Gemworld

by Jeremy Bullard

  Sal chose to use his free time to go off into the southern woods just beyond the perimeter of the camp. “Herb Lore”, he claimed as his excuse as he passed the guard at the southern gate—a more seasoned recruit not much older than Sal himself.

  “Herb Lore? That’ll be the day,” the guard chuckled knowingly, his amethyst eyes flickering in amusement. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

  As Sal moved off down the southern road, he had to chuckle a bit himself. He should have known that he wasn’t the first recruit to ever go off by himself to indulge his burgeoning talent.

  About a mile down the dirt road, he spied a game trail leading off to the west. It seemed as likely a spot as any, so he followed the trail, the road behind him disappearing almost instantly as he made his way through the untamed brush.

  The game trail, little more than a narrow path of matted down high grasses and bramble vines, wound its way through a grove of shiny-leafed trees. Back home, Sal would have sworn they were magnolias. Eventually, the game trail came out on a clearing amidst the trees.

  The clearing spread out over the top of a squat, flat hill. It wasn’t terribly large, enclosed on three sides by magnolia, with the open side facing due west, giving a rather grand view of the Sea of Ysre. In the center of the clearing stood a boulder, ancient beyond measure, and pockmarked by uncounted thousands of young mages, each—Sal was sure—with the notion in their heads to go out into the woods to brush up on their “Herb Lore”. A smile stretched wide on his face as he settled into his place in what was no doubt a grand tradition, held fervently throughout the years by the industrious youth of Ysre.

  The youth of the Earthen Rank, Sal reminded himself forcefully, the thought dousing his joyous feeling of kinship. The Earthen Rank, the military hand of the unjust ruler of this world. The military that he had infiltrated, and would most likely betray before all was said and done. He batted down a sudden wave of guilt, though he couldn’t tell if it was over that impending betrayal, or the kinship he felt toward these young soldiers, a kinship that was at odds with his commitment to the Cause.

  Sal firmly put all these thoughts out of his mind. Such thoughts were pointless. Few of the Rank recruits, if any, were what Sal could describe as zealots. He found it hard to believe that at so early a stage, they were indoctrinated to the point that they could kill innocents upon command, so there was still time to change things. For their sake, Sal hoped so.

  Squaring up at the edge of the clearing, Sal released his hold on Emerald and touched Sapphire, the green tint of his vision giving way to blue. He drew the sapphire magics into him, as he had in Caravan, as he had in the trees near Mikel’s lodge. Suffused with magic as he was, he let his eye slip from primary vision to the magical secondary spectrum.

  All around him, the stress levels of his environment sprang to life. The volatility of the air as it flowed chaotically on a breeze, the lackadaisical sway of the leaves as they stirred, the dead peace of the boulder. He knew he could wield without actually employing his secondary sight—his ability to improvise took care of most of that drivel the instructors taught in General Mana Theory—but if he planned on touching Ruby and Amethyst, he knew it would come from what he saw while wielding Sapphire.

  He emptied his mind of all thought, turning his attention upon the air, as he had with Menkal. He saw the chaos of the breeze, the eddies and whirls as it twisted and pushed its way through the trees, the grass. Catching those eddies, he forced them to be still before him. He chose one eddy, studied it, concentrated upon it. Using the eddy as a focus, he poured his sapphire magics into it, packing it tighter and tighter until a ball of ice began to form. No more than a hailstone at first, it grew... and grew. He continued to force feed the iceball until it grew to about the size of a grapefruit.

  He studied the iceball, turning it this way and that, where he held it suspended in midair. Satisfied that the ball would serve its purpose, he wielded, pushing the ball away from him with as much force as he could muster.

  The ball impacted the boulder with a loud crack, exploding in a puff of snow and ice. Sal nodded to himself, satisfied with the demonstration.

  He brought to mind an image of the iceball. He could tell the subtle differences between the ice and the water he’d created for Menkal. The ice was much more peaceful than the water, more still. In his mind, he translated that peace into terms of heat. He knew that heat tends to animate objects. The more heat, the more animation. Perhaps the two were interchangeable...

