by Jeff Grubb
“Urza’s gem makes things stronger,” said the scholar. “He called it his Mightstone. Mishra’s seems to have the opposite effect. Urza has named it the Weakstone.”
Ahmahl chortled. “That probably does not sit well with the younger brother, to have the weaker stone.”
“It doesn’t,” said Tocasia. “Urza knows it, so he calls it that to Mishra’s face.”
“What does Mishra call it?” asked Ahmahl.
Tocasia thought a moment, “I’ve never heard him refer to it as one thing or another. Its ‘his’—Mishra’s—stone. And the other one is ‘his,’ Urza’s, stone.”
“That sounds right,” observed Ahmahl. “The older brother always had a tendency to name things, to identify them. It makes them his, I suppose.”
Tocasia sighed. “All these years they have been with us,” she said, “and they remain as great a mystery as the energy within those power crystals. As the Thran themselves.”
“The Thran, the Old Ones, you and I will understand, eventually,” replied Ahmahl. “For they have the good sense to stay dead. The living, they keep changing as time goes along. It is harder to climb upon a moving mount.”
“Old Fallaji saying?” Tocasia raised her cup.
“Old digger saying,” said Ahmahl, returning the salute. “From this old digger in particular.”
The conversation moved to other subjects, such as the new layer of hard sandstone they had encountered at the second site and whether Bly would need additional outriders for his caravan (and how much he would try to charge Tocasia for them). Finally Ahmahl made farewells and left the tarp. The night was pleasant, and Tocasia knew she would probably sleep sitting up in her camp chair, wrapped in a soft fur from dwarven Sardia.
Ahmahl slowly walked through the camp. The fires had been banked, and the lamps had all been extinguished. Even the lamps from Urza’s quarters, usually the last to be doused, were now darkened.
The old digger stood in the center of the camp and looked upward at the stars. The moons had not risen yet, and above the old Fallaji the sky pinwheeled in a heavy scattering of stars. Ahmahl tried to imagine if the sky over the far-off coastal cities looked this beautiful, and decided against it. Fires burned long and wastefully into the night there, obscuring the sky with their smoke. So much like city peoples everywhere.
There was a movement to his left and the sound of a sandal scraping against the dirt. Slowly Ahmahl turned toward the noise, keeping his head raised toward the stars but allowing his eyes to sweep the shadows. The moonless night was dark but not dark enough to foil the sharp eyes of the Fallaji.
There was a rustle along the shadowed side of one of the student barracks. Then came a soft, muffled cough.
“Someone there?” called Ahmahl, suddenly looking directly at the shadow. “Show yourself, shadowy one, or I’ll wake the camp!”
A lean form stepped from the shadows, dressed in dark linen. Thin, and wiry; Ahmal recognized Hajar, chief among his assistants. The young Fallaji smiled guiltily, his teeth filling his narrow face.
“It was a beautiful night, and I could not sleep,” he said. “I thought I would go for a walk.”
Ahmahl smiled. “It is a beautiful night, and I have been walking myself,” he said. “Let us stroll back together.” The old digger turned away, but Hajar did not move from his position. “Are you coming?” Ahmal asked, then added with a smile, “Or are you not alone?” To the shadows behind Hajar he said, “You can come out now as well.”
Ahmahl had expected Hajar’s companion to be one of the noble girl students entrusted to Tocasia. Such romances, though officially frowned upon, were common enough, and Ahmahl still remembered his own youth well enough to know all the justifications and excuses one makes in such situations. A stern lecture and a word to Tocasia to keep an eye on the Argivian girl was all that usually resulted from such a discovery.
Ahmahl was thus surprised when the figure who stepped from the shadows was not a young woman but the familiar, broad-shouldered form of Mishra. Ahmahl’s smile turned to puzzlement, and the old digger said, “Good evening, young master. Are you enjoying the beautiful night?”
Mishra smiled, and even in the starlight Ahmal could see it was a thin, inconsequential smile. “I needed to fetch something from Urza’s—from my old quarters,” he said. “I brought Hajar along to help.”
