by Beach, B. J.
* * *
It was Symon who suggested they split up. Not keen on the idea, Karryl nevertheless agreed to try it for a while. His grim expression, coupled with his tone did little to disguise his reservations, “I still think we’d be better combining our ears, eyes and powers.”
Balancing precariously on a large tilted slab of rock, Symon patted his palms together. “Indeed! But the idea of splitting up is to get an overall view more quickly. When we begin a more intensive search, or have a specific target, then we will combine.”
He waved his arms to encompass the vast acreage of devastation. “What you have to remember is the amount of ground we have to cover. You’re now just as capable as I am of working independently. The time has come to put the powers which the spirit of the book gave you to good use.” A wry smile twisted the corners of his mouth. “Anyway, your limbs and mind are far younger and more agile than mine.”
Not fully convinced, Karryl felt a twinge of misgiving as he looked around at the huge swathes of jumbled rock and rubble. “Are we going to attempt this alone? Isn’t there some way we can contact somebody, get some extra help?”
Symon raised his hands slightly as if the matter was of no consequence. “We have all the help we shall need.”
Without waiting for a response he turned away, then looked back over his shoulder. To Karryl’s surprise, he gave a broad wink. “Use your powers as you think fit.”
There were no sparkling motes, simply a slight displacement of air, and Symon was gone. Standing perfectly still, Karryl looked slowly around, his sharp eyes and retentive mind noting and recording each minute detail. That done, he then repeated the process. The position of a large square-edged stone, possibly once the corner of a building, had shifted slightly. He moved towards it, his ears attuned for any sound other than the gritty scrape of his own careful footsteps. A frisson of strong magic disturbed the ends of his hair and prickled along his forearms.
He threw a ward of shielding around himself, searching for the source of the magic as he continued to pick his way awkwardly towards the tumbled building. Unable to detect anything which might give cause for concern, he let the shield fall away. As the last vestiges dispersed, he spun round, his feet slithering in the rubble. The sound of a weak tremulous voice had reached his ears. There were no words, just an unintelligible mumbling interspersed with dry, coughing whimpers. The sounds were coming from somewhere behind the cornerstone.
Karryl called out in Ingali. “I can hear you. Are you injured?”
The immediate response was a long, low keen of relief. A strong voice spoke over the keening sound. “I am not badly injured, and my wife has more fright than hurt. You will get us out?”
Karryl looked about for Symon, but there was no sign of him. He had to make an on the spot decision. Crouched down amongst the rubble, he put his mouth close to a narrow vertical crevice, a slice of darkness alongside the stone. “Are there just the two of you?”
There was long pause, punctuated by furious whispering. The man called again. “Somewhere is our son. Please, find him.”
Karryl leaned forward to place his palms on the tilted cornerstone. “First, I will get you out, then you can help me search. Please, keep quite still, and don’t be frightened by anything you might see or hear. I’m going to try and move some of the rocks.”
He moved back a little way, and placed his pack on the ground. He then selected a spot which would give him the widest angle of approach, reducing the necessity of moving from place to place. Reluctant to expend valuable power on transporting the rocks any distance, at the back of his mind was the niggling thought that, wherever he put the rocks he intended to shift, he could be condemning other survivors of the Mirikani twins’ callous act. Refusing to dwell on it, he drew in power, carefully lifted a large rock from the top of the cornerstone and transported it away from the precarious heap on which it sat. The grinding, rattling sound of slithering stones and settling rocks was nerve-wrackingly loud in the eerie silence. Eased by the removal of the larger rock, part of the heap slipped sideways and stopped. A rock the size of Karryl’s head tumbled down, coming to rest close by the side of his foot. Glancing down at his bare and dusty sandalled toes, he gave an involuntary wince at the thought of the damage it could have done.
