Teaser #1, unnamed fantasy novel

In the cave mouth, six Laborers stood by the carts of broken stone as three uniformed Plainsmen sifted through the contents. Three uniformed Laborers stood, halbards with their butts resting lightly on the ground, in close proximity to the Plainsmen, clearly bodyguards.

The Laborer mineworkers were uniformly pale-skinned, dark-haired males, all at least seven feet tall, with long, heavily muscled limbs, streaked orange with freckles in a tiger-striped pattern. Two carried enormous pickaxes, another a large sledgehammer weighing some 40 pounds.

The Laborer bodyguards were more varied, but were of a slimmer, shorter stock of Laborer, tho they all still stood towering over the Plainsmen in stature. All three were female, and two wore carved emerald cabochons on her cuffs, each denoting the Plainsman for whom she worked. The larger of them, pale and red-haired, also carried a bone knife around her neck on a braided orange strand, indicating that she was a Freeman. The device on the emerald cabochon she wore was of a knight, rampant dexter, the sigil of Magister John Grange.

The bearer of the second emerald cabochon was deeply tanned, also with red hair, and her cabachon was of a lion's head, roaring sinister, the mark of Masterminer Jemsen Rialdonado.

The third uniformed Laborer was the smallest, barely 6 feet in height. Her skin was black, as was her hair, and her eyes were wide-set and almond shaped. She wore a black cabochon carved with the head of a bull over two crossed wands. The black stone was diamond, and it was the sign of Technical Oracle Amar Arrad.From her position between the Plainsman and the Laborers, facing the Laborers, and her body language, holding her halberd close to her, it's butt against her boot, proclaimed her the senior Laborer present.

The three Plainsmen stood over the cart of broken stone, two of them stooping, rummaging through the cart, examining bits of stone. The third stood, eyes closed, concentrating.

In thickly accented True Speech, he muttered "There is only one of value, toward the bottom. It is shaped rather like an - yes, Grange, that is it". He had not opened his eyes as he directed the men to the flake of stone.

Grange looked closely at the wide, thin flake of stone. He turned it in his hands, and held it up to the sunlight. "I see nothing of interest. Are you serious in your offer?"

"Certainly" replied Arrad, reaching for the stone. Grange handed it to him, frowning. "Nothing but rock" he muttered, looking at Rialdonado, who shrugged.

Arrad gave the stone to his bodyguard without examining it.

"Give me some room" he commanded, and the other Plainsman and all the Laborers moved back from him. The bodyguard with the stone walked to the group of hulking Laborers, while the other two uniformed Laborers moved into the mouth of the mine, slightly worried expressions on their faces.

Arrad began to mumble incoherent sounds and pivot very slowly on his left foot. It took him almost a minute to make a complete circle and start a second.

None of the Laborers present had seen a Technical Oracle work, and all watched. The tall, muscular mineworkers tried to watch surrupticiously, and the bodyguards stared intently, except Arrad's, who looked bored.

Arrad finally spoke. "You have a tunnel stretching due south at a depth of about 35 feet, yes?"

Rialdonado muttered "yes, but"

"Drain it, and continue at a thirty degree angle down. In 19 feet, you will break into a cavern. Drain that and simply chip the gems off the walls. It is nearly identical to the cavern above it and to the west, but richer."

"What is it, Arrad?" Grange asked.

"The rock? It contains the remains of a large Zintora shell"

Grange and Rialdonado first frowned, then guffawed loudly. "You must be drunk, man! We are three hundred miles away from the nearest salt water. And how would a zintora get 120 feet down my mine and buried in layer rock?"

"Rheeanza" Arrad said, holding his hand out to his bodyguard. Rheeanza handed it over. Arrad passed his hand over the surface of the stone, and handed it to Grange.

One side of it was now polished. Clearly, light against a dark background, was a spiral shell, about two inches long.

Rialdonado examined it without touching it. "It's a sculpture, it is made of rock, not shell" he said.

Grange closed his eyes and muttered a single sylable. He grinned. "Youv'e been had, Arrad. That was never alive. Now, why somebody would sculpt a shell into a piece of layer rock and hide it down my mine, I cannot fathom, but it is the only answer. But thanks for the scry, that would have cost me 100 ducats." He clearly meant it as scorn, and it was only politeness and a touch of fear that kept him from ending his statement with "Sucker!"

"You have what you wanted, I have what I wanted." Arrad said, and took back the stone. He motioned to his bodyguard, and they walked back up the access road toward their horses. Rheeanza walked two steps behind him, her halberd across one shoulder.

Grange looked at Rialdonado and said "get me more of those stones. I hate mysteries."

The Masterminer growled at his laborers "Start draining the Southmine. But two of you go to where you found that rock and fine me more just like it."

After walking around a bend in the access road, Rheeanza quickened her pace, and drew from beneath her uniform a wood-hilted bone-bladed dagger and lodged it in her belt sash.

"Interesting dilemma" she said in her native language Mitger. "Do we believe that a mad wizard created a sculpture of a shell in the middle of a bed of layer rock and then buried it, leaving no traces of excavation?"

Arrad laughed. "We let the facts guide us to a conclusion without resort to speculation. This is clearly a stone depiction of a shell, exact in every detail except that it is made of the wrong material.

I have attempted to lay a dwimmer on it, but failed, which means according to our current understanding, it can never have lived. Yet, I know it's age to be perhaps a million years, the same age as the rock matrix in which we found it. We have a thing that cannot be, yet is."

"Clearly our current understanding is flawed"

"Clearly"

They walked in silence, and upon reaching their horses tethering bar, mounted and rode silently.

"Well?" Arrad asked, eventually.

Rheeanza said "Clearly there was life before magic, and that life was made of stone. When Magic first came into the world, the stone creatures must have died off, for some reason. We all know that dwimmers can be laid on anything that was once alive, but we must amend that idea to exclude stone life."

"I don't like it" Arrad said. "I think something turned this shell to stone. I think it was alive, it lived and died in a world where their was no magic. I think that is much more likely that a living being made of stone."

"I disagree. I think a world without magic a far more unlikely answer than a living thing made of stone."