Gemworld

by Jeremy Bullard

  Tribean was so caught up in his account that he paid no attention to what some would consider “treasonous” words. He continued on unabated, though his voice grew hollow and filled with grief.

  “Even knowing what Father would think, I enlisted in the Earthen Ranks. I thought that with time, Father would see the wisdom of my decision.” He paused for a moment, licking his trembling lips. “Two weeks ago, I received a letter from Tiernan. He said that the publicans haven’t come to take tribute this year. He also said that Father has denounced me as a heretic,” the emerald stuttered the last.

  He made as if to say more, but instead lapsed into silence. Strangely, it was almost a comfortable silence, the one that follows a great release of tension. Tribean seemed relieved, having finally shared his pent-up thoughts and feelings with someone else. His soul laid bare, Sal doubted that he had anything left to say anyway.

  “So what’s your story?” the emerald smirked. “How does a one-eyed mage earn an assassin’s blade, then find his way into the military?”

  “Who says I ‘earned’ the blade?” Sal asked wryly, raising a mocking eyebrow to his friend. Friend? Who would have thought I’d be calling him that after this morning? “I could have just as easily pried it from an assassin’s dead fingers.”

  Tribean laughed heartily, the sound cutting deeply into the still autumn night. It echoed off the courtyard walls, amplified it. Droves of birds lit out from their roosts in response.

  The emerald coughed forcibly, fighting valiantly to regain his composure. Sal was gratified to see a smile remain on the once-dour face when the mage replied. “I know better than that, Sal. A shol’tuk adherent is not even given his first assignment until he’s reached the iron hilt, is not considered an assassin until then. From the rawhide through the silk, his time is devoted completely to the mastery of forms and philosophies. You may have everyone else fooled, but not me.”

  There was an odd edge to Tribean’s otherwise casual jibe. It gave Sal the impression that now Tribean was the one feeling him out. Still, Sal didn’t jump to any conclusions. “How so?” he asked, careful to keep the question, and his expression, neutral.

  “Let’s just say that I know people. I was trained from youth by one of the greatest swordsmen to ever walk the foothills of the Dragonspire Range—greater even than Master Aten’rih—and you bested me. With one eye and no magic! You executed moves that I’d never seen before, and with such grace! In my mind, that can mean only one of two things. Either your father was Earthen Rank, and he raised you up with a sword in your hand—which I highly doubt—or...” The emerald paused to take a deep, calming breath, then concluded his thought with an awed sigh. “You’re shol’tuk. Barely a step above novice, yes, but shol’tuk nonetheless. Either way, you’re not what you appear to be, so don’t give me that ‘Sal of Dothan in the Southern Plains’ swill. Just because I grew up a rock chucker doesn’t mean I have rocks for brains.”

  As he spoke, he turned his gaze fully on Sal, scrutinizing every reaction. Apparently, he was satisfied with what he saw. He nodded smugly. “Let’s have it,” he demanded.

  There was no threat in Tribean’s voice, just the expectation that Sal would reward trust with trust. Fair’s fair, Sal thought with a mental shrug. He doubted that the other was playing him for a fool, trying to root out any seed of insurrection that Sal might represent. The emerald wasn’t the only mage that had grown adept at seeing the truth in another’s own vitality. If Tribean was lying, or acting as a spy for the Highest, he was a better liar than Sal was.

  He took a deep breath, and faced Tribean squarely. “The truth? Alright. First, my name is actually James Salvatori. Sal’s just a nickname. I really am from a city called Dothan—roughly the same size as Bastion, though it’s not on any map that you’ve ever seen. I’m not sure how I got here. In fact, I’m not entirely sure where ‘here’ is exactly. I don’t know whether I’m here by accident or by the Will of G... umm, the Crafter. But whatever the reason, I’m here now, and seemingly in a position to do a lot of good.”

  There you go. Truth. Kind of vague, but truth all the same.

  But Tribean wasn’t satisfied yet. “What kind of good?”

  “The kind that would restore the faith of your father.”

  That got him. Tribean’s jaw dropped wide open, and his eyes pulsed with a sickly green light. He was astounded, and rightly so. Sal hadn’t come right out and said it, but the implication was there, as plain as the eye patch on his face. Military coup.

