"It could be pomegranates," I mused, keeping a sharp eye on his face. "But no, pomegranates kept Persephone Underhill, not above ground."
"Hades is certainly further down than Underhill," the rock sprite sniffed. But he looked nervous.
"Not a pomegranate, then. But something related to a pomegranate. Another red fruit? No, no." I chewed on my lip. "Magic doesn't work that way. It's-the opposite of a pomegranate."
The rock sprite closed his eyes. I knew I was right. But what was the opposite of a pomegranate? What was he sure they would have in a human diner? I had never been to one, of course, but the Daughters of Ran had had a party with a diner theme a few months back, or maybe it was years. Milkshakes, burgers, fruit pies, and…
"French fries," I said aloud. Of course. Pomegranates grew out in the air, red and juicy and seeded and sweet. Potatoes grew under the ground, white and starchy and solid. And if Persephone had given some of her above-ground sweetness to the underworld with the pomegranate… yes.
I marched into the diner, the rock sprite's wail dopplering after me. I fended off a few spells from him absentmindedly. He didn't dare follow me in where my kind would see him, but he felt it necessary to put up some resistance.
"I'd like an order of French fries, please," I told the first person I encountered.
"Sure, hon," she said. "Let's just get you a table first, huh? And then your waitress can take your order."
Sheepishly, I slid into the booth she had indicated. When the waitress came, I repeated myself.
"You want something to drink with that?" said the waitress.
The rock sprite pressed his nose against the glass next to my table. I looked away. "Just water. Thanks."
"French fries and some water. Got it." She walked away shaking her head and muttering, "Kids."
The sprite kept bobbing outside the window. I could tell he was trying not to call attention to himself, but he was probably doing more harm than good, popping up and down.
The French fries were ready almost immediately. The waitress plunked them down in a red plastic basket with a layer of red-and-white waxed paper lining it. They were golden and salty and smelled so good. The rock sprite's little purple head bounced up just in time to see me bite the first one in half. He rattled down the window in despair.
I chewed slowly to make it last. And rightly so: I was only going to have one. Persephone got stuck with a whole season away from home. I just wanted a vacation every year, with the chance to get to know humans a bit better.
I slid out of the diner booth.
"One fry?" demanded the waitress. "One lousy fry?"
I took a gulp of the water to mollify her.
It didn't appear to work. "What's wrong with our fries?"
"Nothing is wrong. It was excellent. But I must return to the underworld for most of the year."
She gaped at me. Finally she found solid ground: "Don't think you can get out of paying for them. There was nothing wrong with those fries."
I handed her a gold coin and walked out. The sprite was having paroxysms of delight on the sidewalk. "You changed your mind!"
I snorted. "You didn't know what my mind was to begin with. I didn't ever mean to stay here. So you can set your mind at ease: I'll go home. I just want to look around."
"Good," said the rock sprite, "because I think we have someone else to take care of here. Oh my."
"Who? What?" I said.
He pointed straight ahead, barely able to keep his mouth closed. And there in the town square, pouting up a granite storm, was our missing Fee.
"Well, I'll be," I said. The rock sprite said nothing. I looked down at him. He was practically drooling gravel.
"She's so beautiful!" he breathed.
"She's been turned into a granite statue, in case you hadn't noticed."
"I know! She used to be squishy, but now-" He sighed happily.
I shook my head. Squishy. "I came with defensive spells. I don't know how to fix this. We can go back and tell her where she is, and then-"
"I don't want to leave her!" said the rock sprite.
"It'll just be until we can find someone to fetch her. Someone with better spells. What's wrong with her, anyway?"
The rock sprite scampered forward-precipitously, I thought, considering that we didn't know what had caused her to turn to stone in the first place. I could see why he had gotten caught in the trap when I found him. "Be careful," I called after him, feeling like Alits.
"It's a trap," he called back. "Turns things to stone. Looks old-a hundred years or more."
I opened my mouth and closed it again. Of course: he was already stone. "What can you do about it?"
He hopped back to me. It had been a miserable trip for the little beast from beginning to end. "Nothing, nothing at all. But I don't want to leave her alone! What if someone-what if they take her away somewhere? We'd never find her!"
I sighed. "I don't know how to make rock into flesh, sprite. I just don't. So unless you've got a better idea-"
"Into flesh!" His face twisted. "There's no need to be nasty."
"So… all you want is that she should be able to move and talk again?" I chewed on my lip. "I think I can do that."
