Melting Stones

by Tamora Pierce

  He didn’t realize he’d startled me. “You said Flare and Carnelian wanted to play when you first met them. They wanted to show you things, and they wanted you to help them escape.”

  “Ye-e-ess.” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. I didn’t want him springing any word traps on me.

  “What if you went back to them now, and said you want to go out with them?” Oswin asked. “What if you told them you’d found them the perfect spot to do it? An easy spot? Then you led them to it—away from Starns?”

  I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at him. Luvo stood up on his back legs inside his sling to get a better look at Oswin.

  It seemed like Oswin was used to reactions like ours. “No, wait, listen a moment. You said they want to come out. They never insisted on where, did they? In fact, Mount Grace was their last resort. Some old faker of their own kind sold them that old wheeze. You know, the one that if they struggle and fight through tons of solid rock, they’d be worthy to break into the open air.” Oswin said “worthy” like it was a very bad word. “Flare and Carnelian were smart. They’re looking for faults that will take them close to the surface, so they can save their strength until the last moment. You know they’ll break free eventually. Why not do it where they won’t kill thousands of people and make whole islands unlivable?”

  “I have never heard of such a thing in all my millennia, Oswin Forest,” Luvo said flatly.

  Oswin looked at Luvo and shrugged. “You led me to believe you came along with Evvy for new experiences. This would be one of them.”

  “You propose to tamper with the great cycle of birth,” Luvo told him with a little outraged thunder in his voice. “Mountains enter life in this manner. There is always the struggle, violence, destruction, fire. Things die, things are born, the old is buried in the rush of the new. So it has been from the very beginning of this world.”

  Again Oswin shrugged. “Once, if a baby started to come out backwards, the choice was to see if it could be born that way alive, to bring it out that way and risk the mother’s death, or to try to turn it and risk the baby’s death. Then a midwife learned how to turn the baby in the womb. More babies and mothers live because nature never minds a little extra help.”

  “How did you find that out?” I asked, curious. I’d never met a man who could talk midwifery.

  “Jayat hasn’t been around to help Tahar for long,” Oswin explained. “Before that she was without an apprentice for a couple of years. I helped her. We are talking about volcanoes, Evvy.”

  “Blasphemy.” Luvo was rocking from side to side. His weight shifts made him hard for me to balance.

  “I’m not proposing an end to the process through which mountains are born. This is just a new wrinkle.” Oswin was being very patient. “Could many stone mages even do it?”

  “Evumeimei’s skills are unusual,” Luvo said, distracted from his crankiness. “I believe the fact that her first instructors were green mages influenced her power. Her magic follows more flexible channels than those of the stone mages I have encountered.”

  “I am standing right here,” I told them. “I can speak for myself.”

  “I was wondering about how Evvy does things. Most stone mages I’ve encountered seem very, very settled,” Oswin commented. “They only deal with their immediate circle of stones and learning. Certainly they aren’t flexible. I never heard that a mage’s first teachers have an effect on how their magic works, though.”

  They would remember me eventually. In the meantime, the refugees were drawing away. Luvo calmed down as I started walking, and Oswin caught up. He and Luvo kept talking about first teachers. I turned Oswin’s idea over in my head. Hadn’t Rosethorn mentioned something similar? She’d been joking, but Oswin wasn’t.

  Flare and Carnelian didn’t know I had tricked them. If they did, their anger would be enough to blow the quartz trap to pieces. They might suspect. If I showed up before they broke out, though, if I set them free, I could convince them it really was just a game.

  Worse, I didn’t know if I could keep them from the surface. They were big before they went into the quartz. If they were bigger when they came out, I might not be able to control them.

  I might die.

  The road crested a high point in the ground. Below us was the long line of refugees. Rosethorn was riding back, a little boy behind her, a little girl in front of her. She looked tired and thin.

  I promised Briar I would take care of Rosethorn.

  I interrupted Oswin and Luvo. “Where do I take Flare and Carnelian? I can’t just drag them any old where. They’ll come straight back here.”

