Melting Stones (Circle Reforged)

by Tamora Pierce

  From the way Jayat flinched, he had forgotten that Luvo rode on my saddle. I wondered why Luvo always had to be so slow. Didn’t he understand that life was just whooshing by?

  Luvo went on talking. Slowly and pokily. “There is no crack below the ground, though it may be there was at one time. Some of the rock faces a mile to the west are cloven, as if they were sheared off. As if they were once small fault lines in the earth. But that shearing is no longer evident. You could no more reach the power in the faults under the heavy cloak of the earth than I could fly.”

  Myrrhtide sniffed. “Nonexistent fault lines are all very well, but I understand our little tour of inspection will take us up on the mountain today. You may talk rocks at another time. Let’s go.”

  “No.” Rosethorn pointed to a big, brown-needled pine tree on the far side of the pond. It was leaning, half-uprooted from the soft earth. “That’s a hazard. It needs attention.”

  “You certainly don’t expect me to get an ax and hack at it,” Fusspot told her huffily.

  “Oswin said he would cut it down,” Jayat called to Rosethorn.

  She was already walking around the pond. “He took in the children the pirates abandoned. Azaze was telling me about that. He’s got enough to do with his days. I can handle this.”

  Jayat turned his horse. “I know where Oswin keeps his saw.”

  I put a hand on his arm. “She’ll hate it if you cut. She wants to give the tree a proper funeral.”

  He frowned at me. He didn’t understand, but he had the sense to halt and wait to see what happened. I picked Luvo up and cradled him against my chest. But we can do something to help, right? I asked him through our joined magics.

  Luvo and I mixed our power and let it sink into the ground. Under the pond we flowed from stone to stone. I winced at the burn of that water on each rock we passed through. Even with a foot of mud between us and the pond itself, we could feel the acid in it.

  Did some evil mage poison it or something? I asked.

  No mage has been here, Evumeimei, Luvo told me.

  That was that. When Luvo was definite, he knew what he talked about. I don’t know how he understood things, but he did. He tells me I’ll know, too, in a few thousand years. I can’t get him to see that I won’t be around all that time. It makes me wonder if he knows something I don’t.

  Ahead shone the white blaze of Rosethorn’s magic. She jammed vines of her power into some shadowy thing. The threads spread away from her to fill the shape of a leaning tree. Slowly and clumsily they tugged, trying to move its dead roots.

  Luvo and I entered the stones around and under the tree. There Luvo went very, very still. I felt us flex, as if Luvo had swallowed with our magics. A wave of coolness from outside Luvo and me bore down on us. It was an invisible power that filled the earth, calling to the children of iron in the surrounding stone. The iron in fool’s gold, hematite, and olivine, even specks of iron no bigger than pinheads in the granite around us, all stirred like waking bees.

  Rocks don’t like to move. Still, given a choice between their iron’s pull to that immense force, and battling the loose soil to stay put, the rocks chose to move away from the tree’s roots. Luvo and I drew them back from Rosethorn, too, so she wouldn’t be knocked off her feet.

  With no rocks to help keep it standing, the tree slowly lay down on the ground. Luvo and I thanked the earth power that called the iron very politely. Luvo talked to it then for a while. My head was a bit woozy, so I drew back to my body alone, and leaned on my horse.

  When I could, I drank some water and ate a peach, then looked around. Rosethorn was speaking the Green Man’s prayers over the dead pine and the other dead trees. Myrrhtide, who grumbled that he should do something, collected pond water as he waited. He worked spells on it, to see what was wrong.

  Jayat’s face was covered with sweat. “What was that?” he whispered when he saw me smile at him. “Something went through me. It came from you and Luvo. I—I didn’t know what was up or down, where the village is, where the mountain or the lake is…”

  “There are more important things in the world than this village and lake.” Myrrhtide was definitely cranky. Maybe he was as touchy about sick water as Rosethorn was about sick plants. “Even a half-trained bumpkin like you should understand that.”

