Stonewiser (12 page)

Delis was a different story altogether. The change in her was nothing short of remarkable. She seemed free of the burden that had made her so grim before, oddly cooperative, using her well-honed survival skills to their benefit and almost happy, if such a term could be applied to a natural brooder. A part of Sariah was sorry for Delis. She was trying hard to gain her trust, attention and acceptance. Being the focus of Kael's rage was a disgrace, but bearing the wrath of both, Kael and Sariah, that had to be a catastrophe. Well, she didn't care. The woman had earned it many times over.

“Look, look!” Delis pointed at the sky, waving her full net as she ran.

“What… is… it… ?” Kael's eyes narrowed on a tiny spot in the sky.

“A long-legged crane?” Sariah spied a pair of wings in the air. “A gull?”

“Not a crane and not a gull.” Kael frowned. “A hawk, I think. A red hawk.”

Why would the appearance of a hawk cause such a fuss?

“There have been no hawks in the Domain since the rot took hold.” Kael's eyes were glued to the creature's flight path.

Delis reached them, sweating and out of breath. “Did you see it, my donnis?”

“Don't call me that.”

“A strange bird,” Delis puffed, “not of the Domain. An omen of grace, my donnis. For you. Meliahs’ gift.”

“What's in your net?” Kael asked.

“I don't know.” Delis dumped her net's contents at Sariah's feet. “See? The bird was hunting after these. But I've never seen these in the Domain either.”

A half-dozen large fish flapped on the boards. Fish were common to every puddle of water in the Goodlands, even in the keep's ponds, where Sariah had seen them rise to the surface and hunt for bugs during the long summer days. But these were the dead waters. You could hunt eel and rotfish, krill and the occasional bottom feeder. But fish?

At last, she understood the wonderment on Kael's face. As a roamer, he would have seen such creatures in the Goodlands as surely as she had. But to see not one, but two dead species return to the Barren Flats on the same day was nothing less than miraculous.

Kael was on his knees, examining the silvery fish. “Do you know this kind?”

She didn't. It wasn't the kind kept at the Guild's ponds. Kael selected one of the fish. He smelled the quivering thing and then sliced it in half and lay it on the deck, tracing the spine with the point of his knife, poking at its heart, liver, stomach and intestines with deliberate care.

“Not a faulty species,” he said. “Not a monster of nature either. Those we find sometimes. But these?”

He poked some more through the entrails and came up with a cluster of tiny black eggs on the tip of his blade. “They're spawning,” he murmured, fascinated. “Here. In the Domain.”

“Can they be eaten?” Delis asked.

“I don't see why not.” Kael turned one-half of the fish around and checked the silver scales. “No boils or growths, no extra eyes or tails or fins.”

“Fish, my donnis. Fish!” Delis clapped delightedly. “It's a sign of favor. Of luck.”

“Kael, can you explain this?”

He shook his head without taking his eyes from the fish. “Something's either very right or very wrong with the Domain.”

“Wrong, I'd say at the moment.” Sariah's eyes narrowed on the horizon, where yet another host of creatures stirred, this flock very much natural to its surroundings.

Her throat botched the warning. “It's the mob.”

After spending the last few exhausting days dodging the mob, Sariah's hopes surged when she spotted the atorium breaking the Barren Flats’ visual monotony. But her buoyant mood plunged as they came closer. The site where the atorium had once stood was a scene of desolation. The rot bubbled amidst the skeletons of blackened decks and crumbling debris, a fountain of corruption polluting the filthy water and stinking the air. Sariah's eyes watered from both the sting and sheer frustration.

“They must have ignored the rot's rumblings.” Her voice broke the eerie silence. “They must have all perished in the eruption.”

“It would take a bunch of idiots to ignore the rot's coming,” Delis said.

“Atorium, remember? Sick and crazies?”

“But the caretakers—”

“The caretakers acted as such.” Kael's soot-stained face popped out from the ruins’ center. “They knew what was coming.”

“You mean they escaped the rot?” A hint of hope brightened Sariah's heart.

“The rot? No,” Kael said. “The Shield.”

“You mean to say the rot didn't do this?”

“Of course it did. But only
after
the Shield attacked.” Kael stepped out of the rubble holding the blackened point of a barbed pike, the Shield's favored weapon. “The Shield would have been a little harder to foresee than the rot.”

“I thought the Shield limited its incursions to the areas nearest to the wall.”

“I suspect this place is not as far from the wall as we might think.”

“Did anyone—?”

“Survive?” Kael shrugged. “Can't say for sure, but I think there's a good likelihood. The pots are gone.”

“The pots?”

“Domainers always take their pots with them wherever they go.” Kael picked his way carefully through the incinerated ruins.

“They might have spied the Shield and escaped,” Delis said.

“At least some of them.” The burnt timber creaked ominously under Kael's feet as he examined what turned out to be a blackened human body speared upright onto a broken deck.

Sariah fought the urge to vomit. “When did it happen?”

