Lark sat back on his heels, looking disturbed by her proclamation. Then he got up and walked back over to his side of the fire and sat down.
Talena looked at her hands.
What was that all about?
FORTY-THREE
Fenelon was humming again. The sound echoed off the narrow walls of the deep chasm trail they followed. It was not an unpleasant sound in Gareth’s mind. Just terribly annoying.
“Must you do that?” Gareth asked, stopping to look back at his son.
“Do what?” Fenelon asked as he picked his way over loose rocks that were broken into such small pieces, they were slippery underfoot.
Gareth sighed. “It would be best if we were to be quiet as we walk through here.”
“You’re the one doing all the shouting,” Fenelon said.
“I am not shouting!” Gareth said in a loud voice that boomed off the stone walls. “At least, I was not shouting...before...”
Fenelon had stopped, one eyebrow arched in amusement. Hobbler halted in his tracks just ahead of them as Gareth took another deep breath and turned towards the Dvergar.
“You tell him, Hobbler,” Gareth said. “Tell him why he must be quiet in here.”
Hobbler cleared his throat and returned to stand between father and son.
“Shale,” he said and pointed to the rock walls of the chasm. “It’s very loose and very fragile...and quite frankly, any loud echoing sound could easily bring part of the mountain down on us...”
“Remember that,” Gareth whispered softly and walked on a few paces to quell the urge to throttle Fenelon.
“So why didn’t you say so in the first place, Father?” Fenelon asked.
Gareth stopped just at the next bend. He was about to turn back and issue a response when he heard a faint sound...the trickle of loose stones dancing down from above. He raised a hand to indicate that silence was in order and leaned a bit, looking up.
Part of the stone wall above him moved, and then grew still. But mage eyes could see definition to a shake that was doing so well at blending into its background. Humanoid, yet clearly not human at all.
Horns, he had so hoped they could get through this part of the chasm unnoticed...
“What’s wrong?” Fenelon asked and looked up...and frowned.
“Rock trow,” Gareth said softly.
“Rock trow,” Hobbler repeated. “But it’s awfully close to the middle of the day for them to be out and about in the light.”
Gareth sighed. Rock trow did avoid the light of day as a rule as it slowed them down. But down in the depths of this chasm, shadows were aplenty. The overcast sky of autumn was blocking the sun at its zenith. This was not good at all, because where there was one rock trow, there tended to be others.
“I see it,” Fenelon said. “What shall we do?”
“Move on quietly,” Gareth said. “We should not be too far from our destination...”
“You wish,” Hobbler said, but he hurried on all the same. “This is all we need,” he muttered. “Rock trow. I shudder just to think of what they will do to us if they take a notion...”
“They don’t seem to be doing much of anything,” Fenelon said as he walked at Gareth’s side and glanced up.
“They?” Hobbler said. “Did you say they? Is there more than one?”
Gareth looked for himself. More than one rock trow moved stealthily along the walls of the chasm like spiders. How they did that, he could not say, but it was amazing...
“Sure,” Fenelon said. “There’s at least a dozen of them up there. “And if you ask me, they don’t act the least bit dangerous. All they seem to be doing is watching us as we pass.”
“You’re right,” Gareth said. “They are behaving rather nicely...for rock trow.”
“Nice?” Hobbler said and glanced back at them with a sneer. “You show me a nice trow, and I’ll show you a dead trow...” He quickened his pace only to run into a wall of stone that moaned and turned to look down on the Dvergar with granite grey eyes. Hobbler whimpered, “Nice trow,” and backed away.
The rock trow was big enough to block most of the narrow path with its bulk. It blended so well with the rest of the stone, Gareth would have mistaken it for a boulder. The trow sat at a funny angle, and as Gareth studied the monstrous thing, he could see that one of its legs was broken, leaving only a stub. The rest of the limb lay off to one side, and looked like little more than a chunk of rubble crudely carved in the shape of a leg and a foot.
