Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (27 page)

And where did this damned mountain come into the
bigger strategy?  Wyman and the others had yet to peel anything loose from the
prisoners there.  Until they knew what it was, what it did and how it did it,
it could be the dark horse that shattered all their careful plans.  Marik
returned downstairs to lurk by the scrying room’s rear wall, watching the
geomancers work the puzzle, a dark glare on his face.

Disjointed facts swirled in his head.  The last
eightday since returning to Thoenar…the diorama, the ambush by the king’s
seneschal, Knight-Marshal Tybalt’s insulted irritation, trying his best to act
like he knew what in the lowest hell he was doing, finding Rail when he least
expected it, the last two nights with Ilona…his head contained a whirlpool
where colors from each pulled away from their original events in liquid paint
lines to form a dizzying spiral where up was left, green was red and myth
reality.

He waited for a full quarter-mark, watching them. 
They each stayed where they were, noses pressed to their individual research
materials.  How, by the gods, did they expect to solve any mystery before
winter when they never talked to each other?  Without communication, they would
end up duplicating each other’s work.

Marik finally had enough.  He marched to the
horseshoe’s bend and slapped a palm flat on the topmost book since he could
only find enough room for a fingertip if he wanted to pound the tabletop.

“Tell me what you know about it so far.”

They exchanged eye contact across the tables.  Inora
spoke for the group.  “We haven’t had time to work out any further problems.  I
hope you aren’t expecting quick resolutions.”

“That’s not what I meant.  I want you to start at the
beginning with the basics.  Why are we so certain geomancy is the force behind
the mountain’s power to fly?  Why not magecraft, or sorcery, or magician’s
spells?”

The silent eye contact started anew.  Marik, having
enough of it, lifted the book in order to slam it down harder.  He pointed at
the man sitting to the window frame’s left side.  “You seem to know a lot,” he
barked.  “Why don’t you begin by explaining it to me.”

He was the scryer warlock, named Shanahan, if Marik
recalled correctly.  Marik would have enjoyed seeing the man cough or splutter
for a response, but that was not in the cards.  “Because geomancy draws its
power directly from the elements.  Simply the act of bringing a stone into the
air means a natural conflict between air and earth.  Magecraft could do it, but
that would require constant energy expenditure.  Spells might generate the same
effect, but again it would require constant use of components.”

“What about permanent enchantment?” Marik
interrupted.  “Magicians are the only magic users that can create permanent
magical objects.  Why can’t a magician do that with the stone in that mountain
the same way he would with…with a bracelet?”

This time one of the witches spoke up.  “Creating a
small
magical item is extremely difficult.  And expensive in terms of components. 
Enchanting an entire mountain…”  She shook her head, gazing through the
window.  “You would need so much in components alone that you could build a
second mountain from them.”

“And sorcery…,” Shanahan picked up.  He nodded at the
twin mystics.

The sister explained.  “Sorcery is the only viable
alternative, except there are problems.  Galton agrees.”

Her brother nodded.  “Galiena is right.”  He nodded
again to punctuate it.  Marik nearly rolled his eyes.

“Very powerful sorcery,” Galiena continued, “
might
account for it.  The strength of the Devil needed to achieve the feat is beyond
imagination, though.”

“It would be impossible to control such a creature,”
Galton added, “if Devils that strong exist in the first place.”

“Which it is extremely doubtful that they do.”

“It would be closer to a god.”

“And our own sorcerers would know about Devils that
strong.”

“One that strong would be controlling all the lesser
Devils across the entire Abyssal Plane, you know,” Galton finished.

“No, I didn’t know that,” Marik muttered.  Matters
involving the workings of Spirits and Devils from alternate planes had never
been a subject of study for him.  He raised his voice to point out, “But the
idea of a flying mountain was supposedly impossible until a short while ago. 
How can you be confident that Devils with that much power can’t be summoned and
controlled?”

“The stronger a Devil is, the harder it is to
control,” Galiena explained.  “And the stronger a Devil is, the higher
intelligence it has.”

“Even if you completely bind a strong Devil,” Galton
pointed out, “the longer it has to examine its bindings, the greater the chance
that it can find ways to break free.”

“Spirits are more malleable and sympathetic to
humans,” she finished, “except they don’t like being forced to a purpose.  And
the strongest Spirits recorded still wouldn’t have the power to do this, even
if they all worked together.”

The eight people looked back at him while he digested
that.  “A sorcerer summons a Devil to accomplish a specific task, right?”

“As long as it is within that Devil’s powers,” Galton
agreed.

“So how about,” Marik mused, “several sorcerers
working together?  Say a dozen, each summoning a Devil within his power to
control.  Then the dozen Devils work together to summon a much stronger Devil
and they work together to bind it.”

“That sounds good,” Galiena countered, “except that
has been tried before.  Devils don’t cooperate willingly on anything.  Forcing
them to work together always ends in disaster.”

“And they’ll deliberately cause as much havoc as they
can get away with in hopes of breaking their own bindings at the same time,”
Galton revealed.  “Devils can’t be trusted at all.  Their nature is chaotic in
the first place, and any bindings they crafted to hold a stronger Devil would
be the same as a rope stuck together with pine tar from a dozen different
segments.”

Galiena needlessly expounded on that.  “One hard tug
would only pull the whole thing apart.”

“That’s under what
we
know how to do,” Marik
shot back.  “Who knows what knowledge the Arronaths have mastered?  Their
sorcery abilities could be miles beyond ours!”

Shanahan resumed the spokesman role.  “That does not
change the fact that Devils so powerful as what we are discussing simply do not
exist anywhere on the Abyssal Plane.  It makes no difference if you are
summoning from Galemar or across the sea.  The Devils spring from the same
source, and one with such power would not have stayed hidden from our sight for
so long.”

