Warautumn

by Tom Deitz

  Was this what Avall had felt? This recognition from the gems? Vorinn knew well enough that they more or less “liked” Avall, and that all subsequent gems based their reactions, in part, on how their wielders reacted to Avall in turn. But Zeff’s gems should never have known Avall. And Vorinn had never bonded with anyone.

  Which meant that—maybe—it had come down to wills, and he prayed that his will was stronger. What would Avall do in this situation? he wondered, in that moment of frozen time that looked, indeed, to those gathered round, to truly be frozen. He wished Avall were here to tell him. He wished he had Avall’s strength and skill and courage. Dammit, he wished he knew everything Avall knew about these wretched gems! And even as he wished, he sensed Zeff wishing as well.

  Or hating, which was itself wishing of a kind. And Zeff was wishing about Avall, too: wishing he was forever removed from this or any equation, which in effect meant that he was wishing that Avall was dead.

  Yet while they stood thus locked together, Vorinn’s body went right on pressing the physical advantage granted him by greater weight and height—and eventually inertia interceded.

  Zeff staggered backward. Vorinn went with him, not daring to release his hold, yet still his body pressed forward. Zeff could not resist, and fell. His hip struck the pavement, and Vorinn actually flew over him, yet never released his grip on Zeff’s terrible blade. Indeed, such was his momentum that the force of his flip brought Zeff into the water with him.

  And then water closed over their heads, and Vorinn felt nothing at all save the pain in his hand and that other, strange, not-quite pain that was water assailing the gates of his breath. Red dyed that water: a murky cloud emerging from where their hands still joined steel and flesh and jewels.

  And where, in an odd way, their wishes also mingled.

  But … the water was welcoming them! And then Vorinn felt something incredibly, impossibly strange: He felt himself dissolving. And then there was no Vorinn left but raw desire.

  And then—finally—a sense of upward motion.

  CHAPTER XXV:

  TRIAL BY WATER

  (WEST OF ERON–NEAR-AUTUMN: DAY II–SHORTLY PAST NOON)

  Avall had barely crouched down to wash his hands in the clear, fast-running shallows of the nice-sized river beside which his party had chosen to take its midday meal, when the deeper channel in the center erupted into spray.

  With it came a concussion like thunder without the noise, and the unmistakable sharp metallic stench of unseen lightning. Taken off guard, he recoiled—and sprawled on his backside in cold water, aware, even as he fell, that the river was somehow singing to him. Or singing to that which was within him, anyway. It was like when he drank from the Wells, sometimes: doors opening in his mind and doors closing. His poor, burned, personal gem pulsed like a wind-fanned coal on his chest, while around him, attenuating in a way that was all too familiar, time began to slow.

  So it was that he had ample opportunity to note the wide river valley around him, with the river straight ahead ten spans wide, bordered on either side by a graceful sweep of shore paved with countless rounded stones which in turn stood as a bulwark against a fringe of low-grown scrub that fronted impressive stands of taller hardwoods.

  Across the stream—beyond that place where the fountaining water had suddenly frozen to a near stop—more trees grew closer in: aspen, beech, and yew. Mountains rose behind: a hard surge of purple stone with the sparkling white of eternal snow draped around their peaks like lacy shawls.

  Farther down to the right, he could hear the long slow gulps Boot made as she drank down the river, while behind him, he caught the slow shouts of his companions acknowledging that they, too, had seen what he had seen and were amazed. He could even feel their thoughts, a little; frozen, as was everything else: mostly thoughts of relief that the morning’s trek had ended, that they would rest here for lunch and assuage a reasonable hunger. Thoughts that the mountains ahead were the most tangible proof yet that, after six days on the nonexistent road, they were finally approaching the first of what would surely prove to be many goals. And then thoughts that all that had been shattered by a sudden insertion of the strange.

  But only for a moment, as reality cried out to him, then slowed once more, so as to command his full attention.

  And then normal time resumed again, and he knew without doubt that this was no vision but a real event that was happening before his astonished eyes.

