The Magic Mines of Asharim

by Pauline M. Ross

  “It is the law, Allandra. As soon as your flicker chose you, he committed you to another life. You must be properly trained, you must learn how to keep your flickers in safety, you must know how the law applies – every city is different. There are rules about what they can do, to make sure they are useful and not used only for personal gain. Most importantly, you must have the time to come to terms with this change in your life.”

  So many changes I had come to terms with over the years. That was something I was good at. And an institute for training flickers would be a good place to hide.

  “Allandra,” Xando began, rolling the name round in his mouth as if he knew it was false. “Allandra, whatever has happened to drive you here, whatever you are running away from – all that is gone, wiped out. A thrower is – not above the law, exactly, but a special case. You can sever all ties to your past. Whatever – or whoever – is pursuing you cannot touch you now, not as a thrower. It is a chance to begin again, your past wiped away.”

  I wondered if any of that was true. For what I had done, I didn’t think even being a thrower could save me. And whatever I was, wherever I went, I would still carry the seeds of my curse within me.

  But there was no point agonising over it. Nothing could be changed.

  I took a deep breath. “So… what happens next? Must I tell Petreon? He won’t be able to tell, not if I tuck this little chap away in my pocket.”

  “No, but the extractors will. You must tell him. He will write to the Mine Office to release you from your contract.”

  “And then I will have to leave here?” I shuddered. Back into the world, after I’d thought I was safe.

  “Not immediately. You must train your flicker first. You cannot go anywhere with a raw, untrained flicker. If you do not, he will eventually choose his own outlet for his power. You would not wish for that. He will never hurt you, but he might well hurt others. So you need to train him, to give him a purpose and ensure he does nothing without your authority. And he will be happier with others of his kind. Maybe two or three, to start with. Next year you can add more.”

  I had pockets on my tunic, so I tucked the flicker into one of those, where he settled contentedly. My head was filled with the flicker equivalent of humming. I went straight back to the house, and made a more permanent home for him, a tiny pocket tucked inside my sleeve, under Xando’s direction.

  To be honest, I was bemused. I had started out at Twisted Rock believing that all flickers were evil, aggressive creatures, wholly alien. Then I’d seen the ones in the mine, which were openly friendly and curious, at least until the extractors trapped them in their glass jars. Xando’s had never been anything but amicable. Now I had one of my own and I wasn’t at all sure what I felt about it.

  ~~~~~

  Petreon took the news calmly, at least on the surface, but inside his emotions churned. Surprise, certainly, but also a little admiration. And sadness. He would miss me, it seemed.

  His eyes flicked from me to Xando and back. “You’ll leave soon?”

  It was Xando who answered. “Not this coming brightmoon, certainly. Perhaps the next.”

  Petreon grunted and I detected anxiety in him. The eyes flicked again, lingering on Xando. “Does this mean—?”

  I knew what he meant, but again it was Xando who answered. “As far as I am concerned, nothing need change. But it is for Allandra to say.”

  Xando was skilled at reading people, that was sure. He understood the cause of Petreon’s worry as well as I did.

  “I’m happy to continue as we are,” I said.

  Petreon grunted again, but his anxiety abated.

  Chendria’s eyes narrowed when she heard, but she could find nothing to say, beyond, “Well!” repeated many times, and then, with a twisted little smile, “You are a surprising woman, Allandra. But perhaps this is for the best.”

  She was very pleasant to me after that. I supposed she was glad to see me go, and have Petreon all to herself again, but it would have made my life there so much easier if she had treated me that way right from the start. She was not an evil woman, just a jealously protective one, with a special dislike for the Akk’ashara.

  The extractors looked at me with round eyes, and whispered behind their hands, avoiding my gaze. I guessed that would be the last of their tentative overtures towards friendship.

  Rufin cornered me in the linen room the next day. “Is it my fault?” he asked plaintively. “You didn’t do this because of me, did you? Because… I really wanted to stay with you, truly, but… I just couldn’t, not with Janna the way she is. She suffers terribly, poor thing.”

  He was the one suffering, though. The longing and despair filling his mind almost brought me to tears. I had to leave the room quickly. I suppose he took that as a sign that he was right, that I was in love with him and had taken this drastic step to escape from my misery.

  I had no patience with him. There was no reason for him to keep away from me, none at all, beyond his own timidity. He was afraid of Janna’s wrath, and because of that he missed out on our – well, let’s call it friendship, for it was never more than that on my side.

  ~~~~~

  Although I had agreed to continue servicing Petreon’s needs, I was relieved of most of my other duties. No one wanted me working alongside them in the kitchen or laundry rooms when I had a flicker in my pocket. I was to keep the three houses tidy, but nothing else. I had plenty of time to learn to be a thrower under Xando’s tuition.

  Initially my training was very gentle. I sat cross-legged in the centre of the courtyard with the flicker in my hand, talking to him. Nothing else. He loved it, I could tell. His colours changed very slowly and he barely moved, exuding contentment.

  After a couple of days, Xando said, “Try singing to him.”

  “Singing? What sort of singing? A sea shanty, maybe? High theatrical? A road team’s work song?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Do you know all those? You are full of surprises. No, something gentle. A hum.”

