Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Lliferock (2 page)

A wave of sadness came over him as he watched Yonik Bne pronounce his intention to add his body and spirit to the 6

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liferock. Yonik’s passing would leave Gvint as sole Elder because Reid Quo — the next Elder — had not yet returned from his wanderings. Yonik had been Gvint’s friend and brother for countless years; they had passed through the Scourge together, nourished in the deep rock by Ganwetrammus — the spirit force of the liferock.

“As clay, Ganwetrammus bore my body into the outside world, gave life and legend to my physical form. As clay, I return.” Yonik removed his robes a garment at a time, folding them one by one and handing them to Gvint who set them neatly to one side.

When Yonik was completely naked save for his horkla, he stepped up onto the Deathstone and lay on his back at the center. The flat rock was roughly circular, rising knee-high above the surface of the tepuis, and measured three obsidimen-lengths across. Ruddy gray-black in color, like cooled lava, the stone bore scars. Grooves and water channels, etched into the rock’s surface, traced meandering paths from the center of the rock to the edge, where they became deeper — miniature chasms and crevasses.

“The time for wandering has come to an end,” Yonik said, leaning his head back. “I can no longer hold off the will of Ganwetrammus and wait for Reid Quo’s return. It is thus that I welcome the Eternal Dreaming.”

No one spoke. The faces of each obsidiman stared som-berly at their Elder. The Final Merge was a time of completion, they all knew that. The last arc in the circle of life. But it was also a sad moment, when a great spirit would be re-absorbed.

Not lost, but diluted.

Yonik started to chant softly as he lay, his words barely au-dible over the whisper of wind through the Dance of Stones — columns of jumbled boulders which surrounded the Deathstone. “Ganwetrammus, accept the clay of my soul. The mud of my flesh. I return to you.”

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The brotherhood picked up the chant, their musical voices weaving a shell of harmony against the wind. They sang of Yonik’s life, of their desire to see him reunited with Ganwetrammus. They rejoiced in his death, for he would rejoin the pattern of the liferock. And his passing would mean the birth of new brothers.

Their melody held magic in it, the unity of their deep voices becoming a force of its own. And over time, under the influence of that force, Yonik’s body began to turn gray. Days passed as the brothers sang for their Elder, the rise and fall of the sun barely noticeable to them.

As the ceremony’s magic took hold, Yonik’s features blurred; his arms and legs lost clarity until his form seemed to sag under its own weight. His words slurred in his throat as the flesh of his face grew pasty, and his lips sunk into his mouth.

On the fourth day of the ceremony, Gvint hefted a huge ceramic urn which he had filled with water from the spring-fed pool beside the temple. He set it atop the scarred surface of the Deathstone and climbed to stand beside it.

When Yonik’s throat could no longer sing the words, Gvint spoke for him. “Accept the clay of his soul. The mud of his flesh.” As Gvint chanted, the liferock reached out to him, and the soles of his feet merged through the surface of the Deathstone.

A slight sensation of falling, the stone opening up beneath him. Then the hardening of his flesh, just his feet this time, becoming an extension of the Deathstone, rooted pillars of scarred rock.

This was not a normal merging; Gvint felt no union with Ganwetrammus and no communion with the other brothers.

He did not lose himself in the merge, as he usually did, to become a part of a larger and more substantial creation. Instead he felt a disconcerting duality. He was the rock. And simulta-This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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neously, he was Yonik.

He felt Yonik’s body resting over him, the weight and the smell of it like a sack of wet sand. But at the same time, he sensed the pattern of Yonik’s mind, the fluidity of his muscles under the influence of the ceremony’s magic. He experienced the heaviness of his brother’s body as it turned to brown earth, the preparation of his spirit for fusion with the pattern of Ganwetrammus.

Gvint remained merged with the Deathstone as the ceremony progressed, several days, until the liferock told him the time had finally come. He bent down and lifted the huge urn.

From it, he poured cold, clear water over Yonik’s body. The transparent liquid splashed over the Elder’s skin at first, running down through the lattice of canals on the rock’s surface.

