Stonewiser (59 page)

Sariah sat up. “How often do these bouts occur?”

Lexia shrugged. “No one knows for sure. It's different for everybody. There's nothing you can do but stop what you're doing when you feel it coming, find a safe place to stand it for a few hours, and bite down on leather to spare your teeth. But it's over now.”

“How long was I out?”

Lexia hesitated. “A few days.”

Sariah clenched. She tried to keep in her frustration, she tried and failed. She groaned like a wounded beast. “Why do you do this to me?”

“Me?” Lexia stared at her with puzzled concern.

“Sorry. I wasn't talking to you.” She was yelling at Meliahs, the fickle goddess, who knew very well how much Sariah needed the time she had just lost.

The bout had left Sariah exhausted, but that wasn't the worst of it. The prism's darkness had struck her at the same time that the bracelet had unleashed its lethal sentence. Lexia didn't know that. Neither did the others.

Sariah dragged herself out of bed and stumbled to the wash basin. Her reflection in the mirror shocked her. What a frightening mess she was. Too pale, too skinny, too weary, with her razor-short hair spiking like a nest of thorns. She splashed water on her face and neck and then scrubbed herself mercilessly, as if by washing her body she could cleanse her soul's filth.

So this is what it felt like to be ordinary, empty and cold inside, exposed to life's inclemency and bare of all protection, helpless, destitute, powerless. She had often fantasized about living an ordinary life. But how did normal people exist without the goddess's divine touch, without the stone's authority ennobling their lives, with such a fragile sense of the self?

Lexia hovered like a bee over a hive. “Look, I know how you feel. It's always tough afterwards. Sadness sometimes follows a difficult birth. You had a hard birth, plus the prism's darkness. There's also Violet's betrayal. The gall of the wench, to tell the mistress you were turning wising tricks in her pen. But the body heals, sometimes slowly, but it heals. I've lost four, Sariah. It doesn't get any easier.”

Sariah couldn't imagine enduring four times the pain.

“I get to keep this one.” Lexia patted her belly and smiled. “You should hear the debate at the Hall of Numbers. But I'm going to keep her even if I have to quit the Guild, move to the Domain and eat the soles of my boots.”

Sariah dried herself, blotting her watery eyes as well. “The others,” she said. “Do you ever—?”

“Rumors about a wiserling nursery are just that. We looked everywhere. I think they kill them if they're not gifted.”

Images of Violet's dead baby flashed in Sariah's mind. She held the bile down.

“I'm not really helping, am I?” Lexia said. “I thought perhaps you wanted to talk.”

Talk? No. She needed to do. Something. But where to begin?

Lexia took a deep breath. “Sariah, you can't waste your time looking for the prism. You can't even think about leaving the keep right now. The halls are leaderless. The councilors are scheming. No one knows what or who to believe. You've got to assume your election.”

“My election?” She felt like cackling. If the other stonewisers knew that she couldn't wise, they wouldn't be so sure about her election. Would they? She had a vision of blood splashing the Hall of Stones’ walls; of Hounds slaughtering stonewisers by the hundreds and Goodlanders hunting Domainers by the pound of flesh.

The prism, the baby, Kael. It was as if all of her life's losses had coalesced into a monstrous cudgel that beat down on her soul with crushing finality. She feared the end of Ars, the war, the rot. She feared she was going to live long enough to hear firsthand the news of Kael's death.

Mercy is a fickle friend when it's all self-pity
, a tidbit of Tirsis's Wisdom echoed in her mind. She glanced down at her bracelet and traced the tiny tears etched on Mercy's link. Sariah had once found the strength not to cripple Kael with her sorrow. Could she do the same for herself?

“You can start by taking this back.” Lexia pulled something out of her pocket and put it between Sariah's hands. It was round, heavy and cold between her fingers, but by the way her hands tensed around it, it could have been stinging hot.

Her stonewiser's brooch. Lexia must have retrieved it from Grimly's abandoned quarters. In contrast with the brooch's coldness, the round onyx stone embossed at the center was pulsing with warmth. Sariah couldn't have managed a word through her constricted throat if she tried. With the exception of the last two years, she had worn that brooch all her life, a symbol of her faith, a sign of her obedience.

She traced the intricate lines of the ivy of knowledge edging the brooch, the intertwining vines of light that radiated from the black onyx, the four garnets on the subsidiary bosses, the honeycomb of silver filigree. She craved the brooch's presence between her breasts, the cold metal standing like a shield to her battered heart.

She shoved it back into Lexia's hands. “I don't ever want to see that thing again.”

“But Sariah—”

“The answer is no, Lexia, and no again.”

“But the stonewisers, they took a huge risk, they voted for you. Won't you at least think about it?”

“I can't come back to the Guild. I just can't.”

“Sariah, we need you. Those Hounds are ready to slaughter us at any time. We don't know what to do about the Domainers streaming into the Goodlands. The chill is never ending, the crops are sure to fail. And then there are those stories…” Lexia actually shivered.

“What stories?”

“There are tales, that stonewisers are no longer welcomed in some places. They say that Meliahs’ own, the stone eater, has returned to clear the land of stonewisers. They said Grimly sent a party to investigate the claims. They never returned.”

“Rumors. Who can believe anything that Grimly does or says?”

“Things aren't as they used to be,” Lexia insisted. “The world's changing. We're changing too. Think about it. Maybe that seal just gives stonewisers courage.”

