Ley Lines

by Lisa Lowell

  When he had finished reading Owailion looked up toward the northwest, perhaps duplicating the search that Vamilion had tried earlier, seeking for one mind across a vast expanse and hearing nothing. Then slowly he looked back at his companion just a few feet away.

  “Erase it,” he ordered and handed the tablet back.

  Vamilion shook his head, refusing to do as ordered, not even taking the tablet. He would not brush away her words any more than he would brush away her life as Owailion seemed to have done. Then, to his horror, Owailion did it for him, smashing the slab against the rough mountain top. The stone slate shattered into chunks and then Owailion crushed the shattered pieces with a thought and let it crumble to dust under his boots.

  Vamilion suddenly wanted to do the same to Owailion's bones but even more, he wanted an explanation.

  Owailion finally spoke. “You might not understand it now…or ever, but this is what is meant to happen. She is coming into her power. He will not kill her. Nor will he ever sway her heart. Trust that.”

  “No,” Vamilion replied flatly. “Where is she?”

  Owailion looked down at the rubble sliding over the sheer slopes on which he balanced under the pulsing anger of the King of the Mountains. Then the King of Creating looked back up and flatly said the words to ignite an inferno.

  “I will not tell you.”

  Vamilion's anger blasted out at his peer before either could even consider it. No logic remained within. And Owailion's refusal to give a simple answer seemed so arbitrary and ridiculous he had no desire to reason it out. Vamilion's Wise One instincts fled in the face of simple human rage. Was that what Owailion wanted? Well, he would have it.

  The earth shook and both men slid down, on separate sides of the sheer ridge of the newly cut peak. Instinctively Vamilion made his pick appear out of thin air and slammed it into the rock face as he fell, but the magic of the Talisman was to break and the fifty feet of stone above him began to crumble free. With a mental shove he pushed the weight of it the other way, toward the direction Owailion was falling and it crumbled like a stone rain down the northern side. For his part, Owailion didn't take the attack lightly. A storm formed overhead as Vamilion struggled to remain on the cliff face and lightning struck at him before he could recover, blasting him free. Desperately Vamilion launched his thoughts to another mountain, on the far side of the continent and shifted there.

  Exhausted and bitterly cold, Vamilion caught his breath and then threw a powerful wave of sheer magic at Owailion, hoping it would hit him off the mountain far away, but the wave missed when Owailion disappeared. The attack collided violently with the peak, leaving Vamilion rattled with the mountain's pain, and he lost trace of his opponent in the stony carnage. The King of the Mountains felt ill at ease hiding, but he didn't know where the next attack would come, so he kept flipping from one locale to another and the storm clouds and lightning followed him through every jump. He next hid in one of the deeper mines where iron had been discovered instead of the diamonds hoped for and the men had abandoned the dig. Instead he found new miners there and blended in with them for a few hours. It gave Vamilion time to think about what had happened.

  For one thing, Owailion had known this would put him over the edge, Vamilion thought, demanding a battle. Wise Ones were not to lose their temper. The magic required them to be decent, kind people and being driven to the intensity of a full on brawl required quite a trigger. And Owailion had wanted a fight. Why? What was he trying to prove? Was murder the intent? More like suicide. Neither one of them could kill the other…well that wasn't true. The only way to kill a Seated Wise One was to command them to die. Since he did not know Owailion's true name it was impossible to use that means to kill him, but that didn't stop Owailion from doing the same to him. And yet he hadn't done that. He had only driven him to a murderous rage. If the King of Creation was trying to commit suicide this seemed like an insane way of going about it.

  But still they threw blows at each other from a distance, refusing to speak to each other and explain what was going on. They might end up wrecking the world, but they would still be alive, standing in the middle of the ruins. Not very wise of Wise Ones. Most of all Vamilion simply wanted an answer: Where was Gailin and why would Owailion allow her to be used so horribly?

  He tried to locate his enemy again somewhere in the Land but the very act of reaching for him alerted Owailion of his location. In a panic Vamilion shouted about a cave-in and got his fellow miners running out of the tunnels. Owailion's blow hit and the men all scrambled out of the entrance in panic and then stared in wonder at Vamilion. Several of these men recognized him from other times he had been about the mines, but now they started to look on him as a savior – the patron saint of miners all over the world. Vamilion was abashed but when another blow came and lightening hit the rock face above the mine's opening, he abruptly disappeared rather than draw more danger down on the men and that did not help their impression of him.

  Next Vamilion took refuge on his new island, Gardway. Perhaps Owailion had not discovered the new addition to the map and the thundering from the still active volcano would mask the rumbling thoughts Vamilion still harbored. He rested and recovered in the hot springs again but he also worried about being parboiled with a well-placed lightning bolt and so didn't stay long. Finally after three days of exhaustive fighting Vamilion went back to his newest mountain and waited for Owailion to find him there. Hopefully they could finish their discussion and do something to help Gailin.

