The Magic Mines of Asharim

by Pauline M. Ross

  The room where the last family had died was a distressing place, but it was also the only room in the house that was properly lit. The others had glow balls hanging, but we knew no way to make them work. We didn’t want to exhaust our lamp supplies, for we’d found no candles anywhere, and using my own light for too long tired me.

  So I tidied away the family’s remains, and rearranged the furniture to counter the memories. We ate at a small table in there, and, while Xando was occupied in the kitchen, I examined the books, looking for some explanation for the egg chamber, the blue pools and the flickers. I found nothing, but whenever I had a little time, I would sort through a few more books. It was soothing to have books in my hands once more.

  Most of my efforts were devoted to practising my new-found ability to create fire. At first, I just worked on producing a glowball in my hand, raising and diminishing the light at will. But I soon wanted to try something more interesting. A weapon would be useful, I thought; a flame that could be thrown across the street, say. I had no plans to hurt anyone, but it would be a useful deterrent against anyone wielding a sword or pike. A soldier, for example.

  So I went into one of the empty streets, closed my eyes and imagined flames gushing from my fingers. Now that I was aware of my magic, I could feel the power tingling in my hands, flowing to my fingertips. No signs of fire, though. So it was a shock to find myself in a cloud of acrid smoke, stinging my eyes and choking me. I waved it away, and tried again, but this time I kept my eyes open.

  Flames shot from my hands, leaping at least the height of four men. I screeched, jumping backwards, and the flames puffed out of existence. It was lucky I was facing down the street, otherwise the houses would have been well alight. After that, I practised in the largest square I could find until I had good control over the effect. I wasn’t sure how useful it would be, though. It was not the sort of trick to pull in a crowded market place.

  The most enjoyable times were after what we designated evening table. We had no way to judge the true time of day, but we tried to keep to a routine: morning table, work, noon table, more work, evening table and some time relaxing before bed. We hadn’t found dragon stones or any other familiar games, but there was a set of exquisitely carved jade figures on a board inlaid with polished stone hexagons, so we invented games with that. Or rather, I did, and Xando humoured me.

  Mostly we drank the rather good wine – better than Trellian in quality – and chatted as we pushed pieces around the board. Xando tried to find out more about my past life, but I’d already told him as much as I was comfortable to share. I preferred to put the focus on him.

  “Tell me how you became a thrower,” I asked him one day.

  “I had a friend who wanted to try it.” He shrugged, as if it were uninteresting.

  “That’s it? You had a friend who wanted to try it, so you tried it too?”

  He laughed. “Well… it does sound silly when you put it that way. But there are not many options for those who, like me, are outside the Program. I could hardly have become a shopkeeper or a stable hand.”

  “Why not? Someone has to do those jobs.”

  “Yes but… Oh, you are teasing me. Sanya…”

  He swept my hand into his, and kissed it. At once his love washed around me like summer rain, soft and warm and refreshing. I loved touching him, our minds joined. The flickers liked it too. I could feel them purring with satisfaction in the background.

  “Sanya,” he went on, “you cannot imagine what it was like to be Tre’annatha in Mesanthia, yet not in the Program. To have people like you bow when I passed by, to be treated with the utmost deference everywhere, yet be excluded from almost everything. I had no education to speak of, only my own wits and the public reading rooms and my parents’ help and advice. I read avidly, and I had tutors for subjects where the books were too difficult, but still, it was not as it should have been. I have many gaps in my knowledge. But I always knew I would have to leave Mesanthia when I reached adulthood. A child walking the streets – that would be accepted. But by fifteen at the latest I should have joined my court, either underground to one of the research or administration streams, or back to the Sraeh for breeding or development.”

  “A court? Like a king’s court?”

  “No, it is a place, a physical building, with a big open space in the centre – a courtyard, I suppose – and living and working quarters around the outside. At the Sraeh some are open to the sky, the ones where the breeders live, but at Mesanthia they were all underground. A court is assigned for life. Can you imagine what it would be like, trapped underground with the same group of people for your whole life?”

  “You mean you can’t leave?” I said, horrified.

  “Sometimes, if your research needs it. But you have to justify it. My parents chose to research herbal lore so that they could live above ground and travel about. I never had that option. Still, I had a strong connection – an aptitude as the mine people have it – so I knew I could become a thrower. It gives me freedom, Sanya. Do you understand?”

  I did. He was a slave, just as the Akk’ashara were. It didn’t remove my dislike of Tre’annatha in general, but I couldn’t dislike Xando himself.

  I stretched across to kiss him, and he leaned into me, responding very willingly. He was a good looking man, as all Tre’annatha were, slim and softly spoken. But he was as smooth-cheeked as a child, and just as asexual.

  “I’m going to the bathhouse,” I said, jumping up. “Do you want to come?”

  He nodded and followed me eagerly. Petreon had never understood my desire for cleanliness, although he enjoyed what we did in the bathing pool. Xando, however, was a true child of Mesanthia, and loved to bathe as much as I did. As soon as we got to the bathhouse, he stripped off and jumped straight into the water.

