Stonewiser (47 page)

As kidnappings go, this one went as well as planned.

It took the Hounds but a moment to secure the chamber and the two women. The days of planning, the fear and anxiety, they were all worth it to see the surprise on Grimly and Ilian's bewildered faces.

“Is this a trap?” Ilian whirled on the Prime Hand. “We had an agreement, safe conduct to witness Sariah's capture. Arron will have your head for this.”

“No, it's not a trap.” The Prime Hand kept her calm. “Our dear Sariah has come home.”

Home?
Sariah couldn't believe her ears. “Those claws at your back must be making you delusional.”

“Didn't you get my messages recalling you?”

“I got your messages fine, the ones that put a price on my head, the ones that bribed a good many for my capture.”

“I sent people to look for you, that's true, but I never wanted you hurt. I wanted you safely returned.”

“You mean like Horatio Maliver? You told him you had his son and he believed you.”

“Given the proper motivation, I knew that Horatio would find you. I wanted to help you.”

“With help like yours, who needs hindrance?”

“Now child, I warned you about the dangers. I told you about the violence of the world outside the keep.” The mistress took a step towards Sariah. A flash of claws stopped her in her tracks. She ran a single finger over one of the Hound's blades. “Very clever. I see that you have some new friends. What happened to your old friends? Are these, err, gentlemen from the land beyond the Bastions?”

“I'm not inclined to lengthy conversation,” Sariah said. “I came for something and you're going to help me get it.”

“The beam, yes, of course. I'll be happy to take you there. I'm most anxious to know what that's about.”

“I wager you know more than you're saying.” Sariah nodded to Delis, who stepped up to knot a leather string with a large stone around the Prime Hand's neck. “I can make it burst with a thought, even if it's my dying thought.”

The mistress only paled a little.

Ilian, on the other hand, had to be held down while Delis secured another bursting stone to her neck. “You should have shared Sariah's whereabouts with us,” she said. “Arron's Shield could have found her anywhere in the Goodlands. Now you've gotten both of us caught. She's here to kill us. Can't you see?”

“Why would Sariah kill us if we give her no cause?” Grimly said. “She knows my death would mean the collapse of order in the Goodlands, the Guild's destruction. She wouldn't do that. She's a stonewiser.”

Sariah opened the door and indicated that the mistresses should walk ahead of her. “If any of the guards approach us, command them to stay away. Any of my people die, and you die.”

The mistress strode down the hall. “How did you do it? How did you mislead us into thinking you were in one place, when you were in another?”

Sariah kept a stubborn silence.

“Did you copy the wising? Did you give the stone to someone else to run it for you? No. It was moving too fast.” The mistress's knowing smile fractured her wrinkled face. “Of course. I see it. Clever. You broke the stone into smaller parts and somehow managed to retain the full wising. You must have packed the stones in what? Soil? Then you timed the relay runs, to make sure only one section at a time was sentient to my tracking stone. The runners must have buried their stones when their time as decoys was up. Marvelous. Simply marvelous.”

The woman's amusement irked Sariah almost as much as her skillful guesses. The mistress was no fool. She knew her craft. She was capable beyond the others.

They walked down to the courtyard and out through the keep's gardens. Sariah had expected to see the beam landing on the Hall of Stones, possibly over the Sacred Vaults, where the oldest and rarest of stones were buried under prohibition. But as they made their way down the steep, icy stairs, she could see that the beam had landed far from the Hall of Stones, on the other side of the keep, an area forbidden to most stonewisers in the Guild.

They walked through the keep's dormant gardens, powdered with a fine dusting of snow. Despite the weather, Julean and a hundred of his men were waiting for them in the courtyard in front of a large portal. The brilliant beam made a spectacular background for such an uneven encounter.

Julean stepped forward. “Is there something amiss, Prime Hand?”

“Don't interfere with stone matters,” the mistress said. “Stand aside. Let us pass.”

Julean's scar trembled with the force of his clench, but he stepped aside. The Prime Hand banged on the iron portal. When it opened, Sariah and the others followed her through a narrow patio and entered a squat, marble building. With no windows inside, the place was dim and murky, illuminated only by a few smoky torches. Somewhere below, a door opened and closed. The tap of quick steps broke the tense silence. Two figures emerged from the dark, hand in hand, identical in all details and yet opposite.

“Welcome, mistress,” a woman said.

“To the Mating Hall,” the other woman said.

“We're pleased you've come,” the first woman said.

“How can we serve you?” the second woman asked.

Sariah willed her mouth to close. These two women shared the same round eyes and full-lipped mouths, the same curly hair cut short just above the ear, and a similar build of bodies, broad shoulders and narrow hips. But one was black as onyx while the other one was pasty white like the dead. Standing there, holding hands, offering the same dimpled smile, they looked like parodies of each other, complementing and contrasting at the same time, eerie and somehow wrong.

“Belana, Telana,” the Prime Hand said. “We've come to see the beam.”

“The curse of light?” dark Telana said.

“The bloodless scourge?” white Belana asked.

“Without delay.”

The women turned as one and led them down a marble staircase, through a door. They covered their eyes with their hands as they entered an underground chamber. The beam's brilliance hurt Sariah's eyes and broke the darkness of a room constructed entirely of the blackest granite. The light had burned a hole through the courtyard above. It was hot. The scent of stale sweat clung to every corner. Sariah motioned her Hounds to secure the chamber and approached the beam.

Aye. There it was. Just as she had expected. Illuminated by the beam, it lay on a round black granite table. Sariah admired the lively yellow and orange tones flaring in the angular construction, the way the sculpted stone refracted and dispersed the light, a naturally occurring prism. There was no doubt in her mind. This stone was part of the stone in the Dome of the Going, just like Leandro's game pieces.

