“Uh-oh.” My voice came out as a croak. “I guess I fell down.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Most of you did. Your feet and legs are as stiff as stone.”
I sighed. “Thanks for keeping me from drowning.” I looked at his face. Fusspot actually showed whisker stubble, when he’d shaved every day. There were black circles under his eyes. “You should create a spell so your whiskers come off in water. Think how much time you’d save. You’d make a fortune peddling it to people. Even ladies would want it, so they’d never have to get their bodies plucked again.”
“Shaving—or plucking—is the last thing on my mind,” Myrrhtide said drily. “Will you tell me what was on yours? You nearly drowned. I couldn’t carry you out. You felt like you weighed several tons.”
“Oh. Right.” I released the magics that settled my feet and stood on my own. “I borrowed the stones’ weight so the shake wouldn’t knock me down. It never dawned on me I’d need to be stiff all over.”
“Why didn’t you wade to the bank and do whatever you had to?” asked Myrrhtide.
I blinked at him. Heat came to my cheeks—not magic heat. I felt like a real village fool. “I didn’t think of it. I just wanted to lock down that scree up beside the road, quick, before the next tremor struck.”
“Ah.” He said it like he would have gotten to dry land first. Probably he would have, too. “Then the exercise is valuable, if you learned from it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to check with my fellow water mages—”
He never finished. Miles off, in the direction of Moharrin, we heard something explode. Myrrhtide and I raced up the riverbank to the road. Everyone was nervous and unable to see a thing. We had come down the other side of the ring of tall hills that surrounded the lake. The cliffs along the road helped to block our view of Mount Grace.
There was only one thing to do. All of the climbers started up a solid stone cliff just a little ways back. I outdistanced everyone, fast. Well, they weren’t stone mages who could cling to flat rock. When I got to the top, I had a clear sight of the mountain. She towered over the forest that surrounded the lake.
High on Mount Grace’s eastern side, a thick plume of light gray smoke rose. It climbed rapidly in the sky, billowing.
Do not panic, I told myself. I couldn’t have said it aloud if I had wanted to. My mouth had gone sticky dry. Panic is bad. I reached for that plume with my power, telling myself, A volcano spirit couldn’t have escaped without you knowing, Evumeimei Dingzai! Every spirit in that chamber would be shouting the news!
I felt nothing. There was no drop of molten rock anywhere near that fat column of smoke. I couldn’t even find rock ash in it.
When I got back to the road, I begged some water from the inn servants. Then I went to find the mages. Azaze, Oswin, Tahar, and Rosethorn all gathered around Luvo, who was still in his sling on Spark.
Other adults listened nearby as Luvo talked. “It is steam and air only. It has been thrust through cracks in the mountain by the movement of volcano spirits.” Of course Luvo would know. He could ask even distant stones to tell him what was going on. I had to be close to them to hear what they said. “One of those cracks passed through an underground spring. The water was heated far past boiling. The explosion was steam bursting through a crack in the mountainside.”
Tahar gave the most wicked chuckle I have ever heard. “Dubyine, Karove, and their pack will gallop past soon enough. They whine about poverty, but they have the best horses on Starns. Master Luvo, they’ll complain your magery was at fault, saying they maybe had a few more days. Don’t tell them they’re running from a teapot that boiled over.”
“You didn’t believe we had extra time!” I said it before I thought. Then I winced as the adults turned to look at me.
“I may be only a hedgewitch, but I understand enough about the world to know that its power is greater than I am. You mages who draw on it, whose magic comes from things outside you, you think you control it. Maybe when it’s weaving or iron-making or pottery you can. I wouldn’t know. But stone, or the green world, or water? You no more control those things than I control where my great-great-grandson burps.” Tahar grinned evilly at me. “You’re shocked that the volcano won’t come and go as you predict it will. I’m surprised you’re silly enough to think it. That goes double for you, Master Rock. Now, let’s move on, before those spirits come to bump us all into the river.”
I stood aside and let them pass me. Why Heibei hadn’t made that one a great mage I don’t know. She had the attitude for it. And she had told me the same thing that Myrrhtide and Rosethorn, in their own ways, were trying to tell me. It wasn’t that mages didn’t make mistakes. It was that they learned from them.
What could I learn?
Rosethorn stopped. “Did you amuse yourself in the river?”
I fished in my pocket and offered her a blue moonstone. “Want one?”
Rosethorn cupped my chin in her hand, looking me over. “The gods were watching over me when you got in trouble back at Winding Circle. All the same, Evvy, don’t kill yourself with this. Don’t try to hold back the tides. Briar will never forgive me if I let you die while he’s away.”
I smiled at her. “I’m not going to die. I bet it hurts.”
She let me go. “Imp.” She walked over to a cart and took charge of a baby.