User:JohnB/The Book and the stone 2

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The Birthday Gift:[edit]

“A-san-tus!” the motherly voice cooed gently. “Asantus, awake and look up. It is another full year for you. Your intelligence and curiosity have found favor with me, so I have something to give you, my dear boy. It will lead you to the land of the Antipodeans where you will meet the love of your life. Together, you will have myriads of children's children and be laid to rest among the Antipodeans. A whole continent will bear your name. However, your life will often be in very grave danger, but fear not for I am with you.”

Asantus Ilabael stirred from his restless sleep and looked up into the sky to see what time it might be. The Ashlanders didn’t have clocks; they judged the time of night according to the constellation at the meridian for that time of year. There was The Lady. A premonition that this particular time held a great significance came over his sleepy brain. Yes, he was born under The Lady’s constellation! The Ahemmusa shaman, who helped his mother bring him into the world, had told him so. Now he was a strapping 14-year-old. But what was the prophesy he’d just been told? He couldn’t remember a single word, but he understood that it was something of great importance.

Just then there was a loud pop in the sky above his head, and a sparkly green-and-yellow fireball fell just beyond the ridge where he was watching his father’s herd of guars stretched out on the ground sleeping. Asantus sang an Ashlander lullaby to calm them after they’d been startled awake. He struggled to remember the prophecy. All he could remember was Antipodeans. Asantus pulled the quilt over his head to shut out the midnight chill. Whatever the Lady had dropped beyond the hill would have to wait until dawn.

After about a week of living off the land as he crossed the Ashlands, Asantus arrived in the Ald'ruhn Guild of Mages.

"I want to talk to somebody," he announced to the doorman.

"About what?" came the response to the very young person wearing stitched animal hides for clothing.

"Never mind," the youth answered seeing he was being sized up, and he turned to leave.

"No, honestly, about what?"

"Would you mind very much if I kept that to myself?!"

"Well, do you have an appointment?"

The youth shook his head and turned to leave.

"No, no, don't go. You're okay, all right? Just go downstairs and talk with Edwinna Elbert."

The youth looked toward the stairway that descended into the guild hall then turned to the mage. He motioned for him to continue, and when he descended the stairs, the mage heaved a sigh and shook his head. "What is such a savage doing here?" he wondered out loud.

Edwinna was likewise nonplussed to find a fresh-off-the-Grazelands boy accosting her for advice, but she found his story most extraordinary:

"I'm a guar herder like my father, and like his father, and like his father, going back I don't know how many generations. If I hadn't seen what I saw, I would still be a guar herder like my father, and like his father, and like his father.

"It being around midnight when the fireball fell, and the herd being restive from the sound in the sky, I decided not to venture away from the herd until dawn.

"The next day at sunrise, I left the sleeping herd and hiked over the ridge to where I judged the fireball had landed. The grass was dry, and I saw where some of it was scorched. I approached and crouched down to see what it was. It was this stone."

He pulled a dark-gray metallic stone from his pocket. It was about the size of a walnut.


User-JohnB-The Stone.png

The one I personally saw fall from the sky. It shot off yellow and green sparks, which indicate a combination of iron and barium content.  You might be able to see the splayed grooves on the left side of the front [not as clear now as when we first found it], which might indicate that material was being blow-torched off that side while plummeting through the atmosphere. Actually, this stone is very faintly magnetic. "As the meteorite cools below 750 °C, iron becomes magnetic as it moves in to the kamacite phase. During this cooling the meteorite takes on non-conventional thermoremanent magnetization." [Wikipedia])

"And you want to know?" Edwinna asked tentatively.

"Well, what is it, and where did it come from? This stone has caused me so much grief! I showed it to the shaman, and she wanted to pitch it into the sea, but I wouldn't let her. She said it had invisible hands that grasped metal.

