King Larz of Meta-Rikan sipped thoughtfully at the finest vintage of western wine to cross the mountains in a dozen years. Kall-Su had been stupid to turn it down. But Kall-Su was unpredictable, as wizards tended to be, and not to be forced into anything not of his own conception. He had after all, learned at the feet of the master of stubborn pride, so one could hardly be surprised at arrogant superiority. Larz had a full quota of it himself, being the son of a line of great kings and holding the south in his hands. It was not a responsibility he took lightly. He cherished his position and not for power alone, but for the fact that the people and the devastated lands of the south needed a strong leader and he felt there was no one more capable than himself.
He hated letting Kall-Su walk out his tent. There would be hell to pay for that courtesy, when they finally did catch up with Schneider. But, aside from declaring open war on the North and testing his strength and his armies against the Ice Lord, there was nothing else to do. One did not hold a wizard against his will, without paying a price in blood and death.
There was a commotion in the outer section of his tent. The hushed tones of excited voices. His aide shifted the separating flaps and stepped in, a wild eyed pair of priests behind him.
"My Lord, these priests have a message from the Prophet."
Larz beckoned them in. "What has his holiness to say?"
"Majesty, a holy sword has just ridden in with a message. The Prophet has had a vision days past and desperately sought to get his message here in time."
"A vision? Where is this message?"
A rolled piece of parchment tied with a blue ribbon was handed to him. He unfolded it and read, while the priests exchanged anxious looks.
May the High God grant this warning reach you in time. The God has sent me
a vision. Dark Schneider's allies are grouping. The Ninja Master and the Thunder
Empress come from the east and the Ice Lord descends from the North. They must
not be allowed to reach him. I saw the Ice Lord in your grasp. You must not allow
him to slip free or all is lost. Use any means to snare him that you must. I am three days hard ride behind you.
Angelo
Larz crumpled the paper, swearing. The Prophet had known days ago that this would happen. The man continued to amaze him. He also did not know what he asked. But the warning only served to heighten Larz' own sense of unease in letting Kall-Su free to work whatever mischief he might in the name of Dark Schneider.
He threw the missive on the floor and stood, barking an order at the priests to gather their peers. And to his aide.
"Sound the horns and get my armor."
And with disquiet on their faces they ran to do his bidding.
The faint claxom of horns sounded in the distance. Kall-Su's horse pricked its ears, lifting its weary head in nervousness at a sound it well knew. A call to arms. How very predictable for Larz to change his mind after the fact. Kall couldn't blame him. If their positions had been switched, he would never have let Larz leave the camp.
Kall's men looked to him expectantly, as any fifteen men would that might shortly have an army on their heels. He said nothing and kept to the slow, steady pace that his tired mount was able to maintain. He did not wish to slaughter those men. He did not wish to see the Dragon guard, a great many of its officers made up of men who had fought Ansasla with him and his, die under his hand.
Past the sodden fields and the town that supported them and one of his men said softly. "They come."
He turned his horse to look. From behind them there was a dark line in the mist the rain made of the distance. Faintly the jingle of tack could be discerned. The calvery first and the foot soldiers after that.
"What shall we do, my lord?"
"Nothing." He said quietly. "Just ride. Don't kill your horses."
They stared at him and at each other, then with a short nod from their lieutenant, they kicked their mounts into a canter and sloshed forward, leaving Kall alone. He folded his hands on the saddle horn and whispered a word. Power gathered in the air, fickle and truant and needing to be harnessed. With more force he spoke the lines of an incantation, adding power and purpose to the force he had summoned, directing and melding a certain spell to his needs. The rain and the saturated ground were his allies. The breath from his horse's flaring nostrils began to steam with a sudden cold.
The air turned white with snow. The fields before him glazed over. First a transparent, thin layer of freeze, then quickly a thickening slab of pure ice that spread like a living, hungry thing , devouring the earth in its path. He let it run wild for a great distance, a league or more to the north and south, then forced it into remission with an effort of will and strength. It took a moment longer than it should have to control the wild forces he had set in motion, a testament to how much the journey had drained his energy. It was just as well he had chosen this route over one of combat.
The ice would stop them for a while. Until it melted, or they blasted a path through it magically. Regardless, he had gained hours if not days on them that they would be hard pressed to regain.
