine furnishings, paintings and statuary, crate after crate of candles of excellent quality, and books. Whole rooms of books.

  Xando was like a child, exclaiming in delight at each new treasure. He puzzled me though. He could talk knowledgeably about some things – a painting, or some of the books – but he displayed a bizarre ignorance of others – furnishings or architecture. Once he got some basic numberwork wrong. I wondered a little about his education. Still, he was happy for me to enlighten him when my knowledge was greater than his, and he was agreeable company.

  Restful, too. Without the wash of his emotions constantly churning back and forth like waves on the beach, my mind was quiet, at ease. Perhaps that was why he seemed so childlike, for children’s emotions are muted and subdued, despite the external evidence of their intensity. When I was a child, my ability to detect emotions was muted too. Being with Xando was almost like being alone, with just the contented murmur of his flickers as background. Even though he was Tre’annatha, I felt at ease with him.

  When we gave up on the third house and re-emerged onto the street, he sighed. “Well, it was a nice idea.”

  I had a thought. “There is a wine merchant’s shop just round the corner.”

  His face lit up at once.

  “Don’t get too excited,” I said. “It’s locked.”

  “Ha! You have tried it, then.”

  Of course I had. I missed wine almost as much as he appeared to, and even though I had no expectation of finding anything drinkable, it would have been a small comfort to stand inside the shop, and perhaps look at the racks and labels and the merchant’s ledger, if it had survived.

  When we reached the shop, the metal grill protecting the door was still shut fast, with a large lock in the centre, bigger than my hand. Xando looked round at the windows, and tried the side gate, but I shook my head. “All locked and barred.”

  “No problem.” He grinned at me, and reached for one of the pockets on his coat.

  I jumped back, fear tearing through me. When a thrower reaches for a flicker, it’s as well to be out of range.

  “No cause for alarm,” he said gently, drawing out a flicker. “She is perfectly safe.”

  She? It unnerved me when anyone talked of them in almost human terms, as if they were in some sense just like us, instead of utterly alien. This one was exuding a chirpy, almost excited air, its colours shimmering so fast it seemed to be pulsing, almost like breathing.

  I edged backwards, tensed ready for flight. “Where are you going to throw it? Just so that I can keep out of the way.”

  “No throwing needed.” He lifted the thing to his face and crooned at it, very much as Kijana had done in the mine while extracting. Presumably the same techniques worked here, and it turned my stomach in the same way.

  Then, to my astonishment, he placed the flicker on the lock, where it vanished into the keyhole.

  “What is it doing?” I asked, inching forwards to see better.

  “You will see.” His tone was smug, and I was beginning to read his facial expressions a little.

  We waited. After a while, there was an audible clunk, and the flicker oozed out of the lock. Xando hastily scooped it up before it could fall, and pushed open the gate with a grin. The heavy wooden door it protected was also locked, but it yielded to the flicker exactly as the gate had. We were inside.

  The wine merchant’s shop was like none I’d ever seen before. It was more like a grand house, all marble and silk draperies and dried flowers artfully arranged in painted glass baskets suspended from the ceiling. Jade chains looped along one wall, with glass balls attached. The air hung still and perfumed, as if the owners and servants were resting somewhere, the house ready to spring to life at the setting sun.

  Several rooms led off a central atrium, but they were interconnected public rooms in the Khurmizzan style, decorated with exquisite taste, each designed to display a particular type of artwork. Visitors would enter the first, and then progress from room to room to admire the taste and wealth of the owner, sampling a different selection of food and drink in each. There was a marble room with statuary and bowl fountains, a room with lacquered furniture and ornaments, one with woven wall-hangings finer even than at Hurk Hranda and, to my amazement, one filled with clocks, a hundred clocks with a hundred different mechanisms, but all showing the same wrong hour. The final room was all gold and gemstones, a dazzling array.

  It was a fascinating place, and one I knew I would return to, but I couldn’t visualise it as a place to buy wine. My dealings with wine merchants involved gloomy dark-wood interiors and dusty cellars, the walls lined with racks of barrels. This was a place for showing off, not transacting business.

  But in a far corner of one room, Xando lifted a velvet curtain to reveal the door to the rest of the house, and this was quite different. Storerooms, a kitchen, pantries, a buttery, a back yard with chicken coops, and – more promisingly – a room with shelves, a table and chairs and a cupboard filled with long-stemmed glasses of many different styles. Wine glasses. A tasting room, perhaps.

