The Mages of Bennamore

by Pauline M. Ross

  It was so clearly a rehearsed performance. Well executed, and spoken with conviction, but every word had been polished and practised to perfection. The only question in my mind was who had convinced him to play this role.

  Not Ish, of that I was sure. He smiled at me, a wide beam of obvious pleasure, delighted by his own cleverness. “There, you see? Just a mix-up at the gates. Do you have any questions for Kestimar? You may ask him anything.” I saw nothing of subterfuge there.

  I turned to the Commander. “You knew Lady Mage Hestaria well, then?”

  A hint of doubt in the Commander’s eyes. He cast a quick glance towards Ish, then back to me. “I have seen her several times, when she had occasion to visit the Hold.”

  “You knew her well enough to spot her amongst a crowd?”

  “Her face is familiar to me, yes.”

  “Oh, you saw her face? I thought she was leaving the Hold? Wasn’t her back to you?”

  A hint of annoyance now. “It was, but her red hair is most distinctive.”

  “Her hair was uncovered? At this time of year?”

  More confidence now. “Yes, she wears a grey cloak and hood, but on that day the hood was down.”

  “Thank you, Commander. Forgive me for so many questions, but I shall have to give a full report to Lord Mage Losh.” I smiled at him, and he gave me the tiniest of bows in acknowledgement.

  Ish dismissed him and with another salute he marched off.

  “Well, that is a relief!” Ish said. “We needn’t worry about her any more.”

  “She’s still missing!” I snapped.

  “Of course, of course. I meant only that we at the Hold needn’t worry. Clearly she is not here.” He gave a little smile, tugging at one ear.

  For the first time, I felt a twinge of alarm. My father had taught me well, and I knew the signs of a man hiding something. Ear-tugging was a common one. I had never seen such a thing in Ish before, though. Was it possible that Mal was right about him? Perhaps he’d seen this type of nervous gesture in Ish, and I’d been too blinded by my emotions to notice? This Commander Kestimar was clearly lying to some degree, but it would trouble me more if Ish was party to the scheme. I’d be far happier if I thought he were being duped too.

  “Who is this Commander Kestimar?” I asked. “He is not from the coast, I think.”

  “He came here from the plains as part of my wife’s retinue, but he has adapted well, I think. A good fellow, despite the thick accent. Sharp as a needle.”

  “And he still works for her?”

  “Oh yes. He is very loyal. In charge of her personal guard. Very trustworthy. Ah, here is the trolley with your little treats. You approve of my arrangements for your comfort?”

  Was it my imagination, or did he seem relieved to be interrupted? While I nibbled, he looked at the books I’d been reading on Bennamore history and kept me entertained with scurrilous versions of the exploits of the three Princes. Ish was so well-read, and knew so much about everything, both the official records and the alternatives. We soon fell into one of our little competitions, over some treaty or other. He won by knowing the names of all the army captains who had witnessed the signing.

  “You are out of practice, Fen-la,” he said, smiling warmly at me across the table, and for a moment the use of the familiar nickname set my heart pounding. “Time was when you would have thrashed me out of sight. You used to have every trade agreement memorised since the end of the whaling wars, I seem to recall, and all the border treaties.”

  I’d been too busy fending off starvation to worry about border treaties, but I didn’t want to spoil the moment by mentioning that.

  “I should be getting back.” I got to my feet, but to my surprise he reached for my hand.

  “I have something to show you first. Will you come?”

  Perhaps I should have been more suspicious of him, after the business with Commander Kestimar, but I had neither the power nor the inclination to refuse. Whatever he might be hiding about Hestaria, there was no trace of guile in him now. The Ish before me with pleading eyes was the same man I’d married all those years ago, his charm just as irresistible.

  I went with him. His two personal guards materialised from dark corners to follow us. The librarian, Lokkin, rushed across as we were leaving and thrust a book into my hand, then rushed off again. I tucked it under one arm, too absorbed by Ish to take much notice. Another volume I’d asked for, I supposed.

