Perilous Travels (The Southern Continent Series Book 2) (16 page)

“Those are the places,” Grace told him as her finger drifted to the spots where the eddies, along with the rest of the glowing power, faded from view.  “Now that we know the locations of the opportunities, you have to prepare the stone to be a repository of the energy.”  She walked him through the process of aligning the stone’s interior to hold power, and then they worked on preparing the pebble to release the power.

“We usually use a simple command, like ‘shine’ as the trigger that releases the power,” Grace explained.  “But it could be a different word, or even a different signal, like tapping twice on the stone,” she instructed him.

“I’ll just say the word,” Grange decided, and listened to Grace’s explanation of persuading the stone to respond to the word.

“Now the amulet is ready to receive power, so the wizard has to call the power into her presence, then condition it to do what is expected, and then finally to transfer it to the amulet,” Grace summed up the next phase of the process.

“Think of the Flame of Focus,” Grace told him.

“Why?” Grange asked in surprise.  “I can summon the energy without it.”

“What you’re going to do now is different,” Grace said impatiently.  “You’re not just going to trick the power into doing what you want.  You’re going to have to call it, then bend it into a pre-conditioned duty, so that you can store it that way.

“It’s much more difficult, and using the Flame allows you to focus your ability to achieve the goal,” she explained.  “So just do this, and then you can try to do it on your own, on your own time, agreed?”

“Agreed,” Grange relented.  He closed his eyes and thought of the Flame of Focus, recreating the image in his own mind, then letting his quest for the power concentrate on the very core of the Flame.

“Call the power to you in the Flame, and hold it there.  Shape it, if you can, as a cylinder, a narrow one that you can feed into the openings in the stone,” she instructed.

Grange heard the words, and found them fascinating.  As he stared into the Flame that was at the center of his imagination’s attention, the words took on a depth and meaning unlike any words before.  They became concepts that became goals that became necessary actions, and he suddenly understood what had to be done.

His vision through his eyes was a distraction, so he closed them, let his breathing and his pulse slow down, then wove his abilities into the concept he wanted the energy to carry out, and enticed the energy into his design.  It seemed like a slow process, as his perception found multiple events happening at once, and he studied them all simultaneously, stretching him beyond his usual limits.  Yet despite the numerous functions, he could feel it progressing, and sensed that his will was creating the outcome he wanted, so that within seconds he had the power prepared to create a shining light, and formed into the cylinder Grace had suggested.

“Now what?” he asked as he opened his eyes, still maintaining the inner control of the energy.

“What?” Grace asked, startled.

“I have the power prepared and in the cylinder shape.  Do I just press it into the pebble?” he asked.

“You can’t have,” Grace said with doubt in her voice and her eyes.

“I did.  I heard what you said to do, and I did it, then I did a little more,” he affirmed confidently.

“Not bloody likely,” she retorted.  “But go ahead.  Go ahead and slide it into the pebble, then tell me when you’re done.”

Grange carefully lifted the pebble from the table with one hand, then held it cupped in both hands in front of himself, and closed his eyes again.  He let his concentration all come to bear once again on the Flame of Focus in his mind.  He imagined the cylinder of power and the pebble coming together, and watched the energy slither into the opening in the pebble as though it were an eel entering an underwater den.  The pebble seemed to simultaneously expand outward and collapse inward, then settled into a calm, placid state.

He felt a ghost of a smile crease his lips.  “Done,” he said as he opened his eyes.

“Done.  You’re done?  The amulet is full of energy and ready to light the room?” Grace asked.

“Go ahead,” she plunged on.  “Put it on the table, then tell it to release the energy.”

Grange placed the pebble down smugly, looking at it with a sense of satisfaction, pleased with what he had accomplished, and equally pleased that he had demonstrated such ability to Grace, just when she had begun to assume a position of superiority.

“Shine,” he said simply.

The pebble held still, and nothing happened.

“Shine,” his voice changed a fraction of an octave, but the pebble still sat unchanged.

“Glow,” he tried a different word, wondering if he had made some simple, inadvertent mistake in the process of considering the word to use.

“Well,” Grace said with a note of insincere sympathy, “we all make mistakes with our first one.”

“Brighten,” Grange tried another word.  He was sure he had done everything correctly with the power.  Whatever the problem was, it had to be something small and simple, like the trigger word.  He had given little thought to the concept, only considering light, but not really designating a trigger word for it, he belatedly realized.

“Brighten,” he repeated.  It seemed correct.  As he tried to recollect exactly what he had thought the word should be, ‘brighten’ seemed like the true word he had in mind.  Except that it didn’t seem to work.  Except, he suddenly realized…

“Fywiogi,” he spoke the word crisply in the ancient language of the power.  As soon as the last syllable escaped his lips, the pebble began to glow, growing into a brightly shining spot on the table that made both Grace and Grange squint their eyes, then hold their hands in position to shield them as the pebble gave off a steady, brilliant light.

“Great powers all around!” Grace exclaimed.  “That is incredible.”

The pebble began to dim, and its brilliance receded rapidly, so that they were able to drop their hands, then open their eyes and watch the bright white light become a small red glow before it was completely gone.

“You did very well,” Grace said in a shaken voice.  She stood up.  “That will have to conclude our lesson for today.  We need to go get ready for the musical performance.”  She turned and walked rapidly away without waiting for him.

Grange watched her go, then he stood up.  He looked down at the pebble in the table, just an unassuming small item, once again unremarkable to anyone except him. He picked the pebble up with his thumb and his finger, then dropped it in his pocket, and walked out of the shed.

