Melting Stones

by Tamora Pierce

  “I thought so.” I waited to say it until my mouth wasn’t full.

  “That’s what matters. I’m getting back to work—I have my account books to pack up—but if you need anything, Firouze over there will get it for you.” The maid she pointed to nodded at me. I waved and kept eating. Maybe I was still hungry. I cleaned the plate.

  I was right about the map. It was still on the table where we’d left it last night. Once I was done, I knelt on the bench and studied it. I memorized the old paths for the land’s strength. They followed the cracks that led to that huge chamber under the mountain. The old paths might have been erased in the earthquakes, but only so new ones could open up.

  If I was to build my power again, I had to find those new cracks and tap their strength. Or, better yet, I could find one of the big veins that fed the small ones. I touched a thick red line that showed a main fault. I doubted the local mages had dared to tap these. One of them ran straight under the Makray River, all the way up to Lake Hobin. I could reach the place where the river poured out of the lake easily. Why bother with little cracks when I could go to a stronger source?

  Somebody plopped down next to me. “What’s that?”

  It was Meryem. Oswin’s children had arrived at last. “It’s a map,” I said. “Leave it alone. Oswin will cook you in a stew if you touch it.”

  She actually laughed at me.

  Rosethorn leaned over my shoulder and inspected the map. “Luvo says you and he trapped those two would-be volcano creatures in a bed of quartz.” Her pale skin was smutched, and so was her robe. She looked like she had been working hard. She slid onto the bench with a sigh.

  I picked up Meryem and pushed her toward the door. “Shoo,” I told her. Once she was out of the inn, I looked at Rosethorn. “Yes. I got them to break themselves up into a lot of tiny pieces, really tiny ones, and put each into a quartz crystal. There’s a big vein of them under the dead tree canyon. And Luvo turned the whole vein into some weird circle. Carnelian and Flare will think they’re traveling in a straight line, getting stronger, when they’re just going around and around.”

  “But the solution is only a temporary one?” Rosethorn could always sense a flaw in my plans. A kitchen maid set a plate of food down in front of her. “Thank you. Mila and the Green Man bless you and yours.”

  The maid curtsied and hurried away.

  I sighed. “Yes. They’ll escape sooner or later, and get back to volcano-making.” I stopped. Rosethorn was too polite to talk with her mouth full. Instead she raised her eyebrows, waiting for me to go on. I leaned closer so she would be the only one to hear me. “Bouncing around in the quartz…If they can pull themselves together, they’ll be a lot stronger. I should have worked it out, but Rosethorn, I thought they were going to pop out of the pond right by Oswin’s house. Luvo made it harder for them to escape the quartz, but that’s all he could do. We’ve just bought a little more time. Myrrhtide has to tell the ships and the mages to get people off the neighboring islands, too. Now.”

  Rosethorn swallowed. “You and Luvo made it worse.” She said it very quietly.

  I was sweating. “Maybe. Kanzan the Merciful smile on me, I hope not.”

  “Don’t waste a plea on your Kanzan now,” said Rosethorn. “You might require her more later, when they’re about to hang us all. What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll collect all the power I can hold,” I promised. “Luvo can get some of the people outside started on their way to the ships. He was really inspiring for Oswin’s boys.”

  Rosethorn’s mouth quivered. She had seen Luvo inspire people before. “Then go collect more power,” she told me. “I shall be inspiring the slow movers, too. I want to be on the road out of here at dawn tomorrow.”

  I heard the thumps of Luvo’s feet on the wooden floor. I turned to look at him and said, “I’m going to find one of the big veins of earth strength that’s on the map, the one that runs under the river. Do you want to come?”

  His magic brushed me. He knew I was nearly drained again. “I do not care to explore the greater strength of the earth’s fire, Evumeimei, not unless I must. I tested my own courage this morning in my dealings with Carnelian and Flare.”

  I never thought of that. He hadn’t seemed worried at all. I had told him they were broken up into harmless pieces. He had acted as if he believed me. A lump formed in my throat. He had trusted me to make certain that it was safe for him to go near the two volcano spirits.

