The Magic Mines of Asharim

by Pauline M. Ross

  Or so it seemed. Beneath the surface was a roiling mass of emotions. Fear, mostly. A great surge of it as I walked into the room. I grabbed Xando’s hand, and it went away. It was blissful to have that relief, to be able to shut it out entirely.

  Once when I was a child, one of the servants had been afflicted with some creeping illness that consumed her with pain. Day by day it grew, eating away at her like a fire in her belly, devouring her from within. At the end, she took to her bed, but her howling disturbed the other servants, and my father, in desperation, sent for a healer. He produced some kind of powder, like ground up chalk, and mixed it with water, forcing the poor woman to drink it. Within moments her face cleared. The pain was gone. She slipped into sleep, and a little while afterwards into a peaceful death, but I never forgot her face, the way the deep furrows on her forehead uncreased themselves, and she seemed to light up inside as the pain vanished.

  That was how it was when I touched Xando. The ocean of churning emotions that tossed me about so helplessly were gone. In its place, just Xando’s quiet affection.

  Xando spooned porridge into a bowl, while I collected my usual plate of fruit. There was rice this morning, too, fried with vegetables and squid, so I had some of that, too. We sat down beside Petreon, who said nothing, as usual, stolidly chewing his bread and cheese. No fear emanated from him, at least.

  As I looked around, I realised that nothing was normal about this day. The carriers, who gravitated to Petreon as a rule, were at the far end of the table today. Chendria’s voice was silent for once. And when I looked down the room at the extractors, their eyes slid away from me and fear boiled up in them again. Chendria had called me a witch, but that suspicion was reinforced a thousandfold now. Those with small, limited connections had a superstitious fear of those with more spectacular abilities.

  Yet everyone had a connection of some sort. Many would not even be aware of it, and few could walk through fire, perhaps, but the stablehand we’d kept at Hurk Hranda had had an almost mystical connection with the horses in his charge. One of the gardeners there always knew the coming weather. When there were clouds in the sky, a servant at Mesanthia pulled them over our villa each afternoon to shade us from the sun. If only he could have made it rain, too. But even a small connection could be useful, a source of pride to its owner.

  Work began on the burned-out house, hampered by steadily falling rain. Xando and I went to watch, although we kept a respectful distance and no one invited either of us to help. The two small bodies, wrapped in sheets, were brought out first and taken away by a wailing group of women.

  Then those left turned their attention to salvaging anything left undamaged. There was not much: clothing and linens, smoke-blackened but perhaps they could be cleaned up; some pots from the kitchen. Very little else. The furniture was gone beyond repair, the windows shattered, the roof wide open to one side. The rain washed through the house and out again in a soot-filled river, swirling across the square and into the drainage channel.

  Petreon joined us, arms folded, watching in silence.

  “What is the custom here?” I asked him. “Burial, or burning? Or will the bodies be left for the birds, as they do in the hill country?”

  He grunted.

  “Whatever it is,” I added hastily, “I shall keep out of the way.”

  He chewed his lip, and for a moment I thought he wouldn’t answer me at all. “Not invited. None of us are. They go to the mine. The pool. Just the mother and close friends.”

  “The pool? You mean…?”

  He grunted again. By the One, that was a strange thing to do. “What about the adults? If one of them dies?”

  “Same.” He shrugged. “Easier. And… feeds the bloom. Helps with the flickers. Always a good haul afterwards.”

  Xando muttered some Tre’annatha words under his breath. He took my hand again, and I felt his shock, no, more than that, outrage. Yes, it was an outrageous thing to do, to toss the bodies into the pool to feed the flickers.

  At that moment, there was a crash followed by shrieks. An internal wall had collapsed in the ruined house.

  “How long will it take before the Mine Office gets people here to rebuild?” I asked Petreon. “Or maybe they won’t bother?”

  “Five years. Maybe ten.”

  “So long! There will be little left standing by then.”

  He snorted, his sign of amusement. “Still standing. Ready for rebuilding then.” Another snort.

