The Pearl Diver

by Jeffrey Quyle

  But the mirror ceased to work as well, and Silas couldn’t figure out why. It simply reflected what was before it.

  They were somewhere due east of Barnesnob, Silas guessed, after the end of the first month of travel. The group’s speed had slowed; they spent more time each day hunting for food, rather than using the dwindling supplies they carried with them. On the day that Silas’s enchanted knife brought down a large buck in the forest, the group spent hours smoking slices of meat that they could eat for the following several days.

  The food was a welcome source of protein. The weather in the mountains, even at the relatively low altitude the travelers held to, grew wintery, with snow and ice as common features.

  Mata complained to Silas about the cold, an extreme of climate she had never experienced before. They took to sleeping with all their clothes on, and sharing blankets, so that they cuddled together platonically to share body heat.

  Erick and Petre never opened up to their two wards. They would not answer questions about Burr, his work, or his relationship with Prima, but they always evaded answering with a smile and a laugh and a reply that Burr or Prima could answer their questions directly the next time they met. The two guards continued to fence with their students and honed their skills, and came to trust them with any and every duty needed. They especially relied on Silas because of his keen night vision, as well as his knowledge of mountain skills and tricks that helped make the journey smoother.

  After another month of travel from Silas’s reckoned position east of Barnesnob, Petre stopped the group as they were about to round a large outcropping.

  “Be prepared for a sight that very few people will ever see,” he teased, but offered no other clues as the group resumed walking along their narrow trail.

  When they rounded the outcropping, there was no need to point out the unusual sight. Silas and Mata stopped side-by-side, and stared in open-mouth amazement.

  Rising high above all the other mountains was a vast steep-sided mountain that towered over the others like a mature tree over saplings. The great monolith of stone soared to twice the height of any of the other mountains visible. Shining fields of snow coated a vast portion of the upper reaches.

  “Brigamme boy, do you have anything like that where you grew up?” Erick asked with a grin.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Silas said in a hushed voice.

  “It’s the gods’ playground,” Petre pronounced. “It has its own weather. Storms and clouds and lightning and thunder all happen around that mountain where there’s nothing similar anywhere else.”

  “No man has ever climbed it,” Erick added. “Stories say many have tried, and they’ve died, or given up, or never been heard from again.”

  “But most importantly, seeing it means that we have traveled as far south as we need to,” Petre made the two youths turn to look at him. “We are as far south as we need to be, and we’re going to go due west now, to reach Faralag. Four more days and our trip will be over!”

  Chapter 14

  The next day the group’s trail began to descend a large field of snow, in a sloping alpine meadow that was beautiful to behold but a wearying span to trudge across, as every step required that the walkers lift each foot high, in and out of the deep accumulation of snow that sat upon the trail. As the group crossed the snow they slowly drifted apart, with a wide gap that separated Erick in the lead, and Silas, not far behind, from Petre, and a bigger gap to Mata who was flailing through the snow to catch up.

  “I’m going to go back and help her,” Silas told Petre as he turned and began to step into his own footprints in the snow, trying to follow his path back to reach Mata.

  “I’ll go back,” Petre stopped forcing his way forward.

  “No, let me do it,” Silas offered, as he continued back.

  “We’ll wait for you at the edge of the snow field; the trail clears off as it descends after this. We’ll try to open up any large drifts of snow blocking the bottom edge of the field,” Petre agreed, and resumed pressing forward.

  Silas plunged backwards until he reached Mata.

  “I’m doing fine,” she told him stubbornly. “I just don’t have legs as long as all of you, so it takes me longer to walk.”

  Silas turned and began going forward once again, trying to shorten his stride and break a better path for Mata to follow. As she grudgingly stepped into his path, Silas looked forward, squinting his eyes against the blinding light that reflected off the white snow. Petre had not only pulled far ahead of Silas, but had nearly caught up to Erick.

  Silas and Mata were far enough advanced across the snow that Silas could see that the end of the meadow was open space, the hanging edge of the pasture that emptied into the air as the side of the mountain ridge dropped sharply and was unseen beyond. And the drifts of snow that Petre had mentioned were coming into focus – Silas could see that the height of the last visible snow appeared to be above the heads of the two guards who approached it.

  As they continued to walk, there was an ominous rumbling sound that suddenly filled the air.

  “Is that thunder? There aren’t any clouds,” Mata asked in surprise.

  Silas looked upward as well, uncertain about the noise.

  The pair stopped advancing and looked around for some clue, as another growl of grinding noise surrounded them.

  “Silas! Look!” Mata grabbed his shoulder and pointed ahead. A white billowing cloud was rising in the air beyond the snowy meadow, and then the large drifts of snow that rested at the end of the meadow began to shake and topple. Erick and Petre had turned and were attempting to flee back towards Silas and Mata’s position, but the snow beneath them was starting to slide away, and the two men were making no headway.

