They walked the horses through a particularly rock strewn stretch of forested slope. A tiny stream ran past them, its bubbling song competing with the crickets that were awakening with evening. Yoko carried a handful of black berries she had picked a ways back, savoring the flavor, which like everything else in this valley was more intense than she could ever recall tasting. The world was filled with so much color and sensation that her head sometimes swam with faintness and she had to close her eyes until the dizziness went away. And Rushie didn't feel it. Oh, he admitted to the awareness of something more than the norm in this vale, but he in no way experienced the world of late as strongly as she did. She pitied him that inability. It was so wonderful. So entirely fulfilling to experience the world in such glory.
"Should we stop for camp?" she asked, when the ground beneath their feet became hard to see and she stumbled now and then over roots and rocks that were hidden from sight.
He did not wish to, that was clear. He stood staring into the evening, as if its hidden secrets were just around the next bend. His one hand rubbed absently at the bracelets about the wrist of the other.
"The horses are done for." She said, feeling their weariness and their single minded desire for the grain they could smell in the saddle bags. Her own stomach grumbled uneasily. Berries and jerky were not the best combination, but it was all they had eaten during the day.
"All right." He said finally. "Here's as good a place as any."
Yoko sighed and swung her head to look for a good place to picket the horses. A wave of dizziness assaulted her. Her legs trembled and she grasped at the thick neck of her horse. She swallowed bile and squeezed her eyes shut.
"Yoko?" She felt his presence behind her.
"I'm okay." She said. "I'm okay. This is just a little too much intense nature, I think, for a city girl." She tried to laugh and it came out shaky and tinged with a sour flavor. She fought the dizziness away and looked up at him, smiling weakly. He frowned at her, took her horse from her and led both animals to the brook where they could drink.
"Maybe we're getting close." She said. "Maybe that's what it is. Everything just feels stronger."
He looked at her wordlessly, hair pale in the faint light that breached the forest veil. She wished she knew what he was thinking, but Schneider was ever so much harder to read than Rushie. And he had not been Rushie -- the boy she had grown up with -- for so very long a time.
"It'll be all right." She said in a small voice, because she thought he was worried and she felt quivery and uncertain inside and needed to voice that opinion for the both of them. She wondered what Father was doing. If he was worried for her, or cursing her name. How long had it been since she had left home? Two months almost. Three weeks at least since they had left the logging camp in search of mother. Three weeks during which Schneider's moods had dipped to deepest melancholy to flighty irritation to small bouts of belief that there was something indeed that the little acorn drew them towards.
He built a fire and they heated water for tea. He offered her a strip of jerky and she waved it away, not willing to risk further quarreling with the blackberries. She sipped the tea, holding the tin cup in both hands and basking in the feeling of warmth. He sat beside her and she leaned against him, listening to the night sounds and watching the crackling dance of the fire.
"What will you do when the wards are gone?" she asked. It was the first time she had broached the question, too afraid perhaps of what his answer might be.
"Find Angelo." He said softly.
"Revenge." She whispered against his shoulder.
"Don't you think he deserves it?"
"I suppose. The king and Father will try and protect him."
"Then they'll die as will anyone else who sides with that snake."
"All the dragon guard will and all the men of Meta-Rikan."
"They're all fools."
"Maybe, but a fair number of them are good men. Friends. I -- I wouldn't want them killed just to satisfy a need for blood."
He didn't respond, but she felt his muscles tighten. He was angry. She ducked her head and said. "Linden died by Angelo's hand or his order, but if he hadn't he would have fought at the king's order to protect him. Even though I despise the Prophet for that, until Larz can see his true colors, he'll fight for him. They all will. They shouldn't die for misplaced loyalty."
"I will find Angelo and I will make him pay. If they stay out of my way, then I have no quarrel with them."
It was something. She nodded slightly and murmured. "Okay."
He put an arm about her, pulled her closer and she nestled against him wordlessly, grateful for the warmth and the comfort.
The horses rustled in the leaves. The brook babbled idiotically and somewhere far off, the land trembled faintly as rock and earth shifted.
