Melting Stones (11 page)

"I would like to have a little water poured over me, thank you, Jayatin." Luvo stepped down from my back.

As Jayat fumbled with the stopper on his water skin, I whispered to Luvo, "You were afraid. I could feel you, very far back in my magic. You were
afraid
."

"Do you know where you were, Evumeimei? You were
below
. Not in the place where all rocks are melted down, but in a higher chamber to that place. I do not understand how so many spirits of molten stone have come so close to our world, but they should not be here. Their touch on our kind—yours and mine alike—is death."

"But Evvy's still here. She's alive." Jayat carefully poured a trickle of water over Luvo. "Tell me when you've had enough."

"Thank you, Jayatin," said Luvo. "I am not a creature of fancies, yet I cannot rid myself of the idea that my skin is hot and stretched. The water is very good, and also sufficient. Evumeimei went as a creature of magic. Because she is not from that world, she can shield herself. I cannot."

"It cost me." I sat up again. My hair fell all around my face. I had to do something about it. The stuff was down to my waist and flopping everywhere since Jayat removed my headcloth. I tried to lift my arms to see if I could wrap the cloth, but my shoulders knotted with pain.
That
wasn't going to work.

"Had you been stone, it would not have cost you, Evumeimei. It would have killed you."

"Instead it milked every drop of magic I have." I couldn't even braid my hair.

Jayat saw. "My master has arthritis. And I have little sisters. Now, shall you have a turban like Azaze Yopali, or a band and braids, or a wrap like your old one?"

"Anything, as long as it's out of my way." I rested my face on my hands. Jayat wrapped my hair in my cloth, and coiled and tied it as I would do it. I said, "You didn't have to stay here. You must have been frightfully bored."

"Tahar gave me spells to practice. I did that for a while. Then I gathered some mushrooms and herbs she's been wanting. And there are garnets around here I can sell down in Sustree, for extra cash. Once you were back in your body, Master Luvo told me about where he's from, and the things you have done since you met. Your friend Briar sounds like quite the fellow."

"He's usually the first to tell you so, too." I sat up and managed to plant my feet on the ground, which was a start. "Are we ever going to meet Master Tahar?"

"Not if she has anything to say about it. Her attitude is that it's bad enough the people who live here know who she is and bother her." Jayat frowned, then said, "You know, Master Luvo
could
mean the source of the heat that feeds the hot springs."

"What?" Maybe the time underground had slowed my brain. I couldn't understand what he was talking about.

"There are hot springs on the far shore of the lake from Moharrin. People go there for curative baths, or to get warm when the winter's really cold. My master says they draw their heat from deep within the earth. That's probably what you found." Jayat hung the lantern on a tree branch and looked at me. "Can you ride? I'm starting to get really cold, and you have to face her sometime. I can maybe smuggle you into Oswin's house, or the barn behind the inn, if you'd rather face her tomorrow."

I lurched to my feet, hanging on to the rocks for balance. "No. If she has to wait to tell you what she thinks of you, she just gets worse. And she's right to be angry. I don't know what possessed me. It wasn't ghosts."

"It was the heat fever." Luvo shifted on his feet. "The excitement of magma and the earth's strength, so close to the air. I felt it in the closed-off sources of the power you had once used, Jayatin, but I did not recognize it, at first, because it was so faint. I knew it a little better in the dead trees canyon, because it was so fresh there. By then it had moved into Evumeimei's blood. When I saw it in her, my fear overtook me."

"But the ghost of power like that can't hurt you, Master Luvo. Can it?" Jayat levered me into my horse's saddle with a grunt. I nearly slid off the other side. Then I tangled one arm in the reins and grabbed the saddle horn with the other. The horse looked back at me. I saw white around its eye in the dim lamplight.

"I'm sorry." I patted the animal's neck clumsily. "I don't blame
you
for being angry, either."

Jayat didn't trust my control over my body. He walked around the horse to make sure my feet were in the stirrups. Under the circumstances, I was kind of grateful. My feet seemed far away and not exactly connected to me. Once I was settled, he set Luvo's pack on his own saddle, then put Luvo on it.

"Oh." I felt like an idiot. "
That's
how you got here."