  “Did you move the soap?” I asked him.

  “What? No. You usually leave it on the cork dish. It should be on that shelf there.”

  “Well, it isn’t. That’s odd.”

  “You forgot where you put it, I expect.”

  I went off to the storeroom where the shelves were laden with soap, stacked in tidy piles, their edges perfectly aligned. I picked up a cube, and a dish from a different shelf. I was halfway out of the room when, on a whim, I knocked over a couple of those orderly piles. I’m just suspicious, I suppose.

  I spent some time soaping Xando again. I’d got into the habit of it, and he enjoyed the process, sitting with his head resting on the side of the pool, eyes closed. I loved the feel of his smooth skin under my fingers, and he obviously liked touching, too. He was very tactile, in his way.

  As I washed his manly parts, I naturally got to thinking about other things I’d like to do with them. “How does it work, this awakening? Is it difficult to do?”

  “No idea,” he said without opening his eyes.

  “Oh, so it’s all a big secret, is it?”

  “Everything is a big secret.”

  “Of course it is! But you have to go to the Sraeh for it?”

  “Yes, because it is only done for breeding. Those selected to breed are raised at the Sraeh from the age of five. At fifteen, they will be awakened and sent to a breeding court. There they… practise and do their research until they are needed for breeding purposes, when they go to a brood court until they have successfully produced at least five children. After that, well, they can do what they like. Those who have done their duty have great freedom.”

  It sounded so cold, put like that. They were a strange people, the Tre’annatha, always deep in their research, even more than the Akk’ashara. And then the children sent off to strangers at birth, most of them never having children at all and knowing nothing of sex.

  “Have you never felt any desire? At all?”

  “Sexual desire?” His eyes popped open. “No, never.”

  “But you must have detected it in other people. You must know what it feels like.”

  “I shut everything out, remember. I only peek into
people’s minds when I feel I have to. It seems intrusive, to me.”

  I wished I had that choice. Once we got back to civilisation, I was going to try again to close my mind to others. I’d learned to handle fire, so I should be able to learn to manage my other connection. I couldn’t practise with Xando, though. Once we touched, we were like one mind, and there was no way to keep him out, even if I’d wanted to.

  “Well, it is all very strange,” I said, tossing the soap onto its dish and clambering astride him.

  He pulled me close and kissed me for a long time. He learned fast. “What is strange?” He ran his tongue over my ear, then nibbled it gently. Where had he learned that technique? From me, probably.

  “Strange that your people feel nothing. Everyone else in the world feels the allure of sex at puberty, as reliably as the sap rising in spring. Yet the Tre’annatha have to be awakened. Why are you so different?”

  “We made a deal with the mages,” he murmured. He had moved round to my other ear now.

  “The mages? But why?”

  “Our ancestors felt that sex was a disruption to civilisation. It led to bad behaviour and brothels and restrictions on women, which interfered with the orderly management of society. They wanted to concentrate on their research without any distractions. So they helped the mages to increase their power, and in return the mages made some changes to us. It did not work quite as intended, for pregnancy is too difficult now and the population dwindles without great efforts, but removing the urge for sex has been a great boon.”

  I could see the point of it. How much energy did young men waste trying to get between women’s legs, energy that might be better spent improving their craft or increasing their knowledge of the world? How much energy did young women waste, fending them off? And it would have made life incomparably easier for me.

