Stonewiser (70 page)

He surveyed the trampled place where the party split. The bulk of the warriors had waited here, although for what, he wasn't sure. There were no signs of camps or fires, no traces of idle lingering or carelessness. But there had been a late addition to the group, a man who had traveled here from a different direction. Someone of means, Kael noticed, examining the prints of a pair of doubly stitched soles that sported the faint outline of the Guild's master cobbler's seal. It was this new man who had gone into the barren stone field accompanied by a guard. It made perfect sense. She would have never taken the risk herself.

What did Grimly expect to find there? Kael knew firsthand the folly of trying to guess the cunning crone's purposes. The Guild's former Prime Hand was the most dangerous foe a man could face; driven, devious, brilliant, as skilled at intricate deception as she was brutal. He couldn't afford to guess Grimly's game. He had to do better. He had to
know
her game.

The stones crunched under his cautious steps. The one-way tracks led him into a deepening gulch and stopped at the gully's end, as if the men had suddenly vanished. Kael inspected the rocks. They were crammed together and solid. There were no dragging marks, no signs of struggle, no indication of hidden entrances.

He ran his hands over the harsh granite. He was no stonewiser. Like most people, he was deaf to the stones. But the curse of his Domainer blood offered a slight advantage. Because he was a Domainer, he was able to imprint the stones with tales. Moreover, after years of rebelling against the Guild's brutal rule, he had developed the common skill into a rare but convenient talent. These days he was able to imbue the stones with his most violent emotions making them burst at will.

He wagered he could adapt his singular talent to try to trick an answer from even the sneakiest of stones. That's what he did now, carefully imbuing the piles with a pulse of measured curiosity to unmask the wised stones hiding among all that senseless rock. The stones would never grant him a tale, he knew that, but maybe they would react to his query, betraying their presence and confirming his suspicions that he treaded in wised territory.

Had he been someone else, he might have missed the stones’ discreet reply. It came in the form of a smoldering flash, so quick and sudden it could have been his body's own doing. But he was not easily deceived. Born to a stonewiser and mated to another, he was accustomed to the stones’ mysterious ways. The heat that flashed through his body reminded him of his lover's fiery embrace. Loving her was like loving the flame. He craved the fire's sizzling blaze. A lick of that familiar flare had taunted him a moment ago. These stones were wised. He was sure.

But even he was surprised when a small burrow began to open up at the foot of the shifting rocks. It hadn't been there a moment ago. His modest skills with the stones couldn't begin to account for the widening passageway. Could they?

Nay. There was something else in play here, something dangerous. He examined the opening carefully. The footprints disappeared into the darkness. He cringed when he caught a whiff of the foul stink. A revolting scent lingered in the stale air, sweet, noxious and repellant. He listened carefully before he started down the passageway. No noise came from the inside. The only sound he heard was the drizzle, tapping a steady rustle on the rocks, whispering a warning for his ears alone.

Kael proceeded with caution. Wised stone could be gift or curse, friend or foe, wonder or deception. Like Grimly, wised stones could be treacherous too. He crawled along a narrow tunnel, until it widened enough for him to stand beneath a small arch marking an entrance of sorts. He tested the lintel, running his fingers up and down the ledges, finding no ropes, door traps, or hidden mechanisms. His steps made no sound as he advanced down the sloping corridor.

The stagnant air grew steamy as he descended, damp and rich with the foul scents trapped below. A hint of soft, diffused glow issued from somewhere ahead, allowing him to make out the outline of the long winding stairs his feet negotiated. Where was the light coming from? Opaque shadows paraded in his peripheral vision. He ran a hand over the dilapidated paintings that had once decorated the walls. A dank coating of mold feasted on the decrepit plaster and smeared his fingertips.

This had to be an Old World ruin, one of those abandoned places occasionally discovered in the Goodlands, a wreck of the past, a reminder of all that had been lost and destroyed. What was it doing here, so far removed from other known sites? And why was Grimly interested in this place?

