“Many more bowls needed today, Mudwort.” Direfang stood a few feet back, looking stern again.
“Tired. Hard work.” Holding the hem of her tunic in one hand, she bent and cupped some water with the other, raising it to her mouth for a drink then dipping it into the river again so she could splash water on her face. She tarried in the shallows, hoping he would leave. But she finally gave up and joined him. “Head hurts, Direfang.”
“Get the others to help.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Thya has magic. Saw you and Thya and Grallik talking to the ground. Others too.”
Mudwort had thought about combining magic with the others, but a part of her hadn’t wanted to share the making of the earth bowls. It was her magic, not theirs. She scowled and dug her heel into the river clay.
“So tired, Direfang.”
“So much work to be done, Mudwort.”
He left her, climbing a low section of the bluff. Plants had grown there, but the goblins going to and from the river had uprooted them or smashed them, leaving a clear path. Mudwort waited until the top of Direfang’s head disappeared before she scurried after him.
“Find Thya,” Mudwort said to a youngling carrying a bundle of twigs. “Find Draath,” she said to another. When the young female cocked her head, Mudwort added, “The goblin with three tiny elf heads.”
She didn’t have to look for Grallik. He was close by, watching her; he met her eyes through a sea of activity and approached.
“Direfang spoke with me,” he began. His eyes glistened, and she knew it was because the wizard actually looked forward to the chance to mingle magic. “But fire is my true purview, Mudwort. You know that. I’m not sure that I can-”
“Then don’t try,” she retorted. She stalked away, picking out a spot for the next bowl.
“But I will try,” he said just loud enough for her to hear as he followed. The rest of his words were lost in the scampering of goblin feet and the sounds of broken walls and roofs being torn apart. Everywhere the rebuilding was beginning.
Mudwort continued to use her mat, though Thya, Draath, and Grallik kneeled in the dirt to form a circle with her. She studied their faces: Thya’s was always hard to read, as she was a stoic soul who seemed to show little emotion; Draath was an enigma, and he looked angry when he cast magic, but she thought it was merely the way his features knitted together when he concentrated; Grallik could not hide his eagerness. The half-elf wizard had rankled her from the moment he joined the goblin army, and more than once Mudwort had wished him dead.
But he’d proven himself too valuable. There was energy in his scarred body and in his mind that she siphoned whenever they joined arcane forces. Too, some spells came so easily to him-anything to do with fire. Mudwort coveted such magics and continued to learn from the half-elf wizard, tugging the nuances of the enchantments from his memory, likely without him knowing it. So she would put up with him for as long as he continued to be useful. She thrust all musings of the wizard, Thya, and Draath to the back of her mind; it would be unfortunate if they picked up on what she was thinking about them.
The quartet sunk their hands into the earth, touching fingers beneath the surface. It was at the same time a distinctly uncomfortable and a wildly thrilling experience to join magic with another. She imagined she felt Draath’s breath on her face and could hear through Thya’s ears; she thought she was staring in wonder with Grallik’s keen halfelf eyes, and yet she was in command of all her faculties and senses.
She pictured the homes from the long-ago time and watched with the other three as the ancient clan dug the earthen bowls with crude tools-a few using their magic. They watched as the scene shifted to goblins driving posts into the ground and weaving thatch and small branches. At the same time, she willed the ground to shape itself.
Draath’s mind was the first to join hers. His magic was very strong, she could tell, and that frightened her a little. It had a dark and dangerous feel. Thya joined next, a raw talent that needed training, and finally Grallik, who seemed astonished that he could work earth magic. Before the wizard had only “seen” through the ground with Mudwort. But there she taught him-no, forced him-to sculpt the ground.
“Imagine that the dirt forms a hollow spot,” Mudwort told the others. “Like a bowl, an empty spot in a tree, the shell with its nut gone, the shape of a bird’s nest.”
She passed her mental image along to the other three, and within moments they were sinking. Rather than form the depression next to them, they formed it under themselves. And when Grallik’s shoulders met the lip of the ground behind their backs, they stopped. It took little time. It took longer to smooth the bowl, and remove from it a rock the size of a hobgoblin’s head.
Thya made the holes for the posts, Grallik closely watching, while Mudwort and Draath selected the next piece of ground.
“Not here,” she told Draath, moving on.
Draath turned his head to what looked like an uncomfortable angle and tipped his chin up. Mudwort had learned that the gesture meant the same thing as “why?” or “explain.”
“There are too many rocks, and the root from that old tree spreads to here and here and here.”
From Draath came a repeat of the gesture.
“The earth talks and says those things are beneath the surface. It talks quite plainly to those who want to hear it.” She shuffled farther from the edge of the bluff, the balls of her feet dragging in the moist earth; she loved the feel of it against her soles.
“Only little rocks here,” she said, placing her mat down and sitting cross-legged in the center. Draath took the spot to her right.
“Few of the Skinweavers have this magic,” he said. “Most of the Skinweavers have other talents.”
Like shrinking pieces of elves, Mudwort thought.
She found his voice ugly. His lips moved, but it sounded as if he talked through his nose or had a perpetual cold. Nor did she like the disgusting heads that were tied to his belt by their hanks of hair. Mudwort was certain she did not like elves, though she’d known only one half-elf, Grallik. But she did not care for humans like the Dark Knights, and elves were no doubt just as bad. She’d not heard any good tales of elves, so she couldn’t imagine why Draath and his fellows would want to carry hunks of dead elves with them, banging against their hips and their legs as they walked.
She shuddered.
“Is something bad, Mudwort?” Draath seemed genuinely concerned.
She didn’t have to answer. Thya and Grallik arrived, and they got busy joining their magic to make another hole.
Mudwort’s legs and arms felt as heavy as stone when Direfang called a break to the work. A group of Boarhunters had lived up to their name, dragging the carcasses of several boars into a clearing. Other clans set to work skinning the animals and chattered that the Fernwold clan had killed a bear. Grallik, looking as tired as Mudwort had ever seen him, was tasked with starting a fire to cook most of the meat; a few clans preferred raw flesh.
Thya slept at the rim of an earth bowl. Draath paced, looking at the carcasses and alternately wringing his hands and patting his stomach. He did not appear as fatigued as she, and when Direfang approached, the Skinweaver met him halfway. Mudwort decided to pull more energy from Draath when Direfang asked them to dig more bowls the next day. She would not take so much from Thya and Grallik and perhaps Sallor, who Draath called a minor shaman, or an old Flamegrass clansman who could work stone with a touch-all who would be helping the next day.