Darkvision - Bruce R. Cordell [28]
Kiril sighed and paced out a perimeter. She always hated waking from trance-her thoughts were too clear and connected. At those times, the temptation to draw Angul was worst-she wanted to drown her questions and uncertainties in the blade's overwhelming certitude. It was nearly a compulsion.
Nothing the verdigris god couldn't fix. She gulped down a burning shot and gasped. As the fire settled into her stomach, Angul's lure faded into low background noise, as always. The trick was to desensitize her mind. His call couldn't penetrate her alcohol haze.
She finished her circuit around the periphery of the bluff. A gauzy film of cloud partially obscured the moon, but her eyes were sharp in the dark. She spied nothing to threaten the dwarf's impromptu magical rite. Kiril found a likely rock and sat, gazing at Thormud.
The geomancer pulled a chest from the destrier's back. From it he produced various vials filled with mineral salts and viscous oils. These ingredients, along with his selenite rod, were familiar implements of high geomancy. Kiril barely paid attention-if a branch of magic existed that was slower and less exciting than geomancy, she hadn't seen it or heard of its disrepute.
Thormud created a circle on the bluff top by pouring out measured quantities of multicolored dusts. He quartered the circle with his moon-white rod. When he finished, an invisible spark of connection passed up from the ground and into the dwarf, jolting him as if it were an electrical charge.
The dwarf stumbled and managed a controlled fall into the circle's center. He closed his eyes, not to see darkness, but a vision bequeathed him by the soil.
The world was composed of the four primary elements: air, earth, fire, and water. But earth held Thormud's attraction, and earth responded to his fervent attention. And more often than not, earth gave up its secrets to the dwarf.
Earth accepted all and tolerated all; earth observed all that occurred on or within its embrace. To those who knew the language of stone, earth poured out its knowledge in a slow, steady stream. Because so few had the patience to bother learning the deliberate arts of geomancy, Thormud often found his solicitations were answered energetically, almost eagerly, as if stone relished its rare opportunity to communicate.
The geomancer saw lines of connection running below the ground, lines of attraction and correlation, currents that passed telluric energy to all points of the world-sphere. He followed the lines south and east, and was slightly surprised when his trace pushed far beyond his past attempts. The disturbances which had turned to gibberish all his previous attempts to understand the earth's vision remained, but this time, he managed to slide between the disruptive waves and push forward.
An image flashed behind Thormud's eyes-a body of water shining like molten gold. The golden water ran up to a rocky coast. Inland from the coast, the ramparts of mountains unfamiliar to the dwarf darkened the sky, but these were not the focus of the insight. The vision concentrated onto a single, lonely feature close to the shore, like a lone tooth of a predator, a vicious animal's incisor cast in stone. The slender peak towered several miles above the surrounding lands. Thormud's expertise identified the peak as natural, but as the vision narrowed further, bringing him closer and closer, he spied signs of occupation: a narrow road winding up the peak, tailing beds in haphazard order, and pools of murky, tainted water.
The peak housed a mine-one that had been in use for years, by the size of the tailing beds…
Thormud's vision plunged into the side of the peak. A moment of jagged dislocation suffused him, as if he pierced a void far greater than the mountain could contain. He was overcome by white lights, threads