Stonewiser (67 page)

Lorian gazed over the stonewisers in the hall. “I think perhaps, until things are settled, if Meliahs wills it, and if they want it, I could try.”

“I trust you will hold the Hall of Stones to the highest standards of justice,” Sariah said. “For Domainers, Hounds and Goodlanders. Now, rescind your wising and let me go.”

Lorian groped through her pockets. “Sorry, Sariah, I had forgotten—” She found the stone she sought, shut her eyes and pressed it to the nearest wall. “You're free to go.”

“Not quite yet,” Sariah said, sprinting out the doors.

Forty-eight

 

S
ARIAH MADE IT
to the soaring vault of the Hall of Stones’ antechamber. Just as her eyes fell on the gigantic candle-clock that lurked over the gates’ high arch, the banishment bracelet compressed around her wrist with a third wrenching coil. Her entire arm went numb from the yank. She stumbled to a halt and dropped to her knees. Her quivering legs were unable to support her weight.

“What's wrong?” Kael skidded to a stop beside her.

Sariah stared at her wrist. The bracelet was changing before her very eyes. The same silvery flow which had built up in the crystals seemed to be pouring out of the bracelet now. She had a bad feeling that the lethal discharge was somehow seeping directly into her veins.

“Sariah, what's the matter?” Lexia's concerned face was joined by Lorian, the keeper and the bulk of the Hounds who were now forming a human chain to prevent the rest of the stonewisers from following Sariah.

“Time's up,” she mumbled. “It's dawn. I'm done—”

“No, you're not.” Kael half-dragged her to the Hall of Stones’ massive gates. The doors were opened out into the bailey. The wind hit Sariah in the face, acrid with the scent of fire and death. The air moaned a morbid chant that froze everything—ear, nose, soul. The clouds rushed by pregnant with lightning. Heavy chunks of muddled slush plopped to the ground. It was cold and chilling, as if the goddess had vacated the world and forsaken her vows.

“That trinket may say otherwise, but the sun's not up yet. Look!” Kael barked against the sounds of the storm. “The night's black with ashes. That was the deal. Until the sun comes up.”

“I can't—”

“Find a way.” Kael yanked her to her feet. “Do you hear me? Find a rotting way!”

Leave it to Kael to carve time out of the darkness enveloping them. He helped her down the stairs and through the lesser law chambers. Lexia and the keeper hovered around her. Lorian followed, wrapped in her black mantle, fighting the drafts like one of Meliahs’ ill-omened crows.

She was helpless and empty inside without her stonewiser's power. She had tried and failed. There was no way that she, an ordinary woman confronting extraordinarily bad odds, could do anything to change her circumstances. Was there?

Ordinary people did it all the time, she realized, astounded. They relied on impossible emotions—Meliahs’ sisters—Pride, Faith, Courage, Hope and the rest, to defy the darkness and build lives and selves. They did more than just endure. They grew strong, they toiled hard, they thrived without the stone power. They lived full lives and died powerful deaths. They had reason, will and emotions to light the way and warm their days. They had each other. She glanced at Kael, at her unlikely friends. She had that too.

A great calm came over her, the peace that stemmed from accepting death and life at the same time, from understanding hope only after thorough defeat. The consecutive arches of the Hall of Stones’ cellars paraded above her like the final markers of her winding trail. Sariah knew what she had to do. She just didn't know if she had enough time left to figure out how to do it. Before she knew it, they arrived at the small law chamber where the executioners waited with Metelaus. Delis was there and so was Malord, with Belana, just as Sariah had requested.

“Where have you been?” a visibly anxious Metelaus said. “Do you have any idea how little time we have left?”

“We had some complications,” Kael said.

“She's been struck.” Petrid noticed the bracelet's draining glow. “Her time is done.”

“It's still dark,” Kael said. “You swore she had until sunup. The bracelet may say one thing, but the weather says different and as long as she can do what you asked, she's within her rights. I've never known an executioner to break his word.”

Petrid's smile was as confident as ever. “We haven't come all this way to lose our assurances on a technicality. She's drained and the sun will come out any time now.”

Kael started to speak on her behalf. Sariah flashed him a grateful look, but she steadied herself on her feet and stepped forward.

“Forgive my ways, executioners, I meant no harm or disrespect. I acknowledge your right to kill me. Everyone has a right to make a living in the Domain and yours is no less than mine.”

“How can any man's right be respected when he's captive?” the executioner said.

“You're right,” Sariah said. “These proceedings have no bearing unless you're free. So you are free. On my word, no one under my command will stop you if you choose to leave.”

The chamber fell deadly quiet.

“Give them their weapons.”

“But, my donnis—”

“Their weapons.”

The men accepted their swords with trepidation, no doubt expecting a thrust through the gut at any time.

“Can we leave now?”

“You can. Or since you're already here, you can hear me and assess what I have to offer. I'm alive and present. You cannot claim the assurances unless you hear my proof. Am I right?”

The executioners exchanged troubled glances with each other. Somewhere in the Domain, their tribe was packing up for the jubilant trip to the Crags. They would do nothing to jeopardize such triumph.

Sariah's eyes fell on Belana, tucked of her own accord in the chamber's darkest corner. She called her to her side. Like a wild beast, Belana crawled out of the shadows, blind gaze trained on Sariah's face.

