Gemworld (44 page)

Alright then. Fair enough. What just happened?

When he entered the water, he remained one with his surroundings. He hadn’t expected that. No. That wasn’t quite right. He hadn’t actually given it any thought. He’d just taken it for granted.

So if he had become one with the water, did it mean that water was Matter? No. Impossible. Water was the province of Sapphire, not Granite.

But why was it impossible? Water had dimension, didn’t it? It could be deep, wide, and long. He could touch it, and feel the resistance it gave, however slight. He could feel the rain on his face, the wind in his hair. Wasn’t that how Jaren had described the effects of Matter?

Well, he shouldn’t have been surprised if water
was
Matter. Since when did Jaren—or anyone else, really—actually know anything about Granite? Like with most other things pertaining to his magic, Keth would have to figure this out for himself. Taking a deep breath—or he would have, if his lungs hadn’t been one with the riverbed—he willed himself upward.

He left the riverbed slowly, entering the water head first. As he did, the expected red patterns came to life, speckled through with the orange patterns of various river plants and animals. A fluke? A magical hiccup, maybe? He wasn’t sure. Cautiously, he entered the river completely. As the tips of his toes left the silt, his vision went black again.

Wait a moment. Not
entirely
black.

Turning his head this way and that, he found nothing but darkness. Still something tickled the edge of his visual spectrum. He cast his eyes upward, and almost caught it. It was there, invisible, but just barely so. Curious, he willed himself up through the water.

As he moved closer to the surface, the object became more defined. It grew brighter in his vision. The edges sharpened somewhat, took on a round appearance that shimmered rhythmically. Finally, he broke the surface of the river. Water rippled away from him, rippled
through
him, but he didn’t notice. He was completely captivated by what he saw above him.

The moon, beaming in all its pockmarked glory.

But the moon was white! And the sky was black?!?

He didn’t understand. Was his multicolored nightmare over? Had the Crafter given him back his sight?

Almost without thinking, he whipped his head around, seeking another reference point. The movement sent ripples across his vision, but again he barely noticed. He could make out the trees on the back of the river, the leaves grey in the moon’s feeble light. Closer, he saw the glittering gold of a sandy beach, strewn with debris from the waning tide. And floating just downriver from him was the brown and black forms of the
Seacutter
and her flanking ships, lit by the fires of the sentries’ lamps.

Fire! He could see fire!

He
had
to tell Jaren.

He willed himself forward excitedly, barreling into the ship’s hold with a ripple of Matter. As he became one with the solid wood, the blessing vanished, and the curse reclaimed him. All around him, the distinctive blue-black glimmer of oaken timbers and cast iron rivets replaced moonlit darkness.

He felt like weeping. For joy. For loss. He really couldn’t tell which. He just felt like weeping.

He stood dumbly for a moment as the reality of the situation set in on him. But when it did, it hit him like a hammer. He, Keth, a granite mage with no qualified tutor, had somehow discovered something that no other granite in the world had—how to regain primary sight, if only temporary. How was that possible? Were granites so completely drilled on the differences between Water and Matter that no granite had ever become one with water? Or maybe the Granite Order
did
know about this, and have just been extremely tight-lipped about it. It wouldn’t be completely out of character for them, but why would they be so secretive about this power in particular? And how did it even work? What was so special about the water?

Questions echoed back and forth throughout the recesses of his mind, loud at first, then growing to a deafening roar. Amidst the din of his own thoughts, two names floated to the top. Jaren and Menkal. They would help him find the answers, tell him what it all meant. They
had
to.

His vision flashed slightly as he freed himself from the timbers and released the granite magic. Solid again, he wound through the crates that filled the ship’s hold and tore out into the empty hallway, on his way to find Jaren. A scant fifteen steps carried him from the hold to the emerald’s quarters, where he found Jaren sound asleep at his desk, an open tome serving as a pillow.

The granite leapt into the room without the slightest shred of decorum. “Jaren! Jaren!” he urged with abandon, shaking the emerald roughly from his slumber.

“But it’s Endweek, Mum... I don’t have t—” Jaren said blearily, slow to make the transition from sleep to wakefulness. “Wh-wha-what?”

