ZYGRADON (32 page)

* * * *

To keep their plan a secret from anyone who might try to stop them, either to
protect them or harm them, Ceera decreed that they continue as normal. That meant,
once they became invisible and unreachable, members of their party had to ride out as
couriers and pass along messages and progress reports. Endor muttered and snarled when
it was his turn to leave, until Mrillis reminded him that he also had to meet with the
Rey'kil warriors hunting the rebels who still attacked innocent Noveni farms and
villages.

"I'm depending on you to help them," Ceera said, before Endor could find some
argument against that duty. "You know this countryside better than they do, because
you've spent so much time here."

"I know." Endor's face softened and brightened under her smile, which in turn
sent that twisting bit of jealousy through Mrillis' middle again. "I just have this vision of
returning to our meeting place and finding you're gone."

"If you hold to the schedule we've made and don't let anything or anyone delay
you, what's to fear?" She handed him a rolled-up map drawn on hide. "Here is the route
we will take. We won't travel west after the full moon. Then, no matter how much more
star-metal I want to gather, we'll turn around and head back to the tunnel mouth and
decide where to make the bowl."

"Don't do it without me, Little Star." He brushed the edge of the map against
her cheek in a gentle caress.

"We could reach a point where the star-metal will be too strong for us to
handle. Time is of the essence. If you don't join us by the half-moon, we will proceed
without you."

"I'll be there. Don't doubt me." He snatched up his saddlebags and leaped into
his saddle, in much better humor than he had shown in months.

Mrillis watched his friend ride away. It occurred to him that if Ceera had
blushed or reacted in any way to Endor's flirting, he might have prayed his friend would
stay away too long.

What was wrong with him, to want to keep Endor out of such an important
endeavor?

* * * *

"Zygradon," Ceera said, her voice coming unexpectedly out of the soft night
quiet.

"What?" Mrillis stood sentinel, holding the star-metal lump aloft so all the bits of
dust and pebbles that came flying to join it would not go through living creatures. He
didn't look away from the glowing chunk, slowly tumbling above the treetops.

"That's what I will name the bowl," she said, and then he heard her light
footstep in the damp grass of the meadow behind him. "Graddon told me to make it. It
was his scrying that has brought this to be. Imagine how different our world would be if
he had not obeyed the visions sent by the Estall and had not written the words or come
to change our lives."

"The Scry of Graddon." He nodded, liking the way the words flowed together
to form something new. "Zygradon." Mrillis sighed, feeling again that mix of regret,
curiosity and loneliness he had been too busy to feel for many years. "I wish I knew
where he was. Did the Nameless One capture him after all, or does he sleep as he
hoped?"

"With the Zygradon binding all the Threads together, we will be able to search
the entire World and know."

"When we learn how to use it properly."

"There is that, yes," she said with a sigh of laughter. Ceera rested her hand on
his shoulder and leaned into his arm. Mrillis savored the warmth of her slight weight
resting on him.

They stood in silence, content to merely be together. Except for them and
Loereen, who walked sentry duty around the camp perimeter, everyone slept. Mrillis
was sure they had no need of a sentry at all. The lump of star-metal was the largest they
had ever collected, and during the last three days they had tested its blinding effect,
sending members of their party out to see how far they had to ride until their group
vanished from the landscape. As each day passed, it took less distance, until they could sit
perfectly still and watch someone ride past within a bowshot, and never be
discovered.

Mrillis wasn't sure he liked that kind of power.

No one, including the local animals, knew their party had camped there. They
would have more than enough warning to set up defenses if anyone blundered across
them, but this far out into the wilderness of Moerta, who would find them, even by
accident?

It was the thought of someone deliberately looking for them, coming upon
them through stealth, willing to risk running blind and being captured, that chilled
Mrillis. Only someone desperate to destroy the new Queen of Snows would take that
kind of a risk. And such a person would be deathly dangerous.

"How long has it been since we were hit even by dust?" he finally asked, after
the moon had dropped nearly a handspan toward the horizon.

