Gemworld (6 page)

Sal just stood there for long moments letting the sun warm his face, unfettered by iron bars. His eyes were dazzled by the brilliance of the mid-morning sky and slow to adjust, his left eye a bit slower than his right. Blinking, he looked to his friends and the four mages—one was a woman—and saw his awe and relief mirrored on their faces as well.

Even Reit looked less careworn as he spoke to Sal. But only slightly. “You’re a free man, Salvatori” said the rebel leader, in a voice more gracious and respectful than any politico Sal had ever seen. “Go with my blessing, my friend, though I would warn you not to return to Schel Veylin. I’m sure you understand that recapture would not be your only concern.”

Indeed he did. Sal had seen Duffer’s face, as well as Laryn’s. And they had seen his—the only stranger in the ragtag group. Should either of the insiders be captured, Sal would immediately be suspect. He probably wouldn’t live to see the next sunrise.

All of which was a moot point, of course. Sal had no intention of leaving unless he had to. Taking a deep breath to quell a sudden swarm of butterflies, he stated simply, “My friends call me Sal. And I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Reit flicked glance at Jaren, who merely quirked an eyebrow, then turned his attention back to Sal. Apparently, the two had spoken of this possibility before, but no one said anything either in his defense or otherwise. He guessed that nothing had been determined, so he pressed on. “I’d be stupid to go back to Schel Veylin, but I don’t know the area either. And y’all are the closest things I’ve got to friends, so I’d say my options are pretty clear. I could either wander aimlessly, doing my best to avoid all human contact while at the same time trying to learn the lay of the land, or I could throw myself upon your mercy. I know you got no reason to trust me, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to tag along.”

Another silent conversation, this time including Retzu, who shrugged slightly and then nodded back to Reit. Whatever decision was being made, it was Reit’s to make. “You are... different, to say the least. You don’t carry yourself like a typical Valenese, but neither are you Norean like me. You don’t show any of the cultural trademarks that I’m familiar with. Even your clothes, ragged though they are, are outlandish. To be honest, I don’t know quite what to make of you…” He paused, then added, “…but perhaps that’s not such a bad thing, Sal. You see the world for a unique perspective. I may be able to put that perspective to some use.” That said, he offered his hand, which Sal promptly took up.

“Being with us can be a dangerous business,” the rebel warned.

Sal grinned wickedly. “Trust me, I can do dangerous.”

***

“How could this have happened?” Warden Ter’Nal demanded, glaring at Dunbar. He’d been on duty that night, posted in the Overseer’s building where the detection orb was held, just down the street from the prison proper, so he’d been spared the slit throat his comrades had received. He rubbed the sweat where it dripped down the side of his neck, almost feeling the neat parting that could have been there, through skin and sinew, had it been another night.

“There’s nothing he could have done, warden,” Laryn said, leaping to Dunbar’s defense. He scanned the ground in front of the cell as he talked. “He was no doubt ensorcelled before the escape took place.”

Ter’Nal’s icy glare swept from Dunbar to the mage. The guard’s shoulders slumped in relief. The warden squared his shoulders back in a clatter of armor that was largely ceremonial in Dunbar’s opinion. “How would you know?” the warden sneered.

The emerald stooped to point out something that both the warden and Dunbar had missed. “These rust fragments here... On this bar to the right, they fall to the outside of the cell. Same as this one in the center,” he said, indicating the stumps of the missing bars. “But on this one, the rust falls on the inside.”

The warden was not impressed. “But ain’t that what you Greens are good at? ‘Vitality and decay’ or some such?”

The mage winced visibly at the informal reference to his Emerald Order. Had it been uttered by a friend, the term would have been acceptable, even preferred in certain settings, but in this instance, “Green” sounded derogatory even in Dunbar’s ears, a disrespectful jab at the mage who would dare question the warden’s powers of observation.

Laryn clenched his jaws, no doubt biting back an oath that would likely be… unproductive to the situation. He straightened, rising to full height within his green-with-gold-trim robe, and cast his fiery emerald gaze at the warden. “Yes, but you miss my point,” he hissed with exaggerated politeness. “Only one bar was snapped from within the cell. The others were snapped from without.”