“Jaren! Jaren!” was all that Keth could cry. His tongue had gotten stuck somehow. No other words seemed to be able to shake themselves loose. “Jaren! I just-It’s-I-C’mere!”

Keth dragged Jaren bodily from the chair and pulled the emerald down the hall after him. “When I ascended it happened so fast that I never thought that I would ever be the same again and I guess I’m still not but I was so mad back then because the mage didn’t tell me and Nanette and Ma and Da but then Sal helped me and you too and—”

“Keth, what in blue blazes are you yammering on about?” Jaren shouted irritably as the granite practically dragged him down the hallway. Keth had finally unstuck his tongue, but now it was flapping uncontrollably.

“I can
see
, Jaren! I can see! I ca-
owww
!” The granite’s words cut off abruptly as his forehead struck a low-hanging bulkhead.

“Yes, of course you can,” Jaren remarked blandly.

Keth’s hands flew to his forehead, trying vainly to contain the rising knot. Stars—the kind born of pain—danced in his vision as the lump beat out a fervent complaint.

Jaren stood with his arms folded before him, staring dispassionately at Keth, not making slightest move to heal him. Just payment for the rude awakening. Keth tried not to glower as he continued down the hall, beckoning the emerald to follow.

Keth led Jaren to a bathroom that had been set aside for the female passengers and their more delicate bathing needs. A porcelain tub stood on the far side of the room near the port hull, where a pipe allowed the tub to drain into the river. Ringing the tub were rows of sapphires and rubies, their activation runes inscribed between them on the silver strip that held them to the tub. He ran his hand along a length of the strip, igniting the runes and activating the magic. Water began to well up from the bottom of the tub.

“I know you told me once that water was the province of Sapphire,” Keth started. “I’m not disputing that. But you also told me that matter was anything that could be measured in terms of length, width, and height.

“Well, the other day, while we were boarding the ship, it started raining. Any other time, I would have passed it off as nothing extraordinary, and truly it wasn’t. But Retzu had told me to always keep an open mind, and to practice seeing the ordinary from a new perspective. It’s supposed to help me learn how to improvise,” he said by way of explanation. Jaren’s bare foot tapped the deck impatiently.

Keth cleared his throat nervously. “Anyway, there I was on the railing, watching some of our people board when a single raindrop struck the rail. It was a fat raindrop, even for the summer storms, and it splattered where it hit the wood. Then I realized—it was fat.”

“You’ve already mentioned this absolutely amazing fact,” Jaren said sarcastically, obviously missing the connection.

“Don’t you see? It had dimensions, Jaren! Length, width, height-the same as matter.”

“But water is not matter,” Jaren argued patiently, though not without a note of curiosity in his voice. Whatever else Jaren thought, he was interested in finding out where the granite was going with all this. “If Granite could wield the essence of Water, then why have we never heard of a granite mage doing so?”

“Maybe it’s part of that super-secret society of theirs. Or maybe, like yourself, they’ve always viewed water strictly as the province of Sapphires. I dunno,” Keth shrugged.

The water level in the tub reached the silver strip. As the wavelets lapped at the silver, the activation runes flared briefly, then died, canceling the spell.

“But one thing I
do
know,” he continued, staring at the tub, “is that whatever we may ‘know’ to be true, we can’t assume anything.”

Keth rolled up the sleeve of his tunic and placed his hand into the water, wielding. His hand melted, merging with the water. In Keth’s sight, his hand took on the red pattern of water, though he could still see his fingers clearly outlined in the brown aura of granite magic. He willed the melting to encompass his whole body, and he watched as the red of the water consumed the orange-yellow of flesh and bone.

Keth turned his eyes back to Jaren. The mage’s black gemstone eyes held the green aura of emerald magic as they followed the spell up Keth’s arm, then to his shoulder, then finally to his face.

Had the melting allowed his lungs to draw breath, Keth might have laughed when he saw Jaren’s face go from its normal orange-yellow—minus two faint yellow teeth that the emerald had lost—to a deep golden tan, his brilliant green eyes wide and his jaw slack with utter shock...

Now he did chuckle, the soundless, breathless movement sending waves through the man-shaped pillar of water that was his body.

