The Mountains Rise (40 page)

“Our simplest stories would include nothing but a single line of characters proceeding
from the center and moving upward along the ‘future personal’ axis. This is the form
that most verbal conversations follow, although when discussing scholarly matters
we tend to speak along the past to the ‘future objective’ axis, while matters of art
follow the subjective axis,” explained Byovar.

Tyrion’s head was spinning. “That’s confusing on an entirely new scale. Why do you
need three different past to future lines?”

“A proper narrative includes all pertinent information. The personal axis provides
information about the narrator, both before, during and in the future discussed.
The objective ax
is provides factual information
historically and in the predicted future while the subjective axis provides more
subjective information in the same manner, indicating artistic or emotional elements
that may pertain to the topic, both in the past and moving toward the future.”

“How in the hell could anyone write something like that?”

Byovar smiled. “Most of our writers are trees, Tyrion. They do not ‘write’ in the
conventional sense. They grow their wisdom into three dimensional sculptures for
us to observe. The three past tenses all decline from the center when written, while
the three future ones rise on an incline. The past directions are called the three
‘roots’ while the three future
ones are called ‘branches’.”

“You’re starting to make my head hurt,” replied Tyrion.

“It gets better,” said Byovar. “As a ‘writing’ progresses, it may ‘branch’ at later
points, beginning new stories within the story. As a rule, though, future branches
may only branch into more future branches inclining upward
,
and root divisions may only split into more past roots declining downward.”

“Ooohhh!” groaned Tyrion.
“How do you learn to read something like that?”

“It helps that we are born with the knowledge,” observed Lyralliantha who had been
silent until that point. “Reading is generally all
that the children of the She’Har do.
I
t is rare for anyone other than an adult to attempt to create a new composition.”

By adult, she meant a ‘tree’ of course. Considering the lengthy contemplation that
had to go into constructing one of their compositions
,
he could easily understand why only someone with the time and patience of a thousand
year old tree would attempt it. Still, it all fit with what he had already learned
of their race. Knowledge and wisdom
were for the adults, the trees;
the children were supposed to make do with what they were given at birth, until such
time as they were able to join ‘adult’ society. Their writing system reflected that,
being in no way suited to the purposes of fast moving and short lived creatures like
humans—or the children of the She’Har.

Byovar continued teaching, giving him a list of symbols to try and memorize, but Tyrion’s
attention was distracted at that point. He found himself staring at the list after
the male She’Har had left, wondering if it would help him with his fight at the end
of the month.

Probably not,
he concluded.

“Are you ready to play for me?” asked Lyralliantha, “or do you need to rest for a
time?”

Sighing
,
he found his cittern and made himself ready to play.

“Will you go over the last part of your trip?” she asked, referring to his goodbye
with Kate.

“Not yet, not today. Let me play you something that reflects a happy day in childhood,”
he told her. “Something light and happy.”

She did not object
,
and he let his mind and his fingers drift with his mind, sweeping the
m into a land of endless summer.
A
place where children lived under blue skies and chased rabbits while dogs ran with
them in a never ending dance of chaotic joy.

Tyrion checked his stone regularly the next day, but it showed only the faintest hint
of dimming. It was still nearly as bright as when he had first empowered it.

It was clear to him that written symbols
,
as well as spoken words
,
had the ability to greatly enhance the strength and duration of magic, but he knew
there was somethin
g fundamental he was missing; s
ome extra component that gave She’Har spellweaving its permanence, as well as its
vastly superior durability in the face of opposing aythar.

If I can’t figure that out
,
I’m going to have a hard time beating something that can create a shield I can’t
even scratch.

Mentally reviewing his fight with Syllerond
,
he knew that he hadn’t gotten lucky, he had beaten his foe with better timing and
superior experience. If Syllerond had been a good fighter though, the outcome would
have been far different. According to what Lyralliantha had told him, he would not
have that sort of advantage this time.

He spent his free time studying the spellwoven canopy.
At one point he made another attempt to destroy it, this time using the wooden warden’s
sword he had taken with him to Colne. First he etched the words ‘razor sharp’ along
both sides of the blade
,
and then he marked the edges with fine lines. When he was ready
,
he sent his will into the blade while uttering the words, ‘be sharp’.

I really feel stupid creating magic while uttering phrases in plain Barion,
he thought. It made him feel a bit like a kid playing at being a magician.

“Except this magic works,” he noted, studying the intensely sharp aythar that had
formed around his wooden blade. It was several times denser and more lethal feeling
than the blades he normally created around his arms.
It should cut through almost anything.

Bracing himself
,
he took a hard swing at one of the supporting pillars of the canopy.

The magic on his sword shattered
,
and he felt a numbing shock run up his arm from the impact. It felt as though he
had struck a boulder with a stick. The only improvement he could claim was the fact
that he got no backlash. Since he had released his grip on the magic he put on the
sword
before
using it against the spellweaving he didn’t suffer the shock when it came apart.

That will make it easier to experiment, at least.

He had no better luck the rest of the day, however, and it was almost a relief when
Byovar and Lyralliantha appeared for his lessons in Erollith.

***

That evening, when he had finished playing, Lyralliantha stayed behind him. She let
her hands fall from his temples
,
and now they rested on his shoulders while she leaned forward, putting her weight
on his back.

He kept still, unsure of her intention. It was rare for her to continue such physical
contact without some express reason.

Her hair fell forward, drifting past his face and tickling his cheek
,
and he heard her let out a long sigh. He could feel the warmth of her body through
his thin shirt
,
and her closeness was becoming increasingly distracting.

