Life Giver

by Lisa Lowell

  “The only way to remove a demon from a person is to kill him. Then the demon will leave voluntarily, even if you cannot kill it,” Vamilion explained. “There has to be a better way, but we’ve not found one.”

  “Unfortunately, the people are all dead now, and I’ve still got nineteen demons getting very dizzy but not any better controlled. Will it work to seal them under this tree?”

  “One way to find out.” Vamilion put words into action. He walked over between two of the roots of the massive tree, looked over to Rashel who nodded that it was an appropriate place, and then hauled back his pick. “I don’t know if this will work on something not made of stone.”

  Vamilion sank the pick into the thick earth, and the topsoil, as well as the rock deep below, split with a clang. The King of the Mountains held it there, concentrating on the depth of the rift he had caused, and only when he was satisfied did he remove his pick. “It goes all the way down to a cavern there. Is that where you want to put them?”

  Yeolani did not hesitate. He spun up into a tight funnel and squeezed the base of it over the hole Vamilion had caused. He pressed the demon essences through the gap and then phased finally back into his human form kneeling over the fissure. Then, with a final thought, he brought the prairie back together, sealing the demons in.

  “Now, how will we know if that worked?” Honiea asked.

  Rashel looked over at Yeolani, and they wordlessly agreed to stay. “We will watch over the tree and see what it can tell me. I need practice in some things, and this should help me learn how to control my magic.”

  “It seems a little too easy to me,” Honiea murmured, but she agreed and went to Vamilion’s side. “Very well. Call us if you need help again…and Rashel, welcome to the Order of the Wise Ones.” Then she and Vamilion disappeared in the shimmering of the setting sun.

  “She’s right, you know,” Yeolani sighed. “Getting rid of demons cannot be that easy.” He sat down on the ground between the spreading roots and laid back in exhaustion.

  Rashel joined him gladly. “I’m tired too, but where is our baby?”

  22

  Gathering Tree

  “We should leave here,” Yeolani said, knowing his Wise One instinct prompted it.

  But he couldn’t persuade himself to actually do it. Their little family, without a home in Edgewood to return to, remained underneath Halfway Tree. They justified lingering by saying they must keep an eye on demons that lurked beneath it. Perhaps they hesitated because of the baby. Nevai had not suffered from his extended stay in the forest except he was very dirty and hungry. The fairies had watched over him but could not feed or change him. Yet Nevai’s care also did not mean they should move on. Instead, Yeolani began training Rashel instead of launching her out into Seeking without a drop of guidance. He needed something to do to ease the guilt of staying there under that wonderful tree.

  Really, they remained to mourn the things they had lost: Marit, their home, the entire peace of a village free from the invasions and stress that magic brought into their lives.

  “I never thought I’d cry over not having my cows, but now, who knows what’s become of them?” Rashel commented. “I thought I’d be glad to have them gone.”

  “You’re missing the routine and predictability, not the work,” Yeolani added. It had been why he had stuck with fishing so long, and afterward, he realized how limiting it had been, relying on the mundane known instead of launching into the unpredictable open world.

  Rashel looked at the tree above her head and agreed. “This is nice too. But if we’re going to use this tree for something other than shade, it’s going to need some additions.” She put words into actions and conjured a giant spigot. She had crafted it of bronze and big enough around for her entire head.

  “What in blue blazes is that for?” Yeolani asked.

  “For water. If this tree is a siphon for the water below, then we need to bring it up and make it useful.” With that, Rashel turned toward the trunk of Halfway Tree and drove the spigot into the side with a wave of magic. Then she willed the tree to bring up the water in a fresh stream through her opening. They were rewarded with a flood splashing down the bark and out onto the plains.

  “Too much for us to drink, but it tastes wonderful,” Yeolani announced as he sampled it. Then he conjured a cap for the spigot and sighed. “Maybe we should bring the remaining people of Edgewood here. They cannot have any fond memories of the forest burning them out of their homes. We’ll have to check.”

  Although he had said the words, neither of them was inclined to do that. They simply wanted to remain in their seclusion.

