Disclaimer: Tamora Pierce wrote it, I expanded.

A/N: Okay, this has a heavy duty sci-fi type explanation in it that I hope doesn't scare everybody off. I couldn't help it. That's how I envisioned it.

Chapter 18 – Displacement

The debate on antimere magic continued well into the evening after Harailt arrived. They discussed theories about the pocket and where things went when they fell in until Daine and Kit curled up in a corner and went to sleep. Earlier in the evening Jon had refreshments brought in. Everyone ate a little, but for the most part they lay forgotten next to the new map of the forest.

Harailt had been most informative on the subject, but had reserved his judgment on whether or not the chasm was the result of antimere magic until he could see it for himself. How it was hidden was an altogether different question and the various hypotheses on this were enough to make any non-mage's head spin. Still, George and Thayet stayed and talked until Numair was sure the sun would be rising soon.

He scrubbed his tired eyes with his hands and yawned deeply. Alanna tried not to giggle at him and then promptly yawned herself. "Jon, I think better when I'm not sleep-deprived. Is there any chance we can suspend this discussion until later?" he asked.

Jon smiled. He looked tired as well. "Of course," he said. Everyone who was awake stood and stretched. Harailt, Tkaa, George, and Alanna left the room first. Thayet stooped to shake Daine awake and Numair waited to walk Daine and Kitten back to Daine's room. Jon leaned over and whispered, "Why did you decide to teach her cartography?"

"I thought she was better suited for map making than any of us since she flies so much," he answered.

Jon seemed satisfied with that reason. "In case you ever think about taking up Harailt's offer, I want the chance to counter."

Numair chuckled softly. "Somewhere in my sleep starved memory, I think I learned it was poor etiquette to leave the employ of a monarch to work for one of his subjects. Of course in Ozorne's empire that might have been grounds for beheading, so I could be remembering incorrectly."

Jon laughed briefly.

"You know, Jon, you've had a look all evening like there's more on your mind than the fissure in the forest." He looked at the king expectantly.

"Before Daine flew in here to get us, we were discussing the latest news from Carthak. It isn't good. Kaddar has a rebellion on his hands and he's afraid the rebels may have joined forces with the Copper Isles. They commandeered some ships from his navy and sailed northwest with holds full of armaments. When Raoul returns from Panquesh, I'm sending him and two companies to help Port Legann. I'm not afraid of a fight, Numair, you know that. But I don't welcome it. Sometimes I think my father might have been right to reach for peace at any cost."

Numair put a hand on Jon's shoulder and squeezed. "Peace is usually a good thing, but there are prices that are too high. If asked to sacrifice the people who depend on you to maintain peace, you're better to let them fight for their freedom. I knew Kaddar would have a struggle. He wanted basically the right things, but he was too willing to cower to the fat nobles that didn't want to carry their own skirts. Those nobles will make slaves of the southern lands if we let them. Young women Daine's age will be sold as sex objects and children Roald and Kally's age will lose the right to education. Before you question yourself, remember the reasons you didn't want to be your father in the first place."

Jon smiled slightly. "Thank you. I needed that."

"When will we need to leave for Legann?"

Jon smiled more broadly. "I'll leave with Raoul. But I think I need you here until that thing is out of my forest. I keep thinking about the Spidren that fell in and wondering where it went."

Numair became aware that Daine and Thayet were standing there watching the exchange. Daine was holding Kit on one hip and Numair reached out to take the little dragon. "Come on sleepy-head, I'll walk you back to your room," he told Daine with a weary smile.

"I didn't know you could walk in your sleep, Numair," she goaded.

"I'm more awake than you are," he said teasingly. Daine grabbed her cartography kit and the three waved goodnight to Thayet and Jon and walked out into the night.

After Daine was safely escorted to her room, Numair lay on his bed staring at the ceiling and watching the dim light of the sunrise through his drawn shades. As tired as he was, he couldn't sleep. Worse still, every tiny noise in the world seemed amplified to his exhausted brain. He could hear the buzzing of the stones in his workroom. Those were the stones he had used to absorb the magic the morning the barrier broke. He heard servants wandering through the castle on their early morning routines and birds chirping a greeting to the morning. He listened to the strange questions rattling around his brain as if someone were reading them off a list: Who made the chasm? What is the chasm? Where did that spidren go? How do we destroy it? Should we destroy it? Who is Daine's father? Is she the daughter of a God? Is she the one the Goddess talked about? The list went on and on until at some point it just continued into his sleep, allowing him to dream but never to actually rest.

