1. Sanctuary

1

Sanctuary

Safira Chastain

M y first good look at Barixeor Spire was underwhelming. I knew it should have been breathtaking, but all I could think of, looking at that impossible pillar of stone spearing up into the sky, was that maybe, at long last, I could finally rest. I looked across the smooth surface of Tsirisma Lake to the island near its center and at the Spire, and it was only a place, no more incredible than any other place, except that the invisible power it channeled would hide me forever.

There was someone rowing across the lake towards the spit of stone jutting out into the water that the road from Dalbrooke had led to. I walked onto it and sat, crossing my legs and staring across the lake at the Spire. Everything inside me was murky and exhausted. It had been more than a year of running, always on the move, trying to stay one step ahead of the wizard. I'd done odd jobs and hard labor whenever I could, but not everyone wanted to hire a young woman for such things, and I hadn't always been able to afford food. My skills at foraging had helped keep me alive, but there was only so much that could be done during the winter, and it had been a difficult one for me.

I looked down into the reflection of the water. The hardship of the winter had left marks on me, from my thin face to the chapping on my lips and nose, a gift from the cold and the wind. My curly brown hair had frizzed around my face, rubbed by the wool hat I wore to keep from dying in the cold, and I hadn't had a chance to take a full bath since autumn. I knew I smelled and I knew I looked like a ragged mess, with nothing but a knapsack for my belongings, but Barixeor Spire – remote and without a sorcerer – had been willing to hire me, sight unseen, because I'd been willing to sign a five-year contract to live on the island in the middle of this lake.

I glanced up at the rowboat to check on its progress. The figure rowing it had their back to me, but at this distance, it was easy to see that they weren't human. They possessed a pair of horns curling out from their cloak's hood, like a bull or a demon. I shivered at that, before I caught myself, and gave myself a firm mental shake. It didn't matter if Barixeor was staffed by demons or animals or anything else. The wizard wouldn't be able to find me, and I was no longer the trusting girl who believed that love would conquer all. I had five years of safety, as long as I could keep the gardens well, and I didn't need friends.

I looked back down at my reflection, only to see a different face in the water. For a long moment, instead of my own tired features, I saw a man's face, with a classically strong jawline, straight nose, square hairline, and flat brows over expressive eyes. I stared into those eyes for a heartbeat, ice blue with the slot-pupils of a horse or goat, surrounded by a dense fringe of black eyelashes.

"Hello, lake," I whispered, not knowing what else to do. Then the face was gone again, and I could only see my own dark brown eyes once more.

No wonder my instructions had included not touching the lake. Tsirisma Lake had a water-horse, one who paid enough attention to things to identify the reflection of a stranger on his waters, and to choose to investigate. Elemental creatures like water-horses didn't take kindly to being touched without permission, and the lake was as much his body as the physical shapes he could take. And, too, a water-horse could control the body of anyone who touched it, commanding the water within another person as easily as the waters of their home. Touching the lake was a bad idea all around.

Perhaps I should have been frightened by such a thing. A water-horse could kill me if he wanted to, and I would be well and truly trapped on Barixeor's island if he chose not to let me leave. But that same offensive capability was just as surely turned towards the outside world, and once I got over the shock, my second reaction was one of relief. The wizard would have to work to get onto the island, if by some disaster he managed to find me, and even if he managed to get there, the water-horse might not take kindly to his presence. And I could lock myself in Barixeor for as long as I needed to, until he went away again, or was driven off.

Water splashed, and I looked up in time to see the rowboat pull up to the stone spit, and for the rower to reach out and grab onto the stone to steady the boat. The hand was male, and large, with blunt nails and more tawny hair than most men had. I got up and walked down the spit towards him as he turned his head towards me. His face appeared cow-like, with a broad bovine muzzle and nose, albeit shorter than most cattle. A swatch of coarse orange-brown hair fell down like long bangs, almost obscuring his wide-set brown eyes, and his face and neck were heavily furred. He had long cow-ears growing out from where human ears would have usually sat, and the span of his horns stretched more than two feet across, the smooth ivory-gray of them turning forward and up into blunted points capped in brass. A minotaur, then.

I bowed to him, willing to be as polite as necessary to keep this position.

He blew out a breath, steaming in the cold, and tilted his head towards the rowboat. "You must be Miz Chastain," he said, his voice a rich baritone. "Or very lost."

