by Frank Morin
Connor tempted those wild currents once by tapping external quartzite, but the winds raged with unrivaled insanity. Individual air currents seemed to scream as they tore past, filled with so much energy they would probably race down the length of the continent before slowing.
Only one answered his call when he tugged at it. He hoped to wrap it around the camp to help deflect the other currents away. Instead the current plunged down upon his little tent and blasted right through the fabric walls, shredding it in a heartbeat and scattering his meager possessions.
While the snow and wind assaulted them with brutal ferocity, the cold crept in like a stalking nuall, threatening to suck the life out of the unwary or foolish. That cold deepened to nose-hair-freezing levels, then to all-exposed-skin-killing levels. Even Kilian finally donned a woolen sweater under his leather jacket.
Thankfully the storm had given ample warning of its approach, and the Grandurians knew how to prepare for nasty weather. Less than a thousand troops remained in camp as Wolfram’s escort. The Rumbler companies worked hard to upgrade every tent into weather-proof shelters.
The tents were arranged in tight formation, and special winter tents were pitched right around each of them. Those winter tents were made of thicker canvas, reinforced with wood and steel beams against the fierce elements. They took the brunt of the storm and helped insulate the inside tents in tiny pockets of relative calm.
Most of the troops were packed four men to a tent, with a small iron brazier for heat. After his disaster with the wind, no one felt comfortable bunking with Connor, so that left him alone in a spare tent. The quartermaster warned him sternly not to destroy another one. The extra space proved useful for pacing impatiently.
Actually, he enjoyed the first day of enforced rest. He needed a chance to recover from recent insanely busy days thwarting Dougal’s invasion. By the second day, however, he felt eager for something productive to do. Spending much time outside was folly, and he felt reluctant to tamper with the weather again.
The cold kept worsening. It crept into his double tent, despite keeping the brazier fully stoked. Connor had to tempt marble and add extra heat to keep from freezing. Luckily fire responded without issue.
Meals were simple things, with everyone rotating in shifts through the long, low dining hall, which was one of the few Sapper-raised earthen buildings. If not for the instability of the elements, the Sappers could have easily raised substantial buildings to shield everyone.
Many of the soldiers liked to play card games, but they seemed uneasy when Connor offered to join. He doubted they still resented the fact that he was Obrioner. They might feel concerned about playing the Blood of the Tallan, but he couldn’t tell if they felt more nervous about beating him or losing to him.
Connor spent several hours practicing with limestone, playing with the odd qualities of light. He fine-tuned his affinity with the stone until it blazed with light at the first flicker of his will.
Mirage was a lot more fun, but it proved difficult to trick himself. He knew what was happening, so he had to work a lot harder to believe the strange sights that appeared in front of him. He needed someone to practice on.
Lingering alone in his tent left him bored. So of course his mind turned to Verena. Fears haunted him. What if she never awoke? Had he already lost her forever but didn’t know it yet? What if she did wake up, but her mind or body was broken beyond repair?
That seemed like the worst possible outcome. Verena loved life, loved to fly and to build mechanicals. She was strong and confident and clever. What would she do if she awoke and could no longer walk? Or if she’d somehow lost her Builder gift? Would she despair, or would she find new purpose for her life?
Would it include him?
Not knowing drove him to distraction. The need to go to her was so strong, he nearly attempted tampering with the weather again.
He resisted the urge, barely, but hated every second of delay. The peace accord was signed, so they didn’t need him there any more.
As much as he loved thinking of Verena, those constant fears would drive him crazy. He had to think of something else. That’s when more dangerous cravings would creep in, like tendrils of cold fastening to his heart.
Porphyry.
Always the hunger remained, lurking in the darker corners of his heart and mind, eager to tug at his conscious thoughts and fill his soul with restless hunger.
The basic craving for porphyry was still relatively easy to banish, but the hunger returned again and again, growing more clever every time. Porphyry granted him the power to kill Martys, just as it had helped him survive the elfonnel. It was his greatest affinity, so why push it away? As a rampager, he would be immune to the cold, could howl louder than the storm. So why not find some, transform, and cower the storm like he could any living thing?
He had no porphyry. Kilian said he had no more either.
But what if Kilian was lying?
Connor eventually broke free of that dangerous train of thought. He hated how porphyry ate at him, hated the fact that he couldn’t simply cast the hunger away. Hated the part of him that longed to relent and tempt porphyry again.
So he bundled himself into warm furs, tapped marble for additional warmth, and dared the short run through the shrieking wind and the brutal cold to the dining hall. It wasn’t meal time, but the hall was the one possible gathering place, so many soldiers loitered there, attempting to escape their own boredom.
Connor found a quiet corner to watch some men playing at cards. One skinny fellow, filled with the nervous energy of a Wingrunner, was playing a complex dice game with a pair of Blades. Connor decided he’d make the perfect test case to play with mirage again.
He carefully reached out to the waves of light emanating from the nearest glowing brazier, diverted them past the Wingrunner’s face, and twisted them into a knot. He hadn’t figured out how to control the images people saw, so he waited to see how the soldiers would interpret the changes. Maybe that would help him learn to fine-tune the skill.
