Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Mother Speaks (19 page)

"We have enough strength," said Vrograth.

"Their ships are of stone, yours of wood. They will best you."

"We will not use stone for ships!" said Vrograth, and I knew immediately I had touched on a sensitive point.

"No," said Krattack, "we will not. We have not the knowledge nor the means of labor to produce such ships as effectively as the Therans."

"But there is the ship we arrived in," I declared.

"Precisely," said the old illusionist. "It can be repaired, perhaps, and ..."

"We will not sail such a ship. The earth is not meant to fly!"

"Wiser words I have not heard," said Krattack carefully. "And no Stoneclaw need soil his hands with this endeavor. But there are those among us—Releana's people from the ship—who are under no such prohibition. They could refit the ship and join us in our efforts. They could crew the Theran vessel. And some trolls could sail the ship if they wished."

An excitement bubbled up through my chest. We could do that. Perhaps. I didn't know if we had the knowledge to repair the ship. But we might. We might get our own vessel.

The ship would be an extraordinary help in searching for the two of you.

And more than that. There was an excitement in the thought of controlling the ship. I remembered my desire to hide aboard the drakkar several weeks earlier, and now it seemed that I might be able to sail without hiding. To have my own ship, sail where I wanted, and save my two boys. What more could I ask?

Vrograth thought the matter over. "How long repairs?"

Krattack turned to me. "How long for the repairs?"

I was an elementalist magician, so they thought I would know. But I had no experience working with airships. Fearful, however, that if I hesitated, Vrograth would revoke my opportunity to rebuild the ship, I said quickly, "Two weeks."

"Two!" Vrograth said scornfully. "We must go to war now."

"Patience," said Krattack.

"I hate this patience."

"Yes," said Krattack, "but you hate the Therans even more. Two weeks."

With a heavy, forlorn sigh, Vrograth nodded.

The giantess had vanished. But I had the feeling I would see her again.

22

Two weeks was not enough time to do the job properly, but it was all there was. We made do.

I studied the ship for a few days, and had one of the drakkar shipbuilders accompany me.

He explained how the drakkars were build by first carving the wood and assembling the ship. Then elemental air was added, sewn into the wood by elementalists using obscure spells I knew nothing about. I said as much to the troll who accompanied me, and she looked surprised.

"Krattack said you were a fine shipbuilder. He's been saying it for weeks now." She was plump and placed her hands on her waist, like a mother trying to decipher the first lies of a child.

Krattack's words startled me, but I'd learned to react fast when confronted by the old illusionist's deceptions. "Yes, yes. But I mean ... I'm used to having a shipyard prepared to work on stone airships. The facilities here ... Your people know so much more about using crystal than I do. We'll need to use them to repair the ship ... That's what I meant."

She looked at me carefully, then turned back to the ship. "Yes," she said, running her thick fingers along one of the ship's fissures. "We can use the crystals to fill the cracks."

"Exactly," I said, though until that moment I did not know if such a thing was possible.

* * *

We worked very hard. The trolls—those Krattack could persuade to help cut crystals for us and gave me instructions about airship building. They knew how to build wooden airships, and how to manipulate crystals with magic, but they had never combined the two before. The thought of stone flying bothered them very much. My job was to listen to all the information they had about the two separate arts, and synthesize it to repair the ship.

With a great deal of care, J'role and the others of my band of former slaves fit the stones into the cracks, carefully setting them so they formed a smooth surface. There was no time to get the colors to match, so the ship soon had multicolored fissure lines running through it. As the cracks were filled, I cast the spell of elemental air binding over the stones.

I ought to have been more tense than I was when weaving the magic. Our lives would, after all, depend on successful repair of the ship. Besides, I was tapping the astral plane, still without the protection of a magician's robe. It would take months and months to build a robe, not to mention magical supplies the clan did not have. I would have preferred to have taken a robe from one of the clan's magicians and re-attuned it to my aura. But none of the magicians, not even Krattack, would grant me this boon. That is how valuable the robes were only thirty years ago.

