Magic's Promise

Vanyel said, trying to keep the fascination of the heart - stone from recapturing him. 'There isn't much you can help me with, and you two being here would be a little distracting. But if you'd poke your nose in here from time to time -'

'Anything I should watch for?'

'Well,' Vanyel replied wryly, 'if I'm turning blue, that's probably a sign something's wrong. Other than that, trust your own judgment.'

Jervis' answering laugh was gruff, and sounded a little like churning gravel, but it proved that of the four of them, he was the one least affected by their macabre surroundings. 'All right, let me take the boy out, and we'll see if we can make some progress.'

'Thanks.” And thank you, Jervis, that we can trust each other now. I don't think I could be doing this otherwise. Without waiting to see them go, Vanyel turned back to the stone pillar, and placed both palms and his forehead against it -

And it took him into itself.

For a very long time he was conscious only of the incredible, seething maelstrom of the energy-node itself. It was like plunging into the heart of the sun, and yet remaining curiously unscathed and untouched. It was different from tapping into the node; there he was outside, separate from the energy he sought to control, and he was dealing with a single, thin stream of force. Now he was a part of the force, with no intent - or chance - to control it. But control was not what he wanted; he wanted only observation, and answers.

But to have an answer, one must first ask a question. He framed it in his mind, carefully inserting all the nuances into it he could.

In words, it would have been a simple, 'Who left this here?' In thought it was infinitely more complex than that; asking 'who' specifically, and 'who' as a class. The heart-stone was not an intelligence, but it remembered. And every question that was balanced by an answer would call that answer out of the stone. Vanyel got a very clear picture of Tayledras Adepts; several of them, all of them radiating great power, including one with the peculiar blue-green aura of the rare Healer-Adept. That particular Adept was much clearer, and lingered longer in the mind, and the implication was that it was this Healer-Adept that was responsible for having left both stone and node still in their active state.

If Vanyel could have started with surprise, he would have. Although they could, and on occasion did, act as ordinary Healers, Tayledras Healer-Adepts concerned themselves with Healing, not people, but environments. At restoring the balance nature had intended. At Healing the hurts that either magic or the hand of man had dealt there. That a Healer-Adept would have deemed it necessary to leave this potentially disastrously-dangerous energy source in lands soon to be settled by ordinary humans - that seemed to indicate that there was a terrible need that overrode all other considerations.

'Why?' he asked, urgently.

And felt himself being drawn down - deeper - below the bedrock, and into the roots of the earth itself. And he realized with a shock that the pillar was that deeply rooted, too.

There was tension here, a tension that increased as he went deeper, a vast pressure to either side of him that squeezed him until he could scarcely breathe. And still the force that had seized him to answer his question drew him deeper, and deeper still, to a point where the rock began to warm about him.

Then he saw it. Running from north to south, invisible from above, yet carrying implied within it such peril that his blood ran cold, was a crack in the last layer of rock itself. A fault; a place of slippage, following the river bottom.

That was natural enough; what was not natural was the hole punched through the fault down to the molten core of the planet, something probably left from the Mage Wars. That was what the heart-stone was planted above. And all of Highjorune was built directly on that fault. More, it extended the width of Lineas and out into the unsettled lands. If it slipped -

And it was only a matter of time before it slipped and caused a catastrophe that would destroy the city in fire and earthquake-and much of the surrounding country beside. Vanyel could not imagine why it hadn't happened before this - until he Saw where the energy of the node was going.

It was feeding into a complicated spell so convoluted and involved he could never have set it himself. It could only be the handiwork of that Tayledras Healer-Adept - and it looked to be the masterwork of an entire lifetime as a mage and an Adept. It was holding the wound closed, and keeping the fault from slipping.

More, it would, given time enough, Heal the wound and the fault, redistributing the strain elsewhere, until this was no longer an area of instability. But it would take time, hundreds of years or more, and any great siphoning away of the node-energy would deprive the spell of needed power. And if that occurred - depending on the amount of energy stolen from its proper usage, there would come anything from a minor tremor to the major, devastating disaster the Adept had been trying to prevent.

The force that had him let him go, and he drifted back to the 'surface' more than a little dazed.