by Jean Johnson
It was one of the few games Ban enjoyed, and even found thought-provoking in its own way.
For the moment, however, all the main work was being done by the four married Fae. At first, it seemed like they did nothing; they just laid out cushions on the ground, folded themselves onto the makeshift seats, rested their hands on their knees, and closed their eyes. But while “seeing with the inner eye” was not flashy, there was a lot of work being done.
Fali sought out the wind patterns above, in which she would make tiny tunnels through which air could pass, keeping even the lowest and deepest of caverns fresh and breathable. Adan sought out all the crystals in the local rocks surrounding them, discerning which could be strengthened and purified into conduits for sunlight, even moonlight, since this world did have one moon to help illuminate its skies. Parren turned her attention first down and out, then up, seeking the waterways of the local region, the paths where floods raged and streams trickled, where the ground was porous and where it was solid; air and liquid water were life, which meant they were the greatest priorities to acquire and secure.
Kaife looked to the rocks around them as well, but his trancings were meant to build up two mental maps: one of where every cave and tunnel, nook and cranny currently sat, along with the types of rocks surrounding them; and one of where things could be shifted, moved, thinned, strengthened, and altered to suit the Fae’s needs. Air had to flow in and out, yes, as did water, but waste materials also needed places to go. There needed to be more than one entrance or exit—and there were—but they had to be reduced or enlarged, and each one needed fortifications and concealments, both magical and mundane. And of course the shapes of each passage and cavern would have to be altered.
When he was ready, Kaife held out his hands. The others, resting quietly with their own ideas firmly in their minds, linked hands with each other and him. Fae magic didn’t always have to be showy; the largest of magics, however, did have to be balanced in some way, either by compatible energies or by contrasting energies. Or in a group of four, male and female, mated and kin related. Golden white energies pulsed outward, rippling through the air, sizzling along the rocks, and subtly reshaping as they moved.
As the game of black-white continued, Ban noticed Éfan frowning occasionally. The mage’s agitation increased when the quartet started working their magics. Ban wasn’t sure what to make of it . . . until a shimmering white ball of energy only a little bit bigger than a fist came spinning slowly down out of the stone ceiling, swirling toward the four Fae seated in the center of the floor.
“By the stars . . . what is that?” Éfan asked, eyeing the apparition. He glanced between it and the scrying orb in his hand. “It’s . . . pure magic? This world’s magic?”
Idly waiting for his turn, Ban watched Éfan step forward and reach up, trying to intercept the wisp. Instead of sailing on toward Kaife, however, it detoured and zipped right into those outstretched fingers. Blinking in shock, Éfan quickly swept the orb over his own body.
“Amazing . . .”
“What is?” Jintaya asked him, looking up from her task.
“The energies of this world have restored themselves locally. They seem to collect, and manifest in . . . Here comes another one from above!” He raised the orb toward it, invoking his scrying powers, and the wisp swerved and arrowed straight toward him. Flinching a little, he absorbed the silent impact with a sudden indrawn breath. “Invigorating, as a mage. But . . . frustrating, as a scientist,” he added, frowning.
After several seconds, another one arrowed in from the side. Muttering to himself, Éfan tried caging the magic—only to have it arrow straight at him. The next one came up at an angle, skimming along the floor before it sucked its way into Fali’s hip. Frowning, their magic expert turned in a slow circle.
“They seem to be stirred whenever one of the four do something magical to the stones, and to the water table . . . but they are unusually drawn to us,” he reported. “Ban, try some magic—regular, not your inked kind.”
Sighing, Ban changed the play he had intended to lay on the black-white board. Instead of forming the partial image for temple doors, which would have spoken of shelter and succor in the face of Rua’s last play of water rising, he laid his counter on a different square. That made the image turkey beard when the play magically flipped over all the intervening white pieces in between the two black now lined up on the board. Conversationally, it was a bit of an insult aimed at Éfan for his request. Rua grinned, her goldenrod eyes alight with mirth, and laid down two plays in a row, since the first of her moves had locked Ban into an unplayable turn.
