by Carol Berg
“Step three: In your mind, use your need to transform the essence of the thornbush, and then take one tiny portion of that monstrous power you fear and let it flow into your creation. Do it, and then feel what you have done and tell me whether it is good or evil.”
As she counted off her steps, I found myself obeying her commands, resisting the old habits I had developed in Zhev’Na in favor of this new way of thinking. And when I tossed the dry bundle onto the fire and carefully let power flow into the spell I had made, I did not create a holocaust, only a small hot fire that would burn bright through a long night. I felt whole, and the world did not end.
“Didn’t I tell you?” She leaned back on her rock and nodded. Without smirking. But her chin was ready to challenge my least hesitation.
“The water,” I said. “I could make it more palatable . . . get the grit out of it . . .” Was it possible?
“Settle the sand to the bottom, perhaps,” she said, tossing me a muddy flask. She looked at me sidewise, out from under half-lowered eyelids. “A little more difficult than a slow-burning fire.”
Consider the water. . . .
I went through the steps again. Felt an anxious hitch in my breath as I released a dribble of power. But the working felt right. I opened the flask, drank, and passed it to Sefaro’s daughter.
She took a sip, cocked her head to one side, considering, and passed the flask to Paulo. “What do you think? How did he do?”
Paulo, who had been crouched between the woman and me as if ready to leap into the breach when flaming arrows started flying between us, took a sip, stared at the flask, and then proceeded to drain it. “Cripes! I’ve not tasted anything cold in a year . . . I’m sure of it. And no sand in my teeth!”
“Well, we can’t afford to do that any more,” said the woman, snatching the flask back again and tossing it onto the sand beside the sinkhole. “He doesn’t have time to learn how to pump more water from the earth into Nim’s puddles. And he has more important matters to deal with.”
My astonishing feeling of well-being fled in the face of the future. We needed to get back to Avonar. “So, mentor, how are you at making portals?”
She looked up sharply. Her small face hardened like cooling lava, leaving her features rigid and pointed and angry. Paulo was sitting behind her, and he immediately shook his head vigorously, giving me a bleak wince that was some odd mixture of embarrassment and sympathy.
“Portal-making is not exactly in my list of skills.” She could have frosted the desert. “If it were, I wouldn’t have been fool enough to spend four weeks riding through the Wastes to find you, now would I?”
“No, no. I can see that. I wasn’t implying—I just—” What had I done to offend her now? As ever, it was impossible to come up with the right thing to say, especially with Paulo making unintelligible faces in the background. “I understand true talent doesn’t imply the ability to make portals, but I thought you might know what was needed. I’ve likely power enough to do it. You’ve shown me that. But just . . . I don’t know how.” The Lords never traveled physically, and so had no need for portals.
The woman tilted her head and wrinkled one side of her face. “So you just want me to tell you how to make a portal?”
“As you did with the other things. I could take us back to Avonar tonight. We could find some help.”
“What about this oculus? If it is possibly empowering the Zhid, you can’t just leave it. You likely have power enough to destroy it, if you’ll just try.”
I tried to hold patience. “I told you. I can’t go near an oculus. I daren’t touch it. It doesn’t matter what I want or what I intend. All the power in the world isn’t going to enable me to destroy it.”
Flushed and silent, she sat by her rock, digging her boot heel into the sand so ferociously one might have thought her worst enemy buried there. She was thinking about something she didn’t like at all, and I didn’t want to blurt out anything else until I had a clue about what was making her angry this time.
“So this soul weaving,” she said at last, “that’s what you did to get me off the Lady’s roof?”
Was that what this was all about? Gods, she must have been disgusted when she realized what I’d done. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . D’Sanya was so angry. So dangerous. There was no time to explain or to ask you. If she’d seen you . . .”
“I’m not asking for an apology. I want to know how it works. If you can make me scramble across a roof and race off to find your mother”—her glance was as pointed as her chin, and I felt my own skin heat up—“can you make me work sorcery as well?”
“Yes. But I—”
“And do things I might not be . . . capable . . . of otherwise?”