Keeping a careful eye on the doubtless unstable jumbled heaps, Karryl began to devise a spell. Basing it loosely on a spell of holding, he rapidly cut and spliced parts of other spells, bonding them neatly to the base spell in a construct he knew he would not have time to test. Adding a fervent prayer to D’ta he began. Using individual strands of power, he wove them through and around as many boulders and chunks of rock as he could reach without stretching the fabric of the spell too thin. Not even certain it would work, but refusing to allow doubts to dampen his concentration, he gradually closed the net. Certain all the strands were secure, he wove a strong levitation spell into the fabrication. Chunks of loose granite, masonry, small boulders and even dust were now confined in the close but invisible mesh of the net.
Beads of perspiration began to trickle down Karryl’s face. If one strand should weaken and break…Banishing the thought as quickly as it had formed, he held power and spell firmly together. Gathering as much additional power as he could muster, he leaned in to the task. In one massive breath-taking move, he shifted a good half of the heap to the base of a similar one, roughly fifty yards away. Temporarily stunned by his success, Karryl blew out his cheeks as he wiped perspiration and strands of hair away from his eyes. His relief was short-lived. A wispy cloud of dust and smoke preceded the clatter and rattle of shifting pebbles, as a frantic scraping and shuffling came from below the tilted cornerstone. Karryl scrambled forward to grasped the outstretched hand which had appeared beside it.
Despite his ordeal, the scratched, bruised and begrimed Ingali who emerged from the cavity beneath grinned widely as he grabbed hold of Karryl’s upper arms. “You have saved us! I…I…”
He was unable to continue with the effusive thanks it seemed he intended. Releasing Karryl’s arms, he gave in to despair and crumpled down onto the pile of debris which had once been his home.
With a firm grip on the man’s shoulder, Karryl hauled him upright and spun him round. “Help me get your wife out.”
As if some malevolent entity was bent on foiling the young magician’s plan, the cornerstone suddenly shifted. The woman screamed. Without thinking, Karryl dived for the shoulder-width opening beside the stone and thrust his head inside. Four feet below him the woman was huddled against a section of white-washed wall, her hands desperately clutching what remained of a colourful blanket hanging there.
Karryl wriggled forward on his stomach, stretched down his hand towards her. “Stand up, come closer and grab my hand. You have to get out of there.”
The woman shook her head. A chill washed over Karryl’s skin as the woman’s husband knelt beside him. “Her leg…I think it is broken.”
The cornerstone shifted again, sending a shower of dust and crushed rock into the littered cavity below. The woman screamed again, wrapping her arms over her head.
Pulling back from the opening, Karryl turned and looked fervently into the man’s face. “Listen to me. I am a magician. I want to do things you may not understand, but by doing them I believe I can rescue your wife.”
The man nodded but said nothing, his dark eyes widening with awe as his whole body began to tremble. Taking this as implied permission, Karryl wasted no more time. With the shaken man guided to a safe distance, he sat him down and hurried back to the cavity. The cornerstone was now leaning at an alarming angle. Pieces of tile and thatch had fallen in, narrowly missing the diminutive woman huddled in the corner.
Holding out his hand, palm forward, Karryl smiled down at her. “You’ll soon be out of there. Help has arrived.”
Her face lit up with gratitude. Karryl cringed inwardly at the little half-lie as he watched the sleep spell take effect. His heart in his mouth, he squirmed feet-fir
st past the huge leaning stone. The sense of danger pressing him on all sides like great heavy weights, he dropped down into the ruined room, and crouched beside the woman. His hands little more than half an inch above, he quickly ran them over her sleeping form. To his great relief he discovered that her only injuries were a severely sprained ankle and a nasty bruise on the side of her face. Smiling to himself, Karryl quickly changed his plan to something far simpler and requiring less power. He would simply levitate her through the opening. It was just wide enough.
