“We eat.”
* * *
• • •
It was a restless meal. Elva kept getting up to examine some item on the shelves that caught his eye, careful always to keep his hands off. There were weapons in one section, another sword, short with a simple hilt; an elaborately inlaid crossbow, so delicate it would surely break if used; an axe that looked more appropriate for cutting wood. Two muskets, seven pistols, and four boxes of shot. Once or twice he stopped to read the titles on the spines of a few of the books.
Nor could I sit as quietly as I should have. I kept being drawn to the exquisite models of fountains and bridges. I smiled when I found one that matched the crude stone fountain where we fetched water in the village. There was one in particular . . .
“Elva.” He straightened with alacrity and came to stand at my right elbow. “Does this look familiar to you?” I pointed to a fountain with a wide, flat bowl, surmounted by a smaller one. A column of three human figures rose from the center of the smaller bowl and held yet another, much smaller one above their heads. This smallest bowl had what appeared to be large fruits, showing florets at the blossom ends. It was impossible for me to tell from where the water came, whether it sprang upward from spouts at the edges of the widest level or spilled down from above, pouring bowl to bowl.
Elva drew down his brows, mouth twisted to one side. His face cleared and he nodded, tapping the edge of the shelf with his fingers. “I know it,” he said. “I remember it from my earlier life, but I saw it again just lately. It used to be in a public square, in the old part of the City. Now it’s been swallowed up by the Red Court.”
“It must be from before my time,” I told him. “I do not remember anything like that.”
“I swear it’s the same fountain. What are you thinking?”
I laid a careful right-hand finger on the outermost edge of the model. “I was facing in this direction when I disappeared. An old, disused fountain might well contain water lilies.”
“This one did.”
I nodded, stepped back, and picked up Medlyn’s book from where I had set it on the table. “It might explain something here,” I added when Elva looked at me for more. “There’s a section where the forran appears to describe two separate components. I took it to mean the forran itself and the practitioner. Now I wonder whether the two parts are the forran and a model, where each model would lead to a separate place.” I approached the model fountain, book in hand.
“That book has your name on it.”
“No it doesn’t . . .” I turned the book over and Elva was right. It did have my name on it. “I swear it had another title when I first picked it up.” I looked up and smiled. “Evidently I am doing something right.”
“Well, we’d be wrong to try using that fountain again.” Elva nodded toward the model. “If you’re right, and it’s the target, we’ll end up smack in the middle of the Red Court. We need to find one less public.”
“But if I am right, we know that we can both reach it, and come back from it.” Changing only one variable at a time is one of the basics of experimenting in the practice.
“Exactly. If anyone saw you just now—saw anything at all—they’ll have set someone to watching. Remember what Predax told me—the tension between the two Courts is high just now, and the sudden appearance of what could only be a practitioner might look like some kind of attack to them.”
I try not to be annoyed when I am wrong and someone else is right. I try very hard.
It turned out the trickiest part was finding a model we could both agree on. Partners, that is what I had said, so I could not simply overrule him. There was one bridge I was certain I recognized, but Elva did not know it. Another he swore he had seen, and that Xandra had told him was in the Fourth Mode, but which I had never seen. Between us we tentatively identified seventeen models, though we only had four of these in common. And if we were right, each model corresponded to a different Mode.
“Seventeen. Are there really that many counties? I mean Modes?”
I nodded, still focused on what looked like a plain olivewood bowl, painstakingly carved by hand. Only its position on the shelves told us that it was included in the collection of models. “Probably more, if each of these is from a different Mode. They don’t exist anymore, but they may have once. Medlyn was not as old as Arlyn, but he was old. There are books, very old books, that describe practitioners reaching a previously unknown area, in effect, a new Mode. No one travels in that fashion anymore, so maybe those Modes disappeared. I am likely the one who has been the farthest out.”
“One day I’m going to want to hear all about this, but right now it’s not helpful.”
I nodded again. I wanted to try the fountain in the village. However, I knew that to be nothing but homesickness, and I could not indulge at this moment.
“We need to know where to go.”
That drew my attention. “The last we saw, the Godstone was in the City. We have already agreed that the fountain in the Red Court is too dangerous a destination.”
“Maybe it’s there, maybe it isn’t. But I bet you can find it.” Elva sounded assured. “Arlyn said you can find anything natural, and whatever the Godstone is, the body it’s in—Arlyn’s body—is natural. If there’s any of Arlyn left, then you can find him. If it turns out he’s still in the City, fine, we know how to get there. If we know for sure he isn’t, that’s the time to figure out which model to use.”
I sat down, palms resting on my thighs, and shut my eyes. I knew I could find Arlyn, and only Arlyn, on the beach, if he was asleep. But would that help me find where his actual body was? In truth, I thought it might. I had leveled Arlyn so many times, it should be much easier for me to find him than it had been to find help in Elva’s world.
Of course, then I had been in Elva’s world. And when I had found Arlyn on the beach, we had both been in the City. Would I be able to find him from Medlyn’s vault?
