Life Giver

by Lisa Lowell

  “I dreamed of her,” Vamilion replied with a strange look crossing his face, a mix of love, regret, and memory. “I never saw her face in the dream. Instead, I was dreaming about statues, and all of them began speaking to me until I was almost driven mad by it.”

  “It was easier for me,” commented Honiea, “because I was only supposed to find you, not fall in love with you. One of my patients, with her dying breath, told me that I needed to find someone named Yeolani. I was not as driven to find you as you will be driven to find your Lady. She’s your match, and you are correct; she will balance you.”

  “Well, I don’t have any dreams whispering in my ear. Am I supposed to learn her name and then go Seek her? What if I find her before I learn her name? Can that happen?”

  “You won’t feel the compulsion,” Vamilion commented dryly.

  “Compulsion? Are we going to be whipped into doing this?”

  “The attraction will be intense and immediate when you meet her, and I presume you will know her name long before that happens. You won’t want anyone else by then. Everything about her will fascinate you. It will be hard to concentrate on the others that need you…like Nevai perhaps? Let’s hope that the boy is part of the spell to go with her. Either that, or he will need to grow up and be on his own before you can find her.”

  “I hope not,” Yeolani muttered, half joking as he teased Vamilion. “How long since Gil was a twenty-two-year-old man?”

  Honiea blushed. “Why don’t you sleep on it. I’m sure if your lady is alive, you won’t have to wait for her. You’ll find her sooner if you are actively Seeking. You need to get out of this cave and travel.”

  Yeolani nodded his agreement. “I’ve made arrangements for Nevai, and I’m just about to move Marit too so I can go Seeking, which is why I wanted to speed up the process. I’ll not come back here,” he vowed and then cursed under his breath to prevent his words from making him a King. “I just hope I don’t get sidetracked again.”

  13

  Well of Darkness

  Yeolani looked out over the brilliant whiteness of the plains covered with snow. It blended with the white sky that threatened another blizzard to come, blurring the point where earth and sky met. Yeolani felt dizzy trying to focus on the nonexistent horizon. So, instead, he stood in the knee-deep drifts, waiting for inspiration. He had made it here by means of the gut-wrenching method Vamilion had taught him and swore he would never do it again. Traveling by pulling himself to the mind he wanted to reach was easier on the dizziness, but still exhausting. He had tried that method when he reached for Rashel to bring Marit and her babies to the farm.

  That reunion, after only a day away, had been difficult too, but for a different reason. Yeolani had not wanted to leave, but it was necessary. After learning some of the consequences of falling in love with someone who was not a Wise One, he felt torn. The farm was running well, no one suspected Rashel was alone, and everything he cared for was there: Marit, Nevai and now Rashel. He had to admit it and didn’t want to. He loved her but, hopefully, in the same way he cared for the dog and baby. He didn’t dare linger to let it become a stronger bond.

  His next plan was to seek out the underground aquifer from his dream. He had been given that imagery for a reason. He must find that spot, and, hopefully, there he would locate one of his Talismans, one that would allow travel without exhaustion or dizziness to the point of complete incapacitation. He had been standing here in the snowfield for an hour waiting for the effects of his magical shift to wear off. Now, he felt he had turned to ice, despite all the furs, gloves, and other warm clothing he conjured for himself before he departed Rashel’s. The wind here tore through him like a knife. If he remained much longer undecided about moving again, they might find him next spring still standing in the open like a rune stone warning travelers against coming this way.

  Think, how are you going to go down into the ground to see if something’s there? In the dream, he had simply sunk through the earth, but the soil was so frozen it might as well be stone. Could he dig through stone? No shovel he could conjure would penetrate the earth at this late stage of winter. Maybe in the spring. He could winter over with Rashel and then come back. No, you will not let yourself get away with that, he told himself firmly. Now, how did people dig wells out here on the prairie?

