"Are you sure you can do it?" Bazma asked as he and Macander walked along behind Karux.

Karux looked down at Eiraena who walked along placidly holding his hand while examining a germinated seed in the other hand. "I've been giving her seeds and watching her do her thing for a maht now and I think I've figured out how it works. The plants want to grow so she doesn't really change them. She just pushes them along a bit. The real question is what happens after they germinate. I'm sure the plant draws its life from the soil and that will have to be pushed too, I'm just not sure how."

"So you won't be able to do it?" Bazma asked.

"I didn't say that." Karux smiled. "I just haven't figured out how to do it yet."

After having spent the winter in the stoma, the day felt warm, though the wind still had a cool edge to it. Clouds drifted overhead, thick and gray with the promise of rain while the farmers hurriedly dragged their plows across their fields, eager to get their seed in the ground before that promise was fulfilled.

The four boys followed Jomel out into the recently turned fields, their boots sinking into a rich loam that was nearly too moist for planting.

Gerron left the group of elders speaking to the owner of the field as they approached.

"Has he agreed to give us half of the harvest?" Jomel asked.

"He's agreed to give us half his second harvest, assuming this works and assuming the quality of the harvest is up to his standards."

"How generous of him," Jomel sneered.

Gerron shrugged. "He pointed out that an extra harvest will require extra work on his part."

"Will it be enough, do you think?" Jomel asked.

"It doesn't matter. When this works, the other farmers will beg to be included." Gerron turned to Karux. "Are you ready?"

"I guess so. Do we have a stool? This could take a while."

They searched around until they found a section of a tree that had been cut down, and rolled it out into the field. Karux sat on the stump, pulled out his stone and slid quickly into the world of schemas. He quickly sorted through the elemental shapes that represented the air and the land and found the seeds themselves, buried and waiting in the ground, each a tightly coiled spiral of potential.

Karux began chanting the names of the shapes he needed. They appeared in his vision, responding to his voice and he directed them outward with his awareness. He arranged them into alternating patterns, or schemas, each trailing upward from an individual seed like a ribbon. Then he uttered the command to activate them.

The command radiated outward like a wave, sending a shiver through the schemas. They each collapsed into the seed then, like a chisel striking a stone and causing it to split along a seam. The seeds opened and began to grow.

Karux started chanting again, shaping new schemas, tying the seeds into the life of the soil, pushing them to grow. He continued until his head began to hurt and the fatigue made it difficult to concentrate.

Blinking his way back to the world of light and shadow, Karux looked around and noticed Bazma, Jomel and most of the elders had left. "Boy! Am I hungry," Karux groaned.

"I'm not surprised," Macander laughed. "You missed dinner. It's nearly time for supper."

Karux looked up and noticed much of the cloud cover had burned off and that the sun was hanging low in the west.

"Well, it's impressive," the farmer said. "I'll give you that."

Karux looked around at a wide circle of bright green shoots standing about knee height.

"But you're going to have to do better if you're going to feed anybody." Shaking his head, the farmer walked away to where his sons were pulling a plow in the distance.

Looking up, Karux realized that the field extended well beyond his green circle.

"That was the most amazing thing I ever saw," Gerron muttered. "Those little shoots just pushed up out of the ground by themselves and started reaching for the sky."

"Yes. If only there were more."

"I don't suppose you could try again."

Karux shook his head.

"Maybe after a little rest?"

"I gave it all I had. If I were to do this every day, it would take me a maht to cover the whole field, and then the first batch would be ready to harvest while the last had only sprouted. I don't think our friend would approve."

"What is she doing?" Macander asked.

Eiraena was dancing around the field waving a stick, staring up at it and laughing.

"Is that the stick I was carving before?" Karux asked. He shifted back into the world of schemas and saw that the sky was filled with schemas. The elemental patterns streamed away from the stick for a hundred yards in all directions.

As she danced and spun, the schemas would break and float away or catch on to the stick and whip around coiling on other schemas. It was like watching her stir a giant pot of egg soup.

As Karux watched, a long coiled schema dragged the ground and caused a long swath of newly sprouted plants to wither and die. Another large streamer broke off and flew coiling in on itself until it struck a large rock at the edge of the field. The rock glowed red hot and began to melt, twisting in an invisible wind that didn't seem to touch anything else around it.

"Uh, Eiraena—" he called out.

A huge sheet of interlocking schemas broke free of the main mass and rolled directly toward them. It grew as the patterns within it attracted more elements and spread like a raging fire. Karux could not guess what effects the complex mass of schemas might have, but he was certain it would not be good.

"Kenos Akuros Kenos Akuros," Karux chanted, summoning the elements of the Void. Though he could not see the world of light and shadow, everything else seemed to grow dim as the shapes of the Void began to appear. Within them he felt a growing presence as if each shape were a small hole in space, a tiny window into a black void from which an alien entity stared back at him. Karux continued chanting as the mass of runaway schemas came closer, but as he did so, the awareness seemed to grow.

