Unpredictable Fortunes (The Memory Stone Series Book 3)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  They hugged each other, then Theus went back to the bunk that awaited him, and lay awake for a long time before he fell asleep.

  In the morning he helped perform some of the chores around the farm, while he thought about Vanline and Eiren, who were perhaps already gathering together wagons of food supplies to carry east, on the way to Limber. He needed to begin his recruitment of people to go to Limber, and he had little time to spare. He needed to find a way to speed up his actions, even though he had no real plan for his recruitment actions.

  Speed and timing – Theus feared they were going to be his downfall. He was going to fail in the vital assignment he had been given. He had already failed once, in a sense, because he hadn’t arrived back at his home in time to save his father’s life.

  He looked up at the sky overhead, full of regret and despair. The sun was shining brightly, and he thought about all the sunlight that was bringing life to the world with all its energy. If he could tap into energy like that, he could travel further. He could have taken his long, magical steps without draining himself completely. He could have taken four or five or six or more massive leaps across the landscape daily, instead of staggering through three steps in a day. If only he had been given the ability to use that energy, instead of being limited to his own, he mourned.

  Life was unfair, he thought. He pressed his shovel down into the ground to dig out more of the drainage ditch that had become blocked with debris, and threw the dirt aside. It was unfair that dark magicians could take energy from another source, especially from other people, while he was limited to only taking energy harmlessly from himself. He ought to be able to take the sunlight up in the air, on the cloud tops, in the field around him, just for a moment or two, and use it.

  He recollected the horrible feeling he had experienced, when Donal had reached into him and attempted to take energy away. It had felt incredibly painful; he knew why, he realized. Donal had reached into him in an aggressive manner, as though he were entitled to take the energy, and had shown no gentleness, no subtlety. The deadly magician had practiced no regard for matching the method of capturing energy to the availability of the energy.

  If he would have been Donal, Theus began to think, and then he froze. His foot had pressed the shovel back into the ditch blockage, but he moved no further.

  He realized that he understood how the dark magician had taken energy from him. The method was about the transfer of power, about the alignment of the energy within the source with the channels within the recipient of the power. It seemed like something that he could use, something he could modify and apply – apply to the sunlight around him.

  Theus closed his eyes, and took time to examine himself, to look within his soul and spirit to understand how he found and received and used energy. He saw signs of an ability to change; he could manage to adjust himself to receive the power from a new source, as long as he truly understood the source and matched himself perfectly to it.

  He opened his eyes again and looked around. The sun was in a different place; it had moved as time had passed. He’d spent more time than he realized in his inward exploration of himself.

  Theus looked at the sunlight, then let his psyche explore the patterns of the raw energy that was spread across the countryside. It was unfocused and unfiltered. He sensed how it fell upon the leaves of the plants, and he sensed how the plants were reflecting away what they didn’t use from the spectrum of light. He’d never realized that light had so many components, he thought in momentary wonder, and then he realized that there was a way for him to mimic the plants and capture a portion of the sunlight to provide energy for himself.

  “Theus, what are you doing? You’ve been working on that one spot in the ditch for hours,” Thera’s voice was behind him.

  He began to adjust himself. He internally, selectively modified the paths that energy followed within him, and then closed his eyes. He felt the warmth of the sunlight falling upon him. It was only a part of the sunlight, he realized.

  “Theus, did you hear me?” he heard Thera. She was directly behind him, perhaps only a few steps away.

  He opened his systems up, and began to reach out, to embrace and gather a fraction of the energy that was flying through the air.

  “Theus! Great heavens, you’re glowing!” he faintly heard Thera scream as he felt the energy from the sunlight flood into him.

  And then he passed out.

  Chapter 23

  Theus awoke to the sound of Thera calling his name. He was cold and wet.

  “Theus, that’s it, you’re waking up. That’s a good boy. Come on Theus,” Thera called him.

  “I’m okay,” he told her as he eyes fluttered open.

  “You’re not okay if you’re lying in the water of the drainage ditch. You passed out Theus. You were glowing!” she told him.

  He looked at her as he awkwardly pushed himself out of the muddy ditch.

  “I think I found a way to have more power,” he told his sister. “I was trying to collect the power in the sunlight.

  “Do you know that sunlight has many different colors in it?” he asked in a wondering aside.

  He twisted around and stood up, while Thera rose to her feet beside him.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “Just a second,” he murmured. He closed his eyes and examined himself. He felt it; he felt the residual traces of the sun’s energy. It had entered his body; his spirit had reached out and absorbed it. And once it had entered his body it had needed to leave; he had no way to contain or store it. It had exited him by turning into an expression of light – he truly had glowed, just as Thera had shouted.

  He could do better. He could coordinate his collection and consumption of the energy. He would have to.

  “I’m so stupid,” he muttered as he realized the obviousness of the matter.

  “I could have told you that,” Thera was obviously feeling less worried about him, if she was willing to joke with him about the situation.

