Fantasy For Good: A Charitable Anthology Read online

  Despite our problems, I fell pregnant less than a year after our move to Cradlegate. I’d always known I would end up being a mother, I suppose, but it had never been a consuming ambition of mine like it had been for so many of my serving maids and ladies-in-waiting back in Admar. I was not one to romanticize the role. To me, it was all just part of the bargain I had struck: lore of magic for child. I thought I was getting the greater part of the deal. Any young doxy down by the harbor could spawn a child or dozen: but who could exercise the skill necessary to raise the very earth to do one’s bidding?

  When I finally told Mevlish the news he grinned for the first time in months and almost—almost—leaned down to kiss me.

  “Well done,” he said. “I shall… make arrangements.”

  I knew better by that stage than to be affronted by his cold demeanor, even though the bodily spirits that can at times possess a woman whilst carrying child were already raging through me. I merely nodded and said, “Make sure you do.”

  *~*~*~*

  Things changed once Farima was born; some for the better, many for the worse.

  I’ll not discuss the birth itself, save to say I took covert steps afterwards to make sure I would never become pregnant again.

  To Mevlish’s credit he never once expressed any disappointment, to me at least, that his first-born wasn’t a son, but after a brief period of doting he became increasingly scarce. I’m sure it had nothing to do with Farima’s constant crying and demands upon our time, and everything to do with the King’s new crusade against the heretic territories in the Farthest Lands. On the rare occasions he returned from these distant campaigns for more than a day or two I would find him either collapsed asleep upon the bed, sitting in grim silence in his study, or striding the battlements, prone to sudden and unpredictable bouts of rage. Sometimes, behind the always locked doors of his library, I thought I heard him weeping. At night, in our shared bed, he would toss and turn and moan, his hands and jaws clenched, dark, blood-tainted things flitting in and out of existence above his sweat-slicked body as he unconsciously summoned them out of the magic field. In the mornings he would deny anything was the matter, that he was perfectly fine, that he was only carrying out the King’s will, and that I should mind my own matters and tend to the babe. And so that’s what I did.

  I refused the aid of a nursemaid or any other help raising Farima. I’m not sure why: perhaps a sense of wounded pride. She was my responsibility, my one chance to carve out a meaningful role at last. With Mevlish’s services increasingly called upon by the King, for the most part I spent the early months alone with her. I’ll not lie: it was a difficult time, immensely tiring and lonely. Often I wondered if there was something wrong with me, that I did not love my child when she screamed and screamed, high-pitched and so loud for something so small, and I would wonder if she would even stop if thrown from the top of the tower. More than once I ordered the silent clay servants to take her away and I would lock my door and collapse in tears, the screams still piercing my ears. Yes, she was an unsmiling red bundle and nursing her was a painful and almost thankless task. Almost.

  But over the long years spent in that dour place, taking care of her turned gradually from a labor of duty to one of love.

  My formal study of magic had ended as soon as Mevlish learned I was pregnant. “Far too dangerous for you both if you continue,” he muttered, and I found my copy of “Elements” mysteriously disappeared soon after—a small but hurtful slight, considering I had long since committed it to memory. I never stopped probing and flirting with the magic field, though, not even during those long stretches of exhausted, barely conscious wakefulness between Farima’s feeds in the first months after her birth. And as soon as she was old enough to concentrate on small things and smile I would materialize glittering toys from the field: sparkling flowers or floating sprites she would follow with her eyes and try to grasp with her chubby little hands. Mevlish would have called it reckless free magic if he had known, but he was not there to see, and I was not one to care.

  During his long absences, using a variation of the little magic I had already learned, I began to animate toys for my baby: a rocking horse whose legs cantered in the air and neighed when its long hair was pulled, a toy house full of dolls that gyrated and pirouetted when the tiny doors were pulled open, Cradlegate’s clay servants in miniature. Farima loved all these, and it only encouraged me to practice more. But when Mevlish returned, invariably in foul mood, the magically enhanced playthings stilled.