  The fountain that had begun it all subsided, but rising from its heart came two figures.

  Two men, Avall realized: dripping wet and locked in mortal combat, with their hands clamped around something that glittered in the noonday light so brightly it was like frozen fire—or light itself solidified—until the water sluiced away from it to reveal a sword. A single sword.

  A sword one of those men had suddenly wrenched free and pointed toward the heavens.

  Avall covered his ears, but that barely shut out the shout of thunder, the crackling snap of what was closest to lightning, yet not remotely the same as that even more perilous power.

  Yet whatever it was struck the water from a cloudless sky, wrenching out a heavy veil of steam that obscured the combatants for a moment—though Avall saw them fly away from each other as the force that one of them had summoned wrenched them both apart.

  Even as he scrambled to his feet, he was cataloging colors. The one on the right had worn red of a particularly rich and vivid shade that could only be Warcraft crimson. The other: midnight blue edged with white. Not Eemon, but …

  Priest-Clan. The Ninth Face, rather. But what were they doing here?

  And who were these two men?

  And then came the truly impossible: The water brought him the answer. More properly, it brought a set of images in what was clearly some kind of vision or far-seeing: Gem-Hold encircled with water … a formal combat about to ensue—to the death, using what appeared to be at least one gem-powered weapon … and then those combatants falling into water—and vanishing.

  But whose thoughts were these seeking footholds among his own? Thoughts of glory and anger and fear and triumph and amazement and despair. Thoughts of him: reluctant admiration. And thoughts of him: raw, unadulterated hate.

  Faces appeared abruptly, matching themselves to those thoughts.

  “Zeff and Vorinn!” he yelled, as reality surged back even more violently.

  He was back on his feet now and wading clumsily into deeper water, while the whole shore behind him seemed to have gone mad. Horses neighed, whinnied, and threatened to bolt, while voices he had no time to sort out tried to keep them calm. Others were shouting names—questions—or simply curses or yelps of alarm. The birkit—which Avall could see from the corner of his eye—seemed to have forgotten it was a man-sized predator and was acting like an anxious watchdog, to judge by the way it was pawing the stones and growling.

  And then, clear across the water: “Curse you, Vorinn, this is against all rules!”

  “The rules are defining themselves,” came Vorinn’s choked reply.

  Avall blinked water from his eyes, shook sodden hair from his face, and floundered on.

  The warriors stood in water up to their waists, their surcoats floating around them like leaves, their hair slicked close to their skulls. Vorinn was unarmed now, though even where he was, Avall could see that his hand was bleeding.

  And Zeff—Zeff was raising that sword again.

  Lightning—or whatever it was that the sword called down—flashed once more. This time, however, it came in a weaker burst that nevertheless made Avall’s whole body prickle. The blast had been aimed at Vorinn, too—but Avall’s brother-in-law had possessed sense enough to hurl himself backward into the water. It boiled in his wake, but he resurfaced—close enough to Zeff to clutch him by the shoulders and drag him over sideways. Both disappeared for an instant, followed by a quicker repeat of their first emergence from the river.

  Avall halted where he stood, then turned quickly, as it finally o
ccurred to him that this was not simply some odd martial display put here for his entertainment. “Merry—Rann—some-body—bring me the sword—that sword. No questions, no arguing, just bring it now!”

  But Strynn—who, after all, had a brother for whom to be concerned—had already preempted him, and was that moment frantically fumbling at the ties that bound the Lightning Sword to Boot’s saddle. Fumbling, that is, until she ran out of patience and used her knife. Steel flashed in the light, and then more steel, and longer, as she yanked the Lightning Sword free. Pausing but the merest moment, she leapt astride Boot’s back, set heels to his flanks, and charged into the river, heading straight toward Avall and—beyond him—her brother.

  Strynn reached down; Avall reached up—and felt the sword’s hilt come into his hand. It was a risk to use it without the other regalia, but there was no time to don the full complement, though Strynn was already down and working at it as well.

