“Rafe?” Hope said. “Is there anything you can do for us?”
Rafe blinked as if she had spoken an unknown tongue.
“Rafe?”
“I’m only a farm boy,” he said. He frowned as he spoke and leaned sideways in the saddle, splaying his fingers and touching this island of grass and trees. “This is good soil.”
Hope shook her head, glanced at Kosar, looked across the river once more.
“I could swim it,” A’Meer said. “Get over to what’s left of San and see if there’s a boat there, something left undamaged.”
“And then?” Kosar said. “Will you paddle it against the flow for us? Dodge the trees that will hole the boat if they hit you?”
“What else do you suggest?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “We have to risk it with the horses, I suppose. It may be shallow enough most of the way for them to walk, and then they can swim when they have to. Horses are good swimmers. And-”
“We’ll drown,” Trey said. “And I can’t swim. Not much need of it in the mines.”
“He’s right,” A’Meer said. She kicked a stick, watched it tumble into the waters and drift up toward the Widow’s Peaks. “We’ll drown.” She turned and looked at Rafe, silently asking him the question Hope had just posed.
He had dismounted and was down on his knees, not only running his fingers through the grasses now but digging them in, thrusting his fingers into the wet soil up to the knuckles, kneading it, pushing himself as close to the ground as he could. And he was whining, like a dog about to be whipped or missing its master, punishment or loss, both the sounds of heartache.
“Rafe?” A’Meer asked. He looked up at them. But his eyes were glazed, and in them they saw something much, much more than human.
HE SAW MAGICacross the land. The old magic, accepted and revered and honored many generations before the Mages had betrayed it. He saw the good it had done, the ease with which it was incorporated into lives, the benevolent power it exhaled. It demanded no sacrifice, homage or worship, but it honored the respect it engendered, and grew along with the world it served. Its energy was limitless, its boundaries without end. The people of the land translated its efficacy as far as their imagination allowed, and although there was much more-so much more-the magic did not provoke beliefs or understanding that the people were not able to comprehend. They used it to run the machines that turned soil in their fields, when it could have grown the crops themselves. They used it to provide succor to those dying from awful illnesses, when in fact it could have cured those illnesses with a touch. It fed fires when it could have made them, gathered building materials when it could have constructed the buildings themselves, carried messages across the land when it could have passed them at the speed of thought. The people used magic to serve them and entertain them and aid them in the way of life they chose, and even though it could have done so much more it was content with that. It was not a jealous god.
Rafe saw this and recognized the potential he carried, that growing knot of power that seemed so far down that it was deeper than his soul, more a part of him than his own personality, memories and thoughts, and yet totally alien. He fed it his wonder and it fed back a sense of calmness, confidence and security. He thought of where he had come from-rescued from out on the hillside, his parents had told him-and wondered who had left him, what they had known of his origins. He supposed he been destined for this, and though his bloodline was a mystery he did not concern himself with it. It was the here and now that mattered. That, and the love he would always feel for his parents, even though this fledgling magic had indirectly caused their deaths.
And yet beneath all of this, the magic was a child. That such power could labor under such vulnerability was a shock to Rafe. He had not taken time before to consider why it was inside him and nowhere else; he had not wondered at its secrecy; he had assumed that it was a seed, planted and waiting to germinate when the time was right. He had never guessed that it might be hiding.
He, a farm boy of mysterious beginnings, protected by a band of people who all had different reasons and motives, was this new magic’s sole protector.
That made him sad. It exposed the true disorder of things, the random and unfeeling dangers of existence, and it was that more than anything that gave Rafe his first truly autonomous touch of magic. And when he fisted his hands around rich soil, he felt a surge of energy pulsing both ways: from him into the ground; and up out of the land, feeding him, trading itself for the small thing he had to do.
Healing A’Meer had been an example for his own benefit. Now, convinced at last, he began to take some control.
“THERE’S SOMETHING HAPPENINGout there,” Trey said. “I can’t see. .. the mist…”
“Something in the water,” Hope said.
Kosar watched Rafe squeeze both hands tightly around clots of mud and drive his fists into the ground. A’Meer glanced across and he nodded down at the boy, not saying a word. The Shantasi’s eyes were wide and amazed.
The Monks are not right, Kosar thought. No one has a right to destroy this.
Out in the river the waters were boiling, sending spouts of spray and steam into the air. The river continued to flow but the disturbance remained in the same place, directly across from the small hillock where they stood watching. A huge tree, snapped by the force of its upheaval, flowed along the river and was nudged aside by the foaming water. The violence in the river began to lessen and something appeared at its center, a solid shape breaking the surface and turning over, like some leviathan touching sunlight for the first time, exposing a moss-encrusted underside as it balanced on end, turned and dropped down into the river with a huge splash.
A boat. It turned in the water, spinning in the current, and then began slipping sideways against the flow. The sound of water breaking against its hull was like a giant voiding a century’s worth of flooded lungs.
Kosar looked at the boat, Rafe, A’Meer, back to the boat.
“Witchcraft,” Hope muttered. And then she smiled, the tattoos on her face actually forming something beautiful.
As the boat nudged the hillock, Trey and Kosar ran down and grabbed its slimy hull.
“It’s been down for a long time,” Rafe said. He had dropped the handfuls of dirt and stood now next to the horses, his eyes serene and confident. “There are plenty of others down there-some just added-but this one was the most complete. No mast, no sails of course, no paddles. But it was swamped, not broken. The hull should be sound enough to get us across, at least.” He looked suddenly tired, swaying slightly and holding a horse’s reins to keep his balance. He glanced back at the ground, seeing something invisible there.
“How did you…?” A’Meer said.
“That’s all I can do for now.” Rafe let go of the horse and knelt, lay down on his side, closed his eyes.
The four of them stood for a few silent seconds-Kosar and Trey holding the ragged old boat against the river’s pull, Hope and A’Meer unmoving, amazed-and then Kosar shook the surprise from his mind.
“Hurry!” he said. “We can’t hold this thing for long, and with him asleep…”
“Will it take the horses?” Hope asked.
Kosar shrugged. “We can try. The fit ones first, then we’ll see if there’s room for the other two.”
They guided the first two horses over the lip and into the center of the boat, lifted Alishia and Rafe and placed them gently at the stern, then tried to urge the two weaker horses on board. They refused, and no amount of cajoling would convince them otherwise.
“Maybe they’re so tired they’d rather just stay here and die,” Trey said.
“Maybe they know what they’ll face if they come with us,” Hope replied. There was nothing else they could do, so they stripped the two horses of their gear, stowed it on deck and shoved off into the river. The horses watched them go.