The Mages of Bennamore

by Pauline M. Ross

  “A what? You mean this thing?” He held it up, mystified, a piece of wood with a trough cut into it the exact size and shape as a bar.

  “Yes. It’s used to see if bars are the right size. Sometimes people shave off tiny pieces of metal from the ends of bars, so it still looks right, but it’s short.”

  “Ah, that makes sense. We weigh them.”

  “We do that too, but this is a quick and easy way. Everyone has one of these. It works for copper or silver bars. Now watch.”

  I set the measure down on the table, and tipped the jug, reaching out with my mind to the metal within, turning it to liquid. Then I poured molten copper into the measure. When it was precisely full to the brim, I made it solid again. Setting the jug down, I tipped a perfectly formed copper bar into my hand.

  “How many will we need, do you think?”

  Mal’s face was a picture of slack-jawed astonishment. “How did you do that? Copper from a pewter jug?”

  “The jug itself is pewter, but the contents are copper or silver. My stolen coins.”

  “That’s why the jugs are so heavy.” He laughed, his face lighting up for the first time in days. “Quick, make some more! Then we can go out this evening. I know a really good place, which I happen to know has some fresh venison. Let’s eat the fruits of your thievery, my love.”

  ~~~~~

  Not long after that, the next invitation arrived for the Holder’s moon feast. To everyone’s astonishment, Hestaria was included.

  “There is no way under the sun or moon that you will get me through those gates!” she declared.

  I had some sympathy with her position. She was not the only one whose last visit to the Hold had ended in the dungeon.

  “Why do they even invite us?” she screeched. “Surely you will decline, Losh!”

  He was silent, poring over the invitation as if it would tell him what to do. “Fen, what do you think? What does it mean? Do they think the whole affair is finished with now? Is it a gesture of goodwill? Are we at any risk if we go?”

  I examined the invitation for clues, but there was nothing to distinguish it from all the preceding ones. “We are all inner guests, so there has been no change in your status. Lord Mage Temerren is named as well as Lady Mage Hestaria, so they are trying to include everyone. My feeling is that they believe the problems between you have been settled. This is a sign that they wish to continue the relationship on the same terms as before.”

  “After the way they treated me?” Hestaria’s voice rose to a pitch that was a danger to the glass in the windows. Losh winced.

  I assumed my most authoritative tone. “The Holder came himself – he walked here – to explain everything. That is an unprecedented condescension. As far as the Hold is concerned, the matter is closed.”

  Even as I spoke, I could see how flimsy an argument it was. Ish had hardly explained his behaviour at all, apart from expressing the opinion that Hestaria was necessary to his plans. Really, that was hardly a reason for locking her in a tower, and then tossing her into the dungeon. But the mages could argue that point if they wished. My job was only to interpret the invitation, and to me it was quite clear – Ish was proceeding exactly as before, as if the whole affair had never happened.

  “We cannot go! It is quite impossible, Losh, we cannot go, surely you must see that.”

  “Hesta, my dear friend…” Losh began, but he was interrupted.

  “I should like to go.”

  We all turned and looked at Kael in amazement. It was so rare that he expressed an opinion on anything that I could hardly believe it. Yet he had always enjoyed the moon feasts, it was true. His partner for the evening was always one of the more glamorous Hold women, who gazed at him with big eyes and reacted with suitable expressions of admiration to his every utterance, so perhaps it was no wonder. He had little enough attention elsewhere.

  “Will it be taken amiss if we do not go?” Losh asked.

  That was an easy one. “Yes. You have accepted previous invitations, so a refusal would look like a deliberate snub. And you have a business here. Having the favour of the Holder is very important. If he let it be known that you have insulted his hospitality, you could lose most of your clients.”

  “Then we must go, of course. Not because of the business especially, but because we would not like to cause a diplomatic rift. But I will not force Hestaria to go. What about you, Fen, and you too, Mal? You have suffered mistreatment also. Will you go?”

  “I have to go,” I said bluntly. “It would be an appalling breach of protocol for me to refuse.”

  “I don’t mind,” Mal said. “I think it will be quite funny, in a way. Will Commander Kestimar be there? I should like to meet him again.” His face was alive with mischief, and I had to admit that there was something amusing in the situation – the captives who escaped invited to dine in elaborate style with their captors. Hestaria looked horrified, but Losh shook his head and smiled sadly.

  “Ah Mal, sometimes you are a little too frivolous. Well, then, it is agreed. No great harm can come to us at a public event of this nature, and they know now that we cannot help them with their schemes. But we will make sure we are prepared for any eventuality.”

