Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  The single basalt sheet became rocks, many rocks, many, many rocks shifting and rebalancing, riddled with fracturing cracks and crumbling dust. He drifted down through them. Colors shifted in his mind’s eye, the greys tinged with green and the browns tinged with red. Not tinged. Each was different. Each particle was different. Every shade, every shape, distinct in its place, this place, but also somehow as seamless as water.

  Earth magic did lie beneath him, far beneath him. Deep. It would not rise. But it was there. It was down. He followed the meandering fault line. It did not always descend, but the colors faded greyer and greyer as he passed them.

  Eventually, the crack spread apart. Was it as big as a cave or as small as a burrow? Were the rocks he saw pebbles, or grains of sand? More cracks pulled him down, down, until he could see hundreds of cracks in a bowled floor. He slid between the cracks into another wide space, and then into another, larger and larger, all the edges sharp, all the colors sharp. Wider and wider the crack grew, until it had to be big enough to crawl through, except that wasn’t what he was doing. He wasn’t crawling, he was just moving, just … seeing … could he hear anything? Could he smell anything? He wanted to try, but he could not work out exactly how.

  New cave after new cave opened to him, some larger, some smaller. He saw blackened animal bones, as if they’d been burnt, but realized that it was a fossil in the rock. Small. It had to be small, whatever creature it was. The imprints looked so fragile. Maybe no bigger than his hand. He could crawl through these caves, if the fossil was any kind of scale. Could he stand up? Again, he wanted to try, but did not know how. Thinking of it did not make it happen.

  But he could sense space around him. The caves were wider now. Wetter? Why was he seeing the shine of water? Was that what it was? He wished he could touch it, or at least feel air on his face, feel if it was moist. Down. He kept going down.

  He seemed to drop into the next cave from its ceiling, though he still wasn’t really falling. He tried to look everywhere at once, for this enormous space was crossed and re-crossed by bright white rocks with sides as straight as arrows.

  Crystals. Crystals. The earth magic—it was here. It was held within giant crystals that were taller than houses, crystals growing bit by bit during countless centuries. Growing under water—there was water completely filling the cave, completely submerging every one of the giant gems. The earth magic was here.

  Graegor moved closer to one crystal. The earth magic locked inside it did not stir, not even when he called to it. He could see it, sense it, but could not reach it.

  Was it because he wasn’t actually here?

  How could he see that the crystals were white when there was no light?

  Was any of this real? Was this all a dream?

  Down. He felt he should keep going down, so he slipped along the edge of the crystal in front of him, smooth and sharp as a blade. The floor was not flat, but cracked, and covered with smaller crystals, smaller and smaller. The cracks led somewhere that was black, then grey, then brown, then a deep, hot orange. Hot. It had to be very hot down here, but he could not feel anything, not even pain.

  Melted rock filled his mind. Magma. Rifts in the brilliant colors of the stone. He could not sense the earth magic this deep, but maybe that was because this was where it was born …

  The magma glowed orange, red, and yellow. Here, rock was as changeable as water, but slower and heavier. White sparks glinted in deep crimson hollows, like when the planets came to shine like stars on the horizon of a fiery sunset. Like when the Sorcerers Star came to scatter its dust on the earth and waken the new generation. The magma stretched, sank, and rose, twisted back onto itself, and stretched again.

  White sparks and black burns. Sorcerers and magic. He watched it all turn until the red and orange and yellow and crimson sank into black.

  Graegor blinked, and blinked again to try to clear the haze from his eyes. As his sight returned, so did a mountain of pain, and he could not keep from squeezing his eyes shut as he squished his scream into a drawn-out grunt.

  When he forced himself to open his eyes again, he saw rock soaring above him. It was the sea-stack. He was lying on his back on a boulder at the base of the sea-stack. He couldn’t see the sun, and what sky he could see was lumpy grey.

  Movement. He sensed movement to the left. He tried to shift his shoulders and sit up, but all that moved was his head and neck. Even that hurt enough to make him gasp, and the cold air seemed to burn his lungs.