Why does she smell so…

He clamped down on that thought
;
clenching his jaw and wrenching his mind away from the path it had been traveling.
Lyralliantha’s physical proximity irritated him—that was all.

As if sensing his change in mood she pulled away, withdrawing. “Thank you for the
music,” she said.

“I do as I must.”

If his curt reply hurt her she did not show it.
“I think I am coming to understand, in some portion at least, what it is like to be
human,” she answered.

You haven’t got a damned clue,
he responded silently. “I doubt such knowledge will be highly regarded,” he observed.

Lyralliantha closed her hand, pulling it close to her chest as she replied, “It is
important to me.” It was unusual for her to display any type of nonverbal cues while
speaking. It was also odd for her to put emphasis
on a personal pronoun such as “
me
”
. The She’Har were proud of their ability to distance themselves from personal concerns.

It was as if she was pretending to be human.

Her clumsy acting angered him.
It’s bad enough to be kept as a dog, but to have her pretending to ‘bark’ and trying
to emulate true emotions is insulting. It’s a mockery.

“If you’re done with me, I’d like to rest now,”
he told her with ice in his words. He had
no
fear of insulting her. The She’Har cared little for subtext or inflection.

She stared at him for a moment, as if thinking, before she replied, “I have news you
will want to hear.”

He faced her, giving his full attention, but said nothing.

“The elders have granted my reques
t for a delay. You have twenty-
seven days before your match will be held,” she said.

“Oh,” he commented dully. He hadn’t realized that the matter hadn’t been decided
yet. It would have been a bad surprise if they had told her he
that
had to fight in just a few days. “Did you ask them about clothing?” he questioned.

“Yes,” she nodded. “They did not like the idea. You will be required to fight as
you have in the past, naked.”

“That hardly seems fair,” argued Tyrion. “They get to create this thing with any
sort of weapons or armor they want
,
but I have to go in bare-assed.”

“You will both be allowed to fight only with what you were born with,” said Lyralliantha.

“I didn’t get to choose my body, but they get to choose theirs.”

“They will not bend on this,” she told him.

“It sounds as if we have nothing more to talk about then,” said Tyrion.

***

The next week passed quickly as Tyrion fell into a cycle of activities. Each morning
he rose and ate before studying
,
first Erollith with Byovar, and then spellweaving in private. He had some help from
Lyralliantha with the spellweaving. She was willing to produce anything he asked
to see, but none of it seemed to help. He could perceive the fabric and structure
of what she created down to a miniscule level that even the She’Har were incapable
of seeing, but he couldn’t replicate what she did.

He also failed to find any way to damage or destroy one of their spellweavings
,
and as the days passed
,
he became increasingly less hopeful about his chances against the Krytek. Without
a way to
get past its defenses
or defend himself against its attacks, his options for winning were vanishingly
few
.
I
t would come down to him creating an environment that it couldn’t survive in, but
it would be impossible to keep his opponent within such an area when it could destroy
any confinement he could create.

The only other possibility was that it might make a fatal mistake.

Counting on something like that is just asking to lose.

He spent his afternoons exercising and practicing the skills he had already learned,
as well as expanding them in new ways. One of the first problems he encountered was
the discovery that while spoken words could in fact enhance his magic’s effectiveness,
they also made it easier for him to accidentally produce effects when he was simply
talking. It was a habit he couldn’t afford to develop.

His answer to that
was to create his own language—w
ell, it wasn’t really a language. Studying Erollith, he had a notion as to why the
She’Har used a written form of language that used unique symbols for each word. He
reasoned that at some point in the distant past they had learned to us
e their writing to create magic
as he was doing, and for that purpose
,
using a single symbol for a concept or idea made it much easier to enhance something.

With a phonetic alphabet, such as Barion used, each letter had no intrinsic meaning,
other than a sound. The result was that a collection of letters had to be written
to create a word that held any meaning, and meaning was what was needed to reinforce
the purpose given to aythar.

So Tyrion followed in what he thought was their footsteps,
but instead of using Erollith, which seemed excessively cumbersome, he created new
words and symbols for his own use. He began with simple and practical concepts, things
such as ‘fire’, ‘water’, ‘force’, ‘sharp’, anything he had found a use for previously.
In each case
,
he made up his own nonsense word to represent it and then created his own written
symbol.

Since the first things he found a need to use in that manner tended to be the most
common
,
he made their vocalizations and written symbols as short, simple, and straightforward
as possible. Then he drilled them into his mind, practicing to make their meaning
as intrinsic to his thoughts as their counterparts in Barion were.

“What are these odd things you keep scrawling all over your platform?” asked Lyralliantha
one evening.

“New symbols I’ve been making for myself,” he answered.

“Why?”

“I’ve been practicing using them to enhance my magic,” he explained.

“Would it not be easier to use your own language, or even ours, rather than create
something new?”

“I tried that at first, but it makes it too easy for me to make a mistake. This way
I have a separate set of symbols in my mind that I associate with using aythar. If
I use one of our normal languages
,
I start getting in the habit of using magic while I’m communicating,” he said.

Her aura flickered with emotion for a moment.
“You have an idea—s
omething that will enable you to win?”

He looked downward, “No. At one point I thought I might, but this won’t do it.
”

She frowned, “Then why do you continue?”

“It feels important,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe it will lead me to an idea, maybe
it won’t, but I can’t help but feel that it’s important somehow.”