Stonewiser (68 page)

Sariah cursed her own blindness. She cursed Grimly too, for taking her macabre explorations beyond the boundaries of cruelty. In retrospect, Belana's nature should have been obvious to her. She had confused the woman's oddity with her youthful soul. Lost in her own troubles, she had neglected to see Belana's tragedy. In doing so, she had wronged Belana and her dead sister greatly.

Petrid muttered a curse. “Horror of all horrors.”

Sariah put her arms around Belana's shoulders. “What gives you the right to judge her blood as worse than ours? You, an executioner of all things. Don't you know how it feels? She's of Meliahs’ just the same.”

“She's sin turned to flesh,” Petrid said. “She was made beyond the bounds of the Blood.”

“But with her blood she's proven that Goodlanders, Hounds and Domainers are of the one Blood,” Kael said. “You have your proof, executioners, a tale that can unite the Bloods. And we have plenty of witnesses. Now lift your edict and go.”

Petrid's pinched face quivered in anger. He opened his mouth to protest, but Malord spoke first.

“The Domain's gathering will be most interested to hear of your reaction here today.”

“The Guild certainly considers the tale Stonewiser Sariah has furnished as sufficient for a record of justice,” Lorian said. “You wouldn't want to break a first record of justice, would you?”

The incensed flush in Petrid's weathered face was mild compared to the ire flashing in his eyes. “This is an evil place. We'll go now.”

“Not to Ars, you won't,” Metelaus said. “We're free of your encumbrances and safe.”

“And call off your stinking mob,” Delis added.

“Aren't you forgetting something?” Kael said. “Your bracelet. Take it with you.”

Petrid eyed Sariah. “I assume you want it off?”

Sariah chuckled. Caught in the moment's excitement, Malord, Lexia and Lorian had been distracted from the vital tapping that had deferred the effect of the bracelet's poison. It was strange, this ebbing of strength that surged and receded like a leaden wave, reminding her that although the tale had been delivered, her life was very much at stake.

“It's not so bad to live like you,” Sariah said. “A little cold and brittle inside perhaps, but one could get used to it. Are you asking me if I have good reasons to live or are you asking me if the bracelet will kill me?”

“Perhaps you'll survive the bracelet as cunningly as you've survived us,” Petrid said.

“Poison is poison,” Sariah said. “Take it off, executioner. I want to live. And I want my stonewiser powers back. They may be foul to you, but it's what I am.”

The chief executioner approached Sariah cautiously, as if she could bite him, as if she and Belana could turn into venomous species at will. Petrid's monkey was not afraid. He climbed on Sariah's shoulder and licked her ear, chattering like a plague of crickets.

Sariah set the prism aside and watched the executioner intently. She had missed the vital moment before. She wasn't about to miss it again. Petrid mumbled a ritual prayer in the old language, just as he had done when he had invested Sariah with the bracelet. This time, she caught a quick glimpse of the sharp, iron-capped tooth in the very back of his mouth. He clenched subtly, and brought her hand to his mouth. He bestowed a passionate kiss on the bracelet's closed-eyed clasp.

Sariah might have missed the quick lick of blood if she hadn't been watching so carefully. She gathered Petrid had pierced his own tongue with his iron-capped tooth. Unbeknownst to the rest, he smeared a lick of his blood on the clasp when he kissed it. She should have known. After a day like today, she should have guessed that only blood could harbor liberation.

It was surreal. In one subtle pulse, the hinges reappeared on the bracelet. The clasp's silvery lid lifted to reveal the glowering eye. It yielded with a muted hiss. With a twist and a turn, the pin was out.

Sariah had to smile. The bracelet's designer had either a preference for irony or a knack for consolation. One by one the links lifted from her wrist, first Pride, then Courage, then Strength, followed by Hope, Shrewdness, Loyalty, Generosity, Faith, and last, perilous Mercy. She thanked each of Meliahs’ sisters. They were all the company a banished traveler might need to endure the journey's hardship, if one ever looked beyond the bracelet's curse. She had never been truly alone in her banishment.