I pushed out the breath I was holding and began breathing slowly, regularly, centering myself, feeling for my memory of Arlyn’s pattern. I had seen it drawn on a piece of paper, pen and ink. I had given it color. I had seen it alive, so to speak, in Arlyn’s workshop. A small part of me that was not engaged in this search felt Elva take my right hand.
“You’re pointing. Fenra.”
I opened my eyes and saw that I was pointing quite clearly at a model of a bridge.
“That is a bridge over the Daura,” Elva said. “I’ve gone hunting in that county.”
“At least we will not get wet,” I said.
“So long as we land on the bridge.”
* * *
Arlyn
“You aren’t helping,” I say.
I looked out the window. What had been a nice stone bridge, arched across the river just downstream, was now mostly wood. And the three-story hotel we’d gone to sleep in had turned overnight into a single-story inn. We hadn’t done this. Not on purpose anyway. Out of our hands. “This was never my idea,” I said.
“Still not helping.”
I feel his agitation, and I try to control our breathing, but he prevents it. “Let me,” I say. “Emotion gets in the way of rational thought and planning.” Don’t know why I bother.
Maybe I could fall asleep, dream of Fenra again.
“We need to try something else,” I say, but I breathe more slowly. Pulse slows down.
“Bad way to experiment,” I said. “Stabilize first, then change variables.”
I feel a hot rush of anger, more me than him. Surprises me. “Stable is what we’re trying to do,” I say. “These are your forrans. You’re the one who said start in the City and where did that get us?”
“Uh-huh.” Wondered was he getting low. “Now that we’re here, any new ideas?”
* * *
Elvanyn
Fenra gave him a look that
plainly told him she wasn’t amused. He thought she looked tired, but then, after all they’d been through, had Elva ever seen her well-rested? She was thinner, he thought, than when they’d met. How long ago had that been? He rubbed at his eyes. Maybe he was the tired one.
Or maybe he was just trying to stall. Now that he could see everything in the vault, the prospect of staying here felt like a good idea. It was hard to think about leaving what felt like the safest place on earth. Fenra stood with her arms crossed, index finger of her practitioner’s hand tapping against her right upper arm. She glanced at him.
“How soon can you be ready?” she asked.
So much for stalling. “What’s to prepare?” he asked her. “I’m already carrying all the weapons and ammunition I’ve got.”
“There’s nothing here you can use?” She tilted her head toward the shelves holding weapons.
“That’s all shot for pistols, no bullets.” He paused. “I’ve taken a second knife. Maybe you want one too.”
He waited for her to tell him she wouldn’t need it, but instead, after a moment for thought, she picked one of the knives off the shelf and studied it, eyebrows drawn down.
“Not that one,” he said, taking it from her hand. Her fingers were icy. “Here, this one’s got a better grip, and a belt.” He strapped it around her waist and adjusted the knife to hang handy for her practitioner’s hand. She smelled of almonds. Toasted almonds.
“This ruins the hang of my trousers,” she said.
“Yes, that’s what’s important right now.” But she had made him smile.
She took a few more minutes to prepare, touching the locket lying between her breasts over and over, as if she communicated with her dead mentor. For all Elva knew to the contrary, she did. It was well known—at least it had been in his time—that different practitioners had different powers, and that some were stronger than others. He’d seen Fenra do things he’d never seen anybody else do, even Xandra.
He hoped that was going to be enough.
Finally she finished whatever meditations she’d been doing and gestured him to come closer to her.
“Put your arms around me,” she said, waving him even closer. “Hug me as tight as you can, grip your own wrists. Whatever happens, do not let go of me.”
“Not a chance.”
This time he thought he could feel the transition, a sudden wash of icy cold, then burning hot, then a sensation as if tiny insects crawled over his skin. Each took fragments of seconds to happen, and finally his heels and feet struck heavily down on what felt like a wooden floor, with a sound like a blow to an empty barrel. This bridge wasn’t stone.
His arms were empty.
“What happened to not letting go?”
* * *
Fenra
I could smell the sea. I saw nothing, heard nothing. But I smelled the sea. Slow as a sunrise, the darkness around me grew lighter, and I was standing on the beach once more. It was then I realized Elva was not with me.
My breath caught in my throat and my chest tightened until I had to force myself to inhale, deliberately drawing in air and pushing it back out. He must have been left in the vault. Reaching into the top of my collar, I pulled out the chain that held the locket. My fingers shook as I fumbled at the catch, but not as much as they did a moment later.
Nothing happened. Wait, I thought. Was I even here? Perhaps my body had remained in the vault? When I reached into this place to level Arlyn, neither of us was physically “here,” if that word had any concrete meaning. Our bodies remained in the real world. If those words had any concrete meaning.
“Sometimes other people go away, but I’m always right here,” I said aloud. My voice sounded exactly as it should sound in the open air. My friend Hal used to say that when Medlyn was trying to teach us moving forrans—which actually meant finding out if we could. It’s a rarely found power, and my old mentor was the only practitioner who taught it. Hal’s observation was his way of saying that you had to keep focused on yourself, to not lose yourself in the move. Some did get lost, we heard, though we were never told what happened to them.
