The Mountains Rise

  Daniel nodded.

  The She’Har spoke again and after a brief pause Garlin translated, “Are you well fed and watered?”

  Daniel stared at her then, searching her brilliant blue eyes for any hint of mockery or amusement. He found none, and her aura gave an impression of sincere curiosity as well.

  “No,” he replied sincerely. “I have been given only what is necessary to survive and nothing more.”

  The warden gave him a sour glance, but after a moment translated for Lyralliantha. Daniel could only hope that the message would be relayed accurately.

  The She’Har seemed to think for a while before speaking again, but Garlin’s translation this time was brief, “What more do you require?”

  Daniel tried to put the emptiness of his current life into words but failed. Even if he could have described what was missing, he doubted the taciturn warden would have been able to accurately translate it to her. Frustrated, he pointed at his temple, “May I show you?”

  Garlin spoke to her, and she nodded promptly, stepping forward to within arm’s reach. Garlin then said in Barion, “She warns you to avoid attempting to manipulate her as you did the first day.”

  Daniel was confused for a moment, but then he remembered how he had touched her aura that day, when he had kissed her foot. “Forgive me,” he told her, “I was ignorant.”

  After that had been translated, Lyralliantha touched his forehead with her fingers and lifted his hand to her temple. A trickle of aythar flowed through him at her touch and he tried to emulate what she was doing, to connect his mind to hers. The world grew hazy around him while a new vision grew in his mind with sharp clarity, pushing reality aside.

  They stood together in an empty space, and with a simple gesture, Lyralliantha caused flowers to grow up around them, basking in the warm sunlight of an open sky. Daniel could feel her emotions clearly now, and he knew she was demonstrating, as if to say, this place is a blank palette, show me what you wish.

  Reaching out mentally he changed their surroundings, showing her the room that he lived in. By itself the image wasn’t so bad, but he was able to infuse it with the feeling of isolation and intense desperation. Starting with that as a beginning, he slowly removed the dark cell and replaced it with an image of his home, laughing and talking with his parents. His mother smiled at him as she served him and his father a warm meal.

  The vision was given such strength by the power of the space they had created between them that Daniel couldn’t help but go further, using it to recapture some of the happiness of the past. He danced with his mother while his father played on the cittern, laughing at their missteps. Then he let that scene fade, shifting to the memory of the day he had played for Kate on the porch while she sang, her voice flying over the notes from his strings.

  The music of Dana’s Lament burned in his heart, even as the song stopped and his memory brought him face to face with Kate, her emerald eyes searing him with their beauty. She leaned in to kiss him and the world dissolved into tears.

  Daniel had fallen and was sitting on the platform at Lyralliantha’s feet, tears streaming down his cheeks as he tried and failed to stem the tide of sorrow that had swallowed his self-control.

  The She’Har woman was staring down at him, a strange look on her face. She had created a shield around herself, hiding her aura from his view, but Daniel clearly saw the drop of moisture that escaped the corner of her eye.

  Lyralliantha walked to the far end of the platform and then said something to Garlin. The warden responded by addressing Daniel, “She says that you will never find that here. You should have chosen death.”

  Daniel had regained his feet, and he answered, “Tell her that I am sorry. I wanted to show her what happiness could be like for humans.”

  Lyralliantha issued a short command and Garlin moved toward Daniel. “It is time for us to go. She is done with you,” said the warden.

  As they started to leave the platform, the She’Har said something else, and the warden stopped so Daniel did likewise. Lyralliantha approached and put her finger to his forehead and abruptly the picture of the cittern appeared in his mind with the sensation of a question.

  “Tell her that it’s called a cittern, and we use it to make music,” said Daniel to the warden.

  Garlin opened his mouth and then closed it again. “I don’t know what those words mean, or how to translate them,” he replied helplessly. He spoke again in the She’Har tongue, confessing his ignorance to Lyralliantha.

  She waved them on dismissing the question, and soon Daniel and Garlin were on the ground again, walking back toward the dismal town of Ellentrea.

  Daniel couldn’t help but wonder if Lyralliantha’s true question had been about the instrument or the music itself. Surely they have music.

  Chapter 22

  “Why did she send him away?” asked Moira, interrupting me.

  I sighed, “I can’t say for sure. Daniel didn’t know, and they never discussed it later, but I would guess that she didn’t know what to do.”

  “Well, she could have given him a better place to live for starters,” said Matthew suddenly, “or better food. Anything would have helped.”

  “I think the intensity of what he showed her overwhelmed her ability to deal with it,” I told my two children. “She was confronted with a deluge of emotions that she wasn’t equipped to handle. Sending him away was her way of creating distance, so she could process what she had experienced.”

  “You’d think, as old as she was, that she would know enough to deal with sadness,” commented Moira. She glanced at Lynarralla who was sitting next to her. “She’s barely a year old, and she seems as smart as an adult already,” said Moira.

  “I still don’t understand emotions very well,” admitted the She’Har girl, “and I think Lyralliantha was still very young at that point.”

