Gemworld

by Jeremy Bullard

  “What?” Sal asked, shaking the last cobwebs from his brain. “What would take days? What happened?”

  “I’ve got to get Jaren,” she said abruptly, scrubbing her eyes dry as she rushed from the tent to summon the emerald, pausing only a moment at the tent flap to look back at Sal and make sure he was real before disappearing into the morning.

  Sal crunched his eyes shut and clutched at his head in a vain attempt to still the throbbing. As it happened, he really didn’t need to. It had already started to fade, and was completely gone a few moments later.

  Gingerly, he opened his eyes again, convinced that the pounding would return. But it didn’t. He opened his eyes all the way without the expected explosion, then blinked hard a few times just to be sure.

  Strange. Now that he thought about it, he actually felt pretty good. Both eyes were working. All his appendages were in the right place. He didn’t feel like barfing anymore. He wasn’t even dizzy.

  Morphine. However backward they are, they must have discovered morphine.

  A faint buzzing in his head seemed to back up that theory, but... no, something was wrong. He decided that he wasn’t stoned, but it was something similar. It wasn’t dizziness. He couldn’t really describe the sensation, yet it was familiar somehow. Before he could really consider it, Jaren burst into the tent, trailed by Marissa and Delana.

  “Now, now, Sal,” the emerald admonished, slipping seamlessly into what Sal thought of as his doctor mode. “Just lie back, there’s a good chap. No need to rush your recovery—”

  “I’m fine, Jaren, really. I’m not even dizzy.” To prove his point, he pushed Jaren back and slipped from beneath the covers, barely wavering as he took to his feet.

  “Well, you seem to have recovered physically,” Jaren granted, his face drawing up in restrained mirth. “But your powers of observation still leave something to be desired.”

  Sal didn’t need the emerald’s quip to bring home the reality of the situation. Marissa’s eyes were riveted on the lower half of his body, her cheeks flushed. Delana, on the other hand, whipped her head away, throwing up a hand to shield her eyes.

  That was more than enough to put him into motion, diving back into bed and throwing the covers over his newly discovered nakedness. Deciding that discretion was the better part of compassion in this case, Delana backed out of the tent, pulling a reluctant Marissa behind. “I believe you have an order of enchanted bows to finish?” the amethyst was saying as the two left.

  “Well, I suppose you could look at it this way,” Jaren said clearing his throat politely. “This is one less secret between you and Marissa.” The emerald neatly sidestepped the pillow that came flying in response. Undaunted, he scooped up Sal’s pants from where they lay over a wooden footlocker. “It’s probably just as well that we’re alone, actually.”

  “How long was I out?” asked Sal, taking the proffered breeches and pulling them on.

  “Seven days. Two days longer than anyone I’ve ever heard of, which was the cause of our worry.”

  “Yeah, I imagine I’d be a little worried myse—” He stopped, Jaren’s words finally registering. “Seven days?!? What, was I in a coma or something? And what do you mean, ‘anyone you’d ever heard of?’”

  The emerald’s face broke in a wide grin, but he said nothing. Instead, he pointed to the mirror hanging on the central tent pole. Sal stepped to the mirror, wondering what his face had to do with anything. He didn’t know what he had expected, but what stared back from the mirror was definitely not it.

  His right eye was normal, its hazel iris dilated from the dim light in the tent. His left orb, however, had no iris. In fact, he would have sworn that someone had completely gouged his eye out and replaced it with a glass ball, had he not been able to see with it. Or maybe it was a crystal ball?

  Or a diamond...!

  Though smooth on the surface, tiny flashes of rainbow color shimmered deep within the clear orb, reminding him eerily of the gem he’d touched in the prison coach. Purples, reds, greens... it was at once beautiful and terrifying.

  “Does this mean...?”

  “When a mage ascends, he is struck unconscious,” Jaren explained, confirming his suspicions. Sal just continued to stare at the glittering gemstone in amazement, barely absorbing what was being said. “He may experience a great deal of pain, which is made all the worse by panic or resistance. The comatose state usually lasts from two hours to three days, depending on how deeply the mage is attuned to his soulgem and how hard he fought his ascension. You apparently fought harder than most.”