That discovery turned more than four thousand years of theory on its ear. It led to hours upon hours of speculation, debate, and experimentation for Keth and the Heads of Order. Not to mention Menkal attacking the young granite’s abilities with renewed interest, charging Keth to fill this or freeze that. Which suited Keth just fine. As boring as the trip downriver had been up to that point, this discovery proved to be just the thing to break up the monotony.

Over the next thirty six hours, they came to the conclusion that Sapphire, like Emerald, actually borrowed its medium from Granite. Keth found that he could create water in its various states, though it was much easier to make ice than it was liquid water. He even enjoyed some small success in creating air pockets, but it was almost impossible for him to maintain something with so much empty space between its particles. In the end, it was determined that Granite, though it could emulate Sapphire as it did Emerald, could not wield its higher, more complex forms of magic.

As Keth stood on the water, gazing west across the harbor into the great night-dimmed city of Bastion, hot tears welled up in his liquid eyes, adding salt water to fresh. His magic may not be able to do everything, but what it could do was enough.

The sun was still well below the horizon when Sal awoke. By force of old habit, he tugged his eye patch into place and touched Emerald before opening his gemstone eye. Torchlight flickered on the far wall, tinged faintly green in his sight. Yawning, he sat up in his bunk and stretched. He remained there for a moment, both reluctant and eager to face the day. Finally, he swung his legs over the side of the bunk with a sigh, and shuffled to the wash barrel.

One more day
, he thought as he washed the last vestiges of drowsiness away.
One more day, and I won’t have to care what color my eye is. I won’t have to play like I’m a lackey for the Highest. And I won’t be facing certain death and dismemberment day in and day out for proselytizing these kids for the sake of the rebellion
.

He sighed again, and leaned forward on the barrel, his pseudo-emerald eye staring back at him from the mirror. He knew he was where he was supposed to be for right now, but he’d be just as glad to be gone.

Which ain’t gonna happen if I keep myself planted in front of the mirror
, he reminded himself. Pushing off from the barrel, he returned to his bunk and donned his uniform leather armor, then ambled out into the courtyard to meet his lieutenants.

The courtyard was about the size and shape of a football field, with six fortress-like buildings spaced out around the perimeter of the compound. Each of the four Ranks were represented here, having its own barracks on the long side of the courtyard. Ruby and Emerald were stationed on the eastern side, facing Sapphire and Amethyst on the west. To the south stood the stables and the Orientation building, the keep that housed all new Rank recruits. New Rank soldiers would remain in the Orientation building for a period of thirty to forty five days, though occasionally a particularly thickheaded recruit may find himself there a full month. Sal grimaced at the thought of spending a full seventy three days in that dump. Hemming in the courtyard to the north was the main command structure, which held the classrooms, the mess hall, and officers quarters. In the center of the courtyard stood a flagpole, the banner of the Highest cracking loudly in the predawn wind. Sal thought it fitting that the banner waved in darkness.

His lieutenants in the Ranks were already out by the flagpole when he arrived, ready to receive their duty assignments for the Festival. Each of them had been hand-picked by their respective Instructors for their magical prowess and leadership abilities. Not for the first time, Sal had to wonder if it was coincidence that his lieutenants all supported the Resistance, or if the Crafter had done a little hand-picking of His own.

There was Hafi, a Mandiblean Sapphire. Growing up in a nomadic desert tribe, he’d known little more than turbans and sand dunes when he ascended. Overnight, his poverty-stricken family gained the notoriety of having a sapphire son. In a few short months, his father had risen through the ranks of Mandiblean society, gaining the ear of a number of key members of the Fellowship of the Dunes. The next year he was elected to his own Fellowship seat in Deitrich. All the while, the old man was ringing his son for more power, hiring him out to the highest bidder. It became too much for Hafi, so he left for the Earthen Rank. He’d just recently received word that his father had been stripped of his seat. Hafi was sorrowful, but not overly so.

Kiri’tsa was the representative of the Ruby Rank. She said the name meant “fire warrior” in her native Plainsfolk tongue, In accordance with Plainsfolk custom, Kiri’s mother and father entered a
deh’lt
—a type of wooden or clay hut—to consult the spirits about when to conceive, and what they should name the child. They spent all that night in consultation—and conception—before finally falling asleep from exhaustion. That night, they both dreamed of a woman made of pure flame, a warrior, fighting against an immense darkness. They named their child “fire warrior” as the dream suggested. They never knew just how prophetic that name would one day prove to be.

