As Keth stood on the water, gazing west across the harbor into the great night-dimmed city of Bastion, hot tears welled up in his liquid eyes, adding salt water to fresh. His magic may not be able to do everything, but what it could do was enough.
Chapter 27
The sun was still well below the horizon when Sal awoke. By force of old habit, he tugged his eye patch into place and touched Emerald before opening his gemstone eye. Torchlight flickered on the far wall, tinged faintly green in his sight. Yawning, he sat up in his bunk and stretched. He remained there for a moment, both reluctant and eager to face the day. Finally, he swung his legs over the side of the bunk with a sigh, and shuffled to the wash barrel.
One more day, he thought as he washed the last vestiges of drowsiness away. One more day, and I won’t have to care what color my eye is. I won’t have to play like I’m a lackey for the Highest. And I won’t be facing certain death and dismemberment day in and day out for proselytizing these kids for the sake of the rebellion.
He sighed again, and leaned forward on the barrel, his pseudo-emerald eye staring back at him from the mirror. He knew he was where he was supposed to be for right now, but he’d be just as glad to be gone.
Which ain’t gonna happen if I keep myself planted in front of the mirror, he reminded himself. Pushing off from the barrel, he returned to his bunk and donned his uniform leather armor, then ambled out into the courtyard to meet his lieutenants.
The courtyard was about the size and shape of a football field, with six fortress-like buildings spaced out around the perimeter of the compound. Each of the four Ranks were represented here, having its own barracks on the long side of the courtyard. Ruby and Emerald were stationed on the eastern side, facing Sapphire and Amethyst on the west. To the south stood the stables and the Orientation building, the keep that housed all new Rank recruits. New Rank soldiers would remain in the Orientation building for a period of thirty to forty five days, though occasionally a particularly thickheaded recruit may find himself there a full month. Sal grimaced at the thought of spending a full seventy three days in that dump. Hemming in the courtyard to the north was the main command structure, which held the classrooms, the mess hall, and officers quarters. In the center of the courtyard stood a flagpole, the banner of the Highest cracking loudly in the predawn wind. Sal thought it fitting that the banner waved in darkness.
His lieutenants in the Ranks were already out by the flagpole when he arrived, ready to receive their duty assignments for the Festival. Each of them had been hand-picked by their respective Instructors for their magical prowess and leadership abilities. Not for the first time, Sal had to wonder if it was coincidence that his lieutenants all supported the Resistance, or if the Crafter had done a little hand-picking of His own.
There was Hafi, a Mandiblean Sapphire. Growing up in a nomadic desert tribe, he’d known little more than turbans and sand dunes when he ascended. Overnight, his poverty-stricken family gained the notoriety of having a sapphire son. In a few short months, his father had risen through the ranks of Mandiblean society, gaining the ear of a number of key members of the Fellowship of the Dunes. The next year he was elected to his own Fellowship seat in Deitrich. All the while, the old man was ringing his son for more power, hiring him out to the highest bidder. It became too much for Hafi, so he left for the Earthen Rank. He’d just recently received word that his father had been stripped of his seat. Hafi was sorrowful, but not overly so.
Kiri’tsa was the representative of the Ruby Rank. She said the name meant “fire warrior” in her native Plainsfolk tongue, In accordance with Plainsfolk custom, Kiri’s mother and father entered a deh’lt—a type of wooden or clay hut—to consult the spirits about when to conceive, and what they should name the child. They spent all that night in consultation—and conception—before finally falling asleep from exhaustion. That night, they both dreamed of a woman made of pure flame, a warrior, fighting against an immense darkness. They named their child “fire warrior” as the dream suggested. They never knew just how prophetic that name would one day prove to be.
Kiri ascended young, and her parents were not surprised to find that she was aligned with the Ruby soulgem. She was sent by her chieftain to the Academy, where she excelled. She trained there for many years, growing in knowledge and power, preparing for the day when she would finally rejoin her clan. Unfortunately, that day would never come. In the summer of her twelfth Year of Ascension, news reached her that a rival clan had wiped her people out. None had survived the raid, save for Kiri’tsa who was away at the time. The ruby exploded, her rage consuming everything in sight. Luckily, no students were killed. She immediately requested a transfer to the Earthen Ranks, where she could find an excusable outlet for her fiery temper.
