Melting Stones (20 page)

If I lived in lava, I wouldn't need supper, I thought. I lay down on my cot. I didn't even realize that I was still holding my kyanite as I went to sleep.

Luvo woke me when he stuck his nose in my eye. His crystals were glowing with a soft purple light that filled our room.

"What is it?" I whispered because I could see Rosethorn's sleeping body in the next cot.

Luvo said quietly, "I am disturbed by the movement of the earth that approaches now. It is—"

"Ten miles out." It was a big shaker, coming at us in a giant wave. "Rosethorn!" I called.

She sat up instantly. "Wha? 'S better be good."

"Quake coming," I said. "We have to be outside for this one." At least I was still wearing clothes.

We grabbed our mage kits. I stuffed my alphabet into mine. Then I settled my sling and put Luvo in it.

Rosethorn was scrambling into her robe. "I'll wake Myrrhtide, you wake the kitchen staff. They're the only people who sleep here. Send one of them to rouse Azaze and her husbands. Have the others wake everyone in the courtyard."

I did as I was told. All of us fled the inn. Most of the villagers who meant to go in the morning were camped just outside. By the time we came out, they were awake. They hung on to their animals or their children, waiting nervously. Many of them prayed. Rosethorn and Myrrhtide prayed with them. I guess they were supposed to, under the circumstances.

The earth surged from down deep, miles of stones groaning and rocking. Roof slates fell from the inn. Inside wood and mortar crashed. The horses protested; dogs howled. People screamed. A crack opened under the stable; half of the building collapsed into it with a roar.

At last everything was quiet again. People got up and went to see what damage there was in the rest of the village.

Azaze went to look at the stable. "Splendid. Just
splendid
. I had this wreck rebuilt four months ago, and now look! It's ruined! I can't afford an entirely new stable!"

"Evumeimei," Luvo whispered, "we must talk."

I chewed my lower lip. I knew a trick that only worked with stones that were of the same kind. It would prove really useful just now. "All right, but I need to do something first." I picked up my kit. "Let's find some privacy."

The half-moon gave me enough light to find the inn's kitchen garden. It was messed up from the earthquake. Mostly that meant the night was filled with the scents of crushed basil, oregano, and fennel. I put Luvo on an upended bucket so we could talk face-to-face when it got to be time. Then I took a chunk of quartz from my kit. It was no bigger than my palm. The important thing was that it was a collection of crystals, kin in spirit to the ones where I had left Carnelian and Flare. I let myself fall into its cracks and splits. In it I drifted, keeping a seed of thought in my head: the picture of Carnelian and Flare in the crystal trap.

And there it was, as if I stood only a few yards away. Waves of heat rose around me, rippling through the earth. Something weird had happened to the bed of quartz. It had been raised, twisted, and fused together into a great loop, just as Luvo had said. Inside its thousands of pieces I saw bits of carnelian and blue color, a spot of each to a crystal, all spinning. They moved so fast, each bit in its own little prison, that they looked as if they flowed
through
the quartz, instead
of
being stuck in one place. And the bed itself quivered in the earth, making the dirt and stones around it shake.

How long before their volcano friends found them? What if they felt that quivering and came to see what made it? And what would happen once they freed their guides?

My imagination showed me a scary picture. In it, the whole island of Starns shot into the sky, riding a huge column of molten lava.

"Heibei, this is a bad time to frown at me," I whispered. I pulled my mind from my crystals and put the clump away. Then I looked at Luvo. "We made a mistake. I thought if we could get Flare and Carnelian out of the way, the danger would be over. But it's not."

"The earthquakes that have come since we trapped them are not normal earthquakes." Luvo kept his voice down. "They feel more like the waves of the ocean, but far below the earth's stone shell."

"It's the others," I told Luvo. "The ones Flare and Carnelian said never had the nerve to do anything. I think they were wrong. The others want Flare and Carnelian to
lead
them out. Now they're hunting for them. They won't stop till they find them and
everyone
gets to break out into the open."

Luvo began to pace. I leaned back and waited, closing my eyes. My head ached ferociously.