  It was Xando who explained. “This place is magic, Allandra. I expect the buildings are all self-repairing.”

  “What? They mend themselves?”

  “Walls do,” Petreon said. “Clean themselves, repair themselves. Just need new doors. Glass. Furniture.”

  I was speechless.

  ~~~~~

  Xando and I spent the day working with the flickers. They were upset by the disruption, and perhaps by the distress they detected in us. We sat at opposite sides of our courtyard, each of us in an alcove sheltered from the rain, talking or humming to one or other flicker. Soothing one seemed to help soothe the others, so they all gradually calmed down. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, there was a burst of some intense emotion that flooded all of them at once. At first I couldn’t work out what it was, and Xando was puzzled too.

  “I have never known them react like that before.” His face was creased with worry.

  I remembered the outburst when I’d lied in the mine, but this wasn’t like that. It was more like exultation. “I think it must be the pool. The two boys have been given to the pool. That’s my guess.”

  “Hmm. Well, there is no need for them to be so pleased about it,” Xando said. “It is a tragedy for us, after all.”

  ~~~~~

  It was Petreon’s turn to be with me that evening, and to my surprise he brought wine with him, and wanted to sit and drink before going upstairs. I silently fetched glasses. He had always wanted to get on with it before, and this sudden change made me nervous.

  He poured for both of us, but after one sip I put my glass down. I’d already had enough and I wanted to keep my head clear for whatever it was he wanted to talk about. He was never a willing talker, so I let him be, waiting until he was ready. He drank, and refilled his glass and drank again, and still he said nothing.

  I kept silent. That was a skill I’d learned from my father many years ago.

  Eventually my patience was rewarded. He refilled his glass once more, but this time he set it down on the table without drinking.

  “You in love with him?”

  Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t that. “Xando? No, not at all.”

  “Because – thought you disliked him. Quite a lot. Now you’re close as cousins.”

  I thought of my own cousins, long since left behind in Mesanthia, and not thought about much, even then. Wherever Petreon came from, families must be different from mine.

  How to explain my change of heart? “He’s Tre’annatha. I’m Akk’ashara. It makes us natural enemies. I dislike Tre’annatha as you and Chendria dislike Akk’ashara.” That brought a snort of amused understanding from him. “But once I got to know him better, I realised he’s no enemy to me.”

  “And he’s good, I suppose. In bed. Virile.”

  He almost spat the word, there was so much contempt behind it.

  It was all I could do not to laugh. He could hardly be more wrong. Xando might be better looking, I supposed, and he had charming manners and a lovely smile, but virility was not one of his accomplishments.

  “No, he’s nothing at all in bed.” Petreon snorted again. “I enjoy his company, but the sex? It’s better with you.”

  “Then why are you leaving me for him?” he hissed, leaning forward so that his face was a handspan away from me. His anger boiled up inside him, and I had to catch my breath before I could reply.

  “I’m only leaving because of the flickers. I don’t want to go.”

  A flash of something – pleasure? Or hope, perhaps. That wou
ldn’t do.

  “The flicker chose me. I had no say in the matter, but I have to go.”

  “But you’re glad. They’re always glad. None of them want to stay here. They all hate me.”

  “The previous companion-servants? I’m sure it has nothing to do with you, Petreon.”

  “I’m ugly. They can’t wait to leave. They sign up for three years, but they’re sick of me after one. Can’t wait to get away. The last one—” His face twisted in a rictus of distaste. “She threw herself off the wall rather than have me touch her.”

  I gasped. I’d wondered what had happened to my predecessor, but that was a dreadful end for anyone.

  “You’re shocked.” One side of his mouth lifted in a distorted smile. “It’s true. Went up to the wall and hurled herself onto the rocks below. Then the wolves got her.”

  “How do you know it had anything to do with you? This place – it’s strange. And everyone here is running away from something, but in truth they bring their demons with them. There’s no escape.”

