Stonewiser (64 page)

“Of course, my donnis.”

Sariah told her.

“Now?” Delis asked. “My donnis, you're not well yet and the toad wisers—”

“The who?”

“Toad wisers.” Delis flashed a quick grin. “That's the Hound's nickname for the black-robed fools croaking in this crowded pond.”

Sariah fought the smile tickling her lips.

“In any case,” Delis said, “the toad wisers won't let you. They need you. I don't even know if the Hounds will have it either—”

“They don't need to know.”

“It might be too soon—”

“Or too late.”

Delis thought about that. “Do you think it can be done?”

“I think that if anyone can do it, it's you. Something without entailing toxic fumes would be nice.”

“Aren't we getting picky these days?” Delis said. “And the old wasp?”

“He knows.”

“Should I be pleased the man is back?”

“Very pleased.” Sariah squeezed Delis's hands. “I'm sorry if I hurt you before. What I said, about the oath, I didn't mean it like that—”

“I know.”

“You were the one who realized what—no,
who
I needed. You fetched him for me. The truth is that no one has been a better friend to me than you.”

Delis's blue and violet eyes considered her thoughtfully. “Still, he's the one you trust the most.”

Sariah didn't miss the chagrin in Delis's voice. “But I'm donnis only to you.”

“So if it wasn't him…?”

“Aye,” Sariah said, and she didn't think she was completely lying.

The simple sight of Kael warmed Sariah's heart. But it was the warrior in him who joined her hurried march across the bailey towards the Hall of Stones, in command of an escort of twenty Hounds who blended with her own escort seamlessly.

“Metelaus?” she asked, without missing a step.

“He knows what to do,” Kael said.

“So you talked to him? You know about the changes in the Domain?”

“Briefly. He showed me the reports. The rot is acting in strange ways. The weather is crazy everywhere, including here.” He surveyed the darkening skies and inhaled the cold air. “Can you smell it? A storm is coming. It smells like a whiff of the belch.”

“That would be a first. The belch has never reached beyond the wall to the Goodlands.”

“Whatever is happening is affecting the entire land.”

“Great.” Sariah grimaced. “We're all going down. Together.”

“I wish I had the time to study the changes,” Kael said. “All that time wasted dodging foes and friends alike—”

“So the Domainer delegation did find you?”

“Find me they did, although not for long.”

“You got away from them. Didn't you?”

“Not that I don't want to help them, you know, but we have so little time.”

Sariah could see that the land-healer in him was fascinated, curious and eager. But he knew they had to live through today to gain a right to tomorrow.

“What are the odds your plan will work?” he asked.

“Half and half.”

“Not very good.”

“Yesterday, I had no chance at all.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“To secure the tale and to find my son, I would bet on worse odds. So yes, I'm sure.”

They had almost crossed the bailey when a group of Hounds trotted in through the gates carrying an oxen-skin-wrapped bundle. At the head of the group, Sariah recognized Torkel, the keeper's brother. A wail echoed in the bailey, and it wasn't just the wind screeching.

Kael frowned, then slowed down. “The patrol is back early.”

Sariah halted.

Torkel's eyes went wide when he saw her. “Saba, really, I didn't think much of it. It was just a patrol around the walls. He wanted it so much. It's all my fault. I wanted to please her.”

Sariah was faintly aware of Kael's hold on her arm. The Hounds parted to allow her to pass. She came to a dead stop and knelt before the bundle laid on the ground. She took a deep breath before she uncovered the face.

R
ig.
His young face was partially gone and his eye had sunk into his crushed skull, but his irrepressible black curls stirred in the cold breeze as if he were still alive. The wind cut through Sariah like a set of the Hounds’ claws. She didn't have to ask how. Mia and Rig had eroded Torkel's resistance and persuaded him to let Rig go on patrol.

Sariah's heart ached with angry grief. The war. The destruction. They seemed worthless compared to the young life lost. A small crowd was assembling around them. Metelaus had just arrived. The keeper was glaring at his brother with both fury and concern.

Her mind suddenly registered the familiarity of the heart-wrenching wail. She looked up to see Mia restrained in Metelaus's strong arms. Her curls were crusted in blood. Her face was covered with tears. Black flow leaked from her fisted hands. She was screaming like a bolt-stricken fiend. Her wailing haunted the sunset and became the sound of Sariah's most perturbing nightmares.

Sariah walked with the weight of a thousand boulders on her back. She couldn't delay her meeting with the executioners and there was nothing she could do to console Mia. She felt like the coldest wench in the world. She felt selfish too. She would have wanted the child with her for what was to come. But Mia was in no condition to help. Sariah left her in the care of Celia and Pru and marched on to meet her fate without delay. The night had arrived with the storm. When the sun rose tomorrow, atonement would be over.

But Torkel was not easily appeased. He planted himself in her path and offered her one of his claws.
“He who errs shall be maimed from his sorrows.”