But I accepted the risks. There was little choice. And I had a great time. The challenge of the work was delicious. Magic, after all, is where my senses flow into the Universe, and there is no greater experience than this. (Carrying the two of you in my belly was equal to casting magic, however, for your senses flowed into me, making me the Universe. Not a sensation to be dismissed.)

J'role and I were so intimate that we could work effectively without having to speak to each other. I would simply look at some earth I needed for a spell, and J'role would scoop up a handful for me. He expected no thanks from me, and he received none. If he needed help holding crystals in place while brushing them with the special adhesive the trolls used for mounting their crystal work, then I would be there. We would stand with our hands nearly touching, our faces only inches apart, grim and focused on the work at hand.

The other members of our group often laughed and joked with each other. Not us. We carried between us a focus that let us work at an incredible rate. Which is just as well, for we had little enough time as it was.

I remember distinctly the last day of work. My two weeks had passed, and I had to finish that day, for Vrograth wanted blood. J'role and the others had fitted the stone to the cracks, and all that remained was for me to weave the stone of the ship to the crystals, and then the elemental air into the ship.

Storm clouds and rain turned the day dour; the ship's hull gleamed with a layer of water. I wore a blanket over my head, which quickly soaked through. J'role was with me, silent as ever, holding my magical supplies in a box, covering the contents with his own body. The rest of our group had taken to living inside the ship, and they prepared the interior of the vessel, cleaning the blood stains from the walls and floor and stocking it with food the trolls had provided. Krattack had seen to it that some of the more daring trolls agreed to serve on our ship, for we needed help handling it. These trolls worked inside with the others. I was glad, for it would give our little crew, made up of twelve former slaves and ten trolls, a chance to get to know each other before battle. Every so often I could hear deep laughter coming from within the ship.

Melding the stone to the crystals was easy enough, for the two items were from a similar elemental source. I simply allowed my magical thoughts to enter the ethereal plane, and from there, to pass into the elemental plane of Earth.

To my astral sight, the thick gray stone of the ship appeared as rows of dots so tightly packed together I had to strain to see them. The Therans used heavy rock, denser than other rock I'd seen, and again I wondered at their ability to get the stone ships into the air.

Luckily, most of the ship's magic had held through the crash, and I would not be required to repeat their process whole and from scratch.

The crystals were dots as well, but they formed fine lines and delicate patterns. The different colors of the crystals revealed themselves by the pattern of the angles, the way wood grain flows one way or another.

J’role seemed no more than a ghost standing beside me. I could see his aura, of course. I perceived what I had always perceived when I looked at him with astral sight. His body was in fine health. But his emotional state revealed itself as something like a child, and within the child was a flower—a tall sunflower—but blackened and dead from lack of water and sun. Or, at least that's how I thought of it. Magicians say that a person's aura presents a truth. It does, but one that comes in strange symbols that must be interpreted by the magician viewing the aura. People examining people is a very imprecise art, and magic only helps a bit.

I pressed my hands against the dense stone of the ship and could feel my astral fingers press into the material, like a hand working its way into thick mud. I would not be able to pass through the hull, of course. But my astral body could manipulate the material as if it were clay. Gently my fingers pushed the dense stone toward the beautiful lines of the crystals, and began mixing the two patterns. It would never be a perfect combination, of course, but I only needed the edges to fuse. Like a bricklayer applying mortar to stone to make a wall, I took the two stone elements of the hull and forged them into a whole.

Unlike the bricklayer, however, I needed no mortar. The stones themselves would fuse under my magic.

Soon the edges bled together. I repeated the process along all the cracks in the ship, and when I slipped out of astral space I was delighted by the effect on our mundane plane.

The crystal had fused into the ship's gray stone, forming wondering veins of glistening color. Although very odd, it seemed perfectly natural. Which, of course, it was after I'd worked my magic.