"Perhaps half a day." She sighed and tipped her head just enough to rest against
his shoulder. "I want to travel three more hours west in the morning. If we don't attract
anything after that much time, I will gladly head home."

"Where will we make the bowl?"

"Where do you think it will be safest?"

"In the tunnel. Anyone traveling through there is practically invisible
already."

"If we run into trouble and destroy ourselves, we won't hurt anyone else."
Ceera slid her hand down his back, until she could hook her arm around his waist. "What
would I ever do without you to see where I cannot and think the things that escape me?"
She tightened her hold on him. "The only thing that frightens me is the chance that I
could hurt or even kill you."

"I promise, as long as you live, nothing will take me away from you. Even
death," he whispered.

Mrillis wanted to kiss her. He had tried to steal a kiss for the last two months,
but it seemed that every time he thought of kissing Ceera, showing her how he felt,
Endor would appear. Mrillis lowered his gaze to look around the landscape. Nothing.
No movement. Endor had ridden away three days ago on his errand. If his friend were
about to make his appearance, Mrillis knew, now would be the time.

He waited, holding his breath, but he heard no thudding of hoofbeats coming
through the darkness. No rattle of sword and bow, no loud voice calling out a jaunty
greeting in defiance of the lateness of the hour.

"Someday..." Ceera trailed off on a sigh and slipped her arm from around his
waist. Before he quite knew how, she turned to go back to her blankets and he had
missed his chance. Again.

* * * *

Endor missed every rendezvous point and did not rejoin them before they
reached the tunnel entrance. Ceera didn't wait for Endor to join them and Mrillis didn't
ask why. He started to leave a message for him, hidden in the crevices of the tunnel
mouth. He actually wrote the message, then crumpled up the parchment and threw it
into the fire during the watches of the night. Mrillis didn't want Endor to be part of the
making of the bowl. He didn't know all his reasons, but he willingly admitted that
jealousy was part of it. That, and the hardness and arrogance he glimpsed in his
childhood friend. The sense that something bitter had taken root in him long ago and
had finally begun to bear fruit.

Ceera said nothing about leaving a message, and Mrillis wondered if she also
felt uneasy about him. Endor would be angry, when he finally caught up with them.
They would have to deal with his disappointment and his questions when the time
came--if they survived the making of the Zygradon.

Their group was made of strong, loyal, intelligent young Rey'kil, the best of
their generation. Mrillis studied each of his companions as they started down the tunnel,
thought about their training. He called up his memories of growing up with them, to try
to predict how they would participate in this coming endeavor. Ceera had chosen their
companions for this purpose. He trusted her to know what she needed.

He might have asked Breylon to be part of this, and Theana, and little Triska,
no matter what Endor thought of his sister. She was loyal and her mind was quick and
she learned easily whatever lesson was put before her. The only aspect of her that Mrillis
could call weakness was her hunger to be liked and her tender heart, her need to make
others happy and healthy and safe. Ceera was right; Triska would make a good Queen
of Snows, but only if she learned the discretion to say no.

Mrillis knew, looking around their somber group once more, they were
capable, in mind and body and spirit.

"I want all of you to help bind the star-metal from this point on," Ceera said,
when they had finished their noon meal and resumed their journey. "All of us will be
part of the cage, and all of us will be bound to it. When we release it back to the
Threads after the forming, I want the connection to filter through us. Do you
understand?"

"So the contact is made gradually and no one trying to spy on us through the
Threads will sense anything has changed?" Loereen guessed. Her grin was fierce.

"Exactly. We will all be bound to the Zygradon, and it to us, and the Threads
through all of us. With so many keeping watch, I pray the Estall that it will never be
stolen and abused and used against all that is right and good and pure." Ceera wrapped
her arms around herself, shivering a little.

