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.
Here the shooting star had plunged into a hillside, blowing open a crater like a tumbled mine shaft.
Easing his sword from its scabbard, though he sensed no danger, Sunbright paced forward. The forest here was scrubby, rife with pin oaks and mossy granite rocks taller than himself. Yet several rocks had been blown aside like dandelion fluff when the star crashed. The forest was hushed, for animals still avoided the area. Quietly, wary of hidden holes, Sunbright padded across old leaves, then onto fresh-turned dirt of yellow and brown. The hillside was not high, and the impact had split the top like a loaf of bread, leaving a large hole. Sunbright tiptoed to peek inside.
The bottom was ten feet down at a slant. Nothing showed but dirt. Considering the size of the hole, and being unfamiliar with shooting stars, Sunbright had no idea how deep the star might be buried.
He stood up straight and checked the forest all around, but saw nothing but a pair of cardinals chasing each other through a wild rose bush. The sun was one hand over the horizon, for he'd spent the afternoon walking. Now that he was here, he didn't know what to do. Once he called quietly, 'Greenwillow?'
No answer.
Humming a love song to himself, he swept clean a rock and sat down, to wait for sunset, Harvester across his knees.
'There you are! What's this hole?'
Sunbright rose to meet the arcanist. Candlemas, always curious, sank sandal-deep in fresh dirt as he climbed the low hill and peered into blackness.
'A shooting star landed last night. I saw it from a window.' The memory of almost tumbling out made Sunbright's knees shake, but he clamped them straight. 'I don't know how deep it is.'
'Keeper of the Sun!' Candlemas reared back as if from a bonfire. 'Feel that enchantment!'
Sunbright stood alongside, but felt nothing. 'What? It's magic?'
'By Jannath's Tears, I'll say! My, it's-imagine how strong the magic must be if we can feel it at a distance!' The stocky mage jumped in place like a child offered a treat. 'We must dig it up! I must have that star!'
Shrugging, Sunbright sheathed Harvester, cast about for some digging implement, for he wouldn't ply his sword as a shovel. Breaking a dead branch clipped by the fallen star, the barbarian slid down into the hole and dug. Candlemas helped, shoveling dirt with his hands like a dog. As the sun disappeared, he picked up a stone, muttered a small cantra, and set it glowing like cold fire.
'That's a handy spell,' Sunbright told him.
'It's nothing.'
The star was not deep, it turned out, not over two feet buried. Sunbright missed it at first and started to dig around, until Candlemas stopped him. 'What are you doing? Dig it free!'
'This?' The barbarian thumped the branch on the star. It looked like a plain, lumpy stone, burned black. 'This can't be it.'
'Why not?' Candlemas hunkered on his hams above the hole. 'What did you expect?'
'Shouldn't it glow, like your rock there?'
A snort. 'No. It was afire when it fell, like iron in a forge. It was snuffed by the dirt.'
'Seems pretty ordinary for something so magical.'
'And what's an emperor's crown but a hoop of pointed gold? Yet it can move mountains.' The mage ran his hands over the burned, sandy surface lovingly. 'My, my. I might get my own floating city after all. Imagine the value of this thing! I'll be rich.'
'It'd make a fine anchor.' Sunbright tried and failed to lever the thing up. 'It's powerful heavy. Or else stuck.'
'It's not stuck. Here, give me a hand.'
But dig and grab hold as they might, the two men couldn't budge the star, though it was no bigger than a pumpkin. If anything, the star settled deeper into the hole they scratched, as if alive and wishing to hide.
Sweating, swearing, Sunbright opined, 'You'll have to dig away the hillside, and hitch an ox team to drag it out. It weighs more than lead!'
'I think you're right.' Candlemas's face and hands were sooty, his arms sandy to the elbows. 'It must be made of… I can't think what. The densest metals are lead and gold, though the old books speak of adamantine being harder and denser. Still, this is the most solid stuff I've ever seen. I doubt your sword could scratch it.'
'We'll never know,' countered the barbarian.
The forest was dark. In a distant bog crickets chirped and peepers cheeped. Candlemas reached out, grabbed the small stone he'd illuminated, snuffed its magic and turned the hole black. 'We'll return on the morrow. I'll have Damita from the stables bring a hitching rig and a stone boat. Then-'
'What's that?' Sunbright snapped his head up, out of the hole. 'There's a rushing in the treetops.'