  “I guess that’s why my head’s buzzing then.”

  “No. Actually, that’s a reaction to the mana within me. I suspect you could always feel it before, by the way you described your eye tingling. Now that you are ascended, you will feel mana more acutely. Even see it, once you learn how.”

  Sal turned his head slightly, and the color patterns within the diamond changed. Enchanting as the orb was, he still forced himself to pay attention to what the mage—the other mage, he reminded himself—was saying. “I’ve never heard of a diamond mage before,” he murmured.

  “Neither have I,” the emerald said with an awed sigh.

  Sal looked sharply at Jaren. The emerald mage held his hands up defensively, suddenly very serious. “Relax, Sal! Relax,” he urged firmly. “You might wield accidentally before we’re able to teach you how to constrict the mana flow.”

  Reflexively, Sal crunched his eyes shut and tried his best to clear his mind of all thought. Geez, I could kill someone—or even myself—without even knowing how I did it! How the heck am I ever supposed to learn how to wield if there’s never been another diamond mage? He ran through his hilts hurriedly, and for a wonder, it worked. The words of his mantra stuck in his mind, clearing out all thought but that which was devoted to his recitation. He repeated them, slowly, savoring every syllable. Finally, he felt confident enough to open his eyes again. He studied the emerald’s face, searching for answers of some kind—any kind—but only found the same perplexity that he himself felt.

  “How did this happen?” he asked finally.

  Jaren just shook his head. “We don’t know. We’ve discussed it for days, but have come to no solid conclusions. We don’t even know where to begin in your training. There hasn’t been a new soulgem in over four thousand years, so we have no basis for comparison. We don’t know what element—if any—that Diamond may be lord of, so we can’t even begin to understand how to approach the situation. And until we can, you and our new granite friend share a common problem. You’ll both have to teach yourselves.”

  ***

  The sound of the hammer striking hot steel was comforting to Keth. He lost himself in the dull thunk-thunk-thunk as he shaped the metal, punctuated by the occasional peal as his hammer slipped and struck the bare anvil.

  He didn’t see the glowing steel the same way his Master Seti did. Oh, he saw it alright, but in Keth’s sight, the bar glowed its weakness, not its heat. Near the tongs, where it was coolest, the steel bar was a dark blue, almost black with strength, fading to a lighter shade where the metal had been softened by the head of the forge. The orange of his skin stood out in stark contrast, glowing an indistinct yellow where his bones ran beneath.

  His sight was just one of the many things these people had questioned him on, both during the trial of acceptance, and after. It was calming to get away, to listen to the crackling of the forge fire, and remember when days were simple—when the sky was actually blue, and when flames could actually be seen, not just heard and felt.

  He cursed the mage recruiters under his breath, beating his anger into the cooling bar where it dispersed for a time. Before they came with their damnable Tiled Hand, there was beauty to the world. There were green fields, red and yellow autumn leaves, tan fawns with white spots, grey rabbits with shiny, black noses. Nanette... Not a day went by that he didn’t think of his Nanette. So beautiful, with her flaxen hair, her strong chin, her slightly c
rooked nose where she’d broken it in her tenth summer. She was by far the Crafter’s greatest work. But that beauty was gone. All beauty was gone.

  The cold springs that trickled eastward from the Stormbreak Mountains before merging with the Rhu’sai used to run an icy blue. Now, yellow-green ice floes bobbed in the blood red water. The same red also colored the waters flowing past Scholar’s Ford—a city which, incidentally, was now blue-green with light blue walls. He could not even see the sun anymore, as it had no substance. No sun. No stars. Only the moon, hanging light blue in a white sky.

  Feeling his rage returning, he beat the steel bar even harder, drawing a curious glance from Master Seti. But the smith said nothing, simply let his new apprentice work out his own frustrations. He’s a good man, Keth thought. The entire village had gone out of its way to see that he’d felt welcome. Even after their leader Reit had asked him about the murder.