  It wasn't to be. Owailion, with his gift of traveling instantly, didn't have to appear to do his magic. Instead Vamilion felt himself plucked up off the mountaintop and thrown violently through the air. He hardly had time to think before he was slammed in the middle of the plains, hundreds of miles from the nearest mountain. There Owailion dropped him like a load of stone. The landing crumpled the ground underneath Vamilion and he lost consciousness for a time. And when he came to painfully, he wept in exhaustion and frustration. He would either have to make himself wretchedly sick or start walking to leave this place. And overhead, Owailion's thunderstorms waited.

  Vamilion lay on his back, aching everywhere and stared up into the pensive storm. It occurred to him then that he could just lay there and refused to fight any more. He would just have to turn himself into a pile of stone here, a cairn in the grasses before he found his answers. And so that is what he did. A pile of stones in the middle of the winter's dying grasses replaced his body and Vamilion went to sleep, maybe forever.

  Chapter 13 – Secret Rebellions

  Drake insisted they keep moving, regardless of the fact that in Meeting they had returned to the ley lines, fall had descended and the mountains he feared remained ahead. Gailin had to go along with it, even though she found it hard to do anything at that point. She almost crumbled in on herself, with her magic the only thing that remained to remind her that she was human and not an object. She obeyed Drake's instructions to head north, following the appropriate branch in the Laranian River, but a slave had more freedoms and liveliness. She couldn't help herself much of the time and as they reached the mountains, moving away from most of the villages, she grew more despondent. She lost hope that maybe in the Great Chain the King of Mountains would find her. As they hid themselves among the passes Drake kept them invisible and her miserable.

  It didn't help that Drake insisted on trying for the baby every night and she vomited every time afterwards. The reptilian memories and his constant draining touch revolted her. Drake took this as a good sign, suspecting morning sickness but she knew better. He nauseated her and she couldn't stand the smell of him, or get the feel of him off her body. She washed in the river almost frantically and wept there in the water with grief for her own essence. She wasn't Gailin any longer.

  Oh, she knew there were girls everywhere who ended up in loveless marriages or found themselves sold off by their fathers as part of a business deal, but she never thought she would end up that way. She had originall
y rejected Jonis because of that prospect; marriage out of duty, not love. But this was different. She once upon a time imagined that with magic she could do anything, and held onto the hope that a foreordained lover awaited her. Vamilion, her knight in shining armor, was going to come and rescue her just as soon as Paget died, or when he found a way to kill Drake. But Vamilion never came.

  And as the days stretched into weeks her resentment of magic grew with every step. At first she directed her anger and disgust inward and then recognized that led to dangerous depression. The tales of the Queen of Rivers echoed in Gailin's dreams at night. Part of her quietly considered using name magic on herself to escape this misery. That led to instability in her magic, she discovered. She couldn't conjure much accurately. Since their survival relied on her ability to provide food, clothing and shelter as the wet weather descended, this attitude grew dangerous. She also couldn't bear to listen into Drake's thoughts so when he grew volatile, she wasn't forewarned or prepared and instead of diffusing his lusts for death, she almost gave into ignoring them. She could tune out his dreadful thoughts as long as he didn't act on them. If he spoke aloud about going after another soul, she would say something, but otherwise she wouldn't rouse herself to object. And she had almost forgotten about the souls he had taken. She couldn't go into his mind at night now because of his prohibition against using magic on him, but when she forgot about the souls she needed to rescue, that should have been alarming. Yet, it wasn't.

  Rather than falling into the inward depression, Gailin began focusing her unrest and anger outward; toward Owailion, someone she had not met but one she could truly blame for her predicament. It had not been Vamilion who had suggested that she respond to Drake's amorous advances, but Owailion. He was the one who wanted her to lure Drake away from the ley lines. Something else must have happened to Vamilion, she convinced herself. He would not have left her in Drake's clammy grasp. If he knew, the King of the Mountains surely would have written to her. He would have read the book, seen her despondency and sent a message back or found a way to show her that she was still in his thoughts. Owailion must have blocked him or found a way to keep Vamilion from coming to her rescue.

  Her single bright light was her healing. Whenever they came into a village Drake allowed her to find the healer in town and offer her services. She could not speak of magic to whomever she met, and she held no hope of sending out a message, but it lifted her spirits. And in one village the ancient woman who acted as the village healer spoke to her gently about an apothecary who lived up by a huge lake called Ameloni on the other side of the mountains and suggested that she should go there to replenish her supplies of herbs. Drake wasn't aware of this little conversation and so when she kept walking north, even when the river petered out in the pass, and led the way over to the far side, he didn't object.

  Lake Ameloni filled the plains on the far side of the mountain pass and the first snow descended just in time to encourage them to find this vaunted apothecary. A single cabin near the shore and the remains of an herb garden outside told her she might be in the correct place, but Gailin dared greatly and pressed her mind forward to see what kind of person she was going to encounter. A gentleman, alone but not lonely, met her thoughts and with relief she could magically smell a wide range of spices, herbs and other plants in his cabin. This was the apothecary she had hoped to meet.

  “No speaking, Gailin. No magic,” Drake warned, for he rarely let her speak with anyone on the off chance it might be someone who knew magic. She had long ago given up fighting the name magic imposed on her and simply nodded. Really she was just curious and that part of being a Wise One had not died with every other part of her. Being a healer, wanting to learn more and trying to expand beyond the limits of her marriage to Drake gave her hope.