Shifting away from the bench as he rose, Ban eyed the chamber, which was beginning to ripple and take on a new, more formally terraced shape. He didn’t want to interfere with what the others were doing, so he just aimed his will at one of the chests. “Tessolo.”
It levitated. Éfan frowned. “Keep doing it.”
Ban flicked two fingers, sending the chest soaring around the chamber. He even guided it in a tight spiral around the Fae with the wheat gold hair and honey gold eyes, but the master mage didn’t flinch. Instead, he frowned. Setting the chest back down, Ban asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Your magic isn’t causing the same spikes in the local aether. Three of these . . . mist balls . . . came swerving in from below and went into Parren, Adan, and Fali, but none deviated toward you. I want to study one,” Éfan added, “but I cannot do that, because the moment I try to cage it with magic, it swerves straight into me—there! That one!” he called out, pointing off to the side, up near the ceiling. “Catch me that one!”
Ban rolled his eyes but readied his limbs. Within moments, a swirl of light soared through the stone. Éfan did something, muttering some magical mnemonic that swerved the wisp in his direction. Bracing himself, Ban darted in, reached up, and caught it with a feeling of warmth and pressure against his fingers. It resisted, straining toward the Fae. With a bit of careful effort, Ban brought it down to a level where he could cage it with both hands.
“What are you feeling from it?” Éfan asked him. “It absorbs so fast into me, all I feel is warmth and a rush of energy.”
“It is warm,” Ban agreed. “Like sunshine on my fingers. It has a pressure. Subtle, seemingly soft, yet strong, like a wind but with no accompanying cooling sensation. It wants to go to you,” he told the other male. He squeezed experimentally with his fingers. “It is springy. Like a laticific, a rubber sap.”
“Fascinating,” Éfan murmured, eyeing the ball of light. “Can you . . . absorb it? It doesn’t seem to be diminishing in your hand, yet it absorbs into us and feeds our inner energies.”
“I am shielding to keep myself separate,” Ban told him. “You should have done the same.”
“I did do the same,” Éfan retorted. “It doesn’t react to the Fae like it does to you. Until we can speak with the locals about how they manage their magical resources, you are the only non-Fae I can ask.”
Sighing, Ban opened up his inner senses to the power. The wisp dissolved slowly, shrinking; he tightened his fingers to keep it from slipping free. “I can feel the warmth entering my nerves, and my blood. It is . . . invigorating, like drinking a good tea, or that brown Fae stuff, that coffee, only not bitter, of course.”
He wiggled his fingers a little, and the remainder of the wisp slipped free, arrowing straight into the mage. Éfan sighed as it vanished beneath his robes. “I see I will need to experiment more. With your help, I think, or I’ll have nothing but an energy rush with which to experiment. You may go back to your game—thank you.”
A grunt escaped Ban, but like the image turkey beard, the meaning behind it was left unvocalized. Éfan wasn’t a bad person, just someone who was accustomed to commanding, not asking. Ban preferred people to ask.
Upon returning to the bench, he straddled it and studied the board. Rua had managed to complete most of the boa
rd with her two moves; the current image was horses scraping the fence. An image of wanting to get out of a current situation, however calm it might seem.
Ban grunted again and made two plays of his own in a row, completing the game. The last two images broke the end of the conversation into nonsense, so he ignored them. The final score was also three points more for Rua, but that was fine. Overall, he had a higher tally in the accumulated games they had played so far. After scraping the dual-sided marker stones off the grid, half to himself and half to Rua, he placed four in the middle, two white and two black at diagonals to each other, and gestured for her to make the first move.
Eventually, he would be free to explore this world, able to go anywhere and everywhere without fear of being harmed. That was his official role in the pantean, to be their scout, to explore far and wide and bring back knowledge of what he found. It would take him away from Jintaya, but it was how she had convinced her people to let him come with her, to let him stay at her side in spirit, if not always in the flesh. In the meantime, he had nothing to do but be patient, and help whenever and wherever he could.
