Life Giver

by Lisa Lowell

  Yeolani began feeling ill just being aboard but not so these men. That meant they weren’t naturally magical but had been invaded by demons to provide them with their power. Good, that also meant they would be novices and far more likely to panic in an arcane battle. They were essentially pawns, brought here to die by overwhelming the city of West in sheer numbers of bodies thrown at the shoreline. Yeolani needed to find the leader of this invasion.

  He walked carefully past the awaiting sailors and slipped to the wheelhouse to seek someone there who would have a plan. No one manned the wheel there. How strange, Yeolani thought. He saw the hatch that went down into the hold and wondered if he could sneak in. Carefully, he cast a scattering of sound to the aft of the ship, and every head turned to look. Yeolani used his distraction to lift the hatch and disappeared inside.

  He didn’t even have to go all the way down into the hold before he heard the leaders there in conference. The first voice, a gruff male, with clipped sentences continued a conversation that had obviously been going on for quite a while.

  “We might never find it. I don’t trust Muelker. We stand only to lose more bodies. I vote we look after everyone leaves.”

  “You’re a fool,” replied a female voice.

  This surprised Yeolani. Demons seemed to occupy just about everyone. Perhaps these demons had just attacked a village of civilians, commandeering them all, man, woman, and child.

  “We’ve come so far and only have a few more days to try this before they discover we’re here. We must find it, or we might as well go back to Limbo. We’ll never get bodies again.”

  That confirmed it for Yeolani. These were indeed demon-infested men, not sorcerers. Yet it still left him curious about this thing the outlanders sought. What was it? They had prior knowledge of its approximate location. They also knew that the Wise Ones would come to prevent them from retrieving it. Had they been seeking this thing ever since East had been invaded the first time, before he had come, banishing them. What could it be?

  Yeolani recalled Vamilion’s magic lessons. If demons were seeking something here, magic had to be involved. The Land hid a vast amount of power, most of it encased in the earth itself and not accessible except to Wise Ones. No matter how demons and sorcerers might dig for it or try to manipulate others, they failed to tap into…what had Honiea called it? Well, Magic. Also, demons rarely could occupy a human from the Land, and so most of their interventions had been of this type, bringing in an invasion force.

  Well, Yeolani could speculate for hours, but right now, the argument between these two possessed invaders offered no more food for thought. He returned to the deck and wove his way to the side, invisible still, before he slipped off the anchored ship into the cool water and swam away, his strokes obscured by his magical rain. He had just enough time to swim out of the river and walk to the Gathering Tree before dawn.

  Rashel curiously walked the streets of West. She had never been in such a large city, and she worried about how West’s citizens were faring. She discovered several healers hard at work: two women in labor, but most of the patients came with smoke inhalation. Should she call Honiea? Something in Rashel’s mind resisted. These healers probably knew about her candle. They’d been dealing with the fire that had been ongoing for days and hadn’t felt the need to call her.

  Besides, Rashel wanted to resolve this problem, just she and Yeolani.

  Slowly Rashel made it down to the bridge. The alien fires didn’t seem to consume what it tried burning: the bridge. She couldn’t get close enough to see the fire if she remained visible, so after she checked to see that no one was watching, she moved behind a warehouse. She then turned herself invisible, as Yeolani had taught her, and continued down to the base of the bridge. She wanted to see exactly what the demons were trying here.

  The elegantly built bridge, stone piers, steel spanners, and wooden deck still arched over the river, but the smoke and blue flame tried to eat at the joints where stone met metal. The fumes obscured everything. The rain that had soaked the area did nothing for the flames and only added steam to the smoke. Why burn the bridge? No one lived or traveled on the other side anymore. What did the invaders have to gain by destroying Yeolani’s handiwork?

  Rashel looked diligently for magicians that might be poking around the bridge just as she was, but if they were there, they too used invisibility. The fumes burned her eyes, making it impossible to see the eddies of someone passing through. A smokescreen? If so, this fire worked perfectly. If that were the case, what were they hiding behind it? No one could see what was happening in East.

  Finally, Rashel decided she had to go into the empty city. She disliked using the new magic of invisibility while she still needed to concentrate on not causing flowers everywhere she walked. She also worried about leaving Nevai at the tree without someone nearby to hear if he woke. She knew all along that having a baby while traveling and doing magic would demand these kinds of sacrifices, but leaving her baby distressed her. Unwilling or not, she was now a Wise One and had to do her part. She closed her eyes, latched onto a determined daisy that had shoved through the cobbles of the burned-out section of East and drew herself toward it.

  When she opened her eyes, she looked over the desolation left behind from a year before. Scorched and crumbling footprints of buildings remained after Yeolani’s tornadoes had swept them clean, all but a single broken tower. Why had that building survived? Magically reinforced?