  He sat back in his chair then. “Aye, that’s so. You know why I came here?”

  I shook my head. I’d never heard him so ready to talk. It was unnerving.

  “When I was fourteen, fifteen,” he began, “I developed some kind of wasting illness. Just heaviness in the limbs, at first. Legs, mainly. Breathing was troublesome. Tiredness. Started slow, but by the time I was twenty, trouble walking. Healers couldn’t help. Told me when it reached my heart, I’d be finished. Dead. By thirty, maybe earlier.

  “Could still read and write, though, so thought I’d come here. Do something useful with the time I had. Let my brother inherit. Mine company fine with it. No one stays long, so wasn’t a problem. Sent me here because there was no companion-servant here. Only castrated men. And me. Might as well have been castrated. Couldn’t, not at all.

  “But a funny thing happened. I got better. Not just a bit, but completely. No trace of the wasting illness. Had to send me a companion-servant. Ha! Mine company hadn’t expected that. Annoyed them. So I got the worst there was. The rejects. The oddities. Been here almost fifteen years now, and haven’t had a woman stay longer than she had to. The extractors – stay for years, sometimes. Not my women. Not one. They can’t wait to get away. The last one – got desperate. And crazy. Told me she had to escape. Crazy. No escape except over the wall. She was odd, that one. I heard her crying at night.”

  I wondered – maybe Chendria hid her herbal mixture and she got pregnant? That would make anyone desperate. But it was pointless to speak against her.

  “There you are, then. She had problems of her own. People come here for all sorts of reasons, but the past has a way of catching up with you.”

  Petreon grunted. “Is it really true? Better with me than with him?”

  I laughed then. Men are so simple-minded, sometimes. They think everything is about them. And sex, of course.

  “Don’t I enjoy it with you? You know I do. Every time. I’ve no desire to leave, none at all. I’d be happy to stay the three years, if I had the choice.” And if Chendria would leave me alone, and Janna, and no more houses caught fire. There was no need to explain that I enjoyed sex just as much with any other man. If he concluded that I admired some special skill in him, there was no harm in that.

  I wondered if the whores in their brothels had the same problem with men’s insecurities. Did they all need that reassurance that they were special, cherished, desired? That they were better than the others, and the whores, the painted whores who were paid to smile, liked them more than all their other clients?

  Well, I knew how to be a whore, if that was what Petreon needed. I got up and walked round the table to his chair. “What do I have to do to prove it to you?” I draped myself over his lap, and he smiled, wrapping his long arms round me. He looked even more than usual like a spider, rather a predatory one.

  I leaned down and kissed him. He froze. In all the moons I’d been there, he’d never shown any interest in kissing at all, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake. But then he whimpered and kissed me back, hard, one hand behind my head so that I couldn’t pull away. His tongue roamed round my mouth, and one hand pushed up inside my tunic to find my breasts. When he located one, he squeezed it so painfully that I would have cried out if he hadn’t been firmly clamped to my mouth.

  His desire rose so quickly that I was caught off guard, leaving me dizzy as it washed over me. I don’t know quite how it happened, but we ended up on the floor, me on my back and him half on top of me, still kissing me while fumbling with my trousers. I was helping, but we were so entangled they wouldn’t come off. With a roar of frustration he yanked them off, and then he was inside me, thrusting so hard I could feel my bare buttocks sliding over the rug.

  I closed my eyes and allowed his boiling desire to sweep me away again. He was strange man, Petreon, and not a comfortable friend like Xando, but demons, the sex was good.

  Afterwards, we went to bed and he stayed the night for the first time, discovering the benefits of having a willing partner within convenient reach for many hours. It was probably just as well I’d be leaving soon, because his seemingly limitless energy was exhausting.