“I see,” said Ahmahl cautiously, “and this something was so critical that you needed to fetch it now, in the dead of night, when even your brother would be asleep?”
“Yes,” said Mishra. The young man seemed to be turning the idea over in his mind a few times; then apparently he decided to stick with it. His back straightened, and he said again, “Yes. Something important. Do you doubt me?”
By this time Ahmahl had closed the distance between himself and the pair. He could smell the odor of desert wine on them. It was more powerful than on himself.
“Not at all, Young Master Mishra,” said Ahmahl. “And this something is so heavy you need a second man, or a perhaps a third, to carry it?”
“Yes,” said Mishra, then, perhaps feeling he’d given too much away, corrected himself. “No. Not really. Hajar is here more for company.”
“Ah,” said Ahmahl. “Well, I have a need for Hajar. If you can spare him, he can run an errand for me.”
Mishra’s face clouded, and Ahmahl wondered if the lad would continue alone or merely abandon his task. It was obvious he was heading for his brother’s, and Ahmahl thought it likely the younger brother planned to confront Urza with an argument. The youth had obviously taken his courage from a wineskin, a time-consuming task that accounted for the late hour.
Mishra gave another thin smile. “Of course. If you need Hajar for some matter, I can gladly do without him.”
“A small matter,” said Ahmahl. “I could use the help. But I tell you again, I don’t think your brother is awake. His lamps are out.”
Mishra shook his head. “Sometimes my brother lies awake in the darkness and plots into the night. I would be surprised if he were truly asleep.”
Ahmahl raised his hands in mock surrender. “As you say. You know him better than I. Come, Hajar. I have work for you.”
The wiry Fallaji crossed toward Ahmahl, and the older man turned. The pair started back toward the digger’s camp.
Ahmahl looked back. Mishra had already melted back into the shadows. “So why were you there, Hajar?”
The narrow-faced youth scowled in the starlit darkness. “I do not know if I can tell you.”
“We are Fallaji,” said the older man. “If I cared to find out, I could show that your mother’s family and my mother’s family shared a common mother. Come out with it. What were you up to, stinking of nabiz and slinking through the shadows like jackals?”
The younger Fallaji stopped, as clearly motion and moral thought did not work simultaneously. Ahmahl waited. At last the youth said, “Young Master Mishra was angry.”
“Angry at Urza?” asked Ahmahl.
The shadow nodded in the darkness. “About how Master Urza was always picking on him. Was always showing him up. How his brother was trying to trick him out of his stone.”
“And finally he got drunk enough and angry enough to do something about it,” finished Ahmahl.
The narrow shadow shrugged. Yes, that was it, thought Ahmahl. Wake your brother up in the middle of the night to finish an argument from three days before. Get all your thoughts lined up, soak them with alcohol, and set them on fire.
If he was planning for Urza to be awake when he got there. A nasty thought crystallized in Ahmahl’s mind. Perhaps the younger brother was indeed going to Urza’s to retrieve something.
The thought sent a small chill up the old digger’s spine.
“Quickly,” he said to Hajar. “I have an errand for you after all. Go up to Tocasia’s tarp. She should be sleeping there in a chair. Wake her. Tell her what you told me, and tell her to meet me at the brother’s…at Master Urza’s quarters.”
/> Hajar hesitated. “I don’t think—” he started.
Ahmahl hissed. “You’ve had too much to drink to be trusted with thinking, lad! I tell you to fetch Mistress Tocasia, and fetch her you will! Or the next trench you dig will be for the students’ privy! Now off with you!”
The sharpness of the words cut like a knife through Hajar’s drunken confusion. Very much awake and alert, the lad moved quickly toward the rocky outcropping where Tocasia kept her tent.
Ahmahl shook his head and quickly made for the cabin where Urza and Mishra had grown up. It was a heavy, squat thing made of rough-hewn timbers, with a gray slate roof. An equally stout door and candle-waxed paper windows sealed it against the desert dust. Comfortable for one, thought Ahmahl. Suitable for two young boys, and tight for two young men. Impossibly so for two young man who were angry at each other.