Delis elbowed the slacked-jawed executioners. “Didn't your mother teach you not to stare?”

Sariah was keenly aware of the time, of the numbness, of her weakness. Her life's wick was burning down to the end, but she refused to give up without assuring the future of Kael's kin, her kin.

“You really don't have to endanger yourself to humor their primitive laws,” Lorian said.

“But I do have to honor their laws,” Sariah said, “as the Guild will have to do if we're to restore peace to the land. Whatever happens today, for good or bad, from now on, anyone who comes here for justice shall receive it, including Domainers. Remember? Justice is the call of the stone.”

Lorian opened her mouth and closed it several times before she could speak. “You mean to establish—”

“A record of justice,” Malord said.

“For Domainers?” Lexia croaked.

“For everyone.”

The executioners looked taller and more at ease for the distinction. Outside, the wind groaned with renewed urgency. Sariah felt the cold in her bone marrow. She knew daylight was straining to break the night's hold as surely as the poison in her veins was grinding down her body's weary defenses.

“Do you have it, Belana?” Sariah caressed Belana's fair hair. “I need it again.”

The woman relinquished the prism she clutched to her breast.

“Who will stand for the Domain?”

Kael stretched his arm before Sariah. He understood precisely what was required next. She was counting on all she had learned about the stone, from the sages, from her terrible experience with the prism, from the sisters. It was time to give the hound a fair scent.

A little wobbly on her feet, Sariah braced herself. “Only a tiny prick.”

She used her left hand to turn the prism's point in the blood pooling at the base of Kael's wrist in the same way she remembered the sisters turning the point over her navel. Nothing. She added her useless right hand and tried again. Nothing. She had not a drop of stonewiser power left to spare. Corrupted by the bracelet's poison, not even the last of her vital force was enough to power the thing.

“Take it from me.” Kael placed her hand over his heart. “Take it all. Without you, it matters naught to me.”

Tears stung Sariah's eyes. She couldn't accept his precious gift because her palms were numb to his emotions. But she thanked him with a brilliant smile, a smile which brought the furious grin she loved to his face, a fitting last sight to her heart.

They went to their knees together, she leaning on him, he steadying the both of them onto the cold floor. She rested her forehead on his shoulder and listened to the steady beat of his heart, marking the last moments of her ebbing life. She had been lucky, she knew. She had known the stones, freedom and him. She thanked Meliahs for all three favors.

Forty-nine

 

T
HE NUDGE FELT
shaky at first, a tentative trickle of strength, a contribution of a few more seconds of life, coming from the rhythmic taps on her shoulder. Then the infusion doubled with the addition of a steady rapping against her shoulder blade. She craned her neck. Lexia and Malord were tapping with concentrated expressions on their faces.

“How do I do it?” Lorian also began to tap. “Like this? Is it working?”

It was working. Their strength was sweeping through her body like a rising tide, warming her core and heating her muscles, animating her limbs—even her right arm—compelling her organs to function. She channeled the joyous infusion to her core and from there, to the prism. She gasped when the stone lit up in her hands, a wink of yellow glow that gained brilliancy with her sustained effort.

There was no time to lose. She returned the prism's point to Kael's wrist and turned it slowly in his blood. A light shot from the prism. Sariah ducked to one side but held on to the increasingly unwieldy prism. It was hot and heavy in her hands, difficult to turn. It was like trying to move one of Meliahs’ hulking pylons. The light flickered on the ceiling before dying down. She had managed to power the thing, but she didn't know quite how to use it.

“What's wrong?” The strain was showing on Kael's blank face.

“I'll try it again.”

“We'll do it.” Belana's ghoulish face came into Sariah's field of vision.

Of course. Why hadn't she thought of it? Belana was the natural choice.

“This is different from what you've done before,” Sariah said. “It could be dangerous.”

“We were made for the prism,” Belana said. “Our blood remembers.”

“You're very brave.”

Belana placed her hands on top of Sariah's hands, unleashing a harsh issue of smoldering heat. Sariah surrendered to the contact's intimacy, to the striking sense of oneness emanating from the strange union. Her palms began to sweat over the prism's increasing glow. The prism turned with more ease. The point ignited with a particularly bright shade of orange.

It happened then. Colored shapes shifted within the prism and projected upwards. An ornate symmetrical pattern emerged as Sariah and Belana rotated the stone in the tiny pool of Kael's welling blood.

“It's working.” Sariah smiled. “It's working!”

The light flared three times and then died, leaving an intricate pattern carved on the stone ceiling, a decorative rosette similar to a delicate carbon drawing, something that could have been sketched by a most talented artist. Sariah couldn't believe it.

“You did it, Belana.”

“Is little sister pleased?”

“More like delighted.” Sariah hugged Belana. “More like mad with happiness.”

“This isn't proof of anything,” the executioner said.

“Not yet.” Sariah caught her breath. “But soon. Who will stand for the Goodlands?”

“I will,” Lexia offered.

“No, no, let me,” Lorian said.

Sariah and Belana pricked a point of Lorian's blood on her wrist and then repeated the process, until the kaleidoscopic array projected from the prism and flared three times before stamping itself on the ceiling.

Sariah understood that it would match Kael's, but the sight of the twin rosette felt like rapture to her soul. She giggled like a wide-eyed girl. “See? They're the same. The same!”