Stonewiser (32 page)

“The squatters are coming with me,” she said. “It's the best I can do for you.”

“For me?” The woman's limp hand came to rest on her chest.

“Don't make me bring charges against you.”

She blinked stupidly. “Charges? Against me?”

“The penalties are very harsh for those who break the Guild's tidiness laws,” Sariah said. “You'll return the weaves to the Domainers. They're marked with Panadan's weavers’ seal.”

“I'll report you to the Shield.”

“And I'll report you to the Guild. Expect confinement. Ruination. Death. For spreading disease.”

The woman's porcelain face froze in horror.

“What disease?” Ginia asked.

“The rash on her neck,” Sariah said. “It's a sign of a common ailment among a certain kind of woman in the Goodlands. But I've never seen it in the Domain. It first appeared a few years ago among the Shield ranks. The Guild had to act and the Healer's Hall was hard-pressed to deliver a cure.”

“I'm a reputable widow!” the woman said.

“Who obviously cavorts with Shield soldiers,” Sariah said. “Look, Ginia. Some of your older friends have it on their faces and necks.” She grabbed the young woman's hand. “You have it on your arm. Do you know what causes this itchy rash on your skin?” Sariah pointed a straight finger at the widow. “She does.”

“You look tired,” Malord said. “Perhaps we ought to finish this tomorrow.”

“No, nay, now. We'll do it tonight.”

Even if she couldn't call the beam tonight, Sariah meant to make good use of her time. She was determined to free Mia from the mysterious connection that plagued her. True, more than anything else, she wanted the child safe and back in Ars, freed from the bond that tied her to Sariah's dubious fate. But she also needed to expedite her search and accelerate her journey. If she was going to find the pure and the tale she sought, if she was going to save Ars from the executioners’ greed and save her own life before her time ran out, she was going to have to be faster, sharper, shrewder. Aye, Mia would be much safer back in Ars.

She didn't look at her changing bracelet. She set aside the problem of the Panadanian youngsters camping out for the night in Mara's empty barn. She tried to forget the widow's blatant abuses and the rot lesions bubbling in Targamon's front field. She refused to think about Kael and the Shield. One problem at a time. One solution to find.

“Mia.” Sariah called down the stairs. “Where is she?”

“I bet you she's with the young Panadanian,” Malord said. “She's been following Rig like his shadow.”

“I'm surprised he hasn't booted her heinie out of the way. That's boys for you at that age.”

“This one seems fascinated by our little wiser.”

Mia trotted up the stairs. “Did you call me, Auntie?”

“Several times. Where were you?”

“Playing cards with Rig in the kitchen.”

“Isn't he kind of old to be playing with little girls?”

“He's only fourteen and I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm almost thirteen.” She spoke rather firmly, in a tone completely new to Sariah. “He doesn't mind that I'm going to be a stonewiser. He's my friend. I need a friend.”

“I don't mind if Rig is your friend. But you've only known him for—”

“Did you call me for a reason, Auntie?”

Was that irritation in the little girl's voice? “I told you we would have to wise tonight. Remember?”

“I'm ready. Could we please do it quickly? I'm winning.”

Mia, Malord and Sariah sat cross-legged on the floor of the bedroom Mara had offered to Sariah, a comfortable space furnished with a small fireplace that illuminated Mia and Malord's expectant faces. The three stones Sariah had painstakingly prepared for the occasion came from the river's bottom. They were light-colored, tight-linked granite, perfectly sized to fit in their palms, tumbled and polished to comfortable smoothness by the river flow's persuasive caress.

Sariah laid the stones on the ground between the three of them. She had never tried this before, but during her time at the keep she had wised a couple of forbidden Guild stones that discussed the notion of amplifying stones. She just hoped she had remembered to imbue her river stones with all the necessary details. Otherwise, the exercise would be a waste of time.

“These stones will help us look within ourselves,” Sariah said. “They're like a bright candle, like a magnifying glass. We want to take a thorough look at Mia's wiser mind and then travel my links to look at my mind. Be thorough and take your time.”

Holding a stone in each hand, Sariah rested her hands on her knees, palms up. Mia's left hand and Malord's right one came to rest on top of Sariah's hands with the stones in between. Mia and Malord were similarly linked. They formed a perfect wising triangle, something the Guild forbade. The prohibition itself, combined with Sariah's experiences, led her to believe the triangle would increase their combined wising power.

Sariah took a deep breath, closed her eyes, clasped the other wisers’ hands, and pressed the stones against her palms. They had tried looking into her and Mia's wiser cores several times before without success. Would the stones she had prepared make any difference?

The amplifying stones’ effects were astounding. Her own wiser mind glowed like a sparkling mirror under the sun. The thickness of her links at the roots stunned Sariah, and the spiraling lengths of some of those links struck her as endlessly complex. The blackened stumps that stood lifeless and scorched between swaying filaments of light saddened her. The reckless mistakes she had made, the feebleness, the damage she had suffered wising the seven twin stones, Zeminaya's crippling blows—they had left terrible scars. They were the true measure of her losses, the final score of her service to the stones.

Beside her, the little girl stirred. “I'm done.”

“It's too soon, Mianina.” Sariah didn't bother releasing her trance. “Look carefully.”

“But I'm done.”

“I asked you to look into my links too.”

“But I did. I even looked into Malord's. Didn't you feel me?”

Now that she thought about it, Sariah did remember feeling a swift shadow running through her mind, like a quick stir of the summer breeze. “That was too fast. Do it again.”

“But—”

“I said do it again. A wiser's work is hard and tedious sometimes, but it must be done even if you want to go back and play cards with Rig.”

Sariah returned to her wiser's mind. Almost immediately, she felt the shadow cross over her mind, the wind, this time blustery, blowing through. With a sigh, Sariah dropped her trance and opened her eyes.

