Jaunten (Advent Mage Cycle)

by Honor Raconteur

  "If Didi keeps this up," I observed quietly to Night, "he might not survive the trip."

  "I know." Night didn't seem particularly disturbed by this. "Who do you think will kill him? Chatta or Kartal?”

  Hmmm, good question. "Kartal."

  "I think it will be Chatta."

  Maybe, but Chatta had more patience than Kartal did. I was fairly sure that the Wizard would lose his temper first. "Want to bet?"

  Night gave me an amused appraisal. "What's the prize?"

  "Name it," I offered generously.

  "I get your peanut jam."

  "You mean my peanut butter."

  "Yes, that."

  Peanut butter was one of my favorite snacks. It was excellent for giving you energy, and easy to eat with crackers, which saved me from having to cook. I'd been forced to make my own since coming to Hain, as it wasn't a food they made here. Night had tried some before we'd left the school and decided that he liked it. It was a frustrating food for him. It came in a jar, and it wasn't easy for him to eat with no hands. I had to feed it to him, which was a gooey, minor pain! Needless to say, he didn't get it very often.

  I thought it through and nodded slowly. "All right. And you have to stop tugging at me when you want something." It was a bad habit he still had, tugging at my sleeve when he wanted my attention. Night had teeth now, and if he wasn't careful, he’d occasionally catch skin in with the sleeve.

  "Deal."

  "What are you two talking about?" Chatta inquired with a smile tugging at her mouth.

  "We're betting on who kills Didi first," I answered with a straight face.

  "Ah."

  Kartal rolled his eyes. "So who do you think will do it?"

  "You." I shrugged when he gave me a flat stare. "Night thinks it will be Chatta."

  Chatta rolled her eyes. "You two are bored, aren't you?"

  I shrugged again, not answering.

  "Instead of placing stupid bets, you need to think of something a little more serious."

  I had no idea what Kartal was talking about and gave him a blank look. "Such as?"

  "Any person with magic in them will take one look at Night and know that he's a Nreesce. Most people will just see him as a very good looking colt."

  Night actually preened about that comment.

  Kartal ignored him and kept talking. "You need to Braid him so that people will know he belongs to you."

  Braiding a horse was something else weird about Hain. In Chahir, you branded a horse if it belonged to you. In Hain, you wove a long strand of leather (dyed to match your House colors) into the mane and tied your personal seal to the bottom of the leather. It was a criminal offense to take out that Braid if the horse didn't directly belong to you.

  I considered it and decided that Kartal had a point. Actually, I should have thought of this before I'd left Del'Hain. There was only one problem with the idea. "I don't have a personal seal," I pointed out.

  "Actually you do," Chatta disagreed. "All Earth Mages have had the same seal. It's an oval disk with a mountain in the background and your initials in the foreground."

  "Oh." I blinked, processing this. Well, I guess that would work; especially since I was the only known Earth Mage in existence right now.

  "I'll show you how to make it when we stop," Kartal promised. "And show you how to braid it into Night's mane so it won't come out too."

  It was a generous offer, and one that the old Kartal wouldn't have made a few days ago. I inclined my head, accepting it.

  ~*~

  I'm an idiot and I should have seen this coming.

  We'd stopped the night before in a small village, which was barely large enough to support a tavern. Kartal had swapped horses for a serviceable mount. He'd shown me the spell for forming a seal, and helped me Braid it into Night's mane. My Nreesce was clearly pleased to have the seal in his hair. He kept tossing his head, so that he could feel it swish back and forth.

  The trouble didn't start until the next morning. Didi had taken one look at the new Braid in Night's mane and his fingers started itching. He kept trying to sneak up on the Nreesce and unravel the leather woven into Night's hair. Night, predictably, threw a fit whenever the Meuritta tried to get too close. The whole thing was giving me a headache.

  I rubbed one temple, trying to subdue minor rolling twinges growing in my skull.

  Another equine scream of outrage shrilled through the air.

