Melting Stones

Mage Stuff

W ith everyone awake, the cooks fixed breakfast.

When it was done, there was enough predawn light to see by. It was time to go. Carts and animals moved forward along the road, finally. I joined the line at the end, with the herd animals and the kids who watched them. It wasn't the fanciest place in the caravan. That's why I was shocked when Myrrhtide rode back and fell in beside me. "How are you feeling?"

I gaped at him. He never asked how I felt. "I know it's kind of dark, but you have to be able to tell you're talking to me."

"I know who I am speaking to. Your health is important, young woman. Right now you and Luvo may be our best protection from a tomb made of lava." When I stared at him, shocked, Myrrhtide snorted. "What? Because I spent the last day in the lake I'm too preoccupied to understand the obvious? Rosethorn and I can do very little against a volcano. You are all the help we have."

"You don't think we messed up, letting people know that we'd bought some extra time?" I asked. "I thought you'd be saying I don't have any right to call myself a mage."

Myrrhtide rubbed his eyes. "The first thing every mage should learn is that magic makes fools of us. Now you may call yourself a mage. You have learned the most important lesson. Tell me, then—if you did trap our young volcano children, why do we rush along today?"

I have no idea why it spilled out of me. Maybe it was that Myrrhtide had said that I might still call myself a mage, when I had fumbled things so badly. Rosethorn was busy. I could see her up ahead. She was growing vines to pull fallen trees from the road so we could get through. And Myrrhtide was actually listening to me.

He took me back over my tale. He asked questions to clear things up in his own mind. "Luvo didn't believe these other spirits were a problem?"

I shook my head. "He can see what I do, because our magics join in spots. He thought they were just stupid and didn't care. We believed if we trapped Flare and Carnelian, that would be enough." Six miles out and ten miles down, I felt the next squeeze coming. I looked around. We were passing a tall series of granite slabs. On our other side was a slope that led to the river.

I gulped. I didn't have Luvo to help me with this one. "Would you ask Rosethorn something for me? Could she lay vines over the shakier parts of the stone on our left? There's a tremor coming. I'll hold the stone back here if she can do that. Tell everyone we're gonna get a hard shake. It's coming fast."

Myrrhtide rode up along our draggledy parade, passing on the warning. I dismounted from Spark and passed her reins to somebody. Then I called up all that power I had collected the afternoon before, greeting the rock on my left as I walked over to it. This granite was lava that had cooled slowly enough for bits of quartz and feldspar to form in it. Water and plants had done some damage here. So had quarrymen, who had taken away stone for buyers around the Pebbled Sea.

Hold strong, I told the unsteady slabs. Can you feel these youngsters rushing around?

I heard the whisper of stone laughter. Then the volcano spirits rolled under us in a fiery tide. They were returning to Mount Grace far beneath the river. They bellowed for Flare and Carnelian as they traveled. They had been searching under the Pebbled Sea, with no luck. Now they plunged into the hollow chamber, discouraged.

The ground calmed. The granite boulders under my magic settled back into their beds, complaining. They had wanted to move. Another time, I promised them. Maybe even today.

That cheered them up. I knew it would.

I looked ahead. Apart from some tumbled bundles and people knocked from their feet, everything seemed to be all right. On we went. Eventually people started to fall behind, especially the older ones, and the kids.

Rosethorn rode back to me. She had a baby in a sling on her chest, and a one-legged boy riding behind her. "You look comfortable, on your nice strong horse, by yourself."

I scowled at her. "In Gyongxe you let me ride."

"In Gyongxe you had flayed feet. And I did make you get off the horse before you got flayed." She raised her eyebrows. "Are you too worn-out from playing with the nice volcano?"

She knew I wasn't. I gave Spark up to Meryem and two of Oswin's small boys. I even carried a baby. He wet himself, and me. For good measure he burped sour milk on my shoulder. By then the road had come down close to the river. I gave the baby back to his mother to be changed. Then I happily took off my boots and walked into the icy water. Cold doesn't bother me that much. And the smell of water and wet stone was much better than the smell of dirty baby.