  Rashel picked her way through the streets that still had not recovered. In the rain, the ash only made for ink that clung to her boots and choked off anything that tried to grow here. East felt toxic and would refuse to allow the living world to come in. Unless she healed it. At the base of the tower, Rashel placed her hand against the stones and felt the efforts of moss trying to grow in the chinks and seams. The spores struggled, twisted, and were deformed by the magic that had built this place. She tried a bit to clear a space of the poisons to allow the growth, and she felt the relief of the tiny seeds immediately. Someday, she would have to come back here to heal this place so green could grow again, but not now.

  Instead, she stepped away from the dead tower and brought her mind to examine the entire area, wondering if there was anything worth seeking that would draw the interest of invaders from other lands. She tapped into the awareness of the seeds that remained below the singed cobbles and down into the soil. It might have, at one time, been a rich land, but being so near the river, the rocks would have to be cleaned away. The toxic demon magic had seeped into the soil, and that too would have to go, dripping like poison.

  Then she found something that puzzled her, not in the soil but in one of the pit basements left behind after the buildings had been swept away. Something human moved through the underground cellars and tunnels, away from the streets. Retaining her invisibility, Rashel walked through the avenues and found the cellar where these men had descended. In the side of the foundation wall, she saw a hole had been cut large enough for a man to crawl in. And it had been recently. The dirt from the original excavation had turned to a muddy mess in the rain, but not been washed away from a winter’s erosion. Someone was digging through the ground of East.

  What were they seeking? Rashel didn’t dare follow them through the tunnel, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t explore. She was the Queen of Growing Things. She could reach out and sense everything the soil may hide. Deliberately, she lowered her thoughts, broadening deep and wide through the earth. She passed acorns and seeds incubated for a thousand years, only waiting to come to the surface once again to join the sun. She followed the roots of grasses long dormant and let their tendrils be her hands digging through the earth. Something magical must impinge on their awareness. She passed over stone and pebble until, finally, she found something worth her attention.

  A small stone had been buried here, not brought by the river in ages past. It had been here long, but not as long as the pebbles. Also, it bore the tang of magic. She felt this stone’s powe
r not as a toxic blend of blood and greed, but of pure buried potential. The aura glowed green and brilliant, clean and striving to be patient. What could a simple stone, probably granite rather than the sandstone all around it, demand out of magic? And the men in the tunnels, while they were far away from finding the granite stone, they sought it. She knew it would take them days to reach it, for they drifted away from a direct path as if unsure where it lay.

  Rashel dared not let them reach the magic encased in the rock. With a flick of her mind, Rashel lifted the stone up through the soil, through the cobbles, and into her hand.

  She looked down at the stone and felt its pulsing magic, but didn’t want to take the time to investigate. After being so distracted by the simple stone, she looked up at the sky, wondering how long she had been away from the Gathering Tree. A pink dawn lifted over the horizon behind her. She would look at the stone later. Instead, she drew her breath to reach back onto the magic of the Gathering Tree’s memories, to pull herself toward it.

  But an explosion rocked her back before she could tap into her gift to shift toward the tree. Rashel looked up and saw a fireball by the shoreline. Where once the Gathering Tree stood, now only a pillar of fire erupted.

  23

  Pillar of Fire

  The explosion tore through the wood and blew splinters and shards for a hundred yards around it. That much the tree acknowledged before it died in an inferno. Rashel’s mind didn’t register that. She ran the few feet from the grass stem she’d latched onto to the tree but could approach no closer for the heat. Nevai! That was who she really reached for, but she couldn’t find his mind there at the base of the flames that shot out like a geyser. The fire pushed her back, but she fought her way forward with magic. She conjured a shield to press against the heat and forced herself into the flames but still could not find him.

  He can’t be dead, he can’t be dead, he can’t be dead.

  Her mind began the chant, but she knew it for a lie. She could never get those words out of her mouth as she pressed her way at the flames. When she felt someone tugging on her waist, pulling her away, she fought the resistance and lashed out with her mind. Yeolani lifted her away, using magic to fight her, and she threw a wave of pure, grief-fueled power directly at his mind. He absorbed it into the cavern under the prairie and physically turned her to look at him.

  Through her tears she saw he too was weeping, but also, he was covered with ash and had a myriad of nicks and splinters peppering his face and clothing. He must have been standing near the tree when it had exploded. She could read the memory fresh in his mind. She saw him being blown violently away from the explosion and landing in the river. He too had tried to find Nevai in the pillar of fire, but it was useless.

  Rashel collapsed into Yeolani’s arms, and they wept together just out of range of the searing heat of the fire that wouldn’t stop. They barely noted when Vamilion and Honiea arrived, summoned by the needs of the Land. Their faces grew grim, and grief dripped off them as well, but they began battling the alien flames rather than disturbing Rashel and Yeolani in their loss.

  “What triggered this?” Vamilion asked of his wife in a whisper. He didn’t want to be crass, but they were all in danger if they didn’t discover what was going on soon, despite this tragedy.

  “I don’t know,” Honiea replied. “The city is burning. It’s a smokescreen.”

  “It’s not a smokescreen,” Rashel snapped, for she’d left herself open, raw and hurting, to every stray thought around her. “I caused this.”

