Stonewiser (55 page)

Someone braced her from the back. Someone else clutched her knees apart and yet a third person pushed on her belly with a giant's strength. The pain. She tried to tap into the remnants of the prism power. It sometimes lasted for a day or two after a quickening, settling into her aching joints, burning through her body like a swarm of stinging scorpions. If she could use it to kindle the aberrant connection she had created, she could establish a beacon for Mia. Kael could retrieve the prism and take it to the executioners. Ars could be saved. She waited for a contraction to pass. There. The connection flared. If she could tie it to herself, it would last for as long as she lived.

She tried to convey her thoughts to the baby.
Not now. Not safe.

A sense of question filled her mind.
Safe?

Sariah knew she was hallucinating, but it was true, safety had eluded her child since conception. She tried to patch her protective weave's torn links, to contract her muscles, to persuade the child with her body that it wasn't safe to be born just now. But the baby was barreling down her birth canal like a catapulted stone and there was nothing she could do to change that.

As her body broke, she thought she understood Meliahs’ quandary quite well—in death the goddess offered the perfection of her gardens and yet in life her children craved the imperfection of the unknown beyond. When it came to their children, goddesses, it turns out, had as few and as dismal choices as mothers did.

Her hips snapped. Her body failed. Time for partings.
Please, Meliahs, protect them all, because I no longer can.
She thought of the search she would never finish, of the boy she would never know, of his father, the man she loved. With the last of her strength she freed her affection into the dark clouds of nowhere and prayed that it rained upon their faces.

Thirty-nine

 

S
ARIAH EMERGED FROM
the tenuous depths of nothingness, where life and death blended in a gray haze, where the pain coexisted with oblivion and the faintness of a shallow breath suspended the soul at the crossing. It hurt to draw a deeper breath. Was it a first breath? Was it a last breath? It hurt to think, to feel.

Pain. A touch, ever so tender and tentative. A warm drop on her face, maybe two. A hot breath against her cheek. Was someone crying over her?

She forced another breath. Her lungs rattled like rickety wagons. Smoke scented the air. Was the Mating Hall on fire?

Her limbs were gathered gently. Her body was cradled carefully. She had a feeling of lightness, as if she were flying, separated at last from the sticky trappings of the sisters’ nest. How long had she lain there?

Flashes of consciousness intruded in the flickering darkness. Fresh water, Soft linens. Bone-rattling cold. Her hands ached when the leather muzzles were peeled off and the blocking stones were extracted from her palms. Senseless darkness. Unbearable heat. Perfumed oil lovingly massaged into her lifeless limbs. A tap to her wiser's mind, so slight she wasn't even sure.

A touch of healing brought her back to her senses, a cautious probe. She couldn't move, see, or hear, but the stink of burning had eased. She caught a whiff of fresh laurel and spices beside her. It had to be an illusion. Her senses were askew and hardly reliable. A hand guided her fingertips over the scar of a broken eyebrow to the familiar lips that kissed each of her fingers thoroughly. Curse her dreams. They were all too real. Madness was the only fitting explanation to unrequited hope.

But the contact felt real. A hand. The size, the shape, the rough texture of calluses and scars, they were as familiar to her as her own hands. All four of his fingers intertwined with hers in a gentle squeeze.

It had to be him.

The small stone he placed in her palm was smooth and polished. With her palms injured and her links weak and numb, she had to grapple for the simple trance several times before she was able to hold it. It was Kael's telltale imprint, strong, bold, clear. It conveyed no images, only words and a host of his powerful emotions carefully modulated not to hurt her.

“We've come, love, but you know that. It took us too long. The fiery fever got me, but not before the Panadanians were trained and Targamon's rot was contained. By the time we caught up with you, you were trapped. Mia couldn't feel you through the keep's walls. I feared you were dead.” Despite his efforts, his pain seeped into the tale like a scalding tear. “Then she said she heard you through her seal. That message, Sariah. I can't tell you what it did to me. I knew I had to get to you, but Grimly had negotiated a truce with Arron and no one was able to make it through to the keep.”

Sariah realized at once that more than witnessing the agreement between Grimly and Arron, she had been the object of it.

“We met up with Delis, the keeper and his Hounds,” Kael said. “Delis was raging mad at your ruse. The keeper was hurt. He said he lost something you entrusted to his care. He fashioned himself a new claw to fit around his hand's stub once he realized I was set on fetching you.”

Poor keeper. To think he had lost his hand because of her. Sariah's heart ached. But at least he was alive. Alive.

“I couldn't find a way in. I swear to you, Sariah, I looked, and I tried, and the damn Shield was waiting at every corner, and the damn keep was sealed like a forbidden tomb. I called on Malord and he came, but he couldn't find a way in either. The others and I, we agreed. We laid siege to the Goodlands and advanced on the keep. Some Goodlanders joined us. Some stonewisers joined us too. The Domain's tribes put out their fair share, and even Mara from Targamon sent some of her newly trained Panadanians. But it was the Hounds who had the ready weapons and the warriors we needed. It is they who scattered Arron and his Shield and now guard the keep's wall. I know what you're thinking.” His tale sounded strained and tired. “You're right. I've unleashed the Hounds’ Going and there's no stopping it now.”

