Melting Stones - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,20

to my feet, away from the water. I didn't complain, not after a look at those fish. I didn't want my shoes burned off my feet. "There, now, Myrrhtide. It's not sewage, as you thought."

"Not here, anyway. It might be sewage in the water table elsewhere."

Myrrhtide never knows when to give up.

"Evumeimei?" Somehow Luvo had stayed on the horse even while I fell off. "You are all right?"

"I'm fine. Just my dignity hurt. Jayat, listen, nobody could have drawn earth power here." I got up. Rosethorn let me go, once she knew I wouldn't stumble into that nasty-looking brown pond, with its scum of dead things. "The stones were touched by something great, but not lately. They fizz, but it's all leftovers. Maybe you and your Tahar Catwalker were chewing funny leaves. The shamans of Qidao do that, to imagine they can talk to the sky and horse gods."

"We didn't teach you how to be rude." Rosethorn was using her this-is-your-only-warning voice.

I'd been rude? I was impatient. How was I rude if I was just honest and wanted a straight answer?

"That's what I've been trying to tell you." Either Jayat didn't agree I'd been rude, or he was really easygoing. "We used to be able to call up the deep power with the right spells. Mages here have done it for centuries. The veins along these trails are so accustomed to this use, they almost offer the power at a touch. But at least close to Moharrin and the lake, it's all gone out of reach. And if I can't reach it, my master can't—I'm stronger than she is, even if I don't know a quarter as much. Further up the trail, there are more bad places. In one of them, there's a spot where the power is too close to the surface, and there's too much of it."

Myrrhtide frowned. "What do you mean, too much? You're a mage, you need to learn to be more precise in your reports. 'Too much' is hardly definitive."

Maybe I was wrong about Jayat's patience. He did scowl at Fusspot. "Master Tahar was called to help a woman who was having a difficult childbirth. She lives out by that place I mentioned. It's a power spot Tahar has used since she was my age. She was going to save this woman and her baby, with spells she's worked all her life. That time, when she set the spells to channel the power, it swamped her magic and her control. It was, was…" He shook his head. "It was a river, an ocean. Tahar would have killed them both if she'd used it. Instead she turned it back through herself. They died anyway. Master Tahar couldn't leave her bed for two weeks. She couldn't work magic for a month."

"What would make it do that?" I asked Rosethorn.

She shook her head. "There are all kinds of reasons. The earth lines are part of nature. They aren't an easy source of power for academic mages who need a bit extra. Too many things can go wrong." She frowned at Jayat.

He shrugged. "You're a dedicate initiate of Winding Circle temple. You can say that. I bet you've never had to call on sources outside yourself for help in your life."

"You're wrong about that," Rosethorn said. "I draw from the green world all the time."

"Because the green world is you, and you are it," replied Jayat. "Master Tahar and I aren't so lucky. Our people depend on us to help them live, Dedicate Rosethorn. You and Dedicate Initiate Myrrhtide here will leave when you've solved our problem."

"Of course." Myrrhtide sniffed, as if Jayat smelled bad, not the water with the dead things in it. "You could hardly expect us to remain here. We have other demands on our time and skills."

"Well, Moharrin is the demand on Tahar's time and skills. She's in her eighties. She needs all the help she can get." Jayat didn't even look grumpy as he spoke. It makes me cross just to see Myrrhtide when he sniffs that way. "So we do what we must to satisfy the village's demands, since we are the only mages here. If doing our work right means tapping a vein of power, as the mages before us did, you can't blame us for using the tools we have."

"Except there's nothing here but cold earth and stones that remember something," I reminded Jayat. "I can stretch down half a mile, and it's all ghost fizzing."

"I can reach even further," Luvo