How to Traverse Terra Incognita

by Dean Francis Alfar

  “My name is Tenet, good sir,” she replied, offering a smile. “And I will pass through, if afforded no opportunity for gainful employment.” She straightened to her full height.

  “What?” The man scowled at the short stranger, unimpressed by Tenet’s soft brown eyes, odd clothes, and accent.

  “She’s looking for work,” the woman beside him said, scratching at a sore on the side of her neck. “Paying work.”

  “Do we look coin-made to you, stranger?” the man said, tightening his grip on a long piece of wood.

  “Perhaps a few coppers, good sir,” Tenet said, extending her hands palm outward. “And a place to sleep for the night. Maybe there is something I can do for you or this place.”

  “There’s no work for you here,” the woman replied. “Fortune left us years ago, along with the weather. Though you’re welcome to stay.”

  The lean man nodded slowly.

  “I think I can work with the weather,” Tenet said, shielding her eyes against the harsh sunlight.

  “Truly?” the woman’s eyes widened. “Are you a weatherworker?”

  “Not exactly,” Tenet answered. “But I am a Craftsman.”

  “A Craftsman,” the man repeated, a little fear edging into his voice. “What does that mean?”

  “I follow the Traitor’s Way,” Tenet said simply.

  The man and the woman exchanged a look.

  “Forgive our ignorance,” the man said, “but we’ve never heard of such a thing, have we, Maery?”

  “No,” the woman Maery said, shaking her head. “Not at all.”

  “Can you show us what you do?” the man asked, with the smallest shrug.

  “Stay right there, Alister,” Tenet told her mule, pointing to a precise spot on the dry ground. She walked some distance away from the well and faced the man and woman, who watched her every motion with distrustful eyes.

  Tenet considered the environment and sought to encompass the nature of everything in her immediate vicinity. When she closed her eyes, her Craft opened up and briefly showed her the patterns of her surroundings: the heavy lines of climate interlaced with overlaying concentric circles of heat, the solid granulated outlines of the ground and earth, the jagged strokes of the woman Maery’s anxiety, the immutable texture of the man’s irritation, and the odd saturated hue that the man and the woman shared that she assumed was a flavor of doubt. Only the well resisted her sight, a discomfiting emptiness where she expected to see the folding pattern of receding water.

  The well can wait Tenet knew that her reading was superficial, more akin to a glance than long contemplation, and she knew that there were many other factors to consider, other facets to the circumstances than her hurried overview gave her.

  As Tenet’s understanding of the status quo increased, her Craft began to present opportunities to betray the established parameters, giving her potential openings to create unexpected change, identifying weak areas that could be subjected to traitorous incidents.

  When she opened her eyes, she knew what to do.

  “Good sir, good lady Maery,” she called out to the two spectators. “The rule of drought is the law in this place. But it need not always be so.”

  Tenet closed her eyes again as she engaged the spark of Craft within her, selecting a weak point in the pattern of dryness and heat, slicing her mind through the layers of lines, sequences, and strokes. Inside, she inserted a memory of rain and imbued it with all the desire she could muster. This wasn’t very difficult, because she did want rain, had wanted it for days. She felt her need wash over her and into the pattern, invisible rays of persuasion emanating from her and into the equally unseen patterns. Above her, dark clouds quickly gathered and grew heavy with water, as moisture betrayed the rule of drought and rebelled against time and circumstance.

  Easy now easy easy

  When rain began to fall in thick and weighty drops, Tenet opened her eyes. The woman Maery had her arms extended to the sky, her face raised up, mouth open to the welcome precipitation. The man trembled where he stood, a hand on the lip of the well, his eyes fixed on Tenet.

  “That’s that,” Tenet said with smile. “I’ll check the well too—”

  “There’s no need for that,” the man beside the well said, tightening his grip on the thick piece of wood in his hand.

  “Thank you, thank you,” the woman Maery laughed.

  Tenet nodded, then walked to her mule Alister, who stood expressionless in the growing downpour.

