ZYGRADON

by Michelle L. Levigne

"We could reach a point where the star-metal will be too strong for us to handle. Time is of the essence. If you don't join us by the half-moon, we will proceed without you."

  "I'll be there. Don't doubt me." He snatched up his saddlebags and leaped into his saddle, in much better humor than he had shown in months.

  Mrillis watched his friend ride away. It occurred to him that if Ceera had blushed or reacted in any way to Endor's flirting, he might have prayed his friend would stay away too long.

  What was wrong with him, to want to keep Endor out of such an important endeavor?

  * * * *

  "Zygradon," Ceera said, her voice coming unexpectedly out of the soft night quiet.

  "What?" Mrillis stood sentinel, holding the star-metal lump aloft so all the bits of dust and pebbles that came flying to join it would not go through living creatures. He didn't look away from the glowing chunk, slowly tumbling above the treetops.

  "That's what I will name the bowl," she said, and then he heard her light footstep in the damp grass of the meadow behind him. "Graddon told me to make it. It was his scrying that has brought this to be. Imagine how different our world would be if he had not obeyed the visions sent by the Estall and had not written the words or come to change our lives."

  "The Scry of Graddon." He nodded, liking the way the words flowed together to form something new. "Zygradon." Mrillis sighed, feeling again that mix of regret, curiosity and loneliness he had been too busy to feel for many years. "I wish I knew where he was. Did the Nameless One capture him after all, or does he sleep as he hoped?"

  "With the Zygradon binding all the Threads together, we will be able to search the entire World and know."

  "When we learn how to use it properly."

  "There is that, yes," she said with a sigh of laughter. Ceera rested her hand on his shoulder and leaned into his arm. Mrillis savored the warmth of her slight weight resting on him.

  They stood in silence, content to merely be together. Except for them and Loereen, who walked sentry duty around the camp perimeter, everyone slept. Mrillis was sure they had no need of a sentry at all. The lump of star-metal was the largest they had ever collected, and during the last three days they had tested its blinding effect, sending members of their party out to see how far they had to ride until their group vanished from the landscape. As each day passed, it took less distance, until they could sit perfectly still and watch someone ride past within a bowshot, and never be discovered.

  Mrillis wasn't sure he liked that kind of power.

  No one, including the local animals, knew their party had camped there. They would have more than enough warning to set up defenses if anyone blundered across them, but this far out into the wilderness of Moerta, who would find them, even by accident?

  It was the thought of someone deliberately looking for them, coming upon them through stealth, willing to risk running blind and being captured, that chilled Mrillis. Only someone desperate to destroy the new Queen of Snows would take that kind of a risk. And such a person would be deathly dangerous.

  "How long has it been since we were hit even by dust?" he finally asked, after the moon had dropped nearly a handspan toward the horizon.

  "Perhaps half a day." She sighed and tipped her head just enough to rest against his shoulder. "I want to travel three more hours west in the morning. If we don't attract anything after that much time, I will gladly head home."

  "Where will we make the bowl?"

  "Where do you think it will be safest?"

  "In the tunnel. Anyone traveling through there is practically invisible already."

  "If we run into trouble and destroy ourselves, we won't hurt anyone else." Ceera slid her hand down his back, until she could hook her arm around his waist. "What would I ever do without you to see where I cannot and think the things that escape me?" She tightened her hold on him. "The only thing that frightens me is the chance that I could hurt or even kill you."

  "I promise, as long as you live, nothing will take me away from you. Even death," he whispered.

  Mrillis wanted to kiss her. He had tried to steal a kiss for the last two months, but it seemed that every time he thought of kissing Ceera, showing her how he felt, Endor would appear. Mrillis lowered his gaze to look around the landscape. Nothing. No movement. Endor had ridden away three days ago on his errand. If his friend were about to make his appearance, Mrillis knew, now would be the time.

  He waited, holding his breath, but he heard no thudding of hoofbeats coming through the darkness. No rattle of sword and bow, no loud voice calling out a jaunty greeting in defiance of the lateness of the hour.