That image stayed with Mrillis through the rest of the day's walk. Her words
rang through his mind and he built up the images in his head so he knew what would
happen. It amazed him that Ceera, who had been his student and shadow and
accomplice on so many adventures, his partner in mischief against the older children--his
little Ceera had transformed into a wise woman with an instinctive knowledge of how to
create magic that no one had ever tried before.

If they failed and destroyed the tunnel between the continents, no one would
ever attempt such a thing again.

* * * *

We've been idiots,
Ceera said.

Laughter rang through the sphere of joined minds that separated the star-metal
from the Threads. Their joined company, fourteen young minds and souls, found it
ridiculously easy to pull aside the Threads of power that came from the lump and twist
them aside, siphoning away the power so Ceera could use it for the purifying and
forming.

When I think of all the hours I strained and sweated while you played with
your little hammers and gemstones...
Mrillis sighed, and the sound echoed around
the vast, open spaces that their joined minds had created.

More laughter echoed back at him. Giddy laughter. Triumphant and strong
laughter. There was no cocky arrogance. Mrillis made sure they all knew the possible
disasters that could befall them if only one of their company made a mistake.

This was the laughter of relief and delighted discovery.

We should have brought others into the effort sooner,
Ceera said.
Are we ready?
She sent them an image of twisting sweets. Those who grew up
in the Stronghold with them caught the implications immediately. Multiple mind-hands
reached out to help Ceera twist and stretch and fold the metal, hammering it with the
strength of their combined wills, so it was instantly hot and flowing and easy to
handle.

Mrillis stood back from the rest, watching, guiding the weaving of their minds
and talents and strengths into one smooth union. He felt Ceera's growing delight in the
ease of their work, the increasing speed and dexterity in her mental fingers. He watched,
fighting not to be mesmerized by the ebb and flow of power. He almost jumped
physically when the first chiming ring of Ceera's hammer echoed through the bubble in
the tunnel far below the floor of the sea.

Someone hummed, matching her voice to the tone of the metal. Someone else
joined in a few beats later. The sound echoed through the physical and mental realms,
creating harmonies that cut through Mrillis' soul. He felt tears flow down his physical
cheeks, soaking his beard, while his spirit tugged on the tether of his willpower, aching to
fly free and celebrate the beauty they created.

Double and triple idiots!
Ceera sang out, laughing.
We heard the
music all the time we worked the star-metal, and never thought to sing. Who said we
were the wisest, the brightest and best of our Lady's children?

I never did,
he called back.

Ceera laughed and joined her voice in the growing chorus, physical and
spiritual. Someone added counter-harmonies and the swirling current of power took on
color and light. Mrillis held his breath and dared to open his eyes.

Colors he had never imagined existed spun in a prism around the lump of
star-metal. Ceera hammered at it, turning the metal on the rounded end of her anvil, forming
the bowl. The spinning vortex of energy shaped and smoothed the metal just as her
hammer did, rounding it, making the edges flare out, etching lines and designs into the
glowing, blue-white metal. Long Threads shimmering in a prism arched out from the
rippling edges of the bowl. It reminded him of an enormous flower spreading its petals.
Although those waving Threads vanished less than a handspan out from the bowl, as
Mrillis watched, he could see how they affected the Threads that caged the bowl's power
and kept it separate from all the Threads running through the World.

They hadn't isolated the star-metal and its power, he realized. Was it whimsy or
a sign of his tired mind and body, that he imagined the star-metal
chose
not to
affect the Threads? What had Ceera said the first time she worked the metal? She had
said it was a dangerous but willing ally, hadn't she?

"Done!" Ceera's voice rose in a gleeful shout of triumph. She stepped back from
her anvil and gestured slowly with her open hands. The bowl, big enough to hold a
suckling pig with room left over, rose up in the air, turned around so it was right side up,
and settled down slowly on the anvil.

While it's still hot,
she said,
release it slowly, filtering the Threads
through your mind and soul. Imprint your spirit on it, so that you always feel it and it
always feels you, and it will always be safe.
She gasped aloud and jumped when
Mrillis stepped up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders.