At first nothing happened. Elva took a step toward her, but stopped when she lifted her hand without opening her eyes. When I looked more closely, I saw it. The plants were withdrawing into the ground, their normal growth reversed. Elva almost jumped backward, hissing through his clenched teeth.
In much less time than seemed possible, Fenra was kneeling in the middle of a patch of dirt. “Can you work with this?” she asked.
I shook my head. “It needs to be smoother, or the pattern might twist.”
She nodded, got to her feet, stood straight with her hands palms down. The ground beneath her smoothed, following the slow movement of her hands, small rocks and pebbles sinking into the ground, larger stones rolling aside.
“What about the plants? What happens to them?” Elva sounded genuinely concerned.
“They will grow back almost as quickly as they withdrew.”
“How did you make them move?”
“I did not ‘make’ them. I asked them. I promised it would not be forever. I also promised that you would no longer come here to cut away the growth. I undertook that on your behalf.”
Elva laughed, and the sound of it, the tilt of his head, the sight of his smile took me back for a moment to the last time we’d been drinking together, and I’d refilled the glasses without touching the jug of wine. He’d laughed in the same way.
While they were talking I’d broken a fairly straight branch from a nearby tree and peeled it until I had a stick roughly the length of Fenra’s cane. It occurred to me that Fenra’s cane would have made a perfect instrument, considering that it was a tool used by a practitioner, even though not a practitioner’s tool. I focused my attention, centered myself, reached out with my drawing stick, and began to make the pattern. By the time I was finished, sweat trickled down my back, and my mouth was terribly dry. I hadn’t lost my pattern when I lost my power, but my strength wasn’t what it used to be.
Fenra and Elva were sitting close together on the rock. She gnawed on a sausage, and Elva held a canteen for her, watching her face as she ate. Fenra’s clothing was now dusty enough to match his, making them stand out against the greenery behind them. When she saw that I’d finished, she pushed herself to her feet.
“Do you need more rest?” Elva stood with her, hand reaching out for her elbow.
“I think eating has made up for it. If not—” She shrugged. “Our time is limited to what the grasses allow. We need to be finished before they grow back. Arlyn, what should the colors be?”
“The sage and the periwinkle will be enough,” I said. “Power it, and it should rise to form a gate.”
* * *
Fenra
Once I had the colors down, sitting back on my heels was easier than standing. I did not want to chance another wave of dizziness. We had more time than I had led the men to believe. The grasses had never met anyone like me, and they were curious, watching. As long as they continued to be, I could take all the time I needed. I know that there are practitioners who do not believe in the sentience of the natural world. They think it’s some kind of primitive outer Mode superstition—like the existence of a Maker—but then, they do not live on the outer Modes. Even in the City, the grass and trees and suchlike are only dormant, and will speak to you if you speak first. In this at least, the New Zone wasn’t so different from our world.
When I felt I had gathered my strength I got back to my feet and studied the pattern.
“I see similarities to the pattern that sealed your vault,” I said to Arlyn.
“If you used yours more often you’d have noticed the same thing. The theory is that these similarities represent an individual practitioner’s own pattern.” Arlyn’s voice came from behind me. It seemed he was staying as far away from Elvanyn as he could.
“You mean each of us has a unique, recognizable pattern? It’s not just a family marker?”
“Like a fingerprint.”
At this I looked at Elvanyn. He held up his right hand and touched the tips of his fingers with the index finger of his left hand.
“Here they’ve discovered that every person’s fingers have a pattern unique to them. They call them fingerprints.”
“How could they know such a thing?”
He shrugged. “Observation. Testing. Experiment.”
“Fascinating as this is, perhaps we could discuss it once we’re back home?”
Elvanyn looked sideways at Arlyn, one eyebrow raised—and I realized why it bothered him so much when I did it. At least they were finally interacting.
I took a deep breath, centering myself on the earth and concentrating. I lifted my arms to shoulder height and held my hands palm down. For the first time I could feel the power flow up through the ground and move through me. I waited for the pattern to become three-dimensional. Nothing.
I shook out the tense muscles in my arms and shoulders and tried again. Nothing.
After five more tries, I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, feeling the trembling in my wrists and arms.
“It’s not working, is it?” Elvanyn’s sympathy irked me.
“Stating the obvious isn’t helping either,” I said, lowering my hands. The two men were standing on the far side of the pattern from me. “What about using my own pattern?”
Arlyn shook his head. “You don’t use it enough. Without the written forran to guide you, it would be too dangerous.” He drew down his brows. “I could try writing it for you . . .”
“I can barely lift my hands,” I said, “let alone perform a strange forran. Who knew that achieving nothing could be so tiring.”
“So we stay here?” Elvanyn said. He glanced up at Arlyn but quickly looked back to the pattern on the ground, as if he expected to see something this time.
“We can’t stay here,” Arlyn said finally. “We’ve got to get back. If Metenari finds the Godstone . . .”
