Shattered Dreams

by M.M. Brownlow

  Chapter 10

  Following the post-hailstorm cleaning, Cedric led Henry to the south, explaining that as Earth mages, they were no longer necessary in the agricultural belt of the kingdom. As the crops ripened, their care turned now to the Water mages, who ensured that they had adequate moisture in case of drought, and to the Fire mages, who warmed the soil in case of early frost or unseasonably cool temperatures.

  "So what will we be doing?" Henry wanted to know.

  Cedric was tempted to hassle the prince for being impatient, but decided to answer him instead.

  "Now," he explained, "is when the animals are fattening up for the upcoming harvest slaughtering. We're going to make sure that there is enough grazing for that to happen."

  "So we're still making plants grow," the young journeyman groaned, and Cedric laughed.

  "Don't worry," he promised. "When we get to the coast, you'll have something else to do."

  Intrigued, Henry tried to get Cedric to reveal what the 'something else' was, but Cedric remained mute, answering Henry's pleadings with only an enigmatic smile.

  Mythesti, south of the narrow agricultural belt and north of the impassible mountains that marked the southern border, was good for nothing except grazing. The soil was poor, and even the grass and stunted shrubs that grew there could only sustain goats, and so that's what Mythesti had. They had goats for meat, goats for milk and cheese, and goats for hides and fibres that could be spun into wool. Henry had wondered on occasion why the kingdom's symbol was a raven instead of a goat, but nobody had ever provided him with a good answer to the question.

  Casting growth spells on pastures of grass wasn't terribly interesting, and Henry was happy when Cedric continued to lead him eastward and toward the coast. He knew that there were no crops and no goats along the coast, but there was a lot of water, which made him curious about what Earth mages could do. Henry also knew that fall was a time from storms coming in from the sea, and Earth mages certainly couldn't do anything about those!

  "Here we are!" Cedric proclaimed one morning in early fall.

  There was a chill in the air, the grass was browning, and the leaves on the shrubs had started to turn yellow and orange as the nights warned the plants of the coming winter. Before them, down a fairly steep slope, was a small village and a large, flat, open space. Henry could see the sunlight reflecting off the sea on the horizon, the road they were on continuing through the village ahead and to the actual coast. Nothing grew at the bottom of the slope, and the prince had absolutely no idea what they were doing here. Cedric tugged at his mule's lead to get the beast moving once more and started down the slope, leaving Henry no choice but to follow.

  "Where are we?" he asked when he caught up to his mentor. "What is this place?"

  "This is where you find the most valuable commodity this kingdom has," was Cedric's reply.

  "There are jewels here? Gold?"

  Cedric laughed. "No. This is the salt plain. This is where the salt comes from."

  "Salt? How is that the most valuable thing in the kingdom?"

  In Henry's experience, salt was something added to food on occasion. He knew that they used it in the kitchens when cooking too, but other than that...

  "Salt," Cedric explained, "allows us to preserve meat and fish and other foods to get us through the winter. It is not easy to come by either, and most of the kingdoms need to trade for it. Calyso and Cembrance have access to the sea as well, but Bacovia and Evendell do not. Most of the kingdom's revenue is generated from the trade of salt with our neighbours."

  Henry shook his head, astounded. "How did I not know that? If salt is that important, why didn't someone tell me about it before now? I'm supposed to rule one day!"

  "Maybe they thought it was unimportant for now," Cedric suggested with a shrug. "Regardless, for the next while we're going to be staying here to help with the salt mining. Our magic makes it a lot faster and easier to get the salt out of the ground, and the villagers here are always happy to have mages."

  "How did the salt get into the ground in the first place?" Henry asked as they reached the bottom of the slope and started to close the distance to the village.

  "This is the original coastline. As the sea has withdrawn over the centuries, it has left salt behind. You are currently walking on what used to be the bottom of the sea."

  Cedric let them take the rest of the day off after they were settled at the inn, and Henry went out to watch the miners work. He watched them use pickaxes to chip away at the ground, breaking up chunks of hardened soil and salt into smaller pieces that were then put into great vats of water to be heated. When the water boiled off, and the soil was washed away, crystals of salt remained. These were put into large burlap sacks and weighed.

  Everyone in the village helped. The men did the mining, the women did the washing and boiling, and the children sorted through the ground the men broke up for large salt crystals before sending the rest of the mined soil to the women. Henry wondered how he and Cedric were going to help make this process easier.

  When he and Cedric went out with the villagers the next morning, Henry noticed that instead of pickaxes, the men carried shovels and rakes. There weren't as many women either, and he wondered why.

  "Okay Henry," Cedric began. "For this one, it's going to be easier if you sit instead of stand."

