Talismans

by Lisa Lowell

  “The rune stones…I got them from a dragon…in a fair trade,” Stylmach protested but above on the deck a dragon's roar nearly deafened them all. “I thought they were all dead by now.”

  “You thought wrong. Now do you have the stones or not?” Raimi repeated and brought the hooked spear forward to prod him, easily piercing the magical shield Stylmach held around himself.

  “No, I exchanged them…in Malornia,” he protested, backing up against the broken bed. But as he spoke Raimi saw the flicker of a forked tongue escape from behind his teeth. The tongue of a liar?

  With only her instinct, Raimi wished to see everything, including Stylmach as he truly was. Accordingly the sorcerer's appearance changed as much as hers had, if not more. His forked tongue was joined by vomit down his front and the weight of hundreds of chains so heavy he crumpled under them. In his hand he held a vile of poison that smoked evilly and in the other a bloody knife. His face sunk in and huge gaping holes marred his graying cheeks.

  Stylmach didn't witness the profound change in his appearance but another stab with the spear made him recognize he might need to speak the truth to her, so he clarified. “I…well didn't give the stones. I sold them to Malornia.”

  “To whom?” Owailion asked fiercely.

  “To the king, in exchange for a dragon's name.”

  Another name; this time a dragon's name? Would it ever end? Both Owailion and Raimi almost groaned with dread. In a silent warning, she sent to Owailion, “I still cannot cast a spell on him unless it is on all of us. Can you bind him somehow so he cannot use a name again?” Raimi asked in her head, knowing Owailion would hear her despite her inability to fully project to him.

  Owailion nodded and then stepped past his wife, bringing a glittering platinum sword up under the chin of the withered magician. “You have two choices here. You give me your true name and I will wipe your memory of all names and magic, or I simply kill you. Choose?”

  They could both hear his distrust of this bargain. Stylmach feared Owailion's sword held the power to kill him right through his shield but he also distrusted what they would do to him after these Wise Ones stripped him of all magic. They would hold his name and then could torture him as he had tortured Raimi.

  “You keep forgetting, a Wise One cannot lie to you,” Raimi reminded him. “If he says he will take only your magic and memories, he will do nothing more to you, but he will kill you if you don't surrender to our demands.”

  Stylmach managed to nod without getting himself cut on Owailion's sharp blade and then began speaking. “The dragon name I was given was Tiamat. I had not found the time to test it out for one must be close to use it.” For some reason Stylmach could not fathom that got a terrible roar from the dragon on the deck who could witness everything that happened below decks. “And…and my name is …Gnalish.”

  Raimi looked for the flick of a snake tongue and saw none. She nodded her approval and then Owailion spoke. “Gnalish, you will now forget everything of magic you have ever known. You do not know the name of any dragon or Wise One. Your magic is gone Gnalish. And you have been a sailor on this ship for some time. Go home.”

  “Oh, and Gnalish, give me my Heart Stone,” Raimi ordered imperiously as she felt his last tentacles of power over her fall away. She held out her hand, as if Gnalish had it to give her, but he had completely forgotten where it was and all the name magic she could invoke would not change that. Instead she concentrated on the puzzle and felt the little orb's presence in a chest tucked under the bed and retrieved it with a thought. With that Owailion took Raimi by the hand, signaled Imzuli of their departure and they instantly returned to the Land.

  Chapter 21 – Erosion

  “What are we going to do?” Raimi asked Owailion frankly as soon as they returned to the Land. He had brought them to the waterfall just below the animal palace he had almost finished. He looked over at Imzuli who settled on the shore wearily.

  “First, we make a nesting spot for you,” he ordered. “Imzuli, we thank you for your help in dealing with Stylmach, but it is time that you went back to sleep. Will you consider moving to Jonjonel? It is unoccupied and we know you won't be disturbed there.”

  “It seems I must,” the dragon sighed gustily. “Can we plate it in silver?”