"I had to go hide it because word got around, and the whole camp was in an uproar. They said that it contained a demon, and if we kept it, it would bring us nothing but pestilence and famine. People with torches appeared outside our yurt demanding that the stone be pitched into the sea. My mother begged me to have regard for her, and my father tried the 'beat-it-out-of-him' approach, so I sat rocking back and forth singing to them:

"'You can cut off my toes; you can cut off my nose! You can cut off my toes; you can cut off my nose!'

"The wise woman managed to restore order, but even she wanted this stone disposed of underwater. I refused to comply, and that night when everybody was asleep, I took my longbow and chitin arrows and set out across the Ashland region to come here and save my precious gift from the sky."

Edwinna considered for a moment then called an attendant.

"Go fetch Master Cyreril," she said giving the attendant some coins in order to make haste.

After some time Master Cyreril arrived, and Edwinna bade Asantus repeat his story as he had told it to her. As he listened, Master Cyreril took the stone into his fingers and examined its surface. It was strangely shapeless and mottled.

"Explain to me, young man, why you think this stone is so extraordinary," he challenged the youth.

"Look," he said producing a fine needle his mother used and placing it on a sheet of paper. As he moved the stone underneath the paper, the needle moved with it as if by itself. Edwinna and Cyreril stared in absolute amazement.

The people of Tamriel knew of such stones from descriptions in ancient texts, but nobody had ever seen one. This was probably the first case in history in which one was actually found. To find one, you have to know what you're looking for.

"A LODESTONE!" Cyreril shouted. "I've always wanted one of these! Boy, what do you want for this?!"

"Not for sale!" Asantus responded drily. "All I want to know is what it is and where it came from."

Master Cyreril shook his head in exasperation, "I really have no idea! All I know is that it is one of the many wonders of nature."

"To me, it's just a pretty toy," Edwinna sniffed, cooling to the topic after seeing Master Cyreril's ignorance.

"Well, if you're so smart," Cyreril fired back at her, "you explain what this is and where it came from!"

Edwinna tossed her head and walked away.

"Mages!" Cyreril growled and turned back to the boy. "Listen, are you going to be free for the next--I don't know--how many weeks?"

"I'm a run-away," Asantus reminded him.

"Ah, yes, quite. Let's both of us peregrinate to the Imperial City and show your find to some gentlemen there who may find it very useful."

--Useful? In what way?--

"Before we do that," Asantus asked, "can you tell me what an 'antipodean' is?"

“Hmm,” Cyreril responded. “You’ve got me stumped. Where did you come across this word?"

"It was spoken to me in a dream."

"In what context?"

"Well, that I can't say because it's all I remember from the entire dream."

"There's an odor of divine inspiration here. Of course being a scientist, I don't put much stock in the divine, but words don't invent themselves, do they? Let’s go ask Explorer. Oh, Explorer!” he called to a young man across the room. “He’s the Mages’ house genius. A bit slow, but his IQ is measured in gigas.”

A pudgy young man with his hair parted in the middle and wearing a bow tie and suspenders approached.

“Yes, Master Cyreril?”

“Explorer, explain an 'antipodean'.”

Explorer was about to speak when suddenly his eyes glazed over and his mouth gaped half open in suspended animation.

“What happened?” Asantus asked.

Cyreril waived his hand before Explorer's eyes and clicked his finger next to his ear. Even “Robby the Robot”, who was working with Kbs back in his day, could have said it didn’t compute. But Explorer crashed big time.

“I thought this guy knew everything,” Cyreril said in dismay, “but it appears we’ve stumped him as well. Better reboot.”

He went behind Explorer and gave him a swift kick in the behind.

“Ow! What was that for?!”

“You were lost in space. We were just asking about the word 'antipodean'. Can you enlighten us?”

“Well . . . I would venture to guess it’s 'The Hanged Man’ in the Tarot deck, you see turned upside down, hanging by one ankle.”

Cyreril turned to Asantus wondering if that answered his question. Asantus shrugged and shook his head because it made no sense at all.

“Thank you, Explorer,” Cyreril said and tossed him a coin.