Melting Stones

Oswin's Kids

N ory waited for us at the back door when we reached the house. "Do you believe I'll thank you for inspiring Meryem to bathe and dress? You were supposed to be with her."

I gave her my best glare. With my head spinning, I doubt it was very good. "I had something important to do, all right? If I hadn't, maybe none of us could have left here at all. And your darling Meryem might have gotten her toesies boiled."

The darling Meryem peered at me from behind Nory's skirts and giggled. I scowled at her, but not very hard. She was as cute as an amethyst once she was clean.

"There's nothing around here to boil her toes." Nory didn't look convinced.

"There would have been, had not Evumeimei acted quickly." Luvo walked over to Nory and sat on his rump so he could look up at her. "How are the boys?"

She had to back up and kneel to talk to him politely. It was interesting to see that she wanted to talk to him politely. "They're packed and in the cart. We're all ready to go." She glared over Luvo at me. "You can forget anything to eat."

My head ached and my hands shook. Her mention of food explained my wobbliness. I had overdone things, even with Luvo's approval magic to bolster me. I needed food. I'd hitch a ride in the wagon back to the inn, and get something there.

"If you're ready, why are we gabbling?" I picked up Luvo. "We're wasting time." This was the problem with meat people. They had to be talked into everything. I made myself forget the time I spent arguing Flare and Carnelian into doing things. Anyway, it was stones I was thinking of, calm and quiet stones.

"So I'm to believe you found some huge magic thing to do out by our pond." Nory led the way back through the house. "A pond so useless we can't even get decent-sized fish out of it."

"We can play in the water when the weather's hot." Meryem decided to hold on to my hand. I don't know why, but it made me feel funny. She kept looking up at me, too. Was there mud on my face? I had plenty of it on my clothes.

"Yes, Meryem, you play in it when you're hot." Nory stopped to shoulder a pack and pick up two carry sacks left in the hall. "Then you walk back here and track dirt in the house. And you're coated in pond mud and I have to give you a bath."

Meryem just grinned. "Treak gives us a bath sometimes. And Lexa and Jesy and Deva. You aren't the only one. And they mop the floors sometimes. It isn't just you."

"Sometimes." Nory checked the pack's straps. "And sometimes they get silly and pour water all on the floors and get mud all over everything." She pushed the front door open. "Some help. Urda save me, did you kids pack up the entire house?"

Just like Nory, I was staring at the cart. It was piled with boxes and bags. I saw a crate with chickens and another with puppy noses sticking out of it. A dog was tied to the cart by a length of rope. From the look of her, she was the puppies' mother. Eleven people, boys and girls of different ages, stood around it, waiting for us. A pair of sorry-looking cart horses sagged in the shafts. They looked as if they expected nothing but bad out of life.

"You aren't taking all this with you?" Nory demanded. She had told the boys to pack only what would fit a small bag. I had even seen the small bags.

"You let us worry about what we take, Nory. You and the little ones can ride right here." The boy giving the orders was Treak, the one whose hair went every which-way. Now he patted a spot on the cart where Nory and the littlest children could sit. "Jesy can drive."

"Thanks, Treak." A wiry blonde girl with the thickest spectacles I had ever seen—Jesy—clambered onto the driver's seat. Nory settled Meryem and a small boy, then climbed up beside them. Another boy offered me the reins to the horse I had left with Treak earlier that morning. It was freshly combed and saddled. The boy held out his free hand, palm up.

He wanted payment? I asked, "What's your price? I don't have any money."

"A ride to the inn." He was a cheerful fellow, black as shadows, with ribs that showed against his skin. None of these kids was what I'd call plump. "I'll save myself a few blisters that way."

I slapped his open palm with mine to show we had a bargain. Then I mounted and pulled him up behind me. Once in the saddle, I rearranged Luvo in his sling and rode out ahead of the cart.

Traveling on horseback, I tend to forget the bumps in the road. I was halfway to the village when I heard a nasty-sounding rumble and thump behind me. I glanced back. The cart's front wheel had gone into a deep rut. There was another bump as it came out, followed by the crunch of breaking wood. The little ones screamed. The other kids shouted. The dog barked; the puppies replied. The chickens shrieked. I turned my horse so my rider and I could look.

"Oh, ringworms," the boy whispered. He dismounted to help. The cart leaned to one side, the rear left wheel bent in under the box. The left front wheel was also bent. The axle was broken. The cart was going nowhere.

"Hog puke, dog dung, and navy snot!" Treak jumped up and down in the road. Now he looked like someone who could break furniture in a rage. "Lakik's curses twelve times on the scum swiller who fixed this last!"