  Oswin grinned. “All of those roads that lead away from Mount Grace, and you can’t think of something that’s a better place than this?”

  “I don’t know any roads for volcanoes.” I didn’t feel like playing games! Then I bit my lip. The cracks. The cracks, that led to the faults deep in the ground. The seams in the earth. Where might they take me?

  In my mind’s eye I saw black, cold depths at the foot of a stone cliff. Strange sea creatures danced in cold salt water. They swirled around an opening that spurted clouds of hot water.

  “Luvo…” I whispered.

  “I saw.” Of course he saw, I was holding him. “Is it far enough from human dwellings?”

  “Is what far enough?” Now we had confused Oswin.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s seven miles. We need Myrrhtide.”

  Oswin, Luvo, and I worked our way down the riverbank. Myrrhtide was in the water again, his habit kilted up around his waist. He walked along the river bottom as easily as I walked on the road. He didn’t slip or slide like I did.

  I stared in awe. Fishes darted around and between his feet, some of them big ones. Now and then one would leap in the air and hit broadside, splashing him. His pale lashes were marked with water drops. Water beads sparkled on his short red hair. He looked…happy.

  Maybe our voyage would have been more fun if we had just towed Myrrhtide behind the ship on a rope.

  “Excuse us—are you working on something?” Oswin could be very polite.

  “No. Evvy, if your face freezes like that, you will frighten small animals. Is something the matter?” Myrrhtide asked gently.

  Kanzan bless me, with fish nibbling at his toes, Myrrhtide was actually decent. “Back on the ship, when I banged you in the face, did you know where we were?” I inquired.

  He bridled, as if I’d suggested he didn’t know how to do his sums. “We were directly over the Ditlo Trench, the deepest such trench in the Pebbled Sea. It measures ten thousand feet at its greatest depth. Not one of the biggest trenches—there is a deeper one at the heart of the Syth, and another off the Bight of Fire that is said to be nearly twice that. At the one in the Bight of Fire there are creatures, completely bleached of color, who give off their own light—never mind.” Myrrhtide bent to scratch a catfish on the chin. “I fail to see why an offshore formation like the trench would be of interest to anyone just now.”

  “Evumeimei, you would have to do this alone,” Luvo said unhappily. “I can send you strength, perhaps. You know I dare not bring my essence too close to that of Flare and Carnelian.”

  “There’s a spell that Tahar and Jayat know. Sometimes Tahar does something risky and needs Jayat to observe or to lend her strength, but not to get too entangled with her. Jayat uses it, too. That way she can tell him what to do when she’s too weak to work magic herself. It might not serve you, of course, Master Luvo. We could ask.” Oswin’s eyes were shining. I began to see why Jayat spoke of him like he did. This man lived to work out things, even when he couldn’t do them himself. Why hadn’t he been born a great mage?

  On the other hand, the idea of Oswin with the power to try some of his ideas was a little scary.

  “Jayat!” Oswin’s bellow nearly split my skull. “Come here, we need to ask you a question!”

  “Will someone please tell me what that trench has to do with anything? We are running f
rom a volcano, may I remind you?” Myrrhtide sloshed out of the river. He yelped as he stepped on something pointy on the riverbank. I set Luvo down and went to help him.

  “Here. You can brace yourself on me and put your own sandals on, or brace yourself on me and I’ll put your sandals on. Either way, step on that rock right behind you. No sticks to hurt your feet then.” I pointed to the rock. “Or you can go back in the river. Your fishes miss you.” It was true. They swirled in the shallowest water they could manage, right where Myrrhtide had climbed out.

  He frowned at me. “Why are you being helpful?” He stepped on the stone slab and unhooked his sandals from his belt.

  I took his footwear. “Because I found out you’re not such a crosspatch. It’s funny, the way you learn how decent people are, when things get bad.” I knelt and undid the knot in his laces. When I had a sandal free, Myrrhtide braced a hand on my shoulder and lifted up a foot. I put it on and laced it for him.