Sariah's arm felt obscenely bare and impossibly light. Nearly a year of torture and despair was suddenly gone. The strength returned first to her body, a surge of vitality which flushed her veins with healthy vigor and returned the sensation to her limbs. Then it traveled to her wiser's core, jolting it out of stillness with a shudder and a shake, until her core was pumping steadily. She basked in the warmth flooding her mind and body, and decided privately that she was after all better suited to exist as the hot-blooded creature she had been born to be.

Kael welcomed her back to the living with an embrace. “Well done, wiser,” he murmured in her ear. “You're the stone's bravest heart.”

Ars was safe and Sariah had been true to all her debts.

She was just rising to her feet when she spied one of the Hounds slipping into the chamber and talking urgently to the keeper. Shock flashed on the keeper's face. At that moment, Sariah knew that her reclaimed world was far from mended.

“It's Mia,” the keeper said. “They're leaving.”

Fifty

 

T
HE SIGHT THAT
welcomed Sariah to the keep's main lane was horrifying and oddly familiar. Despite the time, dawn was lost to the penumbral darkness. The frantic torches cast more shadows than they gave light, illuminating a chaotic scene of frenzied motion and gleaming weapons. She thought she had seen the long epic line of armed Hounds heading to the keep's massive gates before, the brisk-walking snippet of a curly-haired woman leading the terrifying procession.

“Mia!”

“What is she doing?” Kael asked.

“Stand aside, Auntie. I'm going to war.”

Meliahs help her. The child had gone sick with grief.

“You can't go to war, not you, Mia. You don't understand what's happening here.”

“But I do, Auntie. The evil Shield is loose upon the land and you won't challenge your former master. He kills people and wastes the Goodlands and you do nothing to stop him.”

“It's not like that—”

“I can't let him kill any more good people.” Mia's luminous eyes were strangely blank. “Not anymore.”

“Mia, if this is about Rig—”

“Rig died,” Mia said. “Arron killed him.”

“Is it true?” Lorian arrived, an unsettled jumble of long limbs and gasping breath. “Is she mad? We have effective ways to deal with rebellion in the Guild.”

“Ways I hope you're about to revise,” Sariah said.

How was she going to keep Mia safe?

She spotted the keeper, arguing with some of the Hounds. “Keeper, command your Hounds to stand down.”

Shock was etched all over the keeper's face. “They won't listen to me. It's Torkel. He's of Vargas's line. He's convinced a good number of Hounds to follow him.”

“Where is he?” Sariah found Torkel directing his Hounds out of the gates. “Torkel!”

Torkel signaled and a line of Hounds stepped between Sariah and him.

“Let me pass.”

They didn't move.

“Torkel,” Sariah called out. “What are you doing? Stop this. She's just a grieving child.”

“She's a wise one,” Torkel said without meeting her eyes.
“Wise is he who finds wisdom in the clash of orders. Wise is he who chooses as Vargas would have chosen.”

Sariah had a mind to impale Vargas on her pitchfork and slap the man to his senses. She knew better. Words would not dissuade Torkel. Sariah had denied him the retribution he needed, and guilt had persuaded him best. He had made up his mind and convinced a great number of Hounds wielding Vargas's violent wisdom as his divisive weapon.

“But Torkel, your oath—”

“Is to redeem the worthy and forsake the frail, to lead Meliahs’ restoration or perish,”
Torkel said.
“Who are we but the fist that waits in the shadows to unleash the blow?”

“It's not that time yet.”

“It's past that time.”

As if any Hound would choose anything other than blood when readily offered. Sariah didn't know what was worse—the thought of Mia leaving her to wage war or the notion of the Hounds loose upon the Goodlands.

She turned to Kael and the others. “What can we do?”

Kael surveyed the deserting Hounds with expert eyes. “We'll have a bloody fight on our hands if we try to rush those Hounds. It could be a near thing. It will be bloody. And if Arron figures it out while we are at it—”

“This has to be stopped,” Lorian said. “If the Hounds leave, the keep will be left unprotected.”