  Then something finally penetrated his foggy mind; they didn’t. The prairie was an untapped resource, rich soil for farming, but anywhere far from a river, no one could live and farm because of the lack of water. And he, the King of the Plains, had not opened it up. That was the purpose of the dream, he realized, to show him that there was an aquifer here. If he would tap into it, people could spread out, away from the rivers, and they could farm here rather than leaving this land open for buffalo and little else.

  This thought excited him, though Yeolani had to abandon the hope that inside that dream he would find one of his Talismans to help him travel. Drilling a well would be an act of service, and that was just as good, he firmly told himself. Quit being so selfish and find a way to dig a hole before you freeze to death. He slowly turned in a circle in the snow, stretching his magical senses out in every direction. He could feel the town of Meeting to his northwest about two hundred miles, and to the southeast, he sensed the echoes of a cluster of towns on the Don River. He judged he was about halfway between the two, out in trackless open, without even a tree for shelter. If anyone built here, he or she would need more than water, but first things first.

  Again, how do you dig who-knew-how-deep to the aquifer that must be down there? He wasn’t even sure he was above the crystal cavern, but if he could sense Meeting two hundred miles away, surely he could find that cavern two hundred feet below him. Yeolani directed his mind down into the soil and felt his way past the hibernating and dormant life and into the depth where the pressure above had hardened the soil, not the cold. Strangely, he felt how the earth there seemed warmer, almost neutral. Then he reached bedrock with his mind and sought for fissures in the shale, the cracks where water would penetrate and finally drip from a ceiling made of crystals into an aquifer filling up so long it formed a sea. His mind reached the water and tested that, finding the depth and the chill went almost farther than possible to fathom. Drop a well bucket here, and you could water a great city.

  Without much of a plan, Yeolani knelt and drew a large circle around himself in the snow. This was where he would pull his conjuring from, and he would scoop out the earth and craft cement walls for the well from the material he gleaned, pressing and securing it into the sides to shore them up. He mentally chowed through to the frigid soil, heedless of the animal life he disturbed. Stones he encountered became the wall above ground. His body went down with his excavation so he would gain a true perspective of the depth he created. Magic did not measure things well for him. When he reached shale, he looked back up through the tunnel he had built and saw only a small white circle of sky and a smooth tunnel of secure cement, but still no water. It appeared to easily be two hundred feet of soil he had carved through.

  Now he would have to break through stone. Oddly enough this was easier. He wasn’t distracted by the little minds of hibernating burrowers or the seeds of dead grasses. He only found the stone fascinating for its riches of gems and minerals that would eventually be ground up into more soil.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t pay as much attention, and so when he finally broke through into the cavern, he fell through with a startled cry and splashed into the bitterly cold underground lake. He used Vamilion’s reaching method to whisk himself to the shore of the aquifer, but the chill almost killed him more than the disorientation. He lay under the crystal roof and, with teeth chattering, used magic to warm himself and dry his furs, but he felt he would never be warm again.

  “That was stupid.”

  His words echoed eerily. He could see nothing of the cavern. The fairies, preferring their forest, had not followed him out onto the plains. All the light, what little there was, came from t
he pinprick his well created far out from the shore. It cast a single shaft of light down onto the lake’s surface. The chill down here, out of the wind, might be less than above, but the stark black with a single ray of light made the cold all the bleaker. In his imagination, he saw a single bucket plunge down the hole on a line and realized this wouldn’t work. It would only float and bob uselessly on the surface. How would a bucket make that long trek? Whatever came down must be tremendously heavy to pull down a simple bucket from that depth. It was something he’d have to think about.

  Rather than freeze to death on the surface, Yeolani decided to camp here underground and conjured a fire in the eerie cavern. Next, he dumped out his belongings and found the wet and miserable Life Giver along with his soaked food. These he dried magically, but his map, the one he’d carefully crafted since before he had touched his Heart Stone, was ruined and all his drawings were blurred. He added the map as fuel for his fire.