  I didn’t mean to do it, he remembered saying. And that was true, as the Heads of Order had verified. But that didn’t excuse the fact that he’d done it, actually taken life.

  He thrust the cooling bar back into the coals of the invisible fire, and watched morosely as the steel softened...

  ***

  “Keth”, called a woman’s voice. Careful not to drop the steel—it was already glowing brightly with heat—he turned toward the doorway.

  “Aye?” he called back.

  “Keth, yer father wants ye,” his mother said, drying her hands on her apron. “We have visitors he wants ye to meet.”

  “Aye, I’ll be right there, Ma.” He was irritated at the break in his work. There had been more than enough work to go around since coming here. An uncle had left this farm to his Da in his departing wishes. Da knew little of the crop rotations in this part of the world, little of the soil, but the new farm was five times the breadth of the old, and far be it from the old man to turn down an opportunity.

  Having to pack their lives up and move clear across the mainland hadn’t helped either. The six moons it had taken them, even along the highroad, to cross from the Northern Plains to the eastern foothills of the Stormbreaks had cost them three cows and a good packhorse. The trip itself cost his Da a quarter of what he’d sold their own farm for, then a third of what remained to winter in Scholar’s Ford. They finally reached the new homestead nearly a week into Newbreath, though the Month of Thaws brought them little of its accustomed cheer. The homestead was in such disrepair that it was all they could do to get things in shape before the planting of the early crops, to say nothing of actually enjoying the Festival of Courting. And those fields... those Crafter-cursed rocky fields...

  Still, he reminded himself, complaining will do no good. Even now, two years later, the work continued. And the work will still be here when I get back from entertaining our guests, he sighed to himself, so I’d best be done with this. Turning, he replaced the would-be horseshoe in the forge just outside the coals, then went to answer his father’s summons.

  He found his Da sitting at the work table in front of the main house, keeping company with a pair of men sitting opposite of him. As Keth approached, the pair looked to Keth, then shared a secret look that the boy didn’t altogether trust. They were mages, after all, a ruby and a sapphire. And they seemed a bit too interested in Keth for his liking. “Ah, and here’s me son now,” Keth’s father said, following their eyes.

  “The wind kisses the wheat,” the sapphire greeted him, extending his hand in traditional Plainsfolk greeting.

  Odd, coming from a Valenese, Keth thought. He took the hand anyway, pumping it firmly. “It weaves through the stalks, and they sway,” he answered neutrally. The sapphire’s smile faltered, and his parents looked positively scandalized. That obviously wasn’t the response they’d hoped for. How unfortunate, Keth sneered inwardly. His initial reply, “the wind precedes the storm,” still squirmed on his tongue, begging to be let loose. Keth had little love for mages—they were murderers and house-dividers, the lot o’ them; everyone knew that—but it would not do to insult the sapphire so in his Ma’s presence.

  The ruby, on the other hand, didn’t use the traditional greeting, didn’t expect the polite response, “the wind bears the seed to new fields.” He had watched the exchange between Keth and the sapphire dispassionately, and now greeted Keth with a simple bow, as was the custom among the Onatae. His slanted crimson eyes betrayed no expression, fair or foul. They just smoldered.

  Finally, Keth’s father bade them all sit. The boy was still wary, but there was something about the mages, something odd. Keth was curious. Shaking hands with the sapphire had made his eyes tingle. Apparently, he intrigued the mages as well, for they shared that secret look again.

  “He’s a hard worker, me boy is, and smart as a whip,” his father said, clapping Keth on the back. “Up at dawn to do his chores. Works hisself weary, then studies his lessons long into the night. Listen ye to his speech, see if’n they ain’t the words of an industrious man. Even now, he’s fresh from the smithy out back.” He punctuated this last with another fond slap, oblivious to the pun between the words “fresh” and “smithy”.

  “We have no doubt that your son is quite industrious, Master Tucker,” the sapphire said, addressing Keth as much as his father. “It is the extent of his talent we’re here to determine. You see, boy, we feel that you may have the potential to become a mage, which is something that you cannot do here on a farm. Simply the fact that you’ve grown to this age and not ascended is testimony to that.”