  “All right, young lady. What are you up to?” Myrrhtide asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing bad,” I told him as I did up the other sandal. “Mila and Green Man willing, and maybe Heibei too, it could even be good.” Silk moths began twirling in my belly. Stop that, I told them. I haven’t even done anything yet.

  I stood up and smiled at Myrrhtide. “There you are. All shod and ready to visit the emperor.”

  He smiled, too, and tightened his grip on my shoulder. “Good. Very good. Now let’s see what you and your friends are cooking up. And try to take care of yourself. You are starting to grow on me.”

  17

  Stone Clothes

  When Rosethorn saw us trailing the refugees and talking, she rode back to see what was going on. We told her what we planned.

  “Absolutely not.” Her mouth settled into a hard line. “Tamper with the volcano spirits a second time? Particularly when they might be getting more powerful? I won’t hear of it.”

  “But if she can lead them away from Starns, the island will be safe.” Oswin shifted from foot to foot, he was so excited.

  “Oswin Forest, she is my charge. I am responsible for Evvy getting off this island alive,” Rosethorn told him. “You have no guarantee that she would survive leading Carnelian and Flare out to sea. Even if they did not kill her for trapping them, what of the other volcano spirits? If Luvo won’t face them, why should Evvy?”

  “Her power is not the same as theirs, Rosethorn,” said Luvo. “If Evumeimei keeps her distance from any groups of volcano spirits, she ought to be safe.”

  “‘Ought to’ trims no trees, Luvo,” Rosethorn snapped.

  They were still arguing two hours later. We had come out onto the flat, where the river made the long, slow turn toward Sustree. Tahar, Myrrhtide, Jayat, and even Azaze had joined in the discussion.

  I lost patience. The longer I put off actually trying Oswin’s idea, the better the chances were that Flare and Carnelian would escape on their own. I wouldn’t give a wooden coin for our lives then. I had to get to work now.

  I looked around for a place to stop and saw a good one. Leaving the others, I lugged my packs to some trees that shaded a cluster of boulders. The stones were stable granite. They were perfect for my needs.

  Luvo came to watch me make the place comfortable as people went by. “What if Carnelian and Flare will not believe you? They may well deceive you into relaxing your guard, then turn against you. Evumeimei, you trapped them. What if they claim they accept you are their friend, then lure you into a trap of their devising? They are volcano spirits, not meat people. They have no faces or eyes that you may read.”

  I asked the rocks to shift, to make a seat that wasn’t so lumpy. “Maybe they were pure spirits when I first met them. But once they got to know me, they started shaping themselves more like people. Copying me. They acted more human, too. I’ll give my magic self a look that’s more like human me somehow. I’ll shape it with stones. If they copy me in this new way of looking, I’ll know they still admire me. Stop ill-wishing, Luvo! I have to make this work!”

  “I do not do anything that might be termed a wish for good or ill,” Luvo said. “Neither do I want you to end your days as charcoal.”

  “I don’t plan to do that, trust me,” I told him.

  Meryem came running over. She was dusty from top to toe, her and the Dreadful Doll. She carried it in a cloth sling now, just like the one I used to carry Luvo. Someone had also made a small pouch for her to wear around her neck. She kept the feldspar piece I gave her in that. I could tell because I saw the stone shining through the pouch. “Why did you stop? You look like you’re making camp. You can’t stop here, Evvy. We’re running away from the volcano, remember?”

  Heibei, this is not funny, I told the god. “Meryem, go with the others. Find Nory. I’m doing something.”

  “No!” The little tyrant stamped a foot at me. “You can’t do it here, Evvy. You can’t. Do it on the ship. The mountain is going to blow up, don’t you know anything?”

  The longer she stood there jabbering, the more likely it was that someone would come to find her. They might try to stop me, too.

  “Meryem, I don’t want you with me, all right? I’m a mage, not a nursemaid. Me and my rocks have important things to do, right now, so go away.”

  She blinked at me, her lip trembling. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I’m not! I’m a busy mage, and I need quiet right now!” I snapped.