“Stand aside,” Sariah said. “I'm not going to maim you because you made a mistake.”

“But saba,” the keeper said, “it's the law.”

“For my honor,” Torkel pleaded.
“What's respect but trust in the blood?”

“I think your anguish is enough punishment.” Sariah sidestepped Torkel and strode on toward the Hall of Stones.

“I'll speak to her later,” she overheard the keeper muttering to his brother, before he fell in with the rest of her escort.

“Perhaps you should have punished Torkel,” Kael offered quietly.

“So you too think that everything we do should be tainted by blood?”

“Sometimes people can only be comforted in their own strange ways.”

“I can't even afford the time to console poor Mia and you want me to stop and punish Torkel? I should have stayed with Mia. Torkel, he is a grown man. Sooner or later, grown men need to learn to comfort themselves.”

Kael's silence diffused Sariah's fury. A slushy drizzle crunched beneath her quick steps. The stink of ashes scented the courtyard. Poor Rig. Poor Mia. Poor Torkel. Maybe Kael had a point after all.

Lexia was waiting for them at the Hall of Stones’ entrance. “What's this I hear? You're meeting with the executioners?”

Sariah couldn't help but notice that Lexia was well-informed. “Domainer justice.” She kept up the pace through the hall's cavernous vestibule. “It shouldn't take too long.”

“Did you tell Uma and Lorian?”

“I didn't see the need to complicate things.”

Lexia halted. “I think things are already complicated.”

The Hall of Stones’ massive doors were thrown open to reveal the jet stone aisle crowded with a host of black-robed stonewisers. Lorian and Uma stood framed by the ornately sculpted doors, waiting for Sariah like Meliahs’ weeping twins—plague and slaughter.

The sheer length of Lorian's gangly limb transformed the sweeping motion of her arm into an even grander gesture. “You'll enter the Hall of Stones and account for your actions.”

“Let's do this later. I have something very important to do and very little time.”

“Whatever you have to do can wait,” Lorian said. “The Guild always comes first.”

“Not this time.” Sariah marched on, knowing herself free from the Guild and secured by her escort's claws. She had taken three steps away from the doors when a dull thump stopped her advance. She pushed against an invisible wall. It yielded some, but then contracted as if she was caught in an invisible net.

Kael ran his hands over the unseen obstacle. “What by the rot is this?”

The surprised gasps coming from the keeper and his Hounds announced they too felt the barrier when they tried to step away from Sariah.

“Saba?” the keeper said.

“This fight requires a different set of weapons.” Sariah faced the two councilors. “It's just a guess, but I believe one of you has a wising trick in progress.”

“We tire of hearing exclusively about your wising prowess,” Lorian said. “We too can wise a good trick or two.”

“What kind of trick?” Kael asked.

That would have been an easy question to answer, indeed, a quick problem to solve, if she hadn't lost the bulk of her stonewiser's power to the banishment bracelet. As it was, she didn't even have enough strength left to probe the wising. Trapped. She didn't need this right now.

“Look,” Sariah said. “Domainer executioners have come for justice. I have to respond to their law before it's too late—”

“Their laws are no good here,” Lorian said. “They can't kill you or take you by force, not here, at the keep, where they're outnumbered by stonewisers and Hounds.”

“They might not be able to take me just now,” Sariah said. “But they can harm an awful lot of Domainers if I don't deliver what I promised.” She didn't tell them that her life was at stake too. No sense in adding to their advantage over her.

“You forget there's rot in the keep, disorder in the Guild,” Uma said.

“I wish I could forget,” Sariah said. “Let me go.”

“You'll yield your election to us,” Lorian said. “Else you'll be trapped here for the rest of the night, for the rest of your life, if need be.”

Time was the one thing she didn't have. The night was advancing fast. The silver haze had almost filled the last of the crystals and a strange numbness had settled on her right hand's fingertips. Was it a last warning? Or was it the beginning of the end? She didn't have her stonewiser's power to counter the councilors’ wising, and as good as Delis and the Hounds were at spilling blood, a fight would not release the wising that held them there. She had to think of something and fast.

Sariah considered the Council members. She had an idea. Of the two, Uma was the more secretive, Lorian was the more reactive. Did she know enough to do as she proposed? She didn't want to do this here and now, but the fools gave her no choice. They didn't know they were clamoring for their own destruction. As pressed for time as she was, Sariah understood that they required nothing less than total defeat.
Plunge the ax deep into the timber to split the future's kindling,
the words echoed from her stores of Vargas's bloody Wisdom.

Quickly then. She had resisted any involvement that could splatter her with the Guild's dung, and yet here she was, charging at the future with the Guild's fate stuck in her reluctant claws. Somewhere in Meliahs’ gardens the sages must be laughing, not just at the dubious notion of a Guild election, but at the sheer irony of
her
election.