  “We’ll have a roof over our heads tonight, Alister,” she whispered into his big ear.

  VEN BENT OVER the line of small wet stones, flecking away the rainwater that dripped down his cowl, trying to gain a sense of the muddied oracular tidings. When he had awakened from his once-a-decade month-long druidic sleep, he had been perturbed by the news—word of which reached him through the gossip of winged insects—of an unexpected drought in lands east of his stead. For a moment, he considered not investigating the oddity; the lands outside of his domain were not his responsibility, and those very same lands where considered wild, insomuch as they fell under the influence of neither king nor state. He dismissed a more general feeling of obligation to all of nature at large—he wasn’t the kind of druid who felt the need to respond to the cry of every living thing.

  In the end, it was the anticipation of activity that moved Ven to take the journey; the quotidian nature of his druidic routines made him feel older than his twenty-eight years. He dressed himself in simple garments meant to deal with the anticipated heat of the land he journeyed toward, leaving his well-muscled arms uncovered. At the periphery of his stead, he dismissed his wide-eyed animal companions, opting, as usual, to travel alone. The animals, their hopes crushed yet again, lumbered, skittered, and flew back to their own dens, holes, and nests. It was the old one-eyed ferret who waited, until his master had gone beyond his limited range of vision, that was the last to abandon optimism.

  Days later, Ven considered the readings his fatidic stones suggested in the muddy earth and shook his head. His confusion stemmed from the fact that the stones warned against an unnatural drought, which he fully expected, yet the evidence of rain falling around him with unnatural abandon disputed the oracle. Irritation trumped confusion, as Ven plucked each damp oracular stone from the wet earth, placed them in the pouch at his belt, and moved eastward in the heavy rain, silently cursing his sodden choice of attire.

  He stood shivering at the crest of a wet hill, overlooking a small village that seemed to have dealt well with the unnatural rainfall. Furrows had been dug into the flatter areas of the mountainside, creating channels for the fallen water to follow, leaving a handful of less drenched paths.

  Ven attuned his senses to the surroundings, seeking impressions from stone and sky and water, and affirmed his suspicions. This was, in general, where the strangeness centered, where the sky’s waterlines bent toward. Somewhere in this village, something was very wrong. This was where his power was needed.

  He decided to begin with the rain. Where, prior to his departure, his interest had only been in action, by the time Ven began his incantation the entire set of circumstances had gained a very personal veneer. He wanted, more than anything, to end the irritating rain which had no business falling where it did and in such vast quantities, upsetting the balance of water tables and aerial waterlines in many different places. He used powerful words, repeating the secret formulas he learned at the feet of the dead druid Itus, admonishing the elements for their unruly conduct, seeking to restore matters to how they were before the unnatural rain. At the height of his incantation, he felt a degree of resistance to his will, which caused his eyes to widen and his body to straighten up. With a hoarse shout, he extended a fist into the sky, scattering dull-colored powders as he opened his hand a finger at a time, and broke the unnatural pluvial pattern. By the time he lowered his arm, the rain had ceased falling.

  Satisfied, Ven began to negotiate the muddy earth in the direction of the village, se
eking the true cause of the anomalous precipitation.

  TENET WOKE UP struggling for breath, clutching at her midsection as she stumbled out of her bed, spitting blood into the battered pan near the door. For long moments her mind reeled, permitting no complex thoughts, and she used that time to slowly bring the pain under control, slowing her breathing until she was calm. When she could stand, Tenet wiped the unbidden tears from her face and stepped out of her humble quarters on the outskirts of the village, to deal with whatever it was that so suddenly and so forcefully assaulted her.

  Not what who who did this

  She had planned to spend the day investigating the well in the center of town, the well that had registered as an emptiness to her Craft, when she brought rain the day before.

  The well can wait

  Tenet squinted her eyes against the brightness outside. She saw Alister, her mule, blinking mutely in the harsh sunlight that penetrated the roof of his makeshift enclosure. Around her trusty companion, puddles of water began their process of returning to the clouds. Tenet, almost choking in the thick air, murmured comfort in Alister’s ears and squelched through the mud, seeking higher ground.