  Farima grew up not minding the isolation; it was all she had ever known, and of course she eased my own sense of loneliness. Not only did I love her as a daughter, but we became friends too, something I had never dared expect. She, too, began to share in my magic learning. When I would complain about lack of access to her father’s library she laughed and spun around, arms upraised, and said, “But Mother, we don’t need those dusty old books to learn about magic. It’s here all around us; we can make it do whatever we want.”

  Eight good years we had; eight years during which Mevlish was an absent father and husband, too distracted to notice our growing deviation or his lack of a male heir.

  Of course it could not last.

  *~*~*~*

  The playroom was dancing when he caught us.

  The carriage carrying Farima’s stern-faced tutor had clattered back to Proximus—Mevlish insisted she learn the rudiments of the King’s Magic whilst he was away and unable to teach her himself—and I was free again to see my daughter alone again for the first time in days.

  “It’s silly that you’re not allowed to sit in the lessons,” Farima said. “He even takes all my books away when he leaves. Why does Daddy make him do that?”

  I smiled. “It doesn’t matter, darling. Tell me what you learned.”

  She pouted. “Boring stuff. Repeat after me: always use the same tone and cadence during incantation, always close your eyes when making a spell, always praise the King for his tolerance, always this, always that…”

  I laughed. “It does sound boring. Here: let’s have some fun now!”

  Farima clapped her hands at the gleam in my eye, and together we joined our minds to meld with the field. Soon we had her sizeable collection of dolls—rag, porcelain, and straw-stuffed—all marching around the floor in time to an impromptu band of floating drums, magically blown flutes and her harp plucked by dust fairies.

  We didn’t hear Mevlish’s dragon land at the stables.

  The playroom door slammed open, and such was the strength of our communion with the Source, we didn’t even notice until his roar cut through our joy.

  “Stop it! Stop it at once!”

  The instruments crashed down to the floor. The dolls collapsed as if struck dead.

  My heart jumped into my throat. I felt a wash of guilt and shame, although about what I could not explain. For enjoying myself. “Mevlish! What are you doing here?”

  He jabbed his finger at Farima. “Bedroom. Now.” Two clay servants emerged from behind him, brushed past me, and made sure Farima obeyed. She glanced over her shoulder as she was marched out, and I saw the tears gleaming in her eyes.

  Mevlish strode towards me. His uniform—the same black silver he had worn the night he proposed—was covered in dirt and sweat and worse. His hair, shot through with silver too now, was all in disarray and he stank of the burned oil smell of the dragonride. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “I was about to ask you the same!”

  He grabbed my arm, and it was not a playful or even angry grip, but fierce, life-crushing. “I return from battle with a free magic sorcerer, barely escaped with my life, and find my own wife and child like this?” His hold tightened further and I gave a yelp of pain. “Are you insane?”

  “We were just having some fun –”

  “Kaffryn! This is free magic of the worst sort. I’ve crucified others for less.”

  My stomach went chill. He was telling the truth. Anger still got the better of me.
“Then shame on you!”

  Mevlish growled and thrust me away. I stumbled, but kept my feet. Behind him I could see more of his clay servants hovering. His reddened face contorted. “No more of your reckless witchery, Kaffryn. And you’re to stay away from my daughter.” He drew himself up. “I am the High Wizard here. I will teach her from now on.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I jabbed out with my mind, at the servant beside him.

  It cracked in two.

  The pieces slid to the floor, barely contained by the starched uniform.

  I stared at the shattered figure, stunned by the result of my act. I was still staring when Mevlish took two steps and slapped me hard across the face. I reeled into the wall, bounced to the floor. In that instant I felt more shock than pain; but the pain did follow, a pulsing, mounting tide of it.

  “If you do anything like that ever again,” Mevlish said, the words forced through clenched teeth, his hot breath washing against my face, “I swear I will kill you.”