Courage? Not when panic was running rampant and the keep boiled with frightening, improbable tales. The seal wasn't giving Sariah any courage at the moment either, but then again, she wasn't really a stonewiser anymore. Was she?

“You taught us to stand on our own,” Lexia said. “Did you know we made our own way out of the Mating Hall?”

Was that true?

“We took advantage of the siege,” Lexia said. “We followed your plan. We lit the fire at the height of the last attack. It wasn't the keep's guard we met at the courtyard. It was those creature warrior things—”

A knock startled them both. Lexia went to answer the door.

“I've got a message for Stonewiser Sariah,” she heard a man's voice say.

“I'm sorry, but she is sick and can't receive you.” Lexia began to close the door.

“But it's urgent,” the messenger said.

“I'm fine, Lexia.” Sariah stepped to the door. “What is it?”

“Mistress Lorian summons you right away.”

What did the witch want with her now? Sariah couldn't hazard a guess, but she had her own reasons for wanting to see Lorian.

“I'll go. Do you know what this is about?”

The grim expression on the messenger's face chilled whatever little warmth remained in Sariah's body.

“Something bad has happened,” he said. “The mistress says it's something terrible.”

“I'm not sure you should be up and about,” Lexia said.

“It could be a trap,” the keeper grumbled.
“She who walks without caution risks the final tumble.”

“You and your men are my caution,” Sariah said. “And I'm not going because Lorian summoned me. I have questions for her and her friends.”

Sariah, Lexia, the keeper and her Hound escort were following Lorian's messenger down the keep's busy main lane. Sariah was having trouble keeping up with the others. Her breath was short, her heart was faltering, but she had to find a way to secure the keep while she figured out the rest. Sariah didn't know what was more surprising—the sheer numbers crowding the keep or the astounding mix of people bustling about despite the frigid weather. Hounds, Domainers, Goodlanders and stonewisers were living together in an uneasy truce, a miraculous if nerve-racking sight.

The hostility among the different factions was palpable in the air. But the changes in the keep were almost shocking. Above the gates, the Guild's usually lonely black and gold standard was flanked by the Hounds’ five-bladed slash banner and the blue gonfalon of the house of Ars. Even if Kael wasn't there, the sight of his pennant warmed her heart. It was surrounded by other Domainer banners, including the yellow one with the three embroidered tupelo trees. The forester was playing her game. The green banner with the massive “T” on the oak's trunk gave it away as Targamon's new standard. Good old Mara. She had taken the legacy to heart. When had it all come to this?

Lorian met them in the back alley as high-strung as a charging bull. “No one must know. Do you hear me? If this gets out, we're doomed. Doomed.”

“Know what?” Sariah said.

“This is a day of penance and lamentation.” Olden appeared out of nowhere with Uma in tow. “Meliahs weeps at the sight of our wickedness. We must leave, before it's too late.”

“Leave?” Uma asked. “You mean abandon the keep?”

“Hush,” Lorian said. “Someone might hear you. How did you two find out about this?”

“About what?” Uma asked.

“It's all her fault.” The point of Olden's newly sculpted staff aimed at Sariah.

“He's right.” Lorian clutched Sariah's arm and dragged her along. “If you hadn't gone on about lies in the stones, if you hadn't caused a war and brought all these strangers to the keep, this would have never happened.” She halted abruptly before a crack in the cobblestones and yanked Sariah to her knees. “Look!”

Sariah couldn't believe her eyes.

“Are you happy now?” Lorian said. “For the first time in the Guild's history, the rot has breached the keep.”

The rot had breached the Guild's keep. With the wall so powerfully wised, it didn't seem possible. Sariah stared at the small lesions bubbling faintly among the cobblestones. At least it was the weaker kind of rot, the easier form to contain, like the lesser lesions she had seen at Targamon. Sariah struggled with the notion. The rot had defeated the wisings of generations and now simmered like an innocent little rain puddle just a few steps from the Hall of Stones?

She wondered if Meliahs and all her sisters had abandoned the land for good.

“Saba?” The keeper gestured with his head to one end of the alleyway.

Sariah's throat barely managed a dry gulp. A large group of Uma's stonewisers were blocking the way.

“I said nobody should know about this,” Lorian spat. “Why are they here?”

“Olden told me we might need them,” Uma said defensively.

Sariah eyed the other way out of the alleyway. Her hopes were for naught. Olden's stonewisers blocked her path with hefty chunks of stones in their hands. She wasn't sure she was going to get to ask her questions after all.

“Stone her,” someone cried out from the crowd.

“She's brought the rot to the keep.”

Sariah's voice was a hoarse whisper. “Keeper?”

“Wise is he who survives the trap, for he shall never be caught again.”
The keeper's whistle strummed Sariah's eardrums.

The window shutters on both sides of the alleyway flew open. The few doors opening onto the narrow lane blew from their hinges. Armed Hounds were everywhere, inching down the lane with their backs against the walls, deploying at either side of Sariah, perched on the window sills, standing along the distant rooftops wielding claws, arrows and spears.

A massacre. That's what Sariah had on her hands. One wrong move, from anybody, and the uneasy truce that held the keep together would be over. Panic bubbled in her belly like a ready stew. She surveyed the faces in the alley. The stonewisers were angry, resentful and bitter. The Hounds stood rigidly, ready for the fight.

“Wait,” Sariah said aloud. “We can fix this.”

“Fix the rot?” Lorian said. “How?”

“There's a group of Domainers trained to fix this weaker kind of rot,” Sariah explained. “They're from Targamon. Some of them might even be here. We don't have to abandon the keep.”