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5
Dead Water
Even after two years in this aboveground world, I still love to watch the sun rise.” Luvo was speaking quietly to Rosethorn as I woke up. “This is a gift you and Evumeimei and Briar have given to me. When I was safe in my mountain body, I did not understand the glory of the dawn.”
Rosethorn explained, “Having to do midnight temple services for worship of the Earth gods puts a dent in my admiration for sunrise.” When I cracked my eyelids I could see Rosethorn pour her morning wash water into the basin. She went on, “I’m too tired to appreciate it, most of the time. On the road it’s different.”
I looked out of the window. Ever since Luvo had first told me about his love of daybreak, I remembered all the sunrises I had missed, living in my burrow deep inside the stone cliffs of Chammur. Usually I watched for dawn with him. I could see it from my cot now. The sky was the pink of rose quartz.
As I tossed aside my blanket, I noticed that Rosethorn was staring at the water in the basin.
“Rosethorn?” I asked. “The water’s shivering, isn’t it? Making ripple circles?”
“Yes. Last night, my tea did the same. Myrrhtide didn’t mention it, but I saw him try to make his stop moving. He failed.” She looked at me. “A water mage of his degree couldn’t get a cup of water to stop quivering, Evvy. That’s…interesting.”
“What do you think it means?” I wanted to know. “Earthquake?”
She shook her head. “No earthquake I’ve ever been through was so regular in its warnings. Nor did it send greetings by water like this.” She took a breath and started to wash.
When I joined Luvo at the window, I saw that he wasn’t looking east, where the hills were gold around the sun’s rim. His head knob was turned north. There, at the western edge of Lake Hobin, stood Mount Grace. It was tall enough to have snow at the peak, even in summer. Trees covered the lower slopes.
“Luvo, do you think there’s an earthquake coming?” I asked him. “Rosethorn says not, and she’s been through plenty. Have you ever been in one?”
“Small ones, many. Large ones? Only when my mountain—when I—was born, the earthquakes, and the volcano that created me. I know of that because the older mountains told me of it. Though some of what I feel now reminds me of my earliest memories. Terror, fire, bursting into freezing air as the warm earth spat me out. Growing higher, rising into the air, above everything around me. But I do not know if these are true memories, or what I was taught.”
“Then what is a true memory?” I wanted to know.
Luvo began to pace along the windowsill. I had to sit on my bed, I was so startled. Luvo never paces. He’s not the pacing sort. He’s the standing sort, or sitting. He did the new pacing slowly, but still…I glanced back at Rosethorn. She had stopped in the middle of tying the belt to her habit. Like me, she stared at him.
“I remember slow stiffness that began on my skin, and grew into my flesh, turning it from lava to stone,” he said. “I got hard and cold. I felt crystals and minerals form. The stiffness went on, bringing with it stillness. Silence. Indifference. It came closer to my heart. To this piece of me, that you think of as Luvo.” His stone feet thumped on the wood. “I had to make my first choice. I could let my heart, as well as my body, go solid and silent. I could dream my days away. So many of our kind choose that, unless they are awakened by great events. I could also choose to fight. I knew the battle would be hard and constant. It is easier to be still and to dream, harder to move around as I do. But I wanted to know more about the green things that were growing on my sides. I wished to see the water as it shaped my flanks into something different. I needed to feel the air as it remade me. I desired to meet the creatures that came, like the birds, and you. Those were my first needs. Evumeimei, Rosethorn, I have not thought of my birth, for many spans of your time.” He stopped, and looked at Mount Grace. “I do not know why this place makes me think of it. Why it makes me think of pain.”
Rosethorn came over to his window, drying her face. “Do you wish to return to the ship, or to Winding Circle? I’ll make the arrangements, if you aren’t comfortable here. I can find someone who will take you…”
But Luvo was shaking his head. He sat on his haunches. “I want to know why I feel these things here. And I do not wish to leave Evumeimei. You are a teacher, Rosethorn. You know the most dangerous students are half-taught ones.”
“Well, I like that!” I put my hands on my hips. Rosethorn was laughing softly.
