It was the middle of the day before Emrys started talking about his plan in earnest. “I will explain my plan in earnest.” What a nerd. He was walking well enough as long as they didn’t push it, but the gut bite was clearly slowing him down and causing him some pain, so she wasn’t inclined to call him out on it, though. “You see, we are walking upon a great mountain. Usually a chain like this will have several earth spirits, but the larger and more powerful will be rulers in such a place. The spirit of the mountain, if you will. It is not so simple, because the spirits are merely energy and there is some debate about whether they are sapient before I work my magic, but I believe that they have an intelligence that is simply different from mine and the magic allows for translation.”
Rose looked at him sideways. “You have any of that magic for me, because that makes no sense at all.”
Emrys was silent for a moment, not rising to her bait, which was depressing, but in an impressive display of tolerance, he did allow himself to be sidetracked for once. “You were raised on a farm, yes? Chickens? Cows?”
“Chickens”
“Fine. Imagine that the chickens wanted to talk to you. But they cannot. It is not simply that they don’t speak the language. They think like chickens. Their minds cannot understand the very idea of us. They do not understand higher thought. So you would need magic that turns the thoughts of you into something chickens can understand. It might turn your words into the cheep cheeps, yes, but also your ideas need to become simpler. More about food and shelter and fear, yes?”
Rose thought maybe that she understood the idea now, but … “What the fuck does it mean that we’re the chickens in this scenario?”
Emrys smiled to himself. It was a smug look that Rose would have commented on days ago, but today he got some credit. Eventually he said, “You will see.”
But she didn’t see. At least, she wasn’t sure she would. Two hours later, at a higher elevation, they spent something like thirty minutes with Emrys pleading and cajoling and calling for the spirit of the mountains as clouds rolled in and the sun vanished behind them. Rose refrained from telling him that all elementalists must have performance issues from time to time. But she thought it a few times and it was funny every time.
It was less funny when the storm rolled in. The sky above grew darker and more cloudy with winds whipping about. Every few minutes Emrys would say that it would only be another few minutes but Rose was starting to wonder if she was going to get blown off the mountaintop before those minutes came. Cold and so soaking wet that even she could tell that her feet and her bottom were pooling water, Rose started to try to think her way around the problem. She wasn’t an elementalist, but she knew something about provoking a reaction. Her suggestion that Emrys insult the mountain and call it a soft hillock was not well received.When lightning struck nearer than Rose was comfortable with, she started to think faster out of necessity. Maybe something about the storm? Use that somehow? Rose remembered something she’d once heard about how storms that never hit the ground would rage in the mountains. Something about ….. holy shit.
“Emrys!” He turned to face her, weary. “Hey!” She pointed up.
“Yes, it is very wet, but just another moment.” She could see it happen. Emrys was deeply intelligent,but he had a habit of getting very focused. She figured if she just reminded him that the storm existed and let his brain work on the problem for a moment … and then his eyes shot open wide.
“Yes! Brilliant!” He hastily made his way around the area he’d been working in, reconfiguring the scratches and lines on the ground, stomping out the small fire and taking out some sort of small silver bowen from that sack of his that seemed to contain an endless supply of useless things. As he worked he spoke, “You are correct, of course. Many storms like this carry a sort of spiritual energy, especially at this elevation! The trick is not in reaching such a creature. Contact will be easy, but communication and negotiation – this will be a challenge”
And Emrys began to call again. Not down this time, but up.
<easifat eazimatun, min fadlik tahadath maei, uqadim lak shran lilkalimat alsaghira!>
He was right about communication being easy. There was a flash of light. Rose prepared herself for the boom of thunder and probably a tumble down the nearest cliff. But no thunder came. The sound of rain continued – increased even – but no thunder came. Rose couldn’t look at the light, which didn’t leave, but when she looked away she saw that she could see the outline of a creature cast around the shadow she cast on the ground. Great reaching arms and a head like a great cloud enveloped the smaller negative image of her chair and her arms and shoulders and head. It wasn’t casting a shadow. It was casting brighter light on the surrounding light. She had a strange thought. I will never be able to paint this. I will never be able to draw this. I will never even be able to describe this properly.
Inside the lack of noise was some back and forth. She could make out Emrys speaking in his weird wooshy language, whatever it was that spirits said. It was much clearer to her now than it had been before.
<safar mai lifatrat qasirat ia makhba alilah alnayim>
The storm didn’t respond. Not in the same wooshy language that Emrys had spoken. It responded with crackling noises and the rise and fall of the breeze, whipping Rose’s hair around her face. One of her earrings blew right out of her ear, though she barely felt it. The wind was mad and forceful, but it wasn’t loud. How did it do that? Emrys said more words, but Rose was thinking too much about the wind to hear it clearly. She only caught “sadeekee” and “’ookt,” whatever that was.
The wind rose in speed and pitch, screaming around and whipping them both, wbut Emrys was clearly pushing against it. Rose was shoved closer to him, despite trying to stay put. “I don’t think it’s going so well!”
Emrys looked irritated. “I think I agree!”
“Try some of that Opal shit!” Rose wasn’t sure what that was, but she figured he did. It seemed to insult him at first, but then he started yelling at the thing again, but this time actually yelling.
<ana bihajat ila quatika daeni ahsul ealayha wasa utliquha dida almawti>
There was a terrible moment when the storm seemed to rise. The clouds above them rose and spiraled. She was standing beneath a funnel of clouds and she knew that it was over.