  ~~~~~

  The preparations for any eventuality took me completely by surprise. I was to wear a jade belt, just like Mal.

  “We cannot take our vessels, you see,” Losh explained. “I do not like to be completely without magic in such a case, and you already have some familiarity with magic, with your power over metal.”

  “That isn’t magic, just a connection. Many people have something of the kind.”

  “We would classify it as magic, if we encountered it in one of our own people.”

  “If? So no Bennamorians have connections? What about Kael’s ability with stone?”

  Losh looked at me solemnly. “The unauthorised use of magic is illegal in Bennamore, so naturally we rarely hear of such cases.”

  Yes, I could understand that. If you found you had a connection, you’d keep it very quiet. Even in the Port Holdings, few people boasted about it, and I’d kept my own secret for years.

  Losh was complacent about the discovery that Mal and Lenya had used the belts. It seemed he’d known about it all along.

  “Why don’t you wear a belt yourself?” I asked him.

  “Ah, now, Temerren, Hesta and I are all traditional mages. We each have a vessel, and we get strongly attached to it, so the belts are most uncomfortable for us to wear. It is like having a constant severe itch, a magical itch, if you can imagine that. Poor Hestaria is bereft without her vessel. I cannot imagine what she will do. Now Kael – he is a new-style mage, but he has trouble controlling the power in a belt. It is safer for him to have a vessel. But if you and Mal are both equipped with one, we will have some protection in the event of any – erm, difficulty.”

  Mal helped me find a belt which was comfortable. A new consignment of jade stones had just been received, and the exhausted ones had gone back to Bennamore to be replenished, but there was only a small selection of belts, which were all too large for me. Eventually, with some sewing one was made to fit. It would hold up to six stones, but to start with I practised with only two.

  I’d been used to contact with magic from my experience with the jade stone, and the belt was very similar, but stronger. The sense of well-being was increased, and the reassurance from that constant buzz of magic was a wonderful feeling, not unlike the physical pleasure of sex. At first, I felt a tingle throughout my body but after a while I adapted to it and scarcely noticed it any more.

  Losh took me into the big room where he taught Kael, along with Mal and Lenya. With infinite patience, he tried to explain to me how to draw on the power of the magic and use it to create fire. Mal and Lenya both demonstrated, Mal shooting flames halfway across the room, while Lenya made delicate glow balls that floated above her head, brightening or dimming at a thought, or racing round the room and hiding behind the furniture.

/>   I couldn’t do it. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I concentrated, eyes clamped shut, not the tiniest flame could I generate. I could feel the magic in the stones, but it was unresponsive to my commands.

  “Never mind, never mind,” Losh said, patting me consolingly on the shoulder. “You will get the idea in time, I am certain.”

  “Is there anything else I can do with it? Healing, perhaps?”

  “Oh no, I should not imagine so. If you cannot make fire…”

  “The mages heal with spells,” Mal said. “You can write it out as a spellpage and burn it, or you can say the spell out loud, and thought mages like Losh have shorter ways of applying the spells, but without a spell it’s hard to do.”

  “But you managed it.”

  “Only by luck. I know how to draw out the magic, and I’ve used that to heal myself, and when I tried that with you, it worked. But it’s hard – much harder than making a glow ball.”

  “I’ve tried, but I can’t do it,” Lenya said. “There really isn’t much you can do without knowing the spells.”

  “Keep practising,” Losh said. “It will come in time.”