Yoko and Schneider were arguing. This time it was about her father. It had been one thing or another for the last two weeks, he being in a sour mood and she unequivitably not putting up with it. They sparred, they rode silently at odds, they disagreed merely to disagree and the only thing they did find to combine their antagonism towards was the weather. It had gone from simply being an inconvenience to entirely miserable. The further they rode into the foothills and the lower ranges of the western mountains the worse it got. Rain turned to light snow, which melted during the day and then froze at night to make the trails treacherous. Schneider cursed and maligned it, wasting breath on something they had no control over. Yoko rode, dripping, sodden and cold, fighting a runny nose, enduring it in silent discontent.
"It's beyond me why you defend him." Schneider was saying with that overtly superior tone in his voice that made her want to smack him. "He promised you in marriage to Angelo, if I remember correctly. That alone should be enough for you to want to sever ties, if not a limb or two."
"He didn't do it to hurt me. He didn't know what Angelo was. Maybe he still doesn't know. He was just trying to protect me."
"He's always been underhanded about it."
"Oh, you just say that because he got the upper hand on you and you can't stand the thought of anyone doing that."
"That's not true. Did he or did he not use you -- unbeknownst to you -- to try and control me?"
"He was desperate. You weren't exactly on his friendly list back then."
"I am now?"
"He tried to help you -- which you so conveniently forget, when you were in that dungeon."
"How?"
"He did what he could, trying to keep them from burning you. He tried to convince you to act rationally and make amends so they would let you go, but noooo, you would have nothing of it."
"Let me enlighten you on the facts, Yoko. First. Angelo would have burned the lot of his parishioners before he let me burn and second, I could have begged for baptism in the holy fire and he wouldn't have let me go. And your father was a blind, favor seeking ass, to even consider a marriage."
"He wanted to see me safe and protected."
"He wanted favor with the new power."
"You are so wrong. Maybe Angelo really impressed him with his suit. Maybe he thought he would take care of me."
"Angelo wanted you for one reason and one reason only. To get at me."
"Oooohh, you are so conceited. He was courting me before you even came back from the dead and he was a perfect gentleman about it."
"Oh, so now you're defending him? Did you like his smarmy attentions?"
"No, but that's not the point."
"What is?"
She opened her mouth, searching for that illusive element that had started the debate in the first place. "Well -- it seems to have disappeared, but I'll find it, if you give me a second."
He lifted a brow. She half smiled, hiding it behind her dripping hood. "Would you be jealous?"
"What?" He sounded incredulous.
"If I had liked his courtship?"
"I'd be sick." He snapped.
"Oh." Her smile widened.
They rode for a while without talking, only the sounds of the horses and the patter of rain on the leaves breaking the silence. Her fingers, buried in the pockets of her tunic, under the cloak, turned the acorn over and over. It was pleasantly warm to the touch. A sensation that she only gradually became aware of. She took it out, stared at it in the palm of her hand, but it seemed no different than any other acorn one might find on the forest floor.
"Are we in Saldorn yet?"
"How in hell should I know?"
"I think we are. Or we're close."
He turned to look at her, brows drawn in question. She held up the acorn and shrugged.
"It's getting warm. I've --- I've the feeling we're going the right way."
He stared at her or the acorn a moment longer before tuning back around, but the hostility had passed and his face was thoughtful. Goddess, please, please let them be close.
Where a forest had once stood there was nothing but mud and the severed stumps of trees beyond count. The devastation it seemed, went on forever. Kall-Su and his men picked their way through, passing a sapling here and there that had escaped the fate of its brethren. The underbrush, shadow loving stuff that was, had died back, exposed too long to direct sunlight. None of them spoke as they passed through it, for words seemed immoral and out of place in the midst of such death.
The rain had ceased, and the sun valiantly tried to force its way past swift moving clouds. Clothes began to dry. They came upon a rustic, barricaded town in the midst of the cleared land. Around it were rows upon rows of newly planted saplings. They rode between the rows, and the few men that tended the fields looked up at their passing.
How very, very odd, to destroy a forest and then plant it anew. It seemed enough of an inconsistency that he felt compelled to stop and inquire what flight of fancy had infected the men hereabouts.
"Thrax has gone mad." Grumbled the man inside the barricade who waved them to a common trough where they could water their horses. "He sees spirits in the forest. But, it's his money. If he wants to pay us to plant trees, then so be it."