I had a spell in my pack to animate things. I'd meant it for transportation or something of the sort, but it would do for a stoned cousin of the Puck. I thought the rock sprite would die of rapture on the spot when the statue shook her granite locks and pouted quizzically down at us.
He climbed up on her shoulder. She kissed him soundly. I thought I deserved a bit of thanks as well, but as I wasn't interested in kissing her, I didn't say anything about it. In fact, I tried to ignore them for most of the way home. Next time you hear someone say, "I'm not made of stone," for heaven's sake, be glad.
Everyone was glad to see Fee, though a little taken aback by her stony appearance and her diminutive new paramour. Not everyone was distracted enough by her return not to notice who had brought her back.
"You've been outside," said Alits. "And you've had human food."
I scuffed my toe on the ground and waited for the explosion. It never came.
"I wish you hadn't."
"I'm glad I did," I said. "I needed to see where I come from. I needed to see how my people live. And-" I grinned. "It was kind of fun. And I did bring Fee back."
"I suppose you think that makes it worth it?"
"Yes!"
"You are a stubborn little beast, do you know that?" said Alits fondly.
"I can't help it. It's how I was raised."
Alits heaved a great sigh. "You're coming home sometimes, aren't you?"
"I only had one fry," I said. "That's a month on the surface and eleven months with you every year."
"I would miss you if you were gone."
"I know, Alits." I paused. "You could come with me. It could be a surface holiday for us. We could go camping. Kezhzh could roast the marshmallows."
Alits snorted and then laughed against her will. I hesitated but went on: "I wouldn't feel comfortable up there all the time. The grass stays the same color, and the rocks never teach you new spells."
Alits was too happy to tear the sprite to bits after that. Really, it worked out for all of us.
****
'Ware the Sleeper
Julie E. Czerneda
There were bones where the children played: small, smooth pieces perfect for game markers on the black sand, and long shards Skalda remembered using for fence posts around imaginary horses. The tides washed them here, along with links from shattered chainmail and futile bits of armor.
She regarded them now as portents. May my enemies’ bones keep you company, she wished them.
“You’re certain about this, Dir Agnon,” this from Rathe, the priest-warrior from the Hinter Islands. His fleet lay in safety in the cove whose calm waters defined the near edge of the children’s playground. Safety won too late, Skalda thought sadly, looking out over the sun-sparkled water at those handful of ships, masts split by spells of lightning, crews decimated by sendings of thirst and wasting disease.
They’d come here to huddle behind the great, untested fleet of the Circle Cove, to be nursemaided and told it wasn’t their fault, that nothing anyone could do would succeed against the Enemy. Which might well be true.
“Certain? When are any of us certain these days, Dir Rathe?” Agnon offered in his soft, careful voice. As priest-advisor to the secular rulers of the Cove and the outlying island clusters, he was magnificently noncommittal at any given time. A virtue in times of slow, peaceful prosperity; a dangerous paralysis in this time of utter peril. Skalda stared out to the narrow mist-filled opening that led to the open ocean until her eyes ached from the water’s glare.
“Dir Skalda sounded quite sure of this course in our Council. And why else are we here today, with them?” Rathe pointed a bone-thin finger at the brightly clad group near their feet. The ten children, daughters and sons collected from each of the Noble Houses, were equally oblivious to the presence of adults or to portents of doom, half-arguing and half-laughing in dispute of a shell. Their shrill voices rose into the still morning air like the piping of shorebirds.
“I am sure we have no other options left to us, comrades,” Skalda answered. “Let us choose and speedily. No amount of magic will delay the tides for your debates. We’ve little margin as it is to allow the Mariner’s Pride safe passage over Blood Reef.”
She looked back at the children playing amid the bones of their elders’ hopeless war and prepared to make her own selection. When Rathe would have simply picked the two nearest to be done with it, Skalda touched the heavy fabric of his sleeve and shook her head. His eyes were as haunted as she knew hers would appear.
The parchments, fragile with age and imperfectly translated, were clear on this point of the Summoning Spell at least. The payment for their salvation would be the blood of six innocents. That the blood should be royal and willing, not stolen from the arms of common folk, had been Skalda’s decision.
****
Shafts of sunlight disappeared, reappeared; they filled at times with motes of life, golden suspended dust, then at others reflected silver as the great flocks swam through their columns, dancing with the light.