"Oswin did." Tears rolled down Meryem's face. "Don't you yell at Oswin, Treak! I'll cut you!" From somewhere she had gotten a small dagger. She held it like she knew how to use it.

Pirate kids, I thought, and sighed.

Nory took the knife away like she'd had a lot of practice. "Kill Treak later, Meryem. Get down carefully." She and the driver, Jesy, climbed down and helped the children get off.

As some of the kids cried and others asked what they would do now, I made a mistake. I let my weariness and my need for food run my mouth. "I knew this was a bad idea! Carrying all these things, for what? Those ships will be packed! Surely Oswin told you that. It's why you had orders just to bring a few things, not all this." I waved my hands at the cart. "When the volcano explodes, you'll still be here with all this junk—"

"It is not junk!" Nory stared up at me. Her eyes looked like blue-gray ice in the winter sun. "What do you know? I bet you've never done without in your life! I'll bet you never had to run from anywhere with just the rags on your back! Every one of us has left our whole lives behind more than once, so don't you preach! We have to save what we can!"

I ground my teeth. "And if they don't let you bring it on the ships?" She had a nerve, talking that way to me. She didn't know the first thing about what I'd had to do.

Meryem grabbed a beat-up looking thing that maybe was a doll once. "I have to have Dolly. Dolly's my family."

My gut twisted. "They'll let you take one dolly, Meryem. It's crates and bags and trunks of stuff I'm not sure about."

Luvo raised up in his sling so we were touching. You crossed five lands with your cats, he said so only I could hear. You wouldn't let anyone separate you.

"If we can't take it, then we'll sort it out on the docks, not a moment before! You don't tell us to give up our home and our treasures, too!" Nory was crying. "Treak, stop running around or I'll hit you, I swear! Find a blacksmith. Not the Master Blacksmith, we can't afford him. Maybe his apprentice will fix this rattletrap."

It wasn't my job to tell her the blacksmith had left before dawn. I dismounted and gave my horse's reins to Treak so he could ride for help. Then I put Luvo beside the road. I helped the kids stack their things, including the crated animals, on the grass, out of the way. Meryem seemed to think she and her dreadful doll were supposed to help me. Everywhere I turned, I tripped over her. When we stopped for a drink of water, Nory shoved an egg turnover at each of us.

"The rock says you'll be ill if you don't eat, Evvy. I didn't ask you to help," Nory told me.

I devoured the turnover. I never refuse food, even food grudgingly offered. Pride is something rich folk can afford. Nory gave Meryem and me another egg turnover each. Then we split one stuffed with chicken spiced with cardamom. I gobbled it, too. The headache that squeezed my temples loosened. "He's not a rock. His name is Luvo. He's as close to a god as any of us will ever get."

"He says you bought us time with a trick you played on the volcano spirits," Nory remarked.

"Heibei, take this bad luck and bury it," I said.

Nory thumped me in the arm. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't hit Evvy." Meryem was licking her fingers. "You don't hit me."

"I like you. I don't like Evvy. What's hay-bay?"

I sighed and rolled my eyes, which would have gotten me a tweak of the ear if Rosethorn had been around. "Heibei's the god of luck back home in Yanjing. I asked him for help. He's a good god, not undependable, like your Lakik. It's bad luck to say a thing is taken care of, even when it's Luvo saying it." I wasn't as sure as Luvo that it would take time for Carnelian and Flare to see they'd been tricked. I decided to keep that notion to myself. "I'll feel better when we're on ships and well away from this island."

"Your rescuers are here!" Jayat drove up in a cart that was some less rickety than the first one. The new one already held two trunks—his and Tahar's, I would have guessed. "You kids start loading up, all right?"

Meryem was the first to start loading the cart. The other kids scrambled to help.

Treak, behind Jayat, dismounted from my horse and tied it to a tree branch. Up the road came two of the inn's hostlers. They had a rig they could use to tow the broken cart into the village.

Jayat went to Nory. "Why didn't you have Oswin check that thing before he left?"

"He did. He's the one who fixed it so it would go." Nory could pout very prettily, I saw. She also knew how to use her beautiful eyes on poor Jayat. "I believed him. Even though I knew he was half out of his mind, thinking about every little old widow on the mountain. I should have seen his mind wasn't on the job." Nory grabbed a seabag and lugged it over to Jayat's cart. "Evvy's rock says we have more time."

Jayat looked around. "Luvo? How can this be?"