They paid a man to fetch grain for the horses. A party of men came down the central street to observe the strangers in their town, the town's master among them. The man gushed. The man remarked on the fine horses. He went on about the planting and the forest, talking nonsense. Kall blocked him out. His lieutenant made some perfunctory answer. There was an old woman who had come out of her tent to watch the strangers. She wore charms about her neck and had runes sewn into her shawl. Her old eyes were intense, staring at Kall as if he had sprouted horns. Her lips formed a silent sentence and her hands went shakily to her breast. She looked as if she were about to faint from shock.
He glanced back to his lieutenant who was bargaining for supplies with the lord of this odd little town, then stepped carefully around the mud puddles and towards the old woman. Her eyes widened, and she took a step backward as if she were about to flee inside her tent.
"Wait." He said, holding up a hand and she froze like a rabbit under the gaze of a fox. She bowed her old head in respect.
"Why do you stare so?" he asked. Sometimes seers of great potency could be found practicing their talents in such backwater settlements at this. He had an interest in prophesy.
"I know you, great lord." She whispered.
"Do you?"
"When I was a young woman and new to my powers the city sorcerers where I lived called for all with magical talent to give aid to defend against the invaders who sought to destroy us. Dark Schneider's armies. You were there, my lord. I recall as clear as day and you haven't changed bit. What they say must be true."
But he had, he thought and didn't voice it. "What do they say?" he had to ask it, it was a impulse that he could not repel.
"That your father was an immortal demon."
He stared down at her, unblinking and she averted her eyes. "Until I saw you just now, it never occurred to me who he was. I knew I'd seen him."
"Who?"
"Dark Schneider."
"You -- saw him? Here? When?"
"Two weeks past, since he left. He's the cause of this, you know?" she said the last in a conspiratorial whisper, waving a bony hand to indicate the general area around the town.
"The planting of saplings?" Kall asked in wonder and half laughed at the incongruity of it. Schneider was most certainly not known for his delving into environmental restoration. "Amazing. Do you know where he went?"
"The girl he was with was asking after a place called Saldorn. He looked at maps in Thrax's house. That's what I heard."
"Saldorn?"
"Never heard of it myself." The old woman admitted. "Though they took supplies for mountain travel. Due west they went."
Due west. He whirled, marched back to his men and waved them into motion. They mounted with hardly a word to the men who had been talking with them by the well. Wide eyed, the loggers turned planters watched them ride out.
"Larz let him go. And now the Ice Lord travels on Schneider's heels." The Prophet stood looking into the darkness of a cloud covered night. His robes fluttered about him gently in a breeze that hinted at more rain. Sinakha stood behind him, silent witness to his master's musing. Impenetrable guard at his master's back.
"Gara and the woman have crossed the South Alderon River and make quicker time than Larz's army. They will be at his back before he reaches the western mountains."
"An army can not move in those mountains." Sinakha said quietly.
"No. And I'll have lost both Schneider and Kall-Su by the time they reach the foothills."
"Can the Ice Lord break your wards, my lord?"
The Prophet shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. They are not things fully responsive to magic workings, which is what makes them so useful. I would prefer if he did not have the chance to find out. He needs to be slowed down."
Thoughtfully the Prophet toyed with the holy emblem at his breast. Schneider was only a vague, fluttering presence in the eather, hard to track at best. But Kall-Su was easy to locate, radiating power. The woman was the same, but further away. Her, he could track, though Gara was invisible to his arcane senses.
Six days past they had crossed the Ahrend River and moved steadily southward on a parallel course with Larz's army. At best they were two days behind Kall-Su and he was almost at the foothills of the western mountains. What Schneider's goal was in those mountains, the Prophet could only guess at. There were things in that range that held great meaning to the Prophet personally, but he could see no way Schneider or any of his would know of them. Not yet, at any rate.
"Tell the men that I go alone to meditate." He finally smiled back at Sinakha. "Keep them well clear."
His captain inclined his head. "Of course, your holiness. I shall see to it."
And Sinakha would. He trusted Sinakha with a great many precious and sacred things. Sinakha's only goal in life was to serve the Prophet and he did it well.
Angelo walked into the darkness, putting a cluster of pine between himself and the encampment. He walked until the earth felt right beneath his feet. Solid and deep with veins of rock running through the dirt. He uttered a word of summoning and put power behind it. The air remained still and heavy, but he felt a faint twinge of response from the earth. He curled his fingers and chanted an archaic mantra. Something buckled under the earth. The pines trembled. In the distant darkness the crust of the earth swelled, as if some great serpent forced its way just beneath the surface, traveling in a fast, straight line towards the Prophet.
