“All I ask is that you help him see the necessity of my plight or at least convince him that he should hear my side of the story before acting rashly. I’m counting on you to help convince him of the right thing to do, even if you do not fully realize what that is yet.”
Before she could respond, he looked up at the sky, then pulled her gently by her arm toward an older, robed man with a head that was bald and covered with intricate symbolic tattoos.
“I know you must be tired,” he said. “Please go with Inmorak. He will take you someplace safe where you can rest soundly.
Inmorak smiled warmly and gestured for her to walk by his side as they moved to the same tunnel at the back of the room the two men had used earlier. He explained to her in broken English that, to reside inside the pyramid, was an honor among the Viracocha.
As she left Eudroch behind to his preparations, she remembered how he had saved that poor child from being sacrificed. Regardless of how misplaced his intentions might be to return the sun to the earth, Mona could not help but be attracted to his conviction and his dedication to his beliefs. Maybe he wasn’t Merrick’s evil counterpart after all. He had all of Merrick’s intelligence, and seemed to have his kindness as well, but he also radiated passion in everything he did, a trait that Merrick did not possess.
She and Inmorak turned a corner and walked deeper into the stone catacombs of the pyramid. As her weariness suddenly overtook her, she yawned and thought that maybe the combination of Merrick and Eudroch wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.
#
Swella looked up at the patch of sky visible through the hole at the top of the holy pyramid, and she grew nervous again.
As she watched the foreign woman fade into the darkness of the tunnel, she quietly pulled her son, Dabu, to his feet and started walking away, covering his body with hers as much as possible.
She heard the snap of Eudroch’s fingers, and two guards barred their escape.
Eudroch walked up to her and her son and motioned with one hand, sending Dabu flying across the room until he was floating inches above the stone altar.
This couldn’t be happening, she thought. Eudroch had ordered the King to spare her child and now he was about to sacrifice him anyway, to the mighty, but also cruel, Sigela.
Dabu was a good child, so much better than most of the children in the tribe. He always showed respect for the elders and worshiped Sigela every day with a conviction far beyond his years. He even thought of Eudroch as a hero, someone who would one day restore the Fire Tribe to greatness. Dabu wanted to be just like him and wanted to fight the Earth Clan by his side when he grew to be a man.
Swella watched, too horrified to move, as Eudroch retrieved the dagger handle King Polopu had thrown on the ground. She started to run toward them, just as the yellow-red magma blade flickered to life and glowed brightly.
Eudroch looked up to the sky just as the first ray of sunlight shone down through the hole at the top of the pyramid and illuminated the skin covering Dabu’s heart.
In one terrible moment, her poor, noble son, was eviscerated from his navel to his throat with a single tear of the sun dagger, guided by Eudroch’s hands. Her son frantically watched as his own intestines and his glistening organs rolled out of his body and slid onto the floor beside Eudroch’s feet. Sigela’s beam of light now shone directly on Dabu’s exposed heart as it beat one final time.
Eudroch raised his hands above his head and begged Sigela to accept her son’s heart as sustenance for her long awaited journey home. Everyone in the room, except Swella, raised their hands above their heads and tilted their heads back, following along with Eudroch as they spoke in the tongue of the Fire Dragon. Within a minute, the beam of sunlight vanished, and with it, Dabu’s heart.
The ceremony was over. Swella had lost her only son—his heart given away so easily, to give Sigela strength.
Suddenly hit by the finality of her son’s passing, Swella screamed louder than she had ever done before or ever would again. The two muscular guards struggled to hold her back from lunging at Eudroch.
What was wrong with them? They all knew her son. Why did they just stand there and let him take her son’s life?
Eudroch barely gave Swella a second’s glance as he walked over to King Polopu and casually explained to the confused sovereign that he had only pretended to rescue Dabu in front of Mona in order to gain her trust.
As Eudroch turned to leave, he stopped and looked down at Swella with contempt.
“You should be rejoicing instead of disgracing your son with tears. He serves a higher purpose than you ever will. Remember that he is worth more dead than you are alive. He gave his pure heart and his unspoken name to Sigela. When the Fire Dragon returns, she will teach us your son’s name, and we will speak of him with respect and awe. In this way, he will live forever.”
She looked up at Eudroch, her eyes almost swollen shut and red from crying.
“You, on the other hand…as a matter of fact, I believe I recall your creation name,” he continued.
Despite her grief, Swella cringed with fear at the thought of her name being said aloud. She had, like the other adult members of the tribe, given her creation name unconditionally to the Keepers of the tribe and to Eudroch. If Eudroch were to say her name out loud in front of everyone in the room, she would be at the mercy of any one of them.
With the knowledge of her name, they could command her to do anything. She would not be able to do anything to stop them from making her perform any number of heinous acts.
Eudroch leaned down and whispered her creation name in her ear and reminded her that she was named for a type of grass found in only the poorest, driest parts of their lands.
Swella turned her head away from Eudroch as he stood to his full height, towering over her like a cobra ready to strike.
