A Fortress of Pebbles

Orion, to his credit, didn’t immediately snatch the pebble and swallow it. “What’s it do?” he asked, eyes on Cassandra’s hands, monitoring for signs that she might go for it.

“It’s just insurance,” said the Master of Language. “Notice that it’s a blue pebble, so you can be relatively sure it will not affect your biology or your brain. Nor will it give you…” He leaned in conspiratorially. “...poop made of lightning.”

“Or ice or fire,” added the Master of Mind. “Those are Level 2 spells, by the way. You can make your poop do whatever you want.”

Orion was on the verge of cracking up. They must have done their homework on his sense of humor.

“So it’s an ankle monitor,” Cassandra interjected. “The Fortress is a prison, but we didn’t go in. So you’re bringing it to us.”

Whatever the Masters might have said was cut off by Orion taking the pebble and sniffing it. He liked to steal the spotlight, especially when it was on Cassandra.

“You’ve told us what it doesn’t do,” said Orion. “But what does it do?” He licked the pebble dramatically, pretending to ponder the taste.

“That brings us to the Second and Third Laws of Pebble Magic,” said the Master of Language.

***

Aissaba kissed Tassadu – the last delaying tactic she had left. It wasn’t easy these days, with his head so much higher than hers. But she grabbed his supple neck and pulled him to her level.

To make matters even more awkward, their anatomy didn’t exactly fit together the way it used to. But it bought her a few seconds. Plus, as a bonus, Tassadu was every bit as skillful with his forked tongue as she had long suspected. The kiss lingered – evidence that Tassadu didn’t want it to end either. During this time the Second and Third Laws of Pebble magic blinked across her mind.

Something about the kiss, about being half-dead from thirst, about knowing she’d never see him again – it all conspired to fill her mind with ideas. She practically inhaled his tongue as she gasped and pulled away. “Tassadu!” she exclaimed. “I’ve got it!”

However, Tassadu was on the lookout for more delaying tactics. With the magic of the kiss shattered, he took her by the shoulders and said, I love you, Aissaba, in a language upon which they had once received a B+ and a grudging “not that bad” from the Master of Language himself. Then, he bit her gently but swiftly on the neck, darting in and out like a viper made of silk.

As she sank to the ground, she called him all sorts of names. Paralysis setting in, she reminded him that she was going to hate him forever. And just before everything went black, she mumbled something about the Second and Third Laws of Pebble Magic. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she thought she saw his turquoise eyes go wide – the final two points of light in a darkening world.

***

“I don’t get it,” said Orion. “So you can or can’t flash a pebble from a distance?”

“The Second Law is a called the Law of Distance,” said the Master of Language. “And I won’t bore you with the mathematics, but it essentially states that the amount of matter a pebble can interact with decreases rapidly with distance. For example, a map pebble can create a fireball around itself, but a fireball three feet away will be much smaller.”

Orion nodded, but Cassandra could tell his mind was wandering. He didn’t do well with lectures and monologues – which was one of the reasons they’d been home schooled in the first place. It was also one of the reasons he got grounded so often – because lectures and monologues were Dad’s two main love languages.

“Mind magic alters your perceptions by making minute changes in your gray matter,” said the Master of Mind, holding up a gray pebble that suddenly became a magpie, then a goldfinch, then a woodpecker, then a flaming phoenix. He walked across the library, all the way to the far door, where his mustache was just a white dot. The phoenix remained perched on his hand, seeming to fill the whole side of the room with flickering light. “The perceived effect is great but the material effect is small,” called the Master of Mind.

“Thus, the distance for most mind magic can be greater,” concluded the Master of Language.

Cassandra had a sudden urge to reach for a notebook. She tried not to reveal that learning about the Laws of Pebble Magic was already a lot more interesting than Nazi algebra class.

Meanwhile, Orion was still trying to make the lick-the-pebble joke work. He needed a game to stay interested, she realized. Maybe the Masters were smart enough to realize it too.

***

Aissaba opened her eyes. To her relief, Tassadu was still there. He was grinning and holding up a dark pebble. “You were right,” he exclaimed. “They couldn’t have been wiped, not all of them, not at a distance. It’s our perception and space that’s being manipulated.” He held the pebble to his forehead. Although it wasn’t glowing, it suddenly morphed into a bright green apple. She couldn’t move her arms, but he held it to her mouth for her to bite into. She moaned in pleasure at the taste of the juice upon her parched tongue.

“Can you get us out?” said Aissaba.

“Probably,” said Tassadu, jiggling a pouch of pebbles. “Got a few life pebbles here – enough to stretch the spatial bubble with critters. Spiders or something like that.”

But he hadn’t already done so. Aissaba could tell from the look on his face that he’d been advocatus diaboling himself silly the whole time she’d been asleep.

“This stairwell,” he said. “It’s starting to feel less like a trap and more like a puzzle. Or a test.”

The moment he said this, the orange lights in the walls flickered.