And just before it reached him, it burst upwards, a rearing, dark slab of rock and dirt and clay that shifted and changed as it moved, towering twenty feet above his head.
"Canambra ." He hissed the name of the thing, names being all powerful in the right hands. For a moment it writhed, fighting his dominance over it, an ancient, powerful thing that was not well used to being woken from its earthy slumber. But it had known his mastery before and was wise enough in its age, not to rebel uselessly. It subsided, and the earth creaked with its motion. As if from the depths of the world, its voice rumbled out.
"What is thy wish, master?"
The Prophet folded his hands. "There are men riding to the mountains in the west that I wish delayed. I shall show you where."
"I shall crush them, master."
"I don't believe you will. Sorcerous power is among them. You will find it not so easy a task, but all I need is delay."
"The mountains run deep, master. The power of rock and earth is strong there. I shall do as you bid."
"I know you shall. Even to your demise, if that be the case, Canambra."
The great, craggy head bowed. Bits and pieces of earth showered the ground. An elemental, properly bound, had no will but its masters, only the slyest and most powerful of them could break the bonds that chained them once properly called. Though an earth elemental was powerful beyond belief, it was slow of wit and not likely to conceive of misconduct. Fire and air elementals were much more difficult to work with.
"Go." He commanded it, and it sank into the earth, leaving bits of itself on the cracked ground where it had risen. The dirt and stone swallowed it with hardly more a trace than that. Angelo turned and strolled back to camp, much satisfied with this nights deeds.
"It's vibrating." Yoko said softly, reverently as she cupped the acorn in her palms. Her eyes were large and bright, entirely engrossed in looking at the damned, annoying thing. Schneider wasn't getting anything from it. He did not entirely doubt that she was, but she might have been convincing herself that it was more than it actually was in her great desire believe Glyncara had not lied. On the other hand, it might not be responding to him because he was so adamantly against it. He was very much aware of how fickle certain types of magic could be. Some of them were down right elusive if one did not want them bad enough.
"Again?" he asked, exasperated. It had been giving her little nudges and signals for the last week. They had been riding through the mountains in intermittent rain aimlessly during that time. He hated the woods. He had come to that conclusion. He loved cities. He wanted dearly to be in a nice, comfortable city somewhere -- anywhere, with no trees in sight. Keladedra on the West coast was a wonderful sea port city. He had conquered it maybe two hundred years ago, when he'd been on the world domination kick. The people had been so accommodating that they'd showered the invading forces with flowers. Subsequently he hadn't let his men run amuck raping and pillaging. Who needed to in a city where the women were so accommodating and the populace so willing to please. Yes, Keladedra would be a wonderful place to be, in one of the great villas over looking the sea.
"I wish you could feel it." She said softly, her voice a little shaky, as if the feeling were more than a little pleasurable. "It's so peaceful and all encompassing. Everything is so clear."
She sounded enthralled. She sighed happily and offered it to him. "Hold it and try, Rushie."
He took it and felt nothing. Just a hard little nut. Yoko's smile was still in place. He drew his brows warily.
"Do you still feel it? When you don't have the thing in your hand?"
She nodded. "It's like--- euphoria. I can't explain it."
"How long exactly have you felt this strongly?"
"I don't know. This morning."
He looked around him, at the rays of light piercing the pine canopy, at the moss and the flowering vines that wound about the trunks of trees. The sound of bird call was a symphony of chirps and whistles in the air. The smell of honey suckle and pollen was a fragrant sweetness.
It wasn't the nut, he thought. It was the place. The valley they passed through, nestled between the protective slopes of two mountains. A valley that Yoko through her insistent attention to the acorn had led them to, in a roundabout, winding course. He thought about what Glyncara had said. The acorn was a guide and a gift. And Glyncara had summoned Yoko because she was more reasonable -- or more receptive to whatever power lay hidden in this vale. It had called to her because she believed. Because she was pure of spirit and some of the age old, fey powers -- the things that were around before true civilization ever came to men -- responded to purity.
He leaned across the space dividing them and caught her arm, pressing the acorn back into her hand. "Find the center of this place, Yoko. Find the source of all those things you feel."
"But its all around us." She protested.
"No. There has got to be a focal point. A hub. Concentrate and find it. Let the acorn lead you if need be." An excitement built. In his awareness of the existence of the magic, traces of it became clear to him. There was something here.