Wind-Scarred (The Will of the Elements, Book 1) (27 page)

Gaav took a deep breath and blew it out.
Pulling the bed over with one hand, he carefully took a seat, eyes
fixed on the display. He gave a weak laugh. “You know, I honestly
thought you were just out of your mind with the whole Forbidden
City story until right now.”

“
Heh, yeah...wait, you did?” Ezra gave Gaav a confused look.
“Then why did you...?”

Gaav returned Ezra's look, then spoke
slowly, as if to a child, “It was the right thing to do.”

“
Oh,” Ezra looked taken aback, “well, good. I mean, thank you.”
A smile bloomed on his face. “Speaking of the right thing to do,
how much earth can you move?”

==

Mat and Sarah found Ezra just north of town,
engaged in a furtive discussion with Gaav.

“
I'm not doubting that you can move that much safely, but how
are you going to account for the shift of the underlying
layer...”

Gaav cut him off with a wave of his hand,
smiling cryptically. “Have faith.”

“
Faith,” Ezra snorted, “is a placeholder for understanding.
Now, there are things that I don't understand that I'm willing to
take on faith. Super solids. How my brain physically works. Where
dust bunnies come from. But people apparently do this all the time.
You do it all the time! No-one is hiding that knowledge! You have
to understand that when you're displacing that much mass the energy
has to come from somewhere. You can't just expect things to work
like they've been working, you have to learn, discover, examine.
Think like a scientist!”

“
You really hate not understanding things, don't you?” Gaav
chuckled as he glanced over at Mat and Sarah. “Is he always like
this?”

Mat chuckled. “Sometimes he's unconscious. I
hear a firm smack to the head does the trick.” Sarah demonstrated
the smacking technique.

“
Ow,” Ezra rubbed his head, then his eyes lit up, “Oh, good,
you're both here. Listen, we should get everyone outside the town.”
Gaav made a disgusted sound. “Just to be on the safe side.” Ezra
said, a little more loudly than was necessary.

“
Fine, you have ten minutes, I'm not missing breakfast for
this.” Gaav grumbled as he sat down. The earth rose to meet him
halfway, creating a simple chair.

“
Ten minutes...get everyone out...” Mat gave Ezra a concerned
look. “I don't like how this sounds. Sarah, do you like how this
sounds? This doesn't sound good to me.”

“
Hawkins, you still have a fever. What are you doing out here?”
Sarah lifted her foot and regarded it with disgust. “Why are you
standing around in the mud? Did you even sleep?” She shook her head
tiredly. “No, wait... don't answer. I'm afraid of what you might
say.”

“
Come on,” Ezra started pushing his friends back toward the
waking town. “I'll explain on the way.”

Sarah breathed into her cupped hands to warm
them, then looked around at the morning sky and the tree line in
the distance. “It's a nice morning,” she murmured. “We don't get
mornings like this back home. I could get to like this.”

“
Yeah, yeah, it's lovely,” Mat said distractedly. “So he's just
going to lift it up.” He eyed the empty town from the front of the
partially awake crowd of villagers.

“
Yeah, he says he can do it all in one go,” Ezra answered,
sounding doubtful, “but according to my calculations,” he pulled
out his wormhole device and engaged the display, “the energy
required for something like that would be...”

Someone gasped behind them. Sarah somehow
managed to step hard on Ezra's foot, elbow him in the stomach and
slap the back of his head, all while covering the console and
hissing, “Take that out again, and I will shove it so far up your
ass that you won't see it again for a month.”

“
Oh, right, sorry,” he quickly disengaged the hologram and
stashed the technology. “I was just showing...” Sarah glared a
little harder and twisted her heel harder into his foot.
“N-Nothing,” Ezra gulped, “sh-showing nothing.” Mat chuckled under
his breath.

“
All right.” Gaav's voice carried over the crowd. “Let's finish
this and get on with the day.” He knelt down and reverently placed
his hand on the ground, head bowed. As the big man was only a few
feet away, Ezra was close enough to hear him murmur, “Earth,
protector of all, who sustains us when we are weak, grant me
strength to lighten the burdens of those here.” The front few rows
of townspeople whispered, “Let it be so.”