Luvo halted. "I will build shields between the lower depths and the trap we have made for Carnelian and Flare. Obsidian drawn from the riverbed, I think. The obsidian will show the other spirits their own faces, nothing else. It will reflect, not reveal."

"Granite to back it, though," I suggested. "If the volcano spirits get close enough, they'll melt the obsidian. Granite will slow them down. What do you want me to do?"

"Guard me as you ride to the ships," Luvo ordered. "Azaze and Tahar will wait no longer. Dawn is just a short time away. Pick me up."

When we came out from behind the inn, I saw that Luvo was right. Everyone was up and moving. No one had gone back to sleep. Tahar was bundled up in a hooded robe. She sat on the seat of her little cart, screeching orders. Jayat stood at the head of the pony that drew the cart. It looked like he was going to walk.

Oswin waited with Nory, Treak, and his other foster-kids. He carried a huge pack on his shoulders as if it weighed nothing, and a pair of kittens in a basket on one hip. If he was worried, he didn't look it. His head was cocked. He stared into the distance, his lips moving silently. Nory was fastening small cloth packs onto the backs of the little children. They rode the tired-looking ponies who had been harnessed to the cart before it collapsed. When Nory saw me, she gave me a glare that would have peeled paint. Treak and the older kids did the same. I went to saddle Spark.

Once I'd taken care of that, I placed Luvo in his sling and hung it from the saddle horn. He was as still as dead rock. The best part of his mind and power had gone into the earth. I strapped my saddlebags into place. Rosethorn had cared for her own horse. She was talking quietly with Azaze and Myrrhtide.

"I don't care if we have more days, perhaps!" Tahar's old voice was crystal clear above all of the others. She was talking to one of the village women. "Perhapses never got fields plowed or wood chopped, you brainless nit! Will you wait for earthquakes to pull your house down, or the volcano to burn it? We're leaving! The rock may be great among his kind, but he himself admits there's a chance the spirits will escape the trap. Jayat, stop ogling Norya. Move this collection of splinters!"

Oswin turned to look at the old mage. "What about Dubyine, Karove, and their people? They went back to Snake Hollow. Should we send word that we're leaving?"

Azaze snorted. "Let them stay and loot until the volcano cooks them."

Tahar leaned to the cart's side and spat on the ground. "That for Dubyine and her stinking crew. May they eat ash cakes and drink molten stone."

For all that everyone said that Tahar wasn't much of a mage, I saw lots of people grab amulets and press them to their lips. Either they didn't want to take a chance, or they feared Tahar's ill-speaking. As far as I was concerned, Dubyine and Karove had called Rosethorn a thief. That settled it for me. I hoped Tahar's curse took.

With everyone awake, the cooks fixed breakfast. When it was done, there was enough predawn light to see by. It was time to go. Carts and animals moved forward along the road,
finally
. I joined the line at the end, with the herd animals and the kids who watched them. It wasn't the fanciest place in the caravan. That's why I was shocked when Myrrhtide rode back and fell in beside me. "How are you feeling?"

I gaped at him. He
never
asked how I felt. "I know it's kind of dark, but you have to be able to tell you're talking to me."

"I know who I am speaking to. Your health is important, young woman. Right now you and Luvo may be our best protection from a tomb made of lava." When I stared at him, shocked, Myrrhtide snorted. "What? Because I spent the last day in the lake I'm too preoccupied to understand the obvious? Rosethorn and I can do very little against a volcano. You are all the help we have."

"You don't think we messed up, letting people know that we'd bought some extra time?" I asked. "I thought you'd be saying I don't have any right to call myself a mage."

Myrrhtide rubbed his eyes. "The first thing every mage should learn is that magic makes fools of us.
Now
you may call yourself a mage. You have learned the most important lesson. Tell me, then—if you
did
trap our young volcano children, why do we rush along today?"

I have no idea why it spilled out of me. Maybe it was that Myrrhtide had said that I might still call myself a mage, when I had fumbled things so badly. Rosethorn was busy. I could see her up ahead. She was growing vines to pull fallen trees from the road so we could get through. And Myrrhtide was actually listening to me.

He took me back over my tale. He asked questions to clear things up in his own mind. "Luvo didn't believe these other spirits were a problem?"