  But we all knew how little progress Kael had made. Some people were just not suited for magic. I was desperately disappointed. I watched Mal and Lenya competing to make the brightest glow ball or the most spectacular flames – Mal always won – and felt inadequate and stupid. Why couldn’t I reach the magic and bend it to my will? I could do it with metal, even the most intransigent, rusted affair, but magic was beyond my power to compel.

  “At least you will be protected against anyone who tries to spell you,” Mal said to me as we laid out our finery ready for the moon feast. “Although – I hope two stones will be enough.”

  “I only had the pendant before, and there’s more magic in the belt.”

  “I know, but if it’s not enough for you to use, it may not be enough to protect you. Let’s use all six stones, just to be sure. Just don’t discover you can make fire in the middle of the meal.”

  “I have to use it consciously, don’t I?” I said, alarmed. “It can’t happen unless I make it happen.”

  He laughed. “No, but still, be careful not to play around with it. With magic, you just never know what might happen.”

  As soon as the belt was in place, I was aware of the difference. It was not just the extra power pulsing at my waist; the glass ball above the fire behind me was a constant presence, much stronger than before. There was nothing threatening or hostile about it, I simply knew it was there, as I might be aware of a window without being conscious of the slight draught. I could see Hestaria’s ball, too, lying forgotten on top of a cabinet in the table room. I was vaguely aware of a third ball, but that was less clear to me.

  I also found my power over metals increased, so that I was aware of every single metal object in the house. Instead of a range of a few paces, I could clearly detect the door hinges and locks on the floor below, the knives in the kitchen, the guards’ swords and the hoops binding the barrels in the cellar.

  While two girls fastened the endless buttons on my gown and fiddled with my hair, I amused myself by unlocking Kael’s money box in the study on the ground floor, before relenting and locking it again. I had no wish to torment the poor man. I discovered that one of the spice safes in the cellar had been left unlocked, and I almost locked it, before it occurred to me that the house controller or one of the cooks was probably in there. It wouldn’t do to let anyone hear locks latching and unlatching themselves with no one nearby.

  Usually I was fidgety while my hair was dressed with the vast number of silk flowers custom dictated, but tonight I sat as rigid as a tree, my mind roaming the house. I couldn’t tell whether it was the glass ball that caused the effect, or the jade belt. Perhaps the two kinds of magic worked off each other, one magnifying the other. Whichever it was, it held me spellbound.

  But that was not all. Something else tickled my mind, a large, amorphous shape of something, in Mal’s room. The strips of metal surrounding it told me more: it was inside the locked chest. I heard Mal moving around, putting on his formal Bennamore attire, and knew the precise moment when he unlocked the chest, lifted the lid and took something out. Then I understood what it was: the jade stones, clustered together at the bottom of the box. He lifted out a number of them, all jumbled together – one of the belts, of course – then they straightened themselves out as he fastened the belt around him. I knew exactly where he was as he moved around the room dressing, for I could feel the power of the belt. He closed and locked the chest, buckled on his belt, added a small kooria of inferior metals to it, then opened the door.

  “Ready, my sweet?”

  He stood behind me, watching me in the mirror, as the girls fussed about. If I closed my eyes, I could feel the power of his belt at my back as strongly as sunshine on a summer’s day. And more – there was other magic in the house. Losh’s staff and Kael’s stone ball, their vessels, were in their bedrooms. Another vessel – Temerren’s – in a guest room on the ground floor. A jade belt in the courtyard – Lenya, probably. And something less structured, like a wisp of cloud on the edge of my mind, moving around Kael’s room. I guessed that was Kael himself, some magical aura making him noticeable to me.

  “Fen? Are you all right?”

  I jerked my eyes open. “Oh yes.” I smiled beatifically at him. “I am perfectly all right.”

  “Shall we go?”

  Yes, it was time to put my new magical awareness to one side, and face the people who had hurled me into an underground cell and left me there to die. I took a deep breath.

  “Yes. Let’s go.”