  "Didi!" Chatta snarled. "If you don't stop this, I'll immobilize you for the rest of the day!"

  I really wish she would just do it, instead of threatening to do it! I'd do it myself if I only knew how. Experimenting just now would not be a good thing. Magic often followed your intent more than just your conscious direction. I was feeling murderously frustrated with the Meuritta, so it was probably wiser for me not to use magic just now.

  Then again…

  Almost absently I turned to look down at the seal braided into Night's mane. Wouldn't it be easier to just do something with the seal itself instead of trying to keep track of Didi? The Meuritta was fast and agile, and extremely unpredictable in all but one way—he wanted that seal. If I did something to the seal so he couldn't tamper with it…hmmm.

  "Night, come in a little closer," I asked softly.

  He gave me a questioning glance—after all he was only a foot away from me as it was—but came in close enough for me to touch him. I leaned forward in the saddle and picked up the Braid with one hand. Mages weren't really the type to use fancy spells; it just wasn't how our power worked. We had so much raw power at our call that it was hard to do the more subtle magic. But magic was magic, and I was pretty sure I could do this. It was all about intent, right?

  After months of practice, I could feel the magic dormant within me and touched the core of it. It leapt to life, surging through me, just looking for an outlet of some sort. I directed it toward the seal in my hand, trying to mold it with only one thought in mind: unchanging. Do not wear away, fall away, or be taken away. Remain unchanging. The seal was made out of metal, which is close to one of my earth elements, so it was possible to impress my magic on it.

  Under my eyes the Braid shone a dark green, nearly writhing in energy. When I felt that I had managed my intention, I let the power slip back inside me and locked it away again.

  Night was trying to twist his head to see his neck, but he couldn't quite manage it. "What did you do?"

  "I think I made the seal tamper proof," I answered somewhat hesitantly. There was certainly enough power still in that Braid to indicate that I had done something, but I wasn't sure if I'd managed what I'd wanted to.

  "Garth," Kartal requested in a shaky voice, "please don't experiment like that."

  I gave him a curious look. "Magic follows intent, right? Protecting the Braid was my only intent."

  "That was your only conscious intent," Chatta corrected. She looked a little perturbed too. "There are subconscious intents in you as well. It's safe to experiment at the school because there are enough wards and shields there to protect you, and everything around you, if something goes wrong. The same is not true here."

  You know, she did have a point. I didn't think I would ever do something as drastic as they're envisioning, but history was full of men who made huge errors without meaning to. "I will be more careful," I promised.

  There was a sharp yelp of pain that grabbed my attention. I snapped around to see Didi high up in the air, cradling a hand to his chest and glaring at me. Ah, apparently my impromptu magic had worked. Night’s seal was now officially off limits for the light-fingered Meuritta. Yes, this morning was looking up already!

  ~*~

  It was obvious when we got close to the Beor Mountains. Well, at least it was obvious to me. There was this unsettled feel to the earth, as if something had shifted recently. That shifting had bared ley lines of magic in the earth too, and the air was so thick with earth magic, I could nearly taste it. This didn’t really come as a surprise to me; in fact, I rather
suspected this might be the case. Normal earth bedrock is riddled with ley lines of power. If something breaks that bedrock, then those ley lines are going to break along with it, leaving the ends raw and open. Earth power was literally seeping into the open air, which, I have to tell you, is pretty potent for an Earth Mage.

  Chatta came up on the right, looking at me oddly. "Garth? I know that there's a lot of magic in the air right now, but you are shielding yourself against it, right?"

  "I don't think it will help him much," Kartal disagreed from behind us. "This is all Earth Magic, after all." Pausing he added dryly, "We'll have to come up with something if he starts giggling manically though."

  I gave him a dark glare for that. Yes, the magic was potent but I was hardly going to lose my composure over it. He gave me an innocent look in return.

  The man is a brat.

  By mid-afternoon we had reached the bottom of the Beor Mountains, and then I didn't have to rely on feelings alone to guide me. There was a huge chasm cleaving right down the middle of a mountain. You could literally see it from miles away. As we approached, it loomed larger and larger in front of us.