  Taking my hand, Ish led me out of the library by a side door and across a wide yard edged with businesslike outbuildings. Several chimneys belched smoke, and from one open door came sounds of hammering, and the sizzle of hot metal in water. The aroma of freshly baked bread tempted my nose. At a well in the centre, several boys pushed each other about as they waited their turn. The domestic scene made me smile.

  We went into the tower at the far side of the yard, and I realised at once from the guards outside and the many personal items strewn about that this was the family’s own residence. Coats and cloaks hung on hooks just inside the door, books were scattered on a marble bench and a child’s doll lay on the floor.

  I hesitated. “Are you sure your wife won’t mind me being here?”

  “She’s away,” he said simply. Which didn’t answer the question, of course.

  He took me up the wide circular stairs to a room on the floor above. Compared to the splendour of the public galleries, the tower was modestly appointed, and furnished more for comfort than style. Instead of marble pillars and statues, rugs covered the wooden floors and hangings decorated the walls. Tubs of flowers infused the air with exotically mingled scents.

  The room he took me to was not large, a pleasant sitting room with painted screens and three soft chairs arranged around a wide stone fireplace. It wasn’t hard to spot Ish’s chair, for the table beside it held a neat pile of books, and a couple of document tubes. On the other side of the fireplace, the chair and the table beside it were half-covered by an array of scarves, scent bottles and jars of sweet chewing stones. The middle chair held a small family of toy horses made from stuffed felt in garish colours.

  Ish led me straight past the chairs to a shallow alcove at the back of the room, fitted with glass shelves and doors. Here was Ish’s collection. Every Holder had one, an array of valuable or decorative items collected over the years. I’d had one, too, long ago, a mixture of modest gifts from allied Holdings or potential suitors or wealthy merchants hoping to impress the possible future Holder. Some were just curiosities picked up from the Shannamar strand or found in the dusty backrooms of shops. This was very different, a dazzling array of gold and shimmering jewels and exquisitely lacquered boxes.

  Ish unlocked the cabinet and opened the doors wide. “There! Do you remember it?”

  At first I was so mesmerised by the many beautiful objects in front of me that I could see nothing familiar. A glass fronted clock showed wheels and gears revolving. A whole shelf held dragon’s teeth, engraved with minutely detailed pictures. Two daggers with enamelled handles and curved blades made of some black glass-like material glimmered wickedly.

  Right in front of me, on a stand, a glass ball was filled with a swirling soft blue light. I was instantly drawn to it, mesmerised by the gentle movement inside it, like a summer cloud, constantly reforming itself into new shapes. I reached out and picked it up.

  Immediately the colour changed to a vivid yellow, then through a sequence of other colours, eventually settling to a pale creamy brown. It felt warm in my hand.

  “Do not touch that!” Ish snatched it from my hand, and it flared yellow again, then through all the other colours before subsiding into the original pale blue. He set it back on its holder. “It was a gift from my wife,” he said more gently. “She will be upset if it is disturbed in any way. That is not what I wanted to show you.”

  I scanned the shelves again. Then I saw it.

  “My dragon!”

  I picked it up, feeling the weight of it in my hand, solid gold with de
licately engraved scales and tiny jewels for eyes. Instantly I was a child again, running into my father’s study, being scooped up and lifted to the cabinet where he kept his collection, allowed to choose one piece to hold. Always my skinny hands reached for the dragon, stroking his perfectly formed head while my father read to me or talked of the people he’d met, the places he’d been. My mother was never there. It was the one room she was forbidden, my father’s private retreat. When I was there, I had him all to myself for a little while.

  When I married, the dragon had been my wedding gift to Ish, as a sign that we would be together always, Ish and me and the dragon.

  “Every time I pick it up, it reminds me of you,” Ish said, his voice a whisper. “I have missed you so much.”

