"Everything has limits," said Sunbright evenly. He fingered the nose of a statue, a bronze beauty holding a two-headed snake across her bare shoulders. "A touch to this statue wears it away, in a small way. This castle will be dust some day. Trying to stop the decline of things, or to hasten natural ways-hardening quicksilver to silver-never works for long, and usually backfires. If you would cure your blights, burn the crops. That's a natural cure and ends the problem. Let people move elsewhere and eat differently until new, clean crops appear. The land and people will be stronger for it. But to hope that a random tool from a heap of junk will solve your problem is silly. To cure an ill, you need only visit the source. Sit upon the earth, in the field, fast, clear your mind, learn how the grain eats of the earth, and why the disease works its evil."
"There isn't time." Candlemas stared out a distant window.
Sunbright continued, "And another thing. Where's your end of the bargain? You agreed to help me track Greenwillow's soul. How fare those efforts?"
The elder mage only waved his arms. "Again, there might be something in these boxes. Mirrors are the best thing I know for seeing to other worlds and planes. Telescopes sometimes, or kaleidoscopes. Glass eggs, too. There are probably six of each in these trunks, and more downstairs. And enchanted doors: there are five in the cellar, stacked against the wall. Feel free to fit them to frames and chant over them. By the time you're as old as me…"
The barbarian peered at the trunks, frowning. "I'd give the same answer. A mirror might show some other world, but only that part desired by whoever enchanted it. So too a glass egg or door. To find Greenwillow, we'd need some part of her: a lock of hair, or a ring she wore for a long time. Shamans can learn the animal by reading a bone, or commune with the dead while sleeping on a skull. But we have no piece of Greenwillow. Only dreams."
That thought conjured the night's vision, a dark forest, Greenwillow's ghost leading him on to-what?
He interrupted himself. "I need to go to the forest."
"Fine, fine. Ask the birds if hollow wheat kernels are bitter, or if groundhogs can gnaw bare cobs." Candlemas waved a weary hand. "I'll fetch you at sundown."
He forked his fingers to invoke a shift spell, but Sunbright stopped him. "Let me retrieve my tackle."
"Why? I said I'd fetch you within hours."
The barbarian didn't answer, only turned for his chambers. Candlemas swore softly and slammed the lid of a trunk.
How proceeds the fire?
The fire amongst the humans? They seek heat, and we heap on coals.
Far below the earth, in chambers that had never seen sun, whirled a score of creatures like tops with diamond tails. Cruel gashes with rock-hard edges were their mouths, for they could eat anything found underground: roots, rocks, moles, hibernating bears, tombstones, and bones. But mostly they fed on magic, for enchantment ran through their very fiber. They were the Phaerimm, unknown to men, seldom seen, and even then invariably mistaken for dust devils. Usually they destroyed the observer, champed his bones and muscles to bits, leaving only scraps and stains in the wilderness.
I like it not. Piling magic on magic puts them at risk of burning out, but it endangers us as much.
We discussed that at length. There is no other way. We shall be safe. Their idiocy shall scour the earth, but not penetrate here.
If we are careful.
We are always careful. We must be, for we are so few.
We are the oldest living things on the planet.
All the more reason to safeguard.
The humans will be undone, have no fear. They are soft and cannot last.
Look how our drain spell sucks the nourishment from their food. Soon they will have naught to eat.
They'll eat each other.
All the better. Their bones will enrich the soil. And we will again hold the worlds above and below.
If we give them magic enough to choke.
The humans are foolish to use magic so freely. Don't they see it hastens their demise?
They see nothing, know nothing. They will burn out and cease to be.
This new magic we've pulled from the sky will add more dweomer than ever before. Mountains of magic!
For an orgy-a holocaust of magical energy!
But it will take time. Many revolutions of the sun.
Not so many. Not so…
It felt good to have soft earth and needles under his boots, to smell pine sap and wet moss, to hear warblers trill and red squirrels chitter, to feel the wind on his scalp. Sunbright felt at home.
But more exciting, he thought he recognized this stretch of forest.
It was hard to say, for he'd dreamt it, at night, when distracted by the vision of Greenwillow. But the folds of land looked right, the configuration of those two joined pines was familiar, and the spidery bulk of that bull pine called to him. His lover, his sweet elf, had floated that way, he thought. Always having lived more by emotion than by logic, Sunbright followed.
It felt good to touch nature again, and also to shoulder his traveling gear. He wore the heavy Harvester across his back in a new bull-hide scabbard and at his belt hung the warhammer of Dorlas, son of Drigor, a weapon he'd inherited and promised to someday return to the Sons of Baltar in the far Iron Mountains. A new goat-hide vest was laced across his chest and a bright green shirt hung to his knees. Around his waist was a thick, studded belt, and his tall moosehide boots with the rings and buckles were newly-blacked and the leather oiled. The workmanship of his clothing and tackle was exquisite, hand-stitched by Lady Polaris's seamstresses and saddlemakers. Not that he cared: he would have gone abroad in rags to tramp the forest.
And tramp he did, past trees like pillars, in a hushed, green-filtered, luminous light. He moved quickly, driving game before him, delighting in their quick fluttering. The flick of a deer's white tail as it bounded away. The snuffling of a badger dragging its striped head back into its sett. The twitter of chickadees tracking him from twig to twig. The slither of a green snake as it oozed around a bole and clung to the bark with its belly scales, tongue flickering. Sunbright breathed deep and laughed aloud, glad to be back, as if he'd been gone years and not a few days. The only dark cloud was the need to return to the floating castle high above like a squat stone cloud. But he pushed that thought aside and gloried in his freedom, like a child let out of school.
Walking for miles, he watched everywhere, naturally curious and trained to be cautious. At one point he halted, bemused. Drawing his sword, he hunkered alongside a pine, slowed his breathing, unfocused his eyes to better detect movement.
Something had alerted him, but he didn't know what. A sense of being watched or, oddly, spoken of. (Though he couldn't know it, he sensed the Phaerimm plotting far below the earth.) In time, doubting his own senses, Sunbright sheathed his sword and moved on, walking warily until he was half a mile away. Finally he dismissed the unease with an old adage. " 'Imagination is a two-edged sword: a blessing and a curse.'"
Pausing to rest, he lay flat and drank from a rippling stream, surprising a frog. He ate a meager lunch from a haversack, pressed on. Somehow he knew which paths to follow, for Greenwillow had shown him. In the same way, he knew she was still alive, waiting for him, helping him. Helping him find her.
Then, abruptly, he found his (their) destination. And it made sense, for the shooting star and Greenwillow's warning had broken his sleepwalking, kept him from pitching out a window.