A stout woman with her gray hair in a long braid hurried out of the adjacent room, drying her hands on her apron. "You can't. Please go away and leave us alone, whoever you are."
Bertrice raised her right hand, aglow with leashed energy. "Wrong answer."
"Those spells were just warning shots," Liriel said. "We don't want to hurt anybody. We only want to meet this powerful mage we've heard about. Obviously, it's not either one of you."
The man's bushy eyebrows drew together in a frown. "What gives you the right to charge in here and threaten us?"
"What gives you the right to hold Lord Malkus and his men prisoner in your town?"
"They might've told outsiders about us," the woman said, close to tears. "We can't let that happen. Now get out. Our son has never harmed anyone, but if he decided to attack, you wouldn't stand a chance against him."
"Can he stun both of us before Bertrice gets off another bolt?" Not that Bertrice would willingly hurt a couple of unarmed old folks if given any choice, but they didn't know that.
The man's shoulders sagged. "All right. You can see him. It won't make any difference, because he won't let you leave town, either."
Maybe not, Liriel thought, but if he proved as dangerous as she feared, Bertrice might manage to strike him down while she distracted him—provided they struck quickly enough. Having the parents as hostages might help. "You." She gestured to the mother. "You're coming with my partner. Bertrice, hang onto her arm, and if her son makes a wrong move, you know what to do."
Bertrice gripped the woman's elbow, putting on her most threatening glower.
"Miller," Liriel continued, "what's your name?"
"Tyras."
"Very well, Tyras, I'm Liriel, and this is my partner, Bertrice. You introduce me to your son, and your wife comes along with Bertrice."
With the miller in the lead, they trooped through the kitchen and up a narrow flight of stairs. She noticed the old man sweating, and the woman's arm visibly trembled in Bertrice's grasp. A sour taste filled Liriel's mouth. What had her vow to the Duke's service made of her, a hired bully?
When Tyras opened the door of the chamber at the end of the upstairs corridor, she first noticed the shutters covering the single window. She blinked until her eyes adjusted to the lamplight. The room smelled clean but stale. "Why don't you open those shutters and let in sunlight and fresh air?"
"He wants it this way," said the miller's wife.
Now Liriel focused on the boy in the far corner of the room. Judging from the couple's age and their son's phenomenal powers, she'd expected a man in the prime of life. Instead, she found a slender youth no more than eighteen years old.
Dressed only in a pair of loose trousers, he sat cross-legged on the polished wood floor. His chestnut hair, loose to his shoulders, partly hid his face. He rocked forward and back like a hermit at prayer. He clasped a pale green object in one hand. A wand?
Bertrice flung another miniature flame dart. It stung the boy's fingers and forced him to drop the thing.
A cry ripped from his throat. Rocking faster, he cradled his hand against his chest.
"How dare you?" his mother burst out.
Liriel got a good look at what he'd dropped. A piece of chalk. Half embarrassed, she said, "We've seen what he's capable of. You can't blame us for being cautious."
The woman only glowered.
An elaborate mural decorated the wall in front of the boy. Otherwise, the spacious room was almost bare, with a bed and a chest the only furniture aside from a few cushions scattered over the floor. Beside the bed, a single shelf held a rainbow assortment of chalk sticks.
Tyras cleared his throat and took a step toward his son. "Robur, these visitors would like to meet you."
The boy didn't glance up. He began chanting in a monotone, "Go away, go away, go away."
"He won't talk to you," Robur's mother said. "He hardly even speaks directly to us most of the time."
Liriel swallowed the lump of pity congealing in her throat. "Has he always been this way?"
The woman nodded.
"And the magic?" Bertrice said.
Tyras edged closer to his wife and slipped an arm around her waist. "He started changing things when he was only four years old. We had no other wizard in town to advise us, not that Robur could have benefited from a teacher anyway. So we didn't know how unusual his talent might be."