With morning came rain. Kall-Su began to detest his own summoning which had dumped this string of foul weather on the south. In the gray distance the foothills of the Western range broke the line of the horizon. Beyond those were the mist obscured peaks of the mountains themselves. Not as treacherous a range as the snow covered ridges of the north, but a wider and longer running chain of mountains to be sure.
Breakfast was cold and unappealing. His men were dour and miserable, huddled in their cloaks and forgoing their usual quiet conversation among themselves. The horses were unequivocally displeased with the entire situation. Their legs and underbellies were coated with mud and it had been too long since they had gotten proper rest. Kall hated to treat them so, but war was war. And this verged on just that.
The pace was a plodding walk and both horses and riders rode with head down, turning faces from the rain. The ground sloped upward towards noon, the first of the foothills. Water lay in the valleys between them a foot or more deep. In the distance a herd of huddled deer lifted their delicate heads at the sight of human riders and warily moved up slope towards the line of pine that separated the last of the foot hills from the first of upwelling of true mountains.
There seemed an easily passable trail to the south and they headed towards that. It was a steep enough slope, littered with rocky outcroppings and stray pines. Narrow streams of water ran down the slope, cutting furrows into the earth. The trail followed a zig zag pattern up the hill, the top of which was obscured in rain and fog. It was a slow climb, careful as they were to find solid footing for the horses. There was a rumble not far off. Thunder perhaps.
"My lord." One of his men called and pointed. The trees above and behind them seemed to shift. Mud slide, he thought anxiously. Not surprising considering the amount of rain dumped upon these mountains. He started to urge his horse to a quicker pace and leave the dangerous area behind and rather suddenly the ground under the animal's hooves heaved upwards. The world tilted and gray sky was blocked out by an eruption of dark earth and stone that towered overhead like a solid, heavy wave of water. Horses screamed. Men cried out. His own went down in a tangle of limbs and Kall was so shocked by the earth's errant behavior that all he could think to do was scramble to escape being crushed as his mount tumbled down the slope in a rush of dirt and mud and crushing stone.
He hit the ground and there was no stability, no chance to gain balance or footing in the current of earth that swept them all down slope. Something hit his shoulder hard and he thought it might have been his horse. It hurt bad enough to trigger defenses and he called up a shield a fraction of a breath before a slab of mountain thirty feet long and half that wide slammed down on his head.
It jarred badly. He cried out. The shield held, though Kall felt it pressed back into the earth and mud and himself with it. There was nothing but darkness overhead and tons of rock. Panic at being tamped into the ground, surrounded by utter blackness sprang up and with it a frantic wellspring of power. He spat out the words of a spell, gathered the energy from the center of his being where it resided and released it. The earth exploded outwards. Shards of rock and dirt flew high into the air, pelting the slope for hundreds of yards in all directions.
Mud covered and furious he clawed his way to his feet, slipped as mud kept rolling down. Impossible to keep his feet. He took to the air, escaping the slide and something came at him out of the rain. An arm of rock and dirt that grew out of the slide as if it were alive. He was prepared this time.
"Vash Nabar!!" He hissed and the fist of earth shattered. Bits of it bounced off his shield. He threw out his senses for the culprit. There. Something heavy and ponderous that moved as a part of the vein of rock and earth itself. An elemental. An earth elemental. It surprised him. Earth elementals were not easily tamed. He could not name a wizard off hand who had the skill or the vocation to master them. Someone obviously had, since it was unheard of for an elemental of any kind to go about attacking passing humans. It knew he was here. It was aware of him personally, which meant it had been set on him specifically. Which meant Larz had some unknown and powerful wizard in his employ.
How did one go about destroying an earth elemental? Never having fought one, he was not quite certain. Fighting one on a mountain side seemed a particularly odious task. If he stayed to the air, it was relatively helpless against him.
Then a strangled cry from below reminded Kall that he was not the only one at risk. There were men of his caught in that eruption of mud. A man struggled of the mud, up to his waist in it. The earth rolled towards him like a slow undulating fist. Kall swept down, landed in the oozing ground, whispered a word and froze the wave solid.
"Find the others." He cried, hauling the man out. He began searching for them arcanely, looking for the spark of life under the onslaught of dirt and rock. Found a horse and man and blasted the dirt away from them. The horse staggered downslope, dazed and stumbling. Then men were much the same, but they stayed to find their fellows.