Slowly, the warden caught on. “You mean to tell me that—”

“The prisoners had help,” interrupted the man in a brown hooded cape, who had remained silent until now. “Probably three or four mages total, Greens or Blues”—this time said with the proper respect—”in order to keep the other inmates subdued while they worked.”

“B-b-but the orb-”

The hooded man cut the blustering warden off with a wave of his hand. “If your man was ensorcelled, your detection orb could have outshone the sun for all the good it would have done him. Remember, two of the escaped prisoners are that rebel leader and his mage friend. I assure you that if they had help from outside, the guards were their first target.”

The hooded man turned from Ter’Nal to Dunbar, all but forgotten in this exchange. He casually pulled back the hood of his cloak, revealing a face seemingly chiseled from the solid rock his eyes resembled. A polished grey-brown, with tiny black specks, those eyes held no emotion whatsoever. No anger. No malice. Nothing but cold logic and efficiency. Dunbar felt his bowels liquefy.

“Tell me, Guard Dunbar, where is the Overseer’s post?” His tone was that of a man asking the time.

“Down the street, milord mage, tending the orb out of the range of any mages that might be imprisoned,” Dunbar answered, swallowing bile that threatened to deposit itself at the granite mage’s feet.

“And are you allowed to sleep while in the Overseer’s building?”

“No sir!” Dunbar answered vehemently. “In fact, orb duty is rotated every watch cycle to ensure that a fresh pair of eyes is always on the orb.”

“I see. And what watch cycle were you?”

“Third, milord mage.”

“So fourth watch never came to relieve you,” the granite mage stated rhetorically, “giving the escapees three hours at least, maybe as much as six, to make good their escape. What of the guards in the shack? Do they not standing watch outside? No regular rounds? Not even a single man out of the entire night shift to conduct continuous patrol?”

The blood drained from Dunbar’s face. It was a security issue he’d personally taken up with Ter’Nal a hundred times. But the warden was a proud man, set in his ways, and he threatened Dunbar with his own prison sentence if he persisted in being insubordinate. Marshaling what little remained of his flagging courage, Dunbar set his chin and drew himself straight enough to look the granite mage in the eye. He’d followed every procedure to the letter. The escape was no fault of his, but if he should die for it, there was no way in the Abyss that he’d be meeting the Crafter in a puddle of his own cowardice.

“No, milord mage. It is not the policy of this prison to maintain constant guard outside the shack.” He grit his teeth and prepared his soul to meet the Crafter.

“Policy, you say?” the granite questioned, considering. “And who is it that makes policy, Guard Dunbar?”

Surprised by the question, the guard flicked a glance at Ter’Nal, whose skin had gone a pasty grey. Before the warden could move, the granite mage caught him in his clay colored stare, trapped like a fly in amber. He shot his hand toward Ter’Nal... and it vanished into the warden’s breastplate! The warden’s eyes went wide, his mouth foaming with blood.

With a tearing sound, the mage pulled his blood covered hand from the warden’s chest. To Dunbar’s shock, the breastplate was still whole. But even as he watched, Ter’Nal dropped to his knees, and then keeled over on his side, eyes already glazing. Blood seeped from behind the breastplate, soaking the parched ground beneath the corpse.

The granite mage opened his hand, revealing a heart, still quivering of its own volition. “Mistakes can be forgiven,” the mage said, tossing the heart on the face of its former host. “Careless, however, cannot. See that you surpass your predecessor, Warden Dunbar.” The emphasis on the new rank could not be misread, nor the warning misunderstood.

Dunbar swelled as the mage turned to walk away. Had the new warden not been so fixated on barking his first orders, he might have seen boiling rage flash across Laryn’s features, and then vanish just as quickly behind years of discipline. It would never occur to him that this wasn’t the first time the emerald had compromised his principles for the good of the much-rumored Cause, watched an innocent man—or at least an ignorant one—die in order to maintain Laryn’s image of loyalty to the Highest, and it most assuredly would not be the last.