  “Well, now we are getting somewhere,” Xando said.

  “The cel
lar must be nearby.”

  We set about trying every door we could find, but the first two sets of stairs we discovered led only to a roots cellar, still full of carrots and potatoes, with strings of onions hanging from poles, and a flour cellar, where the lines of barrels were disappointingly empty, just a few grainy specks inside to disclose their contents.

  But then another velvet curtain revealed a second locked and gated door. The flicker did her job again, and there was the stair we wanted, wide enough to feature a smooth central section for rolling barrels up and down. To one side, more chains with glass balls which glowed enough to light our way down.

  And there was the wine. It was locked away, of course, the cellar divided into cells, each with its metal grill, but Xando’s flicker gave us access. Rack after rack of barrels, thousands of them stacked to the ceiling. I stood, mesmerised, staring about me, wondering how long this had been locked away down here and whether any of it would be drinkable.

  Xando wandered from cell to cell, excitedly reading out the inscriptions on the barrels, which were in Helmonic script, of all things. Who used that any more? But whoever had once lived here preferred the old ways.

  “Look at this!” Xando’s head popped out from a distant cell. “Come and see what I have found.”

  Even from the far end of the cellar I could hear the excitement in his voice. I went, but before I was half way there, he emerged again waving something in each hand.

  “Can you believe it? Bottles!”

  “What do you mean – bottles?”

  “Bottles of wine!” he said impatiently. “Come on, we must try it.”

  He shot up the stairs clutching his bottles. I followed more slowly, unsure whether to be exasperated or amused. Wine in bottles? Who ever heard of such a thing? Undoubtedly it would turn out to be a scarce table oil or perfume, precious enough to justify storage with the wine.

  I found Xando in the tasting room, two tall wine glasses already set out waiting.

  “Which shall we try first? I cannot read the marks, so it is all guesswork. Shall I open this one first?”

  The bottles were of dark glass, concealing the contents. They were sealed with wax, but a metal loop protruded, and with a deft flick of the wrist, Xando lifted the whole top, loop, seal and a glass ball hidden beneath. After carefully wiping the lip with a fine linen cloth he found hanging from a hook, he poured a little liquid into each glass.

  It was indeed wine. A deep, ruby wine, full of body, the aroma tempting my nose even from several paces away.

  He sipped, then grinned at me, pushing a glass towards me. “Very nice. Try it.”

  I sat down opposite him, sniffing cautiously at the wine. “How long has this been here, do you think?”

  “Oh, since the moonfall, at least.”

  My mouth opened in disbelief. Then I couldn’t help laughing, he was so ridiculous. “No, seriously.”

  “I am perfectly serious.” He sounded offended.

  “Hardly. Five thousand years? You have to be joking.”

  He paused, his expression puzzled, the glass half way to his lips. Then he set it gently down on the table. “What did they teach you at the Academia about the Catastrophe?”

  “That the mages in their hubris changed the world and the heavens, but had the good sense to vanish themselves to avert the end of all things.”

  I spoke half in jest, but he didn’t laugh. “Vanish themselves? They chose to die so that the world could be saved. You should not be flippant about the sacrifice they made.”

  He sipped the wine, and set the glass down again. “It was the mages’ fault, it is true. But when they realised what they had done, they took steps to ensure that some remnant of civilisation survived. These refuges, for instance. Do you not recognise the magic here? They sheltered small populations through the worst of the Catastrophe, when all was chaos. Whenever there was a good season, crops could be harvested or beasts slaughtered and stored here. The power of magic preserved them for years, if need be, until the next time it was safe to venture out. Nothing decays here. Nothing rots or moulders, everything stays fresh and clean and palatable.” He tilted his head. “Did you not know?”

  I hadn’t. The Academia taught all the knowledge of civilisation, but I had never heard such a thing before. No book or lecture or casual discussion had ever mentioned these refuges. The mages were only spoken of as fools who pushed their magic too far and paid the price for it. A few scattered populations survived to rebuild, but more by chance than forethought. Or so I’d been taught.

  Yet it made sense. And it explained all the oddities of Twisted Rock: the constant warmth, the ever-flowing water at the bathhouse, the lack of dust and spiders’ webs. But was it possible that wine could be preserved so long, for thousands of years?

  Xando had tried it, and he had survived unscathed. Besides, what did I have to lose? Even if it poisoned me, perhaps that would be better than all this running and trying to hide. And there was no one left to mourn my passing.

  So I drank, and sighed with pleasure. However old it was, it tasted magnificent.