The luminescent glow spilled from what appeared to be a larger chamber at the bottom of the stairs. Kael flattened against the wall. With his twin swords poised, he crept down the last few steps. His heartbeat remained steady. Fear had long since been silenced by determination. The child of his heart deserved nothing less than freedom and care. To retrieve the son he had lost, he would challenge Meliahs herself.

The chamber was an ode to destruction. Huge beams fractured the ancient walls. Bursts of long blades skewered the mountain like enormous swords, creating a striking garden of dark fallen stars. The beams had crushed the tiered marble benches, decapitating the gilded statues and shattering the ruined frescoes. Kael's trained eye identified a pattern right away. The jagged beams seemed to radiate from an unseen center. The footprints he tracked veered in the same direction.

At last he was able to identify the source of the strange glow. The place was alight with an odd phosphorescent gleam emanating from the beams. He ventured a touch. The surface was warm to his hand. Remarkable. Were these giant formations made of rock? And if they were indeed stones, were the light and warmth they offered indications of a powerful wising?

He scratched one of the radiant beams with his blade. A thin lustrous layer broke off into a long, smooth plane, a perfect cleavage. The glassy surface reflected the puzzle in his green and black eyes. It was soft and flexible between his fingers. It didn't feel like any rock he knew.

The land healer in him wished he could linger to investigate the odd beams. The roamer in him wanted to survey the entire, extensive place. Observation was a prolific teacher, always willing to speak to the attentive pupil. Not today. He snapped the sample he had taken into smaller pieces and tucked them in his pouch. Perhaps someday he could come back to investigate this place. Right now, his life was pledged to one purpose only—to find his son.

Kael made his way through the beams. The humid heat was hard on the lungs. A man would do well to shorten his exposure to such hostile conditions. He was sweating by the time he reached the ruins’ center. The bulk of the columns radiated from a single point, a hollow core, an empty space marked by a low sheaf of needle-sharp blades bursting from the earth. Light issued from these blades, a purple glow pulsing in the sheaf's center. The footprints stopped before a pile of ashes, the source of the awful stink permeating the air.

Kael poked at the ash pile with the tip of his sword. A scorched, brittle pike point clinked against his blade. A charred skull had managed to retain its form. The guard had died a sudden, fiery death. This place was not just treacherous. It was deadly.

The distant clunk of wooden soles heightened his alarm. It seemed impossible, but the sound appeared to be coming from the sheaf itself. A tiny shadow distorted the light's dark hue. A miniscule shape reflected on the blades, a vision of bustling skirts growing in size with every step, gaining color and definition. Kael was hard-pressed to believe his eyes. A woman sprang from the sheaf and marched toward a rustic farm table that materialized out of nowhere in the ruins’ center.

Kael clutched his swords with a battle grip, yet the short, stout, middle-aged woman who strode past him with a massive basket perched on her hip seemed harmless. She looked more like a cranky, overworked peasant than a dangerous foe. A cursory glance at the heap of ashes reminded him that he trampled in the stones’ perilous territories.

“You'd think two are enough after all this time,” the woman muttered in a shrill, grating voice. “But noooo. I get to do it again. Are you as ignorant as the others were?”

The others?
Was she talking about Grimly's men?

Kael surveyed the woman's pinched face. A stern pout dominated the lines of her brooding mouth. Little astute eyes burrowed in the wells of furrowed slits. Her massive forearms were as sturdy as the heavy plough they must have wielded in the fields. The dirt-stained hands were topped with callous sausages for fingers. A man different from Kael might have concluded that she was a hallucination of his oxygen-starved, heat-baked mind. Not Kael.

He steeled himself for the uneven confrontation. Since he wasn't a stonewiser, his life would be of no consequence to her. But it could be tricky. He needed the information only she could provide and, other than his wits, he had no way to deflect or defuse her dangerous powers.

The woman huffed. “Don't tell me you don't know who I am.”

Kael had an idea, but he saw no advantages to discussing his suspicions.

She slammed the heavy basket on the table. “What kind of fools are we growing these days? Are the likes of you supposed to be the bright future of mankind? If you don't know who I am, then what by Meliahs’ stinking pits are you doing here?”