  Owailion chuckled and began doing just that from a distance. “It should be ready for you when you arrive,” he promised. With a final farewell the two Wise Ones watched Imzuli lift away from the ground and disappear.

  “I'm going to miss her,” Raimi whispered wistfully.

  “And you…” Owailion interrupted her before Raimi grew too distressed, “you need to stay away from the ocean. Until we know that the Stylmach's mentor does not know you, he must never see you. I will go to Malornia and seek him out. You stay here.”

  Raimi almost argued that his restriction was a useless precaution but Owailion's expression stopped her cold. She dare not let herself fall into another trap. “Perhaps,” she speculated, “that is why you have no inspiration to build my home on the delta; too close to the sea. Very well, I will stay here and work on the gardens. Please see if you can deal with the king that bought the stones and knows Tamaar's name. I fear that they will be misused.”

  Owailion agreed heartily and then with a kiss, he disappeared from her arms.

  And Raimi remained behind in the gardens of Fiain, working quietly within the walls but her mind ranged elsewhere, picking away at the mysteries that remained; why the forests had died, why her delta had become a swamp, how Imzuli's mountain could possibly become a valley with a Wise One's palace sunk into it. They had no answers for such questions and it distressed her. If Stylmach's mentor also knew her name, could he also perform the magic to destroy those things in the Land. Working on gardens did not distract her enough from the uncomfortable changes they had foreseen and still could not fathom. The bowl's disturbing premonition lingered.

  Thankfully Owailion returned to her every night and shared his progress or she would have gone mad with worry. “The demons have completely left Enok's village,” he reported. “It's as if their work was done and they have moved on.”

  “What will you do now?” she asked although she really feared to know.

  “I'm moving south along the coast, headed toward their capital city,” Owailion explained. “I'm hoping that Stylmach's mentor is attached to the crown and I can confront both he and the king at the same time. However, since the Memories have no references for Malornia, I must spy out my path as I go.”

  Raimi did not suggest he join a ship. Her seasickness spell afflicted anyone who possessed magic, even a Wise One. Having him gone was tedious for both of them and Raimi had to pick up the slack in addressing demons and continued working on gardens while Owailion traversed Malornia. For weeks they endured this routine into the summer.

  Then, on midsummer's night, after celebrating Owailion's 'birthday', Raimi woke from sleep terrorized. She sat up in the dark of one of Lara's newly completed bedrooms, panting at a dream she could not remember.

  Owailion roused and stretched out an arm to her. “What is it?”

  “A dream…and I cannot remember it.” She shuddered and almost could not get the words out. “Do you think…?”

  “We wiped Stylmach's mind and I have not been able to find his master,” replied Owailion as he pulled his sweetheart into his arms and rocked her, hoping to comfort her while he hid his own fears. “In the morning we will look in the bowl and see what you saw.”

  Raimi would not be comforted. Instead she revealed something more. “I have put warning spells on Imzuli's mountain and the delta. I want to know if any magic is used near them, just in case,” she advised him. She had continued experimenting with deep spells that left no trace until triggered and so forgot to tell him until this dream reminded her. Deep spells were like deep water, unnoticed until someone drowned. “No alarm went off.”

  Owailion approved her precautions by kissing the top of her head and settling a dreamle
ss sleep spell over Raimi's mind.

  The next morning, testing out the newly finished kitchen at Lara, Raimi wandered in to discuss what had happened in the night. She carried with her the bowl and pipes, knowing they would be needed. She thought deeply of the impressions of her dream out in the open so Owailion would know what she feared. For her, dreams had rarely been enlightening. She brought forward the bowl and whispered her request. “Show me my dream last night.”

  In the bowl's reflection they both watched as Raimi walked through the deep Don Forest. She drew her hands along the bark, seeking the sickness that would one day make this forest die off; one of the lesser damages they had witnessed in the bowl's prophesies for the Land. She found no sign of fading here, for the trees stood so thickly that she found it hard to find a path.