  "Someday..." Ceera trailed off on a sigh and slipped her arm from around his waist. Before he quite knew how, she turned to go back to her blankets and he had missed his chance. Again.

  * * * *

  Endor missed every rendezvous point and did not rejoin them before they reached the tunnel entrance. Ceera didn't wait for Endor to join them and Mrillis didn't ask why. He started to leave a message for him, hidden in the crevices of the tunnel mouth. He actually wrote the message, then crumpled up the parchment and threw it into the fire during the watches of the night. Mrillis didn't want Endor to be part of the making of the bowl. He didn't know all his reasons, but he willingly admitted that jealousy was part of it. That, and the hardness and arrogance he glimpsed in his childhood friend. The sense that something bitter had taken root in him long ago and had finally begun to bear fruit.

  Ceera said nothing about leaving a message, and Mrillis wondered if she also felt uneasy about him. Endor would be angry, when he finally caught up with them. They would have to deal with his disappointment and his questions when the time came--if they survived the making of the Zygradon.

  Their group was made of strong, loyal, intelligent young Rey'kil, the best of their generation. Mrillis studied each of his companions as they started down the tunnel, thought about their training. He called up his memories of growing up with them, to try to predict how they would participate in this coming endeavor. Ceera had chosen their companions for this purpose. He trusted her to know what she needed.

  He might have asked Breylon to be part of this, and Theana, and little Triska, no matter what Endor thought of his sister. She was loyal and her mind was quick and she learned easily whatever lesson was put before her. The only aspect of her that Mrillis could call weakness was her hunger to be liked and her tender heart, her need to make others happy and healthy and safe. Ceera was right; Triska would make a good Queen of Snows, but only if she learned the discretion to say no.

  Mrillis knew, looking around their somber group once more, they were capable, in mind and body and spirit.

  "I want all of you to help bind the star-metal from this point on," Ceera said, when they had finished their noon meal and resumed their journey. "All of us will be part of the cage, and all of us will be bound to it. When we release it back to the Threads after the forming, I want the connection to filter through us. Do you understand?"

  "So the contact is made gradually and no one trying to spy on us through the Threads will sense anything has changed?" Loereen guessed. Her grin was fierce.

  "Exactly. We will all be bound to the Zygradon, and it to us, and the Threads through all of us. With so many keeping watch, I pray the Estall that it will never be stolen and abused and used against all that is right and good and pure." Ceera wrapped her arms around herself, shivering a little.

  That image stayed with Mrillis through the rest of the day's walk. Her words rang through his mind and he built up the images in his head so he knew what would happen. It amazed him that Ceera, who had been his student and shadow and accomplice on so many adventures, his partner in mischief against the older children--his little Ceera had transformed into a wise woman with an instinctive knowledge of how to create magic that no one had ever tried before.

  If they failed and destroyed the tunnel between the continents, no one would ever attempt such a thing again.

  * * * *<
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  We've been idiots, Ceera said.

  Laughter rang through the sphere of joined minds that separated the star-metal from the Threads. Their joined company, fourteen young minds and souls, found it ridiculously easy to pull aside the Threads of power that came from the lump and twist them aside, siphoning away the power so Ceera could use it for the purifying and forming.

  When I think of all the hours I strained and sweated while you played with your little hammers and gemstones... Mrillis sighed, and the sound echoed around the vast, open spaces that their joined minds had created.

  More laughter echoed back at him. Giddy laughter. Triumphant and strong laughter. There was no cocky arrogance. Mrillis made sure they all knew the possible disasters that could befall them if only one of their company made a mistake.

  This was the laughter of relief and delighted discovery.

  We should have brought others into the effort sooner, Ceera said. Are we ready? She sent them an image of twisting sweets. Those who grew up in the Stronghold with them caught the implications immediately. Multiple mind-hands reached out to help Ceera twist and stretch and fold the metal, hammering it with the strength of their combined wills, so it was instantly hot and flowing and easy to handle.