  “Why didn’t you look for me?” It burst out of me, the question that had tormented me for twenty years. I’d waited so patiently for him. When had I given up hope? After five years? Ten? Perhaps I never had. Perhaps in a corner of my mind the thought still lurked, that one day… Even now, when we were both married. An annual husband or wife is easily set aside. “You could have found me if you’d tried. Why didn’t you?”

  “I wanted to, of course.”

  Behind him, the glass sphere flared a brighter blue, then died away, distracting me. “Oh! Why did it do that?” I pointed to it.

  He looked quickly, then turned back. “How should I know? It just does sometimes. Look, Fen, my father… he insisted that I try to prove myself. I had a couple of annual wives, without success. Then he sent me travelling. ‘Do not think of returning until you have a child,’ he told me. I could have cheated, I suppose, turned up with a woman and a baby, and hoped no one would ask questions. But that would have been dishonourable. So I travelled for years, and eventually I got lucky. But I never forgot you. My wife…”

  He moved closer, so close I could feel his breath, warm and sweet on my face. His eyes drew me in, his voice mesmerised me, as it always had.

  “She is lovely, but she is not you. The memory of you haunted my dreams. But Carrinshar! I would never have thought of looking there. Why choose such a dire place?”

  “It was far away from both Shannamar and Dristomar. And when I first went there, it was still independent.”

  “True. It only allied six – no, seven years ago. Oh, Fen!”

  He lifted the golden dragon from my hands and placed it back on the shelf as I waited, not breathing, heart drumming, to know what he would do next. When he turned back to me, he cupped my face in his hands and bent towards me.

  “Dearest Fen-la, how I’ve missed you.”

  I closed my eyes and melted towards him. As his lips touched mine, warmth exploded through me like a firestorm, flowing from my head down into every limb. I burned for him, light-headed with need. I pressed myself against him with a little mew of desire, reaching up to pull him to my trembling body.

  The book I was carrying slipped from beneath my arm and crashed to the floor.

  Ish jumped back as if scalded. I would have pursued him, but he quickly bent down to gather up the book, smoothing the crumpled pages. A folded paper had fallen out.

  “What is this? The previous reader must have left it.” He opened it and frowned. “What language is this? ‘Occanar norom benecallon’”

  I froze.

  “I have no idea what that means,” he rattled on. “Do you? I suppose one of the scholars wrote it. Just a note of some kind, I imagine. I do not suppose it has any importance. Shall I throw it away?”

  “No! No, I’ll keep it as a marker.” I snatched book and paper from him. “I… I really must go.”

  He made no move to keep me, watching me back away with unreadable eyes. Considering the point we had reached when the book fell, he let me go surprisingly easily. Perhaps he was struck with guilt because of his wife.

  As for me, I couldn’t escape quickly enough.

  13: Desire

  Everyone was out when I reached the mages’ house, only the servants to observe me. What did they see? A middle-aged woman with flushed cheeks and over-bright eyes, probably. I hoped they would put it down to brisk walking.

  There was no formal noon table, since everyone else was out, so I collected food from the kitchen and took it to my room. For once, my appetite was gone. I don’t know what had disturbed me more, my over-ardent response to Ish or the message in the book. I paced about my room all afternoon, unable to settle to anything, until the mages returned and I could take my news to them.

  I gathered them all in the table room, and told them everything that Commander Kestimar had told me. I didn’t hide my reservations about his tale, and they tutted and shook their heads. Gret’s face was thunderous. Only when they had chewed that over thoroughly did I produce the scrap of paper that had fallen out of the book.

  Losh studied it carefully. “‘Occanar norom benecallon’. I have never seen this language.”

  “There are few people in Dristomar who have, and probably none in Bennamore,” I said. “It is a phentarsh, a type of dialect used only by a small group of workers, very common along the coast. Every Port Holding has two or three different ones at least. This is Mannabora, one of the famous ones, used by the barrel packers in Shannamar.”

  “Shannamar!” Gret said. “But…?”

  “It’s famous enough to be taught in the academy, where the librarian would have studied.”