  When he could breathe more easily, he opened his eyes again, and he saw Ferogin. The Adelard sorcerer was near another boulder at the sea-stack’s base, maybe ten yards away. He was leaning heavily, favoring his right leg, and he was cradling his left arm against his chest. Besides his missing cap, he was without his gloves now too, and there was a rip in his trousers’ right leg from the knee to the cuff. When he saw that Graegor’s eyes were open, a spark of pale purple lit his right hand. But the magnokinetic lash no longer had any strength, and its tingling pain faded very quickly into the general, horrible, throbbing ache seizing every single part of Graegor’s body.

  Ferogin limped a step forward and paused, balancing against another boulder closer to Graegor. Graegor’s arms and legs lay draped over the rocks, stretched into wrong angles, and he could not make them move at all. His medallion suddenly shifted on his chest, and its leather cord dug hard across his throat again.

  Fighting down panic, he extended his gen in every direction, searching for anything for his mind to grab—and he found the crack. The deep crack that he had somehow followed beneath the dueling ground, all the way to the fault. He nudged wisps of his power into it, and above them, the towering sea-stack shifted.

  Not much. No more than a fingernail’s width. But Ferogin looked from it to Graegor and back again with palpable alarm.

  “I’ll push it over,” Graegor rasped. “Right … on top of us.”

  “You can’t,” Ferogin whispered. “You won’t.”

  “Want to … take the chance?”

  Ferogin’s lip curled in a sneer. “You don’t … have it. Inside you. To kill.”

  Graegor nudged the sea-stack again. When it trembled, Ferogin whispered a curse.

  “Draw?” Graegor suggested.

  “Draw.” Ferogin carefully shuffled sideways. His foot slipped a little as it moved to the next boulder, but he recovered, and spat into the water. “Leaving,” he barked.

  “Then … go.”

  Ferogin moved out of sight. Graegor heard splashing, and when it faded, he shut his eyes.

  He needed to try to heal himself.

  He needed to try to remember what had happened.

  Ferogin had thrown a rock at him. A big one. The rock had hit him … in the stomach. In the stomach, or the hip? Or the pelvic bone? Was his pelvic bone fractured?

  Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Just lie straight. The bones need to heal straight. But he couldn’t move, and he was lying on boulders that weren’t flat or straight. His magic …

  He could feel it, just barely. It wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t strong. Not strong enough to feel real.

  He didn’t know enough about healing. He didn’t know anything about healing, about any of it, magic or not. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Could he at least block the pain? He’d never done that before either, because he’d never had to. The meditative prayers should help with that, right? His fingers twitched to make the sign of the Godcircle.

  He nearly passed out again.

  From there he faded in and out of consciousness. He was so cold. Sometimes he thought Ferogin had come back, but when he forced his eyes open, he saw no one.

  Tabitha. He wanted to call to her. But he didn’t think he was supposed to. No one was supposed to help him. Was it against the rules? He thought so, but he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t call to her. He didn’t know if he even could. The spinning, bruise-purple knot of his power felt so far away, buried inside him. He listened to the hiss his breaths made as they left
his body and were carried away by the wind.

  Cold. So cold. And wet. He hurt.

  His quarterstaff was gone. He was shivering. The shivering jarred his bad elbow, and he could not hold back a yell of agony. Everything hurt so much but he could not do anything about it. He couldn’t move his legs. The slightest twitch of his foot sent waves over him of weakness, nausea, and pain, pain, pain.

  How long would he lie here? How long could he lie here until … ?

  Fear clawed at him and the hiss of his breaths became gasps. Was this it? Sorcerers could die, they did die, he could have killed Ferogin, he knew he could have, so now … this? Had Ferogin killed him? Was that why his magic felt so small?

  Oh God oh God oh God. Please. Don’t let it be a lie. Sorcerers can survive this. Sorcerers can survive worse. Please, God. I was trying to do the right thing. I was trying to help her.

