Stonewiser (50 page)

“You can do it again if you want,” Belana said.

“Soon you won't be able to do it anymore.” Telana inserted a small wised stone in the center of Sariah's whittled flesh.

A white flash jolted Sariah's body. Every nerve in her hand awoke to an excruciating burning and found a twin in her mind. Her fingers cramped. It was worse when Telana did the same to her other palm. A slow and gradual blankness descended on her wiser's core, as if her links had been severed.

A wave of panic crashed on Sariah. Without a sense of her wiser's core, her body didn't know how to function. She couldn't think. She couldn't breathe. If not for Belana's perfumed mouth covering hers and blowing hot air into her deflated lungs, she would have suffocated on the spot.

It must have taken her a while, but by the time Sariah learned how to breathe on her own again, Telana was strapping a strange contraption to her hands, a snug copper and leather encasing that pressed on the stones buried in her palms.

“A wiser's muzzle.” Telana locked it with a tiny key and applied a blue flame to the keyhole, welding it shut. “It will keep you from trouble, which means we can preserve your hands for the moment.”

Sariah didn't know such a contraption existed. The muzzle extended from the bend of her fingers’ lower knuckles to the wrist. She was having trouble thinking. It was as if her palms were gone from her senses and her wiser's mind had been trapped behind solid walls, as if the ground had been kicked from under her feet and she was freefalling.

“She's properly curbed,” Telana said. “Do we put her with the others?”

“I wish we could keep her with us,” Belana said.

“She's the one who's created all the mess. We wouldn't want her talking to the others.”

“What if we curb her voice?”

“That should keep her out of mischief.”

The conversation didn't make any sense. How could they possibly curb her voice?

The sisters’ palms pressed against Sariah's throat. A stone was lodged in between her skin and theirs. A quiet murmur. A rush of heat. A feeling of faintness. Sariah opened her mouth to protest. No sound made it through. Astounded, she tried again. Nothing. She wanted to scream, yet she couldn't even whimper. What had they done to her?

The sisters released her bonds and slipped a strange garment over Sariah's head. It was a short, thin, low-backed white cloth that fit her loosely. Translucent and without seams, it offered little warmth and no privacy. Then, the sisters supported her through a heavy pair of iron doors and into a small chamber fitted with black hangings.

Telana rang a bell.

Belana kissed her. “We'll see you soon.”

Then they abandoned her, weak, hurting and alone, in the black veiled room.

The woman who came through the curtains was similar to Sariah in many ways. She was about the same age, devoid of hair, large with child and as shockingly dressed as she was. She also wore a pair of hand muzzles. The difference was that she could move on her own and that she was smiling.

“I'm Lexia.” She helped Sariah to her feet. “I'm going to take you downstairs. You're too far along to be new, but I've never seen you before. Have you just arrived?”

Sariah opened her mouth and found her voice gone. Vexed, she nodded and pointed to her throat.

“You are new. The little vixens took your voice, didn't they? They don't want you speaking to us. Well, at least they didn't take your tongue. Ask Pru, life's tough without a tongue.”

They had taken somebody's tongue? Sariah leaned on Lexia and made it out into the strangest of places. A narrow corridor towered above a lower level divided by thick walls into separate spaces. Sariah was shocked when she looked down directly below her. Thirty or forty women were looking up at her, all dressed in the loose-fitting garment, pregnant and hairless like she was.

“The holding pen,” Lexia said. “We wait here.”

Wait for what? Sariah wasn't thinking very clearly but she managed to point at her belly and then at the women.

“Aye, they're all pregnant or waiting to be bred. What else would you expect at the Mating Hall?”

The Mating Hall. Reality exceeded its foul reputation. The windowless, stark chamber was lined sparsely with cots and tables bolted to the floor. Fires for light and warmth hung high above. The women were mostly quiet, following her slow progress down the steep staircase.

“The men are on the other side of the wall,” Lexia said. “Don't ever go that way. They're kept ready, poor chaps. They're no more than high-strung bulls down here. Those are the breeding stalls.”

Sariah missed a step.

“Don't worry. You won't be going there for a while yet.”

Who had conjured a nightmare like this? She had known the Guild was fickle and devious, but this was beyond reason, beyond indecency and cruelty.

They made it down through two guarded gates. The women glanced her way, a few with a spark of interest, the majority with vacant stares that spoke of desolated minds. Lexia led Sariah to sit on one of the cots and furnished her with a cup of cold tea. Sariah's hands were heavy, painfully stiff and trembling, but she managed a sip. Lexia proved adept at deciphering Sariah's gestures.

“You want to know how long I've been here? About five years, I think, since my master repudiated my lease and I was sent here. They said I had good blood. Look here.” Lexia turned and displayed her backside without a trace of modesty. Four vertical lines were etched above her buttocks. “I've earned my keep. I've birthed four wiserlings.”