  Tenet’s mind was still awhirl with questions that had no answers when she finally made her way up a muddy ledge that gave her a better view of the village. From her vantage point, she could see the abandoned cottage that the woman Maery had told her she could live in. She could see the small cluster of houses and the defiant well the well can wait but no sign of whoever negated her Craftwork.

  She looked up the higher portions of the mountainside and closed her eyes, sparking the Traitor’s Way within her. Immediately she saw that the patterns of the surroundings had been restored to the rule of drought. Warm moisture covered her skin, as she focused on the lines between elements, seeking where her Craft could take hold. Tenet shuddered as she felt the definite influence of another person on the earth and sky around the village, a presence she could not immediately identify. Extending her vision, she stroked the connecting lines, setting up a timorous movement among them, and followed the motions to what disrupted the state of rain she had created.

  Tenet permitted herself the tiniest of smiles. I don’t need to see you

  Bolt, she thought coldly, holding the memory of the thunderstorm that had terrified her as a child, invoking her ability to influence vagaries and happenstances, thwarting the governing rule of electrical generation, lashing out along the connective lines to her unseen enemy.

  VEN WAS HALFWAY down the slope, picking his way carefully through the slippery rocks, when the sky directly above him darkened in the span of a heartbeat. He barely had time to utter an arcane syllable, before a jagged bolt of lightning struck where he stood, triggering a mudslide that carried his unmoving form a hundred strides down the hill, before stopping.

  Moments after the mud settled, Ven fought the vertigo that bedeviled him and slowly restored his outer skin to flesh, thanking his old master for the druidic secret word of transforming flesh to stone. He changed the skin around his face last, holding his breath until he was able to clear an airway, finally pulling himself up on unsteady feet.

  “Lightning, is it?” he muttered, blindly angling his head to the dark sky. Around him, in the air that smelled faintly of metal, fat water droplets started to fall sporadically.

  When his eyes turned back to flesh, Ven quickly inscribed a sigil in the air, his fingertip leaving a light viridian trail. When the circle was complete, he gestured down toward the ground. The green circle settled rapidly on the wet earth, gleaming once, before its color subsided. He took a solitary seed from the pouch around his belt and tossed it in the middle of the circumscribed area. Limned in green light, a single sapling forced its way out of the mud, rapidly extending thin arms several lengths into the sky. Ven regarded his handiwork, permitting himself a moment’s satisfaction: the dweomered tree would attract the next few bolts of lightning, should any come again.

  Convinced that there was a malign intelligence at work against him, Ven thrust his hands into the mud and uttered a new incantation. When he stood to his full height, he held out his hands, filled with wet earth and stone, his voice intoning words in the language passed on to him by his old teacher. The druid then brought his hands together, as if in prayer, as his last words faded in the strengthening rain.

  “Show me,” he said.

  When he unclasped his hands, he knew where to find his opponent—a miniature replica of the surrounding hills nestled in the cusp of his hands, threatened destruction by the downpour. One small rock, irregularly-shaped, represented the person that struck him down.

  “Dao,” he whispered, flinging the contents of his hands in the direction of his foe. Where the largest clump of earth and stone fell, the ground trembled. The head of a creature appeared first, as if submerged in the mud, its mouth open in a soundless roar.

  “Rise,” Ven spoke against the growing wind.

  The elemental pulled itself out of the earth and towered over the black-haired druid, ignoring the pelting rain. Its broad mass was flecked with dull-colored stones made darker by the water; its empty eye sockets gleamed green, the professed color of the druid Ven.

  “Destroy,” Ven commanded, his voice as loud as thunder.

  The creature turned away to obey.

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE lightning flash she had triggered, Tenet made her way as quickly as she safely could to where it struck, needing to see if whoever was protecting the rule of drought was truly felled. She did not want to underestimate her foe, reasoning that no enemy should be considered defeated unless she saw the evidence with her own eyes.