“He had me writing words one time.” Paulo spoke up. “There’s no bigger magic than that. He can take or give what’s needed . . . allow you to do what you need, as well. He won’t trespass where you don’t say, neither. He could, but he won’t. I think it could work.”
Paulo had clearly heard something I hadn’t. I puzzled for a moment, watching the woman biting her lip and grinding her heel. I thought her hand might crush her cup.
Then she stuck out her jaw and kicked a last rock out of the hole. “There’s daylight enough left. We can be to the place I buried it within the hour. You can stay well out of the way while Paulo helps me dig it up. Then you can do whatever it is you do, and we’ll destroy it—with my hands, not yours. I wish I could do it without your help, but I can’t.”
Earth and sky! “You want me to join with you . . . come into you . . . and destroy the oculus?”
“There’s no other way. We’ve no assurance Prince Ven’Dar will be in Avonar or that he even has the power to destroy one of D’Sanya’s devices. You do. You have no idea . . .” She shook her head and mumbled to herself. “And now you have my body to do it with. Let’s just get it over with and don’t let me think about it too much.”
Paulo was already up and saddling horses. I sat speechless, my mind running through five chains of reasoning at once, none of them concluding she was wrong.
“Some day you’re going to understand how lucky you were to have me along,” she said, scrambling to her feet and running her fingers through her shaggy hair vigorously. “Every Dar’Nethi child is taught complex skills such as how to make portals and how to destroy objects of power. Not one in five thousand can actually do such things, so not one in five hundred remembers more than half the steps. But I—” She dropped her cup into the pack that sat at her feet. “I never forget anything.”
CHAPTER 30
Jen
Paulo did the digging. He said he didn’t have much to contribute to the night’s activity but common labor.
Gerick had remained with the horses two hundred paces up the hill. His spirit had closed up like a slamming gate as soon as we crossed the top of the ridge and started down the track to the burial place, and I made him stop right there. I didn’t want any “imaginary” Zhid poking spears into Paulo and me while we did this thing.
A slight chink interrupted the steady crunch of the shovel.
“Ouch! Demonfire!” Paulo threw down the shovel and clenched his hands to his chest. “Shovel hit metal, not rock. Cripes . . .” He bent over, his fists flying to his head and grinding into his temples.
“Time to change the guard, then,” I said, jumping up from the flat rock, grabbing his elbow, and dragging him back up the trail toward Gerick and the horses. “Any damage that won’t heal?”
After a moment he walked a little straighter, but clamped his fists under his arms grimacing. “I saw a man struck down by lightning once. I’m not smoking, at least. Listen—” He halted at a bend in the track where we could see the desert stretching out behind us, the ugly scars of the Lords’ reign a blight on the land. “What you’re doing . . . are you sure?”
“Not sure at all. But I’ve some sense. We’ll start slowly and see if it’s possible before he—I just don’t see any other way. I’ll t
ell you this: He has power enough.”
He nodded and started walking again.
Indeed, I couldn’t believe Gerick doubted himself. Even in the small workings he’d used to brighten our fire and clear our water . . . I’d never sensed such power, even from my father in the days before Zhev’Na. I issued a fervent prayer that the Lady Seriana was right about her son’s heart.
Gerick was perched on a rock, his arms and legs drawn into a knot, when we walked into the little grotto where the horses were tethered. His head popped up. “So you found it.”
“Just where I left it,” I said, taking far too much time and effort to take a drink and loop my water flask’s cord back on my belt so it wouldn’t fall off. I didn’t want to look at him, to think about him. “Let’s get this done. Do I have to touch you or anything? Stand anywhere in particular? Well, I suppose not.” I emitted something halfway between a laugh and a bleat. “The last time we did this, you were dangling in a corner, and I was flailing on a window ledge.”
He unwound his arms and slid off the boulder onto his feet. His eyes were so dark in the failing evening.
I had to see . . . I stretched my hand out so my weak handlight would reach his face. “There . . . I’ll stand over there,” I said, offering a pitiful explanation for my waggling finger.
