The Magic Mines of Asharim

by Pauline M. Ross

  Shock raced through her. “Oh, no, no! We couldn’t risk them. Zak was prepared to take his chances, but not a thrower. If you were hit… And Xando is no fighter…”

  I began to get a glimmering of her point. If I had died, my flickers would have been released from control and then… yes, I could see the logic.

  She picked up the coat and handed it to me. “Here. You had better keep this. It seems to be your destiny to be a thrower. We will discuss this further in the morning. Xando, go to your court.” He began to protest, but she waved him to silence. “We will sort out permanent arrangements tomorrow. Zakkarvyn, take our guest to your court for now. Get her fed and watered. Keep her away from everyone until I’ve decided how to deal with her. And you—” She glared at me. “Keep your mouth shut, all right?”

  I just laughed.

  “Zakkarvyn, make sure she doesn’t go spouting off where she shouldn’t.”

  “I’ll do my best.” But he grinned at me as he spoke.

  We left Errin to whatever assignation we had disrupted. Outside, Xando hugged me tight and then turned disconsolately away. Zak led me in a different direction, through a bewildering array of left and right turns. The streets were so alike that, without the wall looming over the township and the tower away in the distance as constant markers, I’d have been hopelessly lost.

  Eventually, Zak opened a door distinguishable from the others only by its bright red paint. “This one’s mine. I have the place to myself, so you won’t be crowded.”

  “A whole house to yourself?”

  “This place is huge. Anyone who wants can have a whole house. I expect you’ll be sharing with Xando, though, when the dust settles. Novices usually share with someone more experienced.”

  “Like a mentor, you mean?”

  He looked at me quizzically, the merriment bubbling up again. “Something like that. Now, come on through and see the court.”

  I followed him through the house, along a passageway beside the stairs and on through a large room at the back fitted out like a kitchen, although the range wasn’t lit. He opened another door, and ushered me outside.

  Instead of each house having its own garden or yard, the whole row opened onto a common space. In fact, four rows of houses formed a square, and the court, as Zak called it, was the centre of the square. There was a wooden pavilion, tables with benches, clusters of people chatting and laughing, and cook fires set a little apart. A glorious smell of roasting meat wafted over me.

  “Food!”

  Zak laughed. “Food, yes. And a very decent ale.”

  “Any wine?”

  Another chuckle. “I’m sure some can be found. Allandra…”

  I was not so mesmerised by the prospect of a decent meal as to miss the worry in his mind. “Yes?”

  “Look… I really enjoyed watching you spar with Errin, but for myself, I’d like to keep on the right side of her. So…”

  “No spouting off. Got it. I can be the embodiment of silent inscrutability for a glass of wine and a plate of – What is that, venison?”

  “Probably. We have a lot of deer in the paddocks here. So… bath first or food?”

  “Ohhhhh! Bath, definitely. I can see I’m going to like living here.”

