Stonewiser (27 page)

Sariah and the others followed Kael over the rocky promontory, dodging the fumaroles’ sudden eruptions and the boiling orange puddles, taking care not to slip in the warm mud, picking their footing carefully over a span of jagged limestone.

“Watch it, rot spawn,” Malord said, when Delis slipped and sent him joggling inside the basket where she carried him on her back.

“Hold on and shut up, half-man,” Delis said. “I'm not your mule.”

“Quiet.” Kael crouched behind a low ridge. “Hide yourselves and be still.”

Sariah and Mia knelt beside him. He watched a sliver of trampled mud at the edge of the rocks. He took in every detail, seemingly oblivious to the slow passing of time. Sariah wasn't so patient. She had hoped to be in the Goodlands by now, following Leandro's beam and much closer to her final destination.

Mia started to play with the tiny crabs crawling on the rocks. The armored eight-legged fellows had quick claws that nipped at Mia's harassing fingers. Crying gulls flew overhead, landing occasionally to dig out the krill marooned in the mud or to steal the eggs of a flock of long-legged cranes nesting on the muddy beach. Life in the Domain never ceased to amaze Sariah. The rot and its bitter brew had taken over and yet, like the Domainers, life still endured, resisting all attempts at extinction. Sariah watched the riotous gulls and the black-beaked cranes for a while. Then, bored and a little curious, she pressed her palm against the rocks. A vision of coral polyps, algae and kelp entered her mind, a sense of deep blue depths, undulating with the sun's sparkling refraction. A whiff of salt and seaweed slammed her like a wave to the face.

“What was that?” Mia, always mimicking Sariah's action, had just experienced the same.

“It's a sense of the sea.”

“What's a sea?”

“A very vast pool of water, not dead water like the Domain's, but salt water, full of life. They say it used to be everywhere before the rot came. Now it's only on the other side of the Goodlands.”

“I'd like to see the sea someday,” Mia said. “Can you wise these rocks?”

“Most of the time all you can wise from it is what you just saw. These types of rocks are not very good at holding tales. There was too much life in the sea, little animals darting everywhere and flower-like plants. I saw a tale of it once in a Guild stone.”

“It's all that life,” Mia said. “It doesn't like giving up its tale. It wants to go on and on.”

Mia's observation struck a chord with Sariah. The best stones for wising were rich with the earth's core matter. Comparatively, these stones had very little of it and lots of animal and plant remains. Mia was right—life never relinquished its tale easily.

Kael motioned for everyone to be silent.

The water by the muddy beach stirred. Two straight steles aimed towards the rocks. Something popped from the dead water, two jiggling globes wrapped in some kind of wrinkled tissue, mounted on long stalks just now emerging to the surface.

The glimmering base supporting the stalks surfaced like a budding island. It approached the beach as if looking for berth. A slow bovine movement brought a squirming cluster of tentacles out of the water. One of the globes on the stalk swiveled her way. Sariah realized with a start that she was staring at a dark, gleaming eye.

“What by the rot is that?”

“A rot monster?” Mia whimpered.

“No, not a monster.” Kael said. “An animal. She's an empress snail.”

“Snails are little,” Mia said. “And they have shells. I play with them all the time at Ars.”

“This one's big. Her shell is far from here. She and her kind are the biggest of all the snails.”

“You mean there are more of these?”

“Several more that I know of.”

“I heard rumors,” Delis whispered.

“I never thought them true,” Malord said.

“I've seen her before,” Kael said. “She's got a crooked left eyestalk, the poor old thing, and a missing tentacle in front. She probably lost it fighting some contentious pretender. She's an old gal. She likely dates to the execration itself. She's a horrible beauty.”

It was a very accurate description for the gigantic beast. It crawled through the water slowly. A black muscular body skirted by a single massive flat foot rose from the water. Painfully, almost languorously, it launched itself forward. A huge, loose-lipped mouth landed on the beach's mud to suck birds, eggs, krill, and whatever else laid there, in one enormous slurp. There was little to say as the giant contracted back into the dead water and disappeared gradually—eyestalks last—leaving the mud streaked with feathers and cracked eggshells.

Malord broke the silence. “She's huge.”

“She spans almost a league,” Kael said.

“Where has she gone?” Mia asked.

“She's around. She dines in the Domain but she excretes in the Goodlands.”

“You mean she's so large that her head is on this side of the wall and her tail is on the other side?” Delis asked.

“Precisely.”

The pit of Sariah's stomach flooded with dread. “Kael, Kaelin. Please tell me. How are we going to cross the wall into the Goodlands?”

He didn't smile. “We're going
through
her.”

Twenty-one

 

“I
WON'T GO.”
Mia stomped a stubborn foot in the mud. “You can't make me go.” She turned from Kael and collapsed in Sariah's arms, sobbing. “Auntie, please, don't make me go.”

Sariah couldn't blame the child. She felt like weeping too. If it wasn't because she really had to get to the Goodlands right now, she would do what any coherent person in their right mind would do—run away.

