“Out, gentlemen. Thank you.”
As the Bolg Sergeant came forward and stood before the obelisk, it was as if the rest of the people standing beneath the strung canvas in the town square faded into the gray darkness of oblivion, leaving only himself and Entudenin, alone together in the universe.
Even in its state of decay and petrification, the geyser was, like himself, a child of the Earth, one born of fire, the other of water, both unique creations that had known the magic of the Mother’s touch.
As he walked around it in wonder, the first thing he felt was an overwhelming sense of loss. How beautiful it must have been in its living time, a towering pillar twice as tall as he was, arched at the top in an angle that jutted westward in the direction of the setting sun, beckoning to the wide ocean a thousand miles away. He could almost see how it was formed, and must have once looked, layer upon layer of multicolored rings and stripes in rich hues of vermilion and rose, deep russet, sulfurous yellow and aquamarine, mineral deposits that grew ever taller with the passage of time, until their height surpassed anything on the flat dry prairie of clay for as far as the eye could see.
Now the obelisk stood, lifeless but unbowed, shriveled and covered in a baked red clay, like the rest of Yarim.
Grunthor stepped over the broken stones of the fountainbed at its base and approached it slowly, almost reverently, wondering what could have happened to cause such a vibrant, growing source of life-giving water in the middle of the cold desert to suddenly cease, then fade this way. He put out a hand to touch its shrunken flesh.
Beneath the tips of his fingers, the desiccated clay felt surprisingly warm and supple. Grunthor blinked; his eyes told him that the geyser was dead, its once-moist clay now hard and inflexible, but a deeper part of him, the place where he and the Earth were indissolubly bonded, was taking over his sight, his senses.
From deep within the ground he could hear the voice of the Earth, the slow, melodious song that had first crept into his unconsciousness, permeating ever fiber of his being, when he, Achmed, and Rhapsody were crawling in the depths of the world, pulling themselves along the spidery roots of Sagia, the World Tree, fleeing from their hunters to this new, strange land. The song wound around his heart, whispered invisibly in his ear, and it told him the tale of Entudenin.
The song recounted the birth of the region known as Yarim in the language of men, a place forgotten by the trade winds, in the shadow of the mountain, at the base of the glacier, on the continental divide, where the ground was barren but the earth held riches, deep and hidden. Ore of copper and manganese, iron and rysin, the blue metal so beloved of the Bolg in the making of steel, healing mineral springs, opals and precious salt all were concealed beneath the thick red clay, but with no regular prevailing sea winds, no cool gusts from the mountains, the ground hardened stubbornly, refusing to give up its bounty easily.
Grunthor stood, rapt, transfixed, the tale forming images he could see inside his mind, as the song grew more melodious, more fluid. The tale changed to the story of the Erim Rus, the Blood River, a muddy red watercourse stained by the slough of the manganese-red mountains. The Erim Rus had eventually met up with a tributary of the mighty Tar’afel, and their marriage had formed a beautiful oasis at the riverhead. From that marriage Entudenin had been born.
The Tar’afel, like any great river that bisected a continent, had a network of underground tributaries that scored its riverbed and the floodplain that surrounded it, some reaching for many miles from the actual banks of the river. One of these veins was particularly fortunate in its placement; it connected, in the vast, spidery network of subterranean springs that form a watershed, to a strong line fed directly from the sea, through a volcanic cave in the northern coastline of the icy Hintervold. That cave was pocketed in the rockwall at the exact place where the Northern Sea met the open ocean, producing an immensely strong crosscurrent that backwashed for a thousand miles.
This backwash was the lifeline of Entudenin.
Along the way east the seawater traveled through the glacial fields of the Hintervold, where it was sweetened by icy drainage and deprived of some of its salt; it passed beneath the verdant fields of Canderre, through the peat bogs and rich loam that gave that province its bounty, until it finally reached the sandy, mineral-laden red clay of Yarim, where it decided to stop — that decision forced by the deep, heavy layers of all but impenetrable clay and bedrock that had been left over from the formation of the mountains to the east. Filtered by ice, sand, and time, and ramming up against the underground barrier, the water, now sweet, had nowhere to go but up.