  He faded. He kept pushing back the darkness, his throat thick with panic, but it kept overtaking him. He kept thinking Ferogin had come back to finish him. He kept hearing a voice, but it wasn’t real. No one would help him. No one could. He was alone.

  Oh God. Oh God.

  Someone was calling to him. He wasn’t actually hearing it, though, and he slowly realized that it was in his mind. He tried to focus.

  It was Contare. “Graegor?”

  “Sir?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I … I’ve been better.” Had he let Ferogin damage him permanently? Was he of no use to Contare anymore?

  “Broken bones?” Contare asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Try to sleep for now. I’ll be there soon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Contare’s presence faded from his mind. But he was on his way. He would help.

  Graegor let the darkness take him.

  Blinking awake, Graegor saw a massive rock tower soaring over him. He heard water nearby. For a moment he just stared and listened.

  The duel. This was the dueling ground. His power whirled inside him, ready and rising.

  “Graegor?”

  Contare. He felt his magic slow and ebb as the touch of his master’s mind filled him with relief. He tried to turn his head to look around and didn’t understand why it was so difficult. “Where … are … you?” he managed to send. Forming distinct words in his mind was only slightly easier than forming them aloud.

  “Here.” Contare’s face appeared at Graegor’s left. He was wrapped in a green wool scarf and cap, and although his blue eyes were as calm as ever, the cold made his skin seem paler and his wrinkles look like deep grooves. “I found your quarterstaff.”

  “Thank … you.” He was very glad of that. Something was under his head, something besides rock. A blanket, maybe.

  “I couldn’t move you,” Contare sent, “so I shifted the rocks beneath us a little. You’re lying more or less flat now. Can you move at all?”

  Graegor focused on his head, lifted it, and tried to tilt it forward. He heard himself scream as pain lit him like a torch. It lasted almost forever, and he was gasping for breath by the time it grudgingly loosened its hold on him. When he thought he could tolerate it, he clenched his jaw and opened his eyes again. Contare still hovered over him, his expression unchanged.

  “Don’t try to move again,” his master sent. “Do you know where you’re hurt?”

  “Chin ...”

  “I see that. Bloody but not broken.”

  “Elbow. Left.”

  “I’ll look. I won’t touch.” Contare’s face withdrew. After a pause, he sent, “Judging by the twist, I’d say you fell on it.”

  “I think … so. It was … already hurt. But I think it … saved my head.”

  “Impossible. Clearly nothing will save that.”

  At first, Graegor wasn’t sure that was a joke, but Contare went on, “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to make light of it. I know it hurts.” After another pause, he seemed more concerned. “Did you get hit on your hip?”

  “Pelvic … bone. Can’t … I can’t move my legs.”

  Contare sensed his rising panic. “We’ll fix it,” he sent, the sky-blue light of his magic warm and soothing. “We’ll fix it.”

  Graegor listened to the water lapping and rushing against the rocks. He breathed, long and shallow. Deep breaths hurt too much.

  “I’ll help you,” Contare sent, “but you need to do the work. If I try to touch anything, your power will push me out.”

  “I’ll … control it.”

  “You’re in no shape to control that reaction. And I want you to learn this. All right?”

  “Right.” He didn’t want to learn anything right now. “What’s … first?”

  “You need to block some of the pain. But you can’t block all of it, since you need to feel what you’re doing.”

  “Should I … try the prayers?”

  “We’ll do a guided meditation this time. Relax as much as you can, and focus on my voice.”

  Graegor didn’t think he could relax at all, not with the pain surrounding him like the walls of a burning house. But he did his best to squeeze the world down to Contare’s voice speaking the rhythmic prayers, and gradually his mind’s tension eased. Without Graegor knowing quite when it happened, Contare shifted his words, but not his cadence, to a simple description, a metaphor. “Fields of flowers, open to the sun. The sun was warm, but now it burns. Fields of flowers, petals closing. Petals closing out the sun. The flowers’ hearts hide from the burn. Petals closing out the sun …”

  Graegor imagined the fields of flowers closing, clusters of nerve endings shutting. He kept imagining it, kept listening to Contare, and before long, the flames of pain inside him subsided. They didn’t die entirely, but just doing that much, just being able to do that much, made him feel better. Contare sensed when Graegor had a steady handle on the technique, and his mental words drifted off to silence.

