Gemworld (23 page)

Sal pulled up hard on the reins, and the pegasus evaded the sphere easily, sweeping back down into pursuit. He could just make out the highest of Schel Veylin’s thick spires in the distance, minuscule white dots standing out against the flat green canopy of the Vale. He judged that they were still a good hundred miles off or so, but that was less than a day’s travel at the rate they were going. And every mile was drawing him further from the battle at Caravan. He shifted to emerald again and wielded, giving his mount an extra burst of speed, and dove for the granite.

The mage looked over his shoulder and saw Sal nearly upon him. Throwing up a hand, he wielded, launching another sphere behind him. Sal was able to sweep to one side, the ball of granite missing him by a few scant inches that time. Switching again to Sapphire, Sal showered the granite with needles of ice. The granite threw up his hand to shield his face, but his mount took the brunt of the damage, slowing it further. Sal, who was right behind the mage and above, felt the sting of the ice as well, but gravity carried him still closer.

Aiming, the granite wielded yet again. This time luck was with him, and Sal’s mount took the attack squarely on the nose. The horse’s head exploded, drenching Sal with gore and bone chips.

The dead pegasus pitched forward, its wings folded by the crush of the wind. Seizing his last chance to take the granite, Sal threw himself haphazardly from the dead mount. Momentum carried him forward just enough to catch the granite’s horse around the fetlock. His own mount crashed through the treetops below, the snapping of the ancient branches sounding out loudly over the howl of rushing wind.

Surprised at the unexpected weight, the granite’s horse screamed its protest, bucking sharply. Both Sal and the granite were tossed from the horse, and sent pinwheeling into the forest canopy.

The thick, springy upper branches whacked Sal as he fell, flipping him this way and that as he made his long, painful way down. His leg stuck in the fork of a branch, and it brought him to a bone wrenching halt. He bellowed his pain and lost concentration, his blue tinged vision clearing as the sapphire magic slipped from him. Swinging there by his broken and dislocated leg, half-blind with pain, he looked “up” to see his opponent’s fate. On the ground many feet below lay the granite, his body twisted into several impossible angles.

Sal fought nausea and unconsciousness. Waves of dizziness swept over him has he worked himself into a sitting position, just enough to pry his leg loose. He drew together the tattered pieces of his concentration long enough to touch Sapphire, and he watched as the vision in his left eye went a faint blue. He wielded, and was relieved to see the ground below him fluff up with powder-fine snow. Free of the limb, he let himself drop into the snow, sending flurries up around him as he hit.

He tried to pull himself out of the snow, but failed as he reached the end of his strength. Reaching out to the emerald magic, he touched it briefly, only to lose it again in his weakness.

“All this way,” he panted. “A rain of bullets, a blown-out eye, a week in prison, a dang stage coach falling apart around me, a rock growing in my skull, a thousand screaming mages, and a fall from ten stories up. And what’s gonna kill me? Shock and hypothermia.”

He tried to laugh, but only produced a blood choked gurgle.
If God decides it’s time to take me out, that’s fine by me. I got nothing to complain about. I guess there’s only so many times a man can survive the impossible
.

Thinking that thought, he slipped into oblivion, daring the elements to do their worst.

***

Jaren hunkered down behind an overturned wagon to catch his breath.
The battle is going well
, he tried to remind himself. But his eyes betrayed him. Amidst the carnage, he spied yet another wave of invaders swarming down the ridge.

Blessed Crafter, Sal ran off into
that
?

Jaren surveyed the area at the base of the ridge. The ice wall was all but melted now, the thick glass shield driven into the muddy sludge by the press of a thousand feet. In some places, the shield had broken, though not in small enough pieces to be used as weapons. That wasn’t to say that they weren’t dangerous, especially if one were unlucky enough to step between the razor-sharp edges. More than one invader had pulled his leg from the mud, only to find it bit off at the ankle.

The emerald judged that it would only be a matter of seconds before the next wave crossed the slushy mess. Sighting a nearby ruby, Jaren whistled, catching his attention. He pointed at the muddy soup, then at his own eyes.

The ruby grinned wickedly as he took the emerald’s meaning, and barked an order to a trio of rubies further down from him. In concert, they turned their burning eyes upon the mud. The effect was instantaneous.

Steam billowed in a huge cloud as the mud superheated, glowing an ominous red. Those unfortunate individuals who had been running full tilt down the ridge met magma rather than mud. The screams of the dying would haunt Jaren for months, but the command had achieved the desired result.

Drawing a breath, he launched himself from the wagon and ran off to find Retzu under what cover the steam cloud provided.

Enchanted arrows and magic bolts flew overhead as Jaren ran, calling to mind stories that Sal had told him concerning embattled cities in his own world, with such odd names as Mogadishu and Jerusalem. Jaren ducked and dodged around anything that would offer a moment’s respite, often stumbling into messengers running the other way with orders. One such runner told Jaren that Retzu had fallen back to what remained of the village green, and was commanding the battle from there.

Jaren dashed into the street and sprinted for the green, fire and lightning exploding around him every step of the way. As he reached the dais, a near miss struck the ground at his feet, launching him into the air.

He was caught mid-flip by unseen hands, and was held for a moment, suspended over the green. The unseen hands carried him to cover behind the dais where he was set safely down near a young amethyst. As he touched down, Jaren felt the grip release him. The amethyst’s flaming violet eyes dimmed as he released his magics. Looking around, Jaren found Retzu and his company of commanders hunkered near by.

“Good of you to join us, milord mage,” the assassin quipped. Retzu and his commanders were hunched over a map hastily scrawled in the dirt, apparently taking advantage of the lull between messengers to discuss their battle strategies.

“Yeah, well, I was busy,” the mage returned casually has he shuffled over.

