Melting Stones - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,27

know. Sit down and eat something, Oswin. All we did was collect samples from the destroyed areas."

He got off his horse, which didn't look as if it had liked its trip up the mountain road. "Five, Rosethorn? You have five of them doing this to you?" He passed his reins to Jayat, who took over unsaddling his horse. Nory dismounted and cared for her own animal.

Rosethorn patted the ground beside her. "My student Briar and his three foster sisters hover over me whenever they're given the chance. Evvy here makes five young tyrants. Have a spinach roll, Oswin. Tell us when you first saw these dead places. Jayat, I'll need the same information from you." After she passed the food to Oswin and Nory, Rosethorn felt around with her hands.

I stuck my juggling rocks in my pockets, then got her map, notebook, and writing kit from her saddlebag. She opened her map on the grass and anchored it with cups. While she did that, I broke a piece off of her ink stick and ground it to powder, then mixed it with water until her ink was the thickness she liked. Jayat had brought his own notebook and writing kit. He set that up.

I could see that they were settling in for a long, dull meeting. I wandered across the clearing and through the stones that marked its limit. A short walk brought me to the dead canyon, among the sharp-edged granite slabs that made its rim. I squatted on my hunker bones and plucked a stem of grass to chew, looking at the streak of brown that marked the canyon floor.

Under the carpet of dead trees and brush, I felt stone that had been soured, touched with some nasty air. It had tainted the surface of the granite down there. I let my magical body pop free of my real one and slide down those poisoned surfaces, into the distant earth. The touch of bad air covered all the stones beneath that ground, as if the poison had swelled around it before bursting into the free air above.

These stones fizzed. The power that Jayat and the mages before him had drawn on had been there recently, filling them. I plunged deeper, hunting the source of that wonderful feeling. Here was the quartz Luvo had mentioned. It glinted in the crack, throwing the reflection of my power back at me from hundreds of its facets. There was enough white, clear, and smoky quartz to keep Winding Circle and Lightsbridge supplied for centuries. Bits of the fizzing power that had passed through here clung to them like echoes of a lightning storm.

Now I was having fun. Quartz has as many aspects as Rosethorn has medicines, from agates to tiger's-eye, in shades from darkly smoky to colorless. There were agates at the canyon's bottom, as well as amethysts and pure white quartz. I shimmered through the white vein, then bounced along hexagonal rods of amethyst. The faces and chunks told me their stories, about the times this bed had moved up as the earth shifted, then down again. I slid through the long sides, seeing my magical shadow ripple along their surfaces.

Evumeimei. Luvo's voice was thunder in the ground, echoing off of every stone there. I shrieked and shot upward. I opened my body's eyes and looked for him frantically.

He sat next to me, seemingly just a green and purple and crystal bear worn down by water.

"Why did you do that!" I shouted. "That hurt"

"We have company," Luvo said quietly. You would never believe he had made every rock underground within miles bang with the sound of his voice. "You should greet her."

"I was fine! I was minding my own business! I was just—"

Nory stepped into my view. "What are you screaming about? And where did you find the talking rock?" She stood next to us, her arms folded over her chest.

I glared at her. "Why are you here anyway?" My head hurt badly enough from Luvo's voice that I didn't care if I was rude or not. "You're not a mage or a fixing person or a person who looks after her mage."

"Treak's all full of remorse for being bad last night. I am taking advantage and getting free of the house for the day. Not that it's your business, Person Who Looks After Her Mage. As titles go, that's not very impressive. Will you answer my question or not?"

I stared at her. How did someone so pretty get so hot-tongued?