The Magic Mines of Asharim

by Pauline M. Ross

  As we steadily moved northwards, we began to pass through less cared-for stretches. At first, it was no more than clumps of weed here and there, or a bridge missing a few stones from the parapet. The farms were still productive, and the strand watchers jumped up as we passed, bucket held out for the coin. The small towns were bustling, if not always thriving.

  But gradually we saw more dereliction: irrigation gates neglected and rotted, flooding the fields beyond, or towns virtually abandoned. A few strands were still in good repair, but these became fewer and fewer, and we had to make wide detours to find a way through. By the third day, reeds stretched across almost the full width of the canal, leaving us to thread our way through a thin strip of clear water, and the only sounds were the calls of birds squawking angrily as we disturbed them. Beyond the canal walls, the once fertile fields and orchards had become a vast swamp, wholly given over to the fish and water fowl.

  There were still people here, however. Small barges, like Morna’s, still plied this route to avoid the higher tolls elsewhere, and from time to time we delicately squeezed into the reeds to pass one, the bargers greeting each other as comrades and exchanging news about difficult sections or new tolls. And out in the swamps a few hardy souls made a living from the abundant wildlife here, living in round houses on stilts and skating about in little reed boats. Morna exchanged some of our dried meat and flour with one group for three ducks and a swan, plucked ready for the spit.

  Morna at last allowed Xando and me to show ourselves, although she replaced our scarves with her own style, knotted authentically. “Ye be safe enough out here. Just behave yeselves.”

  I’m not sure how she expected us to misbehave. There was very little scope for it in such a wild, dispiriting place. I hated it, seething with anger at the waste: water all round us, but to very little purpose, left to go its own way, unchecked, choked with duckweed. Yet this land had supported tens of thousands of people in prosperity.

  For a thousand years, there had been stability and plenty and nothing for ordinary people to worry about except whether to have fish or good red meat for their supper. All they had to do in exchange was to offer one child from each family, one child who would be educated and trained and nurtured and eventually freed to live a better life than any they could have found in their natural state. But they rejected such kindness, supporting the Betrayer, and now the Empire was gone, and civilisation with it. It was enough to make any educated person despair.

  When I tried to explain this point of view to the others, I ran into a wall. The bargers lived from day to day, and could hardly be expected to care about my philosophical musings, but I expected Xando to sympathise and was greatly surprised when he argued against me.

  “Slavery is evil, Allandra. Benevolent slavery is still slavery. The Empire brought immeasurable good to the coast and the plains, but it was founded on a great wrong. Everyone should be free to choose their own life.”

  That took my breath away. The Tre’annatha kept all of Mesanthia in subjection, in their own way. Indeed, half the coastal cities were in their thrall, in one way or another. It galled me to hear him talk so glibly of it.

  “Free! Which one of us is truly free?” I said. “We are all slaves, in our different ways. We may have the illusion of freedom, we may think we make our own choices, but we are all bound, in one way or another. Morna here is bound to the whims of those who employ her. Free workers have a constant struggle to survive. You and I are bound to our flickers. But slaves – slaves have no worries, nothing to concern them, no decisions to make. With the proper framework to prevent abuse, their lives are carefree.”

  “Disingenuous,” he said disdainfully. “You play games with semantics.”

  Not wanting to quarrel with him, I let the matter drop but it niggled at me that he disagreed so forcibly. I’d believed we were of like mind in most things, despite him being Tre’annatha.

  In other ways, the days passed very pleasantly. There were so few people passing by that my mind was gloriously free of intrusive emotions. Morna and her granddaughters were placid types, not given to intensity, although Morna would have been horrified at the sort of feelings Breela harboured when Xando was around. She was too young for sexual responses, but she was surprisingly agitated when he was nearby.