"Ataeros!"

The symbols of the Void were blasted away, slicing through the massive schema like a mesh of knives. The schema collapsed in on itself and the ground shook from a blast of thunder. In the midst of the chaos, Karux thought he heard cynical laughter sounding as if someone were standing within inches of his right ear.

"What was that?" Gerron shouted.

Karux staggered backwards, blinking rapidly as he tried to restore normal vision. He looked around, but no one was standing nearby. "Did you hear laughter?" Karux asked.

"No," Gerron said. "However there was a tremendous clap of thunder right over our heads, but no sign of lightning."

Eiraena glanced back and forth between the stick and the sky looking puzzled.

"It felt like the air itself was pressing down on me. Did you just do something?" Macander asked.

"No, but she almost did." Karux walked over and took the stick away from her. This could have been disastrous, he thought as he glanced briefly at the melted and magically-wind-swept rock. He never imagined that the schemas could have gotten so out of control.

"Well, it was a good idea," Gerron said. "I don't know how we'll keep the tribes together now if the angorym are still determined to stay in the valley."

"Actually, I think I may have the answer, but first I'll need a wooden post..." Karux made a circle of his thumbs and middle fingers, "...about this big around and about as tall as me. I'll also need some charcoal and someone who knows how to carve well."

Puzzled, Gerron frowned but did not ask his question. "I'll see what I can do."

"Let's go get something to eat," Karux suggested.

-=====|==

After supper, Karux sat down in the stoma and carefully drew the elemental symbols he needed in charcoal on a thick wooden pole. The incident in the field encouraged him to be cautious, but he felt he could create a self-perpetuating pattern that would be safe with only a little sacrifice of speed. When he'd finished he spoke to Gerron who introduced him to a wood carver he'd found. Karux impressed on him the importance of carving each of the intricate shapes precisely as he had drawn them.

To his surprise, the carver returned before noon the next day with precisely what he needed. He and Macander, and Gerron returned to the field where Karux stood the pole up in the ground, then stood back and stared at it in several minutes of silence.

"When is it going to work?" Gerron asked.

Karux who had been watching the slow and steady stream of schemas form over the field, helping the plants draw what they needed from the ground looked over at him blinking. "It is working. It won't be quite as fast as yesterday, but then it will be a lot safer."

"Safer?"

"Yes, well, I learned yesterday that sometimes schemas can take on a life of their own."

"So this is it then? This will allow us to grow a second harvest?"

"Not by itself. We'll need another..." Karux stared up in the sky as he mentally calculated. "Another six poles, I think."

Gerron nodded. "I'll round them up."

Over the course of the next two days, they set up the remaining poles. By then the first sprouts of wheat were already showing in the first portion of the field. This time the farmer was suitably impressed and allowed as how he might have to have a second harvest this year after all. Word spread to the neighboring farms and soon all the farmers of the region were willing to offer a deal for a chance at a second harvest. Karux spent days designing and crafting the carved wooden poles.

The realization that they were not about to starve after all, excited the refugees. They even began to look on Karux as a hero. As his story was repeated throughout the tribes, the story of his trip up the sacred mountain and his return with the strangely powerful stone was also repeated. Soon he was surrounded by an excited crowd that risked becoming a hysterical mob.

"It's true! Isn't it? You've come down from the mountain!" an excited old woman asked him.

"Yes, but I'm not the Simarrah. I'm not the promised one."

"But you know the way," another said.

I know the way I took, but I don't think you can take it."

"But you could show us."

"Yes! Show us!" Others repeated in a sort of chant.

"Look! I wasn't sent to show you the path of return. I was sent to prepare you for the conflict."

"But we don't want the conflict. We want to go back to the mountain!"

"Show us the way!"

"But the angorym are in the valley."

"We don't know that."

"They may have left by now."

"That's true. They're creatures of the cold. Perhaps they've left already."

"Show us the way! Show us the path of return!"

Karux's back was up against the stone wall of the stoma and the crowd began to press in on him so that he became afraid that they could erupt into violence at any moment.

"Very well! If I must, I'll take a few of you to see if the path is open, but we can't all go until we know if the angorym are still there," Karux suggested.

"Show us! Show us!"

Fortunately for Karux, the elders began to intervene and break up the crowd. "Don't worry. We'll send men we can trust. We'll see if the angorym still possess the valley and if the path up the mountain is open or not."

As the crowd backed off, Karux slid down the wall in relief.

"You don't know the path of return, do you?" Jomel asked, as the others speculated on how wonderful the High Lord's home was at the top of the mountain and began to argue among themselves.

"No. I don't even know if I made it all the way to the top."

"I thought so."

"I am certain, however, that we are not meant to return at the moment, so I'm certain the path is not open right now."

"I think you're right. However this crowd's hopes and fears are too tightly wound up right now to let you get away with that. If you take them to the mountain and can't find the path well, things could get very ugly."