“I'm looking for someone,” Kael said. “He came this way. I'd like to know why.”

“Why?” She laughed, a screech almost as unpleasant as her voice. “Who gave you the right to ask questions? I get to ask the questions around here. Do you know why you are here?”

He endured her glare wordlessly.

“Great,” she snapped. “Just great. And a damn mute to top it all. I suppose it doesn't really matter, does it? After all, what's time for a simple creature like you?” She grabbed an ear of corn from her basket, ripped off the husk with a sequence of angry tugs, and tossed the stripped ear into yet another basket.

Kael was sure the new basket hadn't been there a moment ago, and neither had the three-legged stool upon which the woman plopped down. He had grown accustomed to expect surprises from the stones, but this was beyond anything he had experienced before, too real to be false, too eerie to be real.

His blade sliced the air where the basket's tough weave should have stopped it. He could feel the faint resistance of its presence on the table, but when he reached out, the image crumpled, only to rearrange itself around his hand. The air was growing hotter. His lungs were laboring like slaves. He needed to finish his business and get out, before it was too late.

“The men who came here,” he said. “Did they come for stones?”

“Do you see any stones here?”

“Not the kind I expected. Perhaps they stole them from you?”

“I might look harmless, but no one can take anything from me that I don't want taken.” She eyed him thoroughly. “At least you're burly enough to do the job. I can tell you're skilled. You were taught well. You honor labor and sweat. He didn't.” She pursed her lips in the general direction of the ash heap.

“Is that why you killed him?”

“Do you mind a life lost? Aw. How sweet of you. He was nothing to me.” She tore into another corn husk.

“Did you kill the other man as well?”

The woman's double chin quivered with indignation. “Do you think I'm a common murderer? Only the ignorant and the unworthy need to die.”

“Then where is he? Where did he go?”

“There is only one way to me and one way from me. I don't know where he went. He might have mumbled something about going to the coast.”

“Did he mention the woman who sent him here? Do you know of a mistress called Grimly?”

“Now why would he do that? And why would I care about this mistress anyway? Why would I care about any of you pitiful mongrels?”

“You were interested enough to allow those men in here,” Kael pointed out. “Am I right to think that you had something to do with opening the way into this place?”

She grinned an enigmatic smile. “At least you're not so conceited to think
you
did it.”

“Was there a child with the men?”

“A child? Of course not.”

“A young one, a baby in arms,” Kael insisted. “Perhaps he stayed outside, with the woman?”

“I don't have to answer your daft questions.”

“True. On the other hand, I would be most grateful if you could tell me what you know.”

“Grateful?” She threw her head back and cackled like a bickering crow. “As if I had gone through all
this
just for the purpose of easing
your
puny existence.”

Kael swallowed his frustration. Creatures like her were seldom helpful except to themselves, but this one was as infuriating as they came and testy to boot. As far as he knew, there was no reasoning with the stones. A stonewiser might have found this encounter fascinating, but he was pressed for time. He had been gone too long. His camp's safety was at stake and he couldn't afford to lose Grimly's fresh trail.

“Don't look so concerned.” The woman flashed an insidious dimpled smile. “What's a life but a few pints of blood for the goddess?”

“Spoken like the warring sage.”

“So you do know who I am!”

“You are—”

“Don't you dare speak my name.”

“—as intractable in the stone realm as you were in life.”

“And even more accomplished now than when I lived.” She laughed again. “Smarts. Mankind's single redeeming quality. You're looking better and better for the job.”

“What job?”

“Why, the job you came to do, of course.”

“I'm afraid you have me confused,” Kael said. “I'm no stonewiser. I'm just a man seeking justice. If you're not going to help me, I might as well leave.”

As soon as he turned away, a sprout of dark blades burst from the ground to block his path. Kael was vexed. He knew from experience that the woman would be interested only in stones and stonewisers. What could she possibly want with him?

“I didn't say you could leave yet.” Her eyes narrowed. “You might be an ordinary mutt, but the stones like you well enough. After all, they allowed you in here, didn't they? Shall we find out why the stones think so highly of you?”