  It hadn’t been attempted in centuries, from what Sal had read. The notion probably hadn’t even been entertained in as long. For someone to have the courage—or the lunacy—to actually try to overthrow the Highest from within his own power base? Even if there was such a man, the idea that he might find others that were equally suicidal...

  “Are you insane?” the emerald screeched. He shot a nervous look into the darkness, wincing as his rebuke echoed again and again across the night-darkened courtyard. “Maybe you haven’t heard yet, but the Highest is immortal,” he whispered hoarsely. “He’s ruled the world since the Rending, and put down a thousand rebellions. What makes you think you’re any different?”

  “Would you join me if I was different?” Sal asked pointedly.

  “You’re insane,” the emerald scoffed.

  “But would you join me?”

  Tribean stared long and hard at Sal, hands on hips as if waiting for the punchline to some bizarre joke. When it became clear that Sal was deadly serious, Tribean huffed his exasperation. “I might,” he conceded. “But you’d have to convince me that the Crafter Himself had sent you.”

  “I have you’re word on that?” Sal’s face could have been stone for all the expression it had.

  “Yeah, you have my word,” the mage retorted, crossing his arms before him, determined to call Sal’s bluff.

  And there it was, the moment he’d waited for since arriving in Bastion. The initial confrontation. This was where he’d find out if his idea had any hope of succeeding. Strangely, he wasn’t as nervous as he had expected to be. He reached up with one hand, and slid his eye patch back on his forehead, revealing for the first time in weeks what lay beneath. His natural, fully functional eye took in Tribean’s slack-jaw expression. At first it was confusing for Sal, to see naturally after relying on green-tinted vision for so long, but he recovered quickly.

  Tribean, however, needed a bit more convincing. “No, absolutely not,” the mage said emphatically. “There is no way that you could possibly have only one gemstone eye.”

  “You’re right,” Sal agreed. “Under normal circumstances, it would be impossible. Either both eyes would have changed, or if one eye had been gouged out, it would have stayed gouged out until it was healed, and then change the first time I wielded. Under normal circumstances,” he reiterated.

  “So you’re saying that you’re sent by the Crafter? Fool’s fortune, that’s what that is! Fool’s fortune!” he swore.

  “Funny, but I don’t see it that way. Pardon the pun.”

  Tribean sputtered furiously, curses and denials alternating on his tongue. “There has got to be another explanation. A logical one.”

  “Oh? Well then, by all means, name one,” Sal suggested with keen interest.

  The other’s mouth worked soundlessly, trying futilely to rationalize what he was seeing. He looked around the courtyard, to the ground at his feet, to the sky, searching for some sort of answer. His pleading gaze fell back to Sal finally. “There’s got to be another explanation,” he repeated weakly.

  Sal’s only reply was to release the Emerald soulgem. The last vestiges of color drained from Tribean’s face as the single gemstone eye faded from emerald to blue, then red, then amethyst, and finally to sparkling clarity.

  “Blessed Crafter,” Tribean breathed. “The Prism!”

  “Prism? What do you—ya know what, never mind,” Sal said dismissively. “I only want to know one thing. Do I have your allegiance in this? Will you
help me?”

  “My soul to the Abyss if I fail you,” Tribean said reverently as he took a knee before Sal.

  True to his word, Tribean swore allegiance, though with much more solemnity than made Sal comfortable. At one point, he had to physically stop the emerald short of worshiping him, forcibly pointing out the difference between allegiance and fealty. Being fearsome was hard enough to deal with. He couldn’t handle being divine.

  Convincing Tribean to see Sal as an equal was much more difficult, taking the better part of an hour simply to coax the mage into looking Sal in the eye—or eyes, rather. It was a slow, agonizing process, but by daybreak, Sal had exactly what he wanted out of Tribean—a loyal, knowledgeable lieutenant, and more importantly, the beginnings of his coup.

  Chapter 25

  Gaelen pressed his hand against the sun-warmed earth, held it there for moments on end while the rebels of Caravan and her sister villages loaded onto the line of river vessels made for that purpose. He’d been feeling for Jaeda constantly since she was taken by that minta’hk Nestor, but to no avail. He’d yet to feel even the slightest hint of a nudge from the soil beneath his fingers.