“Oh, dear,” Hobbler said and backed over to where the two mages stood.
Fenelon leaned forward, his eyes keen with fascination. “It’s made entirely of stone,” he said. “There’s no blood.”
“Of course, it’s made of stone,” Hobbler said and slipped around behind the two. “It’s a rock trow...”
“Living rock,” Gareth said. “As I recall, the lore of the Old Ones tells us that they were created by the giants of old, playing with bits of stone.”
“Sort of like how Ymir supposedly made the dragons...” Fenelon said.
“By Ymir himself, if those ancient stories are to be believed.”
“So what should we do?” Fenelon asked.
“I suggest we go back,” Hobbler said. “I know an alternate route, one less dangerous and longer and...”
The Dvergar had begun to retreat, but he turned and stopped. Two more rock trow now blocked the way. With a squawk, Hobbler backed into Gareth.
“I’m not sure,” Gareth said.
“Wonder what would happen if we fixed its leg,” Fenelon said, and his eyes held that look that meant he was plotting something.
“Oh, brilliant!” Hobbler said. “Fix it so it can get up and crush us...”
“I don’t think it wants to hurt us,” Fenelon said. “And if they were all that dangerous, why have they not attacked us by now. I don’t think the others would have allowed us to get this close to the injured one...”
“You might have a point,” Gareth said. “But we’re not healers, Fenelon.”
“No, but we are mageborn,” Fenelon said. “And we know a number of spells for fusing stone together. Most of Dun Gealach was built with magical mortar. It had to be to withstand some of the magical blasts it’s taken from student mageborn over the years...”
Gareth almost asked if Fenelon was behind any of those blasts, but thought wiser. He nodded. “Those are ancient spells...I’m not sure I remember them...”
“Oh, not to worry,” Fenelon said and winked. “Some of my best spells are the ones I memorized out of Great Grandfather’s old books...”
“I thought I hid those books,” Gareth said with a frown.
“Not well enough,” Fenelon said with a grin and Gareth shook his head in utter amazement.
“Well, then...have at it...” he said.
Fenelon stepped forward slowly, approaching the rock trow as though it were a frightened child. The trow turned and watched him as he held out his hands.
“I mean you no harm,” Fenelon said softly as he walked over to the broken leg. The trow watched him with interest now. Fenelon held out his hands and Gareth felt the draw of essence as his son whispered the words of a levitation spell. The broken stone limb rose and floated half a meter over the ground. Fenelon gestured and moved it through the air...
The rock trow tensed. Gareth heard the others of its kind shifting nervously. Small showers of shale descended from above. He glanced up and noticed that a couple of the larger ones were moving rapidly down the sides.
Oblivious to it all, Fenelon maneuvered the broken leg into position. The rock trow seemed to lose its fear as it watched.
Carefully, Fenelon knelt and put one hand on the leg and one on the trow. The monster stayed still as its element as Fenelon whispered another spell and drew more essence from the stone around them. Under his careful guidance, the two pieces of stone mortared themselves into one piece again. Fenelon let go and sank to his knees.
For a moment, no one dared move. Th
e large rock trow pulled its repaired leg under it and stood up so that it towered over Fenelon. Gareth balled a fist, ready to call lightning.
But the trow walked away and circled the chasm space, then turned back and looked down at Fenelon. Gareth realized its stone features were shifting into something resembling a smile. It reached down, picked up a broke bit of shale and crushed it in one hand, then held out the shale...
Except it wasn’t shale anymore. It was a lump of crystal.
“Pass,” the creature said in a grating voice. “Show all and pass...”
With that, the trow turned towards the walls of the chasm and began to climb, leaving the path clear.
Fenelon stayed on his knees. Gareth hurried over to his son, hauling him up by one arm. Hobbler was practically bouncing.
“I must say, that was not what I expected at all,” Gareth said. “You seem to make friends wherever you go...”
