The Mages of Bennamore

by Pauline M. Ross

  I put a hand to his chest to feel the slow rise and fall. At least he was alive.

  “Cloth!” I said. “Something to staunch the bleeding.”

  Lenya looked round helplessly, spotting Dern. “Your cloak. Come on, quickly, man!”

  Reluctantly he unfastened it. It looked expensive, and he was loath to see it reduced to battle bandaging.

  Lenya produced her own dagger and sliced a wide strip of cloth. “Here. Don’t try to undress him.” With a few quick slashes, she cut away Mal’s leather jerkin and shirt to reveal the source of the bleeding. His jade belt had a long gash in it, but it looked as though one of the stones had turned the knife aside. I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

  I mopped and mopped, but the blood kept coming. The wound was deep, even I could see that.

  Lenya only grunted. “Keep pressing on it. No, higher up. Firmly. That’s it.”

  “Can you heal him?”

  She shook her head.

  “Kael?”

  “No,” he said, his voice high and quavering. “Only the proper mages, and Hesta is not very good at it.”

  “He has his belt on, can he heal himself?”

  It was Lenya who answered. “Only when he’s awake, and even then it’s difficult. We need Losh.”

  “Can we carry him? On the cloak, maybe?” But I knew the answer.

  A shake of the head. “He’s too heavy for the four of us, and he’d bleed too much. If we can keep him still, hope the bleeding stops and then maybe he’ll wake up…”

  Too many ifs and maybes in there. This wasn’t good.

  Behind the locked door, I was aware of several swords, and the shouting had been replaced by the thunder of booted feet, then scraping sounds. A pause and then something thumped shudderingly against the door. The hinges and lock screamed in protest at the mistreatment, distracting me.

  Kael jumped, and whimpered.

  “We have to go right now,” Dern said. “They are trying to break down the door, and we need to be gone before they succeed.”

  I’d forgotten about Dern. Lenya and I stared at him, then turned back to Mal. Pressing hard on the wound contained the bleeding, but if I relaxed for an instant, the dark pool silently spread again.

  Another whump against the door, and a splintering sound.

  “Kael,” I said. “Some stone to cover the door, if you please.”

  He smiled and turned to the wall, placing his fingers lightly against it. Stone flowed like water from the walls and ceiling around the door, creating a covering several inches deep. Within moments, the door was hidden behind solid rock, and only a slight bump in the surface of the wall betrayed its location. Nothing could be heard now apart from the occasional distant rumble.

  “That won’t hold them for long. They will find a way through,” Dern said, his voice high with panic. “You cannot save your friend, you can only save yourselves, but we must leave now, at once.”

  I ignored him.

  “Lenya, Kael, get back to the house as fast as you can and get Losh down here. Or Temerren, if he can heal. Take him with you.” I tilted my head towards Dern.

  “It’s an hour each way,” Lenya whispered.

  “Light the lamp before you go. I don’t want to wait here in the dark. And leave the knives. I might be able to do something with them.”

  “Fen…”

  “Go.”

  She looked at me with fearful eyes, knowing as well as I did the choice I was making, and the likely outcome. Mal had lost too much blood already, he was unconscious and too far from help. Even without Kestimar determinedly ramming his way into the tunnel, his chance of survival was small.

  “If they break through, run for that side tunnel and douse the lamp,” she said. “They won’t search far, they’ll think we all ran off.”

  I nodded, but I doubted that would work. If Kestimar managed to get through the wall, the first thing he would see would be me and my lamp. I could run, but however fast I was, he would be faster; he was a very fit, well trained man. He would pursue me relentlessly. There was no escape.

  Yet I couldn’t leave Mal. While he was still alive, there was hope. If he came round, he could heal himself, and if not, there was still the possibility that I could protect him, although I couldn’t think how. My ideas were exhausted.

  Lenya, Kael and Dern jogged off down the tunnel, their footfalls echoing. Lenya’s glow ball wobbled into the distance, diminished to a faint haze and then vanished as they turned a corner. I was alone in the silent gloom with the still form of my husband and a single guttering lamp. Even the battering at the kitchen door had ceased for the moment and I could hear nothing.