  “Why am I here?” dream Raimi asked of no one.

  The trees seemed to whisper something to her and she could not understand the language they spoke. “I cannot understand you,” she replied.

  Then her perspective turned. She was still in the Don Forest but instead of near the sea she found the Great Chain looming before her. This time the mountains whispered to her and while the words seemed clearer, she could not understand the language of stone any more than the language of the trees.

  Then a third time her location changed and she stood knee deep in the river, where the forest surrounded her and she looked down, hearing the words oozing from the mountains and trees still. The river added to the melodious song, like they would fill in the tones for each other. She looked down in the flow and saw there a reflection of mountains, not the forest around her. Puzzled, she asked again, “What are you saying?”

  To her surprise, a glowing Heart Stone came rolling down through the clear water. It had come down from the mountains, through this forest and now was headed out to sea, she thought. Raimi reached for it, but unaccountably, it rolled away from her. Usually the river would bring her anything she asked for, but this Heart Stone had a mind of its own. It scurried away too quickly for her to keep up though it remained always in sight. She followed it downstream until the trees began to thin and she could taste saltwater from the ocean in the water. The trees gave way to sea grasses and the Heart Stone stopped rolling away from her. Raimi plucked it out of the water and looked up into the open sky.

  “You will meet here. The next Wise One's name will be Gilead,” whispered the forest, the river and the mountains. In surprise Raimi gasped as she finally understood the words and awakened at that point.

  Both Owailion and Raimi blinked, as if they had been under a spell and then looked down into the bowl. There, as if it had been waiting the whole time, a new Heart Stone rested in the shallow dish. Amazed, Raimi picked it up and noted how it did not beat to her heart's pace.

  “Gilead, the next Wise One?” She grinned as she said it. This might be closest to having a child they would ever get and it felt much the same. They both laughed at their alarm in an innocent dream and kissed in congratulations. At last they knew something positive that was bound to happen in the future. They had no clues as to when or how, but Raimi now understood that the new Wise One would come at the Don River Delta.

  “Maybe we should work on the palace at Don,” suggested Owailion eagerly. “It's probably livable now and we can keep an eye open for him…or her. It is just strange that you have the Heart Stone now to give him.”

  “Or her,” Raimi qualified. “I wonder which affinity he or she might have. Forest, mountain, sea; they all showed up in the dream.”

  “There's a definite mountain palace, one for the sea and the one on the Don might be a forest palace.” Owailion reminded her. “Let's go and see how the architecture is coming together. It's not too close to the sea where an outlander might see you.”

  They traveled instantly to the delta of the Don River using one of Owailion's orbs and looked around, hoping for an arriving Wise One, but there was nothing. It was several miles to the open ocean so they did not fear that some Malornian sorcerer might spy Raimi there. Besides the palace there had been under construction for some time and she could remain inside, out of sight. The building still lacked the more appreciated things like a hearth they could put wood into or running water. This did not stop them from camping inside the kitchen. Raimi looked into the architecture to see signs of what the affinity here would be and some hope to indicate it belonged to a King or Queen of the Forest, but nothing definitive.

  “Should we ask about the future, to see who is coming as the next Wise One,” she wondered as she pulled out the bowl. Seeing something good in it had restored her faith in the Talisman.

  Owailion wanted to stop her. The future, while available always seemed cursed when they looked at it. He felt it should be exclusively for the past where it had always been more helpful. However, it was not his Talisman to command so he nodded and then stepped away to see if he could speed up the placement of hearth stones so they could have a fire.

  Raimi looked into the water of her bowl, whispered the words she wanted, “Show me the future occupant of this castle.”

  But the bowl remained lifeless, showing only the ceiling of the kitchen. That was curious. Raimi's doubts filled back in. Maybe she was being too pushy, demanding too much from her magic instead of letting it come naturally. A little voice in her mind whispered again that the things she touched always went awry. She would get into trouble; trying to do too much and not being patient with God's time.