From the Amethyst Rank, there was Cedric, a diminutive Valenese man. At least ten years Sal’s senior, Cedric had started his service to the Highest relatively late in life. He’d trained at the Academy, then took his training home with him to Bayton, where he used his art to perform in the local theater circuit. When a freak lightning storm swept east of League Deep Bay and set one of the theaters ablaze, all fingers pointed to Cedric. Of course, he was exonerated, but by then the damage had been done-none of the other performers would have anything to do with him. Desperate for a means to support his family, Cedric joined the Earthen Ranks.
These three, with Tribean, met Sal with a wink as he approached.
“We really need to find a better way to identify ourselves,” Sal grumbled. “Password, secret handshake—anything but that dang wink!”
“Oh, come now, Sal,” Tribean chided lightly. “We must show our revered leader how much we love him.” This set the other three to laughing. Tribean’s face remained the picture of innocence.
“Good! Since you love me so much, you won’t mind covering the Commons,” Sal returned cheerfully. The emerald’s innocent look deflated into one of severe dislike, adding new fuel to his companions’ laughter.
Joking aside, Sal got down to business. He took the group through his security plans, assigning each mage their district. He pointed out the advantages of the placement—amethyst electricity near the harbor, emerald versatility in the Commons, and so on—and recommended headquarters for each division. Finally, he detailed his own plans involving the Archive.
“How many people are you going to have with you?” asked Hafi.
“Sixteen, four from each Rank, with another sixteen on standby here at Camp for relief purposes. With four on the roof and the rest on the ground, that should convince anybody that we’re doing our job. I don’t have a clue what Reit’s planning, but I want us to be in a position to help if he needs it.”
“And if we’re betrayed?” This one from Kiri.
Sal looked at her long and hard, his jaw clenching in protest at the command he knew he had to give. Over three quarters of the camp had been converted, bringing the number of rebels within the Rank compound to well over a hundred. Sal wished fervently that he could be sure of every convert, but he couldn’t.
“Keep your orders specific to your Rank, and limit the information you give them to only what is necessary to do the job. Make no mention of the other Ranks, or me. That should put a lid on the amount of damage a betrayal could cause.” Sal tried to leave it at that, but he could tell by Kiri’s eyes that he hadn’t finished. She knew—they all knew—what had to be done. But Sal was their leader. He had to give the order, though he hated himself for it. “There’s going to be a lot of confusion tonight, so keep your eyes open. If you suspect a traitor”—he paused in last-minute reluctance—”eliminate them, quickly and quietly. We still want to look like Rank when all is said and done.”
The mages nodded solemnly. None of them relished the thought of killing another, Kiri’s vendetta excluded, but they would do what was necessary to ensure the success of tonight’s operation.
Quick to move on, Sal took them over a few more issues—calls to battle, rallying points, and the like—then
dismissed them to their various duties. Each one wished the other luck, then left for their respective barracks to await reveille.
Sal stood by the pole a moment longer, watching them leave. “How many of us are going to survive the day?” he wondered aloud. “Are any of us?”
He started toward his own barracks, but his step faltered. As wave after wave of doubt crashed over him, he bent to one knee. He slipped the sword from his back and placed it at his side, for once freeing himself from the death he carried around with him. After a moment’s hesitation, he released Emerald. With no magic flowing through his body, with no sword on his back, nothing that he felt might be offensive, he looked up at the stars, and for the first time in ages, he prayed. Though his lips never moved, though no clear words even entered his mind, he poured out his very soul. He wasn’t sure what he prayed for, or even why he prayed. Maybe just to feel a peace, a closeness, that he hadn’t felt in many years, he couldn’t tell. But when he stood, he was surprised to find a little spring in his step, a lightening of his personal burdens. Maybe, even in this world of the Crafter, a world so alien to his own, maybe he wasn’t as far from his own God as he might have believed. A comforting thought, for a man who may only be hours away from finding out.