Not that Dunbar would have suspected Laryn anyway. What? The mage that woke the guard and informed him of the escape in the first place? The one who came to his defense just moments ago, and was ultimately responsible for his long overdue promotion?

Perish the thought.

Sal and his fugitive friends made their way north, following game trails through an area Jaren called the Vale, a vast expanse of woodland surrounding the city they’d escaped from. Never following a single path for very long, they stayed mainly in the brush, forging their way through the woods proper so as to avoid unwelcome eyes. Sal noted that the forest could easily have been any stretch of land in the Deep South. Alabama, Georgia, Florida—the Vale would have fit nicely into the backwater of any of those states. All he needed was a decent hunting rifle and he would have felt right at home.

Rifle…

“Dang it!” Sal exclaimed, and then winced under the sudden pressure of seven sets of eyes. When he spoke next, his voice was decidedly softer. “I forgot to have y’all look for my gun back at the guard shack.”

“Your ‘gun’?” Reit asked.

“Yeah. It’s a standard issue MP5, fully automatic, with…” His words trailed off awkwardly as he realized what he was trying to do. What would these guys know about firearms? “It’s a weapon that fires bu—umm, metal projectiles.” Hopefully they could grasp
that
much.

“Metal projectiles?” Jaren hissed intently. He held a hand up, his forefinger and thumb about an inch apart. “Conical pellets about this long?”

“Yeah! You see it?”

The mage shook his head. “No, but I’m not entirely certain I’d like to, either. You had enough of those pellets in you to make my job very difficult, especially given the nature of our previous residence. You were near death when you were brought to us. I shudder to think of any mundane weapon that could have caused such damage.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t blame you on that one. But it sure would be useful if we ran in to any of them Schel Veylin guards.”

Sal’s fears were quick to take form. As the hours and days passed on their trek through the Vale, they met more and more Veylin patrols, many of which were comprised of “Earthen Rank”, as Jaren called them. Whatever Earthen Rank were, they caused quite a stir amongst the other fugitives. The barest hint of a patrol heading their way sent the group to ground, not to emerge from their hiding places until the patrol was well past. “Just a precaution,” Jaren explained once, then said no more.

Each time they were forced into hiding, the group got quieter, more reserved. The mood of the fugitives became more pensive, tense, reminding Sal of a spring slowly being wound. It was an emotion he was used to. He’d seen similar behavior at his previous duty stations, especially those with a high probability of a combat situation. The mood would eventually get so tense that the group would become self-destructive, with colleagues lashing out in frustration at each other, getting more and more careless until finally something went horribly wrong and the team descended into chaos.

Well, Sal wasn’t about to let that happen. They’d been on a straight, shaded stretch of road for the better part of the afternoon, and not a single word had been uttered save what was absolutely necessary. They needed a diversion in a bad way, something to take their mind off the patrols for a little while. Sal thought for a few minutes about what he should do, how he should go about taking their minds off the present situation. He decided that the best course would simply be use his gnawing curiosity about the world as an excuse to get everyone talking again, and maybe gain a little personal understanding to boot. “So what’s up with this magic thing?” Sal whispered cautiously, drawing withering glares from his companions. “What?” he asked defensively.

Reit looked back toward Jaren and made a few obscure gestures. Whatever the signals meant, Jaren seemed to understand. The mage faced Sal, his green gemstone eyes flaring briefly. All of a sudden, the woods came alive with sound.

No. The sound had always been there. It was just louder now, more distinct.
Neat little trick
, Sal thought in admiration.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he heard Jaren breathe, though the mage barely moved his lips. “I’ve temporarily enhanced your hearing so that we may talk—silently—as we go.”

“Thanks. Sorry for getting loud.”
Loud?
Funny that he should consider a whisper in the middle of the forest as being loud. But whatever Jaren had done to his ears, it made a believer out of him. “And I’m sorry if I offended you back there.”

Jaren’s face shadowed at the mention of the slight, but it quickly faded. “No apologies are necessary. I suppose I should have explained a few things to you when I saw your reaction to healing. I wrote the reaction off to disorientation, you just being awakened from sleep and all. The fault was mine.”