  29: Voices

  That evening was one of the most peculiar I’ve ever experienced. Hestaria absolutely refused to go, but the other three mages all attended, Losh solemn, Kael excited, Temerren nervous but game. Politeness dictated that they left their vessels behind, but Losh and Temerren each had a jade stone tucked away in a pocket. Mal still seemed amused to return as an honoured guest after his unceremonious treatment on his previous visit.

  I found it hard to say what I felt. It was bizarre to go back there, to be polite to the woman who had hit me over the head to stop Ish revealing secrets, and perhaps to see Kestimar, my jailer. Then there was Nord, who had manipulated my mind, and was still manipulating Ish. But Tarn would be there and I trusted her, although perhaps I shouldn’t, and my anger towards Ish had evaporated. He, at least, was on my side.

  But none of that mattered to me any more, for I was alive with magic.

  Usually for such occasions, the process of dressing in my finery was enough to wrap me in the carapace of the rank I was born to. Tonight was different. Despite my fine gown and dressed hair, the magic seeping into me through my skin transformed me into a new person. Although I mingled with the great ones of Dristomar, I was no longer one of them. I was an outsider, an observer, seeing things I was not supposed to see, understanding the world on a different level.

  Even before I entered the receiving chamber, I knew that several of those within carried daggers about them. That was a great breach of hospitality, and something which had not happened at previous feasts. I realised that the third glass ball I was aware of was Ish’s, and I could tell exactly where it was. There was a vessel somewhere nearby, although there were no other mages in the Holding, and the Bennamore mages had left their vessels at home. And there were voices in my head, like snatched whispers of a distant conversation, caught on the wind.

  All of this was enough to distract me from everything else. I smiled and bowed and, I daresay, uttered all the appropriate words as Ish came, smiling, to claim me as his partner again, but my mind was elsewhere. I moved round the room, greeting this one or that, but detached, floating above the churning waves of conversation.

  Commander Kestimar was there, lurking in a dark corner of the room, saying little. He had two daggers, one a fearsomely large affair strapped to one leg, the other slender but deadly, hidden
in his sleeve. Nord stood beside him, leaning close to speak urgently into his ear. Then they both stood watching me, their faces in shadow.

  Nord had the same sort of hazy aura as Kael, and I guessed for the same reason – they both had a connection. I looked around for Tarn, to see if she produced the same effect, but she wasn’t there. Probably I had one too. I made a note to ask Mal about it later.

  As Ish steered me round the room, we came eventually to his wife, who was flirting – I can’t think of any other word for it – with Kael, whose face was lit up as bright as the moon, gazing with rapt attention at her.

  “Ah, Mistress Fen!” she trilled, swaying towards me so that I caught a waft of her exotic perfume. “How delightful to see you looking so well.”

  For an instant, a vivid blue halo lit up her head. It was gone as soon as it appeared, but I was too astonished to speak.

  Then I became aware of the gold chain around her throat, the pendant it supported buried between her voluptuous breasts. But it was not merely a pendant, it was a vessel. When I closed my eyes, I could feel the outline of it in my mind, carved in the shape of a horse with exaggeratedly flowing mane and tail. I couldn’t tell what it was made of – not metal – but I could feel the power of it. Was she a mage? If not, how had she come by it?

  “— all right? Would you care for some wine?” Ish’s voice brought me back to reality. “You do not seem quite yourself tonight.”

  “Perhaps she finds our hospitality lacking,” his wife said, with a little chirrup of laughter. Ish frowned at her, but she went on blithely, “We must make sure we do better in future.”

  Was that a threat? Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that we might actually be in danger. A moon feast, after all, is a public event, and there were five of us, too many to be bundled off to the dungeons, or worse. Or so I’d thought.

  Yet here in the receiving chamber, we were surrounded by people who had no love for the Bennamorians, or for me. The wheezing, elderly cousins of previous feasts were nowhere to be seen, and there seemed to be a disproportionate number of young, fit men, many with daggers concealed about them. Even the women seemed less friendly than before. Nord’s disturbing powers worried me, and there was the vessel Ish’s wife concealed for some purpose. My strongest ally, Tarn, was missing. I felt outnumbered.