"Very unusual," Liriel said. Now she realized the nature of the drawing on the wall. A map of the village, apparently with every house and tree shown. He must use the picture as a medium for his spells. Stunned at the elaborate detail of the mural, she strode over to examine it. "Beautiful work."
Although he still didn't look at her, the volume of Robur's chanting rose. "Go away, go away, go away." He rocked faster.
"You're upsetting him," his mother said.
Hearing the strain in her voice, Liriel backed away from the mural and instead walked over to the shelf full of chalk. Someone had arranged the pieces in order of color, shading tint by tint from deep blue at one end to reds and browns at the other. White, gray, and black lay in a separate row with similar gradations. She sensed an aura of magic shimmering around the drawing sticks. Fascinated, she reached out with one fingertip.
A keening howl burst from Robur. She leaped back. Bertrice, equally startled, raised a hand, poised to cast another spell.
"Don't touch that!" Tyras ordered. "He can't stand to have anybody touch his things."
The old woman scurried to her son's side. "It's all right, dear. They're leaving now." She glared at the two mages. "Aren't you?"
"You've done enough harm already." The miller's voice sounded sharp with anger now, rather than fear. "Leave him in peace."
"All right." Liriel struggled to keep her own voice from shaking. "We'll talk downstairs."
As soon as they all left the chamber and shut the door, the boy's screaming stopped. "He's your only child?" she asked on the way down to the sitting room.
"Born after many years of barrenness," the woman said with a jerky nod. "But don't you go feeling sorry for us. He has a great gift."
After they'd taken seats on a pair of benches flanking the hearth, the miller and his wife on one, the two mages on the other, Liriel said, "He does indeed. Spell-crafted food that actually nourishes. Cloth that doesn't turn into dead leaves at the next sunrise. Permanent transmutation of weather. I've never seen anything remotely like it."
"But what's the reason for that barrier around the village?" Bertrice asked.
"He's never liked people around him, except us," Tyras said. "And he won't even let us touch him. For him, it's bad enough to have the rest of the village, people he's known all his life, nearby. He hated it when strangers came into town."
"So he shut the town off from the world? When he was no more than ten years old?"
The woman nodded. "Nine. We tried to explain to him that the village couldn't survive without some outside trade. Though he doesn't talk much, he understands enough, as long as it's about things, not people. So he started working his spells to create everything we needed."
Liriel still had trouble wrapping her mind around the marvel of it. "In the outside world, you could be fabulously wealthy."
With a scowl, the miller said, "We don't need wealth. And our son would be miserable."
His wife wrung her hands. "That's why we can't let you or the others leave."
"You can't seriously expect to keep this place a secret forever," Bertrice said. "Surely Lord Malkus and his men weren't the first to stumble on it. What happened to the others?"
Tyras said with a dry laugh, "Not as many as you're probably thinking. Only three in all these years. Two runaway apprentices and, later, a young pregnant woman fleeing from a husband who beat her. Once they found out what kind of life we have here, they were glad to stay."
"The dark forest illusion scares everybody away, I suppose," Bertrice said.
"Well, this is all fascinating from a profession
al viewpoint," Liriel interrupted, "but Lord Malkus and his squires do want to leave, not to mention the two of us."
The miller's fists clenched at his side. "If you try, you'll be sorry, wizards or not."
She stood up. "Listen to me. Your son has great power, but he's untrained. Bertrice and I could probably take him down. And even if he managed to kill us, other people would get hurt. Including Robur himself. Furthermore, when we didn't make it home, other, stronger sorcerers would come looking for revenge." She wasn't bluffing, for if she and her partner died, Brom would fly to one of their colleagues with the full story of their deaths lodged in his memory, ready for any mage of sufficient skill to extract.
Tyras sprang to his feet, too. "You expect us to do nothing while you bring outsiders here to ruin our lives?"
