by Jeffrey Hall
“I... I…”
“Your sister warned me about your tongue.”
“Please, I meant no offense.”
“Yes, you did,” said the shadows.
“Don’t apologize for speaking the truth. I was the one who waved the flag of surrender. I was the one who pulled ten thousand soldiers from the villages and put them to the slaughter for what? I lost, and when I did, so did my country. Now we are being wrung like a towel, stripped of every last bit of what we were. It’s a sad, dark state of affairs.”
“Why are you telling me this?” said Dash.
“So you will understand why I have done what I have done.”
“What is that?”
They rounded the corner of one of the alleys and Dash froze. Rising up from a large gap in the stacks of stone was a hole greater than the size of a small house. What grew from it was the purple-and-green haze of the Abyss, a gaseous giant swelling all the way to the far-off ceiling like it was ready to come down and crash over them. Surrounding the gas was a horde of poles, snaking into it like black worms trying to return home.
Shelves lined the poles. Upon those shelves there were violet plants, wiry and shaggy like heads of hair, growing over the side of the shelves and in towards the hole like they bowed in a state of prayer.
There were hundreds of them if not thousands.
“What is this?” said Dash.
“You do not recognize the plant?” said the Elder.
“I’m a Geomage, not a botanist.”
“Good. The less you know the better. Let’s just say that these are the reasons why some of my brother’s tithes have not been received, and seeing this here would raise many questions. Questions I do not wish to answer.”
“This? This is what you want me to cover up?”
The Elder nodded.
“You might be better off hiring an architect. This is too big. Too unwieldy. There’s a hole bigger than my store, gas rising up from it like a fire.”
“If I wanted an architect I would have hired one, but all they would have done is plugged the hole, moved the plants. Two things that cannot happen, as it would risk killing all of my hard work.” He put his hands to one of the drooping plants, patting it like one would a pet.
“You can’t do this,” said the shadows.
“I can’t do this,” said Dash.
“You will fail and he will have your head.”
That part she didn’t repeat though she was sure she showed it in the way she slumped her shoulders.
“You have no choice. I have laid out the terms of your release, and you have agreed to them. Succeed or return to where I pulled you from.”
She swallowed, the enormity of the task before her causing her throat to feel constricted.
“Looks like you’ll be going back to the darkness with me,” said the shadows. “No matter what.”
Dash gritted her teeth, refusing to let the curses in her head boil over.
“I’ve no stones to use.”
“Take what you need,” said Prince Larken, waving behind himself at the troves of rocks. “Any stone you need is at your disposal… within reason. I’d hate to have another hole in my stores for you to cover up.”
“I don’t have my spell book,” said Dash, her anxiety rising. Her mind was a mess. The shadows were lurking, impeding her ability to think clearly. How could she conjure up a spell that could hide such a monstrosity when not only did she not have a specified stone, but she also didn’t have the right words to draw from those stones?
“You’re a Geomage. You’re studied, aren’t you?”
“I am…” she said, gulping, trying to sound convincing.
“Then figure it out.” Lord Larken spoke so bluntly and harshly that she thought he wanted to strike her instead of speak.
“I can do this, but I need space. I cannot work with someone circling me like a vulture.”
The Elder brushed his face in thought and then walked away. “I’ll be back in an hour’s time. Try to escape and every soldier in this keep will hunt you. We expect the emissaries of Glimmer within the day.”
“I will figure this out.”
“I know you will, Dashinora. You are the blood of your sister. Persistence is part of your essence.”
And with that, the Elder walked out of sight, the clicking of his boots somewhere deeper in the warehouse like a clock that was winding down.
Dash looked up at the Abysmal gas rising over her like an unconquerable wall and felt her heartbeat rise with panic.
“You’re going to fail,” said the Abyss.
She started to pace, wracking her mind for an answer, attempting to dive deep into her memories in order to find the answer to her problems, but when she went searching all she found was darkness.
All she heard was the shadows.
“Listen to us and we will help you.”
“I’ve already got the right stone.”
She took out a lone lump of black lens, said her spell, and once more allowed herself to slip away from the harsh reality of her world.
The Abyss was thick where she was. Like a near gaseous soup of purple and blue. It looked like it was struggling against itself to unfurl and show her its secrets. But slowly, like a knot, it became undone.
There was a building in the distance. It rose so high she could not see where it ended, only the thick walls it was made up of. A giant construction alive with red lights that looked like blemishes. An illness without a cure.
It was a menacing, but wondrous sight.
The Abyss swirled, taking away the construct, leaving her to ponder its meaning only momentarily before a new beast wandered in through the gas. This one had a mouth so big it looked like a void, with teeth that were strong and capable of pulverizing worlds. She thought it looked familiar as it passed, but she could not put her finger on where she knew it from.
Where are you? she thought, hopefully, wanting more than anything for the Abyss to give her something to wash away the nightmare shown to her by the salt hag’s venom.