A lamp now glowed through the windows, so if burglary was Mishra’s intent it had been foiled. There were voices as well, sharp and argumentative. As Ahmahl approached the cabin, the voices were loud to his hearing, but indistinct. Mishra’s voice was a drunken bellow, while that of Urza’s had a sharp, nasty twang.
Ahmahl stood across the path from the cabin’s doorway. Unless something or someone came flying out the door, he decided, the best course of action would be to wait, at least to wait for Mistress Tocasia.
The sound spread; other lamps were coming on, from the barracks and quarters of the older students. If Young Master Mishra was hoping for a private argument, Ahmahl mused, he had been denied that as well. Now Urza was shouting. All Ahmahl could make out were cries of “Thief!” and “Liar!”
Tocasia arrived, accompanied by Hajar. The young Fallaji took stock of the situation and immediately disappeared in a puff of night air, heading back to the diggers’ tents. He would no doubt spread the word that the two brothers were finally having it out.
Tocasia seemed groggy, as if suddenly awakened. She ran her fingers through her short graying hair. “Why haven’t you stopped them?” she asked Ahmahl.
“I haven’t heard any furniture breaking,” returned the older man. “Even then, we should wait a bit longer. This fight has been brewing for months between these two. They need to get it out of their systems.”
There was the sound of glass breaking within the quarters. Tocasia took a step toward the cabin’s front door, but Ahmahl held out an arm.
“Every time the boys fight, someone breaks up the argument,” he said. “Let them go on. They may get some cuts and bruises, but they need to sort things out their way.”
The shouting was almost incoherent now, more like barking wild dogs than the sound of human voices. There was another crash, this time of something heavy. Most of the students had gathered out in front of the cabin, and some of the diggers had arrived with Hajar.
Then there was a new glow visible through the windows. The golden radiance of the lamp was joined, then overwhelmed, by beacons of red and green.
Ahmahl lowered his arm. He had never seen such colors before from a lamp. He wondered if the brawl had started a fire. Suddenly the idea of letting the two young men pummel each other into understanding did not seem as wise as it had a moment before.
“The stones,” said Tocasia, her voice dry with fear. “They are using the stones against each other.”
“The Thran stones?” asked Ahmahl, but he was speaking to empty air. The ancient scholar was already running for the door. A moment later Ahmahl followed her, waving the others to stay back.
Tocasia was through the door first, Ahmahl hot on her heels. The Fallaji smelled smoke and noticed small scorch-marks burned along the interior of the room, though there were no outright fires.
The brothers were at opposite ends of the room. Each clutched his stone. Urza’s flickered with red bolts of flame, while Mishra’s radiated lances of greenish light. The bolts met in the center, almost as if physical arms grappled with one another, each color trying to overwhelm the other.
The display of power was taking its toll on the brothers. Mishra was sweating like a winded horse; blood streamed from his nostrils. Urza’s face was a rictus of concentration and pain, and he too was bleeding from the nose. Mishra was slightly crouched, while his brother stood haughty and erect. Each clung to his power stone with both hands.
The room itself had been affected by the bolts of might and weakness—it was hot in the cabin. The air shimmered with a song of power, a rising, throbbing noise that grew louder each moment. Neither young man would yield, and the space between them glowed brighter by the moment.
Tocasia raised her hands and shouted something Ahmahl did not understand. Neither brother paid the slightest attention, so intent were they on their private duel. Tocasia cried out again and stepped forward into the bands of red and green, her hands raised as if she were trying to physically silence the boys and their gems.
Ahmahl joined her cry himself and leapt forward, but he was too late. Tocasia broke one of the ruby-green, jade-red beams. As one, both brothers stared up at her. Their concentration slipped, their lancing beams suddenly sprayed in all directions….
And the room exploded.
Ahmahl felt himself physically lifted by the blast and thrown backward, out where the door should have been. The blast blew away all four of the walls and most of the roof and showered the observers outside with splinters and flaming chunks of wood.
Ahmahl realized he was looking at the stars again. They spun gently above his upturned face. Slowly he pulled himself to his feet, feeling something soft give in his left knee. The old digger grimaced and pulled himself up.