Tears glinted in his wife's eyes. "You probably think of us as ignorant country folk, but I know enough about the world to know what would happen to Robur out there. Some nobleman would put him in a cage and force him to cast monstrous spells against enemies from the next kingdom over, or they'd make him conjure that wealth you mentioned. They'd try, anyway. He'd shrivel up and die before things got that far." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
With her arms folded, Liriel glared across the room at the old couple and tried to tell herself their fears had no basis in reality. She couldn't sustain that lie. How would the Duke use a mage of Robur's power? A childhood tale hammered in her brain—a maiden locked in a tower and forced, on pain of death, to spin straw into gold. She glanced at Bertrice. "Let's have a talk with Lord Malkus."
Out front, the Duke's son and the two squires stood guard at the door, while a semicircle of village men with drawn daggers hovered an arm's length away. Liriel said, "All of you might as well stand down. We've talked to Tyras and his wife, and nobody's going to get hurt." She explained the situation to Malkus. "My lord, I'm inclined to leave these folks in peace. We should go home and keep their secret."
He stroked his chin. "My father would want to hear of this miracle worker."
"You know what would happen to the boy if your father learned of his existence." She met the young lord's eyes with open defiance. How far would she go to keep him from betraying this village? She prayed she wouldn't have to make that choice.
"The mother was right," Bertrice put in. "We saw how nearly helpless he is, aside from his magic. He wouldn't survive a week as the Duke's captive. Lord Malkus, you'd be destroying these people for nothing."
He stared into the distance for a minute, then snapped, "Very well. You're the experts in sorcery, not I. I've seen their contented way of life. Who am I to ruin it?" He said to the squires, "Well, lads, Mage Liriel and Mage Bertrice have come to rescue us. Ready to go home?"
The youths exchanged glances.
"You're not tempted to stay?" Liriel asked. "None of you?"
Lord Malkus shook his head. "Fine for a holiday, but I have responsibilities." He smiled grimly. "After all, my older brother might get gored by a wild boar or some such, and my father would need an heir."
One of the squires said, "It's a nice town, but a little too quiet for me."
The other one nodded. "Same here."
"I'll take a vow not to reveal the existence of this place," their lord said. "You must do the same."
When they hesitated, Liriel said, "Unless you want your memories magically erased."
Alarm leaped in their eyes, the fighter's aversion to magic again. "No, ma'am, that won't be necessary. We'll make the same pledge."
"You know what we can do to you if you break it," Bertrice said. Liriel knew the menace in her voice was exaggerated, but the men didn't.
"Go to the inn and pack our gear," Lord Malkus ordered. When they'd marched off, he said, "How do you suggest I explain a month's delay in getting home?"
"Forest outlaws?" Bertrice said. "They were holding you for ransom, but their message to the Duke must have gone astray. We rescued you."
Liriel smiled at the idea. "They had a low-level wizard in their band. He cast a forgetting spell on you, so you have only the vaguest memories of your time as captives, not enough to make it worthwhile trying to hunt them down."
Lord Malkus nodded in agreement. "Well plotted. That tale will save the three of us from having to concoct a detailed story and worry about sticking to it."
While he followed after his men to supervise their preparations for the journey, Liriel and Bertrice went back inside to talk with the miller and his wife. After assuring them their secret would be safe, Liriel said, "You should consider something, though. You won't live forever."
"We've thought of that," Tyras said. "I have a niece whose company Robur tolerates. She'll care for him when we're gone."
"And when he dies? Have you thought of that?"
The miller's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
"If he's robust in body, decades could pass before that day comes. This village might raise a whole generation with no idea how to feed and clothe themselves. Your paradise can't last forever. Think about what your neighbors will do when it falls apart."
A few minutes later, Lord Malkus and his squires, mounted on their horses, met the two mages at the edge of town. Liriel cast a spell to rip a hole through the illusion just long enough for the five of them to penetrate it. After untethering her horse and Bertrice's, then leading them outside the perimeter of the young mage's territory, she canceled her own magic. When she turned on the road to look back, the menacing forest had reappeared.
While the three men trotted ahead, she murmured to Bertrice, "We could have stayed in that little paradise. Sent his lordship and the other two home without us. Made an excuse about magical research, catching up with them later, some such lie."