But soon, the water mixed with the claying flesh and diluted it, carrying the mud with it back to the rock. Washing away the bulk of Yonik’s body, his skin and insides in streams of gray-brown. Finally, only his horkla remained, rinsed clean and empty.

Through his fusion with the rock, Gvint felt the disintegration of Yonik from inside. The singularity of one mind diluted into a million drops of consciousness, until Yonik Bne no longer existed; each broken filament of his fractured pattern had joined with the whole of the liferock. His flesh had returned to its origin to be recycled into a future member of the brotherhood. Even as the last of the water fell from the temple urn, Gvint saw the muddy remnants of Yonik solidify at the edge of the Deathstone, becoming part of it. Adding depth to its scars.

Intense pain shot through each of them as the last bits of Yonik rejoined Tepuis Garen. Gvint felt it most deeply, being the eldest now. But each of the brotherhood sensed the passing of Yonik Bne. Those present nearly collapsed from the force of the rock’s signal.

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Gvint froze for several minutes; watched the urn slip from his hands shatter on the Deathstone. The rock released him from the ceremonial merging, and he dropped to his knees on the stone.

Those of the brotherhood who were away in distant regions of Barsaive and the world beyond also felt the passing of Yonik Bne. They felt it like an ache in their gut — the dull pain of emptiness. But it passed quickly, and they knew what it was.

Each took a moment to remember their brotherhood, remind-ing themselves of their true nature. Of their individual connection to Tepuis Garen.

And all of them knew that Reid Quo — the next Elder —also felt the passing. Reid Quo heard and would return to join Gvint at the temple atop Tepuis Garen.

When the signal had passed, Gvint stood, gathered up Yonik’s horkla and cleaned away the shards of the broken urn.

The horkla would be mended, if necessary, and passed along to the next brother to enter adulthood. Gvint put the horkla with the other garments and began the meandering walk to the temple through the maze of natural columns and huge boulders which made up the Dance of Stones.

He waited at the temple for Reid Quo to join him as the second Elder of the Garen Brotherhood. Every brotherhood must have two Elders. Yet, as the years went by and Reid did not return to Tepuis Garen, Gvint began to worry. Without Reid, there could be no namings and no births. Reid’s absence hurt the brotherhood.

He tried to remember the last time he had seen Reid.

About five hundred years before the Long Dreaming of the Scourge, when the thought of Horrors was distant and the land flourished, Reid and Gvint had returned to Ganwetrammus with most of the brotherhood to participate in the Fire Bath ceremony for Jibn Sra.

Reid had been full of awe and energy, newly Awakened This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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and just Named at his own Fire Bath forty or fifty years before. After the celebration, Reid had gone back out into the world. He had talked of Thera, the Netlundion brotherhood, and wondrous magic he would learn from the ancients there.

Reid had visited brotherhoods in southwest Barsaive and beyond, devoting his life to sharing knowledge with brotherhoods across the world. He had spoken of his life as a journey that must never stop.

Gvint had also traveled to Thera, briefly. And he had visited Netlundion — the only brotherhood on the island nation.

From the magicians there, he had learned to master the intricacies of commanding the elements, but his path did not cross with Reid’s. The island was a crowded place, and Reid had already taken his leave of the island’s liferock. Later, as the Scourge approached, most of the Brotherhood returned to Tepuis Garen, but Reid never made it back. Gvint had assumed him lost or overseas, unable to return.

There was a rumor that Ohin Yeenar, the last Elder of the Othellium Brotherhood, had seen Reid since the end of the Scourge. But no one from the Garen Brotherhood could con-firm the rumor, and Gvint didn’t put much faith in it. Ohin Yeenar was ancient even by obsidiman standards and his mind traveled a dangerous and meandering path, often fabricating events which may never have happened.

Still, Reid couldn’t be dead. If he had died without returning — a horrible thought, but still a possibility — Ganwetrammus would know and call Jibn Sra, the next in line. Since that had not happened, Reid was alive, somewhere in the world, trying to get back.

The only thing to do was wait.