  “Come here,” Theus told her, as he looked across the valley to where their farmhouse stood. He reached out to draw her into a hug. He was going to demonstrate to her – and to himself – the monumental breakthrough he had achieved.

  “Theus, no, you’re all wet and muddy! Stop it!” Thera struggled against his clinch. He extended his reach out into the sunlight once again, while also calling upon the spell for translocation, and he focused on just a small step, enough of a step to carry himself and his sister back to the farmhouse.

  He gave Thera a tug, and she came against him, as he stepped forward, and they were suddenly in the farmyard between the house and the barn.

  “Oh gods!” Thera shouted.

  She clung tightly to him for a moment, then pushed away from him, and stared at him, wide-eyed.

  “What did you just do?” she whispered the question.

  Theus took a moment to explore his own status. His personal energy level was undiminished. He hadn’t used any of his own power at all to move the two of them – it had been accomplished completely by relying on the sunlight.

  “I just moved the two of us from the hillside to the house, just using sunlight. I’ve never done that before,” he answered in a tone of wonder. “Thera, if I can do this, if I can use sunlight, I can do so much more now. The limits will fall away.” He told her excitedly.

  Thera stared off at the hillside they had left moments earlier, then looked at Theus.

  “Can you teach me to do this?” she asked eagerly.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, caught completely by surprise by the unexpected question.

  She displayed a crestfallen expression on her face.

  “I need to have a specific memory stone, the one that taught the secrets of white magic to me,” he quickly explained. “If I have that stone, then maybe I could help you become a magician too. But it’s a long way away,” he told her. “In more ways than one,” he added, as he thought of the mystical stone that
he had given to Glory to give to Coriae.

  “When we have a chance, we’ll try,” he promised her.

  “I’ll go finish the ditch work, then be right back,” he told her. He reached out into the sunlight, and took a magically enhanced step back to the hillside, where his shovel laid on the ground. He set to working energetically on the blockage in the ditch, and soon had it cleared away, allowing the water to flow rapidly away from the soggy field on the hillside. With drier soil, the field would be able to produce a crop, and provide food. Not that he expected anyone to be living on the farm to tend the crop or consume the food, he reminded himself as he thought about the need to move his family to Limber.

  That night he invited his mother outside, and he demonstrated his ability to produce light, and to become invisible, and to throw his voice.

  “Mother, I’ve been given these powers, and I’ve been told to do important things. I’ve got to move people to Limber. I’m going to start recruiting people tomorrow,” he told her. “And I want my own family to be the first ones who agree to follow me.”

  She protested about leaving the farmstead that her husband had labored so mightily to build from the raw, untamed soil of the land, but in the end she agreed to follow him.

  And the next day, using the abundant energy that was available even on a cloudy day, Theus traveled around the Jewel Hills to talk to people he knew, and he continued his conversations on the following two days, giving everyone a date to gather at the road beside the river.

  When those two days were finished, he returned to the farmhouse and spent time with his younger siblings, taking them on magical jaunts from one hilltop to another, while Thera and his mother packed their meager belongings into a small cart that the goat would pull.

  And on the next day, Theus went into the center of the Jewel Hills, in search of more potential settlers to take to Limber.

  He recollected the time Grant had taken him along a stream and shown him desperate miners panning for raw memory stones. They were people who had no chance of success, people who were just one step away from caving into the large mining conglomerates and becoming virtual slaves who worked for the companies while earning next to nothing. They were people he needed, and people he wanted to save from their dismal future.

  “You know you aren’t going to find anything,” Theus told a pair of desperate stakeholders who were shaking boxes with screens, as they sifted through the mud and stones at the bottom of a stream.

  “There are some memory stones here, but not many, and even fewer that are any good, and you wouldn’t know a good one if you found it anyway,” he told the startled man and woman after he appeared in front of them.

  “We’ve got as much of a chance to find stones as anyone else!” the woman protested defiantly, ignoring the fact that Theus had materialized in front of her, as she defended her right to pursue her futile quest.

  “What have you found today?” Theus asked.

  “Those over there,” the man motioned towards a dingy cloth on the ground beside the stream, where a half dozen small stones had been placed.

  Theus picked up the stones one by one and studied them with his abilities to judge memory stones. None of them were memory stones.

  “These are worthless; they don’t hold memories,” he told his small audience. He reached his hand into the gravel bank on the side of the stream and pulled out a handful, then sorted through them. One small pebble would serve as a memory stone, and he tossed it on the towel. “That little fragment is the best stone you’ll see in a week, and it’s only worth two pence out here,” he told them.

  “There’s a better way to live, and a better place,” he began to tell his story.

  Minutes later he had convinced the despondent pair, and told them to make the offer to move to Limber to anyone else they knew in the area. He left them and moved on to find other miners to convince.