  The flames flickered and flashed against the brown crystals of the ceiling, and he found himself mesmerized by the play of light. Such a scene, with its magical movement, should be a sight anyone in the world above would pay to see just once. Here he sat in a makeshift camp, most likely the only human to witness such a display. And what did he do with that time? He thought about how to weigh down a bucket.

  With no solutions, he went to sleep before the light from his well shaft had faded, indicating night had fallen above. In his conjured tent, meant for the comfort rather than fear of the weather that wouldn’t touch him here on the rocky shoreline, he went to sleep, hoping to dream solutions to his well problem. Instead, he found his dreams invaded by the fairies.

  Fairies again, hounding him in the cavern. Yeolani had not seen a single one of the creatures outside of the forest except in his dreams. Was this still punishment for his original curse? He couldn’t fathom why they constantly invaded his sleep, but he listened to their high fluting voices, forced to concentrate or he wouldn’t comprehend what they had to say.

  “Her name is Elin,” they whispered. “Elin, lin, lin,” it echoed in the hollows.

  “Who is Elin?” Yeolani asked, unsure he understood anything they were saying.

  “The Green Lady, the Lady of the Forest, the Queen of Growing Things, your lady, the one you’ve prayed for,” they piped, overlaying each other’s words.

  Had he prayed for her? “So, it isn’t Rashel?” he replied, suddenly pained and felt like that bucket hanging from the snowy world had dropped like lead onto his gut, and he awoke in the pervasive dark, alone and grieving.

  So, instead of a Talisman, he had found his lady’s name, but now he did not want it. He had wanted to fall in love with Rashel. Nevai…could he leave the baby with a woman who would not be his mother? How was he going to visit the farm and help this woman while looking for another one, one that would supplant the other? Did he dare return to Rashel at all with these feelings? He squirmed with guilt and sudden frustration. Limits had been part of becoming a Wise One, and on the surface, he had accepted that, but now, more than ever, he wanted to rebel.

  In his despair, Yeolani wanted to reach out to Nevai as a source of comfort, but he was too young to have insight, and Marit was even less so with her alien mind. Yeolani didn’t dare reveal his inner turmoil to the likes of Honiea or Vamilion. They would chastise him and add new layers to his emotional quandary. How could he have fallen in love with Rashel in just a few days and not have that love justified by magic? He felt so sorely tempted to listen in and just hear her thoughts, not daring to actually speak with her. Could he just tap in to watch her as she did her simple chores? He would not invade her mind but, instead, find some solace there?

  Without consciously meaning to, Yeolani’s mind drifted away from him. Perhaps he fell asleep again, fairy hounded, and cast his mind into the winter night. Rashel was giving Nevai a bath, washing him in one of her milk tubs, humming a gentle tune to him and wrapping the baby in a warm towel. Yeolani surveyed the cabin like he was a ghost, seeing Rashel’s movements as she fed the baby and put him to bed. She dumped out the bathwater and then dimmed the lanterns. Each time she walked in front of the hearth, her bright eyes caught sight of the crystal on the mantle. Yeolani’s heart leaped. She was thinking of him.

  He watched her looking at the bed he had left empty. With a fascinated heart, he observed her prepare for bed. He couldn’t resist watching her pull her braid free, brushing the luxurious wood toned strands and letting them fall loosely around her shoulders. It fell like waves of grain across her limbs and down her back, and he wanted to reach out and touch. She pulled it to the side, exposing her pale neck as she reached back to loosen the ties of her bodice, and Yeolani bit his lip. What am I doing to myself watching this, he asked himself?

  With a tremendous wrench, he pulled his mind back into the cavern and sat up again in the dark. Numb, he walked blindly to the water’s edge, and when he felt its chill on his bare feet, he stopped and dipped his hands in, splashing the frigid water over his face. That shock knocked him back to his senses but left him no answers. Yeolani wished desperately to forget Rashel’s name, his attraction to her, and even that he had ever known the woman.