And up it went.
At its birth, Entudenin had been little more than a puddle, emerging with a gurgle, then spreading out with a great muddy burp. Had there been any human eye around to witness its arrival, it might have gone unnoticed entirely, but the region would not be inhabited for several thousand years. It was not a monumental beginning, but it was an important one; the seal of the earth over the water had been broken.
From then on it was merely a matter of the passing of time and the tides of the ocean, dictated by the phases of the moon. When the sea current was at rest, Entudenin rested as well, its water source withering to a trickle that pooled beneath the fields of Canderre, never traveling into the region of red clay at all. But when the tide turned, and the moon was at the height of its strength, the seawater poured in violently, racing along its course until it erupted in a joyful shout from the evolving geyser, spraying glistening drops into the air to mingle with the sunlight. As this continued over the millennia, the minerals that remained around its mouth began to grow thick and harden, forced upward by pressure, until the obelisk that had been Entudenin in its glory had risen, tall beneath the countless stars of the endless desert sky, reaching toward the moon.
That obelisk, formed of sea and earth, well traveled from many places, containing precious minerals and ores, salt, ice, and time, took on a life of sorts, a child of pure Earth, a wonder of the world; sweet water in the middle of a vast, dry land. The glistening mica that scored its walls, glittering back at the stars, was a silent sign of the magic that it held.
And so it had remained for thousands of years more. Eventually this life-giving wellspring was discovered by man and put to use, almost worshipped, tended by priestesses of the Shanouin tribe, an extended family of humans who had a Mythlin ancestor. Mythlin were one of the five ancient races, formed at the beginning of time, from the element of Water; thus the Shanouin had talents for divining it even beneath the desert sand. They were talented well-diggers, and it was assumed that they would be the appropriate guardians of Entudenin.
The Shanouin managed the cycle of the Fountain Rock, as Entudenin became known in the language of Yarim. They kept those who longed to harvest the water away for a full day after its cyclical Awakening, when, with a deep rumble and a glad shout, the backwash roared forth with enough force to break a man’s back. The Shanouin maintained control as the water was gathered during the Sennight, or Week, of Plenty, that followed the Awakening, where the flow was abundant; then through the Sennight of Rest, when the copious spray settled into a smooth, bubbling stream. As the current turned fallow in the sea, the water of Entudenin would subside into a quiet trickle, known as the Sennight of Loss. During that week, only those with grave illness in their households or the elderly and frail were allowed to collect from the wellspring. Finally, as the moon went new, Entudenin slipped into the Sennight of Slumber, when it slept, waiting for the moon to shine again and turn the tide.
And so it went on, year after year, to century and millennium, until the day of the Shifting.
Grunthor’s head snapped back at the change in the voice of the Earth. The song it had been weaving was a lilting roundelay that had come to lull him into a sense of peace; now, with a sudden jolt, the melody changed, screamed into a searing crescendo, then stopped altogether. Beneath the images in his mind, the voice of the Earth whispered sadly.
Miles to the
west of Entudenin, at the border of Canderre, was one of the great opal fields of Yarim, Zbekaglou, whose name in the language of the indigenous people of the continent meant Rainbow’s End, or “where the skycolors touch the earth.” Zbekaglou had been scoured for centuries for its treasures, the earth rent in great delves and mined of its soft, colorful gems, then left empty, open. Where the earth had been mined, the ground was instable, even below the water table. A strong vibration, a normal occurrence in the heartbeat of the earth, had shaken loose a landfall of the disturbed clay beneath the ground, plugging the watercourse completely.
Since this happened in the middle of the Week of Slumber, the water merely never returned. Entudenin went dry, overnight, never to shout with the joy of the Awakening again.
While Rhapsody had told Grunthor the lore of the humans of Yarim, and how the people had reacted with horror, then blame, then finally resignation to the loss, allowing their jewel of a city to wither in the heat, but going on with life, the Earth told him in quiet tones the end of the tale of what had happened to Entudenin.
