As magic rituals go, Siedi is remarkably simple. No words, symbols, herbs oils unguents amulets athanes alembics orchestras or fireworks. Costumes sometimes, for the sake of ceremony or vanity, but the magic has no interest in your clothes. You do need three things: a mind that is open and aware of the piece of the world that you live in, a heart that cares about said piece of world, and a body that can take said heart and mind on the journey the rite requires them to take. Your shape, your species does not matter as long as you have those.

Siedi is necessary. This world is too enchanted to be stable. Deep underground its magic flows in great currents, entwining and tangling, squeezing and grating. If the tension builds to breaking point, the magic turns against itself and for a moment the world ceases to be an entity. In that moment people, cities, mountains, whole continents may be lost. As much as a quarter of everything may cease to be. Its tension discharged, the magic reintegrates. The fractured world will knit back into a whole. The magic will slowly fill the gaps with new land. New people and new cities will come in the usual ways. And deep underground the tensions will start to build again.

You perform Siedi to prevent this. There are places where the currents of magic rise close to the surface, causing the ground to become so fluid or broken that a person trying to cross may fall or sink through it and be consumed by the magic beneath. You set out to the nearest of those places. You keep your senses open as you travel, watching seeing listening touching smelling the world, feeling the reality of it, knowing yourself a part of it. When you arrive at the pit or quagmire, you pause at the edge and meditate. You think about the bit of world you live in, have just traveled through, and you fix in your heart and mind all you know and love and care about in it. Your love connects your soul to it even as you walk forward and sink or slip or plummet out of it. And when the magic takes you, it incorporates that connection into itself. Your love becomes a part of the world's deep structure, a bond that enforces its integrity, helps resolve the deadly tension. That's the Ritual of Siedi.

What you become, whether you live on in any form or meaningful sense afterwards, nobody can truly say.

_o0o_

The quicksand pit could almost have been made for Siedi. A curious narrow outcrop of rock stuck out ten good wolf-paces like a pier, saving the sinker an undignified, concentration-breaking wade through the shallow mire the edge. It was a lumpy ridge, but it ended in a strange smooth piece of rock, slightly concave. It was known locally as "The Spoon".

It seemed to fit Hyol's legs almost perfectly as he knelt meditating, preparing himself for the sand. Comfortable, relaxed, a little hunger that helped keep his mind clear. Mid-morning. He'd taken most of the journey here the day before, had slept in the woods, and taken the last two miles to the pit this morning. He'd avoided the nearby human village, and had seen no talking person of any species that day - had seen none since yesterday morning, in fact. And would almost certainly see none ever again.

Well, he'd always been a loner.