She had a vision of her hand, returning the part to the whole in blessed reunion. She hesitated. Was it her duty to steal what was already stolen? Or was it her task to rescue the stolen from the thieves? Would she be freeing or destroying the truth with her deed? Was the tale she sought the seed for a new beginning or the revival of an ancient evil?

The Wisdom had given her no clear answers. She couldn't, wouldn't know, until it was all done. She snatched the stone from its perch so quickly that only when the beam retreated did the others realize what she had done.

The dark sister gasped. “It's gone.”

“It no longer hounds me,” the other sister said.

“What does it mean?” the Prime Hand asked.

Too many questions. Legions upon legions of questions. Later. Step by step, thought after thought. “We're leaving.”

The sisters tried to stand in her way, but the Hounds didn't allow it.

“You can't take it,” Telana said. “It's ours.”

Sariah couldn't stand to watch the pain on the strange women's faces. She tucked the stone in her pouch and started out of the Mating Hall, trailed by Delis, the Hounds and her prisoners. Wails rose from the building's bowels, screams of pain and anguish that stuck to Sariah like suckered tentacles and tore her heart to shreds.

“Are you all right, my donnis? Do you want me to carry that thing?”

Sariah realized she was crying. “I'm fine, Delis, but we have to get out of here.”

Julean and his men were waiting outside, swords unsheathed.

“Tell him to step aside.”

The Prime Hand gasped when, at Sariah's behest, the stone at her neck singed her skin. “Back away,” she hastened to say.

They trotted down the keep's main lane. Julean and his men kept up, encasing them from the sides and rear. Frightened faces peered from cracked windows and doors as they passed. Sariah could feel the urgency in her soul, her luck running out with the night, and the accursed stone heavy as a boulder in her pouch.

“Open the gate.”

“Idiots, didn't you hear her?” Ilian shouted. “Open the damn gate.”

Sariah's eyes darted from Ilian's flushed face to the Prime Hand. What she saw there surprised her. A warning?

“Don't open the gate.”

The guards froze by the gate's levers. Sariah mounted the stairs to the gate bridge and peered over the crenel. Her heart jolted to her throat. She understood Ilian's uncanny presence at the keep now. Just in case Grimly's clever plan failed, on the other side of the gate, Arron and his Shield massed like an eel rave, waiting for her.

Thirty-four

 

D
ESPITE THE FEAR,
despite the stone in her pouch, Sariah forced herself to think. Julean and the keep guard were behind her. Arron and his Shield stood before her. Arron wouldn't care if she blew the Prime Hand to pieces. In fact, he might prefer it. Would Ilian be enough leverage to let them pass?

If she couldn't get them out of the keep, Delis and the Hounds were as good as dead. Both Arron and Grimly would see little value in their lives. She couldn't take them back through the privies. By now, Julean had figured out how they came into the keep and would have secured the well. It was a matter of time before he started to kill her escorts one by one, to test her resolve. She looked at the men and women who had brought her this far, at their sweat-streaked faces. They were Meliahs’ true faithful. They didn't deserve to die.

Sariah had given her plan thorough thought. The keep's walls were wised with centuries of protective layers reinforced each year by the strongest of wisers. The wall's wising couldn't be erased. Tampering with it resulted in death. No matter how strong the inscription, her bursting stones couldn't dent those walls. It was wits over craft on this one.

She had considered every aspect of the keep's layout, every possible point of entry and exit. The keep had been impregnable when she lived there. But she had learned to think differently, to be resourceful and flexible while living with Kael and his kin. That's how she had come up with her escape alternatives. The trouble was, one option would work for Delis and her Hounds but not for her, and vice versa. It took her but a moment to decide what to do next.

“Up the ramparts. Quickly.”

The north tower was her closest choice. It was no less intimidating than the rest of the keep's walls, but it had advantages. First, the land there rose in a slight hill, shortening the distance to the ground. It was still a high jump, but Delis and the Hounds were stronger than the average man. Second, with the town's encroachment, the tanning vats were located beneath the tower.

“How did you ever think of this?” Delis leaned over the tower's battlements to look at the vats below.

“There was once a man, a thief, long ago, when I was little. They said he jumped from the north tower into the tanning vats. They said he broke both legs but made it alive. We can do better.” Sariah tried to smile with confidence. “Torkel, hang the longest rope we can string together to lessen the distance. Hang it over that one.” She pointed at the grossest of the tubs. “Cured skins are soaking in water with just a little liquor in that vat. It's less toxic.”

“How do you know that?” Delis asked.

“Ilian, over there, she liked to send me out to the tanning vats for penance.”

“Perhaps we ought to drop her down head-first?”

“A moment for every deed and a deed for every moment,”
Sariah said. “Climb down until you run out of rope. Watch your legs when you jump. Those vats are not as deep as they look.”

“You first, my donnis.”

“If you make it, I know I'll make it.”

“And if I don't make it?”

“I promise I'll find a safer way.”

Nothing else would have made Delis jump ahead of her. Eager to test the drop for Sariah, Delis climbed down the rope without a fight.

“Won't you go next, saba?” Torkel said.

“You go ahead. Only I can make the stones at their necks burst.”

The keeper was the last one to go. Sariah handed him her pouch with the prism in it. “Take this to the Bastions. Make sure it's safe. Wait until I arrive.”

“You must do it,” he said.

“You promised to obey me.”

“Are you afraid to jump?”

“No. I can't jump. Trust me. I have good reasons.”

“You must let me stay with you then.”

“Meek shall be the dragon at the foot of the stone.”

“You're quoting the Wisdom to me?”