Life Giver

by Lisa Lowell

  That afternoon, Yeolani walked through the market of East as the citizens prepared for the festival that would begin as the harvest moon rose in a few hours. Yeolani wanted his face recognized by the shopkeepers so they would not think he was a stranger. He also wanted to keep his ear open for the general mood when West made its move. Yeolani checked again his mental notes of everyone he needed to neutralize. He felt that everything was ready as long as his friends in West did not change their minds.

  At sundown, he bought fried bread and some chilled juice and headed toward the port to watch the ships and to do his magic. First, he sat down on the dock, and one of the Western men helped him move a few barrels into a more protective location so he could go unobserved. With the amount of magic he was about to invoke, his appearance would change, and he would have to be shielded and concentrating on other things, not dodging those who would be trying to find him. From his hide on the docks, he could see everything he needed to do and yet be out of sight.

  As the music began at the fair behind him, Yeolani saw movement on the West's bank, with Sethan at the fore. Yeolani watched as all of the few stubborn residents of West gathered on their side of the bank. They climbed to the roof of the most prominent warehouse on their side of the river and stood over the water, solemnly witnessing the celebrations on the far side. Yeolani held his breath in anticipation when Sethan stepped forward and began. With a small surge of magic, Yeolani amplified the innkeeper's voice so that it boomed over the water, echoing among the festival goers.

  "People of the East, hear me," Sethan shouted, and Yeolani, from his hide, cast his magic out, bringing the lights on the Eastern shore down so that the only illumination was the moon and the torches on the West. Their stage was set.

  "Listen to me. We have paid your tribute. We were promised a bridge. We were told that this port would be developed. And we have paid for this. We've worked and sacrificed for your tribute. And all we've been given in return is outlander mockery."

  That was Yeolani's cue. He surged again magically and began lifting from the riverbed the stone pilings of a bridge. It would span from the warehouse district near where Sethan and his supporters stood to the main port road east and west. Solid stone monoliths rose up at least one story high above the river's surface. He anticipated a bridge tall enough to allow boat traffic of significant size and sturdy enough to endure hundreds of years of water passing around them. The river roiled and boiled as it parted for the pilings. The sound of the flow stirring almost muted the startled gasps of onlookers and partiers on the East side. The festival music faded as the musicians joined the audience to these strange phenomena happening in the river beside the fairgrounds. Even the citizens of West sounded startled as they saw this magic, though Yeolani had forewarned them this would happen.

  Sethan got hold of himself as the pilings finished formation and continued his speech. "Citizens of East, you have allowed your elected leader to do this, but he is not one of you. He is an outlander who uses magic and our gold to line his own pockets instead of keeping his promises to us. What will happen when there is no longer a West to bleed dry? His soldiers will come for you as well."

  As if on cue, the soldiers Sethan spoke of began pushing through the stunned crowd on the East bank, drawing swords and marching toward the river as Yeolani began his second building step, still unobserved behind a stack of barrels on a dock. He began crafting wooden shafts secured to his pilings, lifting twelve trunks soaked in tar to grow out of the stones, bringing the bridge farther out of the water. The gasps of the crowd changed to protests as the soldiers began forcing the citizens of East away from the shore, away from the spectacle they wanted to follow.

  "Please, citizens of East,” called Sethan. “Send the outlanders away. They will only occupy your homes as they have ours, cut off your livelihood, and tax your goods until you have none left. You are losing your freedom. They will take away your rights as well unless you do not stand for it, until you force them away."

  Spanning beams began to stretch across the pillars of the bridge, and the thunder of planking and railing going up overwhelmed the shouted orders of the soldiers. The outlander troops that had been assigned to West only now became aware of what was happening on their side of the river, and they moved toward the warehouse, intent on attacking. However, a block away from their goal, they found they could move no farther. Yeolani had already set a shield around Sethan and his friends exactly like the seal around a Wise One's palace. Even with their swords beating on it, the soldiers could not approach the warehouse to bring an end to Sethan's revolutionary speech.

  "We wish to remain friends, so we will have what we paid for. West will have a bridge between us. Our trade will be as equals. The port is open to all who come in peace, but we will no longer allow these outlanders to cut us off from you. See how they react when good magic builds a link between us that they cannot control."

  The outlander soldiers on both sides began lighting arrows and firing in either direction, trying to stop the bridge that now began attaching railings for foot and wagon traffic. When the barrage of arrows did not succeed in lighting the bridge afire, the arrows changed directions, at the heart of West's business district. Yeolani snuffed them out as they flew, and they fell harmlessly, for all the citizens of West that remained had hidden in their homes or were with Sethan on the warehouse roof.

  Someone, an officer on the East side perhaps, might have been a magician, for he miraculously managed to get his men to form up. They decided to strengthen their brethren on the West side and began marching across the nearly completed bridge to do so. Yeolani didn't allow this but began pitching them over the side as soon as they made it halfway. Their screams as they fell over the edge brought cheers from the citizens on both sides.