“A month. Maybe two. The rot is a recent arrival. It hasn't yet consumed the ruins, but it will. There's something else here.”

Kael stuck his finger into the corpse's gaping mouth. The jawbone crumpled. The lower half of the charred face dissolved into a dusty pile of cremated bone, the dead man's final protest. In his hand, Kael held a single gray stone.

Ten

 

S
ARIAH TAPPED THE
gray stone on the floor with the tips of her fingers, a quick, sequential beat, the only sound breaking the stillness in the deck shelter. The last thing she saw before closing her eyes was a very worried Kael ready to snatch the stone from her hand should it become violent. Sure enough, the dreaded sight flashed in her mind. She recognized the small brown eyes, the full lips, the handsome face and the wide leonine nose, flaring at the mere thought of her.

The shiver ran the length of her spine. “Master Arron.”

“He's no longer your master,” Kael said.

“I'm free.” She found comfort in hearing the words aloud. “Do you think this stone got here before or after the Shield's attack?”

“Hard to tell. But you don't have to wise this one.”

“It's too dangerous, my donnis.” It was odd to hear Delis agree with Kael.

“Arron can't hurt me.” Was she saying these things to ease their fears or hers?

“If you do it,” Kael said, “I want to be there with you.”

“Only after I know it's safe,” Sariah said. “Only once I have defused whatever traps lie waiting.”

“Then let's throw it away,” Kael said. “We can hurl it into the flats and never see it again.”

“No, we can't.”

Without allowing herself more time to fear, she clutched the stone in her hand and pressed it to her palm.

Sariah thwarted the assault of a snaring trance, rushing into the trance in a reverse snatch that neutralized the power in the stone. She had been caught by one of Arron's creations before, a disturbing experience she didn't intend to suffer again. Instead, she took the trance by surprise and seized the links’ timing, asserting control over the tale's pace. Her mind moved up and down the links, scouting for tricks, probing for traps and assessing the tale to make sure it was real and not the projection of someone's mind. Strange. With the exception of the snaring trance, a contraption that Arron used often to force his messages on others, the stone seemed harmless enough.

“Let me in.” Kael's voice was like a pounding at the door.

“In a moment.” Her mind stepped into the tale cautiously.

Arron was pacing back and forth in what looked like some kind of pavilion. Had he finally quit the keep? Had he been expelled from the Guild? The last time she had seen Arron was almost two chills ago at the breaking of the wall. Back then, the Guild's highest ruling body, the Council, had been split into two factions. Arron, the Council's Speaker and second in the line of rule, had been leading a ragtag army against Grimly, the Guild's Prime Hand for the last forty years. Targeted by both factions, Sariah and a badly wounded Kael had barely escaped the battle with their lives. At the time they fled, the Guild's powerful army, the Shield, had been under the Prime Hand's command. What had been the outcome of that battle?

Deep in the Domain's isolation, Sariah didn't know. News from the Goodlands was sparse and often confusing. She wondered if Mistress Grimly was dead. She doubted it. The witch had a proven knack for survival, political and otherwise. Sariah surprised herself pitying the Council, split between its main leaders. She pitied the Goodlands more.

In the tale, the light of a brazier flickered over Arron's features, revealing a pensive expression. He looked heavier, no less imposing than she remembered, but wide at the hips and bulging at the belly. A little extra flesh was a trait of prosperity in the Guild, but obviously, he had been indulging lately. He was alone, twirling the gray stone in one hand while sipping from the horn he clutched in the other. The man liked his luxuries. Sariah had no doubt the wine was of the best vintage.

Arron was imprinting the stone he clutched in his hand as he spoke. “If you are wising this stone, then you are still at large, living like a fugitive among the vermin. Sariah, you aren't made for the hardships of the Rotten Domain. Return to me, my beloved pupil.”

Beloved pupil?
Sariah had an urge to puke. When had Arron's so-called kindness resulted in anything but pain and frustration? And why was he speaking kindly in the tale, instead of issuing insults and threats like he did in his other messages? With her usual thoroughness, she scouted the stone tale for tricks one more time and, finding none, opened her eyes.

“You've got to see this.” She put her hand over Kael's heart, allowing the tale to filter through her mind, body and palm, and into Kael's mind. She could feel his emotions too, the steely resolve he commanded to withstand whatever came, the wariness of the warrior called to battle.

“It's all right.” She closed her eyes. “The only trickery so far is this new tone of his.”

“Sariah,” Arron said. “Your burdened heart may not allow you to consider the consequences of your actions. You have no guidance, no sound counseling. You know your duty. You alone can deliver justice to my cause. And you know, deep inside, none of this would have happened had you not escaped my tutelage, had you not forsaken my lease.”

Kael scoffed. As if Arron hadn't been trying to wrestle control of the Council for years. As if his plots and schemes had not been ongoing since well before his ascent to the Council. Sariah was willing to accept responsibility for her acts, but not for Arron's intrigues.