  I barely noticed the playroom door slamming shut. I sat in a cloud of fine dust, left alone to mourn the destruction of the servant and the end of all my dreams.

  *~*~*~*

  There was no decision to make. It was a matter of survival.

  I banged my fist against his study door until he opened it. His eyes were red, his face worn, as haggard as those in the portraits lining the stair walls. He reached out to my bruised face. “Kaffryn. This war –”

  “I’m leaving,” I said. “And I’m taking Farima with me.”

  His expression instantly hardened into fury. He stepped out and slammed the door behind him. I swear I felt the tower tremble. “You take her, and I’ll hunt you down and destroy you, do you hear? Not even if you run to the farthest corners of the Far Lands will you escape.”

  I hesitated for only a second before realizing the battle was lost. I turned and fled.

  Farima’s room was empty: Mevlish must have already ordered her taken to some still-hidden corner of the tower. I used my focused anger and years of idle practice to blow apart the previously impregnable wards protecting the door to the library. I stole a few randomly chosen grimoires—not for any forbidden knowledge they may have contained (and it turned out they did not contain any)—but to spite Mevlish and demonstrate how much I could now accomplish with the free magic he so despised.

  Despite the churning ache in my heart, I fled the tower without my daughter. I steeled myself with the thought that one day, after I had armed myself with sufficient skill and power, I would wrest her from Mevlish’s possession. I almost convinced myself it was true.

  His dragons waited for me further down the valley, in anticipation of my flight back to Admar, or to the Farthest Lands where the field and Mevlish’s power would be weakest. He knew how much I dreaded the beasts—but they were easy to avoid.

  I headed up the valley. Towards the source of magic, not away from it.

  *~*~*~*

  I took a few steps more, swayed, then stopped. My head swam with the intensity of the field, power crackling all around me. It was only a few dozen more steps to the Wizard’s Wall.

  I was still alive. Still sane.As far as I could tell.

  I felt I could have approached closer still, if only for a few moments, but that wasn’t the point. I needed to find a sustainable location, a place I could tolerate to stay in for the foreseeable future. Somewhere close to Farima, but difficult for Mevlish to approach.

  This was it.

  In all our years of marriage, Mevlish had never taken a step closer to the Wall than the boundaries of his tower walls. Despite his reputation and all his skill and years of practice

  I think he secretly feared the power of magic.

  Well I had no such fear. And standing here, so much closer now to the Source than I had ever been, I could feel how much stronger my magic was.

  Don’t get addled, I warned myself. Don’t become another Alexandre.

  The Wall was marked by a few dozen human skeletons, none of them fresh. I wondered which one belonged to Mevlish’s apocryphal Great-Uncle. Bones gleamed pale beneath the moonlight and the faint, shifting aura crackling overhead. A few of the older remains had changed and twisted over the years, into strange, organic shapes: pale, grasping finger-bones had grown as large as ship masts, sun-bleached skulls elongated and deformed until the gaping jaws and eye sockets had grown into cavernous openings. Each an unmistakable warning to any who would dare breach the otherwise invisible Wall.

  I wondered how many of the bones had belonged to males.

  “Wizard’s Wall,” I said, and laughed. I felt drunk, bathed in warm power. “But is it also a Witch’s Wall?”

  Perhaps the female brain could better cope with the strength of magic here. Perhaps it was just me.

  I turned my back on Mevlish’s draughty tower with its cold clay servants and dusty, winding passages, and raised my hands, closed my eyes, meshing with the magic field. I made life from the chalk cliffs rising on either side; there was no need for another’s seed.

  I built myself a tower of my own, and there I waited, listening to the Source’s siren call. Waiting for my daughter to join me. As I knew she would.

  *~*~*~*

  The ground shook me awake.

  Mevlish was on his way.

  “Stay inside,” I ordered Farima as I led her to the lowest levels of the tower. The Lighthouse, we called it. “Hide in the deepest cellar. Whatever you do, don’t try to peek out at the battle. Do you understand? One of us will come get you when it’s all over.”