***
The warble of a dawngreeter stirred Jaeda from sleep. Too early, she thought without opening her eyes. It was much too early for even the most annoying bird to be rousing the sleeping forest. She groaned and pulled her blankets high over her head, trying vainly to muffle the song of the dawngreeter.
“Might as well not even try,” Nestor grunted from the far side of the firepit. “Woke me about halfway through fourth watch, and I haven’t so much as drifted off again. Tonight’s spawn of the Abyss must be the very same bird.”
“He is pretty insistent, isn’t he?” she agreed, reluctantly rolling onto her back and stretching. The snap and pop of a thousand joints sang sweetly to her, remarking of each and every mile they’d traversed—on foot—in the past several days. About midway through the last week, the ground had taken a steady upward turn, not enough to even notice a bend in the trees, but enough that Jaeda felt it in her thighs and calves. They’d only yesterday found their way back to the river, but even the oft-level ground of the rocky banks sapped their energy as they followed the winding waters ever deeper into the Garden. Jaeda swore silently that if they didn’t find something soon, she’d leave Nestor to his fate, and go find a quiet inn someplace to sleep away the rest of her days.
“Come on, Jaeda,” Nestor prodded sleepily. “I want to get a few miles behind us before the sun burns away the cool.”
Slowly, oh so slowly, Jaeda complied, rolling up onto her haunches and then to her feet. “Too late,” she said. “I can already feel the sun coming up.”
Nestor paused, then cautiously said, “I feel it too. It warms my face.”
That brought Jaeda fully awake. Nestor wasn’t facing east. He was facing the headwaters of the river, somewhere off to the north.
***
They hastily packed their gear and what dried meats they’d cooked over the past few nights, and marched off along the river toward the unknown source of heat. As they advanced, the morning picked up a sticky, humid feel, as if they trekked through the balmy islands on the northern reaches of Leviathan’s Maw instead of the forests northeast of the Icebreak Mountains.
The river continued to snake away to the north, the rush of the waters gradually building with every pace until it was a thundering torrent mere miles from where they’d started. They rounded a bend in the river and found themselves facing a broken escarpment, a jagged cliff that stretched out in either direction as far as the thick canopy of trees would allow them to see. It stretched for spans into the air, the river fell gently over the edge of the cliff to crash in a pool some hundred feet below.
“There,” Nestor shouted over the roar of the waters, pointing to the escarpment. Jaeda saw nothing at first, but then her eyes fell upon a tiny nook on the far side of the waterfall. It plunged deep into the cliff, and seemed to run all the way to the top. The path was steep, to be sure, but it was manageable. It would suit their purposes perfectly.
If they could find a way across the raging waters of the river.
Jaeda cast her eyes about, taking in her surroundings all at once. Finding what she needed, she shouted at Nestor to stand back. Spying the base of a monstrous tree, thin but towering, she wielded. Her granite magics ate away at the tree base, the wood turning to dust as she watched. She was careful to make the cut wide on the side facing the river, and narrow on the side facing away. In moments, her effort was rewarded by a loud crack, then another, until finally the weight of the tree brought it crashing down across the width of the river. The red-patterned spray washed over the top of the fallen trunk as the tree bounced in the water, then settled into place on either bank.
Jaeda and Nestor climbed the trunk with a little effort. It had seemed so narrow from so far away! Up close, they found that the trunk was a good head wider than they were tall. A few lashes with Jaeda’s granite magic provided them with some handholds in the green wood. They mounted the tree in short order and started making their way across.
The river beat against the tree, rocking it this way and that as the waters found its way through the branches and then downstream. Jaeda looked longingly at the branches, at least halfway up the length of the tree trunk. The first half they would have to brave without a handhold, relying on their own balance and luck to guide them along. With nothing else for it, Nestor and Jaeda linked hands to lend support to each other, then set out along the bare trunk toward the branches, and the relative safety that they provided.