But Fenelon was staring at the crystal in his hand.
“It feels alive,” he said.
“Alive?” Gareth said.
Fenelon dropped the crystal into Gareth’s hand. Warmth flooded him, living warmth. He’d held Lunari stones with less essence. Sentient stone that lived and felt warm? How could that be?
“Shall we go on?” Fenelon said.
“Are you able?” Gareth asked, handing the crystal back.
Fenelon nodded, glancing up at the wall the large rock trow had climbed.
Gareth noticed that they had all vanished.
Desura was tiring. The euphoria she had gained from pinching the attendant’s essence was apparently not as long lasting as she would have hoped. Perhaps she should have asked more of Talena before trying this, but she has suspected for a long time that there had to be more to the wielding of power. After all, the Temple kept records of the heretics it punished with death, and there were many cases of heretics far older than she being beheaded or burned.
What if they had lied to her? All those years, the temple elders and priests had said she was not going to live long because the power in her was evil and would not let her live. Yet here she had found a way to draw power and stop draining herself.
What had Talena said? That the heretic claimed his kind could draw power from people and animals and even the elements?
She stared at the bowl of stone before her. There was water here, water flowing from deep within the earth. Sometimes when she moved through it to look at the world—to watch the Gate Stones—she noticed there seemed to be some sort of power in the water.
Could she use that power to feed her waning life?
Desura took a long slow breath and carefully dipped the ends of her fingers over the rim of the bowl and into the water. It tingled, cold and wet, and as she concentrated on it, she felt once more the power that was in it. She could pull at it as she had pulled life from the attendant. Desura took another deep breath and began to draw life out of the water...
As she did, an odd thing began to happen. At first, she thought it was her imagination. That perhaps she had caused the water to shift and slop over the rim when she stirred it with her fingers. But no, the water in the bowl was starting to rise, and to her dismay, it was rising faster and faster. It began to spill over the edge of the bowl, run into the floor. Water was flooding around her feet, drawn to her.
No! That was not what she was trying to do...she only wanted to borrow the water’s strength.
But it came out of the bowl, gushing like a stream over the rim. She heard her attendants scream. One of them went rushing for the door. Desura tore her hands free of the stone bowl and the water and stumbled back. She fell and landed in the growing puddle, limbs like liquid.
The water was pulling at her now, soaking through her clothes, touching her skin. Its power was singing to her. In her ears, she heard the thunder of Ymir’s heart deep within the earth. She had never heard it so loud...not since she was a child and the High Patriarchs came and asked her to listen...
No! Stop! She screamed it in her head, begging the power to cease...pushing it away with her own power...
“What in the name of the Holy Triad!” Patriarch Rothanan’s voice was like thunder.
“The water, it just started to flood the place...” the attendant was saying.
Desura floundered in the water, unable to right herself, feeling too weak to get up. At least the water was no longer flowing out of the bowl. She gave up trying to rise and opened her eyes.
The High Patriarch stood over her, his face masked in a dark frown. “What happened?” he asked.
“I do not know,” Desura said. “The water...it just started flowing out and...”
If he could tell that she was lying, he did not say so. He looked at the attendants and growled, “Well, don’t just leave her lying there to catch her death of a chill. Get her up and get her dried...”
The attendants rushed over to pull Desura out of the water. She felt a little dismayed that they just sort of dragged her off to one side, leaving a streak of water across the stone floor. The High Patriarch did not move from his place. Under his stern eyes, she was pulled off the floor and half carried into her chamber. The chill of the water was getting to her now, and she shivered as they pulled off her damp robes, toweled her down, and found her dry ones.
She was dressed when Rothanan appeared at her door. His scowl did not cease. “Now, you will rest, and I will have one of the other Watchers brought in for a while. And let us hope this does not happen again, for the Hierarchy would take it as a sign that you are practicing some form of heresy, if they were to hear of this...”
“But I...”