“If you don't want to do it, just tell—”

“Auntie. I'm telling you. I already did it.”

“You examined your links, and Malord's, and mine in such little time?”

“Thrice.”

“It's not possible.” Malord too had dropped his trance and was staring at Mia.

A preview of adolescent rebellion flashed in Mia's blue and green eyes. “Maybe you're just slow.”

“All right, let's say, for the sake of discussion, that you did review your links and ours,” Sariah said. “What did you find?”

“My mind is much prettier than yours,” Mia said without a trace of modesty. “Newer is better, I think. I worked a little on my blemishes. I don't like the way they look.”

Wiser vanity and little blemishes? Sariah's stomach pitched when she remembered making the bulk of those
little
blemishes during Mia's breaking. They had not been easy to make, or small for that matter. And Mia had said that she had
worked
on those blemishes. A wiser couldn't repair sliced links and truncated connections. Could she?

“Malord, some of your links look worse than Lou Ella's pox-marked face,” Mia said. “And Auntie, one would think bursting stones struck your links judging from the craters in there. You two ought to spend some time sprucing up.” Her tone was unmistakably maternal, as if she were her mother telling Thaddeus to wash behind his ears.

Malord was choking on his spit and Sariah was not doing any better at getting the words unstuck from her throat. “Uh. Mia? Can you heal the blemishes in your links?”

“Of course. You can't?”

The child never ceased to amaze her.

“I can't heal all of them, not all of the time,” Mia said. “And it makes me very tired, so I don't bother with everything.”

“Everything?”

“You know, the stuff you get when you're trying new tricks.”

New tricks. Mia was experimenting on her own and there was nothing Sariah could do to stop that. But then again, if the child was healing herself, why should she be stopped?

“Can you heal others?” Malord asked.

“I healed Auntie once. When she was fighting Zemi.”

“That was you?”

“I thought you knew.”

“Can I—we—watch you?” Malord stammered. “Healing?”

“Sure. What do you want me to heal?”

“Pick whatever you want.”

Mia closed her eyes. Sariah grabbed the trance and followed her links through to Malord's mind. Her vision was enhanced by the amplifying stones. Malord wiser's mind was actually in good condition compared to others she had seen at the keep, but watching Mia's pristine links at the same time, she could see why the child would find Malord's mind—and hers, for that matter— lacking. The luminosity of Mia's links was blinding. The power coursing through those links was immense.

Sariah witnessed as a filament of Mia's power reached through the stones and palpated over crusted links and broken connections. Mia picked at the most grievous-looking of all injuries, a ragged hole close to the center of Malord's core. Her healing filament coiled over the frayed remains of the link segment. Her links pulsed with a willful concentration of power. To Sariah's disbelief, right before her eyes, the edges of Malord's torn link grew even and joined to create a healthy stub, a usable shiny knob.

Malord gasped. “The pain. In my legs. It's gone.”

Sariah looked from Malord's stunned face to Mia, unable to believe what her wiser senses were telling her.

“I can't regrow links if they're gone,” Mia apologized. “At least I don't think I can. But I can heal them as long as there's something to heal.”

Was Mia's healing power specific to her unique nature? Was it the result of her unusual breaking? Were some wisers able to heal and not others? Or was it a gift of all stonewisers, a skill suppressed long ago, a lost art, a learnable trait? Could she heal her wiser self? Sariah had never tried. Could she heal other wisers if it were necessary? She had no answers for all her questions, only a terrible thirst to know.

“Mianina, you're the most gifted stonewiser I've ever met.”

“Then you believe me? You believe me when I tell you I did look in your mind?”

“Meliahs help me. I do.”

“Can I keep this?” The girl twirled an amplifying stone in the air. “It makes it all easier.”

“Of course you can.”

“And did you see it?”

Sariah thought she had seen enough for a lifetime. “What?”

“The seal we bear. At the bottom of our cores?”

Sariah's heart skipped a beat and for moment, she thought it would never beat again. She fumbled for hands and stones and grabbed at the trance like a drowning woman. She went to her mind first, to the core from whence all her links were born. The mysterious pink organ was tucked in the deepest recesses of her convoluted brain. It pulsed there like a second heart, feeding on the frenzy of her stonewiser's tainted blood. She maneuvered to pull apart the bulbous roots growing from it in a tangled mass, until she found the pink corrugated tissue where the wavering brown lines had scorched the familiar seal. It pulsed to the beat of her heart.

Sariah darted to Mia's mind, riding the girl's links and accessing the bottom of her smooth core. And there it was. Small and almost invisible, the tiny translucent brand was imprinted clearly, a little oval with an even smaller triangle inside.

Zemi
. It took Sariah all but a moment to realize that the same brand the intrusion had forced upon her had also imprinted itself on Mia's mind. Mia had unwittingly participated in Sariah's fight against the intrusion. The girl's extraordinary power had saved Sariah from death at Zemi's hands. Mia had been present when Zemi bestowed the legacy on Sariah. They had been sealed together. The seal had turned into an indelible connection. And now the connection had to be destroyed.

“Mianina, can you try to wipe the seal off your core?”

“Why?” Mia said. “It's pretty. I kind of like it.”

“I think the seal is the source of the odd connection between us,” Sariah said. “I'm afraid the connection is dangerous. It could hurt you.”

“Hurt me? How?”

“You know, like when you lost control and burned your father's deck? Then you had to brave Alabara and the snail, just so you could be with me. It would be better if we could break the connection.”

“I kind of like being near you.”

“Could you please try?”

Mia sighed. “Fine. If you really want me to try, I'll try.”

Both Sariah and Malord rode Mia's links and watched her try to heal the seal off her pulsing core. She wielded her links skillfully, but she flinched every time her links made contact with the seal.