There was an irritating thudding in his restless sleep. It hammered at the back of his eyelids the way penetrating noises do. And then he realized it was his door and someone was knocking. He pulled himself stiffly out of bed and put on a robe.

Daine was standing at his door. "It's about time," she said. He stretched sleepily and ushered her in.

"What can I do for you, beautiful?" he asked groggily.

"Do you always flirt when you're not awake or did I just never notice before?" she asked.

He leaned back against his door for a minute before what she asked really sunk in. Now, he was awake. He tried to hide his blush. "Sorry, Magelet." He took a deep breath and attempted to put on a calm façade. "What brings you here?"

"It grew."

"What grew."

"The hole – it grew."

With alarm he said, "How much?"

"Based on my map, Harailt guesses four feet in diameter."

Numair did fast calculations in his head realizing with awe that it could take in the whole forest in 22 days if it continued the same increase daily. He automatically made the sign against evil on his chest – something he rarely did. "How long ago did Harailt discover this?"

"One hour ago. We were going to let you sleep but well..."

"It looks to be mid-day, is that correct?"

"Yes." She sighed heavily. "Numair, it will kill all the animals." She looked so forlorn that he nearly reached for her, but stopped himself.

"We will find a way to stop this, I promise. In the meantime, get them clear. Are there any nests around there that might need moved?" The soft smile on her pink lips rewarded him well. "This is the worst time to move some, though, isn't it? Many are mating or incubating eggs." Again she smiled at him.

"Harailt wanted me to tell you that he thinks it fed off the warding spell."

He contemplated that information for a moment. "Gods! That means I made it grow. And any experimenting to try to destroy it will feed it further if it fails." He sat for a moment reiterating all the questions that had run through his mind over and over in his sleep. "Did you ask the animals in the area if any of their friends had suddenly disappeared?"

"Yes," she answered with a tone that said You knew I would. "There have been some small ground animals that disappeared. But whether they fell in or were eaten by spidrens, it's hard to say."

"So let us assume for a moment that trapping things like spidrens is the purpose. Why would you do that?"

"I don't know. Maybe if you eat them you would. Do any immortals hunt one another?" He shook his head. "So is it a corral maybe? I mean, we know it isn't a friend of ours doing it, because we'd know about it. So maybe it's to corral a bunch of monsters," she suggested.

"To what end? Does the maker intend to dump us one at a time in to die in an impossible battle, or does the maker intend to release a horde of beasts on Corus at once?"

"I don't like either one," she responded, looking up at him with worried eyes.

He ruffled her curls affectionately before he realized what he was doing. "Neither do I."

Over the next three days, Harailt, Lindhall, Tkaa, Alanna and Numair ran every innocuous test they could on the chasm, trying not to feed it any more magic. In the meantime, the world seemed to be tilting toward war. Raoul returned with refugees from Panquesh, only to move out the very next day for Legann. Jon begged Alanna and Numair to let him know the moment the found an answer and he kissed Thayet goodbye and left with the Own.

Spies spotted war ships moving east from the Copper Isles and George headed back to Pirates Swoop to help prepare the coast for an attack. As the days passed, Alanna grew more and more fitful about remaining in Corus.

Onua gave up all thought of traveling to Cria and she and Daine made day trips to try and find ponies and war horses to purchase from surrounding fiefs. Numair grew increasingly anxious about the chasm and increasingly lonely for Daine's company. He tried to stay so busy that he couldn't think about it, but seemed to be losing the battle. He spent nearly as much time thinking about where Daine might be as he did trying to figure out what form of magic might mask the fissure without registering on his magical senses.