"Actually, I found him halfway down the road." Jayat secured the pack to his saddle. "He ran after you. I was held up because I had to ready my horse and bring your gear." He took down the lantern.

"Thank you," I said. "And how did you know we'd need a light?"

"I didn't. Your Rosethorn sent it with one of the boys from the inn. Is she going to beat you?"

We rode out onto the road as I goggled at his back. "Does your master beat
you
?"

"She did when I was younger and wouldn't mind her," Jayat explained, "or snuck off to go fishing. That's what masters do."

I sat back. I cringed as my hips told me I might
think
they had forgiven me for that afternoon, but they hadn't. Jayat was right. My owner had beaten me when I was a slave, after all. Jooba-Hooba, who was going to be my first master in stone magic, would have beaten me. I bet he would have smiled as he did it. The lady, who tried to buy me for her house and her pet gang, would have beaten me. No, she would have
had
me beaten. She wouldn't have soiled her hands with me. But Briar, who never hit me, kept me away from the lady and Jooba-Hooba.

And Rosethorn?

"She'll set me to weeding acres of gardens for weeks." I tried to sit more comfortably and failed. "Or put me in a small, hot room to cook up nasty messes that have to be stirred all the time. Or cook nasty messes part of the time, and dip candles part of the time. But she would never ever beat anybody."

"But she seems
so fierce
," Jayat said with awe.

"Have you ever made soap?" I asked. "Let me tell you, a temple needs a
lot
of soap. She's quite happy to tell them you'll make it
all
. You watch. I'll be on my way to Winding Circle tomorrow, with orders to make soap and dip candles
forever."

The ground floor of the inn was lit up. I didn't wait for Jayat to help me dismount. There was no point in trying to put it off. I slid out of the saddle, hung on for a moment until my body stopped cramping, then lurched inside. I ignored Jayat's shout for me to wait while he saw to the horses. I didn't want him to witness Rosethorn's laying down the law to me. He was bound to hear some of it, but it would be nice if he wasn't there for it
all
.

Inside, the important folk were seated near the hearth fire, as they had been the night before: Rosethorn, Fusspot, Oswin, Azaze. Other grown-ups from the town were there, too. Splendid. More witnesses for my disgrace.

"Well. Her Highness graces us with her presence." Myrrhtide looked as if he'd just swallowed the Midsummer goose whole. "I suppose you're just bubbling over with excuses, aren't you? They won't do you any good this time."

Rosethorn looked at me and folded her hands on the table. There was no way to tell what she was thinking.

"I'll go pack." I headed for the stair, trying not to stumble. If she wasn't even going to speak, I was in worse trouble than I thought. There was no point trying to explain when she was that angry. I may be silly and I may be reckless, but I know better than to make excuses. Sometimes I have to keep my mouth shut and take what's coming.

And maybe, just maybe, she didn't want to humiliate me in front of Myrrhtide. Perhaps she would task me in private, when she came up to bed.

"It appeared to me as if she were under some kind of compulsion," Oswin said thoughtfully.

I froze with my foot on the stair, holding on to the rail. Why did Oswin stick his neb in, as Briar would say? If Rosethorn despised people who were supposed to obey and didn't, she hated mages who couldn't control their magic even more. I turned my aching head to glare at Oswin.

"Look at her." Oswin talked as if I wasn't trying to burn holes in his face with my eyes. "She's pale and sweating. She was that way at midday. She was fidgeting then, too—unable to sit still. She gnawed her nails to the quick by noon today. They weren't chewed at all on the way here from Sustree. Her lips are dry and cracked. She looks as if she had been taking poppy or was under a spell of compulsion—"

"Nonsense," Rosethorn told him coldly.

Jayat came in. He put a hand under my elbow to help me stay on my feet. I tried not to lean on him too much. I have my pride.

"You told Dedicate Initiate Myrrhtide Evvy's behavior is highly unlike her. Surely you'll let her explain before you send her packing." Oswin was mad-brained stubborn, to keep hammering with Rosethorn, Fusspot,
and
me glaring at him.

"He's right." Now Jayat had to pitch in. "I was with Evvy on the road up from the seaport. She's been different today, and it only started after we left Oswin's pond. On the road she acted like any girl—all right, one who's
really
fond of sparkly rocks, but she was fun. She wasn't short-tempered or, or strange. Dedicate Rosethorn, you acted yesterday as if she behaves that way all the time, as far as I could tell. If she was normal then, today she was someone else."