“There are some Hounds here who remain loyal to Sariah and the keeper,” Kael said. “Lorian, call all the stonewisers you can get to take the place of the deserting Hounds on the walls as fast as you can. Call all the standards in the keep to duty, Domainers and Goodlanders alike. Get those guards who are willing to swear fealty to the keep out of the cages and onto the wall. Let's hope the Shield doesn't realize what's happening just yet.”

Lorian took off for the cages like a wrangling raven.

The keeper released and retracted his claws compulsively. “Saba, give me your leave and I'll kill Torkel. He's dishonored my pledge to you and given me cause for battle.”

The Hounds were split. Brothers were ready to beset each other for their tortuous Wisdom. “I won't have us killing each other to Arron's benefit today,” Sariah said.

Metelaus arrived at the gates, carrying Malord. “I don't understand. They said that—what's happened to Mia? Is it the urges again?”

“No,” Sariah said. “Not the urges. She thinks she should lead the Hounds in the fight against Arron.”

Metelaus faced his daughter. “Mianina, you can't do this. You're a girl, not a warrior.”

“Sooner or later we all have to grow up, Daddy.”

“Think of your mother,” Metelaus said. “She'll be so sad.”

“Sad,” Mia said. “Like me.”

“I'm your father. I forbid you to go.”

“Sorry, Father, but I'm sabita now. I will lead.”

“Over my rotting body,” Metelaus said. “I won't let you—”

The Hounds standing between Metelaus and Mia released their claws in unison.

“Will you command harm against your own father?” Metelaus said, incredulous.

“Only if you try to stop me,” Mia said. “Tell him, Auntie. Tell him that we all have our obligations.”

“This is not your duty,” Sariah said.

“It is. Rig told me. In the dream.”

“That's just your grief talking, Mia. Let me help you get through this.”

“Won't you believe me, Auntie? It's inscribed in the Dome of the Going, that I have a duty, that I'll lead my Hounds in the final battle.”

That's where Sariah had seen the image! On the frescoes formed on the Dome of the Going when the sages’ statues transformed to color and paint.

“Is this prophesy?” Malord asked. “Has it been ordained?”

Ordained to the rot pit, Sariah couldn't care less. This was no mysterious feat of the sages, no mischievous intrusion intervention. This was her Mia, leaving her, leaving them all, to go fight a war that wasn't hers.

“Mia, please.”

Sariah had never seen the cold sneer that overtook Mia's face. “You don't believe me. You never do, Auntie. You should, you know. You made me what I am.”

The accusation struck her like a low clobber to the gut. She recalled the day she'd had to break Mia. She remembered how thoroughly she had slashed at the remains of her common nature, how savagely she'd had to tear her old connections to allow her stonewiser's links to thrive. She had known then that Mia would hate her one day. She just hadn't realized how brutally that hatred would strike her.

Metelaus came to a quick decision. “Lazar will take care of Ars in my absence. I'm going after Mia. She won't kill me. I have to believe that.”

“But you'll need us,” Sariah said.

“You can't come,” Metelaus said. “We both know what you have to do.”

“Kael, I can't just let her go.”

“Trust Metelaus to do right by Mia. He's her father.”

“She's been through so much.” Sariah beheld the beautiful little girl flanked by Torkel and the horror of his best Hounds. It was a contrast too strong to stomach. The pain was rife in her soul, the infectious stab of staggering loss and betrayal. She had expected it from the Guild, from the councilors, from almost anybody at any time. But from Mia?

“Don't do this.” Sariah took a step toward Mia and then another. “There's much work to be done yet. The time to face Arron is not now.”

“I said stay away.” A shot of flow gushed from Mia's palms, turning the space between her and Sariah into a trail of ashes. Sariah staggered back, shocked.

“Don't try to stop us again,” Mia said. “Good-bye, Auntie. May you die well.”

Sariah watched Mia go, reeling like a mortally wounded woman. Mia walked through the gates without looking back.