It was a beautiful spring day, five days after Jon had left for Legann when Daine and Onua stayed in Corus to begin training the horses they had managed to purchase. Numair sat in the forest staring at a chasm he could not see. A large stack of books were piled around him. Somehow he seemed to believe that if he stared at the problem while he researched it, there would be an epiphany that solved everything. Alanna came and flopped down beside him, snacking on an apple and glaring with hatred at an anomaly she couldn't really see.

Numair took a break from his reading and pulled three balls out of his pocket. He juggled them for a moment before rolling one out across the clearing. It rolled safely to the other side. The next one he bounced, and it disappeared into the invisible hole. "I think I finally understand something," he said.

Alanna stared at him as if he might be baiting her. "You better not be kidding," she growled.

"Don't get too excited. It's not going to solve this, only answer one of a dozen questions. I've been trying to figure out why one ball can roll across while the other bounces in, when they weigh exactly the same. It is as simple as that both realities exist in the same space. We can't find any debris or detritus because it hasn't been removed. It is still there."

"How can that possibly be?" she asked incredulously.

He picked a stone from his mage pack and drew a rune on it. When he could suddenly see the chasm, he smiled to himself and handed the stone to Alanna. She looked up and saw the fissure and jumped to her feet in shock. "Explain this to me?" she said with her eyes wide.

"Well that's easier said than done," he warned. "It is a dimensional displacement. Hold that stone long enough and you'll see a whole lot of things that don't belong in our world. The theory holds that two existences can actually share the same time and space without being reactive to one another. Their frequencies don't intersect. So we don't hear or see them and they don't hear or see us. We don't affect them and they don't affect us. It's one of those theories that I read and found intriguing, but I was never quite sure if I believed it until I tripped across that rune. The problem is that your own friends will begin to think you're mad if you try to explain it."

"I think I understood about half of what you just said," she remarked. "I don't really have to though, do I?"

"No. I don't fully understand it myself. It simply is. It's like asking your self how Bonedancer can fly when he has no wings or feathers. If you spend too much time thinking about it, you just get a headache. The fact remains that he does."

"Is it possible that a human did this – this displacement?"

"I don't think so. It seems like something that would need a higher magic – that of an elemental or even a god. But which god would do this and why? What would be the point? And if a god did it, are we right to try to change it?"

Alanna buried the fingers of both hands in her short red hair and stared, dumbstruck.

Numair felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Daine smiling at him. Onua and Sarge were standing there too. "I figured I should make sure you had lunch before you had to be taken to Duke Baird again for not eating," Daine said. She handed him a sandwich.

Alanna looked at what remained of her apple somewhat guiltily and said, "Duke Baird, what?"

"A few weeks back our lanky friend here nearly made him self ill by working on experiments and neglecting to eat," Onua said.

Alanna raised an eyebrow. Numair mumbled out of the side of his mouth, "Quick, hand her the stone." Alanna did.

Onua said, "Horse Lords! There it is!" The three newcomers proceeded to pass the stone between them, staring in awe at the huge hole.

"You know, Numair, not that I understand this whole displacement thing – but why can you see this from the air at all?"

"Altitude changes frequency. If you flew a few feet over it, I doubt you'd see it anyway, but we all were ten or more feet above it. Daine and I flew lower in bird form, but the shift changed our frequencies. Plus the vibrations in the ground that we feel and ignore every day probably help shape our perceptions more than we realize."

Alanna looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language. Suddenly she burst into laughter.

"What?" he asked, surprised at her reaction.

"The night we discovered this – this thing, Daine said something about the way you think. I thought she was kidding. I suddenly realized she wasn't."

He turned to Daine who was blushing furiously. Mystified, he asked Alanna, "What exactly did she say?"

"Something to the effect of 'with a brain like his, it just spills over'. I don't understand this displacement theory and I don't think I want to. You read it sometime ago probably to entertain yourself."

Onua, Sarge and Daine were stifling giggles, but Numair felt a little hurt. He turned to Daine and asked, "Am I too bookish?"

"No," she said sincerely. "What she didn't say was that I like that about you. It challenges me." She smiled and he had the pounding urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her. He might have done it if he didn't have an audience and if he hadn't spent the last three months telling himself the hundred reasons why he could never do that. So he settled for staring far too long.

-

-

-

My Dean Koontz habits are showing a little, but I hope I didn't lose everybody.