  “Thank you,” Graegor sent. In the back of his thoughts, he held onto the image of the closing flowers. It was a serious relief to feel in control of himself again.

  “You’re welcome. It’s a useful image. Do you feel ready to start the actual healing?”

  “I think so.” But he hesitated.

  “What is it?”

  “Sir, why haven’t you shown me how to heal before? It seems … important.”

  “We’ll talk about that later. Time is a factor right now. Your bones have already started to fuse back together, but they may not be straight. You might need to adjust or undo some of what your body has already done.”

  “Undo?” That did not sound good.

  “I will guide you. It will hurt.”

  And it did. Graegor learned more about human anatomy, and moving his mind through it, in that afternoon than he had learned in the entire six months that Contare had been his master. But he didn’t think he would retain it, since he had to focus through pain that often spiked but never fell beneath a certain constant intensity—an intensity that he knew was less than it should have been. He knew that the nerves he had numbed would eventually revive. As he concentrated on the fracture that ran from the front of his pelvic bone to the back, nudging it into alignment with Contare’s guidance, tapping his power to heal it a fingernail’s-width at a time, he placed the fracture’s line into his image of the closed flowers. He was filling a trench that cut through a grassy meadow. Filling a trench with cool, soft dirt, and smoothing and patting it flat. He could keep going if he thought of it that way.

  After the pelvic bone, he moved to the tailbone, which was badly bruised but intact, and was already healing in a way that met with Contare’s approval. Next was his elbow, where all three bones at the joint were damaged. When Contare inspected it through their telepathic link, he called the injuries “impressive”. This took longer to straighten and heal, and required a more delicate touch. On his chin was an unpleasant surprise—the bone had been chipped, and the sliver was working its way out of the split skin. Contare told him that it would take weeks or
months for the little slice of bone to regenerate, but the skin wouldn’t scar. “By the time you have a chance to take a bath and clean off all the blood, the wound will be gone.”

  “Shouldn’t I clean it now? To stop infection?”

  “Our wounds don’t get infected. Leave it alone for the moment. Let’s check from head to heel and see if there’s anything else out of place.”

  He had a lot of bruises and abrasions, but the swelling on most had already subsided. Graegor suddenly realized that he had let go of the closed-flower image some time ago. He was sore—he was definitely sore. But he was much, much better.

  He opened his eyes again. The sea-stack still towered over him. Contare’s mind withdrew from his, and his own power settled down to its familiar sense of passive dark purple. He braced his right arm on the cold stone to lift himself, but Contare gestured for him to stop. “Rest for a little longer. Stretch a bit, if you can.”

  Graegor slowly flexed his arms as lethargy started replacing the soreness throughout his body. How long had he been here? The sea-stack’s bulk and shadow kept him from even guessing the hour. “Thank you, sir,” he murmured. “I’m … I’m glad I didn’t have to do this by myself.”

  “You’re welcome,” Contare said. “Call it my Solstice gift to you.”

  Graegor tried to grin. “But I didn’t get … you anything.” He yawned.

  Contare grinned back, then tilted his head. “Just out of curiosity—after all that time you spent choosing each perfect pearl for her bracelet, what did Tabitha give you for Solstice?”

  “Clock.” Graegor cleared his throat. “It has a … mammoth-tusk ivory face. Jade inlay. And … thaumat’argent gears. It’s nice.”

  “Ah.” Contare nodded, then sat back on his heels and braced both hands on the small of his back, stretching. Graegor lifted his head slightly, and saw that in a small circle around them, the tumbled boulders at the base of the sea-stack had been shifted and rotated. Each now lay roughly aligned with its neighbors to make a sort of platform. Somehow Contare had done this without Graegor ever feeling it, and it was a chastening example of his control of his power.