  Mrillis stood back from the rest, watching, guiding the weaving of their minds and talents and strengths into one smooth union. He felt Ceera's growing delight in the ease of their work, the increasing speed and dexterity in her mental fingers. He watched, fighting not to be mesmerized by the ebb and flow of power. He almost jumped physically when the first chiming ring of Ceera's hammer echoed through the bubble in the tunnel far below the floor of the sea.

  Someone hummed, matching her voice to the tone of the metal. Someone else joined in a few beats later. The sound echoed through the physical and mental realms, creating harmonies that cut through Mrillis' soul. He felt tears flow down his physical cheeks, soaking his beard, while his spirit tugged on the tether of his willpower, aching to fly free and celebrate the beauty they created.

  Double and triple idiots! Ceera sang out, laughing. We heard the music all the time we worked the star-metal, and never thought to sing. Who said we were the wisest, the brightest and best of our Lady's children?

  I never did, he called back.

  Ceera laughed and joined her voice in the growing chorus, physical and spiritual. Someone added counter-harmonies and the swirling current of power took on color and light. Mrillis held his breath and dared to open his eyes.

  Colors he had never imagined existed spun in a prism around the lump of star-metal. Ceera hammered at it, turning the metal on the rounded end of her anvil, forming the bowl. The spinning vortex of energy shaped and smoothed the metal just as her hammer did, rounding it, making the edges flare out, etching lines and designs into the glowing, blue-white metal. Long Threads shimmering in a prism arched out from the rippling edges of the bowl. It reminded him of an enormous flower spreading its petals. Although those waving Threads vanished less than a handspan out from the bowl, as Mrillis watched, he could see how they affected the Threads that caged the bowl's power and kept it separate from all the Threads running through the World.

  They hadn't isolated the star-metal and its power, he realized. Was it whimsy or a sign of his tired mind and body, that he imagined the star-metal chose not to affect the Threads? What had Ceera said the first time she worked the metal? She had said it was a dangerous but willing ally, hadn't she?

  "Done!" Ceera's voice rose in a gleeful shout of triumph. She stepped back from her anvil and gestured slowly with her open hands. The bowl, big enough to hold a suckling pig with room left over, rose up in the air, turned around so it was right side up, and settled down slowly on the anvil.

  While it's still hot, she said, release it slowly, filtering the Threads through your mind and soul. Imprint your spirit on it, so that you always feel it and it always feels you, and it will always be safe. She gasped aloud and jumped when Mrillis stepped up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders.

  Look, he thought to her, and showed her what he had seen of the unconnected Threads as the bowl neared completion.

  Yes, I see. She leaned back into his support. Mrillis felt her trembling in body and spirit after the great effort she had put forth. Did we do a good thing here?

  "We did a very good thing. Rest now," he whispered, and wrapped his arm around her waist. He picked her up, cradling her like a child, and carried her to her neat pallet of blankets.

  Ceera smiled and closed her eyes, and was asleep almost before he finished standing up.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Too full of questions to sleep, Mrillis kept guard. Even here, below the sea, with the magic of the tunnel to protect them, he kept watch. He knew they needed to be even more alert than ever, after what they had accomplished.

  Where the Threads emerging from the Zygradon ended, nothingness took over, and that fascinated him. He knew the bowl connected to all the Threads around it, with no visible connection. Nothing that he could feel, even when he traced the Threads with his mental hands.

  Strangely, the nothingness had a familiar taste and smell and reverberation. If nothingness could have a taste or smell or vibration. He blamed his weary mind for the imagery and askew words. Still, he grew more certain he had encountered something just like this before. But where? He never would have known what the sensation was, so how could he have marked it in his memory? What sensations could he liken it to?

  The Scry of Graddon, he mused, and snorted wry laughter, muffling the sound in deference to the others, who were exhausted under their giddy elation. Just like Graddon's visions, this is hard to decipher.