It was a slow, painful death.
Like the great Trees of the Earth, or vast canyons carved over time by rivers, or the pounding sea itself, or any of the other places where elemental earthen magic is embodied, Entudenin had a soul of sorts. In its time it had been a vibrant entity, a natural formation with almost human moods, roaring with joy at the Awakening, laughing happily as the water flowed copiously, filling the vessels, the fountains, the canals of Yarim Paar. Sinking into sober reflection at the Sennight of Loss, contemplating the mortality of the world. Silent in its slumber, to awaken again, beginning the wondrous cycle all over, never tiring of it.
The beautiful obelisk, deprived of the gift of water, at first experienced a sense of what in human terms might have been bewilderment. It could hear the prayers of the humans that had tended it, feel their vibrations, even though it could not comprehend them, but their desperation translated, transcending the differences in consciousness, and that desperation became its own. As time passed, and the water did not return, the Fountain Rock yearned for salvation, prayed in supplication in its own way to its Mother, but the Earth could not undo what man had caused.
Finally, in sorrow, the obelisk succumbed to the inevitable. It continued to stand beneath the sun, feeling the moisture leach out of it more and more as each day, year, and century passed, baking from the outside, withering. It lost some of its height, a good deal of its girth, and all of its myriad colors, passing from the beauty of a child to the ugliness of a crone over time. As each drop evaporated beneath Yarim’s blistering heat, Entudenin mourned.
But it refused to crumble.
Stalwartly, what tiny remains of soul had been embodied in the Fountain Rock held fast, standing tall beneath the stars, the mica that remained in its surface still gleaming in their light on occasion.
Grunthor’s head swam, then snapped back again at the abrupt end of the Earth’s song.
When the voice went mute, his stomach turned; he felt the connection to the warmth that had been coursing through his veins, winding its way through the chambers of his massive heart, shatter suddenly. It was an internal blow so strong that it buckled his knees. He fell to the ground, his hands on the earth, searching unconsciously to reestablish the connection, but the Earth had gone silent.
A moment later he felt hands on both his shoulders; he waved them away, fighting the nausea that had rushed into his mouth, swallowing to choke it down again. He sat back with effort and waited for his head to clear.
When finally it did, his amber eyes blurry as the vision righted itself to the world around him, away from the pictures that accompanied the Earth’s song, he looked up to see Rhapsody and Achmed standing over him, Ashe at Rhapsody’s side. The Bolg in the tent were whispering among themselves with fear at the sight of their felled Sergeant-Major.
Again he waved away Achmed’s hand, and rose, unsteady for a moment, inhaling deeply through his great nostrils. After a moment he turned to the king and nodded once. An intricate view of the inner pathways of the obelisk and its feeder lines was etched in his brain.
“Right. ‘Ere’s the plan: we take off that angled arm — it’s withered to the point o’ being solid anyway, and it’s too fragile to withstand the bit.”
“Take off the arm?” Ihrman Karsrick interjected nervously. “You can’t do that — it’s a holy relic.”
“It’s a holy relic that doesn’t function,” said Achmed, his back to Karsrick while he continued to watch Grunthor, who had lapsed into silence at the higher-ranking official’s interruption. “Do you want to maintain a dead decoration, or do you want water?”
The duke thought for a moment, then put his hand on the Bolg king’s shoulder. “Can you guarantee that the water will flow if I allow you to remove the Obelisk’s arm?” he asked hesitantly.
“No, but I can guarantee that blood will if I remove yours,” the Bolg king replied, staring at Karsrick’s hand.
“Achmed,” Rhapsody chided. “Some courtesy, please.”
The Bolg king exhaled as the duke quickly withdrew his hand. “I can guarantee very little in life, Karsrick. The return of the water is not something I can warrant. But I can guarantee that if you do nothing, the water will not return. If he says the arm must be removed, then it must be. Now kindly be silent and allow us to hear the rest of his directions.”