  Not wanting to waste too much time on study, he again captured an eddy, and drew the magic into himself. But before the magics could get too ordered, he eased his hold on Sapphire and imagined not the peace of the eddy, but its agitation.

  Before him, the eddy exploded into flame, his eye shifting from blue to fiery red in an instant. But as quickly as he’d touched Ruby, the link was gone, the red tint of his vision fading with it.

  Sal’s hand flew to his eye reflexively, ready to rub the expected pain away, but no pain came. So he dropped his hand with a sigh, wondering what went wrong.

  I popped the clutch, he thought after a moment. In his attempt to switch from one soulgem to another, he lost control of the magic he held, exploding before him in a blaze of glory.

  But it did explode, he thought.

  Encouraged, he tried again, though without drawing any mana into himself. This time his eye took a red tint and held it. Feeling that he could now control any mana he held, he drew upon Ruby. Shifting to his secondary sight, his breath caught in his throat as the world bled from red-tinted clarity to infrared.

  He cast his gaze from left to right, seeing creatures about him that he’d never noticed before. A rabbit hopped through the brush a few yards beyond the boulder. A cluster of squirrels chattered in the trees to his right. A colony of ants worked their sun-warmed mound, ever expanding their clay condominium upward.

  Forcing his attention back to the task at hand, he caught one of the heated updrafts that lay between him and the boulder, and fed his ruby magics into it. The updraft shimmered with growing heat, a pinprick of white fire growing to a pea, to a baseball.

  Again, upon reaching the size of a grapefruit, he stopped. As before, he examined the fireball he’d created, and when he was satisfied, he thrust it toward the boulder.

  The fireball didn’t make the loud crack that the iceball did, but its impact was no less impressive. So impressive, in fact, that Sal had to switch back to Sapphire for a moment to handle fire control. Glowing embers left streamers of smoke in their wake, marking the places where they fell. Sal wielded toward these spots, covering them with so much snow.

  Crisis averted, he took a deep breath and decided to try his hand at Amethyst. The violet soulgem was a bit more difficult to touch, its essence not tied to the actual lightning it wielded but rather the energy behind it, but after a few tries, he got it. Having learned from his last attempt at magic missiles, he stood ready to switch soulgems in an instant, prepared for the unexpected. He was not disappointed.

  The afternoon passed swiftly, punctuated by explosions of various natures, with the occasional wild shot giving a rough counterpoint. By the time the sun was dipping toward the sparkling waters of Ysre, Sal was satisfied that he could call upon each soulgem in an instant. Not much more than that, but that was all he’d really been after anyway. He left that clearing content in an afternoon well-spent, the pockmarked surface of the boulder standing in silent, smoking testimony of his time studying “Herb Lore”.

  ***

  He practiced the soulgems every day. Alone, of course, lest an overly curious student notice his gemstone eye flash from green to some other color. He spent so much time either in the woods or—when he couldn’t get away—in the latrine that his fellows began to worry that he was either ill, or a pervert. But the rumors—and the smell—paid off. In no time at all, he was able to assume any Tile, not just touching the various soulgems, but wielding them with equal ease and perfection. He imagined that know
ing the runesets of the various soulgems gave him a certain edge that he might not otherwise have. His proficiency with magic eventually advanced to the point where he could see magical auras without touching any soulgem at all, though he was careful not to let anyone see his eye in its diamond clarity. All in all, he’d considered the first couple of weeks quite productive.

  By the end of his third week, he had distinguished himself as a premier student, advancing farther and faster than any of his peers. He was soon receiving the grudging nods of his instructors, surprised at Sal’s grasp of the material but bound and determined not to show him any particular favor. But no one was more surprised than Sal. In his mind, the way the instructors approached magic seemed all wrong.