“With the earth in motion, you might find yourself in a predicament,” my friend the upstart piece of gravel told me. “I must look after you and keep you out of trouble.”
“That’s not funny,” I cried.
Rosethorn was still laughing at me.
“Of course it’s not.” She gave me a wicked, wicked grin. “Come down to breakfast dressed for riding. We have another long day.”
Azaze was up, too. “I have everything ready for you,” she told us as we finished breakfast. “You’ve horses saddled and waiting, and a lunch packed. Jayat waits outside. Oswin will come to you later. He’s work of his own to see to, first. Your Dedicate Myrrhtide says he’ll be down as soon as he’s finished his breakfast.”
Rosethorn pursed her lips. “He had breakfast in his room?”
When she sounds like that, I’m really grateful if she isn’t talking about me.
“I was just as pleased.” Azaze filled Rosethorn’s teacup a second time. “He kept fussing at my maids. Men like that are best left locked away, where they can’t meddle with folk doing honest work.”
Rosethorn choked as Azaze walked off to see to something in the kitchen. When she caught her breath, she said, “I’d say our headwoman can handle Myrrhtide.”
Hearing that Fusspot was coming had taken the edge off my excitement. “Do I have to come if Myrrhtide goes? You don’t need me to look at plants or water.”
“But we need you as we go higher on the mountain, in case of rockfalls. Yes, you’re coming. Just think, Evvy. You could be snug in your bed at Winding Circle right now, if you’d kept your temper with those boys.”
I knew she would make me go. “Would you have done it differently? Would you have let those boys bully my friends?”
“That’s different,” Rosethorn told me. “I’m a dedicate initiate. When I pick on bullies, it’s called an object lesson. And I know when to stop. You didn’t.”
I hate it when she says things I can’t argue with. I finished my breakfast and went to get her mage kit. I left mine in my room, even my stone alphabet. I wouldn’t be able to study any magic on horseback, for certain. Myrrhtide chatters at me when I take out my alphabet stones around him. He’s afraid the magic I have stored in them will get out.
Like Azaze said, Jayat was waiting in the courtyard with the horses. I put Rosethorn’s kit on her horse myself. Then I slung a little pack I carried, in case I found new rocks, in front of me on my saddle and perched Luvo on it. Luvo wanted to see everything. By the time I was ready, Rosethorn and Myrrhtide were set to ride. The sun was all the way up as we followed Jayat east, on the road through Moharrin.
By day we could see more of the village. It was set on the inner edge of a gigantic, gently sloping bowl ringed by mountains, or at least very tall hills. Mount Grace was the queen of them, towering over the others. Lake Hobin was where the water ran at the lowest point of the bowl. There were patches of farmland and orchards around the rim. The country seemed prosperous enough, earthquakes and all.
“Have you been in the lake yet?” Rosethorn reached over with a foot and nudged Myrrhtide.
He glared at her. “I have not. It looks very, very cold.”
“It’s snowmelt, a lot of it.” Jayat was much too cheerful for that hour of the morning. “You’ll be wide awake if you have a swim.”
“I thought you Water temple types didn’t care about the temperature,” Rosethorn said. I don’t know why she kept telling me to behave with Myrrhtide. She was always after him like a needle with the mending.
“Wil
l you please be quiet?” Myrrhtide rubbed his forehead. “I can’t hear the adorable little birdies greet the thundering sun.”
The road followed the shore. We had a wonderful view of Lake Hobin and all the birds that fished and swam there. The sun turned the water into a bright silvery mirror. Now and then a fish would splash, rising to grab a bug. I half-expected the lake to show us those same weird ripples Rosethorn and I had seen in our wash water and tea. Only the animals ruffled its surface. Not even the wind stirred it. The air was still.
At last we turned down a new road, away from the lake. It took us past a few of those small farms. “This is Oswin’s place.” Jayat led us through a rickety gate. “He was the first of us to find a dead patch on his land.”
A little girl stood on the doorstep of the main building, sucking her thumb. She was six, maybe, a mix of races, with light brown skin, brown hair, and long brown eyes. Her nose and chin were sharp. She was a pretty thing. She needed better clothes, though. Her dress was the color of butter amber, but it was patched. The sleeves had been ripped out of the armholes. She stared at us, walking out into the dooryard for a better look.