  I was taking a breath, getting ready to teach Fusspot some manners, but Luvo had come back from talking with that great force. He stood in front of me. I steadied him as he spoke in his thundering mountain voice. “Respect a mage in his lands, human. You know nothing of those things that Jayatin has put into this place. You do not know the dedication and sacrifice that he and his masters have given this lake, this village, this mountain. You preen yourself on your learning. Take shame instead for the fear that bars you from true work and true devotion. You have not the heart for it. You have not the soul to understand those whose measure will always be greater than yours.”

  Myrrhtide went dead white. He kicked his horse into a trot on up the trail, away from us.

  Rosethorn came over. “Luvo, remind me to stay on your good side. It was very well done, though.” She mounted her horse and looked at Jayat. “I hope Myrrhtide went in the right direction.”

  Jayat wiped sweat from his face and nodded. His dark cheeks were scarlet. He took a drink of water. “I don’t think I was worthy of that, Master Luvo.”

  “I am thousands of years older than you, Jayatin. I know what you deserve.”

  6

  I Fuss with Fusspot

  We caught up to Myrrhtide. Nobody said anything for a long time. I believe none of us could think of anything that wouldn’t sound like fake jewels after Luvo’s thunder.

  The trail followed those earth lines marked for the island’s mages. It often came close to places where plants and water had gone bad. Not all the water places—ponds or streams—had turned acid, but there were plenty of dead patches of land. Rosethorn got quieter and quieter. Her eyebrows came together more often in her puzzled look, until they just stayed that way. Myrrhtide fussed over each bit of dead water as if it was his child.

  We crawled up the mountain’s shoulder except for halts at dead spots. I kept searching the ground for the fizzing rocks, for something to do. They were hard to find. The strength in those ones I touched was fading, without their source of power to renew them. I was getting bored to death.

  “The whole world is hurrying by while we poke along,” I muttered when we stopped for the thousandth time.

  Jayat shrugged. “We can only ride so fast. Here’s where the earth’s power swamped Tahar.” He pointed to the farmhouse that sat back from the road. “The farmer’s mother looks after him now.” He and Rosethorn went to the house to talk to the family.

  Myrrhtide glared at me. “Magical investigation takes time. A proper student would be taking notes.”

  I smiled at him. “I’m not Rosethorn’s student.”

  “You think you don’t have to obey temple rules because you have her and Briar Moss and that rock for friends?” he asked me softly. He kept an eye on Rosethorn. “In two years you’ll be sixteen. It won’t matter then who your friends are. You’ll be out on your ear, Evumeimei. Out on the street where you belong.” He smiled cruelly. “Unless you take your vows to the temple. But you’d have to care about us—and that’s not a thing you can lie about.”

  Something around my heart pinched me. “I’ll be on my way to magecraft, Dedicate Fusspot.” I said it with as much sass as I could, pretending I didn’t care. “I won’t need your precious temple then.”

  “Spoken like a true guttersnipe.” He sounded pleased. “Take, take, take. Never give anything back. Why the temple keeps allowing the likes of you in—”

  “Shut up.” I turned to face my horse. “Rosethorn’s coming, you stupid man.” I climbed back into the saddle, thinking, He’s just a nasty old fusspot. I don’t care what bile he spits.

  “What were you talking about?” Rosethorn looked suspiciously at us. “You both
looked very passionate about something.”

  I dug a smile up from somewhere. “Midday. I’m always passionate about food, you know that. He wants to wait awhile, and I didn’t eat enough breakfast.”

  She looked at Fusspot, who was getting back on his horse, then at me. She didn’t seem convinced. “Luvo, were they discussing the midday meal?”

  “I was inattentive, Dedicate Rosethorn.” Luvo’s head knob was pointed toward the cliffs to the west. “My thoughts were on the fine-grained volcanic gabbro and quartz crystals higher on the mountain. Some of the crystals have a pleasing violet-pink color which I have never seen.”

  Jayat looked awed. Rosethorn could tell something was not right, but she could never bring herself to call Luvo a liar. Not that he was lying. Luvo’s thinking is funny. It works like the rope of clear crystals that runs through his body. Each crystal is a little mind. Luvo has thoughts in all of them going on at once. He probably was thinking of gabbro and quartz, in part of him.