"Done," I said.

J'role remained silent and I looked at him. He wore no shelter from the rain, and the water had drenched his hair and was streaming down his long face. He looked pathetic, and I could not help think that with his performer's sensibility he must know that quite well.

"All I've wanted is to make you happy."

I started to leave. I'd had enough of the man. He could help me try to save the two of you or not, but I wasn't going to spend any more time trying to soothe his wounded sense of worth. He could get someone else to do that.

"Releana!"

I stopped. I felt tears in the corners of my eyes, and the rain that poured down around me only seemed to encourage a good cry. Why did it have to be like this? Why had I wasted so many years on him? Why couldn't I just find the means to throw him out of my life?

What is it about people that keeps us together when all we want to do is be apart?

"Please. Don't turn your back on me. Please don't ... I don't have anyone but you."

I kept my back to him. The rain was cold against my back, and I shivered under the red blanket I wore draped over my head. "You have your sons."

"I can't be a father." He said it simply, with surprise, as if he couldn't believe I hadn't realized this most obvious fact years ago.

Now I turned. "You are a father."

"I love you."

"I don't want your love if you can't love your sons.

J'role, what is wrong with you? Why are you like this? What is wrong with you?"

"I ..." In one of those rare moments, he fumbled for words.

"This isn't normal, you know. Parents care for their children. That's what we do."

"I know."

"What is it?" I stepped closer to him. I so desperately wanted to understand. He was a good man, in his own way. He had so much love and caring in him. Compassion at least.

"You can take care of the Stoneclaw children. Why not your own?"

He clutched his hands to his chest, and his chin wrinkled up and the rain on his face mixed with his tears. His face, always so expressive, now seemed the Universe was crying for his pain. "I'm afraid."

"Afraid of what?" I could taste it. Something was coming. He would tell me something now. A clue. Or the whole story. Something had happened to him. Before we met. Or maybe in Parlainth. When he got his voice ...

When he got his voice.

"J'role," I said quickly, afraid he'd interrupt me, "you've kept something from me for years. And I'm your wife. And this thing ... It's keeping you from being the father your boys need."

He nodded, his shoulders hunching over.

"When you regained your voice, you could finally speak, and you were free in a way you hadn't been before. But now you've got to use your voice. You've been practicing all these years. And now it's time to talk. Now it's time to say what's really important."

An incredible struggle took place inside his thoughts, and under his wet flesh his muscles tensed and loosened and clenched and strained, reflecting the turn and toss of his inner dialogue. His face became a living map of the battle. It was not like watching one person become thoughtful. In that moment J'role was dozens of people. Each expression on his face turned his features—by some trick of emotional chicanery that only J'role understood— into someone completely different. I wondered several times if he might speak, but with the voice of someone else, depending on who his face revealed at the moment

I wondered if there were many people in his head. I know I have two voices in my thoughts, the person I consider me, and another voice that sometimes encourages me, sometimes admonishes me. I wondered how many voices J'role listened to.

He stammered, finally. "I can't.'

"Why?"

He looked straight into my eyes then, and I don't think I've ever seen an adult or child so frightened in my life. “It's too dreadful, Releana. Please. Don't ask me to talk about it."

The way he asked me this, there was no way I could insist.

"All right. All right. But I can't be your wife anymore, J'role. A husband can't ... I don't have words anymore. You either understand or you don't."

He nodded to show me he understood. But he did not.

23

The rain continued into the next day, when we lifted off into the air in search of Theran ships to raid. The rain fell heavily, and though we traveled in airships, it was through a sea of water after all.

J'role, disturbingly, was in a wonderful mood. His attitude toward me had become something like a goofy friend of the family who had a crush on me. Or a recent acquaintance who had respect for me, but couldn't let on yet because we didn't know each other that well. He cavorted over the slippery stone deck to the amazement and delight of the rest of the crew as he entertained everyone.