Gemworld

by Jeremy Bullard

The heavenly smell of roasted chicken wafted up from a fire that blazed near the wagon door. Two birds hung spitted over the fire, juices dripping into the sputtering flame. An iron tripod stood near the fire pit, holding a blackened kettle aloft to cool. He was just about to inspect the contents of the kettle when all thoughts of food went right out of his head.

  Marissa stepped out of her wagon an absolute vision. Her hair was washed and brushed, flowing over her shoulders in auburn waves. She wore a soft velvet dress, a vibrant green to compliment her eyes, and cut to accentuate her full figure in all the right places. Granted, all the necessary body parts were covered, but the way they were covered… Sal reflexively ran a hand across his mouth, attempting to stem the flow of drool that threatened to spill from his mouth. He stammered a greeting that went unnoticed by the other. Marissa was having a hard enough time getting her own mouth to work right.

  That set the pace for the early part of the evening. Conversation was halting at first, if not altogether awkward, but soon began to flow. Before they knew it, the moon was high in the sky and the fire had died down, their half eaten dinner long forgotten. But the tension between them had finally broken, and food was the furthest thing from their minds.

  Testing the boundaries of this new comfort zone, Sal commented off-handedly, “The women of this world are not exactly what I expected.”

  “How so?” Marissa asked, quirking an amused eyebrow.

  “Well… please don’t take this the wrong way, but in my world, women were once thought to be inferior to men. We could chalk it up to misunderstanding what our religions taught us of the relationship between man and woman, or maybe it’s because women are physically weaker than men, but whatever it was, the man was thought to be the protector and the woman was thought to be the helper. Long story short, our world has moved on from that, and men and women generally see each other as equals.”

  Sal paused for a moment to gather his nerve, then pressed on. “I see a lot of our earlier culture in yours. Almost all of the fighters I’ve seen in this village are men. Delana cooks and cleans for Reit. And if I may be so bold, even you caught yourself when you asked me to dinner. But at the same time, Delana is the head of her Order here in Caravan, and you’re… umm…”

  “Head of the Artisan Guild,” Marissa finished for him, her expression neutral, volunteering nothing.

  “Yeah,” Sal said. “How does something like that happen?”

  Marissa pursed her lips to hide some feature, though Sal couldn’t tell if it was a smile or a frown. Not knowing made him feel more than a little self-conscious. He silently prayed he hadn’t stepped all over some line he hadn’t known was there.

  When she finally spoke, her face was carefully schooled. “The relationship between man and woman has a long and involved story in my world, but to sum it up, it was always about unity. When men and women were equal, they both had their own way but there was no unity and nobody was happy. When men were in charge, there was unity but the women weren’t happy. And when women were in charge, there was unity but the men weren’t happy. We’re more… wise today than we were then.” A smile tugged at Marissa’s lips, but she said no more.

  Now completely on the hook, Sal dared just a bit further. “So who’s in charge now?”

  “We are, of course,” she replied innocently. “But we allow the men to think they are, so everybody’s happy.”

  Sal chuckled a bit sheepishly. “Unity first, huh?” he said, bringing Marissa’s playful smirk to the full.

  So it’s your move, Sal thought to himself, his nervousness snaking its way past his mirth. It’s not that she can’t make a move, but that she won’t. Amounts to the same thing though, don’t it? You gotta cowboy up. Well, what are you waiting for? You want her, she wants you. You won’t get a better opportunity to talk to her, so just suck it up and do it. It’s now or nev—

  “So what’s this long story about you and that obsidian chip?” Marissa asked, deftly changing the subject and completely throwing Sal’s train of thought. He groaned inwardly as his courage flagged yet again.

  Sal pursed his lips as he thought of the best way to approach the question. “Remember a little while ago when I was telling you how I got here? Yeah, I know. Kinda weird, huh? Well, it gets weirder. The night of the strike on Merrick’s laboratory in Laos, I was shot like three or four times, and even had a computer moni—umm, big... glass... thing... explode in my face, putting this eye out,” he said, pointing with his left hand. “Tore my face to ribbons. Anyway, when I arrived at the prison in Schel Veylin, I was half dead. The prison emeralds made a passing attempt at healing me. Jaren had to come back behind and redo what the emeralds had already done, but there was only so much he could do with flesh that was already healed. I think they really botched my eye up, because now it tingles every time I touch a piece of magical gemstone. Well, except for this.” He drew the obsidian shard from his pocket and held it out.