  In his classes, he was taught how to build a spell from its initial concept, adding to it various component concepts to shape mana into a specific idea, then to wield that idea as a completed spell. It reminded Sal of Jaren’s description of magic, before Sal had ascended. Sal had to admit that the process did work, but it just seemed to be so... sterile. Tedious. After the first few lessons, Sal rejected them entirely. He secretly began to wield the way he had taught himself, focusing more on the end result than on the means to reach that end. He thought of it as a magical form of shol’tuk, and it served him well enough. His instructors were never the wiser.

  Quite frequently, Sal allowed his mind to wander, barely paying attention to the lessons his instructors were giving. The elder mages, of course, took his daydreaming as an affront to their teaching. They saw Sal as arrogant, disrespectful, self-important. It saw him a good deal of time scrubbing out the crockery—by hand!—but it was time well wasted, in his opinion. Only when he let his mind wander did he ever truly learn anything from his classes.

  One particular day, he cast his mind back to the attack on Caravan, when he flooded his being with emerald magic. At the time, all he’d wanted was for the magic to protect him, to heal his wounds as they occurred. The magic did that, alright. But quite unexpectedly, the magic also flooded his sword, killing his opponents with the merest scratch.

  Sal never actually “built” a single spell throughout the entire battle, and never had until the day he’d been directed to by one of his Rank instructors. He just let the magic do its own thing. It was so much simpler, and Sal proved to himself every day that it worked. So why, he wondered, would his instructors teach that magic was more complex than that? Did they just not realize how simple magic could be?

  Well, apparently not. From ascension on, a mage was taught the complexity of magic, and how important it was to remain in control of it at all times. In the Edicts of the Tiled Hand, recruiters were even commissioned to “neutralize”—Sal laughed absently at how politically correct even this world could be—new mages who refused to learn how to restrict their conduits, cutting themselves off from the mana flows. But why, he wondered? Mana Theory stated that all newly ascended mages are able to cast minor spells, cantrips inherent to their soulgem—rubies could light small fires, sapphires could fill cups with water, and so forth. It was like the sucking reflex of a newborn child. It was almost instinctual. But newly ascended mages weren’t supposed to be powerful enough, or knowledgeable enough, to wield more complex magics. So why set limits so early on?

  That one question effectively revealed the answer to him. Mana Theory was a means of limitation.

  The revelation shocked Sal almost to his feet. Every eye turned toward him as he struggled to right himself in his chair. Sheepishly, he passed the ordeal off on a lapse of attention, and promised the instructor that it would never happen again.

  “How terribly scandalous,” the instructor dead-panned, garnering a round of jeers from the peanut gallery. Suitably bolstered by everyone else’s attention, the elder mage returned to his drab line of instruction, his droning monotone kicking in without a hitch.

  Sal was a stellar pupil, even considering his tendency toward inattentiveness. He wasn’t sure if this lessened or heightened the level of his punishment whenever brought before Master Aten’rih. Whichever the case, few instructors were able to hold his attention for long, so they collectively began to view his various punishments as half-heartedly as Sal received them. As was the case with his instructor that day. He hadn’t even moved on to the next point before Sal was once more lost in thought.

  Ever since that discovery—the notion that Mana Theory was a prescribed restriction placed on a mage’s ability to wield—Sal found himself lying awake long into the night, turning that discovery over and over in his mind. Now that he could see the purpose behind Mana Theory, it was painfully obvious. He felt like a fool, not noticing it before. But the question of how Mana Theory limited magic still bothered him continuously.

  Such were Sal’s thoughts as he lay back on his woven-grass cot, anticipating his first day of formal training with Master Aten’rih. And like every night for the past week or so, the question promised to keep him awake long into the night. So he just gave into it, and commenced his nightly meditation, retreading familiar ground in the hopes of discovering something hidden.

  Mana Theory taught focus on the component concepts of a spell, rather than the end result. Mana Theory took a single truth and built upon it, shaping it to the needs of the wielder. A fire fed on oxygen, so the wielder’s mana directing the fire to consume more oxygen, causing the fire to grow. Water was formed by condensation, so magically drawing more vapor from the air would cause more water to condense. The more components that were added to a given spell, the more complex it would become—the more “specialized”, as Master Aten’rih termed it.