The beautiful girl—Nory—who had come for Oswin the night before ran out of the house. “Meryem, I told you to change out of that old rag!” She grabbed the girl by the back of her dress, then glared at us. “Don’t even think of waking Oswin. He didn’t get to sleep until long after midnight, with one horse having croup and us needing a rebuilt table for breakfast.”
I felt watched and looked up. Faces in the upstairs windows of the house, boy and girl, watched us. They were all colors: black, white, brown, and mixes like Meryem. These would be the pirate kids Oswin had taken in, the ones left over after the adults had been killed. They looked like street kids I had known in the old days, before Briar had found me. They had that wary expression, the same as feral cats.
“Dedicates Rosethorn and Myrrhtide need to see the pond, Nory,” Jayat said. “We don’t have to wake Oswin to do it.”
Nory scowled at all of us. “There are plenty of dead spots all around here. Why don’t you go poke your noses into them?”
“Because we’re here. We won’t be any trouble.” Jayat was almost pleading with Nory. I wondered how long he’d been sweet on her. Quietly he said, “Come on. You’ll wake Oswin before we do, with your growling.”
The older girl took Meryem inside the house. Jayat looked at us and shrugged. “Oswin says she’s getting softer, looking after the kids. You just have to know her, I guess. This way.” He led us around the house, down a rock-lined path into the trees.
I drew up even with Jayat. “I don’t get it. Why are you showing us around, if you and your master are the only mages for this whole area? Won’t you be needed someplace, sooner or later? Couldn’t someone else play guide for us, if Oswin isn’t available?”
Jayat shook his head, making his curls bounce. “It isn’t just that the plants and water are getting poisoned.” He looked older this morning. Maybe he just didn’t like what he was saying, or thinking. “Too many of the dead patches are on places where this island’s lines of power lie.” He pointed to a rough granite post beside the path. It was as tall as my hip. Carved in the top of it was the Earth symbol, the circle that enclosed a cross.
I had seen them the day before, but had been too busy looking for new rocks to care. I studied the post. “It’s tilted. And there’s a crack in the middle of the granite. A bad shock and it will split right down the middle. You haven’t been taking care of it.”
Jayat scowled at me. “Then we’ll replace it. We have one of those every ten yards to mark where the lines of the earth’s power are hereabouts—”
“Are they all stone?” At least this was something I could take an interest in. “Are they all granite?”
“How would I know?” Jayat seemed grumpy. “They’re just rocks that tell us where we may draw on the force of the earth, to give us strength for our spells. That’s how lesser mages like Tahar and me can be of use to our kindred…”
I felt for the line of power that was supposed to be under the cracked granite post. I didn’t sense anything. I let my magic sink through the stones beneath it. There was some power in them that fizzed, but nothing big. There had been strength beyond the normal in those dull bits of stone. The quartz there clinked with an echo of it, but it was just an echo.
I let my magic run deeper and deeper. I sensed a hum, way down. It reminded me of how my own magic had once felt. It called to me. It was like a kid, wanting me to come and play. I kept reaching out, trying to grab that fizzing sense of being alive…
Then I fell off my horse.
It’s not as if it never happened before. I start to chase some fire or crackle in my magical senses, and my body forgets to hold the reins, or to keep my feet in the stirrups. My horse doesn’t know what’s going on because I’m not telling it anything, so it does what the other horses do. This time, the other horses had stopped in a clearing of dead trees around a dead pond. My horse did, too, only suddenly, because it almost walked into Fusspot’s horse. Fusspot’s horse objected to mine coming so close. It turned its head and snapped. My horse backed up and stamped—that’s what Jayat said, when he stopped laughing. The stamp jarred me enough that I slid down my horse’s side.
At least my body knew what to do, even if my attention was somewhere else. I tucked and rolled like a Yanjing acrobat.
Rosethorn grabbed me before I landed in the pond. This time my collar ripped. I was about to argue when she pointed at the water.
Dead fish floated there. Dead animals lay at the water’s edge. The skin of the fishes was eaten away.