There were moans around him from the wounded onlookers and shouts from those attending them. He had not heard the noise a moment before and wondered if he had gone deaf for a moment from the blast. There were more torches now, he saw, and someone had lit a bonfire. Ahmahl staggered to his feet and saw the remains of the old cabin.
It was almost entirely destroyed, only one corner still standing. The entire perimeter was smoking, framing the forms within. There were two, kneeling over a third.
Ahmahl limped into the wreckage of the cabin. Tocasia’s form lay on Urza’s lap, while Mishra knelt at her side. She lay like a broken doll, her neck canted at an odd angle to her body. Mishra held his fingers to her neck, then looked up at Ahmahl. The younger brother shook his head.
Urza looked up as well, ignoring Ahmahl and glaring at his younger brother. It was a hate-filled stare that blazed through the tears streaming down his cheeks. Ahmahl could not remember Urza ever crying in all the time the young man had been in the camp. But beneath the tears, the digger saw accusing fury in Urza’s eyes.
Mishra fell back from his brother as if he had been struck. He rose and staggered a few paces away from Tocasia’s body. Urza did not move; nor did he say anything. Mishra took a step away, then a second, and then the younger brother was running, away from the shattered house and into the night.
No one stopped him in his flight.
* * *
—
Ahmahl laid the last of the cairnstones in place. The students had paid their respects, as well as the diggers, and Hajar had volunteered to make a marker stone to commemorate her resting place. In an area littered with holes and ditches, they buried her in the rocky soil of the outcropping where her tarp had been pitched.
Urza remained beside her through the entire day as the body was dressed, the prayers spoken (old Argivian invocations and Fallaji chants), and the last of the stones were laid over her. Of Mishra there had been no sign, and everyone assumed he would not be seen again.
Urza’s face was gaunt from grief, and Ahmahl for a moment thought the young man could be taken for older than Tocasia had been. The digger started to say something to him, but Urza held up a hand, silencing him. Ahmahl nodded and retreated, limping on his injured knee, leaning on one of Tocasia’s old staves for support. It was the afternoon of the first day after Tocasia’s death.
At dawn of the second day Ahmahl returned
to find Urza in the same position, as if he had been turned to stone to serve as a statue commemorating Tocasia’s passing.
“Master Urza, we must talk,” said Ahmahl softly.
Urza nodded. “I know. There is much to do. There is still a school to run, diggings to continue. Things to take out of the ground.” He said the last in a flat, toneless voice as if it were the last thing he wanted to do.
“We have things we must discuss,” said Ahmahl. “Most of the other students and diggers are all right, though a handful were injured in the blast. Nothing serious.”
Urza nodded, and Ahmahl wondered if Urza had even thought of the others in the camp. Or of his own minor injuries. The scrapes and burns along his arms and neck already had nasty, dark scabs on them.
Ahmahl shook his head and forced out the words. “It would be best to send the students back to Penregon as soon as possible.”
Urza looked up at Ahmahl, surprised. Awareness flickered behind the eyes, dead a few moments before.
“We need to continue Tocasia’s work,” the young man said, stammering in his intensity. “We need to keep going.”
Ahmahl sighed. “The Fallaji follow people more than ideas. The Fallaji respected Tocasia, and so they followed her. They might have followed your brother, who lived among them. But you they do not know. You rarely spent time with them. They will not stay.”
“We can get other diggers,” protested Urza, “and there are the students. We can use them.”
“Without Fallaji present here, you would be more of a target for desert raiders,” Ahmahl said. “There are increasing numbers of Fallaji who do not like Argivians in what they think of as their land. You would have to bring in more men from Argive itself. Soldiers. Diggers. It is not a place for students anymore.”
Urza’s mouth was a thin line. “I see.” Ahmahl could almost see the young man’s thoughts, as one conclusion led to another. “Tell me,” he said finally, “am I safe here now?”
Ahmahl looked at the cairn. He had once assured Tocasia that there would be no trouble and had been wrong. He would not make a similar mistake again. “I do not think you are. The students will be safe, but there are those among my people who blame you for Tocasia’s death. For Mishra’s disappearance.”