And then, and Rose would never have believed this if she hadn’t seen it and might still not believe it looking back on it, the storm stopped. It was just gone. The rain, the wind, the clouds even! It went from dark and windy and cold to a bright clear day. All that was around them tore down the funnel in a moment and right into Emrys. Still cold, of course, and she was still soaked to the bone, but holy shit! She looked around in amazement, which was when she saw Emrys on the ground. He was spasming and rolling around, ribbons of lightning rolling all over his body.
“Shit!” Rose moved toward him. “What the shit?” She reached out her hand and then stopped. The last thing she needed was to get shocked and join him on the ground. Fuck. Okay, so what could she do? “Think, Rose!” This was energy from the sky, right? But it was also magic, wasn’t it? Were the two things even different? So maybe this worked like magic. Rose knew a little bit about how magic worked, right? She reached under the cushion into the little space beneath her bum.
With shaky hands, Rose retrieved the metallic cables she’d taken to the library. Okay, so what? Just toss it on him? That won’t work, the cord was created to make the spell think that it was still working. Meaning the spell wasn’t broken and it didn’t discharge the energy. This was the opposite. She wanted it to dispel the energy, didn’t she? She had, of course, no idea. And even if she knew, what would she dispel it into? Not the rock, because Emrys was laying on the rock. Maybe it needed something metal? Something wet? Well, the ground was wet and that wasn’t helping. Something alive? She didn’t like the sound of that. Not much else up here. Just her, rock, and some scrub. She could do none of it sitting up here.
With a heave she left the chair and hit the ground. She’d hit the ground harder in the past, but it wasn’t her favorite. Groaning, she pulled herself near Emrys. Okay, two options, right? The stone and Rose. She pulled the cord hard, unraveling the wires in the middle and held it by the leather grip. She tossed one end onto Emrys. Immediately the loop itself started to jump in her hands and crackled like he was. A promising start. So, with great care, but knowing that her time was limited, Rose laid the other end on the stone.
She waited. Nothing. Shit! Still nothing. Except ….. Emrys heaved a great sigh. More of a death rattle. The energy was killing him! Rose clenched her teeth.
Again.
The feeling was like being picked up from one place and put down in another, but her location hadn’t moved, only the situation had changed. Emrys was twisting on the ground. One half of the broken loop was on his body, but the other half was still held aloft.
“Well, here goes nothing.” Rose placed one hand upon the ground for leverage and sank the other end into her own right hand.
She felt the hum and buzz of the power on both hands: the one holding the line, but also the one on the ground. Her body jumped against her will and she felt the energy. She didn’t actually understand it when it happened, because it was too fast, but she understood in the moments that followed that she’d felt the energy jump from the loop to her and from her into the ground. She’d expected it to burn, but it felt more like a great hum in her whole body. Which is not to say it didn’t hurt. It hurt a lot! But it was a different kind of pain than Rose was used to.
And then it was over. Emrys lay still and Rose was still alive, she hoped. She choked out, “I’ll be damned.” She pulled herself over to Emrys and laid her head down upon his chest. She heard the lovely sound of his heart and his lungs wheezing in and out like they hated the world, but they always sounded like that. He was alive. “Holy shit,” she breathed out. And then, just to prove to herself that she could, Rose stayed right where she was for a moment, just breathing hard. She might have closed her eyes just for a second or two.
Some time later she was awake and giving the chair a good dry and a wipe down. She’d also changed her pants because the ones she had been in were soaked. She didn’t change Emrys’ clothes, though. Did he change her when she was exhausted and unconscious? Yes. Did she feel comfortable returning the favor right now? She did not.
“You okay, big guy? Still remember where we are?”
Emrys groaned. “Rose? What happened?”
She was silent for a moment, and then adopted a concerned face. “Who’s Rose?”
Emrys’ shocked face was simply the best. She couldn’t keep a straight face for more than a moment. “Eh, you’re fine. Your storm buddy tried to kill you, I think, but he was no match for my awesome power. Sorry that whatever you were doing didn’t work out.”
Emrys took a moment to digest that and then grinned. “I would not say it just like that.” The wind around him started to blow hard, lifting his sweaty wet hair away from his face and lifting his body up, robes and all, until he was standing.
“Dirty shit, Emrys! That was really cool!”
He shrugged as if he were not blushing, the wind dying away, but he couldn’t help but grin a little sheepishly despite himself. “I think that he was simply too much power for me to handle. I have heard that there is a meditation that can prepare one, but I didn’t have the time to try. It seems to be stable now. Thank you, Rose, for whatever you did.”
“Don’t thank me till we survive. We’re still behind. And that son of an ass still has my sister.”
Emrys seemed much cheerier now that he wasn’t crackling on the hard wet rock. “Then we shall go and save her, yes?” b
Rose gave him a sideways eye. “So what, he’s just …. in there? Like in your body somewhere?”
Emrys thought for a moment. Rose recognized it. He was trying to dumb it down so she could understand. She was only a little insulted. “I will explain the metaphysical process as best I can. It is still a storm. And I cannot contain a storm. It has gone to …. the place where spirits usually reside. The place where it lives when there is no storm. When the storm rises a part of the spirit embodies it. That part is within me, yes. So in closing, I contain not the spirit, because my mortal form could not contain the spirit. I currently contain the storm instead. In this way I am slightly safer.”
Rose didn’t know what to say to that. “Oh. Much less horrifying, then, yeah.” She thought back and asked, “Hey, wait. What did you end up saying to it that worked?”
Emrys looked grave. “I told it that if it shared its power with me, I would turn it against death.”
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