  "Why?"

  "Well, there are a few reasons. One, this spell is a lot harder than the one we've been using, and it will take a lot more energy to cast. And two, having more of yourself connected to the ground is a good thing."

  Henry shrugged and did as instructed, sitting cross-legged on the ground with his staff balanced across his knees. Cedric nodded his approval and then sat next to him.

  "Now, I want you to close your eyes and reach out into the earth. Tell me what you feel."

  Henry closed his eyes and reached, an exercise he'd done thousands of times in his life as a mage. He knew that Cedric wanted him to find something specific, so he let his awareness drift, something that he'd never really done in the past.

  "I don't know what I'm looking for," the prince complained at last.

  "Just tell me what you feel," Cedric repeated. Behind them, the villagers waited patiently.

  "I can feel that this area is old," Henry finally stated. "It's been like this for a very long time."

  "Good. And what does 'like this' mean?"

  Henry concentrated, trying to put what he sensed into words. "It's hard and dry. There's no moisture in this ground."

  "And is that what the earth usually feels like?"

  "No."

  "Okay, good. What you're sensing is the salt leeching the moisture out of the ground, which is what salt does - it pulls moisture out. I need you to remember that feeling. Now cast a detect magic spell and watch me."

  Again, Henry did as he was told. He watched his mentor gather power around him, and he was surprised to see that most of the power for whatever spell Cedric was casting came from Cedric himself instead of from the earth. He figured out why a moment later when the older journeyman sent the gathered power into the ground. Henry watched carefully as Cedric's power rippled out from where they sat, reaching about two arm lengths in every direction, but reaching about Cedric's height below them. Then the ground began to shift and heave slightly, bringing shouts of pleasure from the waiting villagers. Finally, Henry watched in amazement as salt crystals began to rise from the ground, forced out of the hard-packed soil by Cedric's power.

  "How did you do that?" Henry asked, astonished.

  Cedric opened his eyes and gave him a shaky smile. "It takes a lot of personal power, but it's just a separation spell."

  "Really?" Henry remembered learning how to cast the separation spell. They'd been given a pail of rubble, rocks, gravel and soil all mixed together, which needed to be separated into piles using magic. It wasn't a particularly difficult spell, but it did take control.

>   "Because you're trying to separate something out of the earth itself, you need to use personal power instead of power drawn from the earth," Cedric explained. "I'll only be able to cast the spell a few times today, and I expect that you'll only manage it once, if that, until you build up some stamina."

  "If you can only cast it a few times, why is everyone so excited?"

  Cedric smiled and gestured behind them. "The amount of salt that I can force out of the ground with a single casting is about the same as they can get in three or four days of work. Between the two of us, over the next few weeks, we'll save them the equivalent of months of labour."

  Henry watched as the salt crystals Cedric had summoned to the surface were collected and bagged. "It must take weeks to fill a single sack," he observed, and Cedric agreed.

  "Like I said before, salt is not easy to come by."

  Cedric seemed more like himself, and settled in a new spot to begin the spell again, while Henry moved a little farther away and settled himself to try his hand at calling salt from the earth. He was mindful of Cedric's assessment of his likely abilities with this spell, and closed his eyes, determined to call something from the ground today, no matter what.

  Drawing his personal power around himself like a cloak, Henry whispered the words to the separation spell and thrust the gathered power into the salt field below and around him. Gritting his teeth against the drain, he tried to hold his concentration as he sifted through the soil searching for something that felt different, searching for salt.

  Just as he finally grasped that elusive crystal, Henry felt as if it was nudged out of his hold. He reached again, and again he latched on. There wasn't a lot of salt in the shallow area he could reach, and the crystals weren't very big, but Henry knew that didn't matter. Getting the salt to the surface was what mattered. He tried to push the crystals to the surface using his magic, and when that didn't work, he tried pulling them. That didn't work either, and as he became distantly aware of sweat beading his forehead and cramps knotting his muscles, Henry realized that he was losing his concentration. Panic hit him like a blow to the stomach.

  This was too important to fail! He reached harder, squeezing his eyes shut to try to restore his concentration and wrench his awareness away from his body and back into the earth. Knowing that time was running out, that his personal power was draining away, Henry grabbed onto the nearest salt crystal and wrenched it from the ground. At the same time, he felt a very similar wrenching inside his head, and crying out in pain, Henry's concentration broke. He was conscious only long enough to see that there was a salt crystal as large as his hand sitting in front of him, and then the reaction headache from the power drain of the spell hit him. The pain rushing through him was enough to make him vomit before he passed out, his last thought gratitude that Cedric had told him to sit down for this casting. It was a lot less distance to fall.