Melting Stones - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,89

belly and guts, for putting up with the bad food I gave them when I couldn't find anything else. I thanked my bones, my skin, my mouth, my nose.

Maybe that was how I could survive the volcano spirits. Carnelian said she and Flare could still remember who they were during the melting together. My stone magic wanted to melt like all stone did. I had to remember my meat self, my human body. I had to remember what made me Evvy.

Holding tight to Luvo's strength and the power I drew from the nearby stones, I rolled into a ball of magic and dropped through the shivering earth. I had to get to those diamonds. I needed as much magic as I could stand. All around me every stone and every grain of dirt was moving. Every bit of water had spread to make the soil damp. Ponds and streams leaked out and down, turning the ground into mud. This was part of a big earthquake, when the ground seemed to turn to water. Houses would collapse, their walls sinking and cracking. The sides of the hills and mountains would slide.

I would not slide with them. I was two miles down, three, and still dropping. The ground's shivering made it easier. The movement shook power free of the stone. I gobbled it all as I passed. I could hear the thunder of the volcano spirits who had stayed behind under Mount Grace. Their voices boomed through the faults. They were wondering if they should have left, too. They were asking if they ought to find Carnelian and Flare now, and follow them out.

The earth bucked around me. Each time Flare, Carnelian, and the others rammed the fault, they shook it. Stuck as it was, the fault trapped the power of their blows, storing it.

I turned some gathered magic to speed. If the fault came unstuck in a big way, the earthquake that followed would make these little ones seem like the shake of a lamb's tail.

It scared me to think of disasters, but disasters were coming no matter what. They might be big gadolga waves. They might be earthquakes. If the volcano broke through too close to Starns, it would bring earthquakes, fire, and ash. And a volcano here wouldn't be a disaster just for the island, but for the nearby Battle Islands, too.

How lucky are you, Evumeimei, I thought. You go from Gyongxe's human war to nature's war on Starns. At least you know it isn't you. This stuff has always begun by the time you get there.

Seven miles, eight. I felt the diamonds now. They sang to my magic, a chorus of nightingales. Luvo had found a bed of them, each one a dull star filled with the earth's power. If I'd trapped Carnelian and Flare here, instead of the bed of quartz, I never could have controlled them.

Now I bounced from stone to stone. I rippled over faces so hard my power skidded on them. Doing so, I breathed in the strength from the hearth of the world.

But it was Luvo's power in me that mattered here. It sang to the diamonds. Luvo's strength called up sparks and flares of power, drinking it in. Drop by drop, I was flooded with magic that was harder than that of any stone I'd ever felt. It was the strongest in any rock that existed. It would guard me in the heat, it would make me strong. Each surface in that diamond bed gave up a stream of magic that wound through Luvo's and mine. When I was ready to burst, I leaped free.

Lines of power showed in my vision. I could see the fault lines all around me, silvery gray fire tinged with red. They vibrated with the strain that the shakes were putting on them. In the distance, I saw the hollow chamber under Mount Grace. The volcano spirits who were still there boiled and leaped. Some of them raced through the earth, following the path Flare, Carnelian, and I had taken out to sea. Others were so excited that they pounded the highest part of the chamber, smashing into the peak of Mount Grace. Some jammed into cracks in the mountain's shoulders. They turned groundwater into steam and anything that would burn into ash. Both escaped into the air over the mountain. Those volcano spirits couldn't get out of the mountain—not yet. How many more shakes would it take before those cracks opened and let them out?

I screamed