  “And I wish to spend some time in solitude, if we do not plan to travel on right away.”

  “We do not.” Rosethorn sighed. “There’s too much to organize yet. Don’t you remember how it went in Gyongxe? People are so much harder to get moving than we plan for.”

  “Then I will take my solitude. Evumeimei can find me by the shore of the lake if I am needed.” Luvo turned and walked away.

  “Are you all right?” I called after him.

  He looked back at me. “Yes. I am also covered in dirt and spilled honey. Nory tells me this is a normal consequence of being near young humans. I do not care for it, and I wish to be clean and quiet.”

  Rosethorn put her head in her hands. “We both understand, all too well. Go, with my prayer that no one sees you.”

  Before I left I went upstairs to collect my stone alphabet. If I was right, I would be able to stuff each piece of it full of power. I couldn’t pass up that chance. On my way out of the inn I stopped at the stable to collect feed and treats for Spark. She was going to do a lot of work in the next few days. I could thank her, at least.

  Burdened like a mule, I left the courtyard. Only when I heard Nory yell, “Meryem! Where’s Meryem!” did I realize I had company.

  I looked around. She trotted beside me, clutching the Dreadful Doll. “What do you want?”

  “I want to go with you and see magic,” she told me.

  “You’re not going to see magic,” I said. “I’m going to ride the horse and sit on the ground.”

  “When do you do magic?” asked Meryem.

  “Later.”

  “Can I watch?”

  “You won’t see anything. The kind of magic I do, nobody can see.”

  “Then how do you know it’s magic?” Meryem wanted to know.

  “How do you know you ate supper?”

  “My belly tells me.”

  “My magic tells me I’m using it,” I said.

  “But I want to see it.”

  “The only magic I have that people see is stones.” I held up the cloth roll with my alphabet. “And you see magic like that all the time.” I bent down—I almost dropped the bag of oats—and picked up a stone from the road. “It’s here, too. My magic is in every stone.” It was actually a nice piece of feldspar. I studied it for a moment, and found a bit of power inside me. I drew it through the feldspar. It caught inside the crystal, making it shimmer and glow.

  Meryem gasped.

  I handed the glowing stone to her. “Now go back to Nory.” I lifted my foot and gave her a push on the bum. Treak was coming for her, a scowl on his face. “Hurry, before Treak catches you.”

  Meryem looked up and saw him. She squeaked and ran to the inn, clutching the feldspar I gave her.

  Spark was waiting right where I had left her. I gave her a nose bag of oats while I saddled her again. Once I was done, I stopped to look at my hands. They were trembling. I was scared. Telling Rosethorn what I’d done with Flare and Carnelian had made me see how bad it could get. Each bit of their strength would grow as it bounced from facet to facet in the crystals. But what choice did I have? They had been under the pond. Might they have shoved their way out? I had no way to know. What I’d had was all those kids, as well as Nory and Luvo, in the house nearby. Luvo couldn’t even come near the chamber under Mount Grace with me. The power of the volcano spirits was the power that gave birth to him; it could destroy him. He could get near it only after Flare and Carnelian broke themselves up into hundreds of tiny pieces.

  I couldn’t risk
it. I couldn’t have risked them escaping that pond to kill Luvo and the others.

  But Luvo and I had only bought days for Moharrin and the other villages around Mount Grace. If the quartz held out. If Carnelian and Flare didn’t get so strong in it that they melted each crystal, if they didn’t break out, if the volcano spirits didn’t find new leaders to bring them up into the air…

  “Ifs just make your head hurt, Evvy,” Briar told me often. “They’re probably bad for your teeth, too. Concentrate on ‘will,’ as in ‘I will do this,’ or ‘I will do that.’ It saves you head- and toothaches, take it from me.”

  I wished Briar was here. He made cold-sweat fear seem like a small problem I could kick in the bum. And he always made me laugh as he did it.