She looked up to the sun’s rays. She would hold her tongue for now, but she reminded herself that the grass she was named for was more than just a desert weed. It was also a survivor that could live with no water for seasons at a time and that could be trampled repeatedly, only to stand up tall again even in the face of the strongest wind.
Swella kept the image of an unbreakable blade of grass in her mind, and she vowed to Sigela that she would somehow see Eudroch pay for taking her son, Dabu, from her.
CHAPTER 25
MERRICK WAS STARTING to lose his sense of time. It had been much easier to keep track of the days back in the real world, where he had measured out his life in weekends. He couldn’t say exactly how long he had been living with Fenton and his family, but he guessed it had been just over a week since he had started his lessons. The training was hard and at times stressful, but he was beginning to make progress.
Here in the Earth Clan, he went to bed each night, shortly after having dinner with Fenton and his family, and he awoke at the first light of the artificial sun that lit the underground city. Upon waking each morning, he dressed and met the family at the breakfast table for goat cheese, bread, and milk, while sharing pleasant conversation about what the day would hold. He was usually given a few hours each day to go around the city with Balach, where they explored the different streets and told stories about the worlds in which they had each been raised.
After that, it was always back to the house for more lessons with Fenton. Without his divinium pendant, his progress had slowed, but it was still steady. He was good at remembering the creation names for the different objects and was passable at pronouncing them. His challenges came with the command words. He said them correctly enough, but he lacked the proper control to use them effectively. He either put too much force into them or not enough, but he rarely achieved the right balance. Stones that were supposed to float, flew high into the air before plummeting to the ground. When he asked plants to gently shake their leaves, they remained still.
Each time he failed, he remembered his encounter with Firefly in the forest. Even though he was relieved that his power had helped him resist her
temptations, he remembered the terrified look on her face just before he almost summoned the lightning. He wasn’t sure, but he now thought he had been siphoning magic from her without even knowing it. There was one thing of which he was sure, however. If he had called on the lightning, Firefly would have ended up in a coma, like Mona, or even worse. After his encounter with her, he had vowed again to never lose control of his power.
As the sky approached twilight, Merrick stood at the base of the Earth Clan mountain with Fenton and Balach, waiting to learn what his next lesson would be.
“I’ve been watching you, lad,” Fenton said. “You’re scared of using your magic, and you should be careful, don’t get me wrong. But the words don’t work unless you put some emotion behind ‘em. The things of the earth respond to what we’re feeling and how we approach them—not just our words.”
Merrick listened to Fenton and remembered back to when he was younger and afraid of dogs. Whenever he would see a dog, it would start barking and snarling at him. He used to think that all dogs hated him, so he stayed away from them as much as possible. When he started dating Mona, she had two large elkhounds, and things had changed.
The first few times he had been over to her place, the dogs, looking like smaller versions of wolves, had pulled back their teeth and sent him a clear message that he was only being tolerated as a guest in their house. Then, one day, he and Mona were hugging, and the alpha dog started barking and growling. His fear boiled into anger as he released Mona and stared at the snarling animal. Before he knew what he was doing, he grabbed the dog by its collar and pinned it to the ground on its back. The dog turned its head from his glare and tucked its tail. When he turned to look at the other dog, it wagged its tail furiously, stretched its front paws in front of its body, and stuck its hindquarters in the air.
From that time forward, he no longer feared dogs. When he approached a dog for the first time, his emotional state was perfectly balanced, and the animal could sense that fact, usually wagging its tail and trying to give him sloppy kisses.
In much the same way, he knew that he had to reach a balance with his magic, where he approached it with just the right amount of energy and attitude. Just because his emotions had mixed with his magic with horrendous results in the past, he couldn’t eliminate them completely from his craft.
As Fenton continued to give him a pep talk about being confident in his powers, Merrick turned to the side of the mountain and touched it. He felt the cool hardness of the rock—the gravelly bumps followed by areas of smoothness—the sharp edges. As he caressed the side of the mountain, Fenton stopped talking.
When Merrick placed his ear against the rock, he could hear the whole mountain breathing. And it was a wondrous thing. The stone was Merrick’s friend. He respected it, and understood it, and he knew that he could not command it to do anything at all, but that he could ask it to do him a favor.
Merrick searched his memory for the name of the stone and then for the command that would let him shape something. With his hands still caressing the side of the mountain, he whispered the words from the language of the Earth Dragon. His eyes opened wide as the impenetrable rock turned pliable in his hands, moving and reshaping like it had been turned to clay. Once he had formed a new ridge in the mountain, he turned excitedly to Fenton and Balach.
Balach was smiling, his face flushed with joy, and Fenton stood with his mighty arms crossed over his chest, nodding in approval. Merrick had finally found something in this new world that he could do well. He turned around and whispered his gratitude to the mountain.
“Now, that’s the way to move a mountain,” Fenton said, laughing. “It didn’t require any force at all, did it? That rock is your friend now, and believe me, you could do a lot worse. You did well, lad, and tomorrow we’ll see if you still have the hang of it. For once, I’d say you earned yourself some dinner.”