Wiserlings? Is that what they called their babies? She glanced around the chamber, looking for the telltale sign. At the edge of the low-backed garments, most every woman sported at least a scar or two etched on her lower back. Some had many more than two. What of their children's fates? During her time at the keep, there had never been more than two or three children gifted to the Guild each year. What happened to all of their offspring?

“You get used to it.” Lexia patted her arm. “It's better than being a beggar, don't you think? Better than being dead?”

There had to be a way out of here. How many guards watched over the pen? When did the guard change? Who kept the padlock's keys?

“There's no escaping this place. Save yourself the grief. If you try, you'll fail. And when they catch you, they'll punish you horribly. Look at Violet over there. The one ready to burst. See? No hands.”

Didn't they know that wisers went mad without hands?

“She's already half-mad. They're just waiting for her to farrow and she'll be gone for good. Now sleep. You'll need your strength in the days to come. By the way, not that it matters much down here, but what should we call you?”

Sariah traced the letters of her name on the cot.

“S-A-R-I-A-H.” Lexia frowned. “Sariah? Formerly of the Hall of Scribes’ sixty-sixth folio?”

How did the woman know her name?

Lexia buried her face in her hands. “If they caught you, what hope is there for us?”

Sariah lay wearily on the cot, yet unable to sleep. The fires had been put out. Darkness veiled the day's shocking sights. A cot nearby creaked under a heavy body, accompanied by a muted whimper. Unable to wise, cut off from her wiser's core, trapped, humiliated, forgotten. This place was a stonewiser's worst nightmare. What horrors awaited the women's children once born? Sariah corrected herself. This place was foremost, a mother's worst nightmare.

She fisted her aching hands. They throbbed at the pulse of her glowing bracelet. She had to get out of here and fast. But first, she had to restore some of her essential links. Mia's healing practices. Would they work for her too? She closed her eyes and turned herself inward. There was work to do.

Sariah tapped her fingertips against Lexia's and watched the woman's pupils. There. A slight dilation. Good. The mix was working. By combining the stone tapping she had learned from Malord with what Mia had shown her about stone healing, Sariah had succeeded in restoring at least some of Lexia's essential links.

Lexia's eyes brimmed with tears. “I still can't believe you can do this. How?”

Adding one of her unique skills to the mix, Sariah send a sequence of leveled emotions through her fingertips.
Perseverance. Self-reflection. Concentration.

Lexia gasped. “Did you just use emotion to speak to me?”

Aye. She had just created an alternative way of communicating with the women. She couldn't tell if Lexia got it completely, but she repeated it, slowly this time, for her benefit.

“Amazing,” Lexia said. “All this, with your fingertips only?”

Sariah gestured for Lexia to try it on her. It took Lexia a little while to master the tapping, but when Sariah surged above the pain and finally felt the weak connection come to life in her mind, she grinned. From their usual posts at their respective looms, the rest of the women smiled in quiet delight. Sariah crossed her lips with her finger to remind them that this had to be their secret, but she was as happy as they were, especially when she noticed some of the women's vacant stares flickering back to life.

“Hey, you,” a guard barked from the railing above. “Move on, will you? The mistress told us all about you. Don't try your tricks on us.”

She walked obediently on to the next loom, carrying along a full basket of black skeins. It was the best pretext she could find to circulate among the women working the Guild's looms. Although it was extremely dangerous, it allowed her the rare occasion to work one on one with each woman.

It wasn't as if she was able to restore the women's ability to wise. The muzzles, combined with the blocking stones implanted in their palms, contained the bulk of the wising functions with brutal efficiency. They also penalized any attempt at fooling the stones with mind-numbing pain. Stone tapping, however, was not a common wising function. Neither were the related finger tapping, the link healing, and the emotion infusions that Sariah had devised. She had wagered that since the Guild didn't teach those, the muzzles weren't designed to restrain those skills. She had been right.

She had only been able to teach stone tapping to a handful of women thus far, but the discovery had changed the chamber's mood. Smiles graced the previously desolated faces, and the occasional giggle could be heard in the work chamber. There was interaction among the captive group, meals shared and secret gatherings after dark where the women tried to revive their truncated links. There were even occasional whispers hidden by the creaks and taps of the levers and pedals that powered the Guild's upright looms.

How strange. Sariah had never once wondered where the black cloth the Guild used to make the stonewisers’ robes came from. Now, every day when she followed the other women into the adjoining workshop and sat before her assigned loom, she wondered how many Guild wisers knew that they wore the product of their peers’ forced labor and sweat.

“Someone's looking for a paddling today,” another guard said from above. “Your loom has been idle too long, woman. You want me to call the mistress?”

No. Sariah didn't need the mistress's attention at the moment. She hurried on to the next loom. She had something else she wanted to do, but the guard was right. She couldn't stay away from her own loom much longer. Failure to deliver the required cloth yield resulted in a paddling proportional to the lapse, ten strikes per yard missing. She knew the sting of the punishment well enough. It was painful, humiliating, and effective. In deference to her bottom's tenderness, she was becoming a most proficient weaver.