  So I hummed. And the flicker hummed back at me. There was no actual sound, of course, but that’s what it felt like to me. After a while, I began a lullaby, one my nurse had crooned to me when I was tiny enough to be rocked to sleep on her knee. The flicker was delirious with happiness. If he had been a dog, he would have been lying on his back for his tummy to be rubbed. As it was, he oozed himself flat across my palm and all his tiny lights turned to blue.

  “This is excellent,” Xando whispered in my ear. “You are both doing well. In two or three days, you can begin focusing his power. But that is enough for today. What you are doing is very intensive, and you must be careful not to overwhelm yourself or your flicker. But while I am busy with my own training, you might care to do some research at the library. See if you can find any books on the subject of flickers.”

  It didn’t feel intensive to me. I was exhilarated, not exhausted. Nevertheless, my training was restricted to two hours each day. So I left Xando to work alone, and set off for the library.

  I had not gone far when I rounded a corner and almost collided with Kijana. It occurred to me that I hadn’t spoken to her for some time, and I wondered guiltily if I’d been so absorbed in playing dragon stones and drinking wine every evening that I’d neglected her company. She smiled at me, though, and I detected a flash of happiness in her.

  “Allandra! I’m so glad to see you. I heard your news. Are you pleased?”

  Good question, which I dodged with some bland reply.

  When her pleasure in meeting me died away, I saw that her mind was filled with sorrow. “I haven’t seen you around,” I said cautiously. “How are you?”

  Her face fell. She looked pale and tired, as if she’d been ill. “Oh… I’m all right. It’s Helly… he’s not very well. The bloom is bad this moon, very bad. All the children are affected, but especially the older ones. It draws them. They want to go to the pool but it would overwhelm them.” She shook her head, and a tear escaped to roll unheeded down one c
heek.

  “Oh Kijana, I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  “There’s no help for them. That’s just how it is with children born here. The bloom affects them even before they’re born, they grow up in its shadow and all too soon it reclaims them.” Another tear. She dashed it away. “You’ll excuse me, but I must fetch some soup for them.”

  I watched as she hurried off, thankful beyond measure that I’d never had a child. I’d endured many losses in my life, but at least I had been spared the grief of losing one so loved, whose soul is wrapped around your very heart.

  ~~~~~

  Xando helped me scour the streets and alleys of the town for a fabric shop, so that I could make my thrower’s coat. That was a task I was very well suited for, and I spent many contented hours measuring and cutting and stitching, sewing in the special little pockets where my flickers would live. There were forty pockets altogether, in many different colours so that the nature of the coat was immediately apparent; ten pockets on the outside of each sleeve, accessible for easy deployment, and another twenty inside the body of the coat. Fifty was the legal maximum, but few throwers could manage that number. Xando had thirty one.

  I couldn’t imagine having so many, but then I’d never imagined being a thrower at all, yet here I was. Once the coat was finished, I introduced my one flicker to his new home, and he almost squealed for joy. The pockets are small and constricted, lined with leather, so they must feel very like the flicker’s hole in the rock. Mine was delighted with his new accommodation, anyway.

  Just before brightmoon, Xando took me to the sun room where the extracted flickers were stored, with a couple of extractors in attendance. The room was just off the tunnel which the women used to access the mine. I could barely enter for the hostility emanating from the creatures trapped within. The room was small and unfurnished, lined on three sides with shelves to hold the jars of extracted flickers. One wall was all window, facing north to catch the sun. Away from the mine, it was the only way the flickers could be kept alive.

  Each shelf held its row of glass jars, some rows long and some short. Despite the dreadful atmosphere, I was intrigued.

  “Why so many over here, and so few on these shelves?”

  The extractors mutely looked at their feet.

  It was Xando who explained it. “Some extractors have greater success than others.”

  “It’s them as has children,” one of the extractors said. “The children draw ’em, make it easier to extract ’em.”

  “’S why so many of ’em has children,” the other said. “Get paid more, don’t they?”

  “And so does she,” the first one said. “Mistress. She switches the herbs, gets ‘em pregnant and then she and Master get more money. Pah!”

  It didn’t surprise me that Chendria, for all her superficial amiability, would do such a thing. Beneath the surface, she was hard as stone. I remembered the advice I’d been given at Crenton Port to keep my herbs locked away, and now I was glad I’d heeded it. Clearly it was a widespread practice to increase production.

  I was relieved to find that I would not have to stay in the sun room with the flickers assaulting my mind. A short distance away was a tiny windowless room with solid stone walls. A table and a couple of chairs were all the furnishings. The selection room.

  “We will need to be swift,” Xando said. “The mulers will be here in two days, and then we will lose all this moon’s extraction.”

  I sat behind the table as the extractors brought a succession of glass jars to me, one at a time. I had to see if I could connect with any of them. Most were too hostile for me to reach with my mind and were quickly removed. It was exhausting work, but when I made a connection, I experienced a rush of energy from the flicker. I spent an hour in the morning and another hour late in the afternoon, and after two days I had found seven extra compatible flickers. Xando had added another two to his own haul.

  “Well, that is a promising start,” he said. “Very promising. You have done well. When you are more experienced, you will be able to attach many more to you. Now we will see about training them.”

  “What happens if I am unable to do that?”

  He shuffled his feet. “Let us hope that situation does not arise.”

  My stomach clenched. I knew what an unrestrained flicker was like.