Ban had already learned how to be patient—including those times when he did not want to be patient—long, long ago. Filling his thoughts only with the needs of the moment, he placed his marker after Rua’s turn, and waited patiently for her to make the next move.
***
The White Sands Tribe spent a restless night, wary of an attack by the black-clad stranger, ambush by any other such strangers who still had yet to shown themselves, or even an attack by the jackals. Animadj Zudu and her three surviving acolytes strove to peer through the rock that had been conjured, to see into the caves, but the strangers’ anima powers were too well wielded to overcome.
They then tried to conjure anima, wasting precious wood from the thorny trees they had chopped up and tossed into a bonfire. Fire was one of the easiest ways to conjure it, after all. But every time a wisp appeared, it soared away rapidly, each time drawing down toward the ground in the general direction of the strangers’ cave. Even Taje Halek could see how dangerous this was, for it left their animadj and her three acolytes with only whatever anima-force they could conjure and hold within themselves.
When dawn came and the sun slowly sailed its way toward noon, no sign of that cliff-leaping stranger was seen. No signs of any others, either. Even the jackals, unhappy with the presence of so many noisy, armed humans, stayed away.
Three of the youngest hunters, children on the cusp of adulthood who were armed with slings and small spears, managed to bring down a trio of dhub, the rock-basking lizards that nibbled on plants and took shelter in long burrows. That was quite a coup for the young hunters, as the lizards were known to be fast, well armored, and nervous, never straying far from their burrows.
The shy, arm-long lizards did not flee at the very first hint of the hunters’ approach. It was also a good indicator that humans had not hunted here in a very long time, if ever. A good sign of how well trained the children were, too, to not have startled them, and to have hit them so accurately.
Everyone rested at noon, of course; a set of caves not too far from the strangers’ provided cool shelter, and even had a bit of water inside, adding to how long they could afford to stay in this place to determine if it could be made into a home or not. That pool in the cave, however, made Taje Halek a bit wary of flash floods. Prudently, he ordered a set of watchers to climb the cliffs and spy on the eight directions of the wind, to see if any rain fell in the distance. As the afternoon wore on, Puna and a clutch of hunters went out scouting again.
They brought back a quartet of oryx they had separated from their herd and trapped in a blind canyon. The sight of them caused a lot of excitement, and not just from the prospect of fresh meat, including the roasted bits of liver the hunting party had not finished. Coming from the southern mountains, the members of the White Sands Tribe were used to seeing the long-horned beasts with beige fur, ranging from light brown to sandy yellow. But here, the flanks of the local oryx were creamy white, even if the legs, nose, and tail were dark brown.
The children in particular were fascinated by the hides and kept wanting to touch them while they were being scraped and staked out to be worked into furred leather. The canyon walls echoed with a great deal of bartering offered to the hunters who had made the killing blows for even a scrap of that fascinating, pale fur.
When night fell, the only troublesome beast was a noisy encounter between a disturbed rattlesnake and a yelling tribesman that roused half the camp just as they started to settle down. At least it was more food; the headless snake was quickly stripped of its hide and buried in the ashes to bake overnight. Another watch was set to guard against wild beasts and strange beings, but again, the night passed quietly. And again, whenever an anima-wisp appeared—they were easier to spot at night—it did so only to dart off as soon as it coalesced, vanishing into the ground at the same low angle.
The next day, Halek sat on a mound of grass covered by a leather hide, trying not to let his half-healed wounds bother him. At least the acacia tree gave him and many of the others a good bit of shade. The respite from the hot sun and the breeze that wound its way past the pond, bringing a bit of cooling moisture to the air, made it very appealing, even if technically the cave was more secure. Then again, it was the easiest place for the tribe to find their leader. To find several people, really, for the ravine-sheltered tree shared enough shade for many to gather around him while they worked on projects, weaving grass for mats and baskets, fixing broken sandal thongs, scraping and working the furred hides with a slurry of oryx fat and brains to help cure them, and more. Others explored the maze of valleys, the narrow defiles, the meandering ravines, only to come back and report where water could be found, greenery, even a few edible plants and an occasional desert hare or snake for game.