“So magic ain’t spiritual, huh?” It took Sal a moment to even get his mind around that one, let alone believe it. “Where I come from, magic is all like love potions, channeling the dead, demons and stuff. It’s considered unnatural by some, a sin. Or an abomination, I guess you call it.”

Jaren nodded. “Your ‘magic’ indeed sounds very similar to mysticism. The Way of
el
also declares mysticism to be an abomination. But mysticism and gemstone magic are two very different things.”

“How so?”

Jaren frowned, his brows furrowing in thought. It was obvious to Sal that the mage had never before needed to explain the difference between the two. Here in this world, it was just a given.

“Imagine two men, exactly alike in every way, except that one has been blind since birth. Is it mystical that one is blind and the other can see? Not at all. The Crafter granted that one man’s eyes would work, while the eyes of the other would not. Simple as that.

“Magic is much the same way. Some are able to wield the flows of mana—the pure forces of creation—and some are not. Simple. It’s like walking, or picking up a hammer, or lighting a fire, except we do it by manipulating the mana flows rather than by using our arms and legs. It’s not an ability you can gain unless the Crafter gives it to you.

“Mysticism, on the other hand, comes from the Abyss. It does not use mana, but rather bends the world by the power of the spirit realm. Not miracles, mind you. Miracles are spiritual as well, but they are granted by the Crafter Himself. They are His intentional, direct interactions in our physical world, and when granted, they are specifically for His purpose and glory. Mysticism is for the
user
’
s
glory and personal gain. Palm reading, divining the stars, speaking mind to mind, communing with the dead—these are a few of the ‘gifts’ of the Evil One. And to the Evil One they lead in the end. True magic is just a tool, shaping and reshaping our world according to the physical laws that the Crafter Himself had already set into place. Mysticism steps outside those laws at will.”

Sal nodded, starting to catch Jaren’s meaning. “And these Earthen Rank dudes… are they magic users too?”

“Yes,” Jaren nodded. “But they are sworn to the Highest, and as such, do not hold to the same principles as we do. They are trained early on to use their magic as a weapon, and are often recruited so young that they know no other use for it. Sal, how is it that you have no knowledge of this? I mean, even in the Outer Reaches, magic exists. Surely, you would have at least been taught the basic principles, even if you’d never met a mage in person.”

And with that, Sal was caught. He supposed that he could continue to hold back, to offer vague details about his origins, but more and more he realized that he’d need to be honest with his new friends, to trust them, if they were to ever help him get back home.

“You ain’t gonna believe this,” he warned, wincing internally.
The redneck version of
‘
once upon a time
,’ Sal thought wryly. Apparently, Jaren had never heard that joke, for the mage just nodded him on, accepting the warning for what it was.

Taking a deep breath, Sal jumped in. “Here goes... I’m not from this world. At least, I don’t think so. I’m from a place where we’ve built cities hundreds of times larger than Veylin, out of metal and glass instead of wood and clay. We’ve created machines that run without horses, that dive to the bottom of the ocean, that fly...heck, we’ve even gone to the moon! But we don’t have magic, and I ain’t got the foggiest idea how I got here.”

“The moon, eh?” Reit whispered. “Sounds like magic to me.”

Sal sent a sharp look at Reit. How in the world could he hear what he and Jaren were talking about? But the swarthy leader only shrugged, and the reason became clear even before the other spoke. “What, you think I don’t like good conversation?” Retzu and the emeralds chuckled silently. Apparently
everybody
was eavesdropping. “Seriously, though. You’re still a stranger to us. We need to know as much about you as you apparently do about us.”

Sal couldn’t fault him on that, but it still didn’t sit well with him. “That’s cool and all, but next time warn me when I’m about to be on public display.”

“Fair enough,” Reit acceded, then said nothing more.

Which left Sal curious. “What, that’s it? I just said I’m from another world. That don’t sound a bit crazy to you?”