  ~~~~~

  The mulers came and went, and Twisted Rock went into its quieter, post-brightmoon phase. The bloom was still strong, so no one could enter the mine, but the extractors grieved over their lost flickers, in no mood to enjoy the respite. Three of the children were still confined to their beds, which kept the atmosphere sombre.

  Perhaps Xando and I were the only ones whose spirits were buoyant, our pockets full of tiny companions. To my surprise, I enjoyed working with my flickers. There were eight of them tucked away in my coat pockets now, and they had very different personalities. If anyone had told me that, I’d never have believed them, but it was true. Four seemed male to me, one my excitable, bossy original flicker and three other sturdy but dogged little chaps. Three seemed female, shy and affectionate. The eighth conformed to neither gender, but was highly intelligent and imaginative. And funny. I often laughed at its antics. Who would have thought they had a sense of humour?

  As I got to know my new friends, I had another reason for enjoying life, in Xando. That was something else I would never have suspected, that I would see a Tre’annatha not as my natural enemy, but as a friend. I liked him, that was the truth of the matter. He had a soft, gentle smile and affectionate ways that melted all my hostility. When his hazel eyes twinkled at me, I could hardly stop myself blushing. It was fortunate that my skin was dark enough to hide such foolishness.

  If he had been a real man to me, I would have said I was falling in love with him. But he was incapable of anything beyond companionship. Very pleasant companionship, certainly, and the fact that I had no access to his emotions made it a steady, placid kind of friendship. He would never knock me sideways with a burst of anger or jealousy or sorrow. But then he would never set me alight with desire, either, and how could I love a man without completing that love in the best, most natural way? There were no kisses, no hand-holding, no urgent gropings with clothes hurled aside. He treated me little differently from any of the others, except that he sought out my company whenever he could. It wasn’t enough. For me, it would never be enough.

  ~~~~~

  My training had progressed to the point where I could now reach out to the power inside the flickers to train them to a specific task.

  “You must decide soon what you want them to do for you,” he said, as we lingered over our wine after evening table. “Your first is almost ready to be impressed, and you must be prepared for that moment. There is only a narrow space of time – two or three days, perhaps. After that, it will be too late and he will have to be destroyed.”

  “I thought they were impossible to kill?”

  “Difficult, certainly. But here there is a way – they can go back to the pool. Outside the mine, it is a very dangerous business. Have you thought how you wish to train him?”

  I hadn’t. My researches at the library had been fruitless. “What are the options? What sort of things can he do?”

  “Anything you want him to, more or less.”

  “I don’t understand. Just tell me what he is able to do.”

  “He can do whatever you can imagine him doing, Allandra. He has magic in him, he is not limited by the mundane world as we are. If you want him to light up like the moon, or burst into flames, or turn everything he touches green – he can do that.”

  It is strange how a single moment, a few words casually thrown out, can change everything. My life up to that point had been a series of doors closing, of options gradually dwindling to this single point with no way out. But now…

  He can do whatever you can imagine him doing. Ah, Xando, if only you’d known how those words would affect me.

  Ther
e was a burst of laughter from the extractors at the far end of the table. Rufin was entertaining them, to lift their spirits. Chendria’s honking voice was the loudest, naturally.

  Xando paused until they quietened down. “The only constraint is that you cannot make something out of nothing, or make nothing out of something. You cannot make anything vanish, for instance. But you can change one thing into another. He can use his magic to transform things – like turning cheese into meat. Or he can turn his magic into something, which can be used.”

  “Like poison?”

  “Yes, or a healing potion. Or wine!” He reached for the bottle to refill our glasses, then slid it across to Petreon, who was watching us in silence. “But if you can imagine it happening, you can teach him to do it for you.”

  “He just reads my mind?”

  “Of course.” His eyes twinkled in amusement. “All your work so far has been to attune him to your mind. He reads you very well. So you show him – in your mind – what you want him to do. If you—”

  The door from the fountain square crashed open, and two extractors almost fell through it. Their faces were grimy, streaked with tears, their eyes wide in panic. Chests heaving, they tried to catch their breath.

  Silence fell, all eyes turned to them. Someone stood up too quickly, sending a chair clattering to the ground.

  One of the women pointed wordlessly outside, sobbing.

  A gabble of sound washed over the room, everyone talking, asking questions at once.

  Petreon’s voice roared over the top of the cacophony. “What is happening? SPEAK!”

  One was too distraught to answer, but the other took a heaving breath.

  “FIRE!”

  12: Fire

  We tumbled out of the Main House into the square. The moon was so bright that at first we could see nothing. Then, a plume of smoke became visible. One of the extractors’ houses. Kijana’s, I thought. Someone screamed. The fear all round me was a palpable thing, filling my head, making me want to scream, too.