Shaking my head, I bent over to place my palms on the ground. The grasses had been patient enough. At least for now, they could have their space back. Everything would look different in the morning. Fortunately, telling them this took almost no power at all.
The locket Medlyn had given me fell out of the top of my shirt, and swung loose. I closed my right hand on it, leaving my left on the ground. The locket was in no danger of sliding off, but somehow touching it made me feel better. As if my old mentor stood by to help me.
I straightened so quickly I could feel my vertebrae crack into alignment, and my vision darkened.
“You’ve thought of something.” Arlyn had hold of my upper arm.
“Now who’s stating the obvious.” Elvanyn lowered the hands he’d reached out to help me and sat down on his marker rock.
I tapped the locket with my fingernails. “Could I open Medlyn’s vault from this world?” I said.
Arlyn nodded slowly as he thought through my question. “Maybe,” he said. “The vaults exist in a space of their own . . . but reaching his vault from here won’t guarantee we can reach our own dimension from it. We don’t know enough about how the locket works.”
I thought I understood his expression. “Nor do we have time for study and experiment,” I told him.
Elvanyn stood up, straightened his sword belt, and checked the hang of his revolvers. “What are we waiting for?”
I suddenly found myself on the ground, with Elvanyn on one side and Arlyn on the other.
“Fenra? Can you hear me?”
“Yes. Stop patting my hand. You would make poor healers, both of you.”
“You fainted.”
“Once again, the obvious. Thank you.”
“Sarcasm. She must be feeling better.” Elvanyn took a step back and again checked the balance of his weapons.
Each of them took a wrist and an elbow and helped me to my feet. I scrubbed my hands over my face, stifled a yawn. “Arlyn. Is there any reaso
n for us to remain here in this spot?”
I felt rather than saw him shake his head. “Before you try anything else, you need rest. Lots of rest. And food. We can’t do anything until the morning.”
I did not argue with him. After resting for a few moments, I moved off the new grass and began choosing stones with care and setting them to one side of the cleared space. I wanted the grasses and insects to know where I planned to put a fire, in case they wanted to avoid it. After a moment Arlyn began gathering dry twigs and sticks.
“So Elvanyn tells me you made the Godstone?” It was easier to ask when I could not see his face.
“You told her.” Arlyn turned to him, but Elvanyn just went on pouring water from his canteen into a pot he’d pulled out of his pack.
“He told me.” I set down the largest stone I had found and began aligning the others to it. “The question now is, why did you not tell me?”
“To be honest, I can’t remember making it.” Arlyn squatted on his heels on the far side of the fire ring from me. It was light enough to see his face, though it wouldn’t be for long.
“I remember,” Elvanyn said under his breath. Arlyn pretended not to hear him.
“I know I must have done it. I remember the planning, the research. I remember the panic and the fear, the horror of trying to stay ahead of it, so I could seal it away. Wondering if I was strong enough to do it, or if it was already too late. I’d caused some damage I was too ignorant to foresee.” He stared down on the small pile of twigs in the center of the ring of stones as if there was already a fire there. “I can remember having it, using it.”
“What did you intend to do?” My curiosity got the better of me.
“He thought our world was supposed to be different,” Elvanyn said when it became clear Arlyn was not going to answer. His voice was surprisingly gentle.
“Different how?”
“He thought it was artificial, the City, the Modes, all the changes that you practitioners see when you travel. He’d been here, and he thought our world was supposed to be like this one. All of a piece. As if there were only one Mode.”
At first I did not understand him. Then I tried to imagine what that meant. “Could that be why the gate won’t work for me? Because this world is so different? But the animals, the growing things—they know me.” The plants had felt odd, just as the bread had tasted bitter, but they had responded.
“No.” This time Arlyn spoke. “The practice works the same way—though artifacts don’t, now that I remember. Here, take your earrings off.”
I put my hands to my ears, felt the familiar facets of the emeralds in my lobes. “These are my final ones, they can’t come off, that’s the whole point of them.”
“Humor me.”
I started with the left one, unscrewing the tiny back from the metal post that pierced through my ear. Though I had not believed it was really possible, the earring parted, and in a moment I had the two pieces in my hand. I felt absolutely nothing different. Which was, considering what we had all been told, a very strange thing. A recklessness came over me and I removed the other earring as well, making sure I re-attached the backs before slipping them into the watch pocket of my vest. “Just a symbol,” I said. “Nothing more.”
“Don’t say it like that.” Elvanyn pulled out the lapel of his coat to show me a silver star pinned to his vest. “They’re your badge, and a badge tells people who and what you are.”
I turned back to Arlyn. “Is this how you removed yours?” I asked him. “Here?” His face clouded over and he touched his own ear.
“No,” he said, lowering his hand again. “When I woke up, after—afterward, they were gone.”
Gone with his power, is what I did not say aloud.
“I did not know the earrings could be circumvented,” I said instead.
“They can’t,” he said. “Many people have tried it, for one reason or another, and failed.”
“Because it hasn’t been done doesn’t mean it can’t be done,” I said.