  Raimi shivered and contented herself to go find a bed for them in the half finished palace.

  * * *

  Nightmares again plagued her and this time Raimi could not escape them.

  “Good girl, you've come. You now have a perfectly legitimate reason to stay down here near the sea. Now, remember, you will not react to any of these communications, Raimi. You are worried that your curse might hurt Owailion, so you will not tell him, Raimi. Now, let's see how subtle you can be. Raimi, I want you to kill the Don Forest but do not destroy it in one fell swoop. Make it a slow death that Owailion will not notice.”

  This soft, insinuating voice did not ask questions, did not engage in conversation and did a far better job of binding her within the name magic that Stylmach. She could not conceive of any way to mitigate the commands. She had already been forced to turn off the alarms she had set on the delta and Imzuli's mountain. A slow death for the forest; how was she supposed to manage that? She knew copper was how you killed a tree's roots. Drive a copper nail into a stump and the trunk would slowly decay and never spring back up. So could she accomplish the same thing by bringing copper into the soil, slowly poisoning a forest?

  The streams of Raimi's mind knew the paths the Don's headwaters could flow where it might pick up copper in the mountains and start upping the mineral levels in the Don River. Subtly she shifted the paths of a few creeks far up in the eastern arm of the Great Chain, washing them over exposed copper and she pushed a spring up through one especially copper rich area so that the water table would do the rest. Shifting the water around would be enough to over time destroy the Don Forest and no one, not even a Wise One would know unless they suspected her deceit and looked into her mind.

  “That's good, Raimi. Now, erase this dream from the bowl's visions. You will sleep well Raimi and when you wake you will forget this whole conversation.” The voice whispered subtly, insinuating itself into her dreams as it had for weeks now. Sending Owailion to Malornia had been a waste when the enemy was already with the gates of her mind. She would forget the specifics but something inside remembered the manipulation. She knew that this was worse than before, but that knowledge never followed her into the waking world.

  * * *

  Raimi thanked Owailion for finishing a hearth and the pump system for the Don palace quickly, as they intended to stay here until the new Wise One arrived. His work at finding the Malornian Master had borne no fruit and it was too dangerous to go out looking for more. They could set up housekeeping here as well as anywhere
else. Raimi carefully encouraged this settling in. Perhaps he would notice what Raimi would not, could not let him see; how depressed she felt. She smiled brightly. She kissed him often and the gardens expanded wonderfully in the growing summer weather.

  But keeping Owailion away from home only worsened Raimi's fear for other reasons. She disliked coming so close to the ocean. There might be another ship out there, initiating name magic manipulation on her again. She knew something was wrong despite the lost memories, so rather than give in to that fear, she took action. One morning Raimi called on the mind of a sea gull that lived on the delta and asked it to head toward the open ocean, seeking for any interactions with man beyond the Seal. The bird flew away into the bright sun and she went back to work on the gardens again.

  At dusk the gull returned to her and she spoke with it. The bright eyed bird did not see anything unusual, at least on the human level but there had been strange changes out to sea just beyond the Seal. A new island, shaped like a pointing finger now stood out among the waves. It had only a few trees upon it and the birds were just now investigating it for a rookery, so it had not been there the season before. While Owailion investigated the still growing stones at Zema Raimi sent her mind out on the delta as far as she dared without leaving the Seal and tried to see what the bird had described but the fog hid it from view. Was it an outpost for the magician that stalked and used her, free from the seasickness that kept others at bay? Could she ask Owailion about the finger island?

  “No,” replied the voice that night when he rummaged through her mind and heard her plotting. “You are trying to discover who I am and how I am using your exquisite magic. Raimi, you will do nothing that will reveal me to you. You are under my control and it will remain that way eternally.”

  And to emphasize the point, the gull she had used as a spy dropped into her lap dead in the middle of her nightmare. This one she would remember.