  Xando himself was the same as ever. At night, he liked to kiss a little when we went to bed, but then he would calmly fall asleep, leaving me restless and wakeful. It wasn’t so much that I wanted sex – it was soothing to be with a man who made no demands on me – but there was no real intimacy between us. That was what I missed, that openness between lovers, the removal of all barriers which created a bond of unquestioning trust. When I touched him, I could feel his love warming me, but I couldn’t be sure of myself. What did I feel? Some affection, certainly. Friendship, yes. But love? I couldn’t say. And it was hard to avoid the comparison with the other man who had truly loved me, my husband. And so it was that I spent half of every night wrapped in grief.

  ~~~~~

  On the fifth day there was an abrupt change. We came to a small town where all was in a good state of repair and the surrounding strands were well-tended.

  “We’ll stop here th’ night,” Morna said. “Good place t’buy meat.”

  We tied up in a jostle of other barges, small ones like ours who had crossed the narrows, and larger ones from the north.

  Morna was gone the whole evening, and came back with bad news.

  “They’s waitin’ for ye. Whole gaggle o’them around th’strands t’th’north, askin’ for two throwers, an Akshara and a Trannatta. Ye’ll not get past ’em.”

  “Soldiers?” I asked. “From Caxangur? And how many is a gaggle?”

  “Nay, not they soldiery types. Wild men from th’hills, wearing feathers and such like. A fair few.”

  “Warriors from Hurk Hranda?” That was interesting. The prince was still looking for me, then. They were depressingly persistent, these people. Would they never give up?

  “Ye’ll change ye’s plans, then?” Morna asked.

  “No.” Xando and I spoke in unison. “We must get to Brinmar,” he said. “Allandra is a new thrower, she has to be registered and taught the proper ways.”

  Ethics, I supposed. Well, I had my own reasons for wanting to go there, which had not much to do with ethics, but that was all right. So long as our objectives coincided, our motives could differ as much as they liked.

  “We will get as close as we can,” I said. “If we can pick up fresher information on the way, we will be able to judge what we are facing.” Morna looked dubious. “And you have been well paid in advance to take us there,” I added.

  “Aye, but there's the tub t’think on, and my two girls. I’ll not risk they’s fallin’ int’th’hands o’they wild men. Animals, they are.”

  I didn't want to fall into their hands myself, but I had defences Morna and her granddaughters could barely imagine.

  “If we have to tackle the Hrandish warriors, we will drop the girls off before we get close. You too, if you wish. Let’s find out what we're up against, though, before we panic.”

  Morna grunted, and spat into a bucket. “Can't imagine you panickin’ even if the moon be fallin’.” And she snorted with laughter.

  ~~~~~

  For two days we made our way north-west, the canals clean and weed-free again. We crossed one of the main east-west routes, wide enough for ten barges to pass at once, if the towing ropes were long enough. Some were under sail or oar, but most plodded along at the pace of one or two patient horses.

  The news we picked up was not reassuring. Garbled tales of the events at Twisted Rock had filtered along the canals, and were gleefully talked of by the bargers and tavern-keepers, as alarming and inexplicable events always were when they happened to other people a safe distance away.

  Our plan had worked, it seemed. After we had left in haste through the tunnels, Petreon had hidden himself away and Chendria had told the besiegers that he had allowed
us to escape, and had himself been executed. The soldiers were invited inside the mine. A sizeable contingent had tried to follow us into the tunnels, but something catastrophic had occurred – reports varied as to whether they had drowned or been eaten by flickers, but they had all gone, in any event.

  “The flickers probably attacked them,” Xando said, white-faced. “That's what they do when...”

  I knew what they did, uncontrolled and angry. I wondered if the soldiers had ended up in the pool, feeding the flickers' magic. Or the morodaim. A sobering thought. So much in this world that we didn't understand fully, yet tried to use anyway, sometimes with disastrous results.

  Whatever the truth of events at the mine, it was certain that my pursuers were now looking for Xando as well. Along the southern canals, it was Caxangur on the search, but the Hrandish warriors had decided we might head for Brinmar, and were camped on every likely route in and out, and well entrenched.

  “They have no right,” Xando said, over and over. “Throwers are exempt from these petty squabbles. We cannot be called to account for a crime, except by the council at Brinmar, or by an employer. It is just not right to threaten us like this.”