It seemed that some malevolent entity had other ideas. With a great grinding groan, the cornerstone shifted, ponderously tilting further over until its bulk lay across the width of the opening. Dust flew into Karryl’s eyes and mouth, as bits of rock showered down on his shoulders. Faster than thinking he revised his plan yet again. Thankful that he’d had the forethought to leave the man a safe distance away, Karryl recalled Symon’s instruction to ‘use your powers as you think fit.’ Aware he was about to break one of the cardinal rules of his discipline he stood up, lifted his head and drew in power. With all the impetus he could put behind it, he sent it surging into the twisted roof and the layer of rocks which pressed down on it.
Outside, the rescued man dropped to his knees and stared. A great fountain of rock, dust and debris burst high into the air, pieces spinning in all directions to fall with a rattling clatter to join the devastation below. The Ingali scrambled to his feet and stumbled across to the gaping hole. Kneeling down he peered in. Karryl crouched and eased his long arms under the Ingali woman, lifting her bodily off the cracked and tilted floor. He looked up at the man’s worried face framed by the ragged and unstable edges of the hole. He prayed that his own face wouldn’t betray the niggling fears which threatened to weaken him. What he was about to attempt he had only ever previously done with inanimate objects, although some of them had been quite large. His chief concern was not so much the execution of the spell, but whether he had sufficient power remaining to pull it off. Taking a deep breath and a firm grip on the sleeping woman, he began the spell.
Another face appeared at the edge of the hole above him. “Need a hand?”
Slowly, Karryl allowed the spell power to subside. He called up. “I think I’ve got enough left, but now you’re here…” He let the rest of the sentence hang.
Symon nodded and stood up. Holding out both hands palm upwards, his lips moved as he performed a slow mime of lifting. Karryl’s skin prickled. He held the woman firmly, as slowly and steadily they began to rise, away from the cracked and tilted stones beneath them.
CHAPTER FIFTYONE
Symon peered into the distance. The broken escarpment, with its little crowd of people and animals, was barely visible through the grey-brown pall which still hung in the air.
Gesturing towards them, the little magician turned to Karryl. “I’ll take the injured woman and her husband up there to their own people. They’ll look after them. You carry on. I want that Mirikani Morchelas found.”
Karryl looked across at the two villagers huddled together on the flat top of a massive piece of debris-strewn granite.
He nodded, then frowned. “I was going to get the man to help me search. His son is missing. We could look for them both.”
Symon shook his head as he gestured towards the man and his injured wife.
“Those two need to be away from here, with their own people. They’re suffering from shock as well as some minor injuries.”
Resigning himself to working solo once again, Karryl looked around him. “D’you think a locating spell would work in all this?”
Symon shook his head again. “Too specific. That only works for a known inanimate object. You need ‘Seek and Find’. That will locate living beings, even if there is only a vestige of the life-spark remaining.”
Without drawing power, Karryl carefully quoted the words of the spell.
Symon gave an assertive nod. “That’s the one. Now, I have to leave you on your own again for a while. There’s something else I need to investigate, but if my hunch is correct we shall find the enormity of our task greatly reduced.”
Not waiting for a reply from his temporarily baffled apprentice, Symon picked his way over to the shaken couple and placed his hands on their shoulders. Blue and silver motes displaced drifting dust. His mouth set in a determined line, Karryl turned to his task. As soon as this was over he would get Symon to teach him relocation.
The ‘Seek and Find’ spell proved strong and efficient. Half a dozen villagers and a varied assortment of pets and livestock were quickly located and, with great urgency and excitement, extricated from the ruins.
Using the ‘Seek and Find’ spell continuously, Karryl devoted the greater part of his powers to guiding all the uninjured men to voids beneath rocks, rubble and debris. It was not all cause for celebration. Slowly, the body count also began to rise. Despite struggling to keep his anger and frustration under control, Karryl felt no compunction about using magic freely whenever the situation demanded. Even so, the animosity of a small number of the rescued villagers towards him was unmistakeable. He soon learned to recognise the hushed tension when another body had been discovered. As each one was freed from its dark and dusty entombment, careful hands laid them gently side by side on the ground. Mangled limbs and torn flesh were hastily covered by whatever came to hand. Eyes wide with terror were tenderly closed.