  14

  Oswin

  I mounted Spark and guided her onto the road, trotting through Moharrin. I waved at the people who called out to me, but kept going. Not everyone was waiting to get out of there. Spark and I passed a stream of horses, donkeys, and carts already bound for Sustree. There were even some people on foot.

  We left them all behind. When we turned off the main road, we followed the trail to the place where the river flowed out of Lake Hobin. Up here, where the river flowed from the lake, it was rapids. Once I got to the rocky bank, I found a place where Spark and me could halt. I watered her and gave her some carrots, then tethered her.

  Finally, I settled myself. The river had shifted. I could see the former bed. It was marked with dried slime and dead creatures who had not been able to follow it. Rocks along the original banks had tumbled from their places. The old stones were cross. They were used to water sliding over them. They did not care for this new life in the sun.

  “Luck of the circle, lads,” I told them. “One day you’re under water, the next you’re not.”

  “You talk like a dedicate,” Oswin said. I jumped. I hadn’t even heard him ride up. “Are you a novice?”

  “What are you doing? Are you following me?” I asked.

  “Absolutely.” Oswin swung down from his swaybacked horse and took off the saddle, like I’d removed Spark’s. “You looked like you were going to do something magelike. One more of those times when I might learn something useful. Your Rosethorn is badgering people to get packed and get their carts in line. Word got out that Luvo said we might have a few more days, so our people act as if they have forever. I’ve done all I can for the moment, so I followed you.”

  I didn’t feel like arguing. He’d get bored fast enough. People always do. “Don’t make any noise, then. I need to find the new line of strength and draw all of it I can.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because I might need it,” I said, testy. “I’m not restocked from yesterday, all right? Because I’m a squirrel who stores up nuts of power for the winter. Why.” I closed my eyes and sent my quivery magical self down into the ground. I searched out the fizzing rocks that showed me where the old line of power had been. Then I spread out and down, seeking the new one. Just as I thought, it was under the changed riverbed, a seam in the granite that shot straight down. It blazed white-hot with the earth’s pure strength.

  I soaked it up like the rays of the sun after a long winter. I bathed in it, drank it, filled my skin with it. The more I gathered, the more was offered to me. Streams of it poured through me to those things I was connected to, my stone alphabet and my mage kit. We brimmed over with power.

  I let myself follow the big fault where the power flowed away from the mountain. It ran along the Makray. It made the river’s bed. I flew in my magical body down to the place where the river met the sea. There I fell deeper into the earth to get away from the salt water. Down I moved through sand and basalt. The ocean’s floor rose high over me. Far from Starns, fire warmed my body. I had found a vein of magma that rose into the ocean floor. It carried power with it. I followed it, curious to see where this thin pipe of molten rock and magic went. It opened into a hole in the ocean floor, at the bottom of a small crater. All around me strange, goggle-eyed creatures with rippling flaps of skin raced away. They were used to lava, it seemed, but not to magical people popping out along with it. The touch of the water made me shiver. It didn’t like me. I darted back into the small lava pipe.

  Back I swam into the vent and along the fault. I found other cracks like the one that opened into the crater—like the one Luvo had shown me, that day we reached Starns. There were tiny volcanoes, some no bigger than my head, all around the Battle Islands. And the faults in the sea, big ones and little ones, were roads under the skin of the earth. They could lead me to other islands, or even the shores that surrounded the Pebbled Sea. It was amazing! I could travel back to Emelan this way. I was so fast in magical form, not weighed down by my meat body and a need for a ship. No more dealing with people, no more being hungry or cold…

  I was drifting, dreaming of freedom, when all the world—or at least my part of it—shuddered. The seam where I traveled squeezed. Volcano spirits from deep within the heart of the world roared. Heat rose to press my skin. Magma was moving up into the fault. If I didn’t leave, it might catch me. I didn’t want to be there, far below the sea, when that happened. I didn’t think I could survive it.

  I raced back to my body, covering dozens of miles under the earth, skidding between layers of basalt. Up I flew from under the sea, plunging into the fault that led under the Makray River with relief.