  His indignation was amusing, but that was not an argument likely to hold water with our pursuers.

  24: The Brinmar Barger

  There was a small town just to the east of Brinmar. It was a wretched place, the buildings patched together with odd lengths of wood and woven reeds. Not a man, woman or child boasted footwear or wore more than a single garment, a simple unfitted shift. Some of the children were naked.

  But it had its market square and its temple, and the usual array of taverns and disreputable-looking soup houses. It had a wharf, too, and the canal tax office which gave it status. Without that one modest brick building, it would have been just another no-account backwater village.

  We glided alongside the wharf, and a girl of no more than ten skipped out of the tax office with the bucket for our silver. When Morna obliged, the child skipped back inside and slammed the door. No inspection of our goods today, it seemed.

  Morna went off to the tavern to sample the ale, top up her supplies of leaf and listen to the local gossip of the Hrandish warriors. She came back gloomy.

  “More’n a score,” she said, shaking her head. “Six or eight o’em loiterin’ at a time, and they’s made camp between th’water and th’wall o’ this place ye be wantin’ to get into.”

  “That is tricky,” Xando said.

  “Ye’ll never get past’em without they seein’ ye.”

  “That remains to be seen,” I said. “We could creep in at night, perhaps.”

  “All shut up dusk t’dawn,” Morna said.

  “Hmm. Xando, tell me about Brinmar. How many entrances, how high is the wall, that sort of thing.”

  “The wall is – oh, perhaps five times the height of a man.”

  “Is it climbable?”

  “No, not at all. It is completely smooth, and there are spikes on top. There is only one entrance, where the canal passes under the wall.”

  “The canal? Then we can take the barge right into Brinmar? So we need only hide in the hold again.”

  He shook his head. “No, this barge cannot go in. So many flickers distress the horses. We would have to bring this barge to the Brinmar wharf, and get onto a different barge.”

  “Then this other barge could come here to fetch us.”

  “There is a gate between the main canal and the small canal that accesses Brinmar.”

  I tutted in annoyance. “I need to see the layout of all this for myself, and observe the Hrandish and barges and gates. I can’t arrange my dramatic reading without knowing how the stage is set.”

  “This is hardly the performance of a dramatic reading, Allandra,” Xando said crossly. “This is serious. All our lives are at stake here.”