  “That’s correct,” I said, confirming her remark. “Although Daniel didn’t realize it yet, Lyralliantha was only four years old when he met her.”

  “Wait!” exclaimed Matthew. “So he’s older than she is? How does she know so much about spellweaving and magic?”

  Lynarralla spoke up, “We are created with all the knowledge we require already within us, language, spellweaving, and most basic skills.”

  “She still seems awfully young,” said Moira. “Don’t She’Har live a long time before becoming trees?”

  “Some live for thousands of years before they take root,” I explained, “while sometimes others take root shortly after being born. Thillmarius was nearly eight hundred years old when Daniel first met him.”

  “Why do some take root early and others don’t?” asked Matthew.

  “It’s a matter of food and space. The mother-trees produce a fruit they called ‘calmuth’, which was the primary food for the She’Har children. Whenever a She’Har is unable to get a regular supply of the fruit, they begin to change, putting down roots in the first good open place they can find,” I said, elaborating. “So if there are too many children for the tree to feed, one or more will become a new tree to reduce the burden and help feed the others. If there is no space to take root, the children will die, which also reduces the food burden.”

  “Was Thillmarius a child? You said he was eight hundred years old,” wondered Matthew aloud.

  Lynarralla interrupted, answering for me, “All She’Har are children until they take root.”

  “That’s so weird,” said Matthew.

  “The deeper life of my people begins then,” noted the She’Har girl.

  “Let me get back to the story,” I said, “Otherwise this will take days.”

  They grew quiet and settled in again, watching me with interest.

  “So when he got back, Daniel wasn’t sure what would happen, but the next day Thillmarius came to visit him…” I began.

  ***

  The door to his room opened at the wrong time of day.

  Daniel knew because he marked time carefully, waiting for Am
arah’s visit each day. It was the only social interaction he had to look forward to, poor though it was. The only other times the door opened were when the wardens had come to take him to see one of the She’Har or to fight for his life in the arena.

  There was no warden outside today. Daniel’s special sense told him that instead, Thillmarius himself stood waiting in the sun. Walking to the door he looked out.

  “Let’s take a walk, Tyrion,” said the She’Har.

  Daniel kept pace with his golden-haired visitor, careful to keep his expression neutral.

  “Who were your parents?” said the She’Har unexpectedly. “Were they unusual in any way?”

  “My father was a shepherd, sir,” said Daniel. “He was well liked by his friends and respected by most everyone else, but I think he was as normal as the next man.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She was kind to me, and everyone else I think. She had an ear for music and good hands for the cittern. I think that’s what drew my father to her, or at least that’s what he said when we were all together,” answered Daniel.

  “Music?” said Thillmarius. “There’s a word I haven’t heard since I learned your language.”

  “Should I tell you about music?”

  “No, I’m not interested in outdated cultural traditions. What did your father say about your mother when you were alone? Did she have a special gift of some sort?” said Thillmarius, probing further.

  Daniel hid a grin at the memory. “He said it was because the best parts of her all came in two’s.”

  “Two’s?”

  Daniel gestured at his eyes, his chest and then his posterior, “It was a joke mostly, but mother was very pretty.”

  Thillmarius stared at him for a moment, thinking before he continued, “That’s all well and good, but it isn’t what I’m trying to find out. Do you think either of your parents possessed the same gift that you do, or perhaps even a more distant relative?”

  “No, sir,” said Daniel. “They were all normal. I never met anyone who was like me until the warden’s started searching for me.”

  “Then I suppose it’s quite possible you are the first, at least we can hope,” stated Thillmarius.

  “The first what, sir?”

  Thillmarius faced him, his visage fixed in an expression of intense interest, “The first naturally occurring human mage.”

  “What’s a mage?” asked Daniel.

  The She’Har sighed, “Your inquisitiveness combined with your excellent command of Barion makes me forget how ignorant you are sometimes. I suspect your mental capacity is much more like your distant ancestors than that of our current crop of humans.”

  Daniel waited, his question still unanswered.

  “A mage is someone who can sense and manipulate the aythar, the energy that permeates all existing matter. Your race was completely devoid of that capacity when the She’Har arrived here,” said Thillmarius.

  “But everyone in Ellentrea is a mage…”

  Thillmarius nodded, “They were produced by interbreeding between our children and some of our captive humans.”

  That shocked Daniel. He couldn’t imagine any of the seemingly perfect and aloof She’Har wanting to mate with a human. “So the people here are all half-She’Har?”

  His companion laughed, “Oh no! Of course not! Hybridization between two utterly foreign species is impossible. No, they are completely human I assure you, baratt.”

  That made almost no sense to Daniel, “But you just said they interbred.”

  “Yes. Don’t I look human to you?”

  Human? Was the She’Har suggesting that he was human? “Not exactly, sir,” replied Daniel.

  “Well I am, baratt, or very nearly so. When we came to this world, we modified our children to match the environment, choosing your specie as the template. Our new children, created here on this world, are completely human, aside from some deliberate genetic changes,” said the She’Har.