Luckily the bright light glinting off shining steel armor and weapons contrasted well with the dark leather straps and sheaths. The more the contrast, the better the twisting effect.
He only ha to wait about two seconds. The two Blades jumped to their feet, swords and daggers leaping to hand, their gazes locked onto a spot several inches to the left of the Wingrunner.
“Tallan’s grace, what is it?” One of the men exclaimed. The other just lunged, stabbing the empty air and shouting in surprise when the movement apparently changed what he saw.
The Wingrunner rolled right off his chair and leaped into a fracked sprint, his expression horrified, the color draining from his face. Shouting like a lunatic, he ran right into the outer earthen wall, bounced off, and crashed onto his back.
Connor cringed and released the light. The men blinked in confusion and looked around suspiciously. The other men and women who had been quietly playing cards all rose to their feet, hands on weapons, calling questions.
“I don’t know what happened,” the Wingrunner insisted. “All of a sudden, the dice turned into spiders trying to crawl up my arm.”
One of the Blades shook his head. “That wasn’t what I saw. The chair next to you stood up and sprouted arms. Looked like some kind of bizarre conjuring. Looked like it was going for the back of your head, but when I tried to dispatch it, it just disappeared.”
The other Blade said, “I saw something similar, but not exactly the same.”
Connor drew closer, fascinated by what he was learning. It seemed that the minds of those affected by mirage supplied the images to give meaning to the twisted light patterns. Did they always see fears or things that worried them, or could he create patterns that would better suggest what they should see?
If he could, then mirage could truly help him turn invisible or offer unprecedented advantages when facing a powerful foe. He could confuse or distract, or trick someone into fighting an imaginary enemy. Could he
use it to duplicate himself, make it look like there were half a dozen Connors in the room?
The men looked embarrassed that they alone had seen something strange. A few of their friends at the next table joked that they couldn’t handle a couple days of isolation and were already cracking.
As they returned to their game, Connor slipped away to his tent, eager to practice more. With the storm shaking the tent, flapping the heavy canvas and isolating him in his little piece of calm, no one would bother him. Maybe not until after the storm ended.
So Connor spent the next hour trying to trick himself into seeing his bed turn into a pedra. The first time, he only triggered memories of the great stone pedra that Kilian and Ilse had conjured together, and the desperate fight against the pedras in bloodlust frenzy. For a second, he saw the disgusting, double jaws of the pedra that had snatched him out of Rory’s little army snapping toward his head again.
The next attempt, he actually saw an image take shape sitting on his bed. It looked like a baby elfonnel, no bigger than a toddler, charging across the bed and attacking his pillow, its many snakelike tongues snapping up feathers as it savaged the helpless bedding. As weird as that was, he felt even more unsettled by the unexpected urge to pick up the little beast and pet it.
The next several attempts produced an exploding cake shaped like a pedra, a fireplace with a large ham on a spit and, most unexpected, the image of Hamish trying to force-feed an outhouse to a torc. Connor laughed himself to exhaustion after the last one.
As he lay on his bed, he considered the different images and how he’d managed to produce them. He’d thought he would need to try forcing the light into specific patterns, creating the image he wanted the person to see, but that wasn’t how it worked at all. His mind had reacted more to the broader strokes of the twisted light, taken the general shapes and filled them with images that best fit them, even if those images didn’t match the specific details he was trying to add.
So how could he produce specific images? Practice.
As soon as he twisted the light again, a new image formed, but it wasn’t a pedra. He found himself looking at Verena, lying prone on the bed, her pretty face composed and calm. Her huge blue eyes opened and joy burned like marble in his heart when she smiled.
Then Mattias leaned over her and kissed her.
The sight shocked him so much that Connor forgot he was fooling himself with the mirage. He shouted with rage, lunged and snatched Mattias off the ground. A rampager-like fury roared through him and he hurled Mattias away from Verena with all his strength.
The mirage evaporated just as his bed, which he had just thrown, collided with the wall of the tent and uprooted the entire thing, smashing it into the outer tent and nearly unseating that one too. The back wall of the tent overturned the brazier, sending hot coals spilling into the room, setting some of the canvas alight.
Connor managed to grab a piece of marble and prevent the fire from spreading. He didn’t recover from that shocking mirage until he’d righted the tent, arranged his clothing stand to hide the holes burned in the canvas, and dropped onto his battered bed.
Why did he see that? He was getting worse, not better. Although he knew the sight of Verena kissing Mattias again was a lie, something dredged up from the dark recesses of his worried mind, it still infuriated him.
He hadn’t been tapping granite or slate when he lifted and threw the bed. It was a light camp model, but he still should have struggled to throw it so hard. He tapped his sandstone pendant, sending a flicker of healing power down through his body along with his healer senses. He could examine himself more completely than any non-Healer ever could.
He really was stronger. His muscles hadn’t changed, but they felt denser, more packed with power. He wasn’t sure if it was a result of his ascension, or of his deeper connection with earth. He hadn’t tapped granite or slate in days, but perhaps some residual benefit of the many times he had used the stones in the past weeks still lingered?