  As she alternately walked and clambered upward, she unwillingly recalled her last duel, the very duel that resulted in her exile. She had considered Erin a friend and fought only to retain her honor, misjudging the younger Craftsman, who fought for love. When Erin collapsed under her assault, Tenet turned away and was caught unaware by her foe’s desperate attack. It was Tenet who fell that day, Tenet who lost her titles and honors, Tenet who had to leave the Guild, Tenet who was marked as exile, Tenet who had to give up Dion. She was still haunted by Erin’s face, her bloodied mouth twisted in triumph.

  “Enough,” Tenet chastised herself, irritated by the useless memories that offered no comfort. What’s done is

  Her thoughts were interrupted by an explosion of rock and mud, as the immense elemental landed in front of her. Before she could move, the creature of earth and stone struck her with its massive fists, its size incongruous with the speed of its attack.

  Tenet landed painfully on the ground, air escaping her lungs in a terrible exhalation laced with spittle and blood. Sensing another blow coming, she shifted to a side, ignoring the lancing twinge in her right leg. The elemental’s fists thundered down where she had been, sending rocks and mud flying in all directions.

  Elemental her thoughts raced. Think fast think think

  Fury and fear ignited Tenet’s Craft where she crouched, showing her briefly the structure of the creature. In that moment of white heat, Tenet stretched out her hands and twisted at the first available weakness, realizing that she did not have the time to seek out a perfect flaw.

  The torso of the elemental whirled around while its feet remained rooted where it stood. Once, twice, thrice, it spun, flinging bursts of mud and stone in an erratic circle, the rocks that composed its hips grating against its upper body.

  Tenet twisted the pattern again. Fall fall fall

  Abruptly, the elemental was sundered, its torso spinning several more times in the air before shattering into innumerable fragments a short distance away. The creature’s legs ceased to move, the force that animated it dissipating in the rain.

  Tenet stood up and gasped once as she tested her weight on her injured leg. Satisfied that she could walk, she set out to finish her cunning opponent once and for all.

  VEN WAS IN the middle of an incantation meant to subdue the unnaturally returning rain when he felt a backlash
of mystic energy strike him. He fell with a startled cry and grimly exerted mastery over the internal flames that would have consumed a lesser druid. He weighed two options as he lay transfixed for a moment on the muddy ground—begin anew his interrupted incantation, or deal with whoever sundered the elemental he had summoned. His scowl turned into a feral smile as he stood up, thin red smoke rising from countless pores of exposed body.

  “So, you’re strong,” he spoke softly. “Good.”

  From his damp pouch he took a brown weathered nut, its surface pitted but intact. He ignored the pain that swept over his body one last time, as the last of the mystic backlash evaporated, and focused his thoughts. A breath expelled later, the nut began to tremble in his hand, drawing on the power of the earth.

  “Temblor,” he whispered, hurling the quaking seed in the direction of his enemy.

  Where it landed, the earth heaved and convulsed, accompanied by the deafening sound of the world bring torn asunder.

  TENET WAS CONSIDERING what to do next when she saw something small hurtling in her direction and realized that she could perish in the next instant. With no time to spare, she turned her Craft inward, betraying her own body’s natural parameters and nature, forcing what composed her to temporarily realign and adapt to the threat. It was a dangerous gambit, for very few who followed the Traitor’s Way and attempted the extreme act were able to restore their own natures.

  Tenet believed that she was one of the few who could.

  She fell on the ground changed and rode the devastating earthquake.

  THE GROUND WAS still shuddering, when Ven reached the summit of the hill and looked for his enemy. Half-blinded by mud and tiny tendrils of pain, he saw a human body crumpled on the vertiginous ground.

  When the quake finally stilled, Ven rushed toward the collapsed form as quickly as he dared, slipping only once on the uneven and wet ground, his senses alert for his opponent. As he neared, he realized that the form was that of a small woman.