By midmorning of their third day, however, everything changed. The first indication that something was wrong was the sight of Shorno pelting for the broad shade tree. Halek caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and frowned, peering that way. The golden-brown-haired warrior had originally been one of the Green Teeth Tribe but had refused to fight the White Sands. He had said it was not honorable, for the White Sands were only traveling in great numbers because they had been run out of their home territory; they did not mean to invade. For his pains, he had been spurned by his mate and exiled by his tribe. Halek had agreed to take him in, and Shorno had proven his loyalty through his efforts since.
Dust puffed up in the wake of his passage. The warrior skidded to a stop on the patchy grass, hands braced on his knees while he breathed a few times, then blurted out, “The stone’s changing. In the strangers’ ravine. It’s not sandstone anymore!”
That caught the attention of more than just their tribal leader. Halek grabbed his crutch, pushed to his feet, and started limping that way. He wasn’t the only person to set aside their current tasks, too. A clutch of over twenty people, young and old, went with him to have a look. Some streamed ahead; some stayed with the wounded elder. But despite the fact that there were many who went, everyone had a clear view of the phenomenon.
It wasn’t too far to the ravine, and what Halek saw astounded the aging human, as it did the rest. The rocks were changing. The striped sandstone, laid in layers of cream and red, orange and brown, rippled and shifted. Stretches of pale, grayish white granite blossomed on the cliff face. For every heartbeat they watched, another golden section of stone the size of a spread hand vanished, replaced by the incoming whites and grays of the invading rock that should not have been here. They had not seen the speckled, tough stone since leaving the southern lands and crossing far into the desert in search of a safe place to live.
Zudu was already there, jaw sagging. Catching sight of Taje Halek among the others, the animadj shook her head. The bone beads attached to her leather head wrap danced and rattled over her dark, thin braids when s
he did that. “This is far beyond anything I can do, Taje. Beyond anything we can do, my apprentices and I together. I can make a pile of sand as hard as stone or fuse the finest sand into beads—add in salt, and let it make its own glaze when it dries, even heat it hot enough to solidify—but I cannot change one type of stone into an entirely different type. No animadj that I know of can do this.”
Halek nodded solemnly. The others gave him frightened looks. He thought about it and tried to sooth away their fears. “The stranger did not attack us. He just forbade us to go into that particular ravine and the caves it holds. He and whoever else is with him—they may simply know more than our tribe knows. Perhaps they can teach us how to do such a thing?”
“Can, perhaps . . . but will they?” the middle-aged animadj asked him pointedly. She shaded her eyes from the glare of the sun on all the stone around them and shrugged. “That we have yet to see.”
Both returned their gaze to the morphing rocks. As the boundary point of the change from sandstone to granite came near, they realized the rock was moving oddly; in fact, right at the edge, the rock flowed. The bands of deposited, compressed minerals swerved out of their more or less horizontal lines and poured into the ground in a stretch narrower than the width of two fingers. At the same time, speckled dots of minerals embedded in the granite flowed up into their place. In the shaded parts of the actual boundary, impressions of anima-wisps formed before darting off in the same direction as all the others of late.
The transition moved so fast on each side, the boundary looked both hypnotic and dangerous. Concerned mothers and fathers pulled their children back. Halek and the animadj stood far enough back that they felt reasonably safe despite their awe, but the parents in the group wisely hustled their little ones away. As they moved, more stone rippled, and with it came a fresh, tumbling set of anima-wisps. They passed through the cliff in their line of flight, visible only as a brief flash of sparkling energy on their way across the narrow ravine toward the back left.
