Free Quartz by Rabia Gale Page B

she whispered. “Turn it off!”
    And Rafe looked down and saw that there really was a white halo and it came from his clenched fist. Light spilled through his fingers, and his palm was hot around the mage device.
    It was so bright that Burgess and the Blackstone officer broke off their argument and stood staring.
    “You there,” called the officer. “What do you have? Handheld mage lights are military only. You can’t bring such a device in here!”
    “He needs it. He has the nightsweats,” Isabella called out, adding yet another malady to his list of afflictions.
    Rafe thumbed the device until the light dimmed, but it didn’t go out entirely. “D-do I have to?” He didn’t have to work hard to force the stutter. “I-I-I-I paid good money, man, and the d-d-dark… she has f-f-fingers… everywhere… man, I swear it!” He ended on a high note of terror.
    The officer shot him a look of contempt. “Oh, get on with you. Get back up the road, away from here.”
    “Shoo, Breveldo.” Burgess gestured savagely. “We’ll meet you once we’re done here.” Turning to the officer, he said, “Now about those radishes…”
    “Burgess can outtalk anyone,” said Isabella as the two of them made a great show of scrambling away from the military might of Blackstone. “We might actually get those tubers tonight.”
    The pressure of the quartz eased. Once out of sight, Rafe slowed and opened his hand. Weak light dripped off his fingers and puddled at his feet, creating a shadow-splotched picture. Rafe caught his breath as he recognized it. The device throbbed on his palm, glowing behind its curlicues.
    Isabella squinted at the device, then at the picture it made on the road. “Not very pretty, that. Some kind of deformed dog with mangy fur? What do you suppose it’s for?”
    Rafe pushed his fingers into the depressions, then shook it. The device turned off and the picture disappeared. He answered as casually as he could. “It’s some kind of mage-made novelty, perhaps for shadow theater, to do the backdrops. It doesn’t look like it’s working right. They do break sometimes, or else it needs fresh quartz.” He tapped the ovoid shell. “If I can figure out how to get it open.”
    “Hmm. Where did you find it?”
    Rafe did not reply and Isabella did not press him. After a searching look, she turned to walk back up to the top of the canyon.
    Rafe stared at the spot where the device had cast its light. What Isabella had seen as some kind of abstract picture was a map, a map that any surveyor would’ve recognized, depicting landmarks below and a star chart above. A map that pinpointed the exact location of the agri-caves they had just visited. Rafe knew of such devices, each mapping the location of a massive vein of quartz. These devices had helped his people find the quartz veins after the Scorching had laid the earth bare.
    His uncle had three of them, and in scholarly circles it was widely accepted that they were three of Renat’s Keys.
    And Rafe might have found a fourth.

Chapter Seven
The Barrens
    E VEN THE HOSTILITY OF the Blackstone military at the agri-caves didn’t prepare Rafe for the shock of the mining camp. The few permanent buildings were brick shacks with tin roofs, surrounded by a huddle of tents made of worn canvas and held up by bamboo poles. Hills of rubble and open hearths took up most of the camp. Hoisting machinery with rusty chains, empty ore buckets, and carts abandoned on their sides dotted the landscape. Judging by the basaltic rock and red-stained soil, this mine had once produced iron and copper. Smoke from the smelting process lingered over the place, but there was no industry.
    Tension hung thick in the air.
    The miners were rail-thin men and women, pale under a lifetime of soot and grime. When Burgess called a cheery hello, his heartiness was almost a sacrilege in that circle of wildly hopeful faces.
    “Tell me”—the leader had the shrunken, loose-skinned look of a big man gone