  Sal approached magic from the opposite end of the spectrum. He tended to focus on the desired result, rather than the spell’s component concepts. He didn’t care where the water came from. He didn’t need to care. All he had to do was direct the mana to a specific purpose, and allow the mana to take whatever course was necessary to achieve that goal. His only limit was his imagination—

  And there it was! Dear God, it was so simple! Mana Theory focused on components, eliminating the mage’s ability to employ imagination. Therefore, the magic was limited to the components known to the mage.

  Sal’s shol’tuk version of magic knew no such boundaries. In focusing on the end result, the magic did most of the work for him. Basically, all he had to do was picture what he wanted and, so long as it was within the laws of physics, it happened. And the laws of physics left a lot of room for imagination.

  Sal nodded his satisfaction. At last he saw why Mana Theory was taught. It indoctrinated new mages with the notion that they were only as powerful as the knowledge they possessed. By the time that they learned otherwise, it was too late. They had in large part discounted the value of imagination, or forgotten it entirely. Without imagination, the ability to improvise was lost. In shol’tuk, an inability to improvise was certain death. Sal was sure that in magic, the risk could be just as great.

  All at once, Sal realized the true value of his situation. The longer he was in Bastion, the more he could learn about the way the world views magic, as well as strengthen his already impressive grasp of magic. And with his fresh insight, there was no telling how that could benefit the Resistance. If I’m ever able to rejoin them, he thought wryly.

  Lying on his grass-woven bunk in the barracks, Sal both looked forward to that day, and dreaded it. There wasn’t a moment that went by that he didn’t wish he was back with Reit, Retzu, Jaren... and Marissa. The memory of their one kiss stole his concentration a thousand times a day. The memory of Reit pulling her away from the battle, and that look of fear. Rejoining the Resistance meant running the risk of her witnessing his death. Or him witnessing hers...

  He banished the thought forcibly, focusing on the present. He was an officer in the Earthen Ranks now. As much as he wanted to leave, to be with Marissa, he knew he couldn’t. Not yet. He was in a position to do the Resistance a lot of good. He was on the inside, an officer in the enemy’s own camp, with men under his command. Men
who were learning to trust him.

  Sal wondered again if the soldiers of the Earthen Ranks truly served the Highest out of loyalty, out of love. After spending more than a month in their midst—or what he was used to calling a “month”, rather than what the local calendar observed—and getting to know some of the other recruits personally, he just couldn’t bring himself to believe it.

  A bell tolled in the distance. Second Watch. Around him, the barracks grew dim as lamps were puffed out one by one and soldiers knelt by their bedsides, bringing their nightly petitions to the Crafter. Few of the whispered voices mentioned the Highest. Those who did seemed to do so hesitantly, almost as an afterthought.

  No, Sal decided. The Earthen Ranks aren’t truly loyal to the Highest. They fear him, probably ended up joining the Ranks in order to garner favor, protection for their families. And who can blame them? There are no real alternatives.

  What? Follow a rebel prince who’s already been captured once, who’s all but declared open war on the undisputed ruler of the mainland, possibly the whole world? No. No one would risk their families to follow a man they didn’t know, didn’t trust. On the other hand, if there were someone they did know...

  Sal pondered this long into the night, finally drifting off to sleep, where thoughts of revolution were replaced with visions of sunlit red curls and the scent of lavender soap.

  Chapter 23

  In the night-cooled southern forests of Aeden’s Lost Garden, amidst the silence broken only by the occasional song of a twilight warbler, another soul stirred.

  Keth lay back on his pallet, as comfortable as he could make himself, but still sleep was proving to be elusive. He wondered where Sal was, what he was doing. Was he safe? Did he still think of his friends, those who had adopted him as family? The young granite guessed that this was what his Da felt like as a kid, waiting for his brother to come home from the Clanwars.