  "People of East, we are your brothers. Please be our brothers again. Do not allow us to be cut off from you. Banish your Lord and become your own leaders. A boat is here to take them back to where they have come from. Fill it with your outlanders and send them home. In East, in West, in all the Land, there will be no magicians who rise up to control us. That is the mandate of the Land. Magic is meant to draw us together, not cut us apart."

  And with that, a barge tied just at Yeolani's feet came free of its moorings and drifted down to the newly crafted bridge to wait for the passengers. He held it there against the pull of the river's current and watched over Sethan as he ended his speech and then came down off the warehouse roof.

  Now it was up to the citizens of East.

  Yeolani strengthened the shields around the members of the West's contingent and then confirmed that all his magic had eased, putting him back into his regular clothing. Then Yeolani peeked around the barrels that made up his hide. He felt a shiver of excitement to see the people of East getting into verbal arguments with soldiers who reluctantly pushed back, though no swords were in evidence. The citizens pointed to the barge and the bridge, arguing and simply outnumbering the soldiers, shoving them back toward the bridge.

  Another group of people at the center of the party grounds had surrounded someone in a purple robe. While Yeolani couldn't make out the individual words, the sorcerer’s angry tone echoed down to him as he came out of his hide. So, this was the magical power behind all the outlander invasions. Yeolani couldn't decide which group to join: the people on the bridge or those moving against the sorcerer at the center of town. In the end, he decided his best choice lay in joining the protests on the bridge or he might end up in a pitched magical battle with a sorcerer.

  He ran off the dock and up his newly minted bridge with the swell of people crossing over from East to West, pushing soldiers before them and almost physically forcing them over the railing of the bridge and onto the barge that floated below, waiting for them. The enthusiasm of the crowd thrilled him, and Yeolani joined in, cheering, shouting slogans of freedom. Yeolani was about to turn back to see how it faired with the sorcerer in the square when something hit his personal shield so hard he l
ost his footing. He saw a flash of fire and felt his whole body lifted up and off the bridge.

  Darkness hit him before the water took him away.

  8

  Grass and Groundhogs

  Yeolani woke face up and noted it was daylight. He felt wretched, but if that was because of the explosion or the slowly spinning world, he couldn't tell. He looked up at the sky, wondering at the blue above him, the few clouds, and the fact that he still lived. He could not wrap his head around the recognition that he was well on his way to floating down the river toward the sea, and he had better swim to shore.

  His limbs ached and felt sluggish, but he managed to roll over and slogged his way toward the bank; east or west, he didn't care. When his knees finally scraped on the sandy bottom, he crawled up the beach and collapsed with his feet still in the water while the rest of him baked in the sun. Yeolani didn't feel so ill once he was out of the water, and he rested there for the remainder of the day until he finally felt capable of doing more: conjuring a supper for himself and making a camp for the night. He would survey his situation once dawn came and hopefully with his strength returned.

  The next day Yeolani began walking north, back towards West to see what had happened in his absence. How far had he floated unconscious? He couldn't guess, but he kept an eye on the river for other debris as he went upstream. To his surprise, he found nothing else one wouldn't expect in a summer run of a river. He saw a few boats pass, and he tried to hail them to ask from where they sailed, but if he didn't want to use magic, the crews wouldn't hear him. He tried to judge by the width from shore to shore how far he'd come, but he had nothing with which to compare it. Obviously, he had floated south, but how far? Had anyone else been blown free by the blast as well? Was his personal shield all that protected him? Had everyone else been killed?

  Then at noon, he saw something on the northern horizon that surprised him. At first, he thought it might be a mountain on the edge of the prairie, but it looked too uniform and pristine. And the closer he got the more it looked manmade to Yeolani. He also noted how the river, green and languid up till now, seemed to grow brown with silt and grow louder as if cataracts nearby roiled up the water. Finally, Yeolani put these clues together and recognized the white spires of a Wise One palace at the forks of the Lara River.

  Yeolani paused in his trek north to appreciate the graceful towering spires and splendid carving even on the outer protective walls. It sparkled in the sun like the icebergs he used to see during spring fishing voyages. A black banner with a silver star as an emblem flew out over the silvery gray steeples, rippling with the prairie breeze. Was the building even occupied? It didn’t seem so, for the rich grass grew up against the walls without being trampled. Yeolani appreciated his chance to see the grand palace of Lara, but was it his? He very much doubted it. Nothing about the very pretty place attracted him other than its placement on the plains. He couldn't approach it, for it occupied the V between the river branches and he walked the western shore, but at least he got a good look before the sun went down and he had to camp again.

  Overall, it took him two full days walking to reach the towns he had connected with his bridge. Even then, he saw the glow of fires just before the stars came out on the second day. Yeolani’s stomach sank with guilt to see that the fires must be the city burning, and although he wanted to hurry, he hadn't yet found a magical way to travel. Running in after having gone missing for days would hardly be conducive to stealth. He had to consider what he would do when he got closer. Coming into West was safest, he figured, for the East was where the magicians most likely waited unless the people had driven them out. He had passed no barges full of ousted outlanders, but then he had also spent half this trip unconscious.