I smiled, the first time in days, at the deadpan joke. "Aye, that's me," I said. I didn't bother waiting for a further invitation, stepping into the rowboat with care, and swinging my knapsack onto my lap as I settled onto the bench. "But please, call me Safira."

"And I'm Bashen," he said. "Or Bash, as you like." The minotaur glanced down along the stone spit, then back to me, with my measly bag. "Nothing else, then?"

Despite myself, I blushed. "Just this," I said. "I don't need much."

He snorted at that, a white plume of steam marking his breath, but he didn't challenge me further.

"There's a good deal of plain clothing in storage, if you find you're missing something," he offered, as he pushed us away from the stone and started turning the boat back towards the island in the center of Tsirisma Lake. "It's a long way to Dalbrooke."

I smiled again at that, and he offered me a smile in return as he leaned into the oars, his broad shoulders shifting under his warm clothing as he rowed with strong, steady strokes.

"Believe me, my feet are very aware," I told him. "Fifty-two miles is no small trip, and it's not like the little hamlets between here and there are much of a place to stay or shop."

Bashen chuckled at that, tossing his horns in a gesture that seemed to be amusement. "Magic doesn't much care for the vagaries of human habitation, it seems," he said. "It's nice out here, though, if you like the quiet."

"Quiet is what I was hoping for," I said, and tried not to let the exhaustion show.

Bashen didn't offer me any more conversation, which I didn't mind. I was tired, and my long escape was drawing to a close. All I wanted was to be across the water-horse's lake and in that black stone tower, and to finally, finally be safe.

It took around a quarter-hour to cross the still waters of the lake, and I didn't risk looking back down into them, lest I see the water-horse again. He didn't seem malevolent, given that we could safely row across his lake, but a water-horse and his waters were the same thing, and I thought it might be rude to stare down into the clear depths of him. When we arrived on the shore, Bashen scudded the rowboat up onto the shore, and I jumped out, tugging the bow up onto the grayish sandy beach so that he could step onto the sand without getting his feet wet.

The minotaur picked up the rowboat as if it was nothing, flipping it over and carrying it over to a covered rack up above the sand, in the scrubby dead grass. There was still some ice on the water along the shore, and some patches of snow and ice on the ground, though it was late enough in the spring that it would only be another several weeks before it was warm enough to start gardening in earnest.

I put my hands on my hips and looked over the grounds leading up to Barixeor Spire. There were obvious paths, and it looked like the gardens had been properly prepared for winter, without deadheads and with a nice layer of well-rotted plant matter that was almost ready to turn into the ground. I saw cold frames, which was promising. In a pine forest like this, the growing season would be shorter, and cold frames would stretch the growing season in both directions.

Bashen gestured for me to follow him, and I did, settling the weight of my heavy knapsack across my back and walking up the long slope towards the imposing black edifice of Barixeor Spire. Its presence loomed when I stood this close, an impossible thing in an otherwise normal landscape, and all that awe I hadn't felt before started settling into me. It wasn't massive in width, like a castle or normal building. It spanned no more than two hundred feet across, but it shot into the sky, up and up and up until it was lost in the clouds, slender and impossible and perfect. All of it was smooth, a flawless black basalt without crack or blemish. The stories said that the Spires had been grown out of the bedrock by magic, and looking at Barixeor, I believed them.

The minotaur led me through a pair of double doors at the end of the path, each made of solid wood and carved in geometric patterns. They opened into a short hallway: the walls of Barixeor Spire were thick, around six feet in width, all solid stone. The hallway opened into a massive entryway, an arcing room with at least six hundred square feet of floor space.

It contained all the amenities that anyone could ever want in an entry-room. There was a sitting area off to the side for waiting visitors, with a case of books for perusal. To the other side sat an indoor garden, with walls of green growing things, and a decorative waterfall, as well as more sitting space, and a carved wooden divider that I suspected hid the bed for a doorman. The majority of the room remained open space, though, the sort of vast hall a small party could be held in.

I was surprised that there was no muck-room, though, until I looked down at my boots and found them free of mud and wet.

"Magic," Bashen said, with a chuckle, when I raised my wide eyes to him. "It won't dry you off if you come in wet out of the rain, but it'll clean up anything you might track in, alright. The sorcerers that made this place were obsessed with cleanliness."

"Oh," I said, feeling a little faint. It was one thing to know that Barixeor Spire was a Spire, a place built by sorcerers and used by sorcerers, and another to experience casual magic on that level. It was the sort of thing only the wealthy had access to... but, then, I supposed that mages were almost always wealthy. The wizard, too, possessed a good deal of money at his disposal .