  She had tears in her eyes, but what was I supposed to do? If Rosethorn noticed I was missing before I left my body, she’d find a way to stop me. If everyone got killed because Flare and Carnelian escaped, it wouldn’t help that I’d been nice to Meryem. I’d wasted too much time already. The ground was quivering under my feet.

  “Go on, go!” I added for good measure.

  Meryem ran away. She vanished into the group of kids at the side of the refugee caravan.

  “For a human, that was hard speaking,” Luvo said.

  “I’m in a hurry, Luvo. I’ll make it up to her later, if we have a later.” From one of my packs I took out my Zhanzou jacket. It was the only clothing I’d kept from home, but not because I missed Yanjing fashions. The plain black jacket had eight pockets in it. There were four outside—two over my chest, two over my hips—and two inside. I wore it when I needed to keep stones close to my body.

  It was time to put my mage kit to use. I opened it up and considered my choices. I had to squint as I removed the stones. The magical glare from the spells on them always half-blinded me. First I showed Luvo the onyx globe. “This doesn’t just hold power. The spells on it will ground me and help keep me in myself. They’ll also deflect anything bad Flare, or Carnelian, or their friends might throw at me. I hope they will, anyway.”

  Luvo didn’t seem impressed. “Volcano spirits will annihilate your globe. What else have you?”

  “Rutilated quartz, to increase my effectiveness,” I explained. Luvo clicked at me. It was not a sound of approval. I put the crystal in a pocket anyway and went on. “Jade for wisdom and protection. Sardonyx for courage.”

  “I doubt yours would ever fail, but that at least may accomplish what you wish for it.”

  “Rockwater for strength and perseverance.”

  “As if you ever required either of these things, Evumeimei.”

  “Malachite for protection from peril.” I was getting cross.

  “A moon cut from it would not be enough to guard you from Carnelian and Flare.”

  “You’re not helping,” I told him. “Garnet for strength and vigor.”

  “Piffle, all of it.”

  “You learned that word from Rosethorn.”

  “These stones are useless,” Luvo argued. “Worse than useless if you rely on such toys instead of your own power.”

  I glared at him. “I am relying on my own power. It’s the power of the spells I made and stored in these ‘toys,’ you stubborn chunk of rock!”

  “This is folly, Evumeimei. Let these meat people flee this
island. Let us make our escape with them. Oswin does not understand the immensity of power held by just one of these spirits. Beings like Flare and Carnelian and their kindred are the agents that make and unmake the surface of the entire earth.”

  “You worry so because you can’t imagine tricking the forces that gave birth to you. I understand. But look here. The force that made me sold me for a handful of coppers. I’m not as awed. If I get in over my head, I’ll just run away.” He doesn’t understand, I thought. I put Carnelian and Flare in a trap that ended up making them stronger. I have to limit the damage I did. I don’t want to be one of Rosethorn’s destroyers, even by accident.

  I patted Luvo on his head knob, which I knew he hated. Then I made myself comfortable and closed my eyes.

  The fault that ran under the Makray, up under the lake and Mount Grace, was warm. I gathered power from it as I raced through the ground in my magical body. I headed for Moharrin and the quartz trap. Travel was so much faster without my meat self. Of course, I couldn’t haul anything useful when I moved like this. I paid a price in exhaustion when I returned to my real body. Still, if I’d had to go to the trap by foot or horse, I would have given up before I even tried. I probably would have reached the trap too late for us all.

  A new earth shock picked me up. It threw me from the place where the river left the lake all the way to the far end. The volcano spirits were traveling in a fault just three miles from Carnelian and Flare. With my senses spread wide through the ground I could feel them. They rooted in the fault like pigs hunting truffles. I jammed myself through the ground past them. My claim to be Flare and Carnelian’s friend wouldn’t sound good if I didn’t set them free.

  I smacked into Luvo’s black obsidian wall. It curved above, below, and to either side of me, a glossy black shield in the earth. A sparkling ghost floated in it: me. Flare and Carnelian were on the other side. I’d kept careful track of their location. They were just three hundred yards beyond this wall, with its granite back. The volcano spirits would only see this—at least until it began to melt.