The Perfect Plan
Linda P. Baker
Demial kept the door of the hut latched tight. She kept the heavy curtains drawn, edges overlapping, shutting out the light, the stars, and prying eyes.
No one else in the tiny village of Toral barred their doors and covered their windows. They went about their lives as they had before Ariakan’s army had come, over a year before, almost as they had before the war. It was as if they were denying that anything dark and hurtful would ever come into the small mountain village again.
Demial knew that wasn’t so. After all, she had fought in the war, hadn’t she? It wasn’t really darkness or the memories that she thought to keep out, though. It was nosy neighbors.
She kept the curtains closed all the time, and she dropped the wooden bar securely into place every night, even before she sat down alone to her meal. She checked the door and the windows again every morning before she picked up the staff that stood beside her fireplace. She checked them before she cast a spell with the staff that had belonged to a Nightlord, the gray-robed mage who had been her war leader, mentor, and teacher, who had taken Demial under her wing and out of this village.
As she did each morning, she cleared a space before the cold fireplace and knelt there, with the plain, wooden staff in her hands. No words for the spell came into her mind, as they once had, memorized perfectly. Magic didn’t work the way it had before the gods departed at the end of the Chaos War. The magic should not have worked at all, not without the power of Takhisis, the dark goddess who had ruled the Gray Wizards. It did work, however, and for that Demial was grateful. She didn’t question. She merely accepted the gift that had been left to her.
She asked only what she needed of the staff: warmth and food and sometimes some inconsequential, frivolous thing. Not too often a frivolous thing, because she feared that the staff’s power was limited, that it would not answer her requests indefinitely.
This morning, as every morning since she’d joined Quinn’s quest to reopen the mine, she asked only for a small amount of strength, enough to make her day go well. Asking to be just a little bit stronger than her tall, thin frame allowed was not a frivolous thing.
She clasped the staff across her body, her fingers finding a comfortable grip on it. The thick top was carved in the rough image of a dragon claw and was sharp edged with its hint of rough dragon scales. The roughness smoothed out, however, as the carved whorls began their graceful corkscrew down the staff, narrowing, growing farther apart until there was only smooth wood leading down to the brass-clad tip.
There were no words for the magic now, no memorized spells, no books of ancient runes. There were only her thoughts, her wish for what she wanted the staff to do. The magic did not feel the way it had during the war, when casting a spell had made her hot and electric, and she had basked in the approbation of the Nightlord. At that time she had felt something grow within herself, swell and build and burn until it could no longer be contained. It exploded outward, and the magic was cast into the air.
Now the magic came from without. It was no longer something to which she gave birth. It was something that happened outside her, over which she had no control, though it still made her nerves sing. It was wild and unschooled, and it left her feeling elated and invincible but also terribly sad for that which was gone forever.
This magic, the response to her wish, skittered along her arms and down over her skin. It probed at her muscles and slipped inside, leaving her shivering and shocked as ragged bursts of pain arced along her nerves. For a moment, she slumped over the staff, actually feeling weaker instead of stronger, but the sensation and the pain only lasted a moment. Then warmth coursed through her muscles, melting the weakness like hot water poured into her veins.
She knelt there a moment longer, enjoying the tingle of pleasure the spell left in its wake. Energized, she bounced to her feet, ready for the day. She put the staff back in its place, leaning against the fireplace.
Demial tidied the small room quickly. There wasn’t much work involved. Brush up the crumbs from her breakfast, wash out the plate and leave it to dry on the table, straighten the light blankets on her bed. She flipped the heavy wooden bar up, laughing softly at how easily it moved for her slender, strong fingers.
She was running a little late today. The edge of the morning sun was already visible over the trees, and the village street was empty, except for Lyrae, balancing her baby on one hip and a water bucket on the other.
“Lyrae, good morning!” Demial hurried to catch up, being careful to come up on Lyrae’s right, next to the bucket. Otherwise, she’d find herself with an armful of mewling infant. Lyrae had lost two babies during the war and had never expected to have another. Since this one had been born, she had not been parted from it, not even long enough to walk to the village well and draw water. While the woman couldn’t stand to be out of sight of the baby, she didn’t mind allowing someone else to hold it, a fact that Demial had discovered by unpleasant accident the first time she offered the woman some help with the morning burdens. It was part of Demial’s plan to appear sweet and helpful, but she was only willing to go so far. The slobbering, grasping child was too far.
“Let me help you with that.” Deftly, before the young woman could protest, Demial slipped the leather bucket from her grasp.
As Lyrae thanked her, a blush staining her soft features, Demial smiled. She forced the corners of her mouth to stretch into a smile. She’d practiced at home until she could do it perfectly, so that it looked nowhere near as brittle as it felt.
Lyrae shifted the baby into both arms, nuzzled its round face, and smiled her thanks. “It’s so sweet of you to help.” The baby looked just like her, brown haired and brown eyed. Demial’s own hair was brown and straight as a stick, but her eyes were yellow. A cat’s eyes, her father had always said, with a sneer in his voice. A demon cat’s eyes,
Demial followed the younger woman through the little gate into the yard of her hut. She set the bucket into its frame and, with a wave of her hand, started up the path again toward the mine.
“Demial, wait!” Lyrae dashed into her hut and returned with something wrapped in a cloth. “A piece of cake, for your lunch.”
Giving a quick thanks for the cake and another wave, Demial walked briskly away. Smiling to herself, she tucked the cake into the pocket of her tunic. On through the village she went, up along the path that wound through the gardens, waving to the workers there. At the top of the slope, where the path leveled off, she took the steeper, rockier shortcut up the mountainside, to the mine. As she approached the entrance, she saw none of the bustling activity she’d expected. Most of the work crew was standing on the worn slope that led up to the clogged hole into the mountain, and their expressions ran the gamut from disgusted to dejected.
Before the Summer of Chaos and the war, Toral had been a small but prospering mining village. From the mine that snaked back into the mountain, the villagers had brought out crystals, a hard, gray flint, and a lovely blue-veined marble that was much in demand by the nearby plains cities for use as building ornamentation. Occasionally, they found something more valuable as well, a rough bloodstone or garnet that could be polished and sold to a jeweler. Ariakan’s army, however, had collapsed the entrance to the mine and crushed the soul of the village. Now the villagers eked out a living from scrubby gardens and what game they could trap.
As she strolled up the slope, Demial’s gaze flitted from face to face, searching for Quinn. Her pulse quickened as she saw him, standing tall and strong and sure, among a group of workers.
Her gaze was fixed on him, so she didn’t notice the mine until one of the women said, “Just look at it.” Her voice was as tired and dispirited as if it was day’s end instead of beginning.
Demial followed her pointing finger. No further explanation was needed for the long faces and the slumped shoulders.
It had been Quinn’s idea to clear the rubble from the entrance and reopen the mine. He saw it as a way to rejuvenate the village. Because it was his goal, part of his ambition, Demial had made it hers, too. When he reopened the mine and the grateful villagers handed him the mantle of leadership for his role, she planned to be right there at his side. She had worked harder than any of them, had pushed herself unstintingly, and all the while had kept the cheerful expression plastered on her face.
The week before, they had rapidly reached a point where there were no more loose rocks to be hauled away. What was left was packed tight inside the hole into the mountain.
So yesterday they had rigged ropes around the biggest boulders blocking the entrance and worked them
