by AO Spade
He started his way back to the pond to get some clean water. That might be another problem. Alvarr had seen himself. He was in more than full health from the good food and water. That, too, would provoke jealousy in hungry stallions, and unwanted attention from Thane, Nassor, and possibly the weak-willed Barron. Would Nature protect him?
They might blame his magic, which was against Nature because it came from Nature itself. That is foolish to the point of death, but I can see it happening. Alvarr stamped his hoof and whinnied into the silent woods. Even fools were worth protecting. He was an earth mage, whose sacred duty was the protection and growth of his tribe. He, of all his people, could make sure there was a tribe.
He put his muzzle into the water, drinking deeply. I need to bring back more proof, something that will make them all believe. Stallions don't change, but this time, I fear that they must.
CHAPTER SIX
Scenes from the Past
HE HAD TO keep searching for something to bring back to them, something that they could touch or taste, or smell. He spent some time exploring the crescent of forest, finding many more ruins of wood dwellings, smaller than the one he had found made of entire tree trunks, but still bigger than the stallions' woven dwellings. Running his fingers over the half-rotted end of a log, he felt the notches where another piece must have fit.
Though the dwellings were wondrous, he never forgot that they had once been inhabited by people. People who had either run from this place, or had been killed by their magical leader. Their bones may be just a few lengths away.
As he walked from dwelling to dwelling, he came across many ruins that all clustered together, even closer than the dwellings in the stallion's camp. They were positioned at the edge of a field, where the tree growth naturally thinned.
Alvarr knelt down, examining a stump growing out of the ground. It had been cut like the others, but higher, well above his head. There were notches on either side, deep ones, to hold more pieces of branch or tree. They used the trees that were here. A good decision. But as he discovered more about the dwellings, he noticed that the trees grew in a perfectly straight path, with notches cut above. How could that be? Trees did not like that, and how would they transport the branches so high?
He blinked. One length front of him, a light brown mare had two long vines wrapped and tied around her chest. The vines led from her up over a low tree branch, and the other end of the vines wrapped around the two ends of a great log. Two people in their man- and woman-shapes stood by each end, their hands on it. Someone on four-legs stood near, a medium-brown mare with a white mage-stripe.
Pull, Equi, the man shouted.
Grunting, the mare dug her feet into the ground and took small steps forward. To Alvarr's surprise, the heavy log started to rise, being pulled along by the single mare. She was strong, but strong enough to lift a tree trunk alone?
No! He stifled his gasp, fearing it would disturb the vision. All the mare-mage was doing was watching, but watching with a focused, intent look in her eyes that signaled the use of power. Her mage-power is helping the log move! She is lightening the load. But the mage might have been doing more than that. A line started forming itself in the end of the tree trunk nearest to Alvarr. When it had been raised halfway, Alvarr nodded. That's how they carved those notches in their logs. What confidence, to help raise the log and shape it at the same time. What trust.
He looked at the trunk by his feet. When he looked back toward Equi, the mare, the people had vanished. Had that been real? Alvarr didn't think he could have invented it; his mind just did not work that way. Elder Sevan could have thought of that, maybe, if he knew about the shape-mage. That's what he would call the mare, for lack of a better description.
The mage touched the stacked logs, then shoved them. Even after all these years, the joint held strong, like the friendships he had glimpsed in his vision. Mares and stallions, together.
He tried to imagine living like that, with real companionship and understanding, not just living side by side and cooperating for the sake of survival. Everyone would be valued. Everyone would have a place. His chest tightened with longing and possibility.
I must keep on.
He shifted back to four-legs and headed in the direction of the edge of the woods. There was only a field there, but he wanted to taste the grass. He'd found so many different plants and grasses. If only the ancients had a way to keep them alive, so that he might grow them back home.
He saw the edge of the grassland peeking through the trunks and branches. The sky had turned darker with clouds, but the wind blew sweet and mellow, though cool. Alvarr emerged from the trees and watched the air stir the long grass, untouched by activity. The tribe could feast for a week on this.
But as the mage walked, his steps grew heavier. He could not see anything wrong in the field, but it felt as though a storm was gathering somewhere nearby. He reached out with his magic. Chaos, terror, grief. Ah. There must be more bones nearby, under the grass. He bowed his head under the weight of that knowledge. He walked into the knee-high stalks and felt the sadness of generations overcome him. He did not have to reach out with his power anymore; the energy came to him, and it dripped with sadness. The very earth was mourning. The mare's madness had embedded itself in the land.
He shifted to man-shape, where the sense was not so strong, and forced himself to keep taking steps through the enveloping grass. The mourning of the earth became stronger, and Alvarr found himself gasping and wrapping his arms around his middle. He knew exactly where he was going. There was nothing out here but death, but, as a mage, he had to see it for himself.
What do you want me to do? he asked. There was nothing he could do; the rift happened many, many generations ago. The only thing I can do is bring back your story, he thought. The wind shifted to blow straight against his back as though a hand were on it, pushing him forward.
All right. He wrapped his hair around his wrist and clenched a handful of it in his fist. The wind, too, seemed to carry an eerie note, like the howling of a wounded animal.