I was gathering blue moonstones on the river bottom when the volcano spirits stirred in the big chamber under the mountain. It was strange. The more time I spent listening for them, the more I knew what they were doing. Now the ones who had gone out were rousing up the ones who had stayed behind. They started to whirl around, deep below the earth. The walls of the chamber began to melt, making the room bigger.

"Shake!" I yelled to the people on the road. "Shake, a big one! Shake!"

They scrambled to grab the horses and get out of the carts. I dared not move. I threw my power against the huge slope of loose, quarried rock beside the road. Even a tiny shiver would send tons of granite on top of everyone there. Next I sucked the river boulders' weight into me. I needed to be sure I wouldn't tumble when the earth began to kick. Once I was fixed in place, I spread my magic thin, covering as much loose rock as I could. Then I jammed it down, locking thousands of stone fragments in place. They shifted, trying to cut through my power.

Heat rose from the big chamber. The volcano spirits were hungry. They wanted Flare and Carnelian. I sent that hunger back to them as echoes. They felt battered by their own feelings. Confused, they backed deeper into the chamber. Knowing they were being monkeyed with, the earth spirits roared their fury. The ground under everything buckled and rolled.

Then, for the first time, I heard their voices. They wanted Flare and Carnelian.

They are near! one of them shouted. We need them to lead us!

We need them to lead us out! We need them to take us into glory and fire! another cried, one that sounded female.

They are the leaders, the guides! Where are they?'That one seemed older.

Where are the ones who will free us of the prison and the shadows? From the sound of that voice, the spirit had been waiting to get out for a very long time.

Where are the ones who will guide us to freedom? And that one was my age, or sounded that way, at least.

Find them! Find them! They all joined in that cry, shouting it over and over.

The shake and the spirits' screaming seemed to go on forever. I held down the rocks on the slope until I thought I would melt. I was so full of heat and power I wanted to rip the earth in two and bare its heart. I wanted to shake the world to pieces.

The earthquake eased and stopped. The volcano spirits traveled out of the chamber to the north, leaving the big chamber half full. They sensed that Carnelian and Flare were someplace close. And now I understood their need. Luvo and I would never be able to hide Carnelian and Flare from the other volcano spirits forever.

Those two volcano kids had it all wrong. They'd understood only part of the story.

I pulled myself back to my body. Once more I brought a lot of power with me. And I needed it, to keep the unstable rock from burying the refugees. For the second time my magical body was too big for my real one. I swore in my home language of Zhanzou and dragged myself in here, tucked myself in there. Finally I jammed myself back into my skin.

I came around to discover I was drenched. Myrrhtide stood beside me in the river. He'd put his arm around my chest so he could hold my head above water.

"Uh-oh." My voice came out as a croak. "I guess I fell down."

He raised his eyebrows. "Most of you did. Your feet and legs are as stiff as stone."

I sighed. "Thanks for keeping me from drowning." I looked at his face. Fusspot actually showed whisker stubble, when he'd shaved every day. There were black circles under his eyes. "You should create a spell so your whiskers come off in water. Think how much time you'd save. You'd make a fortune peddling it to people. Even ladies would want it, so they'd never have to get their bodies plucked again."

"Shaving—or plucking—is the last thing on my mind," Myrrhtide said drily. "Will you tell me what was on yours? You nearly drowned. I couldn't carry you out. You felt like you weighed several tons."

"Oh. Right." I released the magics that settled my feet and stood on my own. "I borrowed the stones' weight so the shake wouldn't knock me down. It never dawned on me I'd need to be stiff all over."

"Why didn't you wade to the bank and do whatever you had to?" asked Myrrhtide.

I blinked at him. Heat came to my cheeks—not magic heat. I felt like a real village fool. "I didn't think of it. I just wanted to lock down that scree up beside the road, quick, before the next tremor struck."

"Ah." He said it like he would have gotten to dry land first. Probably he would have, too. "Then the exercise is valuable, if you learned from it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to check with my fellow water mages—"

He never finished. Miles off, in the direction of Moharrin, we heard something explode. Myrrhtide and I raced up the riverbank to the road. Everyone was nervous and unable to see a thing. We had come down the other side of the ring of tall hills that surrounded the lake. The cliffs along the road helped to block our view of Mount Grace.