"You'll get used to it," he said in a sympathetic tone of voice. "There's a good deal of enchantments built into the place, and it can be unnerving at first, but they do make life easier."

I rubbed the back of my neck with one hand and followed Bashen across the broad expanse of the room. Magic still made me jumpy, so I'd just have to get used to it. Barixeor's confluence would hide me from magical detection, and it was remote enough that it would be difficult to find me by mundane means. If that meant getting used to hallways that cleaned my shoes, it was well worth it.

"I like to spend most of my time outside, when I can," I said, because it seemed like I should say something. "Can't say that I'll miss having to scrub mud off my boots coming in for bed."

Bashen laughed again, a low rumble of sound. "And as I'm the one who does the necessary cleaning and heavy lifting, I can't say I miss needing to mop up all that mud," he said, in a cheerful voice.

I decided that I liked the minotaur. He seemed like a decent fellow, and I wasn't troubled by the fact that he wasn't the same species as me. While humans dominated the social landscape of the Material Plane we were native to, I'd encountered a few of the other sapient species we shared the world with. Naga, minotaurs, fauns, merfolk, dragons, sphinxes, and the like were much less common than their human counterparts, and often had their own societies, but there was integration in both directions. I'd met a couple minotaurs before, usually working at heavy labor jobs or as guards, and I'd encountered a naga apothecary and a few shapeshifters.

We went into a circular room, about fifteen feet in diameter, with a large circle inscribed in the center and four doorways, and then back out into a kitchen equally as large as the entry-room. Barixeor Spire appeared to be divided into quarters, and I'd recognized the symbols on the doors as being the symbols for the planes, each representing both the plane and their major element. I'd been told that Barixeor was an abyssal Spire, which meant that it channeled fire magic, and Tsirisma was a volcano, though a quiet one. The kitchen was the room marked with the elemental symbol for fire, which made sense to me.

Bustling around in the kitchen was a young woman, no older than her mid-twenties. She had light brown curly hair, the sort that might have been dirty blonde as a child, pulled back into a severe bun, with some curls escaping here and there. Her fair skin was warm-toned, yet oddly un-flushed from the heat of the ovens. She didn't look over when we walked in, focused on moving a heavy dish between two of the ovens. But when she'd closed the oven door, she turned to us and smiled, broad and easy.

She was a handsome woman, with an oval face, strong jawline, and large lichen-green eyes underneath fine brows. I liked the sharpness of her face, so different from my rounder, softer features and broad nose. Her own strong, aquiline nose took a face that might have otherwise been merely pretty and elevated it to a memorable one. The thought flitted through my mind that she could have had many suitors in any ordinary town; did she miss the companionship of men? Would I?

No, I thought. I won't. I'd had more than enough of the fallout of romance. I would rather be alone forever than ever be in the grasp of someone like the wizard again.

"Ah, welcome, Miz Chastain," she said, "I'm glad to see you made it safe and sound. And thank you, Bash, for picking her up."

"My pleasure," he said. "I'm going to walk the loop, since we've enough daylight left in the afternoon, check and see what deadfall there is to deal with, unless you've need of anything?"

The woman shook her head, and Bashen headed back out of the kitchen, patting me on the shoulder as he left, a friendly gesture that left me surprised and pleased. I'd been willing to endure almost any level of solitude in order to get away from the wizard, and it was nice to be treated with warmth instead.

I looked over at the woman, who must be the cook, with what I hoped was a hopeful expression.

She flashed me another smile, the corners of her eyes crinkling. "I'm Marin Rutter, in case Bash didn't tell you already, and you can call me Marin, if you like. Are you hungry, by any chance?"

"Call me Safira, please," I said. "And I wouldn't mind eating something." As if to emphasize the point, my stomach growled, and I flushed as she smiled.

"Set yourself down, then," she said, and started moving around the kitchen.

I went over to the large square oak table and took off my knapsack, setting it on one of the chairs and sitting next to it. The kitchen was large and well-established, obviously tended by someone who cared about it. There was an archway into another room next to it, and the room itself possessed several ovens, a large hearth and spit, a variety of other kitchen things I didn't recognize, tables for working at, and a long counter with several deep sinks. The level of wealth surrounding me left me feeling uneasy and out-of-place, the way a bee must feel when she gets trapped indoors.