The roll of earth Kall had frozen trembled. The ice splintered and cracked and flaked away as the power of the rock under it became overwhelming. Something rose up out of the earth, glazed with ice of Kall's making that had shape and form somewhat more distinctive than the slabs of blunt earth that had been thrown at him so far. The elemental itself, that had taken dubious human form, as elementals tended that had been called forth by man. It was no minor summoning. He could feel the depth of power residing within it, the utter age of the thing.
"Get away." He hissed at the ragged, mud coated men around him. "Down the slope."
"But, my lord --" his battered and bloody lieutenant cried, terrified of the thing towering over them, loath to leave Kall-Su. There were eleven of them out of the mud and some seven or eight horses. The other forms buried under the earth held no spark of life that Kall could sense.
"Go."
They went, ever obedient to his orders, even if it plagued their sense of honor.
The elemental did not hinder the retreat. It stood like a finger of solid rock, unmoving, unmovable, its massive arms held out from its sides like stumps.
"Who summoned you?" Kall asked softly. There were four dead men under the earth. His rage built. The thing about elementals was that if you could strike them down when they were in physical form, you could beat them, but once they dissolved into air, fire, water or earth, they were hell to get at.
It did not answer. It swayed and with a shower of dirt and broken ice, one arm swung down upon him. He brought up the shield and a fist the size of a small wagon rebounded off. Not a living thing as living things went. No blood and flesh to turn to ice. It had to be shattered then, and even then, the pieces might reform.
He chanted the words to a spell quickly under his breath, then shouted out the last word and threw his arms forward. Explosive power shimmered in the air around him. He found the core of the elemental, the center of it's solid form and focused the energy at that point, released it with an inarticulate cry. The mountain side shook. Kall, shield or no, was forced backwards by the exhalation of destructive energy. He skidded down slope some twenty feet. The Elemental shuddered. Cracks appeared in its rocky hide. One arm shattered at the shoulder and dropped off, rolling down the hill. The chest exploded outwards, a thousand shards pelting Kall's shield, piercing the crust of earth and mud on the slope. The ground split. One jagged line appearing northward, a second traveling down the slope almost beneath Kall-Su's feet. Oozing mud filled the indent almost immediately.
Silence. He cast out his senses searching for traces of the thing. There was nothing that caught his notice. He let the shield down and took to the air, letting the rain wash away the filth of the mudslide. He hovered above where the elemental had stood and there was nothing but rubble covered with slow moving mud. The water from upslope ran in turrets down the mountainside, bringing more dirt and debris with it. The trail, for as far as he could see in the dismal light of dusk and storm, was obliterated. Had it been only him, he could have continued. Could have merely levitated over the worst of it, horse and all, but he hadn't the resources left to him to take his men that route and he would not abandon them. Not with Larz on his trail.
He returned to the foot of the mountain where they waited. A ragged, wounded lot, who looked at him with great relief when he sat foot on ground in their midst. The horses stood trembling, with heads down in exhaustion and shock. All of them were covered in mud and blood.
"Is it dead, my lord?" Someone asked.
"Perhaps." He answered quietly.
"Should we go and look for the others?" A more hesitant quarry. Kall looked up the slope into the shadows, shut his eyes for a moment, blaming himself for not reacting quickly enough to save men that had depended upon him. Too long out of practice; the thing had taken him completely off his guard.
"No. They're gone."
"But, Lord Kall-Su ---"
"I said no." It was not safe for men or horse to climb that slope. Not until the rain let up and the mountains stopped pouring all the gathered waters down their slopes.
His horse was among the surviving animals. He was ridiculously grateful for that. It butted its nose wearily against his chest when he went to inspect it for injury.
"What shall we do?" His lieutenant, the man's name was Chanto, asked in a subdued voice.
"Find shelter for the night." He scanned the hills behind them. There was an outcropping of rock that sat at an angle off the side a hill that would shield them from some of the rain. It was big enough to squeeze men and horses under its protecting bluff. They walked the horses, save for one man who was unconscious and had to be draped over his saddle. Kall almost hesitated in stepping under the lee of the rock, the memory of the slab of earth that had crashed down upon him vivid in his mind. He cast every awareness he had of arcane stirrings to the area around them. And nothing came back to him. Only the still, resonance of the earth and that he found distrust in, not knowing all the predilections of earth elementals.