If I ever got on my knees for anyone, I would have knelt right there. I would have knelt and begged these two not to help. I didn't want Rosethorn angrier with me than she already was. I'd messed up. They were complicating it.

"She was seized by the earth's power." Because Luvo stood on the floor beside Jayat, it seemed as though his voice came from nowhere. Everyone but Rosethorn glanced around, startled. Rosethorn looked straight at Luvo. "She traced the remains of the earth lines that Jayatin spoke of, seeking their remnants in the soil. Then she found new, greater lines." With a grunt Jayat set Luvo up on the steps so he could be seen.

I didn't dare move. Luvo scares me when he's like this, when he speaks with the age of his mountain within him. In Yanjing, his mountain supports huge glaciers. There are villages and forests on his flanks, and deep, ice-cold caverns in his depths. People worship him as a god.

Luvo didn't look at me. He was talking to the others. "She followed the earth lines into the heart of this island. She used their power to go far deeper than she could venture with only her own strength. In a chamber full of magma, she met the creatures that inhabit it, the children of the earth's heart. They captured her. They kept her for hours until Evumeimei escaped. She did so not only with her magic, but with all of the power she had collected over the course of the day, power that had clung to her as she examined the failed earth lines. She did it with
the power that made her act so strangely
. If she had not had it, she would have perished alone under the earth. I could not help her. I would have been devoured, had I followed her. You mages would not have survived the first thirty feet, even traveling as pure magic, as Evumeimei and I do. The force of this magic would have crushed you. It nearly crushed my young friend."

Something he had said itched my brain. He said the power clung to me. I sat on the step closest to my rump. My knees didn't want to keep me upright anymore. What was the idea that had caught my attention? Something about power clinging, and sticking?

I looked up. "I know why the plants and water have been going bad."

"I don't believe this!" Fusspot slammed his cup down, slopping tea on the table. "She gets her animate rock to plead her case, she plays the tottering invalid to get our sympathy—"

"Be still." Azaze spoke with a voice like ice. "Unlike you, she has an idea. You have only tests you wish to perform." She looked at me and twitched her fingers in a "come on" gesture.

I glanced at Rosethorn. She nodded.

I opened my mouth. Words, an avalanche of them, spilled onto my tongue. "In the gorge with all the dead trees, I felt the skin of the rocks was touched by bad air. There was poisonous stuff in it, chemicals that stuck to the rocks after it passed. Under the ground, the poison was all around the rocks on either side of the crack in the earth—it was left behind when the bad air passed through the crack." I started to cough. My throat was dry as chalk. Jayat went to the kitchen and brought me a cup of mint tea. I sipped it until my coughs stopped, while Jayat went to stand with the kitchen maids. "When I was in the big chamber with all the magma and the rock spirits, I got adopted by two. I named one Flare, and the other was Carnelian. They didn't have names of their own. They wanted me to play with them. They dragged me all over the place. Everywhere they went, Flare and Carnelian yanked me up into these cracks. They couldn't make themselves as thin as me because they were solid magma. They could melt part of the cracks, but they could only force them open so far. They want out of that chamber
really
bad. They keep saying it like it's their prayers—they want
out
. And they keep trying. In the chamber they were surrounded by wavy lines, like you see coming off of cobblestones on really hot days. I think those wavy lines were the poisoned air, and the poisoned air is the only part of them that can escape through the cracks." I finished my tea. "The last thing they did with me, I
think
they tried to jam all three of us straight through the top of Mount Grace."

My hands started to shake. I put my teacup next to Luvo so they wouldn't see, and tucked my hands in my armpits. "That was… bad. I got away, finally, and escaped through one of the cracks we had tried before. The stones in it were coated with poison. The stuff that's killing the water and plants comes out ahead of Flare and Carnelian. The rest of the magma spirits can't get out, not yet, but the poisons in their air can. If they followed Carnelian and Flare, they could kill this whole island." I opened my mouth to tell them more, but the word avalanche was over. Trembling, I waited for Myrrhtide to start on me again. I could feel sweat trickle down my back. My head pounded.