So much for preserving the peace and keeping the Hounds safe and out of the Goodlands. The world had changed while she was trapped in the Mating Hall. The war they had all feared had arrived.

“If you hadn't led us here,” Kael said, “we wouldn't have found you in time. Malord and Mia are trying to mend you, but you must try to rest and get better. Meanwhile, remember that our tales belong to each other. You'll get out of this. You'll be well.”

It was just like Kael to command her to health. His words were a welcome reprieve to the silence overwhelming her, a better alternative to her thoughts. But was the prism secured in his possession? Had the baby survived his birth? How much time did they have left?

She tried to issue her own imprint on the stone. She tried to ask the questions. It didn't work. The anguish was like a pillow to her face, like a bull sitting on her chest.
Help yourself.
Kael wasn't going to talk to her about the matters she cared about most in the limited confines of a tale. He didn't know if she was sound of mind and listening, let alone fit to endure his news. No, he would wait until he knew she was conscious. He would tell her face to face. That meant Sariah had to find a way to bust out of her broken body's prison, and fast.

Sariah resisted Mia's attempt to dose her with an infusion of contrived and youthful calm. She refused to fall asleep. However, she did allow the girl's efforts to soothe her heart's uneven palpitations so that Mia and Malord could resume their healings. She joined their work on her broken links. She kept at it long after they had to stop for the night, overcome with exhaustion.

She had just finished fusing a link when an image suddenly flickered in her mind—a blurry hand, very close to her face. Her skin was numb as cured hide, but wasn't that the feeling of someone scratching her nose? The hand. Was it hers? She tried to focus her eyes. They crossed ruefully. She tried again.

The banishment bracelet. It was her hand. It was moving of its own accord. It made a rustle when it landed on the bed. She heard that. She tried it again. Aye. The arm answered. It moved.

Slowly, now, old gal. Pace yourself.

A few candles lit the chamber where she lay. She didn't recognize the place, but it was comfortable, with a fireplace that stung her light-sensitive eyes. She lay on the bed for a moment, gathering her strength, savoring the sounds suddenly available to her, the roar of the hearth's fire, the bubbling of a pot on the spit, the voices next door. Then she forced her dazed eyes to focus on the bracelet.

Eight of the nine crystals glimmered with the opaque film. The last crystal was already half filled with the silvery mist. Her mind was like a cart stuck in a rut, slow moving and tentative. She had left Ars eight and a half months ago. She had been in the Mating Hall for almost… two months?

She still had some time to wise the prism and find the tale. But what about her son? Could he have survived his birth with so little time in the womb? Had he managed to fight off the prism's effects only to arrive unprepared for the rigors of breathing air?

She pushed herself up and slid off the mattress. Her legs didn't want to work, but she locked her knees and clung to the bedpost, trembling like a newborn lamb. The white nightgown she wore tripped the three tentative steps she dared. She leaned against the wall, ignoring her muscles’ screech for mercy. She could move, Meliahs be blessed, and she would.

She made a slow progress to the door. It was thankfully half-opened. She braced herself against the threshold and looked out into the small adjacent chamber that served as a sitting room. There were many people milling about, many of whom she didn't recognize. The ones who mattered were all there—Mia, playing cards with Rig by the fire; Malord, dozing on a stool; Delis, sharpening her hatchet; the keeper, missing a hand but very much alive; and Kael, sitting closest to the door with his back to her, studying a sheaf of parchment and a mountain of maps.

“How?” It was her voice, pathetically hoarse and discordant.

The explosion of motion and noise startled her long-stilled senses. Malord was down from the stool, batting the keeper out of his way. Delis was at her feet in two strides but had to hold Mia back. The girl's attempt at a hug toppled Sariah. Kael scooped her deftly, stilling the room with his glower.

“Not now,” he said in a tone that defied protest. He took Sariah into the bedchamber, kicked the door shut, and made for the bed.

“No, not there,” Sariah murmured.

“You're sick, love.”

“I don't want to lie down anymore.”

He looked around, then dragged a chair to the fireplace and settled himself in it, arranging her carefully on his lap. Sariah leaned against his shoulder and buried her face in his neck, inhaling his scent, appropriating his warmth, listening to the pulse hammering at the base of his throat. She felt weightless, like a feather perched on his lap, anchored to this world only by the strength of his arms.

He pressed a cloth between her legs. “There's been some bad bleeding. It's better now, but we must be careful.”

The shadows in his gaze were much darker than the stain on her nightgown. She fitted her fumbling hand under his tunic and set it against his heart.

“This might not be the best of time for that sort of thing,” he said.

“Please?” Her own eyes stared back at her, wide and enormous in the paleness of her face, reflecting in the pools of his black and green gaze.

He kissed her temple. “Go ahead.”

It was all there, like a mirror of her soul, the fears, the anxiety, the exhaustion, the hurt, the determination and the blessedly abundant affection.

“Tell me,” she said.

“It's not wise.”

“Tell me.” If she had to wait a moment longer, she would burst from desperation.

“All right.” He couldn't hide the dread in his voice.