  The large snow drifts collapsed before Mata and Silas’s horror-filled eyes, and then disappeared, as an avalanche swept them down the side of the mountain.

  “Go back!” Erick’s tinny voice barely rose above the roar of the plunging snow on the mountainside, while both guards frantically waved at Silas and Mata to retreat.

  And then the guards began to rapidly recede away from their two companions, and within moments they disappeared along with the sliding field of snow that fell over the mountain’s edge.

  “Mata!” Silas shouted. He grabbed the girl’s hand as he turned and began to try to run back up the slope of the meadow, away from the falling doom that appeared before them.

  Together they slogged slowly upward, already tired from the day’s work, their legs worn and aching, yet still sluggishly responding to the desperate conditions and fear that drove the pair forward.

  The snow around them began to slide, and their feet began to lose purchase on the icy surface. They began to fall victim to the avalanche’s voracious appetite for more snow and weight to throw down the mountainside.

  Silas tightened his grip on Mata’s hand, and he felt her other hand grab hold of his sleeve as they began to pick up downward momentum. He gave up on trying to outrun the power of the disaster, then turned and wrapped his arms around Mata, hoping to stay united with her as they fell victim to the avalanche.

  They were tumbled off their feet, and fell to the surface of the sliding snow, whose momentum was picking up, and dropping them downward at a faster and faster pace.

  “We’re going to die!” Mata wailed in despair. Snow from above them in the meadow was sliding along with them, intermittently covering them with snow and ice, or pelting them with loose rocks.

  They seemed to fall over the edge of the mountain. As they tumbled, Silas sensed that their motion was mostly downward, no longer atop a slope. His vision could see only darkness then flashes of gray light, and more darkness, as motion and impact and sound all became an overwhelming blur.

  One of his arms no longer was wrapped around Mata. They were about to be torn apart and thrown in different directions, to be buried in different locations under the tons of debris that was falling.

  “Stay with me Mata; we’re
going to make it!” he roared the words desperately, wanting more than anything in the world to hold onto his friend, to protect her and himself and keep them united during the tumultuous catastrophe.

  And as soon as he shouted, he knew what he had done. He felt the activation and reactions in his body as his energy and his body and his will all combined to change his voice into an active tool. He had unleashed the telekinetic ability within himself.

  He felt his body suddenly move against the momentum of the snow slide, and rise upward, up through the layer of stone and ice streaming above him. Mata’s body was pressed against his, and the two of them burst into the open air atop the avalanche. They shot upwards, and then arced to the side, and began to gently descend.

  Silas’s view was first of the blue sky above, and then the stream of tumbling white and gray debris below, and then he saw a stretch of mountainside that was beyond the avalanche, intact ground and trees and plants, with shallow patches of snow intermittently scattered. The pair of survivors were being wafted towards the unharmed portion of pathway. Within moments the settled onto the ground. Their feet touched the soil, and they both collapsed, rolling with momentum until they stopped with Mata lying atop Silas on the stony pathway, her feet in front of his face.

  Mata was crying, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Oh, by all the gods, what just happened?” she asked.

  Her voice carried above the rumbling noise of the diminishing avalanche.

  “We’re alive! I was sure we were going to die,” she sobbed, as she remained prone atop Silas.

  They both were in the throes of powerful emotions. Mata was trying to accept that a miraculous force had plucked them from certain death, while Silas was reacting to the realization that he had unintentionally produced the power that had saved them both. He had once again produced the power to move objects. He had once again done it unintentionally, accidentally, providentially.

  If he had known what he was doing, if he had controlled the power, he could have used it deliberately. He could have lifted and saved himself and Mata sooner, before they were nearly killed. He could have saved Erick and Petre, who were buried beneath tons of snow and debris at the bottom of the mountain.

  “Help me Krusima. Help me understand and control it,” he whispered the prayer. He needed to finally, fully, deliberately study the unique ability and learn to properly channel its force.

  He lay in silence for moments more, then pressed Mata’s feet to one side and sat up. His body felt like a collection of welts and bruises, but he felt no significant injuries.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Mata.

  “If I’m really alive, I’m okay,” she answered. She rolled off of him and looked up at him. “Are we really alive? What happened?”

  “My telekinesis lifted us out of the slide and put us in a safe place,” Silas replied.

  She stared at him incredulously. “Like you did at the Avaleen tavern?” she recollected the time he had avoided a battle with tavern drunks by freezing their movements.

  “Thank you, Silas,” she told him intently. “Do you control it, or is it unpredictable still, like it was in the tavern?”

  “It’s nothing I can control,” he lamented. “If I could,” he began wistfully, then stopped. “There’s no one else who has it, who I can ask to teach me. I’ve tried before to learn, but it just didn’t work. If it did, I would have saved Erick and Petre,” he lamented. “If it was something I could control, I’d be able to make so many things better, easier.” He hung his head.

  “Don’t blame yourself for the bad things that have happened,” Mata tried to comfort him after a moment. “You’re still able to do things that no one else can do.”