The enforced inactivity would have been a great time to pick Kilian’s brain about deeper magic like his enhanced strength or managing mirages, but Kilian spent the majority of his time with Wolfram and the army commanders. They counseled about logistics for wintering the army in Altkalen, contingency plans for monitoring the border, and response plans should Obrion break the truce.
Kilian did take the time to pull Connor aside the next day. “I heard there was a bit of a ruckus in the meal tent yesterday. Some unexpected sights startling some of the soldiers.”
Connor sighed. Sometimes it was no fun spending so much time with someone who knew so much. “I was just practicing with mirages. I didn’t mean to cause such a stir.”
“What do you think mirages are?” Kilian asked with a smile. “You bend the light which tricks the eye, so the mind of that person has to fill in the gap. Usually they fill it with fears.”
“I know that now.” He wished he’d understood before tricking himself into seeing Mattias kiss Verena.
“Don’t attempt mirages alone, and don’t tamper with the storm. And don’t walk with slate here. Marble has acted almost normal during the storm, but don’t use it once things return to normal. In fact, don’t tempt the elements anywhere south of Altkalen.”
“I haven’t. I won’t,” Connor promised, annoyed at Queen Dreokt and High Lord Dougal for making such a mess of things. They’d wrecked everyone’s access to the elements. That seemed particularly mean-spirited and selfish.
Kilian fixed him with a serious gaze. “Good. Don’t start. I think the border is secure, at least for a while. I’ll be traveling north to Altkalen in the coming days to help Anton and his Sappers try to calm the elements. The city is probably safe, but the sooner we begin reversing the damage Dougal did, the better.”
“How do you reverse unstable elements?” When a cow got unruly, a good slap to the rump could often set it back on the path, but he suspected slapping the elements might only make them kick harder.
“With great care. Once we’re ready to try, I’ll let you know. You can give us a hand.”
“I’m usually better at breaking things than fixing them,” Connor pointed out, thinking about the arguments with Verena and wishing for the thousandth time that he’d apologized sooner, taken more time to understand her point of view.
“Don’t limit yourself. Different moments call for different talents.”
“Verena is in Altkalen. I plan to visit her, so I’ll be there.” It might be insane to try fiddling with the elements, but he couldn’t think of better company to try than Kilian and Anton.
First he needed to visit Verena. He had hated the idea of letting Mattias take her back to the citadel of Altkalen for better care, but that was preferable to letting Mattias take her farther north to his estates near Edderitz. He’d pushed for that, but been overruled. No doubt he would try again if rumors started that Altkalen was in danger.
If they could settle things down, Mattias would lose that argument. Connor could not allow him to isolate Verena.
“She’s receiving the best possible care,” Kilian assured him. “Saskia already has a healthbed, and Mattias promised the best Healers.”
“I know. It’s just. . .” Connor trailed off, hesitating to voice aloud his constant worries. They had too much to say to each other, too much to do together for her to slip away.
He decided he simply couldn’t wait any longer. “Tomorrow I’m leaving for Altkalen.”
“If you wait a couple more days, I can run it with you. I doubt we’ll get a windrider, but we can make the journey pretty fast.”
“I know the way. You don’t need me here anymore, and I need to check on her.”
“Very well. Say hello for me when she wakes.”
“I will.” He appreciated Kilian’s confidence that her waking was a foregone conclusion.
He slept fitfully that night while his tent snapped and boomed in the constant wind. By the next morning, the storm finally slackened to little more th
an a blustery gale. Gusts still howled occasionally, but lacked the intensity of the past few days. Snow lay in windblown drifts ranging from six inches to over eight feet.
The chill felt warm by comparison to the past couple days. The clouds actually fractured, allowing dazzling sunlight to sparkle across the snow fields.
Connor found a pair of Wingrunner shaded goggles.
Then he started to run.
7
Snow Day!
Connor all but flew across the snow-laden landscape. Deep drifts concealed the road, turned many trees into little more than pointed snow mounds, and sparkled in the bright morning sunlight like they’d swallowed a company of Solas.
Connor flashed across the surface, his fracked legs moving so fast he barely scuffed the top layer of snow. The fracking felt unusually painful in the crisp, cool air. The pain faded almost immediately, though, and Connor risked a glance down at his blurring legs and his changed physique.
A lot of people fear change, but Striders and Wingrunners had more reason than most. Human legs could only move forward and back so fast, but basalt broke that boundary by breaking legs. The thigh fractured, forming a new joint as the upper leg swung out at a forty-five-degree angle. The new joint allowed the upper leg to rotate in full circles without the lower leg needing to follow. The intensely painful process took only a couple of heartbeats, but unlocked incredible new speeds.
The first time Connor successfully fracked, the sight of his freakish new legs had distracted him and he’d tripped. Since then he usually didn’t look, didn’t think about how his legs moved, but just embraced the thrill of running so fast he sometimes wondered if he might outrun the day and catch up with the previous night again.
Now Connor laughed as he threw himself into a race against his own shadow. The miles fell away, but he scarcely noticed. His shadow kept up the entire way. He wondered if he could pull ahead using limestone. He ran so fast that even with a Wingrunner face mask to shield his nose and mouth, the wind nearly made it impossible to breathe.