Kiri ascended young, and her parents were not surprised to find that she was aligned with the Ruby soulgem. She was sent by her chieftain to the Academy, where she excelled. She trained there for many years, growing in knowledge and power, preparing for the day when she would finally rejoin her clan. Unfortunately, that day would never come. In the summer of her twelfth Year of Ascension, news reached her that a rival clan had wiped her people out. None had survived the raid, save for Kiri’tsa who was away at the time. The ruby exploded, her rage consuming everything in sight. Luckily, no students were killed. She immediately requested a transfer to the Earthen Ranks, where she could find an excusable outlet for her fiery temper.

From the Amethyst Rank, there was Cedric, a diminutive Valenese man. At least ten years Sal’s senior, Cedric had started his service to the Highest relatively late in life. He’d trained at the Academy, then took his training home with him to Bayton, where he used his art to perform in the local theater circuit. When a freak lightning storm swept east of League Deep Bay and set one of the theaters ablaze, all fingers pointed to Cedric. Of course, he was exonerated, but by then the damage had been done-none of the other performers would have anything to do with him. Desperate for a means to support his family, Cedric joined the Earthen Ranks.

These three, with Tribean, met Sal with a wink as he approached.

“We really need to find a better way to identify ourselves,” Sal grumbled. “Password, secret handshake—
anything
but that dang wink!”

“Oh, come now, Sal,” Tribean chided lightly. “We must show our revered leader how much we love him.” This set the other three to laughing. Tribean’s face remained the picture of innocence.

“Good! Since you love me so much, you won’t mind covering the Commons,” Sal returned cheerfully. The emerald’s innocent look deflated into one of severe dislike, adding new fuel to his companions’ laughter.

Joking aside, Sal got down to business. He took the group through his security plans, assigning each mage their district. He pointed out the advantages of the placement—amethyst electricity near the harbor, emerald versatility in the Commons, and so on—and recommended headquarters for each division. Finally, he detailed his own plans involving the Archive.

“How many people are you going to have with you?” asked Hafi.

“Sixteen, four from each Rank, with another sixteen on standby here at Camp for relief purposes. With four on the roof and the rest on the ground, that should convince anybody that we’re doing our job. I don’t have a clue what Reit’s planning, but I want us to be in a position to help if he needs it.”

“And if we’re betrayed?” This one from Kiri.

Sal looked at her long and hard, his jaw clenching in protest at the command he knew he had to give. Over three quarters of the camp had been converted, bringing the number of rebels within the Rank compound to well over a hundred. Sal wished fervently that he could be sure of every convert, but he couldn’t.

“Keep your orders specific to your Rank, and limit the information you give them to only what is necessary to do the job. Make no mention of the other Ranks, or me. That should put a lid on the amount of damage a betrayal could cause.” Sal tried to leave it at that, but he could tell by Kiri’s eyes that he hadn’t finished. She knew—they
all
knew—what had to be done. But Sal was their leader. He had to give the order, though he hated himself for it. “There’s going to be a lot of confusion tonight, so keep your eyes open. If you suspect a traitor”—he paused in last-minute reluctance—”eliminate them, quickly and quietly. We still want to look like Rank when all is said and done.”

The mages nodded solemnly. None of them relished the thought of killing another, Kiri’s vendetta excluded, but they would do what was necessary to ensure the success of tonight’s operation.

Quick to move on, Sal took them over a few more issues—calls to battle, rallying points, and the like—then dismissed them to their various duties. Each one wished the other luck, then left for their respective barracks to await reveille.

Sal stood by the pole a moment longer, watching them leave. “How many of us are going to survive the day?” he wondered aloud. “Are
any
of us?”

He started toward his own barracks, but his step faltered. As wave after wave of doubt crashed over him, he bent to one knee. He slipped the sword from his back and placed it at his side, for once freeing himself from the death he carried around with him. After a moment’s hesitation, he released Emerald. With no magic flowing through his body, with no sword on his back, nothing that he felt might be offensive, he looked up at the stars, and for the first time in ages, he prayed. Though his lips never moved, though no clear words even entered his mind, he poured out his very soul. He wasn’t sure what he prayed for, or even
why
he prayed. Maybe just to feel a peace, a closeness, that he hadn’t felt in many years, he couldn’t tell. But when he stood, he was surprised to find a little spring in his step, a lightening of his personal burdens. Maybe, even in this world of the Crafter, a world so alien to his own, maybe he wasn’t as far from his own God as he might have believed. A comforting thought, for a man who may only be hours away from finding out.