  I bowed to acknowledge his rebuke, but in truth it was indeed a performance. We somehow had to get ourselves into Brinmar, through the only entrance, right under the noses of the watching Hrandish. More to the point, we needed to do it without them realising it, otherwise we would find ourselves just as trapped and besieged as at Twisted Rock.

  ~~~~~

  The following morning, the patient horse towed us a little nearer to Brinmar, to the wharf at the western end of town. This was an even less prepossessing place than the eastern wharf, surrounded by dilapidated warehouses and with not a soul in sight. This suited my purpose admirably. We could just make out the walls of Brinmar in the distance, on the other side of the canal.

  I took Morna on my scouting expedition.

  “Morna! Why Morna?” Xando asked in petulant tones. “I know Brinmar, so surely I should be the one to come with you.”

  It was hard to be patient with him when he was so obtuse. “Because we will be visible to the warriors, and they are not looking for two women.”

  “How about if I wear women’s clothing?”

  I tutted in exasperation at him.

  We dressed in the oldest rags Morna could find, in the locals’ preferred dung colour. We left off the conspicuous barger’s scarves, and wrapped strips of sacking round our heads.

  “You look terrible,” Xando said mournfully, and for once I agreed with him. But no one would mistake me for a lady.

  We took a basket so we could pretend to be picking herbs or some such, and crept between the abandoned warehouses until we reached the edge of the town. After that, we struck out across the strand. There was no cultivation here, and although there were irrigation ditches, they were dry, so the prevailing plant-life consisted of spiky grass that cut my feet to shreds, scrubby bushes and brambles, with the occasional clump of wind-blasted trees. There were a few herbs, too, so we were able to bend and pick in what I hoped was a convincing manner. We even found a few birds nesting on the ground, and Morna scooped up the eggs with glee.

  In this way we crossed the two or three marks that brought us opposite the canal to Brinmar, and ducked out of sight behind a thick clump of reeds. The sight was discouraging. The Brinmar wharf was unhelpfully bare of hiding places, backed by a small paved square with a low wall on two sides to mark the boundary. The other two sides were formed by the towpaths of the main canal and the side branch that ran up to Brinmar itself. A solid wooden gate in good repair divided the two waterways, with a low bridge over it. A small brick-built hut in one corner of the paved square was the only building in sight, and there wasn’t a single decent bush or tree for cover.

  The Hrandish warriors were everywhere. A group squatted in front of the hut, crouched over some kind of game, and several stood about on the towpath. On the other side of the Brinmar canal a few flags and the smoke of a cook fire marked their camp.

  These were not like the soldiers brought by Most Noble Commander Birin to Twisted Rock. He headed the plains army, whose role was to deal with any problems amongst the other plains dwellers. They wore practical uniforms, looking much the same as other soldiers, and trained with sword and axe, although their discipline was poor and most soldiers were conscripted.

  The warriors blocking our way were Hrandish nobility, and a different matter altogether. They had to pass some near-fatal manhood initiation rite, and had a reputation as the most fearsome of fighters, constantly testing their skill in wars against other tribes, against slaves in the fighting pits and very often against their own kin. They were deadly with a bow or spear. Mostly they used their skills only against rival tribes. To find them here was so unlucky.

  My heart sank. It would be tricky. There was no possibility of sneaking past so many watchers, not in daylight hours anyway. If the barge pulled up anywhere along the canal bank, Hrandish would be all over it in a heartbeat. And how would we get into Brinmar anyway?

  Beside me on the ground, Morna cackled. “Not easy for ye, that. Can’t just walk past ’em, eh, can ye? So how’ll ye get to th’throwers’ little barge?”

  “What little barge? Oh!” I hadn’t noticed it, but tucked away ti
ght against the canal wall on the Brinmar waterway was a small barge, perhaps a quarter the size of Morna’s. “Why so small?”

  “If they can’t use th’horses, they’ll be towin’ theyselves. Guessin’ it’ll be just th’one man. Th’one sleepin’ in th’hammock.”

  I chided myself for my lack of observation skills. The hammock was strung up on the porch outside the hut, and what I’d taken for a bundle of rags was clearly a person, stretched out fast asleep.

  Hidden by the reeds, we watched for several hours as the sun reached its zenith and began its slow descent. Morna fell asleep, snoring gently, but I kept watch on the Hrandish, marking their movements and routine. Not that there was much of that. The Hrandish were notoriously undisciplined, and this lot were fine examples of that. They sat or lay about chatting, or sharing their noxious smoking pipes, or gambling, and the only liveliness I saw in them was when their cook beat a drum to announce the noon meal. They all shifted pretty smartly back to camp then.

  But twice fights broke out amongst the gamblers, which went from shouts to knives in three heartbeats. Then they fought viciously, only stopping when one was incapacitated, while the rest of the group cheered them on.

  In the middle of the afternoon, a barge glided down the main canal from the west, and tied up at the Brinmar wharf, while a couple of boys unloaded several boxes and sacks. The sleeper in the hammock woke up, and the three of them carted the goods across to the small barge.

  It seemed an innocent enough activity, just food supplies being delivered for the institute, I supposed, but the Hrandish were instantly alert. They broke off whatever they were doing and milled about getting in the way, examining every item, and even going onto the two barges. I was too far away to pick up any emotions, but the bargers were waving their arms about in obvious annoyance. They stepped aside smartly enough, though; if a Hrandish warrior armed with bow and knife and sling decides to take a close look at your activities, there isn’t much you can do about it. A couple of throwers might have sorted them out, and I amused myself by devising some interesting ways to train flickers for such situations.