With the worst of the wounded, he did what he could, then sat with his cloak wrapped about him and senses stretched taught, listening for the strain of arcane rustling that would hint something foul was afoot.
There were flowers blooming in the last weeks of autumn that Yoko informed him, should not have been. There was a great deal amiss with this warm, rain free vale. It was quite the perfect place. And that much perfection worried him. Yoko woke before he did, and he rolled over to find her walking down the bank of the little stream, humming to herself in a vaguely disoriented manner. The way this place effected her made him nervous. He knew well the influences of strong magics could have upon an unprepared mind and spirit. Yoko was naive. She was trusting. She was an easy victim for a thing that seemed too good and might very well hide a dark nature. He of all people knew how easy it was to corrupt a guileless soul.
He pulled on his boots hurriedly, leaving his cloak where it lay, the vale warm enough not to need it, and went after her. She moved along the thin strip of sandy earth that made up the bank, her boots leaving soft imprints. She passed under the overhanging branches of a ancient willow and stopped, staring down at the source of the brook. The roots of the willow, great gnarly things that they were, trailed into a round, dark pool. The whole of it was cocooned in twisted willow limbs and green moss.
She turned when he approached, her eyes luminous and wide.
"Are you all right?" he asked it again, because he kept doubting her answers. She stepped into him, wrapping her arms about his neck, drawing him down to kiss, which in itself was a morning ritual that could easily become addictive. She pulled back, fingers lingering in his hair.
"I love you." She said dreamily and held out the acorn. There was something else other than Yoko in the faint smile on her lips and the dreamy glitter of her eyes. Warily he took the acorn from her palm.
"What should I do with it?" he asked carefully, not certain if it were her or something else that he asked.
"Its an offering." She said. "Offer it." One of her hands fluttered towards the dark pool. He looked towards it dubiously.
"This is it? This is where I'm to find Mother?"
"You won't know till you try?"
He turned to face the pool. How did one address a pool of water? He was enormously terrible at asking for the favor of others. It was so much easier merely to take what he wanted.
"Glyncara said to bring this. Here." He tossed it into the pool. It disappeared with a plop, sending ripples concentrically outward. Yoko sat down on the moss under the willow.
"I think I'll take a nap." She said, curled up and was asleep in a moment. Schneider stared at her, mouth open to complain that she'd just gotten up. Water lapped his boots. He had been standing several feet back from the edge of the pool. He looked down and found the toes of his boots at the edge of the water. He blinked at the displacement. His heart beat like a drum in his ears. He shook his head, bringing a hand to his temple. He shut his eyes for a moment and when he opened them water sloshed at his ankles.
A beat of his heart and his senses swam dizzily. Sunlight dappled the glade and he saw spots of brightness mixed with shades of darkest black. The water was up to his waist. The ends of his hair trailed on the surface.
A beat of his heart and the world faded into sudden and utter night. He was drowning in it. It filled his ears and his mouth. He breathed it in and it weighed his lungs down with ebony fluid. Pain pressed against his chest and yet he didn't struggle against it. He was weightless and heavy at the same time. In darkness and light juxtaposed.
A beat of his heart and the veins of the earth pumped in unison with his own blood. The molten core of the planet coiled and churned, pulsing out in a thousand thousand veins of lava that worked their way inexorably towards the surface. A living core to a living world, warming from within, what could never be reached by the life giving heat of the sun.
A beat of his heart and a billion nurturing roots broke through the crust of the earth, seeking nutrients from the rotting remains of their forefathers, feeding off the bones and the flesh of the billion things that had died before them. Grass, reeds, vines and trees that held the network of soil together, that covered a world and created life even as they lived off of death.
A beat of his heart and the oceans surged against one shore then the other, tearing land down and creating new land grain by grain. Unstoppable and unchangeable, where life had begun and where life was renewed, protected from the violence's that raped the land.
