Battle Magic

zayao was dead wood, untouchable by Rosethorn and him; sulfur was metal somehow, immune to plant and stone magic. Saltpeter, the third ingredient, was outside all three of them. He had tried to tell Evvy it was part stone, but she did not believe him.

The bombs fell, exploding throughout their army. Horses and soldiers shrieked. Riders and foot soldiers raced to fill gaps in the front and shift the screaming wounded and the dead. Clouds of stinking smoke rolled over the field.

Briar tried not to listen to the cries for help as he reached underground with his power, seeking roots. He groped in his jacket with one hand until he found a vial of strengthening oil. The enemy’s cavalry was charging. If he rubbed the oil on his hands to strengthen his power, he could get a wide swathe of grasses to trip the horses….

He was loosening the wax around the vial’s cork when fire, or a pain like burning, raced over his skin. A mage had singled him out for attack. He cried out and reached for Rosethorn. She lay on the ground, doubled over on herself. With a gasp she smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch me! I’m burning up!” she shouted, though he saw no blisters on her pale skin.

He fumbled to put the vial back in his pocket. He felt more invisible flames spill over him and swore he would have the Yanjingyi mage’s teeth out in revenge. He didn’t see fire, but he heard it crackle; his nose was filled with the stink of cooking flesh. Tears of pain streamed down his face.

Rosethorn cried out again. He fell to his knees and began to crawl to her, shouting for Evvy and Luvo.

He stopped at a pair of splayed brown feet. Knotted brown hands yanked him up as Riverdancer shouted into his face. More heat engulfed him. Briar shoved the older woman away to keep her from being burned, but he still couldn’t see the fire that crackled so convincingly on his own skin.

Riverdancer grabbed him again. This time her translator stood beside her. “She says, the Yanjingyi, did they get a chance to collect your hair or your fingernails?” the translator bellowed in tiyon. “Did they take clothes with your sweat on them?”

He stared at the two Gyongxin women. They had tried to be careful back in the Winter Palace, using their magic to remove all trace of themselves from the guest pavilion, but they could do little about the cushions and drying cloths they had used during all those meals with the nobles and the emperor. A very good mage might have drawn enough of their essence from those to do them harm now. Briar had learned all about sympathetic magic and the uses of all things that were once part of a person on their journey east. He was trying to remember if they had forgotten anything important, like nail clippings or hair, when the pain swept over him and Rosethorn screamed.

Riverdancer released him. Briar fell to the ground beside his teacher as the shaman began to dance, one foot up, one foot down. Had he known Riverdancer wore tiny bells in her clothes? One foot up, one foot down in a strange, turning step. She danced around Rosethorn and Briar, her bells singing. Fine white crystals spilled from Riverdancer’s fingers. She sang, too. Briar could see her words in the air. They spoke of the strength of the mountains and the power of eagles, about the roots of the glaciers and rivers of Gyongxe. Even though he didn’t know the language she used — it wasn’t tiyon — he saw and understood everything.

As she danced and sang, her white crystals formed a solid, unbroken line. In it tiny shamans danced and twirled like she did. They made swirls in the white stuff without disturbing the evenness of the white line. The more Riverdancer and the small shamans danced, the more his pain eased. When she closed the circle, the fiery agony stopped. The tiny shamans waved to Briar and vanished.

Rosethorn sat up. “Thank you,” she whispered. “That was — horrible. They would have killed us.”

Riverdancer grinned and made a remark.

“Now they will burn, the Yanjingyi,” her translator said. “We will take the power they threw at you and return their curses to them.”

“Can you stop them?” Briar asked as Rosethorn leaned against him. “You don’t even know who has our sweat or whatever it is.”

The translator smiled. “You would be surprised by the things Riverdancer can do on her own.”

Rosethorn leaned against Briar. She was reaching for more of the catapults. Briar put an arm around her and watched the shamans. Several of them had come to make a shielding line in front of Briar, Rosethorn, Evvy, and Luvo. They began to chant softly. Now and then they stamped, or rang tiny bells. Their voices soaked into Briar’s bones, drifting down through them like silt.

Movement in the air caught his attention. From the walls of Garmashing, arrows and big stones took flight, then dropped down into the ranks of the emperor’s army. Again and again the city’s defenders shot, hammering the Yanjingyi enemy on the western side.

Briar let his own magic seep into the hillside. His body was weary; he felt battered after the mage assault. But it was spring: Everything in the southern Gnam Runga Plain was growing. Briar drew only a small part of that strength into his veins, just as he knew Rosethorn drew on part of it. As soon as he was ready, he sped through the interwoven grass roots down the rise and into the flat plain.

Horses thundered over his head. Next came the remains of the catapults Rosethorn had changed to form the trees above him: They hummed with her power. Beyond those lay the weight of more catapults that were in the process of becoming trees once more, stabbing new roots down into the earth. Above the ground he sensed thousands of crossbows and bolts carried by the archers who stood in their ranks around the imperial platform.

Briar was not searching for catapults or archers. He sought the white blaze of magic laid on the cool touch of willow, oak, and gingko.

The mages were bunched in small groups protected by archers, many of them arranged in steps on the great observation platform. To his magical senses they floated at different levels in the air depending on where they stood on the platform. Each mage appeared in his magical vision as a series of bead groups; these glittered with an overlay of Yanjingyi magic. He felt the clash between the magic and the wood’s own power: Didn’t the Yanjingyi mages understand how much more powerful their spells would be if they worked with their materials?

He picked at the alien spells for a moment, curious, then gave up. Whatever they did, it was dedicated to the destruction of the Gyongxin army and the kind of pain that had made Rosethorn scream. He was going to do his best to do some damage to them and to the mages who wielded them.

Briar gave one set of beads a mage’s tap. It released the magic that had been forced on them: The wood was already dry and brittle from lack of care. The beads shattered; the oak ones spraying splinters into the mage’s face, the tough gingko beads cutting the string on which they were threaded. Briar searched for the next cluster of beads, creaking under their magical burden, and tapped them until they broke. When he found a mage who had strung his beads on cotton or linen, he coaxed the fibers to part and gave the beads enough strength to roll out of all reach. Each time he parted a mage from his beads, Briar immediately turned his attention to the next one, hoping to stop any of them from making Rosethorn suffer again.

Briar was deep in a mage trance at her side when Rosethorn sat up with a moan. Riverdancer and her fellow shamans sat close by, sharing dumplings.

“The work here continues,” the translator said, motioning to a group of shamans who danced at the front of the army. Mages in the robes of different temples were nearby, also busy with spell signs and gestures. “There were more of the zayao bombs, one batch over our eastern flank and one over the road behind us. The shamans called up a very strong wind high in the air. It blew half of the zayao balls aimed at our eastern flank onto open ground.” She touched her clasped hands to her head and lips in a prayerful gesture. “The general ordered our people off the road, thinking the enemy might strike there, so the bombs did not kill as many as they could have done. Now they have stopped the zayao bombs, because someone put too many trees in the way.”

Rosethorn cursed bombs and the enemy under her breath. On the slopes below she could see screaming horses and the slumped bodies of soldiers. How many of the wounded and dead were men and women she had joked with, or healed, before? And when would she be able to help the healers again? She felt wrung out. The