  She stood up above him, then offered him her hand. He smiled up at his friend, then accepted her assistance, and climbed to his feet.

  The avalanche was ended, the deep rumbling sound gone, though individual stones and smaller, unstable slides of snow continued to intermittently erupt.

  “Could they be alive somehow?” Mata asked. “Erick and Petre?”

  Silas raised his head and faced towards the path of the snow slide. “Erick! Petre! Shout if you hear me!” he shouted the words out, using his Speaker voice and attuning it to match the courage and discipline that he knew each man possessed.

  The pair stood silently, breathlessly, listening for the sound of a response, but hearing none.

  “Petre! Erick!” Silas repeated the call, and waited again, but heard no response.

  “I can’t believe they’re gone,” Mata said softly. “They were good men.

  “I’ll say a prayer for them at the temple,” she added. “As soon as we get to a temple.

  “When will that be?” she turned to the dazed Silas.

  “Let me think,” he replied. The boy looked up at the sky. He wasn’t even sure what direction they had to go to go anywhere. They wanted to go to Faralag, he realized. And it was in the west, he dazedly recollected. He found the sun, then looked at the shadows on the ground, and gradually comprehended the directions in the world around them. He and Mata were already on the west side of the snow slide. They could walk away from the massive barrier and head in the direction of the city.

  He wasn’t sure how far they had to go; it seemed like one of the guards had told him it was only a few days to the city, perhaps three. The city, the end of their long, long migration to safety, was nearly at an end.

  A migration to safety. He laughed bitterly at the notion. In escaping from Ivaric’s invasion, the two guards had been thrown into a fatal accident. It hadn’t been safe for them.

  “What do you think?” Mata’s question interrupted his thoughts.

  Silas shook his head slowly. “It’s that way to the city,” he pointed west, along the trail. “I don’t know how far to the city.”

  They started walking, an unspoken admission that they both thought the two guards were dead, beneath the avalanche debris.

  Each was silent and somber, exhausted by the ordeal of the avalanche, and shocked by the rapid and unforeseen loss of the two guards who had been accompanying and leading them for so many weeks. They followed the path they had landed on, and as it descended into a mountain canyon during the day, Silas kept a close eye on the changing position of the sun, and the shadows that were cast, checking to make sure that they were moving in a westerly direction.

  When evening came, they retreated to the shelter of an enormous hollow tree, and slept soundly, without anyone keeping watch, until after sunrise.

  They ate nearly the last of the supplies they carried in their packs when they awoke in the morning. After that, they walked along a path that clung to the canyon wall, without event until midday, when the canyon emptied into a vastly larger river valley. As Silas and Mata’s trail descended and then rounded a final hill, they saw, sprawled out on their left side, a wide valley that opened into a plain. And at a distance, upon that plain they saw a shimmering bump on the horizon that they could not identify.

  “Could it be a forest?” Mata asked, as Silas shielded his eyes and tried to identify the dark smudge.

  “It could be. We’ll keep going and see what we find,” he answered in a neutral tone. He wanted to get to Faralag and put an end to the long journey.

  Their path continued to sink down to the level of the river valley as it traveled west, and as it wound on, it grew wider.

  “Silas, this is a road, not a path,” Mata declared in the mid-afternoon, as they ate the last of their supplies.

  She was right, Silas realized. The path was wide enough to be considered a road. It was a better road than the forest path he’d driven his wagon upon when he’d been separated from Prima’s caravan in the northern mountains, when his adventures had befallen him.

  Soon after, they began to see cultivated fields, just a few at first, and then more, and finally, at sundown, they came to a village, one that was large enough to host an inn.

  “Where did you arrive from?” the host at the in
n asked when the pair walked in.

  “We came down from the mountains,” Silas answered. “Can you tell us how far we are from Faralag?” he asked.

  “It’s about a day’s journey,” the man ventured to guess. “Where were you in the mountains? Did you go to see Mt. Inegalee?”

  Silas remembered the vast mountain they had seen. He hadn’t looked backwards since the disaster at the avalanche to look at the mountain, which he thought might still be seen even from the village.

  “We hiked in the mountains from the north,” he answered evasively.

  The innkeeper looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  “May we have a room please?” Mata pushed the conversation aside. “I’m tired and ready to relax,” she smiled at the man.

  “Of course,” he was charmed by her smile. He collected their payment and sent them upstairs to a room, one of several that appeared to be empty that night. They dropped their empty packs on the ground, and Mata sighed in relief, then looked at Silas speculatively.

  “What is it?” Silas asked nervously.

  “I think this is a good night to go have a good dinner at the tavern, and to have a bottle of wine with it. We’ve earned it after coming all this way,” she declared. He nodded his head in wholehearted agreement.

  They left the inn and walked down the dark street to the tavern they had passed near the center of the city. Inside, several oil lamps burned brightly from wall sconces, and a mandolin-playing woman sang melodic ballads from a corner of the room.