Me? I could use someone else’s moving forran, but I could not write one myself. Healing was my strong power. Ironic, considering the twisted leg that had brought me to the City in the first place.
I began walking with the sea in the direction I always took when looking for Arlyn, alert to any change in light or wind, expecting the fog at any moment. After walking until my legs and back were tired and sore, I sat down. The nearby arm of the bay appeared no nearer. “I must really be here.” My voice still sounded normal, and I wanted something to listen to besides the sounds of the water. “Otherwise how could my back ache?” There was a flaw in that logic, but I was too tired to find it.
Ione Miller, back in the village, used to sing when she was bored, or doing some repetitive task. It gave her something to do, she used to say, along with letting her feel that time was passing. No one wanted to hear me sing. Not even me.
After a while I began to feel I was not alone. I reached out with the power I use to find or call animals—and help, and Arlyn—but I could detect nothing living. Not even in the sea. Yet something was here, I knew it. I shot fast glances over my shoulders, hoping to catch some movement, anything that could explain the feeling that I was being watched.
“Would you show yourself, please? Do you need my help?”
As if in answer, a wave rose up the beach and didn’t return to the sea. In fact, a portion of it came further up than the old water line, rattling pebbles and pushing worn empty shells and other debris before it. I scrambled to my feet, though the water stopped at least two feet away. As I watched, it filled a small hollow, pooling without draining away through the pebbles.
The surface of the pool bulged upward, as if air was blowing into it from below. A large bubble formed, a shimmering iridescence, not unlike blown glass, marking where it shivered in the air. It moved abruptly, roughly, as if it wanted to be a different shape. I took a few slow steps toward it, my hands raised. The bubble immediately disappeared, though the water remained. I retraced my steps. Perhaps my movement had frightened it.
As I had this thought, the beach before me erupted into the air. I threw up my arms to protect my face. Water, sand, shells, and pebbles swirled as though caught up in a waterspout. The force of the wind increased and I fell to my knees, covering my head as best I could. It had been a little like this in the chaos, I thought, but there I had not been alone. Finally the noise and wind eased, and I was able to peer between my forearms and look. What had been a shapeless cloud of debris had solidified somewhat, but it was lumpy and grotesque, as though a child had been trying to make a sculpture of an animal she had never seen. Though I could not imagine the size of the child who could play with what I saw before me.
Movement slowed, and quickened. Just as I thought I could see a shape, it was gone, replaced with another. Finally, moving as though it was stiff and in pain, the debris began to take a human shape, deformed, I thought, until I realized the lower half of the being remained below the surface of the beach. Though it seemed to be moving still.
I scrabbled backward like a crab, pushing myself with hands and heels. The being placed the palms of its hands on the beach in front of it, as if it leaned forward on a table.
“Please don’t,” I whispered, unsure what I asked for. In my imagination I saw the being pushing itself upward, and pulling its unseen lower torso and legs out of the beach. Was it human-shaped all the way down? And if it wasn’t? Which would be worse? I covered my mouth with my right hand to stop my teeth chattering and I believe I may have lost consciousness. When I became aware again, I was lying on my side, still with my hand over my mouth, and the being was still in front of me.
It was looking at me now. Before it hadn’t been, but it was now. I lowered my hands and pushed myself into a sitting position.
“Are you the Maker?” I asked. I wished I had not made fun of Arlyn when he suggested that one existed.
The being tilted its head as if considering my words.
“No.” Its mouth did not open, its lips never moved. Its voice was the sound of rock rubbing against rock, of waves, of drifting sand, and, strangely, of the wind in the trees.
My own mouth was dry. “May I ask what—who you are?” A living being, definitely, though without gender.
As if it had heard and understood my thoughts, this time the mouth opened and the lips formed words. “I am here. This is me.”
“You are . . .” I cleared my throat again to loosen my vocal chords. “Was it you who examined us in the chaos?” I gestured around me with my right hand. “Is that where home is for you?” Perhaps it had pulled this place from my mind.
“No,” it said again.
I squeezed my eyes tight shut. I had not spoken aloud. “Not my mind,” I said, determined to speak my thoughts aloud rather than have them plucked from my brain. Ah, it would have heard that. “Is this place in your mind?”
“All places. Reach you. Difficult. My child.”
“You look for your child?” What kind of child could it possibly have?
“No. You. My child.”
All the fine hairs on my arms stood up. “Me? I am your child?”
“All.”
“All people?”
“No. My people,” and it held up its left hand.
The air froze in my lungs. “Practitioners,” I breathed.
“Yes.”
The air carried an overwhelming feeling of relief, that I understood.
“Yes. Slow. It will come. Patience.”
I hoped it meant explanations were coming.
“Yes.”
At first I thought it had difficulty speaking our language, but I realized suddenly that it was both more simple and more complicated than that. It had never before created a part of itself that could speak. It had reshaped the pebbles of the beach into a sort of mouth and tongue.
The Godstone Page 32