“Acid.” Fusspot looked absolutely miserable. “This water has turned to acid.”
“These plants and trees have been poisoned by it.” Rosethorn dragged me to my feet, away from the water. I didn’t complain, not after a look at those fish. I didn’t want my shoes burned off my feet. “There, now, Myrrhtide. It’s not sewage, as you thought.”
“Not here, anyway. It might be sewage in the water table elsewhere.”
Myrrhtide never knows when to give up.
“Evumeimei?” Somehow Luvo had stayed on the horse even while I fell off. “You are all right?”
“I’m fine. Just my dignity hurt. Jayat, listen, nobody could have drawn earth power here.” I got up. Rosethorn let me go, once she knew I wouldn’t stumble into that nasty-looking brown pond, with its scum of dead things. “The stones were touched by something great, but not lately. They fizz, but it’s all leftovers. Maybe you and your Tahar Catwalker were chewing funny leaves. The shamans of Qidao do that, to imagine they can talk to the sky and horse gods.”
“We didn’t teach you how to be rude.” Rosethorn was using her this-is-your-only-warning voice.
I’d been rude? I was impatient. How was I rude if I was just honest and wanted a straight answer?
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Either Jayat didn’t agree I’d been rude, or he was really easygoing. “We used to be able to call up the deep power with the right spells. Mages here have done it for centuries. The veins along these trails are so accustomed to this use, they almost offer the power at a touch. But at least close to Moharrin and the lake, it’s all gone out of reach. And if I can’t reach it, my master can’t—I’m stronger than she is, even if I don’t know a quarter as much. Further up the trail, there are more bad places. In one of them, there’s a spot where the power is too close to the surface, and there’s too much of it.”
Myrrhtide frowned. “What do you mean, too much? You’re a mage, you need to learn to be more precise in your reports. ‘Too much’ is hardly definitive.”
Maybe I was wrong about Jayat’s patience. He did scowl at Fusspot. “Master Tahar was called to help a woman who was having a difficult childbirth. She lives out by that place I mentioned. It’s a power spot Tahar has used since she was my age. She was going to save this woman and her baby, with spells she’s worked all her life. That
time, when she set the spells to channel the power, it swamped her magic and her control. It was, was…” He shook his head. “It was a river, an ocean. Tahar would have killed them both if she’d used it. Instead she turned it back through herself. They died anyway. Master Tahar couldn’t leave her bed for two weeks. She couldn’t work magic for a month.”
“What would make it do that?” I asked Rosethorn.
She shook her head. “There are all kinds of reasons. The earth lines are part of nature. They aren’t an easy source of power for academic mages who need a bit extra. Too many things can go wrong.” She frowned at Jayat.
He shrugged. “You’re a dedicate initiate of Winding Circle temple. You can say that. I bet you’ve never had to call on sources outside yourself for help in your life.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Rosethorn said. “I draw from the green world all the time.”
“Because the green world is you, and you are it,” replied Jayat. “Master Tahar and I aren’t so lucky. Our people depend on us to help them live, Dedicate Rosethorn. You and Dedicate Initiate Myrrhtide here will leave when you’ve solved our problem.”
“Of course.” Myrrhtide sniffed, as if Jayat smelled bad, not the water with the dead things in it. “You could hardly expect us to remain here. We have other demands on our time and skills.”
“Well, Moharrin is the demand on Tahar’s time and skills. She’s in her eighties. She needs all the help she can get.” Jayat didn’t even look grumpy as he spoke. It makes me cross just to see Myrrhtide when he sniffs that way. “So we do what we must to satisfy the village’s demands, since we are the only mages here. If doing our work right means tapping a vein of power, as the mages before us did, you can’t blame us for using the tools we have.”
“Except there’s nothing here but cold earth and stones that remember something,” I reminded Jayat. “I can stretch down half a mile, and it’s all ghost fizzing.”
“I can reach even further,” Luvo announced.
From the way Jayat flinched, he had forgotten that Luvo rode on my saddle. I wondered why Luvo always had to be so slow. Didn’t he understand that life was just whooshing by?
