We all dismounted. I held Luvo with one arm as I clutched my horse’s reins with the other. Now everyone else had the sense of it. The birds and little creatures were silent. Our horses stamped and yanked at the bits. We hung on as the earth rattled the loose leaves from the trees and the stones from their places. When the shock struck us, I felt like a thousand fingers were tickling me. I giggled. Then the power was gone. Life got slow and boring again.
As we rode on, those neglected stone markers started to vex me. What if they didn’t show the local mages where strength could be drawn from the earth anymore? That was no reason to leave them untended. They had done generations of service. Some of them had fallen over. Some were just tilted, which made them look undignified.
When I found moss covering most of one granite marker, flaking its carvings away, I couldn’t bear it anymore. “Rosethorn!”
“Evvy, I’m thinking,” she said.
“It’s moss on a rock, and the rock doesn’t want to be changed. It likes being all neat and carved.” I was jittery and aggravated. “If you won’t clear it away, I will, Rosethorn, you know I will. I have followed like a good dog all morning. Now I would like to tend this marker.”
She sighed and dismounted.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Fusspot turned his horse around in the road. “We’re going about important work, looking at serious problems. Why do you cater to that spoiled brat you insisted on burdening us with?”
Jayat rode a little way up the trail, to get away from us.
Rosethorn glared at Fusspot. “Evvy and I have an understanding. There are plenty of reasons for doing things as we do them. She is no burden to me. Since I am senior and in charge, I will thank you to hold your tongue!” She came over to me and muttered, “Don’t make me have to defend your behavior to him again.”
I didn’t tell her I could defend myself. I was eager and nervous and vexed, but I was not ready to die. It was one thing to snap at Fusspot. I had learned early on, a person who snapped at Rosethorn had best be armed for war and prepared to take casualties.
“What is the matter with you, anyway?” Rosethorn demanded. “You don’t normally care if there’s moss on stone or not. Didn’t you tell me in Yanjing that you don’t even think vines are rock killers now? That since rocks have no bodies like ours to grow and change, they are dependent on forces from the outside to change them, and that includes plants?”
I scuffed my foot in the dirt of the road. “This marker wants to stay the way it is for now.” Normally I would have told the rock not to be silly, but my veins were filled with hot, fizzing blood. It was like what I’d sensed in those old power places, only stronger. If Jayat and Tahar had drawn this kind of strength from there, I was surprised Jayat could bear to ride along so pokily.
“And stop jittering,” snapped Rosethorn. “Mila save us, Evvy, it’s like you’ve been sniffing dragonsalt. Enough!”
Carefully Rosethorn put her hands on the moss. She talked it into letting go of the stone. Piece by piece, she lifted it free and moved it to a shady patch. I called a fistful of lesser stones in the soil to come together, bracing the marker. They helped me to push it until it was straight again. When that was done, Rosethorn and I mounted up and followed the others along the trail.
Fusspot couldn’t keep still for long. We hadn’t gone more than five more markers up the slope of Mount Grace when he drew his horse even with Rosethorn’s. “I want her left at the village next time! She is a distraction and a nuisance! She is—”
“What in the Green Man’s mercy?” Rosethorn turned her horse down a path among a tumble of rocks. Myrrhtide might think she was riding off in a temper, but I knew better. She hadn’t even heard him. Something else had gotten her attention. I looked at Jayat.
“There’s a better place to see it from,” Jayat called to her, and turned to me. “How did she know?”
“How did she know what?” I asked. Fusspot shoved in front of us to ride after Rosethorn. Jayat didn’t answer; he just followed Fusspot, and I followed him.
Rosethorn led us down among rocks that got taller and taller. These were big, gorgeous slabs of flat stone. They looked like some giant had cut them from the mountainside with an ax. We came out on a ledge. Stone rose behind us, and the ground sloped far below. The slope ended in a small canyon filled with dead trees.
Jayat sighed. “This is the worst place. My uncle and I found it two weeks ago as we were hunting.”
I dismounted and put Luvo on the ground. The fizzing in my blood was starting to annoy me. It made me fidget, when I am not by nature a fidgeting person. I rested my hand on one of the slabs behind us, hoping the nice, steady granite would calm me down. Instead its roots warned me of what was rising under our feet.
“Shock!” I yelled. How did it come up on us so fast? It must have welled up under the mountain. “Earth shock!”
The others threw themselves off the horses, which were panicking. The animals had felt the coming shakes almost as soon as I had. That was embarrassing. I should have known faster. “Luvo, why didn’t you warn me?” I cried.
“It is too quick. Too close,” he said.
I dragged my horse’s head down. It fought, until I yanked my jacket off and covered its eyes.
The earth shuddered and crackled. Trees fell into the dead canyon from its sides. Boulders tumbled along with them. Everything smashed to bits at the bottom. The wave of power struggled to reach the surface, fell short, and sank back.