  “Let’s move on.” Rosethorn mounted her horse. “Myrrhtide, you will ride beside me, if you please.”

  Off we went. Luvo sat in front of me and didn’t move for a long time. Jayat rode ahead of Rosethorn and Myrrhtide, thinking about something. I tried to sit quietly, but it got harder as the morning wore on. I swear, even the sunlight made my blood itch to move faster. My flesh throbbed inside my skin.

  Is this how Luvo feels when he watches us? I wondered. Birds and small creatures dashed past and around the trail, living their real lives at a real pace, not crawling along. Does Luvo feel as if life is passing him by? Or does he like being sllllloooowww?

  I ground my teeth.

  At yet another halt, Luvo looked at me. I don’t know how, because he didn’t have to turn his head to do it, but I felt his eyes on me. “You tremble. You give off heat. Are you ill?”

  “Just restless. I feel fine,” I retorted. “I feel better than fine. I just want to ride, not trudge along like a snail. I’m not hot. I don’t feel the ground trembling one bit. I’m not trembling.”

  But I looked at my hands on the reins. They shook, as if I had a fever. I didn’t feel sick.

  I felt it then, far below the stone and earth under us. The little hairs on my arms stirred as I called the warning: “Shake coming!”

  We all dismounted. I held Luvo with one arm as I clutched my horse’s reins with the other. Now everyone else had the sense of it. The birds and little creatures were silent. Our horses stamped and yanked at the bits. We hung on as the earth rattled the loose leaves from the trees and the stones from their places. When the shock struck us, I felt like a thousand fingers were tickling me. I giggled. Then the power was gone. Life got slow and boring again.

  As we rode on, those neglected stone markers started to vex me. What if they didn’t show the local mages where strength could be drawn from the earth anymore? That was no reason to leave them untended. They had done generations of service. Some of them had fallen over. Some were just tilted, which made them look undignified.

  When I found moss covering most of one granite marker, flaking its carvings away, I couldn’t bear it anymore. “Rosethorn!”

  “Evvy, I’m thinking,” she said.

  “It’s moss on a rock, and the rock doesn’t want to be changed. It likes being all neat and carved.” I was jittery and aggravated. “If you won’t clear it away, I will, Rosethorn, you know I will. I have followed like a good dog all morning. Now I would like to tend this marker.”

  She sighed and dismounted.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Fusspot turned his horse around in the road. “We’re going about important work, looking at serious problems. Why do you cater to that spoiled brat you insisted on burdening us with?”

  Jayat rode a little way up the trail, to get away from us.

  Rosethorn glared at Fusspot. “Evvy and I have an understanding. There are plenty of reasons for doing things as we do them. She is no burden to me. Since I am senior and in charge, I will thank you to hold your tongue!” She came over to me and muttered, “Don’t make me have to defend your behavior to him again.”

  I didn’t tell her I could defend myself. I was eager and nervous and vexed, but I was not ready to die. It was one thing to snap at Fusspot. I had learned early on, a person who snapped at Rosethorn had best be armed for war and prepared to take casualties.

  “What is the matter with you, anyway?” Rosethorn demanded. “You don’t normally care if there’s moss on stone or not. Didn’t you tell me in Yanjing that you don’t even think vines are rock killers now? That since rocks have no bodies like ours to grow and change, they are dependent on forces from the outside to change them, and that includes plants?”

  I scuffed my foot in the dirt of the road. “This marker wants to stay the way it is for now.” Normally I would have told the rock not to be silly, but my veins were filled with hot, fizzing blood. It was like what I’d sensed in those old power places, only stronger. If Jayat and Tahar had drawn this kind of strength from there, I was surprised Jayat could bear to ride along so pokily.

  “And stop jittering,” snapped Rosethorn. “Mila save us, Evvy, it’s like you’ve been sniffing dragonsalt. Enough!”

  Carefully Rosethorn put her hands on the moss. She talked it into letting go of the stone. Piece by piece, she lifted it free and moved it to a shady patch. I called a fistful of lesser stones in the soil to come together, bracing the marker. They helped me to push it until it was straight again. When that was done, Rosethorn and I mounted up and followed the others along the trail.