  “Do you understand it?” Losh said, cutting straight to the point.

  “I believe so. My father insisted I learn it. An ‘occanar’ is a shaman, or spiritualist, someone who practises arcane rituals. So a wizard, perhaps. Or mage. ‘Norom’ is more difficult. It’s like a negative, but stronger. ‘Under absolutely no circumstances’. ‘Benecallon’ means to depart. It’s grammatically incorrect as it stands, but I think he wrote it in haste.”

  “He?”

  “The librarian. He’s from Shannamar too.”

  “Ah!” Losh saw the point. “He wrote it knowing that you would understand, but no one else would.”

  “Exactly. ‘The mage definitely did not leave.’ That’s what he tried to tell me. He must have overheard the Commander telling his story, and wants me to know it’s not true.”

  Gret’s sharp intake of breath was audible. “We must go there at once! This is intolerable, we must—”

  “Gret,” Losh said tiredly. “We should not act too hastily.”

  “Hastily! How many quarter moons has Hesta been missing, and now we find out she is right here under our noses.”

  “If she’s still alive.” That was Mal, ever the optimist. I supposed it was a guard’s job to consider all possibilities.

  I let them talk. The sun set and the servants brought food in, and still they went round and round the arguments. My head was as light as if it were full of feathers, thoughts floating away out of my grasp, and I barely heard them. My body still thrummed from my encounter with Ish, leaving me disconnected. It was like walking through sea fog, the world muted and near-invisible.

  At some point Mal put a plate of food in front of me and a glass of wine, and sat beside me while I ate and drank. After that, I felt a little better.

  They decided to go directly to Ish. Or rather, Gret was determined and the others gave up trying to reason with her.

  “I shall insist that Ish answers me truthfully,” she declared.

  I winced. “Please don’t talk about him by name. It’s most improper.”

  She looked at me in disgust. “I am perfectly happy to address him by title to his face, but we can be informal here, surely?”

  “Holders give up their personal names altogether and take the Port name. He is the Holder or Very Honourable Dristomar, nothing else. Only very close friends can use the old name, and only when the Holder permits.”

  She grunted, but Losh said, “That is not unlike the custom with the Drashon, Gret,” and she shrugged.

  It was my opportunity. “If you will permit me to offer some advice?”

  Gret scowled at m
e, but Losh brightened. “Please do, Fen.”

  “There is nothing to be gained by talking to anyone from the Hold directly. You will only get the same story from Commander Kestimar, and all you have to set against that is my instincts and one scribbled note in Mannabora. If you approach the librarian you could get him into serious trouble.” Gret would have interrupted but I held up my hand. “And you have no authority to investigate. Only the Holder and his appointed officers have that right, and there is nothing in the treaty with Bennamore concerning laws of injury. What you need to do next is to call on Bennamore’s power to lean on the Holder. A letter from your Drashon, for instance, requesting the right to investigate the disappearance of the Bennamorian. With the proper phrasing, it would be hard to refuse.”

  “Or we could bring the army back,” Gret said darkly.

  “That would be a last resort, I hope,” I said tartly, before the idea settled. “A little political pressure is all that’s needed. Perhaps a visit from a high-ranking noble, to create a stir. And if you could bring in your own team of investigators, to do things your own way?”

  I hesitated, trying not to look at Mal, but I was curious about his claim to be able to detect the truth. Was that a Bennamorian ability? Some device they had, maybe? Goddess knows, such a device would be useful.

  I took a deep breath. “And if you have anyone skilled in determining the truth, some way to be sure…?”

  I half expected them to laugh at the idea, but Gret’s face lit up. “That is a very good point! I have never been able to, but maybe you—?” She turned to Losh, but he shook his head. “And obviously not Kael, but we can get someone from Kingswell.”

  “You would need the Fire Mage, really,” Losh said. “She is the only one who can be relied upon.”

  Then they went into an animated discussion of whether this Fire Mage would come, and, if not, who else would do. The names meant nothing to me.