Ridiculous. His eyes were their natural color. And concerned. I walked over to a boulder near him and propped my backside on it, facing away so I couldn’t see him anymore. “Get on with it.”
“How can you do this?” he said quietly from behind me. “How can you bear asking me to come inside you after the things I’ve done to you? Aren’t you afraid? Don’t you remember?”
And I answered what I had been repeating to myself for the past two hours. “Memory has no power but what the soul chooses to make of it. I choose this. Now will you please just do it?”
His boots scuffed on the dirt. Paulo murmured something. I tried not to think of anything at all. How was I supposed to let him know where not to trespass, as Paulo put it? How was he supposed to know the part I needed him to play? Did I have to say it out loud? Yes, I can tick off steps and form complex enchantments, but a rabbit could bring them to life sooner than my stunted soul will, so you’ll have to supply all the real magic.
Looking upward, to where the first sharp-edged stars poked through the deep blue, I inhaled deeply, relishing the clean, dry air and the oncoming night. No longer did an everlasting pall of smoke and dust haze hang over Ce Uroth. That happy circumstance soothed me a little. I smiled and imagined green stars in a stormy purple sky. Gods, I wanted to snatch Papa from the hospice and go home. Strange . . . “Will you just get on with it?” I said to those behind me.
“Jen.” Paulo’s soft call drew me to look around. He was crouched beside Gerick, who was sprawled on the ground, eyes closed, body limp as a dead man.
“He’s already . . . ?” I suddenly felt hot all over, my face pulsing. Green stars . . . I should have known.
“He said he’d try to stay back as much as he could until you need him. He knows he was clumsy when he helped you before. Are you all right?”
I stared at my hands. Breathed. Peeked into my own thoughts. And they were my own thoughts . . . but, of course, he could likely hear them if he chose. I resisted the urge to ask him, for fear I would hear that quiet voice bouncing around in my skull or coming out of my own mouth. Good Vasrin show me the Way. . . . “I suppose I’m all right.”
“You holler if you need me. I’m going to stay here to watch out for him. You know what needs doing.”
I moved slowly down the path, assuming for some reason that I had to tiptoe. If I stumbled, jostled, or thought too hard about what I was doing, something in the world was surely going to break or explode or crash down on my head. Or perhaps inside it.
I focused on the job at hand. Indeed I knew exactly what was required to destroy an object of power. As with so many things I could never use, the steps sat right there in my mind, dusty and neglected: consider need, assert ownership, disrupt containment, trigger the destruction . . . The triggering, yes, that was where I’d need help.
The implements lay where I’d left them on the flat rock I’d used to cover the hole: the shovel, the broken sword, Paulo’s hand ax. I quickly added a few items from my pocket: the sweat-crusted scarf I had tied on my head in the desert crossing, the tight-wound measuring cord I used in my work, my mother’s coming-of-age ring that I always carried, my knife, and its sheath that my father had tooled for me.
The oppressive enchantment of the oculus was already deadening my limbs, making it an effort to lift the broken sword. But I carried the sword to the hole and poked about in the dirt at the bottom, probing to find the ring. A muffled clink, another stab, and I snagged it, scooping it out of the loose dirt. As I raised the broken tip, the brass oculus slid down toward the hilt and clanged into the guard.
Trying not to look at the thing, I carried it back to the flat stone and let it slide off again to lie simple, round, and perfect in its evil, gleaming in my pale handlight. My simple invocations of protection felt quite pale as well. I could try to invoke power for strengthening them, testing this joint working, but my mind was already growing sluggish. So begin. You can do this.
Step One: Consider the object to be destroyed . . . the need . . . the use or misuse that justifies destruction. That was easy. While visions of ravening Zhid, of Gerick without eyes, and of my father’s confusion of mind created a solid hateful shape in my head, I proceeded to the next step, arranging my possessions around the brass device—the knife, the sheath, the little gold finger ring, the scarf. I unwound the measuring cord and wrapped it carefully around them all, making sure it touched each of my four possessions. And then I passed my fingers around the cord, releasing just enough power to assert my ownership of this boundary and everything within it. Unless D’Sanya showed up to break my circle and thus dispute my claim, the oculus was now mine.