  At night, sleeping in a conjured tent, Rashel and Yeolani both found their dreams disturbing but could not remember them the next morning. “Is that normal? Not being able to recall a dream that seems to haunt you?” she asked.

  “For a Wise One, your dreams are guides to what you should do. I cursed the fairies when they blocked my view of the prairie that first night. The dream of your name drove me out of the cavern. I even dreamed that I would be given Nevai. You dreamed of demon dust. Every time I’ve dreamt of something important, I had no problem recalling it after I awoke. Not this time though. I know I’m supposed to remember this dream, but I cannot.”

  “It is the same for me,” admitted Rashel. “Could it be the demons underground are interfering with our receiving an important dream?”

  Yeolani considered her theory. “More likely it is the tree interrupting our dreams. You made it to squash demon dust. It’s more than likely squashing our dreams for good measure.”

  “How can we know what we are to dream?” Rashel mused aloud. “Perhaps one of us can sleep and the other listen to the dream while awake. If I don’t shield at night as you’ve taught me, perhaps you can listen to my dreams and learn if they’re important.”

  “I see you want me to be the one to stay awake,” Yeolani grumbled as a tease. “Just when we got Nevai to sleep through the night too.”

  “Well then, I’ll stay awake and use the time to practice breaking through your shield that you say you can hold even in your sleep,” she challenged.

  “Let’s flip a coin.”

  “Magic allowed?”

  “Of course. How else will you get stronger?” Yeolani conjured a coin with a fairy etched on one side. This game he had developed to help practice control. Originally, she was tasked to hold the coin in mid-toss, freezing it with the face she called up. This time, she used her magic to rip it from Yeolani’s mental grasp and launched it into the labyrinth of tree branches and leaves above their heads. He, in turn, slipped into the sky with his mind, expecting it to come up higher where he could wrest it from her magical grasp. Rashel did not let it escape the tree. Instead, she disguised the coin as one of the many leaves and let it rest, sealed underneath the shade.

  Well, if he could no longer break through her shields, Yeolani would attempt another tactic. He called up a tornado and began savaging the giant tree. The roar of the cyclone disturbed the baby who had been content to sit in the shade on a blanket, playing with the flowers his mother kept conjuring for him.

  “Enough,” Rashel shouted over the wind. “The coin landed on heads. You get to sleep first, and I’ll haunt you.”

  But Yeolani did not respond to her surrender. Instead, he remained with his mind high up in the thunderclouds he had summoned. Up there, far above the muting influence of the tree, and perhaps the demons, he felt something. Down on the ground, he turned toward the west. He knew now his dream had been about the west.

  The storm clouds faded like dew off the grasses, and Yeolani brought out his forgotten compass. “I think the dreams are about where we should go next. I’ve been an idiot, hiding away here. Just having a dream should have been warning enough to do this.”

  “What is it showing you?” Rashel asked, scooping up the baby and joining Yeolani as he walked out into the sun, away from the tree.

  “Due west…is something, but I don’t kn
ow how far. I think we need to dream tonight, away from the tree. It’s blocking everything magical.”

  Rashel looked at her husband with a serious eye. Yeolani so rarely grew this pensive. It must be something dangerous he sensed. “You sleep first, and I will watch over your dreams.”

  Yeolani saw noxious green and bloody smoke. Overhead, the stars hid behind billowing ash. He heard shouts and the splash of water on fires obscured by the arcane fumes. A fire someplace burned and frightened the people who fought against it. He could not make out the place, but he knew how to fight the magical flames if only he could reach it.

  “Then I will take you there, my love,” Rashel’s mind voice twined into his dreams. “When you wake, we will go.”

  Yeolani bolted awake, gasping. It was East and West, burning again, he just knew it. Nowhere west of the Halfway Tree were there enough people to be fighting that fire. “Those demons returned,” Yeolani explained as he sat up and looked at Rashel who had watched over his rest. “They found me at Edgewood as well as the villagers at West. They’re taking their revenge there since they could not get at me here.”

  “We need to go then,” Rashel agreed.