I shook my head. "He can see what I do, because our magics join in spots. He thought they were just stupid and didn't care. We believed if we trapped Flare and Carnelian, that would be enough." Six miles out and ten miles down, I felt the next squeeze coming. I looked around. We were passing a tall series of granite slabs. On our other side was a slope that led to the river.

I gulped. I didn't have Luvo to help me with this one. "Would you ask Rosethorn something for me? Could she lay vines over the shakier parts of the stone on our left? There's a tremor coming. I'll hold the stone back here if she can do that. Tell everyone we're gonna get a hard shake. It's coming fast."

Myrrhtide rode up along our draggledy parade, passing on the warning. I dismounted from Spark and passed her reins to somebody. Then I called up all that power I had collected the afternoon before, greeting the rock on my left as I walked over to it. This granite was lava that had cooled slowly enough for bits of quartz and feldspar to form in it. Water and plants had done some damage here. So had quarrymen, who had taken away stone for buyers around the Pebbled Sea.

Hold strong, I told the unsteady slabs. Can you feel these youngsters rushing around?

I heard the whisper of stone laughter. Then the volcano spirits rolled under us in a fiery tide. They were returning to Mount Grace far beneath the river. They bellowed for Flare and Carnelian as they traveled. They had been searching under the Pebbled Sea, with no luck. Now they plunged into the hollow chamber, discouraged.

The ground calmed. The granite boulders under my magic settled back into their beds, complaining. They had wanted to move. Another time, I promised them. Maybe even today.

That cheered them up. I knew it would.

I looked ahead. Apart from some tumbled bundles and people knocked from their feet, everything seemed to be all right. On we went. Eventually people started to fall behind, especially the older ones, and the kids.

Rosethorn rode back to me. She had a baby in a sling on her chest, and a one-legged boy riding behind her. "You look comfortable, on your nice strong horse, by yourself."

I scowled at her. "In Gyongxe you let me ride."

"In Gyongxe you had flayed feet. And I did make you get off the horse before you got flayed." She raised her eyebrows. "Are you too worn-out from playing with the nice volcano?"

She knew I wasn't. I gave Spark up to Meryem and two of Oswin's small boys. I even carried a baby. He wet himself, and me. For good measure he burped sour milk on my shoulder. By then the road had come down close to the river. I gave the baby back to his mother to be changed. Then I happily took off my boots and walked into the icy water. Cold doesn't bother me that much. And the smell of water and wet stone was much better than the smell of dirty baby.

I was gathering blue moonstones on the river bottom when the volcano spirits stirred in the big chamber under the mountain. It was strange. The more time I spent listening for them, the more I knew what they were doing. Now the ones who had gone out were rousing up the ones who had stayed behind. They started to whirl around, deep below the earth. The walls of the chamber began to melt, making the room bigger.

"Shake!" I yelled to the people on the road. "Shake, a big one! Shake!"

They scrambled to grab the horses and get out of the carts. I dared not move. I threw my power against the huge slope of loose, quarried rock beside the road. Even a tiny shiver would send tons of granite on top of everyone there. Next I sucked the river boulders' weight into me. I needed to be sure I wouldn't tumble when the earth began to kick. Once I was fixed in place, I spread my magic thin, covering as much loose rock as I could. Then I jammed it down, locking thousands of stone fragments in place. They shifted, trying to cut through my power.

Heat rose from the big chamber. The volcano spirits were hungry. They wanted Flare and Carnelian. I sent that hunger back to them as echoes. They felt battered by their own feelings. Confused, they backed deeper into the chamber. Knowing they were being monkeyed with, the earth spirits roared their fury. The ground under everything buckled and rolled.

Then, for the first time, I heard their voices. They wanted Flare and Carnelian.

They are near!
one of them shouted.
We need them to lead us!

We need them to lead us out! We need them to take us into glory and fire
!
another cried, one that sounded female.

They are the leaders, the guides! Where are they
? 
That one seemed older.

Where are the ones who will free us of the prison and the shadows
?
From the sound of that voice, the spirit had been waiting to get out for a very long time.