  In his confusion Yeolani finally realized the only safe place was in forgetting. Witlessly he heaved himself to the surface in one of those ill-advised shifts. Then, retching and ill, he transformed himself into a tornado that sucked the snow from the prairie and raced across the night in boundless fury. He didn’t care if he lost track of his well in the middle of nowhere. He cut across the Land like a knife, the knife through his heart, and all he knew was he ran south through the plains, away from his memory and every touch of civilization.

  Two days later, the blizzard inside Yeolani left him tattered and on the verge of insanity at the edge of the Land, looking out at the Open Ocean with only a few steps of sand before he washed away. He stood at the base of a cliff, and he turned back to see the mountains he had come blustering through, covered in the snow from his passage. His eyes barely focused. He wavered, wondering if he could keep going out to sea, but that decision was made for him. Yeolani collapsed into darkness in the icy surf and didn’t remember landing.

  14

  Compass

  Sometime far later, the warmth of half-a-dozen blankets and a breaking fever woke him to firelight and soft voices. He looked blearily at the humble cottage of a family that he didn’t recognize. They were gathered around the table enjoying their evening meal when the littlest girl, swinging her legs on the bench, spied him as she hopped up and down.

  “Da, he’s awake,” the blonde toddler announced, and the entire family turned to stare at the stranger who abruptly wanted to sink back through the ground, back into a well of darkness. He couldn’t even move, let alone use magic. Could he use magic? He couldn’t remember.

  The mother of the household rose to set water for tea while the father came to the side of the cot, escorted by a trail of six children, the youngest barely able to walk. “Well, sir, welcome back to the world. Can you understand me?” the father asked as if he wondered if his foundling could speak the language.

  “I think so,” he whispered. He had never felt so wretched, except he couldn’t remember anything really. Where was he? He put his hand to his eyes, trying to recall where he had been when he had fallen so sick. He remembered darkness and a single shaft of light. Was there a bucket swinging in the light? Where had he been? He recalled a blizzard and being bitterly cold, but that could have been the sickness. Where had he been before that?

  The mistress of the house came to him with a cup of tea, and the stranger struggled to sit up to drink it, trembling with weakness, but it moistened his throat and drew a longing for more from his queasy stomach.

  “How long?” he gasped after he had sipped a few more swallows and then fell back onto the bed, unable to hold himself up any longer.

  “Three days,” the father supplied. “Elin found you on the beach like you had been washed up wearing nothin
g but your trousers, but the storm was blowing out to sea. Very strange. You might have been there a few hours before she found you. What’s your name, sir?”

  The young invalid struggled to think. He couldn’t remember anything except that darkness and the one ray of light with a bucket swinging in it. “I’m not sure,” he had to admit. “I’ve been…been cold.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it, walking in a blizzard without a shirt, cloak, or even boots. You were lucky not to freeze to death, though how that could be, we cannot fathom. Well,” the father shrugged that off, “I’m Everic and these are my children, my wife Emmi. You’re welcome here, and I’m sure you will recover now. You have…have many people who must be looking for you.”

  “Many people?” the stranger asked, curiosity the only emotion he felt able to dredge up.

  “You’ve spoken in your fever,” Emmi came to his side with a more substantial soup. “You were asking for help: Honiea, Rashel, Nevai, Marit, even our little Elin. Do any of those names mean anything to you?”

  He shook his head and then realized that movement only scrambled his brains, and he firmly reminded himself not to do any more shaking. Instead, he applied himself to the broth that Emmi served him.

  “At first, we thought you were speaking another language, but then we heard you say Vamilion. That’s a name we know,” Everic supplied.

  “Who…who or what is Vamilion?” managed the younger man.

  “You’re just south of the Vamilion Mountains. Perhaps you crossed them?”

  He looked across the room to the winter-filled window where night skies were lined with gray clouds. Vague memories of white-capped mountains teased at his thoughts, but from far below him, as if he were a bird passing over them, and it made him dizzy. He firmly refused to let himself think about these things and instead sipped at the soup, feeling much better with something in his stomach. He would learn to think again when it was daylight and he had rested. Perhaps then he would be able to bring forth some worthwhile memories.