  He grinned widely, teeth gleaming.

  ~~~~~

  It was a strange thing, but that evening was my happiest and most relaxed for a very long time. It was more than a year since that dreadful night when I’d crept out of Caxangur, shocked, grief-stricken and utterly alone. Since then, I’d spent moon after moon either pretending to be someone I wasn’t, or an outcast, or else fleeing in desperation, surviving from day to day as best I could, sometimes all of them at once. Even Xando’s friendship – love, if it could be called that – hadn’t been much help to me, for he was in many ways just a child.

  What I needed, exhausted as I was in both mind and body, was someone who would look after me for a change. Someone who would take charge, so that I could lay down the burdens that dragged at me. Someone who would stand between me and the world while I curled into a ball and healed myself. Someone strong, to take care of me. It didn’t need to be a man, particularly, but that evening Zak was there, and he fell into the role as if born for it.

  While I bathed, he found me clean clothes – a gown, of all things – and then bathed himself while I dressed. He took me into his court, saw that I was fed, sent someone for wine, made sure I ate and drank enough, but not too much. And all the while he chattered away to the others, turning the conversation away from awkward subjects, deflecting questions, drawing attention away from me. He wrapped me in a protective cocoon, and all my anxieties melted away.

  It didn’t hurt that I found him attractive. I’d never gone through that stage between childhood and womanhood of falling for every unlikely passing male. I’d been too busy dealing with my very adult outbreaks of lust, and then I’d been married to a man who was lovely but had never excited me physically outside the bedroom.

  So meeting Zak was like throwing oil onto a fire. I sat and watched him all evening, mesmerised by his lips with the faint sheen of sweat above them, the smooth skin of his arms with muscles that rippled as he moved, bringing the tattoo snake to life, and the constant laughter in his mind, as if life was one huge joke. When he looked at me, his eyes smiling, he seemed to be inviting me to share the joke with him. The rational part of my mind knew perfectly well that he treated everyone with the same good humour, but my heart fell into his orbit like iron to the magnet.

  I was lost. If he’d invited me to his room, I’d have gone without a thought. But he didn’t see me that way at all. When he spoke to me, there was a wariness, an unease, as if he was assessing me. Not unexpected, I suppose, for I was a stranger to him. Even so, whenever his eyes turned my way, I saw a ripple of pleasure in his mind. I put that down to our shared heritage. We were both Akk’ashara, we both came from Mesanthia, we understood each other in subtle, unspoken ways. But there was no desire in him, beyond a very low level: something that was probably below his conscious threshold but could be roused by a touch or a word, perhaps, if I wished.

  I didn’t wish, not that night. It was enough to be with him, to look at him, to listen as he talked, to enjoy the thrumming of my heart and the heat of my body without the urgent need for sex washing over me.

  In fact, considering the number of people in the court, perhaps twenty-five all told, there was no emotional turbulence to disturb me at all. They were curious about me, but they easily allowed Zak to distract them. There were couples amongst them, but their affection was muted. There were no resentments, no secret feuds, no jealousy. No conflict at all. Only Zak and a married couple who were also bargers had feelings of normal intensity. The rest – the throwers – seemed oddly out of focus, somehow. But I was too happy to worry about it. Like my flickers, who were thrilled to be back amidst so many of their kind, I purred with contentment all evening.

  Tomorrow I would meet with Errin again, who would decide my future. Tomorrow I would be back with Xando, whatever that meant. But for that one night, I was blissfully happy.

  27: Training

  Errin summoned me the next morning. I followed Zak meekly through the streets, my mood vastly improved by a bath, a long sleep and plenty of wholesome food. As we walked, he played the host, punctiliously pointing out the landmarks we passed: the infirmary, the library, the research hall, the stores.

  The records room, where I was to be interrogated, was a large single-storey building, as undistinguished as all the rest. Inside were the dull offices and corridors and heaps of paper found in any small-town administrative building. Functional, but nothing more.

  Errin’s office was no larger than any other, and contained the usual desk, shelves and cupboards. And Xando. I wasn’t sure whether he had arrived before the appointed time, or had been summoned early to ensure he gave his version of events before me.

  “Ah, there you are,” Errin said. “Sit.” Immediately she turned back to X
ando, who was describing our flight of the previous day. Despite Errin’s brusque manner, there was little hostility in her towards me. Caution, perhaps, but nothing aggressive, and the anger of the previous night was gone, thank the One. Still, she had the manners of a dung beetle.

  “Good morning, Mistress,” I said pointedly. Xando’s narrative trickled away to nothing, and he and Errin both turned to look at me. Zak was behind me, fetching chairs, but his inward surge of amusement made me want to laugh.

  “Oh. Good morning.” Errin’s tone was grudging, and there wasn’t a scrap of guilt in her, but I detected the tiniest hint of respect. “I trust you are well rested?”