“Grace said to ask you,” Astel greeted him at the kitchen door to the embassy.

“Ask me what?” Grange asked.

“What was that glow?  What wizard thing did the two of you do out there?” the page asked.  “It cast shadows on the walls inside the embassy,” he noted.

“It was just a simple test,” Grange said.  “It was my first time to try something, so we didn’t know how bright it would be.  Everything’s done now,” he said, then walked past the boy and up the stairs to his room.

They would have to leave soon, he realized.  Grace had been justified in walking away in that sense.

He pulled the pebble out of his pocket again and looked at it once more.  He had time to recharge it with more power, he decided.  And as he prepared to work on his creation a second time, he would make an effort to reduce the brightness of the light, and to prolong the length of the glow instead of the intensity.  He placed the pebble on the table in his room, and sat in the warm air as he focused on his activity, filtering out all other sounds and motions and noises around him while he tried to replicate and change the steps he had gone through in the small shed in the garden.

Several minutes later he finished, and smiled a slight smile once again as he stared down at the pebble on his table, until he suddenly sensed the presence of someone standing behind him.

He whirled around and saw the seamstress, Rigan, holding an armload of new clothing as she studied him with her own mysterious smile.

“You are doing one of your magical wizard things, aren’t you?” she asked as she stepped forward and extended her arms.

Grange reached and took the new clothing from her.  “I was just experimenting with a new lesson I was taught today,” he replied.

“Keep practicing,” she laughed, “and be creative,” she added, then turned and left the room.

Grange watched her walk away, slightly shaken by her presence, as always.  He then looked down at the clothing she had brought, and saw an appealing shirt with black and white stripes that he decided to wear.  He changed clothes, placed the pebble-now-an-amulet in his pocket, and went down stairs to the street level of the house, where he found Lord Bartar and Astel sitting in the office, talking about the embassy accounts.

“You and Grace will be taken in a large vessel to the lepers’ island,” Bartar confirmed the plans for Grange and Grace.  “After you perform your music, the two of you and those who you’ve healed will ride in the ship back to the palace, where you’ll be presented to the queen’s court along with your healed patients.

“We’ll be there as well, by then,” Bartar continued.  “Then there will be a small, private dinner with the queen and her closest advisors and our Palmland group, which is where we’ll have the chance to press our case for better trade between our nations.

“You and Grace,” the nobleman nodded at the girl, who appeared in the doorway just then, “have found a wonderful way to gain the queen’s attention.  Thank you for making this possible,” he smiled at the two apprentices.

“We need to be on our way,” Grace said.

“We’ll see you at the palace, as planned,” Astel said as he stood in acknowledgement of Grace’s arrival.

Grange and Grace walked in silence all the way to the docks, without any conversation, until Grace noticed that Grange has unconsciously plucked his amulet-pebble from his pocket and was tossing it in the air as he walked along.

“Is that the pebble you used in the garden house?” Grace asked.  “Did you do something else to it?” she probed when he nodded yes.

“I charged it with more light energy,” he admitted.

“Just like that, twice in one afternoon.  It took me a year of practicing before I made my first amulet,” she sighed despondently as they arrived at the dock, while Grange self-consciously pocketed the pebble.

“We all have our own talents,” he tried to console her.

“Oh, shut up, Grange,” Grace said without bitterness, and they proceeded to climb down into the waiting boat, with a crew of twelve waiting at the oars, and a number of empty benches waiting to carry the newly-cured lepers on their return trip from their exile.

“Crew, commence the journey,” a man sitting in the back of the boat said as soon as Grange and Grace were seated.  The men began rowing smoothly, and the broad, shallow shell moved briskly across the harbor, then out to the shallow sea waters beyond, as they skirted along the coast on the way to the island.  Minutes later they arrived at the dock and Grange and Grace left the boat.

“I was told to remain in the boat and wait for you to return with any passengers you thought should be brought back,” the coxswain told the two wizards.

“We’ll be back in an hour or so with some passengers,” Grace confirmed.  She held out her hand in a formal gesture, and gave Grange a significant look, so that he offered her his arm, and they walked stiffly off the dock and into the forest that covered the trail they would climb up the hill.

As soon as they were out of sight of the dock, Grace released her hold on Grange’s arm.

“What was that about?” he asked.

“I wanted the rowers to believe that we are unified and powerful,” she answered.  “We’re going to be bringing former lepers into the boat with them, so they have to believe that we are strong and in control and to be obeyed without question,” she told him.

He squinted as he considered her logic, but they walked up the hillside, and returned to the stony shelf they had stood upon just days before when they had performed.

An audience was already waiting for them, word of their return and approach having spread quickly among the residents of the island.  The crowd was much larger than the crowd they had seen before, three times as large perhaps, Grange guessed.  Some members of the audience had the look of complete health, presumably the listeners who had attended their first performance at the village.

But there were others who had clearly not attended, people who had horrific and gruesome cases of leprosy, advanced cases that had terribly altered their appearance.  They were the people who must have previously avoided being seen by others, the most advanced cases who were simply passing time until they died, perhaps, embarrassed by their appearances, or perhaps afraid of the reaction their appearance would provoke. 

Afraid, except in the case of another performance of the miraculous music that seemed to take away the incurable disease, the slow and painful death sentence that hung over the heads of the inhabitants of the island.  It sounded too good to be true, except that the evidence was walking among them, people whose symptoms had disappeared or been reversed – able to come and testify to the impossible cure that had happened.

There was hope in the eyes of the audience members, Grange saw as he pulled his flute out of his pocket.  There was also fear, fear of disappointment, perhaps.  He didn’t want to disappoint them in any way.