  “Pardon me, sir, but your hair and skin are different than anyone’s whom I have ever seen and humans don’t take root and become trees,” Daniel observed. As an afterthought he added, “I don’t know what genetic means either.”

  “It was a word used by the ancient humans to describe the instructions that defined each person’s distinct traits. They were quite advanced in their understanding of it. My people even gained new insights by studying their texts, once we had broken their resistance,” said the She’Har. “But I digress, our bodies are human, with a few genetic changes that give us our distinctive colorations and cosmetic features, along with the ability to manipulate aythar, but within each of us is a seed. When we take root, the human body dies, serving as fertilizer for the new tree. Our memories, our minds transform, becoming part of the new She’Har adult.”

  “So you die and the seed inside eats your body?”

  Thillmarius blanched at the description, “Such a crude way of putting it. This body dies, but my mind and spirit become part of something greater. In any case, the point of all this was to explain that She’Har children are almost entirely human, with a few improvements. When they conjugate with a normal human, they can produce human offspring, but those offspring do not contain a seed, although they frequently inherit the genetic traits we designed to allow She’Har children to manipulate and control aythar.”

  Daniel’s mind was spinning as he tried to assimilate the new information that Thillmarius was bombarding him with. One question kept returning to the foreground of his mind, and while he feared it might result in his punishment, he couldn’t help but ask, “If these people are almost the same as you, how can you enslave them like this? How can you torture your own children?”

  “Mind your tone, baratt,” warned Thillmarius. “I tolerate your questions because I find you fascinating, but do not mistake that for friendship. They are not ‘our children’ as you put it. They are the result of crosses between wild humans and the genetically modified, temporary shells that we use to house our seeds. Inheriting a few specific genes that we redesigned, genes that were also human genes by the way, does not make them in any way She’Har.”

  Daniel bowed his head, fearful of receiving another horrific round of punishment at the hands of the wardens if the She’Har speaking to him should become seriously annoyed. “Forgive me, sir, my curiosity often gets the better of me.”

  Thillmarius stared at him for a moment. “I can see you are not finished, ask what you will.”

  “If they inherit the same genes that you use to become mages, why is their magic different than yours?”

  “The seed we are born with imbues us with a great amount of knowledge and skills, including the talent for spellweaving. From the day they leave the pod, a She’Har child is far superior to any human, in terms of knowledge, magical skill, intelligence, or any other attribute you might name.”

  “Does that mean a human could learn spellweaving, though?” continued Daniel.

  The She’Har snorted in derision, “Could one of your sheep learn to spin their wool into cloth, baratt? Spellweaving is the greatest distinction between the She’Har and baratti, it is what separates us from all other species and gives us dominion over them.”

  Daniel fell silent, not wanting to risk angering Thillmarius.

  “If you are finished with your questions, baratt, I will tell you why you interest me. Aside from your active mind, which I suspect is a product of being reared in the wild, you possess a gene for manipulating aythar that we did not design. On the face of it, if there are no other specimens like you, that would indicate that you are the recipient of a novel mutation induced in the germ cell line of one of your parents. It could also have been a mutation produced during recombination after conception. What is of greatest interest to me, is discovering how effective your new gene variant is, and whether it confers any special talent.”

  Much of what Thillmarius said was unintelligible to Daniel, but he grasped the essential concept. He was unique. A sudden hope bloom
ed in Daniel’s mind as he realized that his new captors might want to keep him alive for further study. “Does this mean you won’t be sending me to the arena anymore?” he asked.

  Thillmarius chuckled genially. There was no malice in his voice as he replied, “Of course not, baratt. We have all the samples we need, and even without them we could reproduce this new gene in our children or in our captives. The first step will be to stress you thoroughly and see how you develop, whether your abilities grow or falter. Once we have determined that, we may produce new subjects with your special variant to test further. After extensive experience and testing we might even choose to use your variant in our children, if it is shown to have some advantage, but that would likely be centuries from now.”

  “Stress me thoroughly?”

  “In the arena of course!” said Thillmarius with audible enthusiasm.

  “And after that?” asked Daniel, wondering how many battles he would have to survive before they would decide they had learned as much as they could.

  The She’Har smiled, “After that, we will produce new subjects to test.”

  Daniel’s heart sank. He intends to keep testing me until I die.

  Chapter 23

  Garlin arrived early the next morning to collect Daniel.

  “Time to prove your worth, Tyrion,” the warden told him.

  “The arena?” asked Daniel as they walked.

  Garlin nodded.

  A few minutes later Daniel spoke again, “Which grove does your talent come from?”

  “Mordan.”

  “Can I ask what talent that gives you?”

  Garlin snorted, “You don’t know much yet. Those with the Mordan gift can teleport.”

  “Teleport?”

  The warden was walking in front of him, but with a brief surge of aythar he was suddenly behind Daniel, his wooden sword pressed painfully against Daniel’s back. “Teleport,” stated Garlin, not bothering to explain further. He waited a long second before sheathing his sword and resuming his previous gait.