  “And you’re eye isn’t tingling now?”

  Sal shook his head.

  Marissa frowned. “How odd. It sounds a bit like what happens when a potential mage ascends—when he first touches his soulgem. I’m not certain. I only know that much because I’ve crafted the Tiled Hand so many times. I’ve even seen it used once or twice, though I can’t say I understand everything about what it does. From what I’ve seen, a newly ascended mage finds that he is more sensitive to the flows of mana, and can feel all forms of magic, not just that of his own gemstone. But this... I just don’t know. I’m not a mage, so I wouldn’t know where to start,” she shrugged apologetically.

  Sal glanced at his wrist at the timepiece he’d created. It was an absolute marvel to Marissa, who’d never conceived of such a thing. It was silver backed, and held to his wrist by a wide leather strap. The faceplate was made of emerald, with four rubies quartering it and a fifth ruby in the center. As a final touch, he’d cut notches into the emerald faceplate at regular intervals to mark the hours. The runes took a bit of effort to work out, as the current form of timekeeping was based on the movements of the sun. But a sundial would quit at dusk, and that left too much of the day unaccounted for, so Sal went a different route. He etched runes onto the silver backing that would cause the emerald to reflect the ebb and flow of life as the day progresses, and the rubies to reflect the movement of the sun around the earth as a whole. He found the end result to be quite satisfactory. A glowing green line shot from the central ruby toward a point just left of the top of the timepiece, marking the hour.

  “Well, it’s about thirty minutes to midnight... err, third watch,” Sal estimated. “Jaren may still be up. I can head over there and ask him. Wanna come with?”

  Marissa was on her feet before he was even done speaking. Curiosity, that’s all, Sal thought, letting his insecurities bind him to silence once more.

  They found Jaren sitting on the stoop of his wagon, clothed in his bed garments but wide awake and pouring over one of his many books. If Jaren was surprised to have visitors so late at night, he didn’t let it show. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked cheerfully, as if it was perfectly normal for him to entertain guests when the rest of the world was in bed.

  “I needed to talk to you about something,” Sal answered. At this, Jaren flicked his eyes to Marissa, then back to Sal, who answered the unspoken question with a minute shake of his head. No, he hadn’t “declared his intentions” yet. Jaren’s eyebrows arched slightly, a silent rebuke. Sal’s first impulse was to get defensive about it, but he stopped just short. This was neither the time nor the place. He flicked a quick glance at Marissa, who’d missed the entire exchange. No. Definitely not the time. Instead, he produced the obsidian shard and held it out to Jaren. The emerald took the shard and inspected it briefly, then turned expectantly back to Sal.

  “Back when I started working with Marissa, I noticed that my eye—the messed up one—would start itching for no apparent reason. At first, I thought it was allergies, or dust, or something. But then I reali
zed that it only happened when I was working with the gems. I thought it might have been some sort of aftereffect of the healing, so I ignored it. That is, until I touched that obsidian chip.”

  Jaren listened in silence as Sal talked, rubbing his chin thoughtfully throughout. At this last, he frowned, but remained silent for a while longer.

  “Which gems cause your eye to react?” Jaren asked slowly.

  “Ruby, emerald, sapphire, amethyst... All of them except obsidian.”

  “What about granite?”

  Sal paused, considering. “Now that you mention it, I’m not sure. We’ve never worked with granite before.”

  Jaren thought for a moment more, then nodded. “Marissa, would you be so kind as to gather up the other Heads of Order, and bring them to my tent? Thank you. Just tell them I’ll explain when they arrive. No, Sal, you wait here with me. I want to try something.”