  Two days later, he was done with his recruiting, and was ready to help his own family move to the rendezvous spot on the riverside road. His mother cried a steady stream of tears as they walked away from the place where she and her husband had tried so hard to make a life, while the children pranced in excitement at the beginning of the adventure.

  Chapter 24

  The next day, Theus found himself with a collection of scores of people who were assembled, and relieved to see him arrive. For some, such as the miners who were on their last legs of hope, the offer of a new life was a miraculous opportunity for a new beginning, while for others, such as members of relatively prosperous farming families, it was a gamble to find new prospects for life in a different place.

  He wore himself out organizing the group and sorting them as best he could along lines that he thought Vanline would have used, then setting them all in motion to the west, traveling along the same road that he had covered when he had been Grant’s indentured servant in Vanline’s caravan. The group moved at a slow pace at first, until slow reorganization and sharing of rides allowed the oldest and weakest and slowest to sit in wagons, as the fleeter afoot kept easy pace with the procession.

  Theus placed responsibilities on Thera as his chief assistant, and together they established a watch system and sentries and general safety for all their wards. After a handful of days, they reached Waterspot and passed through the settlement. Theus marveled at his memories of his first visit to the collection of buildings, which he had thought was substantial at the time he had first experienced it while with Grant. It was an average-sized village, perhaps slightly larger, he realized with a grin and a shake of his head.

  He stopped at the local market and bought several supplies, though not everything he wanted – he wasn’t able to find many items in the remote, small city. But he mixed remedies for several of the common ailments, fed some travelers who were low on supplies, and improved the spirits of the pioneers who were on the move.

  And the day after they left Waterspot, Theus’s group of travelers rendezvoused with Vanline’s caravan of goods.

  They spent half a day and the night in one place, resting and celebrating the meeting of the two parts of the new population of Limber. They feasted in a great meal in the evening, and the skeptics among the Jewel Hill refugees grew greater faith in Theus’s myth of restoring Limber.

  “You really found people to leave, didn’t you?” Vanline asked Theus that night as they sat together and ate. “I didn’t think you could find more than a handful out there in the woebegone wilderness,” he admitted.

  “So where do we go from here?” the caravan leader asked.

  “We turn around, and start going west again,” Theus replied. “I’ll need to go find out some directions on where we go and how we deliver all this to Limber. I’ll leave in the morning, then come back to find you as soon as I know,” he promised.

  “You and Eiren can help Thera get our group moving. With all your wagons, we’ll be able to move a lot faster,” Theus reckoned.

  The next morning he bid his family farewell, and eagerly began to use his new abilities to travel towards Limber. He made one sunlight-powered step to the northwest of the caravan, then a minute later made another, and a minute after that he took a third step. In less than five minutes’ time he’d traveled as far as he would in a full day if he traveled under his own power, and as far as he’d travel in three days if he didn’t possess the abilities of white magic.

  “How am I doing, Voice?” he asked.

  “You are impressing me, young acolyte,” the Voice answered in a deep tone. “I am impressed by all that you are accomplishing, and my companions have greater hopes now, because of the potential that you are bringing to life.

  “Finish your trip to Limber, and talk to the granitines, as you plan,” it instructed him.

  Theus journeyed on to the eastern range of the tall Wallchick Mountains, then began to take many small steps to scout around, looking for Limber among the valleys.

  “Where is it, Voice?” he asked in frustration an hour later. He’d see
n no sign of the city after a score of investigations.

  “You are too far north. Go south, and look for the tallest peak in the range. The city lies in a valley on the east side of that mountain,” the Voice provided guidance.

  Minutes later, Theus saw the towering mountain, and stepped towards it, then walked in the conventional manner along a goat path that led him to the east side, and down to the city center.

  “Crystal, Gem, Rocky, Sandy?” he called out the names of members of the race of stone figures that guarded and maintained the city.

  “Lord Prometheus?” one of the creatures appeared around a corner and raced towards him. “We had no warning of your approach, I apologize. How may we serve you?” the granitine asked.

  “The city looks very well,” Theus commented. The columns were all upright, the paving stones had no weeds growing between them, the roofs were all intact, and the city looked as though it were already lived in.

  “This part of the city has seen all repairs complete, as we hope that you are bringing us humans to inhabit the city?” Rocky asked hopefully.

  “The caravan is on its way here. We will have a few dozen people to start with. From what I see, you have provided plenty of space for us all to move in. But I need to know about the road; will it be ready for caravan to travel upon it?” Theus asked.

  “A great many of us are working in the mountains, rebuilding the ancient road that used to lead to Limber,” Rocky said. “It is very near to being finished.”

  “Where can I find it?” Theus asked. “I need to know where it will join the river road. My people and supplies are traveling on the river road now, and I need to tell them where we will turn to take the way to Limber.”

  “Go to the south side of the city, and you will find where the road begins. Then simply follow it until you reach the constructors who are rebuilding it,” Rocky advised. “Crystal is in the south working on the road. She will be pleased to see you,” he offered.