Alvarr staggered as he walked over a rise in the ground, and knew he'd just trodden on a grave. He wanted to shift and send it peace, but he didn't dare. The instant he walked on four legs, fear would take over, and he would bolt.
He walked over another grave, and disturbed energy rose from it. The mage groaned and splayed his hand over his stomach, trying to protect himself. The dead couldn't touch him, but the sense of wanting and sadness was thick in the air.
The wind sent the sharp ends of the grass scratching the skin of his thighs and back. The ends of his hair tangled together, and he found himself stumbling forward because of the force. And the ground rose and fell as he kept moving over grave after grave of the fallen. At least he could not see the skeletons this time.
He'd put his head down to protect his eyes from the whipping stalks around him, and he saw the terrain change as he forced his way through the dense grass. There was an abrupt line where the grass simply stopped. On the other side, it had given way to bare, dark earth. It's dark with blood, the mage thought, but that was not a realistic notion. The blood would have gone back to Nature long ago.
He set his foot on the bare dirt, and his weak legs gave out. His palms and knees hit the cracked soil. Tears dripped from his eyes, splattering on the ground in dark circles, and he couldn't seem to stop them. He was crying in Nature's place.
This stricken place was where the mad mage had once stood. Alvarr wiped the tears out of his eyes and lifted up his head, hair tangling around him. Two skeletons glowed. The mare-leader had a true mate, according to the Elder. Some of these bones are probably his.
He crawled over to one of them. His hair dragged on the ground and caught beneath his hands and knees, but he did not care. When he reached one of the skeletons, he put his hand on it.
A large black stallion lay on the ground, shivering and coughing. "Alvi," he said, "I'm sorry." Clearly ill, he gave great wracking coughs that move
d his entire body. "Give my love to..." But he couldn't speak for coughing, and blood started coming out of his open mouth.
The vision disappeared, but Alvarr knew what happened. The black stallion died soon after that, the event that started the rift. If he ever had a mate, he couldn't imagine watching someone be taken by illness. The mare-mage would have been crazy with grief, having so much power. Having it be useless.
He crawled over to the other skeleton and put his hand over the glowing place it was buried.
A red-brown mare with a white mage-stripe stood there, begging Nature to let her mate live. She called on her power until her eyes glowed, but she was not a healer. Nature refused to accept it.
Her - Alvi's - rage and pain swirled over the dirt in a cyclone of emotion that swept everyone near up in it.
A small black stallion approached his mother, but the invisible force of her magic pushed him away. His eyes widened until the whites showed. "Get away," he told the others, but he did not command Nature's Order yet, and he could not make them obey. They approached their leader to give her comfort, but ended up surrounding her, unaware of the danger.
She looked at them with those glowing-white, hot eyes. Clouds converged in the sky, drowning out the sun's light. Wind whipped around her and the body of her mate.
She opened her mouth and screamed. The weather-mage's eyes flared, and shot bolts of power at the people who were too close. Others were slammed by the wind, or pierced by rocks and shards of earth that rose from the ground at the mad leader's command.
Alvarr heard their screams ring in his mind after the vision ended. He had taken in their flashes of pain and shock, their final emotions before their lives ended. But the past's hold on him had eased. So. She did die here, not taken away by her tribe-sisters as Elder Mastok thinks. And she commanded the wind and rain.
He shivered and stood up, almost in the same spot where Alvi, as he knew her name was now, had made her violent last stand. The earth mage looked out at the empty field, imagining it full of ancient people. When he reached out with his awareness, the restless energy of the dead answered eagerly, pressing against the boundaries of his mind. They wanted to be known.
I have seen you, he thought, bowing his head. As he stared at the ground, he saw something half-buried in the dust that did not look quite natural. He reached down and picked it up, holding it in his palm: it was a sharp shard of stone with perfectly straight sides, coming to a point.
The thin edge had not been blunted by time. Was it a chip from the ground, splintered by Alvi's dangerous windstorm? Pressing his thumb against the edge of it, Alvarr marveled when a thin line of blood welled up.
He let a drop of blood fall at his feet, thinking of the beast he had killed. The dry earth absorbed it, but nothing else happened. I should leave something of myself here, so that my ancient brothers and sisters know they have been heard. They can rejoin Nature in peace.
Twisting his hair into a rope, Alvarr brought it over his shoulder and sawed the rock through it. Pieces of long hair fell to the ground, a reddish color the same as his coat. And the same color as the mad mare-mage's. Nothing answered him.
He began to walk back toward the trees, but a faint sound made him turn around. The hair began to sink into the earth, but instead of going back to Nature, it inched toward the mare-mage's bones. The air shimmered with a strange heat that spread out from the two skeletons.
Alvarr shifted to four-legs, and saw an image of the mare-mage. But it was not the same as his visions of the past. He reached out with his energy and touched hers. She is here.
He backed up a step, but the mare-mage did not come forward, nor were her eyes white-hot with magical rage. She tilted her head toward him.
"Alvi?" he whispered.