  Of course, that also meant there was an unimaginable amount of wild Earth Magic saturating the air as well.

  I was shielding as hard as I could, but even with that, I could still feel it, taste it. It was like it had achieved a life of its own, and transformed into some sort of being. Mental note to self: as soon as I get back to school, I will do some serious research on how previous Earth Mages dealt with this kind of chaotic power. Being around areas like this must be a form of addiction for an Earth Mage. How can any mortal deal with this kind of raw power, on a regular basis, without losing his sanity? It was seductive and intoxicating.

  Kartal reined in, eyes cutting sideways to look at me. "Is this close enough?"

  I looked at the area carefully. I thought it was close enough for me to work, and frankly I didn't trust myself any closer to that jagged slash through the living rock. "Yes, I think so."

  "It's probably not a good idea to stay here too long," Chatta stated in clear worry. She was looking at me sideways as well, but she was more obvious about it. "You start evaluating this; Kartal and I will set up camp."

  A valid suggestion and one I readily agreed to. I nodded and dismounted before handing my reins over to her. Night stood perfectly still inside my shield, barely breathing. I appreciated how much effort he was making not to distract me. Distraction would be a very bad thing in this place.

  You know, the more I looked at it, the more it reminded me of someone with a giant axe just taking a titanic swing at the mountain. You could see clearly through the vegetation and soil, straight down to the bedrock underneath. There was this long rend in the mountain, measuring several miles in length. I sincerely doubted that some lunatic deity swung an axe around and chopped up the landscape, so what caused this?

  "Garth?"

  I blinked back into reality to see Chatta studying me with a marked look of worry on her countenance. "I'm going to do a scrying," I told her. "I need to determine and understand the cause of this."

  "All right. I'll pull you back out in an hour."

  "No need," I denied as I settled into a comfortable sitting position on the ground. "Night will do it."

  Distractions fell away as I slowly poured my conscious mind into the earth. Now that I was sitting right on top of it, I could feel how unsettled the earth was. I knew that it had shifted, but that was only the surface of the well. Of course, there were still all of those open ley lines of power coursing through the bedrock. I was doing my best not to trip over any of them. I was getting a buzz just looking at them! I couldn't imagine what actually touching them would do to me.

  At first I couldn't see anything that would cause such a tremendous break like this. It was just normal, albeit upset, bedrock. So why…

  Wait, what was that?

  I backtracked a little and took a closer look. What under the stars is that? Color me insane, but it looked like a very large piece of granite (something about the size of Del'Hain) was shoved up against the main bedrock under the Beor Mountains. Huh! Now that's interesting. Never mind where that hunk of granite came from. Why was it there, and how was it remaining in place? I stretched out some more and traced along the seam of the two rocks.

  "Come back."

  Argh, not now! "Give me a minute," I thought back at Night.

  "You find something?"

  "Maybe." It was hard to be definite, but I thought this held the answer. I was so busy talking to Night that I almost missed it. Oh-ho, so I was right! There was a third member of this little party. Another piece of bedrock was shoved against the other two. Actually, the granite bedrock was wedged between the two. Judging from the raw feel of the rock, one of them had shifted a little, which in turn shifted the granite. Huh! Yes, that would make a giant rift in the terrain all right.

  This definitely changed our plans. I pulled back to my body—

  —and immediately fell sideways, gasping and shaking. I felt like I'd been thrown into a cold spring; my body was tingling all over, and I couldn't seem to catch my breath. It's for this reason alone that I hate scrying. The separation of mind and body was way too hard to manage. Surely there's got to be a better way to do this.

  "Garth?" Chatta appeared from somewhere, throwing a blanket around my shoulders. The welcome heat of it immediately sank into my skin. "You were down for so long."

  "F-found it-t," I chattered out. I hate being cold like this.

  Kartal pointed his wand at me. "Heat."