As it was, they had no choice. A quick glance at her bracelet showed that the fourth crystal was filling up. Word among the Domainers they had encountered in the last two weeks was that the Shield had mounted a new offensive on the wall's cracks and refugees were dying by the hundreds. Word also was that Alfred and the mob were but a half-day behind them. Malord and Delis's ashen faces told of the same dread she felt.

“Perhaps you don't have to go, Mianina.” Sariah patted the girl's soft curls. “Perhaps you can stay on this side with Malord and Delis.”

Relief made a subtle appearance on her companions’ faces, but Malord shattered the reprieve. “You know she has to be with you. She can stand a little time and distance without you, but Meliahs knows, you may have to travel long and far into the Goodlands to reach the beam's source. Until we figure out a way to unhinge Mia's mind from yours, we can't risk the separation. And I pledged my work to you. I'm going.”

“So will I, my donnis. I'll come. By whatever deranged way.”

Sariah's gaze shifted from Delis, to Malord, to Kael, and back to Mia. She didn't want the heavy burden of their lives on her soul. “If something were to happen to any of you—”

“We make our own decisions,” Kael said. “We have three choices: We try our luck with the Shield, go this way, or we turn around and return to Ars.”

“Ruin Ars?” Malord scoffed. “That would be a great gift.”

“Only to have my donnis killed?”

“So we go.” Kael pulled out three oversized weaved sacks from his pack. “We don't have a lot of time to prepare. I've told you what to expect.”

“But I don't want to go.” Mia's hands trickled drops of black flow. “I won't go.”

The flicker on Kael's clenched jaw signaled his impatience. They had no time for Mia's tantrum.

“Go get ready,” Sariah said to him. “Let me talk to her.”

The others might have a real choice, but Kael was forgetting that Mia didn't. She was stuck in a decidedly adult and unpredictable world. To make matters worse, the child was somehow linked to her, a rogue stonewiser whose lousy odds for survival trended from bad to worse. No wonder the child hesitated.

Slim and small for her age, at twelve Mia was barely emerging from a protected childhood in her family's happy home. Despite her courage, her trials as a new wiser and her unwonted presence at Sariah's breaking of the wall, Mia was frightened. It made perfect sense. Sariah was afraid too, terrified, horrified. What they were about to do called for no lesser emotions. She hated herself for endangering the child. She made a silent vow to find the connection between Mia and her, and shatter it to oblivion. Mia would be better off for it.

She spoke very softly, looking into the girl's tearful green and blue eyes. “I know you're scared, Mianina. So am I. But sometimes we have to be brave and do things we wouldn't do otherwise.”

Mia stuck out a defying chin. “My mommy's gonna poke your eyes out if I get hurt. She said so.”

It was no idle threat. If something happened to Mia, Torana would do more than poke Sariah's eyes out. She would rip out her beating heart, chop it to pieces and feed it to the goats. Sariah had learned the hard way that motherly rage fueled the fires burning in Meliahs’ rot pit.

“I'd do anything to avoid harm coming to you,” Sariah said. “But I can't lie to you. This is dangerous. We do it only because it has to be done.”

The pout on Mia's face didn't waver.

“How about if I infuse you with a little sleep? That way, you won't be afraid. You'll dream nice dreams through the worst part, and when you wake up, you'll be fine on the other side of the wall.” Or so she hoped.

“Can you do that?” Mia asked. “Will it be all right?”

“You won't be afraid.”

“What if we die?”

If they granted children coins for good questions, Mia would be rich. Sariah wracked her brain for a remotely good answer. “Do you remember when old Matty died back in Ars a few months ago?”

Mia nodded.

“She died having dinner on her deck, remember? She was slurping her gruel one moment and next she was gone.”

“To Meliahs’ gardens,” Mia said.

“My point is we can all die suddenly and without cause. It's the nature of our lives. Some of us get to die snug in our pallets. Some of us get to die in the rot's fire.”

“Or in a worm.”

“Technically, it's a snail.” Sariah smiled. “I happen to think if we die trying to do something good, something that will help our kin and make life easier for those who come after us, we die better than if we passed from choking on pits while stuffing our faces with cherries.”

She was beginning to sound like Kael. How by the fiery rot had she gotten stuck with explaining something she didn't understand?

“I like cherries,” Mia said.

“What?”

“I said I like cherries. But you want me to be brave.”

“I wish you didn't have to be.” Sariah took Mia's hands in hers. “I
need
you to be brave.”

“I'm sorry. I'm not very brave, Auntie.” Mia wiped her nose with her sleeve. “Put me to sleep. I'll see you on the other side.”

“Let me tie that knot,” Kael said, after kissing her hard on the mouth.

“Who's going to tie yours?” Sariah asked.

“I'll do it from the inside. Remember everything I told you. Every word. Understand?”

Sariah hugged the sleeping girl against her body. The weaved sack's opening narrowed, until she could see only Kael's black and green eyes, fast on hers.

“Be there,” he said as he closed the gap.