  Keth took in the earnestness of the sapphire. He seemed a nice enough fellow, and outgoing to boot. He definitely had a way with his Da, who Keth had always seen as the ultimate judge of character. Still, the whole thing stank like a stall in need of mucking out. “Alright, then do whatever ye must, and go,” answered Keth tightly. Mage he may be—or no, as willed the Crafter—but he determined that no one would tell him he had to leave his Da’s own farm, whatever happened.

  “It’s not that simple,” the ruby said, his tone as dark as it was quiet. “We must administer a test of your magical abilities. If you pass, we will aid in your ascension, and then take you to a place where you will be able to learn to control your talents. You will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine. If you fail, you stay here, and we will never bother you again.

  “But we cannot allow you to remain untested. If you were to accidentally ascend on your own, you would be a danger to everyone you know and love. We would have no choice but to return, in force, and... resolve the problem.” There could be no mistaking the note of finality in the ruby’s words.

  “You leave me little choice,” Keth muttered cheerlessly, setting his will against what might happen. This was his home, and he’d rail against the Gates of the Abyss before he let those minta’hk divide it.

  Nodding his satisfaction, the sapphire produced a plaque. It was little more than a lacquered slat with the bejeweled design of a hand on the front of it. Keth hissed and backed away. “That’s your test?”

  Keth had heard of the Tiled Hand. He’d had friends that had touched the plaque, only to be smitten unconscious. When they woke days later, they were... different. And not just their eyes or their ability to wield magic. Whatever the Hand bestowed, it wasn’t good.

  Keth moved to stand, but his Da held him fast. “Sit yerself, boy, and listen.” The older man’s voice was firm, but sympathetic to his son’s fears. “Me and yer Ma shan’t be around forever, and we want to know yer taken care of.” He pointed at the Hand. “That may well be our guarantee. A mage leads a grand life, respected and admired by his peers. I’m a farmer. Me Da was a farmer, and his Da before him. I want somethin’ better for ye, son.”

  Keth looked to the Tiled Hand, then to the sapphire mage holding it. The gemstone eyes he found there frightened him. He felt trapped in them, as a fly in amber. But within those sky blue orbs, he also saw the hint of the wondrous power that could be his. He had to admit that the prospect excited him almost beyond his fear
. His emotions swirled, his gorge heaved reflexively. He looked to his Da for stability, but the older man’s eyes just continued to plead with him. Keth sighed deeply and shook his head. What was he to do? He didn’t want to be a mage, wanted nothing of the sort, but he’d be a fool not to take advantage of that kind of power. Besides, mages didn’t have to be murderers and house-dividers, did they? Fear and possibility chased each other around inside his head, until finally, he grit his teeth and threw his reluctant hand forward, bringing it down upon the plaque’s multicolored design before he could convince himself not to.

  As his hand came down on the Tiles, his head erupted in a mad rush of pain. He tried to scream, but the pain stole his breath. He fell to the ground clutching his head as, before his dimming eyes, the world blurred, the colors bleeding together as they inverted, and eventually faded altogether as he slipped into the black void of sleep...

  ***

  The thunk of Master Seti’s hammer brought Keth back to the present. He had no idea how long he’d been lost in his memories, but the fires of the forge had softened the steel bar to a blue that approached turquoise.

  He pulled the bar from the fire and laid it on the anvil, positioning it precisely, so that every swing of the hammer would achieve maximum effect. Satisfied, he went back to work pummeling the steel bar, exerting his will upon the metal as it slowly took the form of his choosing. This one was to be a scythe, for use in the wheat fields east of Caravan, should the village stay put long enough to see that particular crop come in. One of the many tools he’d mastered through the years, he could have forged it with his eyes closed. As the blue metal darkened—hardened—beneath his hammer, he was tempted to do that very thing, to close his eyes and slip once more into the past.

  Blue the metal was, like his Nanette’s eyes had been once upon a lifetime. That last time he’d seen them, they were wide with shock, and grey as ash. The tears were still wet as they coursed down her crumbling cheek...