  By mid-morning he had a good idea of what had happened, though he couldn't understand what had caused what he was seeing. Magic from the eastern shore still flared up everywhere in strange explosive ways. Fires burned in the oddest spots: tops of trees, in the middle of streets, and even one on the side of an otherwise intact building. It flared in strange colors, giving off noxious green smoke. He passed one woman who was beating at a sickly purple blaze on top of her chicken coop, but the water she threw at the blaze only spread it and she could not douse it with rugs or anything else she had at hand. Yeolani helpfully smothered the flames in a magical load of salt and that did the trick. How he knew salt would work, he could not tell her. Besides, her chickens were dead, and he could do nothing for that. He simply moved on to the next crisis, putting out another fire, lifting fallen obstacles, and helping where he could.

  All through that day, Yeolani felt so guilty he could barely move. His eyes brimmed with unshed tears at the ashes and smoking heaps in the city of East as well as West. Mist choked both sides and a sickly blue and green glow witnessed of magic still afoot, especially on the eastern shore. His bridge remained intact, so while East still burned, the people had all shifted to West if they could. The streets of West teamed with bewildered citizens scavenging for food and shelter. Bedraggled as he was, Yeolani, grieving and ash-smeared, fit in perfectly. He kept his head down looking for Marit in the press of people. The poor dog would be traumatized too.

  The horrible pressure of minds on his brain also stripped Yeolani of any semblance of peace. He tried to shield out the freely shared grief and only concentrate on helping snuff out fires but found it difficult to even move. He did not even realize he had limits in his capacity to work magic until he recognized he simply could not conjure another bucket of water. He stood like a statue in the street that ran with mud and could not think. In a daze, he decided he needed an island in the storm.

  Yeolani staggered down to Sethan's inn on the wharf. The building had survived the fires thanks to the shields that Yeolani originally set on them, but the magical blows from East had done their damage here as well. One wall was caved in on the top floor, and men were diligently trying to do the repairs. The flow of people in and out of the common room hadn't suffered for all of that. Thankfully, Marit still guarded the porch and sat out of the way. Her tail wagged at his approach. Yeolani motioned his little friend to stay where she was as he went into the inn to see what kind of greeting he would get here with so many people coming in and out.

  The inn looked like a refugee camp. Cots had taken the place of the tables which were pressed over to the side to form a buffet for those that needed to eat. Sethan's cook stood behind the table barricade ladling out soup to all comers, and Sethan himself worked in the back of the room handing out blankets. Refugees from East huddled in little family groups or worked to hand out supplies and news to others about the room. Sethan made eye contact with Yeolani from across the space but didn't react one way or the other, just nodded and went about his tasks.

  Where were Honiea and Vamilion, Yeolani wondered? Without thinking about it, he slipped behind the bar and conjured a candle, lit it and held it low, wishing Honiea's help to come. She arrived, crouched low like he was behind the bar, and smiled at him, the only smile he’d seen in days. She must have already known about the situation, for her face showed evidence of ash and hard work.

  “We’re here,” she assured him and then stood up, found a child near the door who had a burn on his arm, and left to go tend him. Vamilion took a little longer to arrive, for he walked down the inn’s steps with the building crew to get them supper when Yeolani saw him.

  Hours later, after the refugees had settled in the shelters prepared for them and after the fires of East had turned to eerie glows in the dark, Yeolani found Sethan so they could chat. The innkeeper approached Yeolani feeding Marit who waited patiently for her master's attention.

  "Sir," Sethan began since he didn't know Yeolani's name and they had agreed to keep it that way. "I saw you blown off the bridge. I thought you were dead."

  "No, just thrown into the water like the rotten fish I am. I washed downstream so it took me a day to come back. What happened here after I went over the side? East has been burning like a
torch at mid-winter, I see. What happened to the soldiers and magicians? The Lord of East?"

  "Little is known for sure," the innkeeper shrugged, looking utterly exhausted. He sat down on the other side of the dog to rub her ears but more just to keep from collapsing himself. Subtly, Yeolani reached over and put his hand on his friend's shoulder, funneling some magical energy into the man who must have been working constantly since the night of the rebellion.

  "The people who came across the bridge at first were pushing soldiers onto your barge. You must have seen them. Then there was the explosion…that…that I saw you…well, you're the only one we know who was on the bridge to survive that blast. Frankly, I'm surprised the bridge is still intact. It was a magic-driven explosion, so we know it was the outlanders that did it. It frightened everyone, and the people rushed the bridge, trying to come over, and left the outlanders on the other side. When you went under, the barge broke free and the soldiers on board floated down the river. That must have left just a few, mostly outlander magicians, on the East side."

  "What of the outlanders on West's side?"

  "We gave them two options: depart and go overland to the coast where they must depart the Land or use their weapons to defend the bridge. They may not go over to the East side to join their kin. I'd say about half of them will stay here and help defend West rather than fighting us. Refugees have been escaping from East for the last three days, swimming for their lives or sneaking across on boats, but no one dares take the bridge any longer. Anyone who tries to cross that way gets the same treatment you did, explosions on the bridge."

  Yeolani shuddered with grief at what he’d crafted. However, he couldn’t let that stop his finishing this battle. "And the fires?"