Elvanyn chuckled, but not as though he had heard something funny. “He means he knows it can’t be done,” he said. The tone in Elvanyn’s voice was that of a person who has been proven correct, when they did not want to be. This told me much about his real feelings.
“You designed them,” I said to Arlyn, remembering what Medlyn had told me.
“Specifically so they couldn’t be removed.”
I thought about the locks on his vault. Even how his furniture was structured. “You designed the jewels by harnessing the power inherent in the stones.”
“I’m afraid so. There’s no forran to circumvent because it wasn’t done with one person’s forran.”
“Commoners like myself might think it a fine idea to keep track of practitioners, but I can’t imagine why practitioners themselves welcomed the idea,” Elvanyn said dryly. “You weren’t exactly acting in the best interest of your own kind, were you?” Again, the undertone of distrust and cynicism.
Arlyn paused so long I thought he was not going to respond. “I wasn’t acting in their best interest. I was acting in the best interest of mundanes like yourself.” This last phrase came out in a voice I had never heard Arlyn use before. “Power gets abused if it’s not controlled—”
“You’d be the best judge of that.” Elva’s hand shifted on his sword hilt.
“Stop.” We had no time for this. “We wear the earrings so that if one of us goes missing, or goes mad, they can be quickly found, and . . . helped.” I am not exactly sure why I hesitated over the last word. “So they are to our benefit.”
“And finding a practitioner who’s gone mad has obvious benefits to mundanes as well.” Arlyn was determined to have the last word. His increasing irritability was worrying me more and more. I’d leveled him only hours ago.
“Why did you ask me to take them off?” I said.
“I wanted you to see what would happen for yourself. Artifacts have no power, but the practice itself actually works a little better here, forrans seem to take less energy. Remember you were able to call for help to come? That’s why I thought the two worlds were supposed to be more alike. I thought a world where the practice worked more easily had to be the correct form.”
“So you tried to change our world . . .” The concept was too big. I could not visualize it. I did not really want to.
He nodded. “I made the Godstone to do it. At first I tried to find one. I spent a long time looking before I realized that it wasn’t there to be found. Then I thought, all I had to do was make one . . .” He shivered.
“What happened when you used it?”
He shook so much that at first I could not see him nodding. I reached across the still-cold fire pit and grasped his wrist in my left hand. He tried to pull away, but not as though his heart was in it.
“What happened?” I said again, willing him as much calm as I could considering my own exhaustion.
“I don’t know. There was a tower—I don’t remember.” Elvanyn looked up at this, but Arlyn shook his head. “I remember the panic and the horror. Of wanting it all to stop, of hoping it wasn’t already too late.”
A cold thought rose to the surface. “Was it?”
Now he shook his head. “No. Not really. Except for me, of course. Except for . . .”
“Do not stop talking now,” I warned him.
“I think our world jumped a Mode.” He waved at my clothes. “Suddenly people were dressed differently. Dressed the way you are now.”
As far as my experience went, people had always dressed the way I was dressed now. “You mean, before the Godstone, people in the city dressed like Elvanyn? Like in the old paintings?”
The muscles twitched at the side of his jaw. “Yes. More like that. The Road wasn’t paved as well, and no one had pistols, just muskets.”
“And swords.” It wasn’t tha
t there were no swords anymore, just that people saved them for formal dress. “And since then? Nothing else has changed?”
“Nothing.”
“And the world is developing as it should?” Again I remembered what Medlyn had told me. There were fewer Modes now, and no new ones were forming.
Arlyn pressed his lips together and the muscles around his mouth jumped. I supposed that answered me.
“We have to get back,” I said. “Metenari may be pompous, but he is stubborn, and not in any way stupid. As you pointed out, your vault is now open. If the Godstone is there to be found he will find it. We cannot count on his not using it, once he has it in his possession.”
* * *
Using a thin glass rod, Santaron Metenari edged the folded parchment on the top of his worktable closer to the light coming through the open window. It wasn’t raining—it never rained in the White Court during the day—but an overcast of cloud obscured the sun. Still, natural light often told you more than artificial, no matter the brightness. Noxyn had very properly brought his find straight here, the room where Metenari attended to administrative details he could neither ignore nor delegate. He shifted his grip on the glass rod, holding it between the index and middle finger of his practitioner’s hand, swinging it back and forth with the movement of his fingers. The parchment was dirty and discolored along one edge, as if it had been sticking out from a pile of similar documents. The inner side was a soft, clean, off-white still, protected by whatever it had been pressed between.
“How sure are you?”
“I unfolded it just enough to glimpse the heading.” Noxyn shifted his feet, his hands reaching forward slightly, fingers curled, as if he wanted to pick up the parchment again. The boy wore fine silver-mail gloves lined with silk, exactly the precaution Metenari would have expected from his senior apprentice.
“Here,” he said now, indicating the parchment packet with the glass rod. “Go ahead and open it for me. Spread it out fully, I’ll get the glass.” He noted the flush of pleasure that colored Noxyn’s expression. He deserved it; the boy worked hard, and was coming along well.
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