  Mrillis leaped to his feet as an idea crashed through his weary mind.

  He had tried to find Graddon through the Threads, after the seer vanished. What if he had found the man's hiding place, but hadn't realized it because his mind brushed up against something that evaded his mind, his skills, his strength?

  Could he find it now, with the nothingness around the Zygradon as a clue of what to look for? Could he touch the something-there/nothing-there power at the ends of those Threads and use it to find the nothingness that enclosed Graddon?

  Before he could think of problems or doubts, Mrillis approached the cloth-covered stone where the softly glowing bowl rested. It was inscribed inside and out with ever-twisting, spiraling, interconnected lines--etched by the Threads into the hot metal as it cooled. Mrillis suspected a mind could become lost in those endless spirals and loops and lines. He reached out both hands, physical and mental, and tried to grasp the invisible Threads coming from the end of each blunt flower petal that formed the bowl.

  Blackness shot through with a rainbow of impossible colors exploded inside his mind.

  Slowly, he grew aware of time passing with the slow dripping of honey in winter. His sense of self and body returned.

  How long he hung there in darkness that shimmered with that same non-glowing non-darkness, Mrillis had no idea. He felt like he had been there forever. He opened his eyes and tried to move. His questing hand touched something warm and rough. Stifling a gasp, he braced to find he had knocked himself unconscious and had landed on someone's blanket. He opened his eyes.

  Graddon lay before him, stretched out on his back, hands folded across his chest. A faint smile lit the big, bald man's broad face. His chest didn't move with breath, but Mrillis saw healthy color in his skin. He reached out a trembling hand and touched the seer's sleeve and arm. The flesh was warm.

  Mrillis looked around. He knelt in a domed cave where multicolored streaks broke the dull golden brown grain of the rock. This was no place inside Whispering Vale. Could this be the Vale of Lanteer, which Graddon had mentioned in his final letter?

  Just like the nothingness coming off the edges of the Zygradon, Mrillis knew no one would ever find this place if they didn't know it was there and didn't know it existed.

  Mrillis started to shake the sleeping man's arm, to wake h
im. Surely if they ever needed Graddon's advice and visions, it was now.

  As if he had known this moment and temptation would come, the rest of Graddon's letter slipped through Mrillis' memory.

  Mrillis knew he had found Graddon for a reason--so he could find his hidden resting place some time in the future, when he needed it. Not to wake the man, who had looked forward to his well-earned rest. Against future need. To protect someone. An important, endangered someone who needed to rest and hide, perhaps for years, decades, generations.

  Turning to leave, Mrillis saw the Threads that intertwined and formed a cocoon that enclosed and made invisible this sheltered spot. He laughed and the sound echoed along all the dangling ends of the Threads. He caught them up and his body began to grow so he felt like a fabled giant in a matter of seconds. Or was it that the Vale of Lanteer had shrunk to the size of a soap bubble? Mrillis held on tight to the Threads until the blackness swept over him again.

  When he opened his eyes, he stood in front of the Zygradon. He anchored the Threads surrounding the Vale of Lanteer to the streaks of star-metal Ceera had embedded in the walls of the tunnel. The star-metal would give strength to the protective magic, and now Mrillis had made it so that only someone who came down the tunnel could enter the Vale of Lanteer.

  Graddon--and whoever would sleep there someday--was safe. He had been found, his fate finally revealed, and he would remain safe and hidden. The Nameless One, the only enemy who could truly threaten the seer, could not touch the Threads. It was only common sense that the safest place to hide was literally within the Threads. It was laughable that none of them had thought of the answer before.

  Mrillis smiled when his watch ended and he curled up in his blankets close by Ceera's side.

  * * * *

  Their company traveled in silence, exhausted by what they had done, though it had seemed so easy and swift when they formed the Zygradon. The star-metal embedded in the walls of the tunnel glowed in slowly shifting, soft rainbow streaks in reaction to the passage of the bowl, so they had no need for their torches or the floating globes of imbrose light.