"Were you tempted?" Bertrice whispered back.
"Maybe for about ten seconds. Think of what we could teach that boy—and learn from him." The thought still dazzled her. She forcibly shook it off. "I was right the first time, it's a trap." True, her pledge to the Duke also trapped her in a way, but temporarily, not for life like these people's self-chosen captivity. With patience, she'd win her freedom. True independence, not an illusion.
She and Bertrice mounted up and started for home.
Pearl of Fire
by Deborah J. Ross
Deborah J. Ross began her writing career as Deborah Wheeler, so her previous stories in the SWORD & SORCERESS series are under that name, as are her Darkover short stories. Her story "Imperatrix" in the first SWORD & SORCERESS was her first professional sale, making her one of "MZB's writers." As Deborah Wheeler she also sold two science-fiction novels: JAYDIUM and NORTHLIGHT, as well as dozens of short stories—Marion alone bought a couple dozen of them. Deborah was the person Marion chose to continue the Darkover series; she's done three novels so far, and the fourth, THE ALTON GIFT—not to be confused with my short story "The Alton Gift" in THE KEEPER'S PRICE—should be out by the time this anthology is published.
Deborah lives in the redwood forests near Santa Cruz with her husband, writer Dave Trowbridge, two cats, and a dog. In between writing, she has worked as a medical assistant to a cardiologist, lived in France—which she describes as an "alien encounter"—and revived an elementary school library. She has been active in the women's martial arts network and has spent over 25 years studying kung fu san soo.
She says that the idea for this story came to her in a dream. I'll bet a lot of us wish that our dreams could lend themselves to such stories.
#
I traveled by river barge as far as I could, as the forested hills I had known all my life fell away into rocky pastures and then fields of barley and millet. When my path led me south, I joined one trader's caravan and then another. A decrepit camel brought me across the broken, withered lands, and at last I reached Ixtalpi, refuge of thieves and outlaws and all manner of desperate souls, huddled in the shadow of the black, volcanic Viridian Mountains.
* * * *
I never expected to become the guardian of
the Pearl. It had always passed from father to son, a closely-guarded family secret. True, I wondered why, with so few men to defend Sharaya, we had never fallen, why the dregs of the Duke's armies never harried us, why we had always been able to fend off Eaglehurst, with whom we had long maintained blood-feud.
The Pearl had been intended for my brother. Devron was fourteen, just beginning to grow broad in the shoulders, when Great-grandfather fell ill. No one knew exactly how many winters the old man had survived, but this one would be his last. He called us to him one blustery morning, when the clouds were more black than gray, and sleet rattled against every loose-paned window.
As usual, Devron could not be found. He was probably hiding in the stables. My mother and father and uncles stood around Great-grandfather's bed, the headboard carved with the scene of a hunt, the stag at bay, yet fighting on, the dogs lying dead at its feet. The rows of candles from the night before had almost burned out. I remember watching one and then another gutter into curls of smoke, still tinged with the honey scent of beeswax. I was, I suppose, a little afraid of Great-grandfather, who was wrinkled and gruff and had never so much as patted me on the head in all my ten years.
I could hear Great-grandfather's rattling breaths in between the gusts of wind outside. As the soft golden light of the candles died away, his skin turned whiter. I had the fanciful thought that when the last one had burned itself out, his life would end.
A feeling welled up in my child's breast, of loss and tenderness and a great yearning to speak before it was too late. I had been standing beside my mother, the way I did when I was little and hid myself in her full skirts. Something drew me forward. Only two candles remained, and one flickered, leaping and struggling as if the storm outside had penetrated the room.
Great-grandfather had closed his eyes, but now the lids jerked open. His eyes were full of lightning and clouds and things I could not name. His lips—so withered, so dry!—moved. I thought I heard him speak a name, but whether it was Devron's or my father's or that of someone dead long before I was born, I could not tell.
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXII Page 7