  As for Vorinn and Zeff—all Avall could see of them was wildly frantic splashes as Vorinn sought to seize Zeff’s sword for himself—though apparently not to claim it, as much as to wrest it from Zeff’s control.

  But Zeff still had it, and was raising it again.

  Without thinking, Avall raised the Lightning Sword in turn, even as he pressed the trigger in the hilt that would feed that weapon blood.

  Power flooded into him—but it was power unbalanced, power untempered by control, power that entered him greedily, reveling in the power that he, in turn, fed into that weapon. He gloried in it—or it in him. And time froze once again.

  Froze long enough for Avall to want one single, precise, perfect thing.

  One single, precise, perfect bolt of Overworld lightning.

  Wishing did it.

  Like the strike of a whip, raw white force lanced out from the tip of the sword to spear Zeff where he stood. His face went white; his eyes went wide; his mouth gaped—though no blood showed.

  And the sword wanted to do it again: wanted to call down more lightning—and he dared not let it have its way. Seeing no other choice, he dropped it—then picked it up at once, but in such a way that the barb that fed the gem could taste no more than the merest trickle of his blood.

  Intent on friend and foe alike, Avall waded onward.

  Vorinn surfaced at last, looking bewildered and confused but relieved—especially when he saw Zeff’s body bob to the surface a span to his right. He snared it by the neck hole of the surcoat, flipped it over, and dragged the Ninth Face Chief into the shallows.

  Where, to Avall’s amazement, Zeff revived. One moment he was lying flaccid in the water, the next, he was trying to stand on the uncertain, unseen footing, then turning to face Avall, a thoroughly shaken and frightened man.

  “I have seen my death, Avall syn Argen-a. And that is not a thing a man should ever see more than once.”

  “Then see your death in truth,” Avall spat. And without further thought, raised the Lightning Sword—which was merely a well-made blade again—and swung it in a clean arc toward Zeff’s neck.

  Flesh and bone barely slowed that blade at the worst of times, and this blow was more than sufficient. Zeff’s body pitched forward, bubbling red into the crystal water. Avall snared his head before it touched the surface and grasped it by the hair, raising it on high. “So end all traitors. If any here deny my right to execute this man, let him appear before my throne at Sundeath.”

  No one spoke, though a circle of comrades regarded Avall solemnly, some from the shore, some from the shallows.

  “Long live the King,” Vorinn panted. “Long live King Avall.”

  For his part, Avall stared at the head in his hand. “I have just killed a man,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to, either. It was that Eight-damned sword.”

  “That sword saved your life,” Rann reminded him, easing up beside him and expertly prying the bloody hilt from Avall’s nerveless fingers. He wiped the blade on the hem of his tunic and passed it to Riff, who took it dutifully, then waded out to where Strynn was leading Boot back to shore.

  “King of the Wild and now King of the Water,” Strynn murmured. Then, to Vorinn: “Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

  Vorinn blinked, as much from shock as anything. Nor did Avall blame him, based on the assessment of the preposterous experience that the river—apparently—had given him, which was itself raising new questions even as they awaited Vorinn’s reply.

  “I … hardly know,” Vorinn managed eventually, through bouts of coughing. “But if someone will give me food and fire—lots of fire, because I’m as cold as I’ve ever been in my life—I’ll try to do as best I can. But first”—he gazed back at his sister—“do you mind telling me where on Angen I am?”

  “West of the Spine and south of Gem-Hold, as best we can determine,” Avall inserted curtly. “Bingg—or someone, please see to that fire.”

  “What about the sword?” Myx called.

  “Which sword?”

  “Zeff’s sword. The other … Lightning Sword.”

  Avall froze in place. “I’d as soon leave it here forever, but I suppose we ought to retrieve it, since it’s obviously something else we’re going to have to study. If someone’s brave, can stand the cold, and feels like swimming, I’d be grateful if he—or she—would retrieve it. The water is clear out there.”

  “I’ll go,” Bingg volunteered, already tugging at his tunic. “Seeing how I’m soaked to the skin already. But only if someone will tell me everything I miss when I return.”

