N. Jemisin: The Fifth Season

And it stops. And the gathering strength of her orogeny just… disippates. She gasps as the heat and force spill away, and then she understands: This ship has a Guardian on it, too. Maybe they all do, which explains why ’Baster hasn’t destroyed them already. He can’t attack a Guardian directly; all he can do is hurl boulders from outside the Guardians’ negation radius. She can’t even imagine how much power that must take. He could never have managed it without the obelisk, and if he weren’t the crazy, ornery ten-ringer that he is.

Well, just because she can’t hit the thing directly doesn’t mean she can’t find some other way to do it. She runs along the ridge as the ship she tried to destroy passes behind the island, keeping it in sight. Do they think there’s another way up? If so, they’ll be sorely disappointed; Meov’s harbor is the only part of the island that’s remotely approachable. The rest of the island is a single jagged, sheer column.

Which gives her an idea. Syenite grins and stops, then drops to her hands and knees so she can concentrate.

She doesn’t have Alabaster’s strength. She doesn’t even know how to reach the amethyst without his guidance — and after what happened at Allia, she’s afraid to try. The plate boundary is too far for her to reach, and there are no nearby vents or hot spots. But she has Meov itself. All that lovely, heavy, flaky schist.

So she throws herself down. Deep. Deeper. She feels her way along the ridges and the layers of the rock that is Meov, seeking the best point of fracture — the fulcrum; she laughs to herself. At last she finds it, good. And there, coming around the island’s curve, is the ship. Yes.

Syenite drags all the heat and infinitesimal life out of the rock in one concentrated spot. The moisture’s still there, though, and that’s what freezes, and expands, as Syenite forces it colder and colder, taking more and more from it, spinning her torus fine and oblong so that it slices along the grain of the rock like a knife through meat. A ring of frost forms around her, but it’s nothing compared to the long, searing plank of ice that’s growing down the inside of the rock, levering it apart.

And then, right when the ship approaches the point, she unleashes all the strength the island has given her, shoving it right back where it came from.

A massive, narrow finger of stone splits away from the cliff face. Inertia holds it where it is, just for a moment — and then with a low, hollow groan, it peels away from the island, splintering at its base near the waterline. Syenite opens her eyes and gets up and runs, slipping once on her own ice ring, to that end of the island. She’s tired, and after a few steps she has to slow to a walk, gasping for breath around a stitch in her side. But she gets there in time to see:

The finger of rock has landed squarely on the ship. She grins fiercely at the sight of the deck splintered apart as she hears screams, as she sees people already in the water. Most wear a variety of clothing; hirelings, then. But she thinks she sees one flash of burgundy cloth under the water’s surface, being dragged deeper by one of the sinking ship halves.

“Guard that, you cannibalson ruster.” Grinning, Syenite gets up and heads in Alabaster’s direction again.

As she comes down from the heights she can see him, a tiny figure still making his own cold front, and for a moment she actually admires him. He’s amazing, in spite of everything. But then, all of a sudden, there is a strange hollow boom from the sea, and something explodes around Alabaster in a spray of rocks and smoke and concussive force.

A cannon. A rusting cannon . Innon’s told her about these; they’re an invention that the Equatorial comms have been experimenting with in the past few years. Of course Guardians would have one. Syen breaks into a run, raggedly and clumsily, fueled by fear. She can’t see ’Baster well through the smoke of the cannon blast, but she can see that he’s down.

By the time she gets there, she knows he’s hurt. The icy wind has stopped blowing; she can see Alabaster on his hands and knees, surrounded by a circle of blistered ice that is yards wide. Syenite stops at the outermost ring of ice; if he’s out of it, he might not notice that she’s within the range of his power. “Alabaster!”

He moves a little, and she can hear him groaning, murmuring. How bad is he hurt? Syenite dances at the edge of the ice for a moment, then finally decides to risk it, trotting to the clear zone immediately around him. He’s still upright, though barely; his head’s hanging, and her belly clenches when she sees flecks of blood on the stone beneath him.

“I took out the other ship,” she says as she reaches him, hoping to reassure. “I can get this one, too, if you haven’t.”

It’s bravado. She’s not sure how much she’s got left in her. Hopefully he’s taken care of it. But she looks up and curses inwardly, because the remaining ship is still out there, apparently undamaged. It seems to be sitting at anchor. Waiting. For what, she can’t guess.

“Syen,” he says. His voice is strained. With fear, or something else? “Promise me you won’t let them take Coru. No matter what.”

“What? Of course I won’t.” She steps closer and crouches beside him. “ ’Baster—” He looks up at her, dazed, perhaps from the cannon blast. Something’s cut his forehead, and like all head wounds it’s bleeding copiously. She checks him over, touching his chest, hoping he’s not more hurt. He’s still alive, so the cannon blast must have been a near miss, but all it takes is a bit of rock shrapnel at the right speed, in the wrong place—

And that’s when she finally notices. His arms at the wrists. His knees, and the rest of his legs between thighs and ankles — they’re gone. They haven’t been cut off or blown off; each limb ends smoothly, perfectly, right where the ground begins. And he’s moving them about as if it’s water and not solid stone that he’s trapped in. Struggling, she realizes belatedly. He’s not on his hands and knees because he can’t stand; he’s being dragged into the ground, against his will.

The stone eater. Oh rusting Earth.

Syenite grabs his shoulders and tries to haul him back, but it’s like trying to haul a rock. He’s heavier, somehow. His flesh doesn’t feel quite like flesh. The stone eater has made his body pass through solid stone by making him more stonelike, somehow, and Syenite can’t get him out. He sinks deeper into the stone with each breath; he’s up to his shoulders and hips now, and she can’t see his feet at all.

“Let him go, Earth take you!” The irony of the curse will occur to her only later. What does occur to her, in the moment, is to stab her awareness into the stone. She tries to feel for the stone eater—

There is something there, but it’s not like anything she’s ever felt before: a heaviness. A weight, too deep and solid and huge to be possible — not in such a small space, not so compact. It feels like there’s a mountain there, dragging Alabaster down with all its weight. He’s fighting it; that’s the only reason he’s still here at all. But he’s weak, and he’s losing the fight, and she hasn’t the first clue of how to help him. The stone eater is just too… something. Too much, too big, too powerful, and she cannot help flinching back into herself with a sense that she’s just had a near miss.

“ Promise, ” he pants, while she hauls again on his shoulders and tries pushing against the stone with all her power, pulling back against that terrible weight, anything, everything. “You know what they’ll do to him, Syen. A child that strong, my child, raised outside the Fulcrum? You know .”