But when the Abyss shifted again all she saw was a dark and foreboding land. A place awash in grey, a world without sunshine and with little hope of the clouds that occupied it ever being vanquished.
She kept waiting for it to be swept away. She kept waiting for the Abyss to swallow it whole like it had the rest of the apparitions, but instead the gas dissolved around it. And slowly the land grew larger, as if it were becoming her world. She could see the strange stone formations in the distance, things that grew like mauled limbs rising from the rubble surrounding it, asking for help. She could see the hills and the brackish water that ran through them like veins of the dead. She could see the vegetation curling out like old hair, broken and white. It was a dying, choked land, but it begged to be explored.
It begged for her to stay. And she wanted to, for it was better than what awaited her when she woke up. Better than facing the pain that constantly gnawed at her like a stubborn tick.
But when she looked up she saw that those impenetrable clouds had shifted and what awaited beyond was the purple tint of the Abyss and objects in the sky so large that they looked like worlds coming to crush her and punish her for her trespassing.
When she blinked the Abyss was still overhead, forming into a shape like a fist ready to swing. She sat up, expecting to see the grey land rolling out before her, but instead she realized she was still in the stores, and the problem of figuring out how to cover the monstrosity before her still waited her.
The poles. The plants. The Abyss. The hole. It was all there, still not hidden. A problem still not solved.
But the voice was gone, and so was the muddledness of her mind. At least for the time being.
She knew the hourglass was filling on when the emissaries would arrive in Bothane, but the side effects her lack of black lens would cause was a much more pressing issue.
She had one lone nugget left in her pocket. One. Once it was gone then so too would be her trips t
o the Abyss. So too would be her peace.
She put her fingers on her temples.
Think, Dash. Calm down and think.
She ran through the list of stones in her head like she was running a race, stumbling frequently as she tried to recall the names of the rocks she had treated with, all eighteen of them, their capabilities, and how she could draw their essence.
With caradinium she could create a waterfall that would hide the entire operation, but that would be a foolish illusion that would only draw more attention. With ehrium she thought she could turn some of the plants into flowers. That would only solve half of her problem, not to mention she couldn’t remember the spell. With sky opal she could create a breeze strong enough to push the emissaries aside… until they found their way around such a minor inconvenience.
Think, Dash. Think!
And then it came to her, a memory of when she and Chendra first sat in their family’s apartment alone, without their father, his funeral only completed a few hours prior. They had argued then, out of a fear of what would come, of what they would become without their father holding them together. They argued about what to do next. About how they could keep living with the threat of the tax man constantly lurking.
“I wish he was here,” said Dash, after she had no more tears to give, and their arguments had turned her voice rough and ragged like a pile of jaggomite.
“He’s not,” Chendra had said. “And he won’t be, so might as well start figuring out how to move on without him.”
“He’s down there,” said Dash. “I know he is.”
Chendra had clucked her tongue like Dash was her child and she had disappointed her. “You’re not going to see that man again unless you can conjure up an image of him with owl’s eye.”
Owl’s eye.
A stone whose makeup and color mirrored gold save for the black flecks that tarnished it.
One she had never treated with before.
Damn, she thought.
Treating with a stone meant awakening one’s connection with it. It meant its essence would be a part of her. It also meant poisoning her blood with it.
A thing that could be deadly if the compound of stone grew too thickly in a Geomage’s body.
Stone sickness, is what they called it. A disease that would cause a person to drop dead.
Most Geomages could hold somewhere between twenty to thirty stones. Some of the most powerful dared to treat with closer to forty. But she was not powerful and she had already treated with eighteen since she became a Geomage and went through the first, painful treaty to awaken her blood.
There had to be another way. There had to be another stone she could think of that was already part of her blood.
She wandered the alleys created by the buckets of stone, looking at them for inspiration like each collection was some muse plopped down for her by the gods, but nothing worked.
All the stones she had treated with gave her the ability to set things ablaze or pick locks or nourish her, things she needed to survive when she was upon the street, but never had she dabbled in anything illusionary.
Those were stones she had studied. Stones she knew she wanted a part of her, eventually. But owl’s eye, it was only a weak stone. The illusion she could create with it would be temporary. If anyone looked closely at it they could name it a sham in seconds. But she could think of no others.
After what seemed like only minutes she heard the familiar clicking of the Elder’s boots coming down the hallway.
He met her by a pile of black stone known as kingmadium. “Well?”
“I’m still thinking of a solution.”
She saw the strain in Prince Larken’s neck from her answer. When he recomposed himself he answered, “We have a report that the emissaries of Glimmer can be seen approaching from the Spoke of Aldane. You have one more hour. If it’s not ready by then, the dungeon might be the least of your concerns.”
“What do you mean?”
“You might be responsible for the start of another war.”
The Elder turned and stormed off.
“I’m not the one putting holes straight to the Abyss.”
“You’re not. But now you’re in charge of covering it up.”