  But in the quiet intervals when his lust was temporarily sated, I detected real affection for me in his mind. Just as my dislike of Xando had changed to something positive, so Petreon no longer found me distasteful.

  ~~~~~

  It was time to begin training my flickers to accomplish their magical tricks.

  “So how does it work, being a thrower?” I asked Xando. “If you’re not an assassin, what are you? Who employs you?”

  “I offer my services as a healer, but I have other capabilities – like opening locked doors, and peering over high walls.”

  I remembered the trick with the locks. “You’re a spy!”

  “I can be, if that is what an employer wishes me to be. But you have only eight flickers for now, so my advice would be to choose something simple but benign, useful in a general way. There will be time to determine your ultimate career path when you have more flickers. But the first one – he is ready to be impressed. You have only to direct his magic.”

  Magic. It was an intoxicating idea, to have magic at my disposal. “Do you really think I can do this?”

  “I am sure of it.”

  “But if I have difficulty – will you help?”

  “Allandra, no one can help you with this. The training is entirely between you and your flicker. I can advise, but I cannot do more than that.”

  “But you can see into my mind.”

  “Not when you are communicating with your flicker. When your mind is connected to his, I am shut out. Whatever happens then is between the two of you alone.”

  I knew then what I was going to do.

  ~~~~~

  The mine settled back into some form of normality after the fire, although in truth there was nothing at all normal about a flicker mine. The bloom diminished and the extractors went back to work. The fire-damaged house was cleared of debris and then left to its own devices, where every day saw the charring on the stonework reduce a fraction, and the clean, whole wall increase, as the house quietly repaired itself.

  Kijana said nothing at all to me, but her mind was still full of grief, masking anything more subtle. I couldn’t tell whether she was grateful to me for rescuing Helly, or angry because I’d freed him and allowed him to escape to the bloom.

  All the women avoided me, even Chendria. If I met them in the Main House while I was fetching fresh linen, they would squeeze themselves against the wall to let me past, averting their eyes. I felt their fear, and I could hardly blame them for it. The Two Rivers Basin was a mass of mysticism and superstition, but even the great coastal cities would have trouble understanding a woman who could walk unscathed through fire. Only the Tre’annatha would be excited by it, and sweep me into their Program.

  Petreon was unsettled. He very much enjoyed his increased access to me, and came eagerl
y to my bed on his allotted nights, while not grumbling too much when it was Xando’s turn. But Petreon was keen to notify the Mine Office of my new status and his need for a replacement companion-servant, yet there had been no message rider for several quarter moons.

  “Weather’s good,” he muttered under his breath. “Track’s good. Should have been here by now. Where is the fellow?”

  “Maybe he’ll come with the mulers?” I said. “It’s almost brightmoon.”

  “Don’t usually.” And he shook his head. “Always come mid-moon. For the reports. Maybe there’s been a rockfall.”

  “If there has, the mulers will clear it. You can send your letter with them. They’ll be here in a few days.”

  But our next arrival was neither a message rider nor a mule train. Our visitors materialised out of low cloud one afternoon with blaring horns, the glitter of swords and spears, and the grim-faced determination of professional soldiers.

  The army had come for me.

  14: Visitors

  Petreon must have known their purpose too, for he had dealt with the mercenary who’d come looking for me in the spring, and deduced his objective. Now, it seemed, a single mercenary wasn’t enough.

  As the first horns sounded, everyone rushed onto the walls, some in excited haste, some nervous and unsure. I took care to fetch a hooded cloak first, to hide my face in case they had seeing tubes. Then I climbed the steps slowly, knowing what I would see, but not in any hurry.

  Even so, I was shocked. Flattered, too, I suppose, that I was considered important enough to justify sending so many men into this wind-blasted and desolate place. A shoulder of the mountain hid most of the track, but soldiers filed past it and onto the open ledge before the walls in a seemingly endless stream. Mailed riders on sweating horses, foot soldiers with spears, lines of mules laden with equipment and, well to the rear, a cluster of riders with plumed golden helmets, their brightly coloured cloaks flapping briskly in the wind, banners flowing above their heads. Two hundred, perhaps, in all. And two different uniforms, Caxangur and Hurk Hranda. A joint mission.