  Fusspot couldn’t keep still for long. We hadn’t gone more than five more markers up the slope of Mount Grace when he drew his horse even with Rosethorn’s. “I want her left at the village next time! She is a distraction and a nuisance! She is—”

  “What in the Green Man’s mercy?” Rosethorn turned her horse down a path among a tumble of rocks. Myrrhtide might think she was riding off in a temper, but I knew better. She hadn’t even heard him. Something else had gotten her attention. I looked at Jayat.

  “There’s a better place to see it from,” Jayat called to her, and turned to me. “How did she know?”

  “How did she know what?” I asked. Fusspot shoved in front of us to ride after Rosethorn. Jayat didn’t answer; he just followed Fusspot, and I followed him.

  Rosethorn led us down among rocks that got taller and taller. These were big, gorgeous slabs of flat stone. They looked like some giant had cut them from the mountainside with an ax. We came out on a ledge. Stone rose behind us, and the ground sloped far below. The slope ended in a small canyon filled with dead trees.

  Jayat sighed. “This is the worst place. My uncle and I found it two weeks ago as we were hunting.”

  I dismounted and put Luvo on the ground. The fizzing in my blood was starting to annoy me. It made me fidget, when I am not by nature a fidgeting person. I rested my hand on one of the slabs behind us, hoping the nice, steady granite would calm me down. Instead its roots warned me of what was rising under our feet.

  “Shock!” I yelled. How did it come up on us so fast? It must have welled up under the mountain. “Earth shock!”

  The others threw themselves off the horses, which were panicking. The animals had felt the coming shakes almost as soon as I had. That was embarrassing. I should have known faster. “Luvo, why didn’t you warn me?” I cried.

  “It is too quick. Too close,” he said.

  I dragged my horse’s head down. It fought, until I yanked my jacket off and covered its eyes.

  The earth shuddered and crackled. Trees fell into the dead canyon from its sides. Boulders tumbled along with them. Everything smashed to bits at the bottom. The wave of power struggled to reach the surface, fell short, and sank back.

  We waited and did nothing, only listened. Luvo and I sent our magics into the ground, feeling for more waves. We found nothing. On the mountain and in the canyon, more stones fell. Big ones, little ones…They welcomed the chance t
o change themselves. I wished them well on their journeys to new shapes.

  “That was very, very close.” Jayat, like me, had covered his horse’s eyes to keep it calm. He began to unwrap his shirt from his horse’s head.

  I stared at the long scars on Jayat’s back. He shrugged and said, “Not everybody was sad when the foreign lords killed as many pirates as they could find.”

  I nodded. I could see that he wouldn’t be too upset at that. “Luvo? Are you all right?” I asked.

  Luvo wandered over to the ledge to look down into the dead canyon. “The crack in the earth beside the road closed, but a new one opened down below. I do not recommend that you try to use the new line of power, Jayatin. There are seams of quartz crystal around and below it. They will make any magical strength drawn by a human somewhat irregular.”

  “Are you sure we would do so badly, Master Luvo?” Jayat smiled patiently, as if he spoke to a child. “We’ve gotten pretty good at finding ways to draw on this stuff, you know. We have to, you see. We’re just a little bit desperate at the moment. Perhaps our skills don’t look like much to you, being stone…”

  “The strength you used is affected by certain laws, including those of crystals, Jayatin.” Luvo was in his teaching mood. I was glad it wasn’t me who brought it on. “Magic passes into quartz as light does. It is reflected from the inner walls of the crystal. You would gather it up quickly, if your magic passed only through one crystal. However, along the seams below and around the crack in that canyon are large clusters. Within each cluster the crystals are turned in their own arrangements. They will reflect each bit of power back upon itself, then to other crystals. You would be trapped here, chained by your magic, until it wore out.”

  I heard a grinding noise above our heads.

  So did Rosethorn. “Luvo, be quiet.” Her brown eyes searched for the source of the sound. “Everyone, back up—”

  Higher up the mountainside, a huge slab of granite gave way. The shock had broken it from its roots. It slid toward us, collecting a train of smaller boulders and gravel as it came. As it fell, it gathered the strength of its falling, picking up speed.