  “We need to plan first,” he stalled. “They know me, but they do not know you. Let’s go do some reconnaissance instead. Those fires…no water can put them out. It requires salt.”

  “Salt? I can conjure salt, but what should we do with Nevai?” She looked over at the baby who slept soundly at last in his cradle. “Do we want to take him with us?”

  Yeolani put his chin on his knees as he thought. “I guess we must. We really need to find someone to tend him when we are off fighting demons.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now, we have another bridge to save. Let’s go.”

  Yeolani looked at her with wonder. “You aren’t afraid? I’ve seen these demons before, and I failed to save much. I don’t want to fail again.”

  Rashel shrugged. “I want to see if I can travel there and take you and Nevai with me. I know of a tree on the east side of the river, about half-a-league north of the towns. I will use it to draw us there. I’ve not tried to move more than myself that way. I need to learn if I can do this, that’s all.”

  “And your dreams? Don’t you get to sleep as well?”

  “Not when people are dying and a fire is spreading.”

  Yeolani stood up and began gathering the blankets that they had conjured for their bed. “It might not be happening yet. We’ve had premonitions of where magic will be needed long before it actually has come. We’ve both been having dreams for several days. You’re right, we should go.”

  Rashel stood up in the spring grasses of the prairie under the starlight, looking toward the west where they were headed. She felt the pressure of time to try her traveling gift. She sensed the place she wanted hundreds of leagues away. She had come to sense the plants all around her. That sometimes overwhelmed her a bit. If she learned to listen, she could control it, especially to the larger things like trees. She heard their thoughts and collected news from them. Smoke and fear predominated this particular tree on the Lara River. It whispered to her, and she knew she was in the right area. Then Rashel pulled herself toward it with a wish that she could be with that tree.

  Her gift worked perfectly. Rashel stood next to an ancient oak that grew along the wide river just north of the towns that glowed in the just lowering sun. Thankfully, this means of travel did not leave her ill, as it had Yeolani when he had tried magical leaps.

  “No problem,” she called to him where he waited. “Now, let me pull you toward me, so you and Nevai don’t get sick.”

  Yeolani sent her a wordless thought of enthusiasm and encouragement in response as Rashel reached toward the Halfway Tree. She found him there carrying their packs and the baby. She encircled them in her mind and gently lifted them toward the tree on the river.

  “I’m so jealous of that,” Yeolani admitted as he arrived under the Gathering Tree. He put the baby down under this new shelter and dropped their bags. “Now, what can we see of the fires?” He had guided Rashel in observing a situation from a distance using magic. He used the clouds, but now, with the sun setting, he had little light except that emanating from the strange blue, green, and purple fires.

  “I cannot see much through the smoke,” he admitted. “Can you do better with your method?”

  Rashel used the senses of the trees and other plants in the area to observe downriver. She now saw why Yeolani had felt such a premonition that urged them to arrive sooner. The bridge which he had conjured to ease the tensions between East and West now stood aflame, though it hadn’t fallen yet. Beyond it, a tall black ship floated on the river. She could only spot two masts spearing the sky above the smoke and chaos.

  “Invaders on ships are at the town. I suppose they’re who set the bridge on fire, but I can see none of them. I need a tree on the other side of the river, beyond the smoke that…I see it. Three ships, probably with dozens of men visible on board. I sense sorcerers, or something magical. Maybe the men aren’t magical, but….”

  “Demons,” Yeolani speculated. “Roach promised to return. The crewmen will be innocent sailors most likely, powerless to its persuasions. Can you see what’s going on in West?”

  “No, the smoke is blowing right over it and obscuring everything,” she muttered, eyes closed against the burning fumes. “Can you do something about that?”

  Yeolani didn’t reply but instead felt the prairie wind and redirected it shimmering off the plains and encouraging it to blow west, off the ocean. Meanwhile, Rashel worked at seeing through the clearing air.

  “West is burning a bit. They’re trying to put out the fires while arming themselves against the men. It’s mostly on the bridge. The invaders haven’t landed yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  “I’ll deal with the fires,” Yeolani replied, looking up at the cloudless skies. “It’s about to get wet…saltwater wet.”