The duke cleared his throat and nodded at Grunthor.
“We’ll drill out the obelisk itself, and the first thirty yards below it,” the Sergeant said, wiping the sweat from his wide forehead, his skin having returned to its normal hue, the color of old bruises. “That’ll get ’er ready to withstand the return of the water, if it comes. Right now she’d shatter.” He glanced up at the dry red geyser. “The pathway beyond that is clear; the real blockage is farther away, almost to the border of Canderre. That’s somethin’ Oi can ’andle myself, sir; no point in draggin’ the men there. Once they finish ‘ere, you can take ’em back to Ylorc and Oi’ll ride out to the border, clear the blockage, an’ then come on ’ome.”
“Will you need any of the equipment?” Achmed asked.
The giant grinned broadly, then fumbled in his pack for a moment. He produced a small hand spade, battered and worn, and held it up for Rhapsody to see as well. It was Digga, the retrenching tool he had used to dig the three of them free from the Earth after their journey through its belly four years before. Rhapsody laughed.
“This is all Oi’ll need, sir,” he said.
“All right,” Achmed agreed. He turned to the assembled Bolg craftsmen. “Unpack the rest of the equipment and we’ll set to work.”
Outside the tents the ring of Yarimese guards was slowly, subtly growing larger. The ever-expanding ring had pushed the crowd gently but resolutely back to two street corners away from the town square, where the flickering torches that lighted the tent from the outside did not reveal the movements of the shadows within.
At the edge of the rope, Esten waited, struggling with the throng of townspeople to get closer, to catch a glimpse of what was happening. She was preparing to leave, having seen nothing, when Dranth touched her elbow and shook his head, indicating that thus far none of her spies had managed to broach the work site either. Esten inhaled deeply, then pushed her way through the crowd to the empty streets beyond.
“I have no patience in this matter,” she said to the guild scion. “Karsrick is benefiting from all the work I undertook before the disaster; if the Bolg restore Entudenin, he will have the water that should have belonged to me. Why has no one gotten inside? The guards have always been easy to bribe or threaten.”
“The Yarimese guards, yes, mistress,” Dranth replied darkly. “But the Bolg are standing guard as well; their king brought his own security detail with him, and they are steadfast and thus far unapproachable.”
The guildmistress’s black eyes glistened angrily.
“I want to know what is going on in that tent,” she sai
d in a low, deadly voice. “And I need to have someone get inside, to prevent the theft of my water. Before night falls tomorrow, it will be done, or blood will spill like the water from Entudenin.”
12
Within three days, Ashe’s prediction had come to pass. The Bolg followed a regular schedule of workshifts, laboring silently in the heat beneath the tents that surrounded the work site, and the villagers of Yarim Paar settled for watching them enter and leave the tents and the city as their rotations changed, from the boundary two street lengths away.
The throngs that had gathered during the first days began to grow sparse, and while there was still considerable interest in the primitive men whom the Lady Cymrian had said were Entudenin’s hope for resurrection, the majority of the town returned to its work and its daily routine, occasionally happening by the square at the appointed hours to see the Bolg hurry out of the tents to their waiting escorts. No interaction was allowed, and since the Bolg never initiated any, or showed any interest in meeting or touching any of the citizens of Yarim Paar, it became unconsciously clear to the townspeople that the Firbolg were being protected from them, and not the other way around, which changed the mood from resentful and fearful curiosity to that of embarrassed interest.
The linen tents, bleached white as snow at the onset of the project, rapidly took on a brownish-red cast from the clay dust spattered into the air by the drilling. Great beams of wood were brought in on the Bolg’s supply wagons, lashed together in articulated sections that were driven into the ground by massive apparatuses of tampers and gears, sophisticated machines designed centuries before by Gwylliam and used to hollow out the passageways of Canrif. The townspeople of Yarim Paar, accustomed only to the well-digging practices of the Shanouin, marveled at the sights and sounds of the tools that the Bolg were making use of, though most of the smaller equipment was kept from their sight, like the craftsmen themselves.