  “C’mon, mate,” Retzu said, standing over his shoulder. “We’ll be putting in at sundown. You can give ‘er a try then. But we have to get moving. And no, you can’t take one of the pegasi, or lift yourself downriver,” the shol’tuk adherent said sharply, cutting off Gaelen’s imminent protests. “Reit’s already considered it, and he don’t want us being separated this close to Harvest.”

  “But it’s Jaeda,” Gaelen pleaded. “She’s my big sister. Do you know what it’s like to have a sister go missing on you?”

  “Well, as it happens—”

  “She’s always been there for me,” Gaelen rambled on, not caring to listen to the assassin’s platitudes, “since before we were found by Tribe Tobin. What kind of brother am I if I don’t risk everything to find her now?”

  “The kind of brother that doesn’t want her discomfort to be in vain,” the assassin said firmly, deftly avoiding the possibility that she was dead. Gaelen appreciated that about him. So skilled at dealing death, and yet the assassin went out of his way to avoid the subject when necessary.

  Gaelen sighed and hung his head for a moment. Finally, he straightened and looked Retzu squarely in the eye. “Sundown,” the amethyst said, not a question per se, but a demand for confirmation.

  “Sundown,” Retzu affirmed.

  Gaelen paused for a moment longer, then nodded, and began his slow plod to the waiting ships, all the while looking to the ground before him as if expecting Jaeda to nudge the earth in his path.

  ***

  Jaeda craned her stiff neck from right to left, thrilling with every pop. Nestor stiffened at her side, then relaxed again, his breathing taking on the slow, regular pattern of light sleep.

  He was getting lazy, Jaeda observed. He still slept with his bare hand in contact with her skin, but he no longer held a sword in the other hand. He no longer leapt to his feet, intent on ripping her throat out if she so much as thought of escape. The long days were getting to him, wearing him down. Stress, lack of sleep, rapidly thinning rations, they all added to his exhaustion. She had only to bide her time. Soon now, very soon...

  Nestor’s head lolled gently forward, and the light sound of his breathing gave way to snores. His hand slipped, breaking contact. Seeing her opportunity, she wielded, slipping her bonds and becoming one with the earth.

  Above her, she felt Nestor’s presence, running this way and that as he fought the half-sleep out of his eyes and searched for Jaeda. He paused momentarily, then pounded the ground with a fist. Jaeda laughed silently, insomuch as being one with the earth allowed her to laugh at all. She relished this moment of total victory, floating free and ephemeral in the soil, mere inches from Nestor’s shackling grasp, but a world away for all the good it did him.

  Finally, she decided that he’d had enough. She had no thought of leaving him just yet. There was no point to it, or so she told herself. She clearly had the upper hand in the situation, and would keep it so long as Nestor kept his hands to himself.

  Moving a few yards off, she willed herself upward, breaking the surface with a ripple of granite magic. Nestor, still casting his eyes about, caught sight of her and moved to lay hands on her again.

  “Back off, Nestor,” Jaeda commanded. “If I wanted to be gone, I would have.”

  The shackled granite froze in place, still clearly wanting to reclaim his former prize, but now overcome with uncertainty. If Jaeda had to guess what he was thinking, she’d say that it likely boiled down to a single word. Why.

  He studied her for long minutes, not moving, until finally he straightened with a huff, then turned to sit back down. “Well, go on your merry way, then,” he said flippantly. “Not as if you can take me back anyway, shackled as I am.”

  “No, I can’t,” Jaeda admitted. “The shackle won’t allow me to wield against you. However...”

  Gathering her will to her, she touched Granite and wielded. Nestor tumbled a bit as granite magic liquified the ground around him in a tight circle, leaving him afloat upon a raft of soil and root. With a mental push, Jaeda sent him floating along the molten, magical river, tottering ever so slowly toward the south.

  “I can affect your surroundings,” she said, allowing Nestor to float a moment more before she cut off her magicks. “But again, I don’t want to do that.”

  Her former commander stood, uneasy for a moment, then more confident in the ground at his feet. He shot a glare at Jaeda, though she felt it was more out of frustration than anger or fear. “So what do you plan to do? You don’t wish to escape, and you claim you don’t wish to take me back to your rebel leader. Why are you still here?”