  “Very, thank you. I’m feeling much better this morning.”

  Now she was amused, too. If she took it as an apology rather than a comment on her rudeness, that was fine with me.

  Xando finished his tale, and then Zak told the story again from his perspective. Errin listened without interruption, asking sensible questions when he paused. Only then did she turn to me.

  “Your case is unusual. I have never heard of anyone who became a thrower because a flicker chose them. It is especially odd, because the flicker had already attached to Xando. Our researchers are investigating, but it may be a unique case. However, it has happened, and there we are. So now you must be trained. That will take a year—”

  “A year!”

  “Certainly. You will join our novices in class every morning for two hours. For one hour each day you will attempt to attach new flickers, or train the ones you have already. You will spend the afternoons working in the gardens. You get a day off every quarter moon. Each moon you will take a test. At the end of a year, if you have passed all the tests, you will become a registered thrower.”

  “A class? With a teacher?” She nodded. “I don’t think so.”

  She sighed heavily. There was a spike of annoyance in her mind, but it faded quite quickly. “You may think you’re special, you know, but to us you’re just another novice thrower.”

  “You have a library here,” I said patiently. “All the necessary information I need will be in books, yes?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “Then I shall learn from books. I will take your tests in one moon—”

  “A moon! You cannot learn everything in one moon.”

  “I assure you I can.” The astonishment in her was amusing. “Most of your novices are illiterate, I expect, is that so? Then the only way they can learn is by verbal instruction. But I learn from books. I read quickly, I commit the salient points to memory. It is what I have been trained to do from childhood.”

  “You must have had tutors,” Xando said, although he sounded doubtful. “And you went to the Academia.”

  “Indeed. But my tutors and professors did not teach me. Rather they tested my understanding, and clarified ambiguities. They discussed my findings with me. They helped me interpret what I learned, certainly, but I taught myself. Sitting in classes with the illiterate – being told what to think – that would drive me insane. I say this not to boast, but to explain my position.”

  Errin regarded me silently. The dominant emotion in her mind was curiosity. “You really believe you can learn everything that quickly?”

  “One moon. If I fail to reach the required standard, then I will stay for the full year. If I pass, you will register me and I will be free to leave. Do you agree?”

  Her eyes gleamed. “Why not? You may try.” She glanced at Xando and then at Zak. “And now you two can go. I want to talk to Allandra on her own.”

  After they had gone, she leaned forward, arms resting on the desk. “You and Xando. You are – lovers?”

  How to answer a question like that? Lovers? Friends? Something in between? I didn’t know myself.

  “We sleep together,” I said eventually.

  She laughed. “A non-committal answer. Very good. It is not my concern, perhaps. I will ask a more precise question. Do you wish to share accommodation with him? It need not be a permanent arrangement. Perhaps I should explain. It is usual for a novice to have a guide, someone to help them come to terms with being a thrower. They normally share a house, as a matter of convenience. Now, Xando has given me to understand that you and he are – close, that there is something between you. Clearly, he is the obvious candidate to be your guide. However, you may feel – differently. You may wish to make a fresh start. If so, I can assign a different guide for you.”

  I was tempted, for a moment. Xando was not the great love of my life, and we were together more from his wish than mine. There would be advantages to leaving him behind, and Zak was very much one of them.

  Yet there were benefits to being with Xando, too. He understood me, he had shared some difficult moments with me and that meant something. And he was so restful to be with. His own emotions were hidden from me, and he had the power to shield me from external emotions, too. I wasn’t ready to give that up.

  Errin watched me carefully. There was something in her mind – some hesitation – that made me suspect that she didn’t want Xando as my guide. I wondered why, and whether there was a way to accommodate my wishes and also hers.

  “I’m happy to have Xando as my guide for the practical aspects, but… you have academics here? Researchers, who aren’t throwers themselves?”

  “In a way. The class teachers you so despise are of that type.” She was amused now.

  “I don’t despise them in the least. Nor do I despise the class-based method of teaching, which works for most people. But I should like to have another guide – a mentor, someone I can hold deep discussions with. A different point of view, if you like. Someone to stretch my mind, who is less close to me.”

  A spike of approval in her mind. “Ah. I see. Yes, that can be arranged. So you will share a house with Xando?”

  “I will.”

  “Very well. And if ever that arrangement becomes – problematic, shall we say, we can revise it.”

  I smiled at her.

  One moon. That would be enough. Plenty of time to train the flickers I would need for my purposes. And then… then at last I would be able to do what I wanted. No more running away. No more hiding. No more sitting tamely by while everything of value in the world trickled away to dust. It would not be easy but it could be done, yes.