There was only one thing to do. All of the climbers started up a solid stone cliff just a little ways back. I outdistanced everyone, fast. Well, they weren't stone mages who could cling to flat rock. When I got to the top, I had a clear sight of the mountain. She towered over the forest that surrounded the lake.

High on Mount Grace's eastern side, a thick plume of light gray smoke rose. It climbed rapidly in the sky, billowing.

Do not panic, I told myself. I couldn't have said it aloud if I had wanted to. My mouth had gone sticky dry.

Panic is bad. I reached for that plume with my power, telling myself, A volcano spirit couldn't have escaped without you knowing, Evumeimei Dingzai! Every spirit in that chamber would be shouting the news!

I felt nothing. There was no drop of molten rock anywhere near that fat column of smoke. I couldn't even find rock ash in it.

When I got back to the road, I begged some water from the inn servants. Then I went to find the mages. Azaze, Oswin, Tahar, and Rosethorn all gathered around Luvo, who was still in his sling on Spark.

Other adults listened nearby as Luvo talked. "It is steam and air only. It has been thrust through cracks in the mountain by the movement of volcano spirits." Of course Luvo would know. He could ask even distant stones to tell him what was going on. I had to be close to them to hear what they said. "One of those cracks passed through an underground spring. The water was heated far past boiling. The explosion was steam bursting through a crack in the mountainside."

Tahar gave the most wicked chuckle I have ever heard. "Dubyine, Karove, and their pack will gallop past soon enough. They whine about poverty, but they have the best horses on Starns. Master Luvo, they'll complain your magery was at fault, saying they maybe had a few more days. Don't tell them they're running from a teapot that boiled over."

"You didn't believe we had extra time!" I said it before I thought. Then I winced as the adults turned to look at me.

"I may be only a hedgewitch, but I understand enough about the world to know that its power is greater than I am. You mages who draw on it, whose magic comes from things outside you, you think you control it. Maybe when it's weaving or iron-making or pottery you can. I wouldn't know. But stone, or the green world, or water? You no more control those things than I control where my great-great-grandson burps." Tahar grinned evilly at me. "You're shocked that the volcano won't come and go as you predict it will. I'm surprised you're silly enough to think it. That goes double for you, Master Rock. Now, let's move on, before those spirits come to bump us all into the river."

I stood aside and let them pass me. Why Heibei hadn't made that one a great mage I don't know. She had the attitude for it. And she had told me the same thing that Myrrhtide and Rosethorn, in their own ways, were trying to tell me. It wasn't that mages didn't make mistakes. It was that they learned from them.

What could I learn?

Rosethorn stopped. "Did you amuse yourself in the river?"

I fished in my pocket and offered her a blue moonstone. "Want one?"

Rosethorn cupped my chin in her hand, looking me over. "The gods were watching over me when you got in trouble back at Winding Circle. All the same, Evvy, don't kill yourself with this. Don't try to hold back the tides. Briar will never forgive me if I let you die while he's away."

I smiled at her. "I'm not going to die. I bet it hurts."

She let me go. "Imp." She walked over to a cart and took charge of a baby.

Oswin came to me leading Spark. Once I took Luvo and his sling, Oswin gave Spark to a couple of kids. They climbed into the saddle with relief. I figured Oswin would wander off—he looked distracted—but he didn't. Although he carried that immense pack, he walked like it was filled with feathers. His hands were tucked in his pockets. He gazed off into nowhere, his lips moving silently.

Since Oswin didn't seem to want to talk, I turned to Luvo. How did the shield building go? I asked in our magics. Will it fool the volcano spirits? Will it keep them from finding Carnelian and Flare?

The shield is made, he said, granite on one side, obsidian facing outward. It will reflect only the volcano spirits, should they find it. I do not know how long it will hold. The volcano spirits might come too close, and melt it, or enough of them may decide to ram it. Has Myrrhtide said if more ships have arrived in the seaport?

I didn't ask, I replied.

"Question," Oswin interrupted.

I was so fixed on Luvo that Oswin's voice made me jump. We both stared at him.