Luvo started to explain about Flare, Carnelian, and the quartz trap. I couldn't bear to sit still anymore. From the sun's position, I knew we weren't leaving that night. I untied my horse.

"I'll see the rest of you at the inn." I wanted a look at Oswin's map again. "Luvo, are you coming?"

"I will stay with the cart, Evumeimei. If there is a shock, I can steady the rocks under it, and reduce the effect on the wheels."

Jayat looked at him with appreciation. "Thanks, old man. That's kind of you."

"What's your rush, Evumeimei?" Nory's eyes glittered. "Or don't you like to be around us poor homeless waifs?"

"Nory!" Jayat looked shocked at the way she spoke to me.

"Nory's mean to Evvy." Meryem perched on top of the cart with the luggage, her doll tucked in her sash. "Nory thinks Evvy doesn't like us."

"I need to replenish my magic." I didn't enjoy the way Meryem's words made me feel. Meryem thought I did like them. It's no good liking people, not when they're probably going to get killed. I had learned that the hard way. "You think Luvo and I know more about the volcano spirits by accident? We found them under your pond. We set a trap for them deep in the ground. Now I have to strengthen myself again. You don't need me to get to the village. Luvo just said he can help you." To build myself up this time, I wanted Oswin's map with the lines of power sketched on them. It was still on a table at the inn when we had left that morning.

When no one else said anything, I mounted my horse and rode off. It occurred to me that if I left the animal in the stables, someone might take it. That wouldn't do. Just outside the village, I dismounted and led the horse into a clearing beside a stream. The clearing was shielded from view by trees. There I removed the saddle. I tethered the horse where it could graze and drink safely, once I'd checked that the water was free of acid. When the horse lipped my shirt, I stroked its muzzle and sighed.

"I suppose we ought to be better acquainted." I had tried so hard, since Gyongxe, not to get to know any animals well. The only exception was the dog, Little Bear, who had been at Discipline. Mostly I had blamed him because he wasn't a cat, which seemed unfair, now that I thought of it. I checked the inner rim of the saddle. There was the horse's name, "Spark." A look under the horse's belly told me Spark was a mare. "Hello, Spark. I'm Evvy. You probably knew that already. I need you to wait quietly here. We're going to do some more running about. I'll try to bring you some treats when I come back." I thought, And if they won't let me bring you aboard my ship, I get to leave you here to die.

She made a happy horse noise and bumped me with her nose. I hesitated, then gave her a rub with some handfuls of dry leaves. After I wiped my eyes—they were watering—I went on into Moharrin.

Some carts stood in the open space in front of the inn, but not many. I bet that those who could afford good carts had left already, rushing to get places on the ships. People waited in the courtyard with their bundles and their horses, donkeys, or mules, if they had them. I also saw dogs, sheep, goats, and baskets and crates with cats or birds. I turned away. I wasn't the one to say that they probably wouldn't be allowed to take their creatures along. The inn's servants were carrying boxes out to pack into the carts. They were too busy to do more than nod to me and dodge the children who played in the yard. Why hadn't these people taken the road already? Were they waiting on someone? Tahar, maybe, or Azaze.

Inside the inn's public room, I found Azaze folding blankets as she supervised the maids sealing food in crocks.

"Not that one, the lid is cracked! The first bump and we'll have fish brine all over us! Firouze, pack that basket tighter—we aren't going on a picnic." Azaze cast a quick dark eye my way. "Evvy, you were supposed to be helping Oswin's children."

"They're on their way, with Jayat and two of your stable boys and Luvo," I told her. "If they have any more help they won't get here at all. Have you seen Rosethorn?"

Azaze looked down that beak of a nose at me. "Do I hear snippiness from you, girl?" She inspected me and sniffed. "Sit down." She began to pull things from jars and baskets onto a plate. "One thing I have learned about mages in my years, you have to eat when you are working. What did you do out there?"

I scowled at her. "What makes you think I did any work? And I had two and a half turnovers."

Azaze set the plate on a table with one hand. She thrust me onto the bench in front of it with the other. "You're trembling, you're pale, and your mouth is pinched. Whatever magic you worked, those turnovers weren't enough to bring you back."

"They weren't very big," I admitted. She'd given me bread stuffed with ground lamb and cheese—travel food. I began to eat while she poured me a cup of mint tea.

"No one has seen your Rosethorn," Azaze said. "Myrrhtide is still in the lake. He's working magic, too. I've had a lad taking food out to him, for all the boy thinks I'm crackbrained to do it. He hasn't seen as many mages collapse as I have. I hope whatever you did was important."

"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.