  ~~~~~

  Brinmar had its quirks, but I was so happy there. I had a huge pile of books to read, I had my flickers as a constant burble of companionship, I had Xando to talk to, play dragon stones with and to keep the mental assault at bay, and I had Zak to look at and fill my imagination with interesting thoughts. I had a tutor too – a grey-haired woman, round and red-cheeked as an apple, who spent every meal at my side, endlessly discussing the nuances of Hrandish thrower customs, or the history of the mines, or the possibilities for attaching and training my own flickers. She was never at a loss, no matter how obscure the subject.

  I crept out of bed each morning, careful not to disturb Xando, so that I could get to my books without a moment’s delay. I converted a room in the house to a study, and covered every surface with mounds of books. My fingers became ink-stained from the copious notes I took. I read every possible moment of the day. Occasionally Tsanda, my tutor, suggested a class that I might find interesting, or a relevant discussion amongst the senior tutors, but mostly I worked on my own. It was glorious.

  After a few days, when Errin acknowledged that I was competent enough, I was allowed to go to the tower to try to attach flickers. The tower was an unsettling place, managed by a stooped old man, deaf as stone, who seemed unaffected by his proximity to the barrage of untamed flicker emotions. There were so many flickers trapped there that their combined anguish was detectable from all over Brinmar. The extracted flickers at Twisted Rock had been full of anger, actively hostile, spitting their aggression at anyone who came near. Here, however, they were grief-stricken, lost in their own tormented distress. It was very upsetting, not just for me, but for my flickers, too.

  All
the throwers went in and out of the tower as quickly as possible. There was one advantage here; it was much easier to attach a flicker. They were so desperate for release that the compatible ones responded at once to my call, so I was able to scoop up several in each session. But most were too far gone even to respond. Xando told me they would die soon.

  “It is not good for them to be transported so far from their source,” he said. “They are better fresh. It is why I prefer to go to a mine to attach what I need.”

  “Why doesn’t everyone do that? The distance, I suppose.”

  “Partly. But you and I – we feel the flickers’ distress particularly strongly. Most throwers have a much more limited connection.”

  That was partly a benefit, in enabling me to attach flickers quickly, but it was a curse to feel their pain so intensely.

  Tsanda and Xando both talked to me about the sort of tasks I might wish to train my flickers for. Throwers were either fighters, whose flickers could kill or maim or otherwise act as weapons, or helpers, whose flickers were capable of healing or other useful functions. I declared my intention to be a helper.

  “Excellent!” Xando said, when I told him. “We will be able to work together, then.”

  I said nothing. If he wanted to think that, I wasn’t going to disabuse him of the idea, but I had my own scheme in mind and he had no part in it.

  Xando’s court was a quiet one, with only ten other people living there permanently. Throwers tended to come and go, disappearing to carry out assignments for clients, then returning when it was completed. I made no effort to make friends with any of them, since I had no plans to stay. No one wanted to make friends with me, either, or with Xando. I wasn’t sure why, but it suited me.

  Every quarter moon, there was a rest day, with no classes or gardening for the novices, and in the evening one or other of the courts hosted a meal for everyone. There were perhaps two hundred people living at Brinmar at any one time, throwers, novices, tutors and the necessary servant class who cooked and cleaned and managed the paperwork. They originated from all over the northern plains, and normally got along perfectly well speaking the derivative of Low Mesanthian that everyone knew.