He didn't realize he'd startled me. "You said Flare and Carnelian wanted to play when you first met them. They wanted to show you things, and they wanted you to help them escape."

"Ye-e-ess." I wasn't sure what he was getting at. I didn't want him springing any word traps on me.

"What if you went back to them now, and said you want to go out with them?" Oswin asked. "What if you told them you'd found them the perfect spot to do it? An easy spot? Then you led them to it—away from Starns?"

I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at him. Luvo stood up on his back legs inside his sling to get a better look at Oswin.

It seemed like Oswin was used to reactions like ours. "No, wait, listen a moment. You said they want to come out. They never insisted on where, did they? In fact, Mount Grace was their last resort. Some old faker of their own kind sold them that old wheeze. You know, the one that if they struggle and fight through tons of solid rock, they'd be worthy to break into the open air." Oswin said "worthy" like it was a very bad word. "Flare and Carnelian were smart. They're looking for faults that will take them close to the surface, so they can save their strength until the last moment. You know they'll break free eventually. Why not do it where they won't kill thousands of people and make whole islands unlivable?"

"I have never heard of such a thing in all my millennia, Oswin Forest," Luvo said flatly.

Oswin looked at Luvo and shrugged. "You led me to believe you came along with Evvy for new experiences. This would be one of them."

"You propose to tamper with the great cycle of birth," Luvo told him with a little outraged thunder in his voice. "Mountains enter life in this manner. There is always the struggle, violence, destruction, fire. Things die, things are born, the old is buried in the rush of the new. So it has been from the very beginning of this world."

Again Oswin shrugged. "Once, if a baby started to come out backwards, the choice was to see if it could be born that way alive, to bring it out that way and risk the mother's death, or to try to turn it and risk the baby's death. Then a midwife learned how to turn the baby in the womb. More babies and mothers live because nature never minds a little extra help."

"How did you find that out?" I asked, curious. I'd never met a man who could talk midwifery.

"Jayat hasn't been around to help Tahar for long," Oswin explained. "Before that she was without an apprentice for a couple of years. I helped her. We are talking about volcanoes, Evvy."

"Blasphemy." Luvo was rocking from side to side. His weight shifts made him hard for me to balance.

"I'm not proposing an end to the process through which mountains are born. This is just a new wrinkle." Oswin was being very patient. "Could many stone mages even do it?"

"Evumeimei's skills are unusual," Luvo said, distracted from his crankiness. "I believe the fact that her first instructors were green mages influenced her power. Her magic follows more flexible channels than those of the stone mages I have encountered."

"I am standing right here," I told them. "I can speak for myself."

"I was wondering about how Evvy does things. Most stone mages I've encountered seem very, very settled" Oswin commented. "They only deal with their immediate circle of stones and learning. Certainly they aren't flexible. I never heard that a mage's first teachers have an effect on how their magic works, though."

They would remember me eventually. In the meantime, the refugees were drawing away. Luvo calmed down as I started walking, and Oswin caught up. He and Luvo kept talking about first teachers. I turned Oswin's idea over in my head. Hadn't Rosethorn mentioned something similar? She'd been joking, but Oswin wasn't.

Flare and Carnelian didn't know I had tricked them. If they did, their anger would be enough to blow the quartz trap to pieces. They might suspect. If I showed up before they broke out, though, if I set them free, I could convince them it really was just a game.

Worse, I didn't know if I could keep them from the surface. They were big before they went into the quartz. If they were bigger when they came out, I might not be able to control them.

I might die.

The road crested a high point in the ground. Below us was the long line of refugees. Rosethorn was riding back, a little boy behind her, a little girl in front of her. She looked tired and thin.

I promised Briar I would take care of Rosethorn.

I interrupted Oswin and Luvo. "Where do I take Flare and Carnelian? I can't just drag them any old where. They'll come straight back here."

Oswin grinned. "All of those roads that lead away from Mount Grace, and you can't think of something that's a better place than this?"

"I don't know any roads for volcanoes" I didn't feel like playing games! Then I bit my lip. The cracks. The cracks, that led to the faults deep in the ground. The seams in the earth. Where might they take me?

In my mind's eye I saw black, cold depths at the foot of a stone cliff. Strange sea creatures danced in cold salt water. They swirled around an opening that spurted clouds of hot water.

"Luvo…" I whispered.

"I saw." Of course he saw, I was holding him. "Is it far enough from human dwellings?"

"Is what far enough?" Now we had confused Oswin.

"I'm not sure," I said. "It's seven miles. We need Myrrhtide."

Oswin, Luvo, and I worked our way down the river-bank. Myrrhtide was in the water again, his habit kilted up around his waist. He walked along the river bottom as easily as I walked on the road. He didn't slip or slide like I did.

I stared in awe. Fishes darted around and between his feet, some of them big ones. Now and then one would leap in the air and hit broadside, splashing him. His pale lashes were marked with water drops. Water beads sparkled on his short red hair. He looked… happy.

Maybe our voyage would have been more fun if we had just towed Myrrhtide behind the ship on a rope.

"Excuse us—are you working on something?" Oswin could be very polite.

"No. Evvy, if your face freezes like that, you will frighten small animals. Is something the matter?" Myrrhtide asked gently.

Kanzan bless me, with fish nibbling at his toes, Myrrhtide was actually decent. "Back on the ship, when I banged you in the face, did you know where we were?" I inquired.

He bridled, as if I'd suggested he didn't know how to do his sums. "We were directly over the Ditlo Trench, the deepest such trench in the Pebbled Sea. It measures ten thousand feet at its greatest depth. Not one of the biggest trenches—there is a deeper one at the heart of the Syth, and another off the Bight of Fire that is said to be nearly twice that. At the one in the Bight of Fire there are creatures, completely bleached of color, who give off their own light—never mind." Myrrhtide bent to scratch a catfish on the chin. "I fail to see why an offshore formation like the trench would be of interest to anyone just now."

"Evumeimei, you would have to do this alone," Luvo said unhappily. "I can send you strength, perhaps. You know I dare not bring my essence too close to that of Flare and Carnelian."

"There's a spell that Tahar and Jayat know. Sometimes Tahar does something risky and needs Jayat to observe or to lend her strength, but not to get too entangled with her. Jayat uses it, too. That way she can tell him what to do when she's too weak to work magic herself. It might not serve you, of course, Master Luvo. We could ask." Oswin's eyes were shining. I began to see why Jayat spoke of him like he did. This man lived to work out things, even when he couldn't do them himself. Why hadn't he been born a great mage?

On the other hand, the idea of Oswin with the power to try some of his ideas was a little scary.

"Jayat!" Oswin's bellow nearly split my skull. "Come here, we need to ask you a question!"

"Will someone please tell me what that trench has to do with anything? We are running from a volcano, may I remind you?" Myrrhtide sloshed out of the river. He yelped as he stepped on something pointy on the riverbank. I set Luvo down and went to help him.

"Here. You can brace yourself on me and put your own sandals on, or brace yourself on me and I'll put your sandals on. Either way, step on that rock right behind you. No sticks to hurt your feet then." I pointed to the rock. "Or you can go back in the river. Your fishes miss you." It was true. They swirled in the shallowest water they could manage, right where Myrrhtide had climbed out.

He frowned at me. "Why are you being helpful?" He stepped on the stone slab and unhooked his sandals from his belt.

I took his footwear. "Because I found out you're not such a crosspatch. It's funny, the way you learn how decent people are, when things get bad." I knelt and undid the knot in his laces. When I had a sandal free, Myrrhtide braced a hand on my shoulder and lifted up a foot. I put it on and laced it for him.

"All right, young lady. What are you up to?" Myrrhtide asked suspiciously.

"Nothing bad," I told him as I did up the other sandal. "Mila and Green Man willing, and maybe Heibei too, it could even be good." Silk moths began twirling in my belly. Stop that, I told them. I haven't even done anything yet.

I stood up and smiled at Myrrhtide. "There you are. All shod and ready to visit the emperor."

He smiled, too, and tightened his grip on my shoulder. "Good. Very good. Now let's see what you and your friends are cooking up. And try to take care of yourself. You are starting to grow on me."