A beat of his heart and source of a planet's life surrounded him, invaded him, encompassed him with the staggering aura of its power. In all his thirst for power and magic he had never experienced this. Had never known this existed, not this concentrated aura of force that flowed through him. No single being this, but a conglomeration of a million life sources that were overwhelming. He was small and inconsequential in the midst of it. The images kept flashing through his mind, his being, and they might never have stopped, if he had been a little less sure of his place in the world. A little less certain of his worth in the scheme of things. A lesser being might have been reduced to blathering idiocy at the scope of Earth's power. For it was the earth that battered at his soul. Mother. How appropriate. The mother of everything mortal and physical. Only Schneider was beyond mortality. He was not certain if he had ever been a creature spawned of this physical earth. Mother, though it very well might have produced every other living soul on this planet, might not have been responsible for him.
With a force of will he pushed the images away, forced the pounding of his heart to a faint beat in the background of his awareness. He was floating in a hazy field of bright light. There was nothing of the forest of the physical world around him. All his trappings of that world were stripped from him. It tried to strip all his defenses, but he held onto them stubbornly, and eventually it let him be.
"Who are you?" he cried, though not with his voice, though he thought he knew the answer.
Mother. It echoed in his head, a sonorous, thumping blow to his senses.
He cringed and curled up, hands to his ears even though it came not from without, but within.
"That's not the answer I want."
It did not answer him. It pulsed, with the beating of its own slow heart. He shivered and supplied his own answer.
"You're the earth source. The planet's life energy. You feed everything."
Yes. No.
"What does that mean?"
We feed each other. I die the earth dies. The earth dies I die.
He thought of Glyncara and her precious forest. If it died, then so would she. This thing was of such a larger scale than that.
"You've been here forever?"
Forever. It agreed. It was not much for conversation, this Mother. He was impatient, even with such a thing as Mother, to fulfill his needs.
"One of your daughters sent me here. There are wards on my person, she said you could break. I did her a favor and you I think."
No response. Merely the pulse of earthsong. Schneider seethed, but did not push, figuring that so ponderous a thing as Mother was slow in its decisions.
They are abhorrent to magic and nature, what binds your power. The voice thrummed in his head.
"Technology." He uttered the blasphemous word, the word that had been banned since technology brought about the summoning of Ansasla and the end of the old world. He had thought as much. A blending of technology and bastardized magic. A cruel and deadly efficient combination that he had never personally thought to attempt. "Can you break them, or am I wasting my time?"
Time means nothing.
"To you maybe."
There is a price to be paid for every thing. God, prices again.
"Can you free me of these bonds?" He would not be played a fool again.
I can.
He took a breath, shuddering in relief. "What do you want of me?"
Of fleshy creatures you are unique.
"I'm aware. What of it?"
You have power that is not entirely of this realm. You are a creature of more than my earthly influence. Of you I wish blood.
"Blood?" Warily. Sudden chills ran down his spine.
Blood of your blood. Firstborn.
He drew back in shock, in rage. The light would not let him go, it grasped him and held him firmly and waited patiently for his composure to return. "You're crazy. Insane in your old age. I make no bargains of that nature."
Of all the women he had had and there had been so many he could not begin to name or count them, he was aware of no child that had come of the unions. No seed of his had sparked life. Perhaps it was his unique nature, of his unearthly heritage. Perhaps he just hadn't wanted it badly enough. Why bother to bring a child of his into a world he had been intent on bringing destruction to? That reasoning might have influenced him centuries ago.
With the mate of your soul, you will spawn life. Firstborn shall be mine.
Mate of his soul. The other half of his soul. She who made him more than he was. He shut his eyes, but her image flared anyway. Yoko laughing. Yoko yelling at him. Yoko defending him against all her good sense. Yoko believing in him and not letting him walk all over her as he did with practically every other living soul in the world.
"Damn you to hell." He cried. "Stop it. Why? Why a child of mine? Don't you have enough of your own?"
Not of my own. Not of blood as powerful as yours. The time will come, when a protector is needed. A defender against that which will threaten the Source. Your blood will do.
"If you need defense, then I'll pledge to do it."
You are not pure. You will never be pure. Your power is tainted. The protector of the Source must be of the Source and loyal only to the Source.
"No. I won't promise that."
Then you will remain as you are.