“Why should it?” Jaren asked. “In a reality where every possibility is or can be represented, there is always the possibility of a realm that is bereft of magic. And if that is the case, it certainly seems reasonable that you’d be from that very place.”

“So I’m not crazy,” Sal stated, more to assure himself once more than for their confirmation.

“No, I doubt you’re crazy,” Jaren chuckled near-silently. “Unfortunate, perhaps. Misplaced, certainly. But not crazy. And while I grant you that it is very odd that you should find yourself here, I would not go so far as to say it was impossible or even unlikely. After all, what you might consider impossible would seem to be commonplace in this world,” he added with a wink.

***

Over the next few days, Jaren answered Sal’s questions as best he could, mainly to acclimatize the stranger to his new surroundings. Sal felt more like a sociology student than someone having a real conversation.

At night, though, they would bat around stories of a personal nature; women—-except the female mage Nisa, who would discuss her family—battle, misadventures, what have you. The conversations took much the same slant as those evening powwows back in the prison, except Sal felt comfortable enough now to add his otherworldly perspective to his tales.

“I mean, we
all
warned him, but Boob was dang sure
gonna
buy her a drink if it killed him!” Sal was saying one night, amid uproarious laughter from all except Nisa, who colored a bit at this “Boob’s” impending mistake. Even Reit was doubled over with mirth, valiantly trying to shush his companions, but doing a poor job of it himself. None of them knew who Boob was, or what “tequila” might have been, but they didn’t have to. They knew what was coming, and cruel as it seemed, humiliation was universally funny.

“So there he goes walking up to her, shot glass in hand, and he says ‘Hey baby, what’s your name?’ And in the deepest voice you ever heard, she says ‘Bruce’!” With the punch line went the last of the restraint. Howls of mirth rose up through the trees, startling night birds from their roosts. Even Nisa lost it.

They continued that way for a few more moments. Then memory drew a dark cloud over Sal’s jollity, and his eyes began to fill. “He was a good man, good to his Momma and Daddy. He deserved better than what he got.”

The others agreed—though more for Sal’s sake than for any kinship they might have felt for Boob—and raised their cups in salute to Sal’s fallen brother-in-arms.

“May the Crafter shelter him, and the seed of his memory continue to bear fruit,” Tavin said, his blessing almost sounding like a prayer.

“Let it be so,” the others said as one.

They passed a moment in silence, then Tavin asked, “So how did he die, he and your friends? How did you come to be the only survivor of your fellowship?”

Sal scrubbed a would-be tear from his eye and coughed hard, clearing his throat. “Well, on the night that I came to this world, my team—or ‘fellowship’ or whatever—was sent in to Laos to raid this nut job’s laboratory. He’d been running experiments, dangerous ones that were killing people, and it was our mission to stop him. Among other things...”

“And in this ‘lab-ruh-torrie’, there was a portal to our world?” Nisa asked, roughing her way through the unfamiliar word.

“No, not exactly. See, my team was set up... umm, betrayed... and our target, a guy named Merrick, had men waiting on us. That’s how Boob, Tillman, and Gunter died. Hood too, probably, but if he bought it, I wasn’t there when it happened.”

“Bought what?” Jaren asked, confused.

“Bought the farm,” Sal replied, then caught himself. “Figure of speech, meaning that he died.” Jaren nodded his understanding, though he retained his quizzical expression, eliciting a grin from Sal. In a way, it amused him that no one understood what he was saying. But on the other hand, it was frustrating. Slang was so much a part of Sal’s normal speech that he had difficulty remembering what he needed to translate, and what he did not. Sighing, he moved on.

“Anyway, I’m taking out Merrick’s men from behind this desk. There’s bullets—errr, metal projectiles—whizzing past me right and left, chewing the desk to bits. I figure I’m dead if I don’t do something quick. That’s when I see this scientist guy in a white robe ducking into an office. Well, he looks like a decent bargaining chip—or meat shield, whatever—so I go after him. When he sees me, he pulls this rock thing outta thin air and hits me in the shoulder with it, and… I… what?” He trailed off self-consciously as all eyes sharply fastened on him.