***

The warble of a dawngreeter stirred Jaeda from sleep.
Too early
, she thought without opening her eyes. It was much too early for even the most annoying bird to be rousing the sleeping forest. She groaned and pulled her blankets high over her head, trying vainly to muffle the song of the dawngreeter.

“Might as well not even try,” Nestor grunted from the far side of the firepit. “Woke me about halfway through fourth watch, and I haven’t so much as drifted off again. Tonight’s spawn of the Abyss must be the very same bird.”

“He is pretty insistent, isn’t he?” she agreed, reluctantly rolling onto her back and stretching. The snap and pop of a thousand joints sang sweetly to her, remarking of each and every mile they’d traversed—on foot—in the past several days. About midway through the last week, the ground had taken a steady upward turn, not enough to even notice a bend in the trees, but enough that Jaeda felt it in her thighs and calves. They’d only yesterday found their way back to the river, but even the oft-level ground of the rocky banks sapped their energy as they followed the winding waters ever deeper into the Garden. Jaeda swore silently that if they didn’t find something soon, she’d leave Nestor to his fate, and go find a quiet inn someplace to sleep away the rest of her days.

“Come on, Jaeda,” Nestor prodded sleepily. “I want to get a few miles behind us before the sun burns away the cool.”

Slowly, oh so slowly, Jaeda complied, rolling up onto her haunches and then to her feet. “Too late,” she said. “I can already feel the sun coming up.”

Nestor paused, then cautiously said, “I feel it too. It warms my face.”

That brought Jaeda fully awake. Nestor wasn’t facing east. He was facing the headwaters of the river, somewhere off to the north.

***

They hastily packed their gear and what dried meats they’d cooked over the past few nights, and marched off along the river toward the unknown source of heat. As they advanced, the morning picked up a sticky, humid feel, as if they trekked through the balmy islands on the northern reaches of Leviathan’s Maw instead of the forests northeast of the Icebreak Mountains.

The river continued to snake away to the north, the rush of the waters gradually building with every pace until it was a thundering torrent mere miles from where they’d started. They rounded a bend in the river and found themselves facing a broken escarpment, a jagged cliff that stretched out in either direction as far as the thick canopy of trees would allow them to see. It stretched for spans into the air, the river fell gently over the edge of the cliff to crash in a pool some hundred feet below.

“There,” Nestor shouted over the roar of the waters, pointing to the escarpment. Jaeda saw nothing at first, but then her eyes fell upon a tiny nook on the far side of the waterfall. It plunged deep into the cliff, and seemed to run all the way to the top. The path was steep, to be sure, but it was manageable. It would suit their purposes perfectly.

If they could find a way across the raging waters of the river.

Jaeda cast her eyes about, taking in her surroundings all at once. Finding what she needed, she shouted at Nestor to stand back. Spying the base of a monstrous tree, thin but towering, she wielded. Her granite magics ate away at the tree base, the wood turning to dust as she watched. She was careful to make the cut wide on the side facing the river, and narrow on the side facing away. In moments, her effort was rewarded by a loud
crack
, then another, until finally the weight of the tree brought it crashing down across the width of the river. The red-patterned spray washed over the top of the fallen trunk as the tree bounced in the water, then settled into place on either bank.

Jaeda and Nestor climbed the trunk with a little effort. It had seemed so narrow from so far away! Up close, they found that the trunk was a good head wider than they were tall. A few lashes with Jaeda’s granite magic provided them with some handholds in the green wood. They mounted the tree in short order and started making their way across.

The river beat against the tree, rocking it this way and that as the waters found its way through the branches and then downstream. Jaeda looked longingly at the branches, at least halfway up the length of the tree trunk. The first half they would have to brave without a handhold, relying on their own balance and luck to guide them along. With nothing else for it, Nestor and Jaeda linked hands to lend support to each other, then set out along the bare trunk toward the branches, and the relative safety that they provided.