Hopelessness threatened to overwhelm Karryl, as time after time he felt the life-spark flicker out, despite his efforts. His hands and clothes became torn and blood-stained, the situation increasingly demanding physical rather than magical effort. He snatched brief moments of respite as heart-felt prayers were said over the lifeless forms that had once been friends, neighbours or relatives. His mind and body began to scream in protest each time the arduous process of searching was resumed. He tried not to stare at the bloody messes extricated from beneath piles of rock, the shattered corpses released from beneath tons of crumbed and powdered mud-brick. He longed to share the grief of those survivors searching for lost family members, but as the bitter day wore on, his finer emotions buried themselves deeper.
Steeling his nerves, he concentrated on using his dwindling powers to the best advantage, chiefly maintaining the vital Seek and Find spell. He needed to rest and recoup, but there was still too much to do. He gave silent thanks that Qetzi, the son of the headman of the village had survived. Staying close on Karryl’s heels, and despite a multitude of cuts and bruises, the sturdy young Ingali was now busy organising rescue and retrieval. From far along the mile long swath of destruction a shout went up, its urgency echoing and re-echoing from the surrounding rock faces. Karryl and the rescuers hurried forward, scrambling and stumbling over piles of jumbled rocks and debris.
Two more people had been discovered. Karryl’s heart lurched as he knelt and stared into the gaping hole in the ground. Great slabs of sheared-off mountain granite leaned precariously edge to edge, creating the walls of a tapering shaft some four feet square at the top, and twenty deep. At the bottom of the shaft, on the shredded remains of a reed thatched roof, huddled an old man. Beside him lay the prone form of Morchelas. It seemed to Karryl that the Mirikani was dead. Looking up, the old man clasped his hands together in a silent plea for help.
Cupping his hands round his mouth, Karryl called down. “Try not to move. We’re going to get you out.”
Easing back from the edge of the shaft, Karryl sat back on his heels, Qetzi, the young head-man crouched beside him. “How can we do this? It looks very dangerous.”
Karryl looked about, hoping to catch sight of Symon. With his help he could levitate the old man and Morchelas out of the shaft. There was no sign of the little magician.
Karryl shook his head. “I can’t do this alone; not with magic. My powers are almost drained. Someone has to get down into that hole and bring them out.”
Qetzi’s dark eyes met Karryl’s. With an assertive nod he scrambled to his feet. “Wait here. I think I know how to
do this.”
* * *
Minutes later Qetzi reappeared. Accompanied by two other scratched and bruised young men, he struggled under the weight of a snapped-off tree trunk. Passing on either side of the shaft opening, they carefully laid the tree across it. Satisfied it was long enough, the three Ingalis began to take off their torn clothes.
His voice fraught with tension Karryl called out. “What are you doing? Keep your clothes on. At least they’ll provide some protection.”
Qetzi held up two homespun shirts and tied the sleeves together. He waved them at Karryl. “See! We make a rope. That way we go down into the hole.”
The young magician stepped carefully over the jumbled surface. He shook his head as he surveyed the three men and their pitifully small pile of clothing. “It won’t reach. Not even with everything you have there tied together. It just won’t be enough.”
The men didn’t argue. Despondently they gathered up the clothes and put them back on. Karryl watched their faces. He knew he had been harsh, but he had only voiced what was painfully obvious. Once again he looked around for some sign of Symon, but could see nothing to indicate where he might be. There was only one option left open to him. His reserves of power were now not enough to achieve a double levitation. Qetzi’s idea, however, was still viable. Karryl knew the effort would completely drain him, but it was the only chance they had to get the old man and Morchelas out. Moving to the edge of the shaft Karryl looked down, estimating the depth. The old man peered back up at him and raised a frail hand. Morchelas had not moved. Karryl’s heart thumped with trepidation. Stepping back from the edge, he took a long moment to work a calming spell. The power required was negligible. It would be worth it. Drawing in as much power as he could muster, he centred his concentration. Then he began.