  It was only mid-afternoon but the sun was already lowering when Drake knocked on the door of the apothecary. It took a long while for the man to reach the door and Gailin sensed he had to come from the basement where he had a still room, cool year round for the storage of his wares. When he came to the door, the gentleman looked surprised. An older gentleman with graying hair and huge hands, he seemed a simple, roughhewn person who looked like he saw perhaps five people a year given the rustic, hard to reach location. His beard, untrimmed, and his leather clothes witnessed to his rough lifestyle. He wore a leather apron, work gloves and a startled look, but greeted them well enough.

  “Oh, I was expecting a hunter,” he said cheerfully. “How may I help you?”

  “Are you the Apothecary?” Drake prefaced. “We heard about you in one of the villages down on the other side of the pass.”

  “Yes,” he nodded, giving Gailin a strange look, for she kept her head down, humbly standing behind her husband, not daring to make eye contact. “I provide herbs and such things in this area. Are you in need something?”

  “My wife here has an interest. We're traveling and need to replenish her supplies,” Drake replied.

  The Apothecary invited them into his home which seemed completely devoted to his work. The table, the hearth, all flat surfaces and even his bed tucked into a corner, were covered with bottles, leaves, bowls and powders of his trade. The haphazard and overwhelming display of medicinal wealth made Gailin's eyes go wide.

  “Tell the man what we need,” Drake ordered and she started. The Apothecary looked at her, still concerned, though he recovered well enough by finding a scrap of leather and a charred piece of wood with which to write. He swept aside an empty mortar and pestle to make a writing surface and looked up, prepared to make a list.

  A light went off at last in Gailin's mind. She could treat herself for her depression. The things she needed would also be a warning to this man if he knew something about the herbs and supplements he sold. “I need dried spinach, fish oil, hypericum…”

  Dutifully the Apothecary wrote all these items down, nodding his understanding. When she added a few things they legitimately needed, like ginger and garlic, he looked up and she peered at him face on, showing him that she wasn't necessarily cowed by her husband and that she at one time had a mind of her own.

  “Well, it will take a bit to get this together, but I have it all here somewhere,” the Apothecary muttered. “Can you wait here for a while?”

  Without pausing for the answer, the Apothecary went down into his basement still room and left Gailin and Drake upstairs in the chaos. Without asking permission she began visibly sorting through what she saw and in wonder recognized how a little organizing would truly display what this man had. She had never seen such a vast array of healing needs. She found bottles and corks, mortar and pestle, dried leaves of all variety flung about the room haphazardly and couldn't resist. She began organizing.

  She bundled like leaves together and found twine in the windowsill to tie them in a bunch. She gathered empty bottles and began pouring the ground powders into them. One sniff or a brief taste told her exactly which medicinal herb she encountered and she looked around for the apothecary's labeling system. None seemed in evidence so she looked back at Drake. He wouldn't object with her helping as long as magic wasn't in evidence. She took out her book and stylus and began cutting one page into little strips of paper.

  Drake looked disgusted and bored. He had not wanted to come here, but he nodded his approval when her labor managed to clear the only chair in the place and he was able to sit. He didn't bother offering to help and instead cleaned his nails with his belt knife, paying little attention to her actions. Could she get a message to the apothecary? It would not require magic and she wasn't 'calling' to anyone. Carefully, on the bottle of caraway seeds she was labeling she wrote a second word. “Help.” On the next she wrote “Queen of Healing” instead of the words that belonged there. On the next she wrote “Name Magic” and then reconsidered. A simple apothecary would know nothing about magic or her situation. Yet something subversive awoke in her and she ended up labeling every bottle there with a message to someone. She only had to hope that Drake h
ad been honest when he said he could not read the language of the Land.

  When she heard the apothecary stomping back up the ladder from his still room, she paused. The old man lifted the floor hatch and gasped. She had managed to work her way through fully half the room and made his bed livable along with the chair and part of the table. Awkwardly she finished writing on one final label, tied it to the cork and then put the bottle on his mantle where she had been storing her newly organized medicines. Without looking at the Apothecary's stunned face Gailin gathered the now empty bowls, put them in his wash tub and then turned toward him.

  “You're a god-send,” the Apothecary commented with a chuckle. Even though he had his hands full of their purchases he began exploring her labeling system and handiwork. Gailin watched the old man read one label and freeze a bit as her true message came through to him. Instead of cinnamon like she should have put on the jar she had put 'tell someone'. The Apothecary moved on to the next bottle and read there, getting the point quite quickly.

  Then he turned back to his customers as if there was nothing amiss in his bottles. “This is wonderful. If you can stay, I'll give you these for free and you can finish the job. The still room is worse, trust me.” Then he set down all the little bags and few bottles of liquid items he had prepared for them.

  Gailin didn't dare look over at Drake, for then he would know she wanted to remain behind in this wondrous place, exploring the herbs and leaving her little messages. She looked down at her hands and commanded them not to tremble. She had finally broken free a little and the prospect of more crafted a rage against the name magic she could not contain. Oh, to be able to speak.