As they walked back to the mountain entrance, Merrick bounced in his step a little more than normal.
When they arrived home and were seated for their meal, Fenton pointed casually at Merrick with his spoon.
“You should have seen the boy today, luv,” Fenton said to Adriana. “Reached right up and worked his magic on the mountain like he’d been doing it all his life. Like a true craftsman, he did.”
As Fenton continued to praise Merrick, Balach’s smile faded a little more with each compliment. Merrick guessed that Balach was feeling a little left out, since Fenton had been paying so much attention to Merrick since he had arrived. Even when he hadn’t done anything well, he was still the topic of most of their conversations lately.
Looking at Balach, he remembered his father—actually his step father—who had only rarely praised him. An idea came to him that he immediately knew was the right thing to do.
“You’ve all been great,” he said suddenly. “I couldn’t ask for a better teacher than you, Fenton, a better cook than you, Adriana, or a better friend than you, Balach. But I was thinking that maybe it was time I had a house of my own—if you think the council wouldn’t mind.”
Merrick paused to check their faces. He had their attention.
“And I’d like to build it myself. I’ll need some help to work out the right commands at first, but I know I can do it. It would be good for me, and it would make me less of a burden on all of you.”
“My father was a Master Builder before he joined the Fianna,” Balach said, the smile once again returning to his face. “I could help, too. It would be like another part of your training.”
Merrick, Balach, and Adriana stopped eating, and waited for Fenton’s reaction. The grizzled warrior carefully finished slurping the last of his stew, then set his spoon down next to his bowl. His face was expressionless, but his eyes seemed to be searching for any flaws in Merrick’s plan. Finally, he cleared his throat and placed his hands flat on top of the table.
“I think that’s the best idea you’ve had so far. It’s good for a man to put some sweat into the place he calls home. And I think I know just the location. After we finish here, I’ll take you to see where I’m thinking—just to look, mind you. I’ll have to check with the council and the Queen to make sure you’re gonna be around here long enough to build a house in the first place.”
After dinner, Merrick and Balach followed Fenton outside, eager to see the future sight of his new home. Merrick had expected Fenton to lead them to the edge of the cavern out past the agriculture fields. Instead, he took them farther into the royal section of the city, past the royal quarters and the Fianna barracks to the very back of the immense cave of the Earth City. The rock ceiling became progressively lower as they continued walking, and finally they stood next to the internal mountain wall.
“Don’t get too excited. I still have to clear this with the Queen, but I think this would be the perfect place for your home.”
Merrick wondered at the fact that Fenton had chosen a place in the royal section of the city. He reasoned that it was so they could keep an eye on him, but a part of him also thought that it might be because he was of royal blood, no matter how tainted that blood might be because of Ohman’s exile. He decided that it would be best not even ask about it. Instead, he just smiled, and reached out to touch the stone wall.
Fenton again cautioned him not to do anything before he had received approval.
“I’m just saying hello,” Merrick said, as he lightly ran his fingers over the rock. It felt much the same as the outside face of the mountain that he had successfully manipulated earlier that evening. This stone, however, was moist, and it was colder than the outside rock had been. It was like touching the internal organs of the mountain itself. Keeping his hand on the rock, he turned to Fenton.
“Are you sure the mountain won’t mind if I build here? This feels…different than the rock outside, like it’s the heart of the mountain itself…and I don’t want to hurt it.”
Fenton chuckled softly and put his hand on Merrick’s shoulder.
“My boy, I think you
’re finally starting to understand a little something. But, don’t worry none. You aren’t going to hurt this old mountain. It’s been here since the time of Abred. It hasn’t lived that long without learning how to protect itself. Just make sure, if you do build here, that you need to work with the mountain, not against it. I’d wager that you’d lose that battle anyway, but it’s best to not even try.”
Merrick nodded his head and took his hand from the rock. Balach looked up at him, his eyes wide and his lips sealed shut, like he was holding something back that he wanted to tell Merrick, but which didn’t want his father to hear.
“Now that you’ve introduced yourself to the mountain, you’d better greet everything else around here to make sure they all know who you are, as well.”
He was confused by Fenton’s request. He looked around, but all he saw was the solid stone face he had already touched. When Fenton saw that he was unsure of how to proceed, he gestured to his son.
Balach stepped out dramatically in between Merrick and the rock wall, obviously pleased that his father had chosen him to teach the lesson.
“There’s a lot more here than just the inside wall of this old mountain. There’s life everywhere if you look hard enough. There’s the dirt under your feet and that moss over there on that rock. And, now that it’s getting dark, you can see the fungus higher up on the wall. It glows at night, but it’s really hard to see in the light. And then there’s the pebbles and the tiny shells beneath your feet. They all have different creation names than this here rock, you know.”
Merrick looked at the parts of the earth as Balach pointed them out. He was right. The more closely he looked, the more living things he saw.
“To build a solid home here, you must learn the names for all of the life my son has pointed out to you, and probably more that you’ll find once you start building.”
The Conservation of Magic Page 22