“The last time this happened, a Watcher was trying to use the power in the water,” he said sternly.
Desura closed her mouth and said nothing more. The attendants made her lie back, covering her with thick blankets to keep warm and stoking up the brazier in the corner to warm her room. She would like to have demanded warming stones for her bed, but the High Patriarch’s look of disapproval convinced her to hold her tongue.
Damn you, Talena...I should have known better than to listen to you! Now the High Patriarch was angry with her. Desura had only known one other Watcher who angered him, a woman older than herself who disappeared the next day.
She was told the woman was overcome by her power and died as all Watchers were destined to do...
But Desura had overheard two of the Matriarchs speaking of the other Watcher in low tones...
She had been executed for angering Rothanan.
He will not take me that way, Desura thought. I will use this knowledge to take him first, if I must...
She sank into her covers and closed her eyes and tried to stop shaking.
FORTY-FOUR
Having left Lorymer in charge of finding a mageborn living close enough to Ross-Mhor to assist them, Turlough took a horse and an escort of two mounted mageborn guards and gated to Gordslea Hold. Or at least half a league from the actual hold since he had no clue as to whether or not old Drayton Braidwine still lived. Turlough had heard a rumor that old Drayton died of indigestion. Then again, rumors of death were not always to be trusted where mageborn were concerned. Death only meant the physical form was gone. Essence could live on, and while mageborn spirits had no power, they could be annoying.
Turlough had never gotten along well with Drayton, who refused to attend Council meetings, preferring his solitude. It infuriated Turlough the way these “country” mageborn would defy the Council, refusing to cooperate. Too many of them believed there was no need for a Council of Mageborn.
These thoughts were flitting through Turlough’s head as he guided his horse up the road towards Gordlea Hold. It was late morning by the angle of the sun, and the air was cold. Turlough kept warm with a spell set permanently upon the robes he wore.
As he approached the hold, he could see farm workers busily harvesting their crops for the winter ahead. Good. Common folk at work were common folk who generally had no time to wonder about things
that were none of their business.
Still, he noticed that a few heads turned in awe of his passing, and it gave him a certain sense of pride to see their expressions of wonder as he rode through the gates of the village that fronted old Drayton’s keep.
As he rode through the gates of the village, Turlough reined in his palfrey and looked around. A common place as such villages went. The locals went about their business, scarcely aware of the fact that there was a mageborn in their midst. Oh, there were a few stares that turned his way. He frowned at the lot of them, and they would turn their eyes elsewhere.
Now to find the Braidwine residence. While Turlough knew they would have inherited the keep from Drayton when he passed on, he was not certain they would actually live there.
One of the local was wandering by, leading a pig on a leash. He was a thick set man whose salt and pepper locks had been cropped poorly so that they stood out at odd angles and made him look like a crazed milkweed.
“You there,” Turlough called.
The man stopped and looked up. His blotchy face and dull eyes harbored a certain hint of animosity.
“Whotcha want?” the man retorted with a frown.
“I am looking for the house of Braidwine,” Turlough said. “Where is it?”
The man’s bushy brows formed a line. “Who’s askin?”
“Who is asking?” Turlough repeated and sputtered. “I am asking, you illiterate sod-tiller.”
The man’s frown actually deepened. “And who be you?” he asked.
Turlough was tempted to put a magebolt through the man’s heart. “I am Magister Greenfyn, High Mage of the Council of Mageborn, you parvicient imbecile. And just who are you who dare to ask?”
“Auld Tappin,” the man said. “And I am not parvicient, nor am I an imbecile as I don’t go riding around all dressed like a peacock asking for folk without saying who I am or why I wants them. For your information, Master High Mage, the Braidwines is well thought of in these parts, which is more than can be said for most folks here about. So iffen you wants to find the Braidwines, you’d best learn to say please and thank you. We don’t take kindly to airs in these parts. I’ve fed more important men than you to me pigs!”
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