  Around my waist, the jade belt fizzed with magical energy, taunting me. If ever there was a time when it would be useful to know how to apply that power, this would be it. Kneeling on the cold floor of the passage, my skirt soaked in Mal’s blood, pressing the strip of cloth to his side with bloody hands, I tried to clear my mind and recall everything Losh had told me about how to use magic.

  I could feel it there, that was the trouble. It fizzed around in the jade stones like a party of merry little sea sprites, dancing for the joy of the energy they held, and quite oblivious of me and my need for them. No matter how hard I tried to call them, they made no response, bubbling away around my waist as if the world was a wonderful place.

  Then I tried waking Mal. I called him, stroked his face, yelled in his ear, even slapped him at one point. He was even less responsive than the magic.

  I became aware of something metallic on the other side of the wall, something small – a key. They had found the key for the door, but that wasn’t going to help them. I quickly twisted the lock so that the pins were out of alignment. I could hear nothing, but I imagined them trying and retrying the key, Kestimar shouldering the others aside in frustration – “Let me through, you numbskulls, I’ll sort it out!” – then struggling and tossing the key away in annoyance. It was a small victory, and it wouldn’t delay them for long, but it gave me a reason to smile.

  Not long after, the thumping restarted as they returned to trying to smash their way through.

  I tried the magic again, in increasing desperation, wondering how long Lenya had been gone, and how long it would take them to get back to the house, drag Losh from his bed and get back through the tunnels. Lenya had estimated an hour each way, but surely it would take longer than that.

  The battering stopped for a while. I guessed they’d managed to remove the door and were now staring at a blank wall that hadn’t been there half an hour earlier. That would puzzle them. Anything that slowed them down was good.

  The magic failed me again, so I made another attempt to waken Mal. Was it my imagination, or was his face greyer than before?

  Kestimar’s men started work again, and this time whatever they were using shook the wall, raising little puffs of dust, and sending rivulets of tiny stones skittering down the wall. Fine cracks appeared, spreading a little more with each strike. Sledgehammers, perhaps.

  Then the lamp spluttered and went out.

  That was the moment I finally despaired. I had tried everything and failed. I had no weapons, no defences, nothing to use against Kestimar and his men apart from two daggers I wasn’t competent to use, and the ability to tie swords into knots. They wouldn’t need swords to deal with me. Rope would bind me perfectly well, and solidly booted feet to my head would finish me off.

  And Mal, my poor Mal, would barely need that, for he was three parts dead already.

  “Stupid man! Why did you have to get yourself stabbed? She was half your size, surely you could have fended her off. I’ll never forgive you if you die on me, do you hear?” Tears trickled down my face, and my voice cracked. “Don’t you dare die! Just wake up, by the Goddess, open your eyes and work your magic. I know you can do it. Don’t tease me, you stupid, stupid idiot! Just wake up – please, Mal, please, don’t leave me alone again, please…”

  He didn’t move. Th
e cracks in the wall widened, and a chunk fell out, so that a narrow beam of light gleamed across the tunnel. Our time had run out.

  I crouched there in a pool of blood, buried in inky blackness, and wept for us both.

  I have never been particularly religious, keeping the Goddess’s festivals and making the requisite public offerings at the temples, but no more than that. I blamed my mother for that, confusing me with her irrational mixture of fervent devotion to the Goddess and odd superstitions. It always seemed to my logical child’s mind that whatever she wanted to do was somehow precisely what the Goddess herself would prescribe. Whatever I wanted to do, on the other hand, was always forbidden. “We must follow the ways of the Goddess at all times,” she would say piously, even though her interpretation of those ways subtly changed from day to day and sometimes from hour to hour. It was hard to believe unquestioningly in a deity who seemed so fluid.

  So I had never recited the tidal prayers each day, or stood in the waves on the beach chanting, as the sailors did, or sent jewelry and coin to the deeps. I had nothing against the Goddess herself, and I had never blamed her for the bad things that had happened to me, for her job was to protect the sea-goers not the land-based like me, but I had never felt the need to call upon her services, either.