  “Promise,” Avall assured him absently. Something banged against his leg, prompting him to look down. It was Zeff’s head. He had forgotten that he still held it.

  “Proof,” he announced, to nobody. “They’ll want proof that Zeff is dead.”

  “They?” From Rann.

  “Nothing’s changed, Rann,” Avall sighed. “We still need to get back to Gem absolutely as fast as we can. In fact, we can’t really spare the time to hear Vorinn’s story, except that we have to hear it—the rest of you do, anyway—in order to figure out what to do now.”

  A fraction of a hand later, Div had a fire going, Kylin was playing the woods-harp he had finished two days earlier—playing, he said, to help calm everyone down—and Vorinn was changing into Lykkon’s second-best garb while his own steamed by the fire. Strynn was passing around the last bottle but one of Lykkon’s finest wine.

  “I hardly know where to begin,” Vorinn breathed wearily. “This doesn’t seem to be a subject that can easily be hurried.”

  “Hurry anyway,” Avall told him tersely. “Time hasn’t stopped in Megon Vale.”

  “Except for Zeff,” Vorinn spat. “Poor foolish, vain, misguided man.”

  “So he could have said of me,” Avall shot back. “Now tell your tale.”

  Vorinn took a deep breath. “Well, as soon as Avall … vanished …”

  Avall didn’t stay for the recounting. Nor did he have to, for he had discovered a dozen words into Vorinn’s story that he indeed knew everything Vorinn was relating. It had come from the water, he knew—but that knowledge was almost more than his poor mind could accommodate. The gems were enough, dammit; he didn’t need one more part of the world becoming something to distrust. Water was too important to him—for bathing, for swimming, for making things new again. But instead of making him new, it was—he didn’t know what it was doing. Remaking him, perhaps.

  Or perhaps what had happened there at the riverside had merely been an aberration—a function of the same circumstances that had brought Zeff and Vorinn here to start with: a desire to be with him for whatever reason.

  He hunkered down again in precisely the same place at which all this craziness had begun, staring out at what was once more the pristine Wild, save where Bingg was wading ashore farther down with Zeff’s sword in his hand. He would need to inspect it, he knew—and dreaded it. Inspection would mean more bonding, and he had bonded with too many gems already. Would this one also contain a death? Maybe not; not this time. A
fter all, Zeff hadn’t been holding the sword when he had died.

  But the river had held both of them, and the river—or the water it contained—seemed to be the connection.

  So intent was he on his musings that he did not hear Merryn and Rann amble up behind him—not until Rann reached down and gently touched his shoulder. Avall started, then laughed nervously and sat back, arms draped across his knees, not looking at either of them. “What is it?” Rann murmured. “Don’t lie and say it’s nothing. I heard what you said: that you didn’t need to know what happened but the rest of us did. And I choose to read that as more than a simple statement of your having made a decision. Your mind is my mind, sometimes, don’t forget. At least when you’re thinking hard.”

  Avall glanced sideways at him, resisting the urge to scowl. “I know some of what he has to say. I know because the water—It’s like it washed into me, and when it was gone, there were all these images of what had just happened in Gem. As if Vorinn’s and Zeff’s memories had washed out of them and flooded into me.”

  “Water,” Merryn murmured. “Water there. Water here. Water that brought them here. Maybe the same water, for all we know. The Ri-Megon splits south of Gem-Hold. The right branch goes underground. After that, no one knows where it goes.”

  Avall regarded her askance. “So you think the water—”

  “Water saved you when you fell in the Ri-Eron, Avall. The gem saved you, too, of course, and there was will involved. But maybe water is—or can be—a factor in jumping.”

  Rann nodded. “Lyk and I have talked about this a little. We’ve all but agreed that when we bond with the gems something flows from them into our blood, while our blood at the same time provides something—maybe something as basic as food—to them. Certainly, in most bonding, the connection is still liquid. And what is blood but a kind of water? And what are rivers and streams but the bloodstream of the land?”