  “But Mother –”

  I took her firmly by the shoulders, pushed her back through the doorway. “Please, Farima, trust me. Nothing you would see will bring you joy: today your father and I fight, and one of us must lose.”

  She must have seen the strain and fatigue in my face and bowed her head, dark fringe hooding her eyes. “Yes, Mother.”

  I had spent more than three days and nights with hardly any sleep, preparing for the coming battle; molding clay, imbuing it with the essence of life (or at least its convincing semblance), drawing on the power that flowed so strong here. I used all my hard-earned skill, and as much of my blood as I could spare.

  I hoped it was enough.

  I hugged Farima tight, kissed her forehead, felt an ache so strong in my heart it threatened to shatter my resolve. I pushed her away, hardly able to breathe never mind talk. “Go.”

  The door closed behind me, the strongest locking charms I could make sliding into place. I climbed the stairs to the tower entrance, casting protective spells as I went, erasing my daughter’s tell-tale traces as best I could. Then I stepped out into the early morning light.

  The ground rumbled, and I focused my attention on the threat gathering ahead of me. A yellow-brown dust cloud rose from around Mevlish’s tower and swallowed the sun. The gardens that had once flourished around Cradlegate had long since faded and dried to dust. A half-mile of desolate cracked earth and dust was all that separated us now.

  I tried to calm my hammering heart, but it was impossible. My husband was too skilful, too experienced with using magic in combat, for me to stand much chance against him. Despite the advantage the strength of magic here gave me, I knew I could not win.

  Unless. Unless…

  His magically amplified voice rolled like thunder towards me.

  “Surrender my daughter.”

  “She stays of her own free will,” I called out. I was pleased by how firm my voice sounded.

  “You turn her against me. You’ve poisoned her mind with your madness and your lies.” The ground shook again. “I say one last time: give her up. Give her up and I’ll let you flee back to the Far Lands unharmed.”

  “Come and get her,” I said, voice choked with returning anger. It was a challenge, not an invitation, and he knew it.

  The ground shifted, left, right, like a rug adjusted. I barely kept my feet. Behind me, boulder-sized chunks of cliff clattered down beside the Lighthouse. I hop
ed Mevlish wasn’t stupid enough to try and destroy the place with Farima still inside it.

  Like some nightmarish crop, his troops began to emerge from the cracked surface of the pass. Arms and torsos made of mud and rock thrust into daylight as Mevlish molded the dirt into a shambling army. Ogres and trolls and whirling dust devils as tall as our towers advanced towards me.

  A year or two ago I would have dissolved at the sight, would have submitted to whatever demands he made. But now I had some power of my own.

  *~*~*~*

  I dove my mind deep beneath the ground. Three days and three nights had been enough for me to assemble the rudiments of my own subterranean army. All I needed to do was extend myself into their bodies and pull them to the surface.

  There was a moment of terrible shock as I waited for my legions to emerge, and nothing happened. Had I foolishly overestimated my capabilities? Were the hoped for results a mirage, a delusion caused by over-exposure to the Source?

  But I was merely being impatient. I had never tried to control such a mass before, nowhere close.

  I would need to learn fast.

  The earth cracked before Mevlish’s oncoming horde. His vanguard of sand spirits and soil pachyderms tumbled into the unexpected crevasse, dissolving back into the dirt from which they had come. The tide of creatures behind struggled to slow their momentum, but the cascade to destruction continued.

  The approaching columns of dust wavered and dissipated along with Mevlish’s concentration… but they soon solidified again, tighter than ever. They grew scythes and spun towards me, lethal twirling flowers of pulverized rock.

  By this time my own army had struggled to the surface. I’d re-used the kobolds that I had first created to build my tower. Their ranks had swelled, and I’d added some new designs; the sort of nameless, dread shapes that fear and desperation give rise to in the depths of sleepless, anxiety ridden nights.

  I was glad Farima would never see them.