This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected])  Chapter Two 

Pabl Evr arrived at his liferock on a day as clear as spring water; the mist ring which usually clung to the rock had dissipated in the afternoon heat. Pale blue sky peeked through the tiny spaces in the interlocking tree limbs. Underneath, the jungle slept; the air hung still and humid, keeping the buzzing insects in their nests and making the monkeys lazy for the afternoon. Under a fruiting banana tree a few miles from Tepuis Garen, Pabl and his two companions stopped on the edge of the trail to rest.

The huge mesa loomed before them like a jagged wall of stone; they had been walking in its shadow for most of the morning, but the sun had finally cleared the rock. Now it shone through the high jungle canopy in sporadic patches.

The cliff facing them was sheer; a waterfall plummeted over this side, erupting from the rock near the top and falling almost three thousand feet. The Garen Brotherhood called it the riflev — the water that flies.

Pabl focused on the top of the tepuis just above the riflev.

The temple of his brotherhood was perched there, on the cliff edge, but he could not see it from this distance. Built from 12

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slabs of the same rock, it blended too well to be seen. The temple was Pabl’s destination; there he would end his twenty-year journey of exploration and learning. The end of his Awakening would be marked by the Fire Bath ritual when he would finally learn his Name in the language of his people, becoming at last an adult member of his brotherhood. And he was anxious for that.

Of course it might not happen if Reid Quo had failed to return. The last Pabl heard, Reid had not been seen since well before Yonik Bne’s death ten years ago. Pabl had felt Yonik’s passing like a keen blow to his chest, a cold ache which chilled him like a winter storm.

Still, there was hope that Reid had returned in the years since. And perhaps, even if Reid remained lost, the Fire Bath ritual could be performed by Gvint Od alone. Pabl didn’t know.

That was why he had returned home.

Pabl glanced down at his two companions. They looked haggard from the long journey, resting under the broad leaves of the banana tree. Road dust coated Jan’s red beard, dull-ing his normally animated face, and a fine lattice of thin salt lines had crystallized on his forehead below his fiery hair. Jan Farellon was a dwarf, and wore a stylish wizard’s cloak made from a collage of overlapping patches, each a different color and pattern. The blues and the reds were dingy with dirt and faded from long exposure to the sun.

Now, Jan was hunched over, focusing on a thread-weaving puzzle which he held in both hands. His eyes were glazed over in that far-off stare which meant he was using thread sight.

“This level is too tricky,” he said, looking up from the puzzle.

“I can’t manage to weave to it.” He breathed a heavy sigh and tossed the puzzle to Pabl.

“You’ve only been trying for an hour,” Pabl said, letting out a deep laugh.

Jan looked up at him, a scowl on his face. “An hour today, This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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an hour yesterday, and three hours the day before. I just can’t get past the fourth loop. My empty stomach must be affecting my concentration.”

The elf, Celagri, mimicked Jan’s voice, adding a degree of whine. “My empty stomach must be affecting my otherwise flawless concentration.” She laughed.

Celagri lay on the soft ground, her head resting on her pack, lounging in her scarred black leather pants and jerkin.

She was slight of build, with the telltale pointed ears and fine bone lines. Her skin was the color of brown clay; she wore her black hair pulled into a tight knot behind her head, and shadows seemed to gather around her. Celagri was an excellent liar and a good thief. Jan and Pabl had met her in Kratas some ten years back and now trusted her completely, for she had saved their lives on several occasions.

“Shut up, elf,” Jan said. “What do you know about thread-weaving, anyhow.”

Celagri widened her eyes in mock shock. “Well, pardon me, your most noble master thread-weaver, sir. I didn’t mean to —”

“Just shut up.”

Pabl smiled, wondering if the two would break into a full bickering session. Now, that would be funny. Standing in a small patch of sunshine that penetrated the jungle’s bower, Pabl’s body was as wide as the other two combined, and easily twice the height of the dwarf. His ruddy skin was the color of red sandstone, like the cliff face, and his head sloped to a bare and hairless peak. He wore a loose shirt and trousers of plaited indigo and deep magenta, but no armor save the heavy bracers of dull silver which adorned his forearms.