  And yet… how much Xando was missing. And I was missing it, too.

  ~~~~~

  The next day, the soap was restacked. My knocked-over pile had been realigned seamlessly.

  “You must have done it yourself and forgotten,” Xando said with a shrug.

  But I was not quite in my dotage, and I knew how I had left it. I shivered.

  We were not alone.

  “It’s time we left,” I said.

  “One more day, and we should have enough supplies. Then we can leave the day after.”

  “No, now! We have to leave now.”

  “What? Because of the soap? That was just a mistake.”

  “Not a mistake. I left them disordered deliberately. Something came in here and tidied up. We have to leave.”

  “Sanya, Sanya…” He took my face in his hands, and his calmness soothed my agitation a little. “So there is someone else here. So what? If all they do is tidy the soap, they seem quite benign to me.”

  I clucked in annoyance. Sometimes he could be unbearably dense. “We are leaving. Back to the house.”

  We ran back to the house, Xando protesting at first then falling blessedly silent. Either he picked up my urgency, or simply gave up trying to dissuade me, but I didn’t care, as long as we got out of there. The flickers buzzed with concern, although a little puzzled.

  I raced around collecting things in a random fashion, before realising how stupid I was being. I stopped, breathed deeply, told myself to be rational. Dredging up a list in my head, I began again, more methodically.

  When I had packed the necessities, I took the bags through to the kitchen where Xando was wrapping food in cloths.

  “Are you sure about this?” he said quietly. “We are comfortable here. We could stay as long as we want.”

  “I don’t like being watched, not when I don’t know who – or what – is doing the watching. Besides, don’t you want to get out from under this mountain, out into good clear air?”

  It was a foolish thing to say to a Tre’annatha, of course. They were born and raised underground, many of them never emerged into the light of the sun, and their highest ambition was to reach a rank that meant they never needed to.

  But Xando smiled. “Yes! I am sick of this darkness.” He was not at all typical of his kind.

  We were soon ready, and now that the decision had been made, I could hardly wait to get moving again. I wasn’t looking forward to the tunnels, and we would have to pass through the egg chamber once more, but we would find another refuge, and this time it might be one we could escape from.

  I led the way through the dark streets, striding over the smooth paving slabs, still perfectly flat after so many years. Lamps on poles, or suspended from roofs, slowly filled with light as we approached and faded again behind us. Fountains played in squares and drinking spouts gushed on street corners. So reassuring, so normal. Yet there was no moon, no sparkle of stars. No rain washed these streets, no breeze rocked the lamps or tossed the fountain water about. Not even a skitter of mice in the gutters. I shuddered, and quickened my pace.

  We reached the large square below the mine, and climbed the steps to the stone balcony. Below us, the last few lamps silently extinguished themselves, and the town fell back into its profound sleep.

  Through the flicker cavern and on to the blue pool, lying in its unfathomable mystery, calm and still.

  And there we stopped.

  Beyond the pool, four pairs of eyes blinked at us.

  20: Horses

  They were two legged and two armed like humans, but small and skinny, the size of an undergrown child of ten or so. Their hands and feet were large, relative to their stick-thin arms and legs, and they had bulbous hairless heads with huge pale eyes of an iridescent blue. They wore loosely draped brown rags, and they twittered to each other like gossiping laundrywomen.

  I searched for them in my mind, an instinctive reaction, for they were not human. There was something there, right on the edge of consciousness, but I couldn’t read them properly. Yet I was sure they meant us no harm. I had no idea how I knew that, but I did.

  “The flickers like them,” Xando whispered to me.

  It was true. Mine were curious, interested perhaps, but not at all agitated.

  Another burst of twittering, then one of the four stepped forward, arms windmilling wildly. Then he ran towards one of the fissures on the far side of the pool and twirled his arms again. Then he stopped, and the twittering died down. The four creatures watched us expectantly, heads bobbing from side to side.

  “What do they want?” Xando said.

  “Hard to be sure, but I think they want us to go that way.”

  “Why, when all these passages go to the same place?”

  I turned to him in exasperation. As if I could possibly know their intent. “Can you read anything from their minds?”

  “No, nothing. They are too alien.”

  “Well, neither can I. It is all guesswork. But I don’t think they are hostile. Shall we go closer?”

  “What! We could go back…”

  “No. I am sure they are benign. I think… I believe they are morodaim.”

  “The dragon helpers? Impossible! These are not dragon caves… oh, but perhaps they are here to guard the eggs.”

  I tsked impatiently; I thought I’d convinced him the eggs, or whatever they were, could not be from dragons.

  The creatures were twittering again. Very slowly, so as not to alarm them, I walked forward around the edge of the pool. The twittering rose to a crescendo and the head-bobbing increased too. They seemed pleased, as far as I could tell.

  As I drew near, the arm-twirler ran a short distance towards me, then back to the same fissure, arms flailing. He definitely wanted us to go that way.

  I couldn’t see the harm in it. I was sure that all the passages went the same way, so we would get to the egg chamber eventually. It made no difference which route we took, and if it pleased these little creatures for some unfathomable reason, then why not?

  He – I don’t know why, but it felt like a he – twittered even more excitedly and jumped through the arch ahead of me. I followed, then X
ando, then the other three, still bobbing.

  With Xando and the lamp behind me, I lit a glowball to light my way. This provoked a burst of excited chittering. The creatures didn’t seem to need light, though. Their vivid blue eyes glowed in the tunnel’s gloom.

  We travelled for some distance, and mostly downhill, which surprised me a little. The tunnels we’d followed before had been more level, at least initially.

  Eventually the little fellow in front stopped and turned, waiting for us to catch up. Now that I was closer to him, his face reminded me vaguely of someone, although I couldn’t say who. Someone I’d known on my travels, probably. Someone incongruous – a beefy barger or a giant of a guard. Someone not at all like this delicate little creature.

  When we had all caught up, he pressed one hand to the wall and, with a soft whooshing noise, a door appeared. Xando made an exclamation of surprise, but for me there was a surge of exultation. It was startling, true, but it made sense that the morodaim were here for some purpose, and not merely to guide us down tunnels we already knew.

  It didn’t surprise me that they could find a door that was invisible to our eyes. They knew these tunnels well, they lived here, after all, and those eyes perhaps had some ability we lacked. The wall had appeared completely blank, just like every other wall of these endless tunnels. Yet the morodaim leader had found the right place – somehow – and was able to open the door. He blinked at me, his huge blue eyes vanishing for an instant, then reappearing.

  He turned and headed off rapidly down the tunnel. We followed more cautiously, but it was exactly the same as all the other tunnels, smooth underfoot and with a perfectly arched roof. There was a difference though; the air felt fresher. My spirits sank again at once. Not another egg chamber!