  She sighed deeply, and considered for a moment. There was so much she had been wanting to say—out of love or wrath, she couldn’t tell which—but only when she had reached a middle ground with him. She wanted to speak to him as an equal, neither below him nor above, neither as the prisoner nor the captor. She had that now, and yet she felt something held her back. “Would you really have killed me back there?” she asked finally.

  His lips twisted in a sneer, but it faltered in a moment, falling to a disappointed frown. “What is it any concern of yours?” Again he turned, slowly, and sat with his back against the tree.

  “Perhaps,” she started, taking a seat in front of him, “I’d like to know if your declaration still stands.”

  “After I tried to kill you? Are you daft, child?”

  “Not so much,” she said with a chuckle, “though I’m sure Gaelen would disagree.” Upon mentioning his name, she realized that she hadn’t been in contact with him for quite some time. She had known that it was only a matter of time before Nestor let his defenses slip, and that thought lent her courage. Focusing all her energies into the search for that one lax moment, she’d forgotten her brother entirely. How he must worry about her! But she didn’t press her hand to the soil, didn’t become one with the earth, hoping to feel his aura, shining like a beacon calling her home. He’d waited this long. He could wait just a bit longer. “But as I told you before, I don’t take such a declaration lightly. I can forgive you acting out of desperation, if in fact that’s what it was.”

  Nestor said nothing, made no attempt, but instead cast his eyes down at his feet. It wasn’t exactly the answer that she was expecting, but she was far from surprised. She’d known Nestor for only a few short months, but in that time, she’d found a dedication to the Crafter, and to the man he saw as His vicar, that she’d rarely found in even the most devout followers of el. However misguided Nestor may have been, Jaeda couldn’t bring herself to believe that his heart was evil. And if not evil, then possibly in search of redemption.

  “How could you still honor my declaration,” he croaked, “when I’ve dishonored you so?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a dishonor. You could have killed me—that would have been far easier than lugging
me around the way you did. And while I strongly oppose what you did,” she added with a quirked eyebrow, “I can at least understand it.”

  The shackled granite shook his head slightly and lifted his eyes to meet hers, before finally returning them to the ground between them. He sat in silence, neither moving to apologize nor defending his actions, until finally he raised his granite orbs again, this time his face washed clean of its former rigidity. Still he said nothing, but it was a comfortable silence. Jaeda was content to share the silence with him. There was much that still needed to be said, but she had the feeling that now, there would be plenty of time to do so.

  They passed the night in much the same silence, neither soul saying more than was necessary to get through setting up camp and cooking the evening meal with efficiency. But through it all, Jaeda had to steel herself to focus on the task at hand, whatever that task happened to be at the moment. When she inevitably slipped, she always found herself looking at Nestor, not really seeing the gruff sweaty man pounding the steel tent spikes into the ground by hand, but seeing rather the confident, relaxed, somewhat contented man that she’d come to know in that one night of peace that they’d shared over evening rations. She saw the passion in his black orbs, wreathed in brown despite the shackle. She saw the fleeting, rare smile that seemed to sap all tension from his face. More than once, Nestor glanced at her, and she swiftly turned her attention to anything but him, but always her attention drifted back to her former Chief General.

  They kept no watch that night. They hardly needed to. It seemed that in the silence they had reached an understanding. He could only hold her so long as his attention did not waver, and she had no desire to leave regardless.

  In the morning, they would set out again, driving deeper into the heart of Aeden’s Lost Garden in search of... whatever they might find there. A lost encampment? A mountain filled with terrifying creatures? Hints of a world long gone? Jaeda didn’t know, and for all his talk, neither did Nestor. But he was on a mission, Nestor was. He wasn’t searching for transport back to the Highest, although he may find it. He wasn’t searching for treasures lost in Ysra tuk'sheol either. Jaeda wasn’t sure that he even knew what he was looking for, only that his faith had been shaken, and that he felt the need to work out his faith in the Highest, and more importantly, in el Himself. And he felt the best way to do that was to find the Highest’s lost encampment and go from there. It made a strange kind of sense, so Jaeda was content to go along, as much to work out her own feelings as to help him work out his. So that night they would sleep long and deeply, each passing off their cares at least until the morning.