  I immediately felt warmer. There was only a slight chill dancing along my skin now. Sometimes I just loved magic. "Thanks," I nodded to him in acknowledgement.

  He waved it away as he settled down in front of me. "So? What did you find?"

  "The bedrock shifted," I explained succinctly. For some reason they both stared at me like my eyebrows had turned fluorescent green. "What?"

  "Garth," Chatta said slowly, obviously doubting my sanity, "bedrock does not shift. Its one big piece, everyone knows that."

  "Everyone's wrong." That sounded so arrogant of me, but it was the simple truth. "This area alone is made of three larges pieces of bedrock wedged together."

  "You mean that theory is true?" Kartal blurted out incredulously.

  I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. "What theory?"

  "Some Earth Mage a few centuries ago said that all of the continents sat on several large pieces of bedrock. Of course, he also said that they moved, which is why no one really believed him."

  So someone else had figured this out already…interesting. That cinched it; I will so do research on Earth Mages when I get back to Del'Hain. "Believe him. One of the bedrocks shifted, which made another bedrock shift, and that's the result." I pointed at the deep ravine nearby.

  Chatta turned to look at the ravine, twining a lock of hair between her fingers absently. "How large is each piece?"

  "The smallest one is the size of Del'Hain." Now that I was warm again, I was starting to get hungry. Someone had put a pot over the campfire, and whatever was in that pot smelled really good. My mouth started watering.

  "—plan won't work, will it?"

  I forced myself to focus on the conversation, promising my poor empty stomach that I would feed it soon. "No, the previous plan won't work," I agreed. There is no way I can shift that bedrock back into place.

  "Then what do you suggest?"

  I was proud of Kartal in that moment. He'd come a long way to actually ask for my opinion. "Can't we just fill the hole?"

  Chatta was nodding in approval. "A neat, easy solution. I like it."

  "I want to add a spell so that your patch will stay solid," Kartal mused while staring blindly off into space. "But that sounds feasible. Where do we get the dirt to fill it up?"

  "We're surrounded by hills and mountains," I pointed out dryly. "I think we have enough dirt on hand. Besides, I don't plan to fill up the whole r
avine, just the area near the underground lake."

  "Good point," Chatta agreed. "Let's eat, get a good night's sleep, and tackle it tomorrow."

  Marvelous suggestion. Do I have to share the food?

  Chapter Eleven: Patches

  It's one thing to say it; it's entirely another to do it.

  The basic plan of scooping dirt out of a nearby hillside and dumping into the crack sounded easy—it wasn't. We only had a third of the crack filled, and it was approaching noon. I was tired, sweating like a merchant on tax day, and so hungry that my stomach was gnawing on my backbone.

  Chatta and Kartal were hardly just bystanders during the day. Using wands and crystal amplifiers, they were moving sizeable chunks of dirt and rock, as well, to patch the ravine. But still, with the combined efforts of our assembled trio, it was slow going.

  Being the sensible one among us, Chatta was the first to call for a break. "That's it, let's stop. We need food and rest before we start getting tired and making stupid mistakes."

  I nodded in agreement, moved back to the campfire and dropped heavily to the ground. Kartal was only a moment behind me, sprawling out completely prone on the ground. He was sucking in great quantities of air, like he'd been swimming a marathon underwater, with a large shark on his heels.

  You know, when I was young I thought that Mages and Wizards were invincible. They had all this magic power available at their fingertips, and they could go on for days and weeks working magic without ever tiring.

  Wrong!

  Doing something with magic was pretty much like doing it with your muscles…with about three times as much effort. At least it was for me, I wasn't sure how it felt to a Wizard or a Witch. Judging from how exhausted Kartal and Chatta were, trying to keep up with me, it was probably a little worse for them.

  "Who's making lunch?" Kartal asked laboriously. It was almost as if just breathing was draining the last of his energy.

  I quickly touched a finger to the tip of my nose. "Not me."

  Chatta gave me a strange look. "Um…Garth? Why are you touching your nose?"