  I tried to slip into my body, and stopped. It was too small! My magical self was bigger than usual, built up with all the power I had taken from the earth. I had trained myself to hold my magic in a certain way. All that romping under the sea had interfered with my control over it. Kanzan and Mohun, couldn’t anything ever be simple?

  I ordered myself, Evvy, stop—calm down. Be steady, drag yourself together. You’re a tight little ball of you.

  I pulled myself inward. I didn’t want to lose any of the power I gathered, but I needed to concentrate it. When I was packed together as tightly as I could manage, I tried once more to slip into my real skin. This time it worked.

  I opened my eyes. It was trying to straighten my legs that made me groan. I was horribly stiff. Oswin offered me kibbeh patties. I grabbed one and bit down. The beef and wheat were greasy, but good, though someone had overdone the cinnamon. “Nory cooked these?” I asked.

  Oswin grinned. “She always puts in too much cinnamon. Tell her, if you want your nose bitten off. She likes cinnamon.” He gave me a flask. It held good, cool mint tea. I looked at him as I drank. He had made himself comfortable while I was away. He’d brought his saddlebags over. One was open. There was a pad of paper sheets stitched together, an ink brush, and an ink bottle. He must have been writing. I sniffed food in the other cloth bundles I could see in the bag. I also spotted books around the food bundles. Oswin used the other saddlebag as a backrest.

  I looked around. Rocks had fallen into the riverbed from the heights across from us, making fresh changes in the rapids. A crack had opened in the riverbed. That had dropped the bottom another thirty feet. The lake was booming down into the new channel, throwing up a fine, cool spray. Moharrin had a new waterfall.

  “There was a shock?” I asked. I offered the flask to him, but he shook his head.

  “More like a long shiver, but a hard one. Some trees fell.” There were shadows in Oswin’s blue eyes. It must have been a scary shock.

  “Why didn’t you go? I must have been entranced for a while,” I said.

  “Go back to see Nory try to get the axle fixed on that cart?” he inquired. “The smith’s apprentice might have done it—he’s sweet on her—but he left with the smith. She’ll be furious, which means she’ll be bullying someone else into fixing it. I’d offer, but I doubt she’d even let me try a second time. She knows I’d probably just botch it again. I feel bad I couldn’t get her and the kids a decent cart.”

  “You do lots of other things for them,” I told him. “You give them a home.”

  Oswin spat on the ground beside him
. “It won’t do them much good if it and they get buried in ash and lava. What were you doing away from your body? I wouldn’t think gathering power would take so long.” He offered me some dried figs.

  I ate those, too. “I was exploring the fault under the river on out to the sea.” I looked over at the granite marker nearby. It had fallen over. I called to it. Slowly, pulling against the soil, it straightened. I tugged on the surrounding rocks. They rolled into place, bracing the marker until it stood firm again.

  Oswin swallowed hard. “I’m used to a bit more fuss when people work magic.”

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe you know the answer to this, since you’re the stone mage,” Oswin began. “What are they, these lines? Big and small? Tahar and Jayat don’t know what they are, apart from the fact that they carry power. They only know they can use them.” Oswin drew his knees up to his chest like a boy and wrapped his arms around them. His eyes were blazing with curiosity. “They never say where the power comes from, or why they find it in these places, and not in others. When the lines moved, Tahar and Jayat were at a complete loss. They couldn’t find new ones.”

  “But that’s silly,” I told him. “Why didn’t they just do a spell for feeling power, and sweep across the ground? The big faults didn’t move far. They couldn’t. Look. The lines—they’re faults, or seams in the earth’s stone cloak. The faults reach down. Miles, some of them. Way below us, the world is full of molten rock—lava. Well, Luvo and my stone mage teachers call it magma inside the world, lava when it’s out in the air. It’s heat, it’s pressure—it would mash us flat in the blink of an eye—it’s light, it’s the elements that make up every stone, every mineral, every metal and every gem ever was.”

  “How do you know?” Oswin asked me.

  “What?” I was confused.

  “How do you know that’s what’s in it?”