It only took Marin a few minutes to put together a plate for me, and she placed it in front of me along with a mug of steaming tea, and sat down across from me with another mug of her own. It was simple fare, but still hot: a slice of shepherd's pie, laden with vegetables and meat and with a flaky crust, and a crisp, steaming bun slathered with honey and butter.

My eyes went wide despite myself, and my mouth started watering. I picked up the utensils with a quiet "thank you" , and started cutting into the food, trying not to let my hands shake. The first bite tasted incredible, the best thing I'd had to eat in months, and I had to focus in order to keep from crying.

"I'm not going to ask why you decided to take the job," Marin said, after a moment. "Anyone who wants to come out to a place like this always has a reason for leaving their life behind, and that goes equal for me and Bashen."

I could feel myself flushing again as she spoke, but at her last words I looked up into her eyes, startled.

She gave me a little nod of acknowledgement. "Barixeor is remote and lonely. You'll be working under Kaylor for the next six weeks, so that he can show you everything he can about the gardens before he goes, but once he leaves, it's just going to be the three of us."

"What about the, um, water-horse?" I asked, between bites. "Does he interact with the island at all?"

Marin shrugged, a slight expression, holding her tea without drinking it. "He comes up on the island from time to time. He was here long before the Spire was raised, and no doubt he'll be here long after, but while he's as dangerous as any elemental, he's not a malicious sort of creature. Tsirisma Lake will leave you alone as long as you leave him alone, and the worst he'll do is watch you."

I nodded. That seemed in keeping with the brief glimpse of him I'd gotten, with a gaze that held only calm curiosity. "Bashen mentioned that he does all the cleaning and heavy lifting... and I'm guessing you're the cook?"

Marin made a small sound, like a single, breathed laugh, and she shook her head. "Aye, I do the cooking, and all the kitchen and stillroom work," she said, "Though there's not enough people in Barixeor to make it that difficult of a task. I'm also quartermaster and steward for the time being, and I'm the one who hired you."

I swallowed my bite, and washed it down with some tea, then said, "Thank you for giving me the opportunity."

"You had the best application," she said with a smile. "No one else got everything right, and Kaylor put together that interview to be a difficult one. We're glad to have you here."

I ducked my chin, and nodded. I'd grown up working in the farms dedicated to the tables of the University for mages, and I had a vast store of knowledge of how to run complicated gardens and greenhouses as a result.

"Once you're done, I'll give you a tour of the parts of Barixeor you'll be able to access. Bashen and I are keyed to the Spire's transport ring, but you'll only be able to go to the public areas until we get a new sorcerer." Her tone of voice was apologetic, but I didn't mind. My work was outdoors. "And you'll need me or Bash to take you up to the greenhouses when you need to work up there."

"The greenhouses are... inside?" I asked. I hadn't seen any greenhouses, walking up from the beach, but the island wasn't that small, and they could have been over the hill or something. But indoors didn't make any sense; how would they get any sunlight?

"Aye, they're all lit by magic, and the temperature is controlled the same way," Marin said, as if this was commonplace and unimportant. "One for each plane, so you 'll get to work with some interesting things, if Kaylor's love of them is any indication."

Another smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. I'd worked with some plants from other planes, but most of them had been bred and crossbred for so many generations that they weren't much like their cousins outside the Material Plane. It would be fascinating to get to tend a greenhouse full of purebred plants from other planes.

"That sounds lovely," I said, finishing up my food. "Is there a schedule or anything that I should get used to?"

Marin swiped my plate and empty mug as soon as I had set down my utensils. "Breakfast is ready at eight, lunch at noon, tea at four, and dinner at eight again," she said over her shoulder as she put the dishes into the sink, including her undrunk tea. "Bash eats at odd hours, because his diet is so different from ours, and we usually eat right here in the kitchen. Other than that, your hours are whatever you set them to, as long as you get the work done."

She came back over. "Before we start the tour, do you have any room preferences? One benefit of it being lonely out here is that the last Spirekeeper didn't mind us using the room suites for the higher-status servants, so if you'd like a two-room suite, you can have one."

"Two rooms as in... two rooms this size?" I asked, astonished.

"Just so," Marin said with a grin. "Even the simple servant's rooms are this size, and subdivided. Whatever else people might say about sorcerers, the ones who raised the Spires weren't miserly about the homes they put their staff in."

I rubbed the back of my neck. "I can't imagine using two rooms," I said, "But I'm loath to turn down the opportunity to see what it's like, so I suppose the suite it is."

The cook laughed outright at that, and I got up, shouldering my knapsack, ready to investigate my sanctuary.