The brass circle pulsed and glared as if it knew what I was doing. Its physical shape did not change. My mind knew that. Yet it seemed to grow larger, occupying fully half of the world I could see. Concentrate, Jen. I forced my eyes to see the rock and the other things on it, to feel the night air and hear the distant howl of a wolf.
Next step. I considered the casting of the artifact . . . the mold fashioned with care and skill . . . the molten metal running into the mold, skinning over as it cooled . . . the careful burnishing and whispered enchantments that had made it. I thought of all I knew of its designers and its maker . . . envisioning them in all their horror, beauty, and betrayal, a necessary step to encompass the existence of the object. “I’m sorry,” I whispered as I concentrated on the Lady. But I dared not slide over the requirements, even the ones that might be painful for either of us to dwell on.
My spirit clamored warnings, and my hand trembled as I picked up the hand ax we’d borrowed from Mistress Aimee’s stable, its sharp steel blade properly venerated and cared for by Paulo on our trek across the desert. I raised the tool, and my shoulder howled in protest. Foolish . . . I couldn’t possibly muster the physical strength to do this. The oculus had surely been cast with spells to make it impervious to casual damage. Perhaps I should call for Paulo. Confused, dispirited, I lowered the tool.
No! I shook off the leaden sensation. Focus on the steps. Disrupt containment. What you feel is only enchantment—the object trying to preserve itself. Strike!
I raised the hand ax high, strength surging into my limbs like a river pushing into the sea. The blow landed square on the oculus and hard enough to mar the perfection of its gleaming surface with a small dent. I had never struck such a blow. So hard. So accurate. Blood rushed to my skin again. I was not alone. . . .
Unsettled, I threw down the hand ax as if it were the evil instrument. Mistress Aimee’s blade would need some tender care; shards of rock had flown everywhere when it struck.
The unity of physical form and enchantment that made up the oculus, the c
ontainment of the spells within the physical object, should have been disrupted by the blow. Only a small breach was needed, a flaw in its construction that I could exploit to break it. And so I proceeded through the mental exercises of desire and transformation, shaping them with the simple sorcery nature had left to me.
Once those were completed, assuming I’d done all correctly, only one step remained. The most difficult. The least certain. Hold the desire in the mind, incorporating every sense, and feed it power enough to accomplish the breaking spell. Closing my eyes, I felt the solidity of the enchantment I had constructed, envisioned its accomplishment, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling the shattering I desired. And then I reached deep into that most intimate place of a Dar’Nethi’s soul, and in that reservoir where my Way had left only dust and rubble, I found magic.
My eyes flew open, and every object in my sight—sky, stars, rocks, desert—became more comprehensible, more real, its color richer, its texture, shape, and solidity, even its flaws, delights to the eye and the mind. The bluster of the wind and the screech of a hunting raptor sang with tones and harmonies that extended far beyond those of ordinary hearing, and with such clarity that I could understand the slightest nuances of wild nature bound up in them. For one instant I was admitted to the heart of the universe, its intricacies and truth laid bare for my soul to devour.
Always I had read of the exhilaration of Dar’Nethi enchantment, and how the intensity of the experience grew in proportion to the power of the enchanter. Now I knew that all I’d read was true. Gerick’s power left me breathless, speechless.
But before I could even encompass the wonder, the oculus pulsed and shot off beams of light, blinding me, choking me, devouring the bright moment and spewing out horror that overwhelmed every sense—tortured screams, billowing darkness, the reeking smoke of burning corpses. The brass ring gleamed through the murk.
I fed power into the enchantment I had built, more and more, until I feared that even this ocean of magic inside me must be drained dry. And always the circle of brass stayed whole. I knew only one way to divert more power into my enchantment—make the link with its object more direct. Furious at a creation that could convert such beauty into horror, terrified that we would fail, I could not consider the danger. And so I stretched out my hand and touched the oculus itself.