  But I prayed now, prayed with unparalleled fervour for a miracle to rescue us – for Mal to wake up, for Kestimar to give up, for Losh to arrive, for something – anything – to turn the tide. I knew it was fruitless, knew it was just grief and despair making me irrational, but I had tried everything else, and perhaps, against every likelihood, the Goddess would look kindly on me.

  And it worked. There at the point when I’d given up all hope, the glass ball called to me. That sounds crazy, but that was exactly what it felt like. Not a voice, but a consciousness, an awareness of something benevolent and compassionate that filtered through my anguish. Or perhaps I just remembered that it was there. Whatever it was, it reached out to me like a mother opening her arms to a child in need of comfort.

  The ball was in its bag hanging from my waist, and at first I wasn’t sure how to reach it. I had both hands still pressed to Mal’s side, and I dared not move. By shifting position a little, sitting up more so that I leaned over Mal, I found I could keep the same pressure with just one hand. Then I scrabbled in the bag for the ball. It took me a while to manoeuvre it out of its container, but as soon as I touched it, I felt the power deep within it, curled up like a dragon in its egg. It was magic, certainly, but not like the mindless little sprites fizzing in the jade stones.

  This was an altogether different kind of power, intelligent, responsive, capable of initiative. It was purposeful magic, and it was responding to my distress, waking itself up for me. It was allowing me – it wanted me – to direct it. It lay in my hand almost willing me to use it.

  Yet I had no idea how to activate it.

  I tried drawing on the power, the way Losh had explained. Nothing. It was not inert, but nor was it active like the magic in the stones. Rather it was quiescent, waiting. An amplification tool, Losh had called it, but what could it amplify? And how to persuade it to do anything? It seemed passive, not active. A conduit, perhaps.

  “What do you want me to do?” It seemed natural to talk to it, but of course it didn’t reply. It was alert, but it couldn’t communicate directly.

  “Can you help me?”

  A definite reaction. An increased alertness, and again, that feeling of benevolence, of wanting to help. It reminded me of one of my tutors, who had quivered with excitement whenever he asked me a challenging question, beaming, “Yes, yes, you know this!” as I struggled to form an answer.

  I tried again. “Help me.” Nothing, that time. If anything, it faded, drew back from me.

  A question, then. “Can you heal Mal?” A clearer response, more alert, keen, like some metals that are eager to be to be manipulated and reshaped.

  The hammering from the kitchen was louder now, rhythmic, the hole expanding with every thunderous whump, debris falling in increasing amounts. Kestimar’s voice, between thumps, urging them on. I wished I’d kept Kael with me to shift more stone to fill in the gap.

  It was hard to think. “Goddess, what do you want me to do, ball? If you have any power at all, seal up that fucking wall!”

  The ball began to glow, giving me such a shock that I almost dropped it. At my waist, the jade belt emitted a warmth as the ball called on its power. Within a few heartbeats the glow had lit the whole tunnel, and the cracked wall was bathed in light. I heard Kestimar’s exclamation of astonishment on the far side, and then the wall flowed, just as it had under Kael’s hands. The glow died away to almost nothing and I was facing a blank wall.

  But now I knew what to do. In rising hope, I turned back to Mal’s inert form. “Heal him!” I whispered.

  The jade stones fizzed, the glow rose in intensity again, and this time the light fell on Mal, bathing his face in warmth, so that he looked peacefully asleep, rather than on the point of death. For long moments, the glow dazzled me, making me screw up my eyes. Then gradually it faded away.

  Had it worked? I held my breath, not daring to move, certainly not risking removing the cloth from the stab wound. Mal still lay immobile, only the slight lift of his chest periodically giving me reassurance.

  A slight cough, and he opened his eyes.

  “Mal? Are you all right?”

  “I – Fen? Where are we? Oh, the tunnel… I remember. She stabbed me. The bitch stabbed me.”

  The outrage in his voice made me laugh out loud. Or maybe that was just relief, I don’t know.