“As I was saying, our forces are hemmed in here, here, and here,” he said, using a dagger to indicate various locations on the map. “And they’re entrenched here and along the ridge, and have moved in over here.”

“So we’re stuck,” Menkal summarized bluntly. “They essentially have us surrounded. No way to advance, no retreat.”

To anyone else, he would appear to have completely given up, but the assembled minds knew better. The sapphire was playing his role as an intellectual catalyst to the hilt, stating the obvious so that they didn’t need to waste precious time dwelling on it.

Retzu ignored the negative comment, and instead turned to Jaren. “Since you’ve decided to drop in—pardon the pun—you might as well be of some use. What have you seen?”

The emerald, still panting from his run, vainly licked dry lips. “Probably nothing you don’t already know. They still have a lot of Reds and Violets, one or two Greens. Thankfully, I haven’t seen any Granites remaining. I think we got all of them. The mundane guards are blocked by a lava flow—don’t ask—but that won’t hold them long.”

“We’ve got to get behind them somehow, attack them from their flank,” Retzu said to no one in particular.

“Levitation?” the young amethyst suggested.

Retzu shook his head. “We don’t have enough amethysts to carry a large enough group. Besides, we’d be out in the open, defenseless. They’d pick us off like so many quail.”

Jaren agreed. “Our people would have to be grouped together for you to levitate them all, and it would only take one well-placed lightning bolt to fry the lot. Too bad Sal’s not here,” he sighed. “He’s quite resourceful.”

“I was meaning to ask you about him,” Retzu said.

The emerald shrugged. “The last time I saw him, he was leading a charge up the ridge. That’s where the Earthen Rank stationed their mounted support mages. While the mundanes, emeralds, and rubies advanced, a few rubies stayed behind with their amethysts and granites...” He paused, something clicking in his mind.

Granites...

Granite!

“I’ve got an idea.”

***

“You’re insane!” Keth accused, unconsciously wincing at the boom of a nearby lightning strike.

Jaren started to explain his plan again when Menkal spoke up. “Look, we know you haven’t been properly trained, but right now we have no other option. You have the ability, and that’s what counts. How do you think the first mages learned? Necessity and imagination.”

“I don’t know,” the granite said dubiously.

Irritated, Senosh grabbed the granite’s arm and pulled him close. “What’s the worst that could happen, boy?” the ruby demanded, his gemstone eyes flashing blood red within their ebony border. “We might die. Might. But if you
don’t
give it a go, we die for certain. If even one of those support mages get back to the Highest, we could be seeing reinforcements on our doorstep in—what? A week or so? What about a division of granite soldiers? They could be here in less than a day. If we are ever to escape before the second wave comes—”

“Alright,” Keth said through his teeth, wrenching his arm from the ruby’s grip. “Alright, I’ll do it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Hastily, Retzu, his commanders, and the mages formed a circle around Keth, locking hands on one another and on the granite mage. Now that his idea had actually taken life, Jaren was having second thoughts, though he refused to voice them. Grimly, he swallowed what bile threatened to make its way to his mouth and looked around the circle. Not surprisingly, he saw a similar fear etched into every face. Menkal’s mustaches trembled. Retzu licked his lips nervously. Even Senosh’s ebony skin was ashen with fear. A dozen faces, leaders and volunteers all, shared a look of barely contained terror.

Except for one. The man in the center was the picture of grim determination.

The granite’s eyes were closed in concentration. Occasionally, the muscles in his face would give an involuntary twitch. His grip would tighten on the shoulders of the men he touched. His arm bunched with building tension.

Jaren heard a grinding sound. At first, he thought it was the granite gnashing his teeth. But a quick glance around told the emerald the real story.

Beneath the group, the ground rippled, rocks and dust flowing from Keth’s feet in ripples. Wave followed wave, lapping over Jaren’s feet like water.

Water?

As he watched in horror, the emerald’s feet disappeared into the ground.
Melted
into the ground, he would later amend. His ankle followed, then his shin. With the agonizing slowness of a toddler taking his first faltering steps, Keth lowered the circle of men into the ground.

Air drove from Jaren’s lungs as his chest became one with the earth. Try as he might, he couldn’t draw another breath. He panicked, struggled to free himself from the death grip his neighbors has on his hands. This proved fruitless. Already one with the earth—and his neighbors!—he could no more remove his fingers than he could fill his lungs. Unable to stop it, he watched as the ground steadily swallowed him whole.

As the earth covered his head, Jaren realized that he could “sense” the ground around him. He couldn’t see, of course, but he could feel every bit of grit that mingled with his body—with every body within the circle, in fact. It was a most curious sensation, startling him out of his panic. Now clear-headed, he discovered something else. Though still unable to breathe, it occurred to him that he didn’t
need
to. It was as if the granite’s magic had turned them all into living stone. Knowing what little he did about granite magic, it made a bizarre kind of sense.

Jaren sensed movement. Faster than he could track, soil and rock moved through his body. It took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t the dirt that was moving. It was him. He was struck with awe as he took all these new sensations in. He’d heard about such travel among granites. It was the basis of his whole plan, why they were all there together with Keth. But to actually experience it...? That was quite another matter entirely.

As swiftly as it began, the movement stopped. The group emerged from the dirt much easier that they went in. Jaren counted that to Keth’s growing confidence in his own abilities. Once more whole, the shaken men continued to hold each other’s hands in a death grip until, finally, they opened their eyes and saw that the ride was over. Ever the explorer, Jaren was flushed with the wonder of enlightenment, as was Menkal. All the others were simply flush with relief. Including Keth.

The granite bristled at any attempts at thanks or congratulation, shouldering them all with cold practicality. “It had to be done” was all he would say.

Retzu took in their surroundings. “We’re at the far base of the ridge,” he said. “Japheth, can you see anything?”