It was slow going, inching along the trunk as it teetered this way and that, the thunder of the rapids drowning every shout, every slip of the foot. Even the most basic thoughts were beaten from their skulls, leaving behind only pure instinct, the all-consuming desire to find their way to the far side of the fallen trunk. Perhaps it was that instinct, or perhaps dumb luck, or perhaps even the direct intervention of the Crafter that they experienced in the next few minutes. Neither of them would ever know for sure. All they would ever know for sure is that the next came upon them hard, fast, and brutally.
A particularly loud crash boomed off the cliff wall, echoing a thousand times throughout the tree-flanked bowl of the waterfall. Jaeda, walking ahead of Nestor, paused in mid-step and shot an eye over her shoulder in time to see the blue-brown patterns of an ancient boulder, its already weak hold on the cliff face weakened further by the thunder of the felled tree, disappear beneath the red waves as the river water rushed in to fill the hole it had made. Nestor also looked over his shoulder, but continued walking, confident in the natural footholds the knotted trunk provided. In that moment of distraction, he nudged the already off-balance Jaeda, sending her sprawling. He reached his arm further to help her maintain her balance, but lost his own. The two tumbled, hand in hand, into the frothy water on the downriver side of the trunk.
The current raged around them, pulling them under more often than it pushed them up. They kicked and paddled violently with their legs and arms, struggling to gain even a few seconds above water. Nestor tried to let go of Jaeda’s hand, but she held his doggedly, in a panic. It was all happening so fast! How she’d wished that she’d let Gaelen teach her how to swim when Tribe Tobin had camped on the shores of Leviathan’s Tooth, on the northwestern edge of the Mandible that one summer. How she wished that her booted foot would touch the riverbed just one time, allow her contact enough to become one with the earth. But the river was deep here, and the water insistent, and her knowledge of swimming just barely adequate to breach the churning water. More than once, water filled Jaeda’s gaping mouth, entered nostrils flared wide to receive life-giving air. Her head would break the water’s surface and give her just enough time to gasp and spit water back out before the rapids pulled her back under.
Spots swam in Jaeda’s vision, and in a disconnected
way she realized that those were not patterns inherent to her granite vision. She was drowning. She’d taken in too much water, and now if was filling her lungs. It was a strange feeling, and painful, but it almost felt as if it were happening to someone else. The feeling carried an odd peace with it, spreading through her swiftly, displacing the panic that she knew should have been there. No matter. The spots swam closer, grew larger, swarming to embrace her, encompassing almost all of her field of vision...
She felt the cold crunch of gravel under her cheek as Nestor pulled her to shore, death grip on the scruff of her neck, dragging her further and further from the raging current until finally he too collapsed from pure exhaustion.
She coughed and sputtered into the gravel, the air entering her lungs stinging worse than the river water.
“Why... didn’t... you melt?” Nestor asked, heaving great gulps of air.
“I was in the water, you dolt!” Jaeda spat back, anger giving her water soaked lungs strength. “I’m a granite, not a sapphire!”
“Fool girl,” Nestor sighed as the last shreds of consciousness finally fled him.
Jaeda rolled her head toward him, feeling her own strength bleeding rapidly from her. It was all she could do to keep her own eyes open long enough to take stock of the situation. Not that she had strength enough to do anything about it. Nestor lay just upriver from her, no more than two hands away. His chest rose and fell unevenly, but it did rise and fall. He had a hairline crack in his skull just above the right temple. He was lucky. Any lower, and he would have died on the spot. They were both lucky.
As Jaeda’s own eyes finally slid shut, she realized that she must have taken a blow to the head herself. Far beyond Nestor, she’d spied the crevasse in the escarpment. At the far end of the narrow crack glowed an aura, but one the likes of which she’d never seen before. This one had an almost opalescent sheen about it, like a thousand rainbows haloing someone, or something, just beyond the far edge of the crevasse.
Gemworld Page 40