  Another cough, and he shifted his legs and straightened his arms, which had fallen oddly when he’d hit the wall. Tentatively, I withdrew the blood-soaked pad from his side. Finding an almost dry corner of cloth, I wiped the skin and, by the still luminous glow of the ball, examined his flesh. The deep gash was gone. Perhaps there was a faint pale scar, but in the gloom it was hard to tell.

  He pushed himself into a more upright position. “Hey, what happened to my jerkin? And – oof, what’s this sticky stuff?” He lifted one hand, now dark and dripping.

  “That’s your blood, husband. You had a surprising amount in you, and a good proportion of it is now spread over the ground.”

  “Gods! It’s all over you, too. That stupid bitch. What did she want to stick me with the knife for? Lenya took care of Kestimar, but then Tella came after me. I was trying to get away from her, but she got hold of the dagger. I remember the pain – shit, it hurt! I must have passed out, I suppose. But – where are the others? And where are we? How did I get here?”

  “This is where you fell.”

  “No, that would have been outside the door. There’s no door here.”

  As best I could, I explained everything that had happened, and his eyes grew round. He gazed thoughtfully at the ball, still glowing faintly, at the blank wall opposite and then at me.

  “You’re a surprising woman, my love, I’ve always said so. You constantly surprise me, anyway.” He slid backwards so that he could lean against the wall, long legs sprawling right across the passage. He rested his head against the rough stone, closing his eyes.

  “Are you all right?” I asked in alarm. “Are you in pain? A headache? Dizziness?”

  He opened his eyes, smiling. “Nothing like that. I’m just tired.” A long pause. “My belt is helping, but I feel as if I’ve spent an entire day at the training yard.”

  “That will be from losing so much blood, I suspect.”

  He just nodded, and my heart ached to see him too exhausted to talk. He’d always been so strong, so enduring, so quick with a joke or a frivolous comment.

  But then a twinkle in his eye. “Are those tears on your cheeks, my love? Not crying over me, surely?”

  “Of course not!” His lips quirked, and it took me a few heartbeats to realise why. “Oh. I suppose I had a great big blue flare round my head.”

  He laughed then, but the amusement fad
ed almost instantly, as if he didn’t have the energy for it. He closed his eyes again. “You shouldn’t have stayed. You should have gone with the others.”

  “And leave you to Kestimar’s tender mercy? I don’t think so.”

  His eyes shot open, and this time the smile was genuine. He reached for my hand, not deterred by the bloody stickiness of it. “What did you hope to do, my optimistic love? Frown him into submission? Hiss at him like a snake? Hit him over the head with the sub-clauses of the whale law of one hundred and fifty something?”

  I forced a smile, but I’d been too close to failure to joke about it.

  “Ah, Fen!” His voice softened with affection, and he gripped my hand hard. “Thank you, my darling. Do you think…? Would you kiss me? Please?”

  How could I refuse? I shuffled on my knees to get close to him, then leaned into a long, warm kiss. He sat still, his lips gentle, holding my hand but not pulling me into a closer embrace, letting me decide when to break apart. I was the one who lifted his arm around me and curled against him, absurdly pleased to have my husband restored to me. Who would ever have thought I could be so sentimental?

  36: Rescue

  It seemed like hours before Mal felt able to attempt the long walk home. I was restless long before, aware that Kestimar would not give up looking for us. There was silence from beyond the walled-up door, and it must have been obvious even to such a barbarous and uneducated man that there was no point repeating the sledgehammer exercise, when I could rebuild the wall whenever I wished. However, he wasn’t completely stupid, and I imagined him storming off to look for another entry point to the tunnels.

  We walked slowly, Mal leaning on my shoulder, with the ball lighting our way. The light from its magical performances had faded to nothing, but I recalled it by the instruction, “Light!” It was wonderfully obedient, channelling the power of the jade belt to my every command.

  We were still under the Hold when Lenya, Kael and Losh found us. We got on better after that, as Lenya was stronger than me, and able to support more of Mal’s weight.