She walked over to the site of her dead mate, but no black stallion shimmered into being to meet her. She nosed the ground, looked at Alvarr, and bowed her head. Her eyes were calm when she lifted her head up again.
"I'll bring your story back with me," Alvarr said. "We don't live here anymore. I'm sure you know."
Alvi's head nodded, and she came forward, growing more faint as she walked away from the site. She stretched her neck out to touch noses with Alvarr just before she vanished.
Alvarr got a sense of warmth that spread out from his middle to his hooves and the tips of his ears. And then, the mare-mage was gone, with no hint of her presence.
The land's sadness was gone, too. Alvarr couldn't sense anything under the earth. The grass was just grass, and the ground was just ground. The presence of the dead had blown away, leaving only peace. He dared to eat a few mouthfuls of grass. It was only grass with no taint of bad magic or energy.
That had to be what Nature wanted me to see. Alvarr was honored to carry the knowledge of their history, but what did it mean for them now? Elder Mastok wanted to heal the damage done with the rift. Did that mean that everyone had to know the story? Or stallions had to stop rejecting magic? If they believed the story, the land might heal.
Their current territory, found by the mad mare-mage's son, had probably been just as good as this, once. He wouldn't have settled the stallion tribe somewhere they could not survive. The camp had good grass, trees, mountains, a river, water to drink, a clearing to live in… how was that any worse than here?
But what would stop romeya from finding its way to them again? And Alvarr still did not have anything to show his tribe except the bundled found in that underground place he had marked. No one would listen to his words of visions and glowing skeletons, not if they didn't want to believe.
As Alvarr entered the trees again, he shifted to man-shape again and picked up a leaf, the brilliant orange and red color catching his attention. Its edges were smooth, rather than jagged, and the shape was like splayed fingers.
The trunk was greyish-brown and smooth. I must have walked into a different part of the woods. Alvarr picked up a thin branch and tried to break it. The wood resisted without a hint of bending. As an experiment, the mage swung the branch against the trunk. It connected with a sound like hitting two rocks together. It's hard as stone.
He'd have to bring a leaf or branch back with him as well. The Elders would want to see it for themselves. It was proof that there was so much in the world that the stallions had never seen. His legs felt very heavy, as he walked, but despite his growing fatigue, Alvarr was curious enough about this part of the trees to venture farther. After only a few minutes, he was glad he did. A large dwelling stood, greyish-brown, made from the wood of the trees.
A straight-sided hole was the only entrance, and it was not wide enough for anyone on four-legs to enter. And the entire dwelling was made of straight, flat sides that were shaped of wood. In man-shape, Alvarr ran up to it and touched the slabs of wood that overlapped one another, perfectly arranged. This have been shaped, of course. But how? Their own dwellings were made of woven branches and vines. The other dwellings he'd found here, made of stacked logs or that place dug out of the earth, Alvarr could understand. But this was different.
He had no idea how shaped wood would come to be, even with the ancient people's abilities. The wood pieces long, clearly made from whole trunks, but they had to be cut. No stone would never survive that, not against those impossibly hard trees.
And how is it still standing? Even the hardest wood will rot after so much time, like the logs. But as he looked inside the entrance hole, light peeked in. Parts of the roof were no longer there.
He sent out his energy but sensed nothing. He put one bare foot inside on the hard earth floor, and then the other. Overhead, he saw branches through the jagged holes that time had left.
Mages lived here. That could be the only explanation for what he saw. All around him, he found more straight-sided objects. None of the walls had natural rounded shapes, but everything met in sharp points. There were both small and tall platforms made of wood. More small straight-sided holes had been made in the walls. Perhaps to let in air? He poked his head out of one
of them and shrugged.
A straight-edged hole led to another room of the dwelling. With a cautious glance upward at the damaged roof, Alvarr walked through it. His instincts flared with the urge to run, because even in man-shape, he could smell danger all over the room.
Black and gray matter was in the center on the floor. Ash. He had only smelled it once, when he had found a tree struck by lightning. He crept toward the pile. Why had they collected ashes?
Then he noticed something else, an item like a branch. When he got closer, he knew it was from no tree that grew here, or anywhere. It had a straight, smooth wood part that ended in a row of many wicked-looking points made of wood. He picked it up, and immediately knew. Mage-made.
It was a tool, but how had they used it? This entire place was beyond his understanding. He placed the item back down and tucked his shortened hair behind his ears. Maybe the answer would be found in those bundles of flat leaves stored in the underground dwelling.
He went back to the larger room and noticed another straight-sided hole leading to another area. Alvarr went through it and came into what he thought was a place to rest. Though it was on a low platform of straight wood pieces, somehow joined together, he saw a pallet, covered with that white material.
He pushed down on the pallet. It rustled and crackled, and a sweet, dusty smell like late-summer hay came from it. He sat on its edge. When the pallet and platform under it stayed steady beneath his weight, he lay back and felt himself cradled by the summer-hay smell and softness of the cloth. His eyes closed.
Alvarr had woken up, still in man-shape on the soft, unfamiliar pallet in one of the ancient tribe's dwellings. It had been the most comfortable night in his memory, and the mage wanted nothing more than to lie until the sun was well overhead.