Gaav remained motionless for a solid two
minutes, then suddenly nodded his head and stood. His right foot
lifted and stomped heavily to the ground, then slid outward,
widening his stance as his hands came to rest at waist height,
palms upwards. With a grunt he lunged a half-step to the right,
striking out. The ground in front of his foot suddenly began to
pour downwards, shifting like sand in an arced line, shooting out
around the town. He took a huge step forward and repeated the
motion to his left, sending another line arcing around the other
side of the town.

The Sanctuary team gaped.

Gaav stepped back and centered himself
again, eyes closed, a slight smile playing over his craggy
features. He waited, completely still, until both concentric lines
had finished racing around Southedge and joined up with their
starting points. Ezra inched forward to examine them. They were
precision cuts in the earth, a few centimeters wide and most of a
meter apart, sharp edges leading down to untold depths. Gaav's eyes
snapped open. “Right,” he said softly, exhaling and nodding to
himself again.

He slowly drew in a breath, lifting his
hands. With them, the entire town rose. There was no rumble of
displaced rock, no grating of stone straining against stone. It all
happened in almost complete silence. In fact, the only sound Ezra
later remembered hearing was Gaav's slow, measured breath. At about
twenty five centimeters, Gaav made a quick pushing motion, then
once again lifted his arms. The platform came to rest for a moment,
then the inner platform began to rise, creating a small step. Gaav
glanced to the road off to his right, flipped his right hand over
and brought it down. A ramp formed over the steps along the road at
both ends of town, smoothing the way in and out. He gently made a
wiping motion with his left hand, and the cuts in the earth filled
in, leaving seamless steps up from where they stood with
townspeople.

Sarah sank to her knees. Mat took a numb
step forward, pulled a flask from his shirt, unscrewed the top and
took a shaky drink. He looked down at the flask, then up at the
earth-crowned, nudged him and held it out. Gaav smiled broadly and
took a generous swig before handing it back.

Ezra watched the ground intently as the tiny
rivulets of water running off the blight line behind them found a
wall of rock and clay in place of an easy way into Southedge. He
looked around with a stupid grin on his face, then yawned loudly.
Gaav's smile exploded into a huge laugh as he thumped Ezra on the
back while the townspeople cheered. A few of the men Ezra had seen
piling sandbags the day before were dancing gleefully in the mud,
while many others came up to offer Gaav their heartfelt thanks.
Ezra beamed around at everyone, then lowered himself onto the step.
He was asleep before he touched the ground.

==

“
Fine then! Just leave!” Ezra was startled awake by the sudden
shouting, his chair rocking back and balancing just long enough for
him to see Jenna Haldis slap Mat squarely across the face. The seat
overbalanced and tipped, depositing Ezra on the floor. The scowling
girl gave him a disgusted look, then stormed toward the tavern
door.

“
She, uh, needed some personal medical attention the past few
days,” Mat said sheepishly, rubbing the side of his face. “I guess
she got a little attached.”

“
And I never want to see you again!” she screamed, slamming the
door behind her. Mat winced.

Two young women with the same reddish hair
prowled up on either side of Mat, trailing their fingertips across
his shoulders. Ezra rubbed sleepily at his eyes, recognizing one of
them as the girl with the water pitcher.

“
But if you are in town, be sure to stop by,” one of them
purred.

“
We always enjoy entertaining creative young doctors,” the
other whispered huskily as the first brushed a kiss over his cheek.
They each gave Mat a smoldering look, then turned and swayed across
the room after their retreating sister.

“
I'm going to miss this town,” Mat moaned forlornly, eyes glued
to the young women. “Ezra, if I asked nicely, would you go break
something so we can stay another day or two?”

“
Pervert,” Sarah muttered darkly, shouldering past Mat and
heading for the door.