Inora made the pronouncement.  “You see that each of
the other three talents would have to work at levels beyond their ability to
achieve the levitation of such a large object.”

“And still, according to you, geomancy shouldn’t be
capable of that either!  Where does that leave us?”  Marik glared at them all. 
“How about blended talents?  For geomancy, let’s see…mystics, witches and
wizards.”

“It’s the same story, just with different colors,” the
second witch stated.  He could not remember their names to save his life.  “The
geomancy might make it easier to accomplish your end, but it would still
require the full powering resources of the secondary talent.”

“We are completely certain on this?”  He cast his gaze
over them each in turn.  “The only possible method to do that,” he pointed at
the scrying window, “is through geomancy.  Pure geomancy.”

“That’s right,” the wizard pompously agreed.  He was a
man named Verge who wore a trimmed beard small enough it looked like an
arrowhead pasted to his chin.  “It’s only a question of
how
they managed
to awaken the aura of stone throughout an entire mountain and control it.  A
thousand strong geomancers would be unable to accomplish it.”

“Hold on,” the second pure geomancer interrupted. 
Marik could remember his name no better than the witches, except he had a vague
feeling it started with an ‘R’ sound.  “We haven’t reached a conclusion on that
issue.  I still think it is far likelier they are using an aura of air. 
Surrounding the mountain with an eggshell of air, and lifting it by shifting
the shell, rather than forcing stone into the sky.”

“That puts earth and air into direct conflict,” Verge
retorted.  “You can’t have air energy touching stone’s flesh and expect it to
remain stable.  We’re talking about an undertaking that already requires massive
power behind it.  You’d be insane to add to the load by forcing opposing
elements to interact at the same time!”

“Flinging stone through the skies has the exact same
counter-elements at play!”

“Please!  The juxtaposition is far less with physical
versus physical than when you have an elemental aura coming into contact with
the physical nature of its opposite.”

Inora silenced them with a curt command when they
looked ready to launch back into a fully fledged debate, saving Marik the
bother of doing it.  He could feel the vein in his left temple throbbing.

“It’s all supposition, is what you’re telling me. 
You’re assuming that geomancy is the power driving it.”

“No,” Inora challenged back.  “The only possibility
with any potential for success is geomancy.  What you see through that window
is the direct result of an elemental alteration.  The easiest, simplest and
most effective means to achieve that is with pure geomancy, which draws its
power through that very medium.”

“Then why don’t you know if it’s using earth auras or
air auras?  From how I understand it, you should be able to tell without
question when you see it.”

“Can you see any auras within that view?”  She crossed
her arms to wait for his reply.

Suspicious, Marik switched over to his magesight, startled
at what he beheld.  The room filled with the purple mists of the etheric
plane’s mass diffusion.  Each wall became jet black.  Except the window became
the true window it was; a hole in the barrier between them and the outer realm
of the palace grounds.  He belatedly realized that the view in the glass, be it
window or mirror, only reflected an image his physical eyes could discern. 
Scrying could not actually stretch his vision into those far corners.

“No,” he admitted.  “I can’t.”

“It is the same with us.  All we can do is estimate
using our knowledge combined with what we see.”

“What, then, do your estimations suggest?”

She hesitated.  Verge did not.  “Unless they have over
a thousand geomancers working tirelessly nonstop every minute of the day, then
they’ve twisted natural laws to generate unbelievable amounts of elemental
power.”

“Codswallop,” barked a witch.  “If you had a thousand
of the best, you’d still never lift an entire
mountain
for the length of
time it takes you to shave your beard every morning.”

“How would you know?” he fired back.  “Your geomancy
couldn’t lift a pebble out of my boot on a good day!”

“Stop it,” Shanahan demanded.  “I refuse to listen to
you bicker the day away again.”

The second witch jumped in.  “If you could find the power
to lift it, that would only be the beginning, don’t you agree?  It looks solid,
but how much extra power would be needed to keep the whole peak from
fragmenting into a million shards once it entered the air?”

“That’s a fair point,” Galiena conceded.

Galton picked up as soon as his sister’s last word
came out.  “Moving the mountain would generate untold amounts of stress pulling
at it from every direction.”

“By rights it should be a pile of rubble on the
ground.”

“Not still in one piece floating in the air.”

Verge glared in annoyance at the twins.  “If you are
already altering the earth properties in the stone, then binding the entire
construct together would be of no consequence.  It would be a natural byproduct
of the earth aura through the entire mountain merging into a single elemental
force!”

“You don’t know that,” Inora insisted.  “And it seems
to me that having so much concentrated earth force focused in one spot should
make it collapse in on itself before long.”

“Not if proper precautions were taken to ensure the
integrity of the earth matrix within the stone.”

“Which would require still deeper power reserves,”
Shanahan argued.  “You’re talking about elemental force beyond what can be
provided by the subject of the alteration.  You’d need twice as much earth aura
as the mountain contains.  Where do you plan to harvest that much earth force?”

“It’s not about power,” Marik shouted, pounding the
book pile so hard he heard an ominous crack from the table beneath.  He’d had
no idea what he would shout until the words burst from his lips, but the moment
he heard them, he sensed the inherent truth.  “Look,” he said when sixteen eyes
turned on him.  “Magic is…”  He stopped to utter a harsh laugh devoid of
irony.  “Magic is not set in stone.”

And indeed it was not.  It was a truth he had learned,
and proven, since his mage talent had awakened.  In fact, within the palace
grounds last summer, Celerity had admitted as much.  What had she said,
exactly?