  He ducked into his wagon as Marissa left on her errand. Sal heard the crash and thunk of clutter being rearranged. Finally, Jaren emerged with a plaque. The plaque was made of rich lacquered wood, intricately carved with arcane symbols. Pointless symbols, Sal realized. Since they were not etched into a silver backing, whatever power the runes held wouldn’t be released. They were merely for decoration. On the front was the shape of a hand made entirely of gemstones, divided up into tiles. Each finger was crafted of a different stone—amethyst, sapphire, emerald, ruby, and granite. The palm was tiled in obsidian.

  “The Tiled Hand,” Sal said, somewhat confused.

  “Yes. When a mage completes his training in Bastion, he is commissioned, as part of his continued service to the Academy and the Ranks, to act as a recruiter of sorts, seeking out others who were similarly born with the potential to become a mage. When the recruiter comes into contact with such an individual, he introduces the would be mage to his soulgem using this.” He paused, extending the plaque to Sal. “Thankfully, the soulgems, while somewhat plentiful, are precious and come at great price, so rarely does someone come in contact with his soulgem prior to having touched the Tiled Hand. Regardless of how it happens, when it does happen, the potential mage is... changed,” he finished lamely, for lack of a better word. Sal took his meaning, though, and he wasn’t buying it.

  “If that’s the case and I’m a potential mage, then why didn’t I change when I first picked up a gemstone? And why would I react to nearly all of the gemstones instead of just the one?”

  “I don’t have all the answers,” Jaren admitted. “But the Tiled Hand is where all mages start. If we are to find the answers, we must begin with what we know.” Again, he offered the Hand to Sal.

  Can’t fight the logic there, Sal thought ruefully. Slowly, he raised his hand over the plaque.

  Suddenly, he was taken by a wave of panic. What would happen if he was a mage, somehow? Would it kill him, because he wasn’t from this world? Would it drive him insane?

  “If I’m not completely satisfied, can I return the unused portion for a full refund?”

  “Pardon?” Jaren asked, confused.

  “Never mind. Poor attempt at humor.”

  Reaching out, he tentatively stroked each tile. He felt the familiar tickling sensation from the four fingers. Touching the obsidian palm, he felt nothing, as with the shard. Then he touched the thumb, which he assumed was the granite tile. Strangely, the stone brought no more reaction than the obsidian did.

  Well, that’s all of them, and I’m still the same, he thought. Licking his dry lips, he extended his hand over the plaque, matching the position of his hand with the position of its gemstone counterpart. Sal hesitated a moment longer then, holding his breath, he pressed his hand into the design.

  Expecting a flash of pain, or whatever it was that mages felt when they changed, Sal sighed his relief when he was greeted with nothing more than the telltale twitch in his left eye.

  Apparently, Jaren expected something as well, for his face was unreadable. Returning to his stoop, Jaren lapsed into grave silence, a puzzled frown etched on his face. For long moments, Sal watched his gemstone eyes flash back and forth as the emerald mentally attacked the situation from different angles.

  Marissa soon returned, her mission successful. The other three Heads of Order arrived on her heels, in varying stages of undress. Delana was the worst off, with only a light house robe to cover a sheer silken gown. Sal looked at her apologetically, but the look was lost on her. Her violet eyes flicked from Sal to Jaren and back again, curiosity burning within. Senosh and Menkal seemed equally interested in the night’s events.

  Sal listened quietly as Jaren consulted the other mages. If he’s a potential, he should have ascended when he touched the Hand. Maybe it’s a residual effect of the healing—Sal is from another world, after all. Was it possible that Sal was a potential in his own world? The questions ran on and on.

  Finally, Sal had had enough. “Look,” he said, exasperated. “Isn’t there some way you can test me without using the gems? I mean, what do you guys do when there isn’t a Tiled Hand around?”

  “Mana,” Menkal said, catching on. Met with blank looks, the sapphire mage elaborated. “Our souls are attuned to different gems, but the end result is still the same—we are able to wield mana to shape our world. We test him for sensitivity first, as we would in lieu of the Hand. If he doesn’t ascend, we can fill him with mana forcibly, try to effect ascension that way.

  “Ah, I think I see,” said Jaren. “Even without his soulgem present, he might be able to establish contact through an influx of pure mana.”