I was content thus, to gaze upward through the lens of my eye into the living magic of my world, my place, and see only that which belonged here. I felt the surge of waves over the crust of my side, reading there the approach of storms, the tug of moon and sun-events distant yet intimate. I slept, as some life reckoned this state of consciousness. It was as true a description as any; since I needed nothing and need do nothing.
If this is sleep, I sometimes wondered, struck by some particular beauty above me or caught by starlight through a rare clarity of ocean, perhaps I dream the world.
****
Fortress and fantasy, Skalda thought as she took one lingering, hungry look at her home before climbing the ramp onto the Mariner’s Pride later that afternoon. The Circle Cove was a perfect shaping of black hard stone, the inward-facing surface of its mountainous sides etched by generations of artists into towers of breathtaking loveliness, decked with flower-laden balconies and terraces rich with green life; the outward sides carved by the ocean herself into equally fantastic shapes. The water within was the deepest, clearest blue, framed by beaches of soft black sand. Despite the grim reality of their Enemy’s spread into almost all the territory once ruled from this place, the citizens continued their peacetime ways: floating scented candles on the calm waters each night and tossing flower petals from their balconies to grace the decks of the mighty ships each morning.
The Mariner’s Pride had left her crew behind, a sullen group of Leeward Islanders distrustful of dry land and the mysterious ways of priests. Her captain was the only non-priest to remain. Skalda noted without surprise how he stayed on deck, refusing to even step below into his cabin where the children, soothed by spells of sleep and forgetfulness, rested on the softest of mattresses.
For this voyage, priests crewed the Pride: novices and warrior, in rank from sedir to dir, selected from scanty enough ranks not for their knowledge of the sea-they all, even the sleeping children, had that-but for the accuracy of their magic. The battle magic they would attempt tomorrow was twofold, containing both summoning and aiming. There could be no margin for error, no chance to hesitate, fear failure, and stop. Skalda had not needed the ancient parchments’ warnings or the worries of her fellow dir-priests to make that plain.
Besides, what good would a second try be? The massive fleet of the Enemy was moving inexorably closer. Why should it stop now, when nothing they had sent against it had made the slightest difference?
“We’ll just make the tide, Dir Skalda, Dir Rathe,” said the captain, Lienthe was his name, as he joined them at the rail. Overhead, the sails snapped as the breeze began, spelled by the sedir-priests below whose talents were sufficient for this (steady wind being the most useful magic to their seafaring kind and thus the first essential learning). The tiny wind caught at the canvas edges, then began to swell the sheets themselves.
Now that his ship was alive on the sea, her deck moving lightly under their feet, the man had shed his meek and haggard look, assuming a swagger to his walk Skalda believed quite unconscious and, from his reputation, deserved. “Wouldn’t have wanted to wait any longer. This girl’s not one to like her belly scraped on rock, no sir.”
Rathe’s nostrils flared and he looked down at the rotund little seaman as though trying to fathom why he, dir-priest and warrior, was being chatted with like some
fisherfolk on his way to the rich hunting of the Banks offshore. Skalda leaned back against the railing, careless of her fine robes on the damp, cold wood, and almost smiled. Instead, she drew in a deep breath through her nostrils, relishing the salt and fish tang to the air, the tar-stink of fresh caulking. “We appreciate your holding at the dock for us, Captain,” she said graciously. “And be sure we also value your fine ship.”
Captain Lienthe’s skin darkened even further under the bristles of his sparse beard. “’Course, 'course,” he muttered. “Dir Skalda. I wasn’t implying other, you know.”
“Have you taken her after baskers in the southern sea, Captain?” she asked absently, looking to the passageway ahead, its gap wide enough to pass three of the Circle Cove fleet’s largest galleys abreast. The opening was protected by twin towers manned ceaselessly by priest-warriors, dir and so capable of calling rock falls on intruders: a last resort, since catapults and burning oil were always aimed and ready. Despite the war with the Enemy, despite bones drifting in on tides she suspected the Enemy sent to appall them with its message that not even the blessed Depths were safe, none had ever assailed this port. Some here, thought Skalda, slept well at nights. She was not one of them.
As always, preparing to leave the Circle Cove and its protection, she felt both exhilaration and fear. On this journey, she suspected her exhilaration was simply that of freedom from the endless debates, the weeks of searching musty records for any hint of a weapon; her fear had a more rational source. Those protecting cliffs curled outward just enough to hide an ambush, should the Enemy’s sea-skills be able to hold ships within the crashing surf beyond. For all their sakes, this ship must not be stopped.
Jim Baen’s Universe Page 37