  Rashel felt a little shiver of anticipation, and she conjured a little tent over Nevai’s cradle and tucked it right under the tree.

  Yeolani meanwhile pulled more wind off the sea to the west, escalating the building of thunderclouds all across the horizon. It would be obvious to the demons on the ships that this was a magical storm, but it couldn’t be helped. The huge splattering rain came down as the last of the sunlight fell over the horizon.

  “It makes me nervous to leave our son here, but it’s the height of foolishness to take him with us into a magical battle,” Rashel commented. For good measure, she put the boy into an enchanted nap and then wove an invisibility shield over the tent. “There, you’re as safe as can be under this Gathering Tree.”

  “I’ll check on the boats to find out why the demon-men haven’t attacked yet. I’ll go speak with Sethan too. He’ll probably club me upside the head for not finishing Roach off the first time, but it will be good to speak with him again. Will you look around the bridge and in East? If someone sees you there, they won’t know you’re a magician. Just keep your shields up.”

  “Very well,” Rashel agreed, “but let’s meet here at the Gathering Tree at dawn.”

  Yeolani made himself invisible and walked through his conjured rain to Sethan’s inn, hoping the downpour would help the burning and obscure his bootprints. He noted how the cobbles of West had improved over the muddy gullies earlier last year. The warehouses that hadn’t caught fire had people rallying to keep it that way with buckets manned mostly by the female population of the town. Meanwhile, the men barricaded the river’s edge, carrying makeshift weapons to stockpile against it. Yeolani opened his mind to find Sethan had left his inn and was down, hefting a pitchfork, on the wharf.

  “Sethan,” Yeolani made himself visible and got the innkeeper’s attention.

  Sethan’s grimace changed to a smile that disappeared into his beard as he caught sight of the Wise One. “I knew this storm could be anything but natural. You came back.”

&nbs
p; “I promised these outlanders that I would return any time they decided to make themselves obnoxious again,” Yeolani commented as he surveyed the gathering of troops, most armed with farm implements and only a few swords. That did not bode well. Everyone here was a farmer, craftsman, or trader. Few were trained soldiers and probably most of those were the men that had switched allegiances during the battle last year.

  “Obnoxious?” Sethan snorted. “Not the word I’d use. They’re more direct this time, no mince-footing and making like they’re all benevolent and going to fix things. They set the bridge afire three days ago before we even saw the ships coming up the river. I must say your bridge can take a lot.”

  “I aim to please,” replied Yeolani. “I wonder why none of them have come ashore yet. I’ll look into that. What defenses can magic provide? Weapons, shields, fireproofing?”

  “A leader would help,” Sethan looked over at his friend. “I know you’ll not stay in one spot long enough to give any directions, but someone with some experience?”

  “Maybe,” Yeolani sighed, “but I’ve got as much experience as a babe in arms. How long till they come ashore?”

  Sethan shrugged and surveyed the townsfolk manning high positions or crouched behind the barricade. “That’s just it. We don’t know. They’ve been here two days and haven’t set foot on our soil. It’s like they’re waiting for something. Your storm sure riled them up though. There was a great deal of shouting over in the ruins on the East side. They knew you were coming to spoil whatever they’re doing over there.”

  “I’ll try to ruin it, but not until dawn. This rain doesn’t seem to put out fires. It needs pure salt, but my rain might beat down some. I’ll get back to you.”

  And Yeolani disappeared, using the rain to obscure how he waded into the river and swam invisibly to the lead ship. He barely made a ripple as he parted the water and then climbed aboard. The deck was eerily quiet as he held his magic tightly tamped down in case the sorcerers here had means to detect unwanted spells. He listened for the conversation aboard, but there seemed very little. The crewmen all held swords and waited patiently on the damp deck, only shifting restlessly or working a line if it grew slack. They did not even react to the rivulets of rain running down their lax faces. Yeolani noted the smell of demon covered everything aboard, from the men down to the mast and oars.