  All of which was Greek to Sal, but he listened in silence as the mages deliberated.

  Agreed on a course of action, the Heads of Order arranged themselves around Sal in much the same way they were on the dais just weeks before. Touching Sal with one hand, their neighbor with the other, the mages closed their eyes.

  Instantly, Sal’s eye began to twitch beneath the lid. His breath caught in his chest as the mana flowed into him. He could feel it building up within him! Like sunlight, it filled every crack and corner of his being. He was elated at the awesome power that surged through his veins. But the elation was short lived. As the mana continued to build, that sunlight turned to fire, cooking him from the inside. His eye spasmed painfully in its socket, threatening to explode. His teeth ground together uncontrollably.

  Then all at once, it was over. The mages lowered their hands and looked up at him. They shared a common look between them, both hopeful and disappointed at the same time.

  He felt the same as always. He hadn’t ascended.

  “Well, he is sensitive, at least,” Jaren said, addressing the common disappointment they all felt.

  “But if he’s not attuned to any of the six soulgems, then what does it matter?” Senosh demanded, his fiery eyes flaring in frustration.

  Jaren looked for a moment as if he would say something, but then swallowed his words. Too tired to pursue the matter, the other mages let the matter drop, deeming it labor for another day. Bidding each other good night, the Heads of Order departed for their respective homes, leaving the final word to Jaren.

  Sal sat down on the emerald’s stoop, completely at a loss. “So now what?”

  “You keep doing as you have been,” Jaren answered matter-of-factly. “You obviously have magical potential, but there’s something missing. Crafter knows what that might be. But whenever He’s ready for you to become a mage, you’d better hope that you are. So I’d suggest that you continue in your current studies for the time being. I’d just as soon not increase your workload just yet. Besides, what you’re doing right now should suffice. Shol’tuk will provide a modicum of discipline that should prove useful, while gemsmithing will give you at least a partial insight as to how the various soulgems work in tandem one with another, as well as the world at large.” Marissa stepped to Sal’s side in agreement with the emerald.

  The argument was sound—don’t rock the boat. The only problem with it was that he knew little more than he started out with
. With a sigh, Sal thanked his friend for at least trying, and bade him good night.

  The walk back to Marissa’s wagon was a quiet one. No matter how they tried, they could not recapture the carefree mood from earlier that night. Perhaps it’s for the best, Sal thought sullenly. After a week of foolish giddiness, a little sobriety could only help the budding relationship. He sighed for what seemed the hundredth time that night, glad to finally at least be comfortable around Marissa. As the artisan looked deeply into his eyes, wishing him a good night, it was clear that the feelings were mutual.

  He drank in the sight of her for a few more moments, then turned for home, feeling her eyes on him as he walked away. Her image remained with him long into the night, comforting him the few times his thoughts led back to Jaren’s wagon.

  ***

  Jaren was awake long into the night himself, pouring over his books in much the same way Sal had found him earlier. The earlier text had been A Treatise on War, by the emerald mage Tamet Skri. Jaren nearly considered it to be required reading for any emerald thinking to join the Resistance. Even a century later, Skri’s position on the emerald’s place in warfare was revolutionary.

  Many emeralds had their favorite passages. Jaren’s was this: “It is more preferable to take a life to better the world than it is to save a life that might worsen it.” Granted, it was a rather jaded view, but to Jaren, it almost seemed that Skri had foreseen the Resistance, and the things emeralds would one day be forced to compromise in the name of freedom.

  But since Sal’s visit, Jaren’s attention had turned to another book in his library. This one was far older, its leather cover and binding threatened to crumble at the slightest strain. The six soulgems adorned the front, arranged in a pentagram, with the circular backing done in obsidian and the five outer rays of the star in the remaining soulgems, ringing an empty pentagonal space in the center. The book was written about that empty space.

  For hours, Jaren searched for one particular passage. As the night wore on, his vision began to swim, fatigue stealing over him. He was just about to trade his book for his bed when one certain phrase caught his attention. Adrenaline surged through his veins as he finally found the elusive passage, bringing him fully alert. He read the words aloud: