The youth jumped. “Sir, you didn’t have to do that! I trust you! I—”
Yadeen sighed. “This part is necessary for the spell. I am perfectly fine, see?” He held up the palm he had pressed against Arram’s hand. A number of little scars marked his skin, including the most recent one, rapidly healing before their eyes. Arram looked at his own palm. He, too, had a mark.
“Don’t tell the other masters,” Yadeen says. “Only a few of us still work with tribal magic here, and Sebo would scold me for using it on a student. But I began with tribal magic. It is how my Gift speaks for me with the bigger magics.”
Arram nodded. He felt like he was glowing even more brightly than the torches. Did the master feel it, too?
“Let’s get started,” Yadeen said. He picked up the reins for the two horses and walked toward the tunnel.
A woman in a coarse linen tunic, her feet bare, met them at the opening to take charge of the mounts. The moment they saw her, the horses surged forward more willingly than they had for Yadeen and Arram. They thrust their heads against her chest, whickering anxiously.
“Don’t be rude,” she chided them softly. “I’d guess they wasn’t no happier’n you, out so late in slop for footin’. Can you dismount?” she asked Arram. “They’s big babies and snobs to boot, knowin’ when folk aren’t easy. They’ll act proper if you want to get down yerse’f.”
Arram froze. Yadeen rescued him, unwinding his hands from the horn and drawing him from the saddle. The youth looked away from the woman, knowing that he blushed.
Yadeen handed both workbags to him and stripped off his own coat as the woman led the horses away. Arram could hear her scolding them gently as they vied with each other for the chance to lip her hair and shift.
“She’s very unusual,” he commented, taking the master’s coat and trotting to keep up as he headed for the tunnel.
“She’s like the Banjiku people from the Far South, bonded to a certain kind of animal,” Yadeen said. “It is a kind of magic that is not taught at the university, because we are either born with it or no.”
“But shouldn’t we study it anyway?” Arram inquired.
Yadeen glanced at him, his mouth forming a crooked line. “Not everyone wants to learn everything, boy,” he said.
Arram sighed. “That’s what Ozorne always says.”
Najau walked over to them, gesturing to a six-foot-tall, six-foot-wide block of white stone with tiny marks of black and gray stone inside. “Unicorn white marble,” he said, with as much pride as if he had given birth to it. “Brought by sea around the tip of the Roof of the World. Anyone caught with it without an imperial writ of sale is sold himself. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Yadeen walked up to the stone and leaned his head against the rough side. Najau and Arram watched him for a long moment before the stonemason turned and saw the boy. He stared at Arram briefly, then said, “Go on, you. Touch it.”
Arram hesitated. “I…I couldn’t….I…”
Najau snorted. “I stammered, too, when I was a lad and got worked up. I don’t any longer—some of us lose such things as we get older, more confident. If I say you can put your hands on it, you can.” He flapped his hand, ushering Arram over to the great stone.
Arram obeyed, carrying the workbags. Standing near Yadeen, he reached out and touched the marble slab. Nothing happened. He was wondering what he was expected to do when a voice very like Yadeen’s, loaded with amusement, boomed through the stone, up his arms, and into his skull.
Open your Gift to the stone, boy!
Oh, Arram thought, of course! He closed his eyes and let his power flow into the unicorn white marble.
It was cooler than it looked from the outside.
He was caught up in threads of stone, black, white, clear crystal, all of different sizes. The white ones were dominant. They hummed to him, rattling his teeth agreeably. They sang of the embrace of the deepest earth as it pressed and turned each tiny bit of them to shaped edges and points. Then black chunks, small ones that had collected in different pockets, found them, and clear ones. All twining together to become immense, proud stone.
A massive hand gently thrust him backward. Enough for now, Yadeen said. You don’t want to spend forever holding up the emperors of Carthak, do you? Back to yourself.
Arram awoke inside his normal body, gasping for air. He was flat on his back, staring up at the marble. “That was wonderful!” he cried. “When can I do it again?”
Najau crouched beside him and held a leather flask to his mouth. “Drink,” he ordered. “Slowly.”
Arram drank as cautiously as he was bid. It was not some strange beverage, but water so cold it made his teeth hurt, flavored with mint and lemon. “That’s so good!” he exclaimed when he returned the bottle to Najau. The beverage was the opposite of the stone, moving where the stone had only exact places to go, water and leaves and fruit where the stone was only stone. He felt himself, human.
The stonemason was looking him over more carefully than he had before. “I see why Yadeen brought you,” he remarked at last. “You’ll do all right—better than those jumping crickets he’s fetched to my place before.”
“I told you he would be fine.” Yadeen stepped away from the marble, rubbing his hands together. “This is a sound block. I won’t have any trouble doing the work.”
“Did you think I would choose flawed stone?” demanded Najau, indignant. “I, the finest stonemason on the Northern coast of the empire? Possibly even the Western coast?”
Yadeen took the bottle from Najau and tipped it up, drinking as he poured.
“I said nothing of the kind, you silly old hen,” he retorted. “The boy needs a blanket. I’ll let you know when I have pieces finished. How many slabs will you need?”
Najau tapped his teeth with his thumbnail, then said, “Six for safety, I think. Once this noise over the ambassador is done, I’ll be testing the others in the stand to see if more stones are ready to drop.”
Yadeen nodded. “With Arram’s help I’ll craft six, if you have the raw stone.”
Najau pointed back into the tunnel, where more chunks of marble waited.
“Very good.” Yadeen looked at Arram. “Are you ready?”
Arram nodded vigorously.