She tried to argue with him again, but he was already gone.
She cursed to herself, feeling the overwhelming pressure flatten her.
She ran then. Down the alleys, desperate, like a lost orphan without a place to go find safety. Everywhere she turned there were only more useless stones. Everywhere she turned there was hopelessness. And as she wandered that warehouse blindly, she heard a familiar whisper in her ear.
“You’re going to die here,” said the shadow, the quickness of its reappearance shocking her.
“Shut up!”
“You cannot possibly find a stone that will do what he asks. Take the owl’s eye.”
“It’ll kill me,” she pleaded.
“It might not.”
She gritted her teeth, unable to bear the thought. Her heart was racing, her anxiety so high that she felt herself shaking.
“Do it. You’ll take one step closer to meeting him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
“I... I don’t even know a single spell for the stone. I don’t have my book.”
“We will help you.”
Her head felt foggy. It was the Abyss inside of her, the Abyss put there by the black lens, tumbling about like a storm with nowhere to go. All she wanted to do was escape this world and the decision before her and return to the Abyss with the help of the black lens and quiet her head, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to until she did what the Elder wanted.
“You’re running out of time,” said the shadows, reminding her of how long she dallied, how much time she wasted wandering the warehouse in search of a better answer.
Dash fled the shadow’s words and turned down the alley where she had seen the collection of owl’s eye. It looked like a giant box of treats found in the back of a bakery.
She took one of the lumps and looked at it, wondering if it would be her end, and if not, what it would do to her.
Something so plain and lifeless holds such power, she thought to herself.
“What are you waiting for?” said the Abyss.
“You lie,” she whispered. “You won’t help me. You never have.”
“Only because you never listen.”
And Dash, with both hands on the stone, said the common treating spell that all Geomages knew as soon as they decided upon such a wicked profession. One only used scarcely. One that would give them a power they would have to pay for.
And as the words left her lips, she felt the essence of the owl’s eye enter her blood like a thousand needles and shards of glass.
A pain unbearable. The final confirmation of her pact with the stone.
Chapter 16
“Hold still,” said Sasha, working the ground-up herbs around his face like he was a cake and her paste the frosting. They sat across from one another, in the cart, Sasha with a bag of herbs and flowers on her lap as she mixed and ground them into a mask that would drown his identity, make him just another member of the emissarial retinue that arrived at the Elder’s doorstep, and not himself. Not a threat to the sanctity of the kingdom and the fragile peace that had existed there for three years since the end of the Shamble.
“It ain’t me,” he protested. “It’s the wagon.”
“You’re twitching worse than a fish plucked from water,” said Sasha, frowning.
Garp snickered further down the cart, and Grey slugged him, to keep him quiet. At least the older of the men was trying to give him his space. At least he understood the reason Requiem was getting his face done up like a lady attending a party wasn’t to provide comedic retribution like Garp thought.
Requiem opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again, knowing whatever he said wouldn’t produce a different result. Sasha would still hate him.
She worked her fingers down his chin, slapping some crud here and there. She caught him looking at her.
She stopped. “What?”
“What?”
“Close your eyes.”
“Just making sure you’re not slipping a dagger beneath my chin.”
She didn’t smile. Instead, her fingers hovered over his chin, waiting for him to comply.
He closed his eyes.
She continued her work. “If I wanted to slit your throat I could’ve done it a thousand times more discreetly than this.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Her fingers kept working. Smudging, pressing, stopping only to gather more paste before applying it again. In the darkness behind his eyelids he thought he heard Garp snickering again.
“What’s so funny?” said Sasha, her hands leaving his face.
“Nothing,” said Garp, clearing his throat, trying to regain himself.
“Must be something if you’re over there chuckling like a gossiping hen.” The tone of her voice was so stern, Requiem thought it was him she was reprimanding.
“It’s just… He looks funny is all. He ain’t the gruff, beat-up son of a bitch he once was. Looks like a proper jester now.”
Requiem opened his eyes to see Sasha frowning in Garp’s direction. “I ain’t no cosmetician. Doing this because there ain’t no choice, and because I’ve got orders.”
“Didn’t mean nothing by it,” said Garp, slumping a bit.
“Wasting a perfectly good crop of herbs on this man’s face is the last of what I should be doing.”
She caught him looking at her again and he closed his eyes.
There was a moment of silence where no one spoke, nor did she grind her petals or apply his mask. It was a maddening silence in the darkness.
Requiem dared to speak. “I know it.”
“You don’t know a thing.”
“I know you’re the hardest-working healer I’ve ever met,” he said, and it was the truth. When he had first found the scar stone and was anointed it had finally allowed her to be something other than a miner’s wife. She could study. Explore her fascination with the plants that grew with help from the Abyss. At least when Mote was sleeping. Otherwise, she’d be nose down in a book or out in their garden, testing, learning, slowly rising from a lifetime in the hole to something more.