  “Rashel?” Yeolani whispered in agony. “You didn’t do this, my love. Why would you say such a thing?”

  “I was following the …there were people digging in the soil under East. I followed them. They were looking for something underground, but I found it first, and the instant I had it, they triggered this reaction.” She pulled away from Yeolani long enough to bring out the stone she had discovered. The others left the fruitless battle against the fire and stepped near to look at what she had brought.

  “They know we’re here,” Yeolani whispered as he acknowledged there must be a connection to this search for a stone and the instantaneous lightning attack on the tree. “When I was on the ship, I overheard that they knew we would come. They’re smart enough to recognize this rain is magical.”

  Accordingly, he let the clouds loose, and they began parting almost instantly.

  Rashel lowered her head as if the rain still weighed her down. “The demons knew they couldn’t challenge us directly, so they attacked the tree where we were meeting. Did they know Nevai was hidden here?”

  Yeolani answered, now feeling like he wanted to go hunt something and kill it. “Perhaps. They’ve not really hurt anyone in West, just kept them on alert. I agree they’ve hidden behind a smokescreen so the people of West wouldn’t get curious. The outlanders were looking for whatever you found, Rashel. Since they can’t get it, they attack us as a warning or against the only one of us without powers, Nevai.”

  “Wait,” Rashel looked at the burning tree, then at Yeolani, and finally at the rock in her hands. “What were they looking for that would prompt this kind of response? It’s just a rock. I was led to it. They really didn’t know what they were trying to find and would probably have dug for days in the passages underneath East. I knew instantly the moment my mind touched it.”

  Vamilion now peered at the stone and then shook his head in puzzlement. “Granite, here? No, it’s not here naturally. That’s not native to this river valley this far south. Is there something inside that’s magical because, right now, it’s not giving me any hints that it’s anything but a simple stone.”

  “But I felt it, from hundreds of paces away…is it? What is it?”

  “A Talisman?” Honiea guessed. “You feel something, and we don’t. It’s just a rock to us and probably to those demons, though they knew it was there somehow. None of us would be able to sense its power until we touch it.”

  “A rock? No,” Rashel could not believe that. The rock wasn’t the gift. “No, there’s something inside the stone that is calling to me.” Then without any explanation, she threw it with all her might at the pillar of fire. She ignored the shocked expressions of the others, but she was following her instincts the way Yeolani recommended. If it destroyed her Talisman, she didn’t really care at the moment. She felt too much grief at not listening to her premonitions to not leave Nevai alone by the tree. She would follow those premonitions faithfully for eternity now.

  They all heard the pop when the rock exploded in the fire, but like a geyser had been shut off, the fire died with that rock’s demise. The inferno left just the charred trunk and a few of the hardier limbs still intact. The blackened trunk glowed like an ember for a few minutes, and then even the tree cooled. Before anyone else could approach, Rashel ran to the base of the tree, conjured herself a poker and began digging through debris among the roots. She wanted at least Nevai’s bones to bury, though she would probably not go very far from where they stood to make a memorial he deserved. Surely something of him had survived.

  But she found nothing. No skull, bones, or the two teeth he finally had cut. She wanted something, but she fingered through every chip of wood and stone, and nothing remained to prove that he had ever lived. When she found a ring in the ashes, she almost threw it aside in disgust, but Yeolani stopped her.

  “No, that’s what was sealed in the stone,” he admonished. He took it from her trembling fingers and walked with it to the river to wash it off. When he brought it back to her, he knelt and put it carefully on her sweaty and ash-covered hand.

  Numbly she looked down at the ring she had won with the life of a little boy. She would never look at that beautiful ring and think of it as anything more than a cheap trinket. Nevai was dead, and she couldn’t help but realize that she had gone after this Talisman rather than protecting her baby. The gold glittered, and a faceted green stone nested in its weave. The filigree of the band looked like ivy twining about her fing
er, and while it sparkled beautifully, despite her dirty hand, she felt no compulsion to even be curious about its power.

  “Look,” Honiea whispered, long after Rashel had lost track of the world or time. “The fires at the bridge are out too.”

  They all peered toward the city and saw that, indeed, the blue flames had faded. As the sun rose, the wind stilled, refusing to blow away the remaining fumes of the magical fires. The boats on the river still stood just south of the bridge, but they weren’t moving, and everything seemed to wait for the next act in this magical battle.

  Yeolani looked at the other Wise Ones and said aloud the words that all of them at the moment were thinking.

  “Shall we go to war?”

  The four Wise Ones walked into East moving shoulder to shoulder, pushing a wave of power ahead of themselves that drove everything out of hiding. They all wore the most war-like version of their royal clothing. All of them wore shields or armor and carried weapons. Yeolani was grateful for his arrows rather than the sword or spear, for he actually felt he could use those, that and the tornadoes he called up in the warming day. Vamilion, for his part, carried two weapons, a sword in one hand and his Talisman pickax that could crack open the earth. Even Honiea, the healer, had a bow and white fletched arrows and silver pikes woven into her hair.