  Xando laughed, his face lighting up with glee. “Good, yes?”

  “Very good. But is it really pre-moonfall?”

  “Ah, well, it could be. If we could find the records and read them, we might have some idea of when this place was abandoned. Certainly these bottles never came here aback a mule.”

  I had to agree with that. We sat and drank and talked, or rather, Xando talked, drifting into High Mesanthian. I listened to his musical voice, soaking up his accent, his tales of home. He talked, and I could see in my mind the wide streets, the marble temples, the halls of justice, the Imperial Tower with its thousand windows, the palaces of gold with their painted domes and frescoes. He reminded me of the street vendors on every corner, selling slices of juicy fruit, warm from the sun, or pastry cones filled with hot shellfish in delicate sauces. I could almost smell the cooking smoke, and the incense from the temple processions. The singers’ high voices wafted through my mind like the summer breeze.

  And there was nothing else. For the first time in my life, I was burdened with no one’s emotions but my own. Xando’s mind was a blank to me, the murmur of the flickers was contented and no one else was near enough to register. It was blessedly peaceful.

  I was drawn to him, I couldn’t deny it, yet he was Tre’annatha. If I passed him in the street at Mesanthia I would have to bow with full deference, and keep my eyes averted. Nor could I speak unless he addressed me first and would never, ever be permitted to drink wine with him or eat with him or touch him. Yet here he was, treating me as if I were his equal. As if I were a friend. It was strange to be so at ease with an enemy.

  We drank half the bottle, then took the rest back to share with Petreon over evening table. On the way, we passed a toymaker’s shop and Xando handed me the bottles and dashed inside. He emerged after a while with a square box and some wooden animals.

  “Dragon stones,” he said, grinning broadly, waggling the box. “You play, of course.” It was a statement, not a question. He waved the animals in his other hand. “And look at these – whales and dragons and dolphins and – well, I have no idea what some of them are.”

  “Sea creatures?”

  “Yes. Look, this one is a crab. Anyone would think this place was by the sea.”

  “By the—?” And then I realised. This place might be in the arms of the mountains now, but the Catastrophe had moved things around somewhat. I’d seen maps of the world before moonfall, with its thousands upon thousands of islands. Perhaps this had been on one of them? I remembered my favourite fountain, adorned with whales and dragons, and the shells adorning the bathhouse. Yes, the sea must have been familiar to the artists.

  When we returned to the Main House, Xando distributed the toys to the children, who accepted them in wide-eyed silence. They seldom spoke, I realised. The younger ones chatted together sometimes in low tones, but the older ones hardly at all. And the babies never crie
d.

  Petreon fell upon the wine with joy. He banged about in cupboards for two poor quality glasses, then, at Xando’s insistence, brought a third. I thought it would be for Chendria, and could hardly contain my delight when Xando filled it and pushed it across to me with a smile. I felt Chendria’s annoyance from the other end of the room, but she was too in awe of Xando to protest. Her ire was a constant low rumble, filling her mind but not strong enough to disturb me much.

  As soon as the table was cleared after the meal, Xando brought out the box of dragon stones and laid them out in a four winds formation. Grief washed over me like a spring rainstorm, sharp and cold. Perhaps the memories would never entirely leave me, but I’d hoped distance would ease the pain. Not so. The least thing could trigger a fresh onslaught. Dragon stones. So many happy hours I’d passed in that way. Perhaps I would never be able to play again without aching for my lost family.

  To my relief, Xando invited Petreon to make the first play. I brought them a dish of sweetmeats, then turned to leave.

  “Stay, Gracious Lady.” His face was turned up to mine, golden in the moonbright evening. “It would please me greatly if you would favour us with your company.”

  It was the language that drew me, the sound of home, his accent holding just a hint of the harmonious tones of his Tre’annatha heritage. Their own tongue was a pleasing, musical affair, like birdsong, although they rarely used it in public.

  I sat, and he smiled at me again, pushing my half-empty wine glass within reach. Without seeing into his mind I couldn’t be sure, but my instincts told me that his words were sincere.

  “I thank you, Lady. And perhaps you would honour me with a game later? I should like to learn from you.”

  I nodded noncommittally, and watched them play. It wasn’t much of a contest. Petreon played competently, but with no flair and without recognition of Xando’s more subtle moves. Before long, Xando began to revert to simpler strategies that would make the game seem closer and last longer. That was standard courtesy to a weaker player, and took skill to conceal.