Mat helped Ezra to his feet and pushed a
traveling sack into his hands, sighing as he shouldered his own
pack and followed Sarah outside. Ezra hurried after them, and out
into the mid-day sun, struggling to secure his pack as he went.

Sarah stood squinting critically at the
windows, then shot a glance at a group of nervous looking young men
near the forge who were watching her intently. Ezra saw his
opportunity to lighten the mood. “Looks like you've got some
admirers of your own there, huh?” He nudged Sarah playfully with
his elbow.

She glared at him, then growled, “Ugh, show
them one trick and drink a couple of them under the table, and
suddenly everyone thinks I'm some wanton barmaid begging for their
attention.” She stomped off toward the forge, scattering the group,
Ezra and Mat hurrying to keep up. A gruff looking old man was
carefully wrapping up a few glass figures as they approached. He
handed them to Sarah with a nod, then went back to his work. She
smiled wistfully at them, then dropped her pack to the ground to
secure them inside.

“
Um, Miss Sarah?” A timid looking boy had broken away from the
pack and stood shifting from foot to foot, hands behind his back.
“I know that you have somewhere to go, and I know that you must
have suitors with money and power,” he blurted out, “but, well,
I...I wanted to give you this token of my affection!” He thrust a
freshly picked flower out toward her, eyes scrunched closed and
head bowed.

Sarah sighed loudly and took the flower.
“My, how lovely,” she said in a completely flat voice, “I imagine
that you have something else to say.” She rolled her eyes as she
picked at the flower's petals.

Obviously emboldened by her acceptance of
his gift, he looked up and gave her a bright smile. “Well, I know
that you turned down Phillip Thompson, but you see, I'm different!
My father owns this whole smithy, and, well, that is, grandpa said
that you're like a goddess of the forge come down from heaven to
us, and that any girl with half your fire is more woman than he's
ever seen. And, you see, I was wondering if maybe you could stay
for a few more days and you and I could, um, you know, get to know
each other a little better or-”

Sarah laid a hand gently on his shoulder,
interrupting him. “Maybe you should go tell your grandpa to come
talk to me himself,” she said in her gentlest voice. The boy began
to squirm as her grip tightened. Her gentle smile turned brittle as
she continued to talk through clenched teeth. “Then he and I can
have a nice long talk about how much fire I have.”

The boy yelped as she squeezed for a moment
then released him to scamper away.

“
I
swear, if one more thundering idiot proposes to me because
someone's blighted grandpa told them that I had fire like no other,
I'm going to bind every one of his skin cells to a high density
geosynchronously stable carbon helix then laugh as earth's rotation
tears them to little tiny bits.” She continued to detail what Ezra
could only assume were even more dreadful fates. Fortunately, he
lacked the knowledge of material chemistry to understand
them.

A thump sounded behind Ezra, then a huge,
meaty hand grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. He felt a
moment to panic before he was crushed in a hug by Mr. Wellward.
After a few air deprived moments, the big man released him, then
patted him firmly on the shoulders and grunted, nodding to several
enormous sacks of potatoes at their feet.

“
Oh, uh, there's really no need,” Ezra wheezed, “I mean, after
everything that happened...”

“
No, no dear,” Mrs. Wellward bustled up, shooing her husband
back toward the inn. “We really just can't thank you all enough.
After what you did, getting our little girl off to lord Gaav and
having him speak to the lady seer about things, it's really the
least we can do. Can't have folk saying that the people of
Southedge don't honor their debts.” She pressed a firmly wrapped
loaf of warm bread into Ezra's hands along with a jar of some
preserves, babbling incessantly all the while. “And after all the
hard work that you put in, it's really the least we can do, the
very least! I'm just glad that you cleared up that little
misunderstanding, fine young people like yourselves. Now you take
care and drop by again some time. Really, just skin and bones on
you, like you never ate a decent meal in your life.” She poked at
Ezra's ribs to demonstrate, making him lose hold of the
jar.

Ezra juggled the jam and bread, somehow
managing to save both, then glanced around sheepishly. “Um, about
what Kelly may have...”