Grey Stone

by Jean Knight Pace

  “Very good,” the deformed wolf said. Then, looking casually to the king’s bedchamber, Wolrijk added, “Your father has requested that next week you go and fetch the slaves from the mines. Your brother grows overly distracted with that female.”

  Kaxon nodded, picturing the human Jager. As he turned to leave, it almost seemed like the ugly wolf smiled.

  Wolrijk watched the young prince walk away. It would seem there was something besides pretty kitchen maids that could catch the eye of the youngest prince. Which was good. Wolrijk had not worked magic for many centuries; indeed it was a bit of a secret that he could work magic at all. It had taken much of his strength to enchant the book enough to keep the youngest prince reading. Wolrijk had failed when he had tried to get a long blade made for himself. Stirring the idea into the youngest prince’s head seemed the next easiest way.

  Wolrijk tossed the scrolls aside and walked silently from the chamber.

  Chapter 22

  “Do not be offended, good Wittendon, but your eyes must be covered for the duration of this journey.” Sadora reached up and quickly wrapped a coarse burlap covering over Wittendon’s eyes.

  “You tie up my eyes and ask my pardon,” he said. He could feel the tips of two blades pressed firmly into both of his sides, though with his eyes covered he could not tell if they were tipped in Grey or not. The black creature that stood at Sadora’s side—he could no longer see it, but now he could more distinctly hear the animal purring, an unusual sound, an impossible sound.

  “How?” he asked.

  Sadora did not answer, but she moved the guards with blades away from Wittendon and took his hand, leading him through a maze of winding tunnels. He did not resist. Even as he lost count of the turns and bends, dips and ascents, his curiosity pulled at him more than his fear.

  After nearly an hour, they stopped and Sadora reached up to remove the binding from Wittendon’s eyes. Wittendon saw that they stood in a large room, lit with curious lanterns that released no smoke. He stepped back into a damp corner and said, “Sarak knows nothing of this?”

  “No,” Sadora said, a deep line forming just above the bridge of her nose. “I do not enjoy keeping things from him, but this he would not understand.”

  Sadora, he noted, stood in her flesh form at the head of a long table made from the same earth, stone, and clay that streaked the walls of the room. The other members of the council, as council it seemed to be, lined up on either side of the table, taking seats that seemed to be appointed to them, although the large black cat curled up at Sadora’s side and continued to purr.

  Wittendon stared at the feline, letting the shock sink in. A cat—assumed extinct by all among his race and every other—sat no more than five feet from him, smoothing the fur of her ear with a wetted paw. The animal looked surprisingly like the one in the picture Sadora had admired in the art wing. Our ancient history indeed, Wittendon thought, and just as he did so, Sadora began the meeting by addressing him. “I have not, I realize, brought you here in a way that will inspire your trust in me, yet it is that trust that I hope to earn from you.”

  “Well, perhaps you could whisper sweet nothings into my ear so that I dissolve into a blubbering puddle and you can have whatever you wish,” Wittendon said.

  Sadora narrowed her eyes in a way that made her resemble the cat. “Perhaps you think it is joy to me to wander about the palace acting as though my only cares are petticoats and the dribbling romantic gossip of my fellow ladies of the court when, in a few short weeks, the fate of our race, your family, and the entirety of our world could be changed.”

  “Changed?” Wittendon asked.

  “The Motteral Mal celebrates an important time in our history, a time when the earth shifted from the high white sun to the heavy red sun with its constant moon. A moon that grants the Veranderen significant power.”

  “Yes,” Wittendon said.

  “At the cost of the power and often the dignity of others.” Sadora leaned forward.

  Wittendon did not trust himself to reply.

  “What you should know, but have perhaps forgotten or never been taught, is that every hundred years when the solstice and the full moon coincide, there is a possibility to change the worlds again,” Sadora said.

  Wittendon snorted. He had not been taught that, but he’d heard tell of it from drunken humans and crazed soothsayers. “Such talk is not even reputable enough to call a fairy story,” he said.

  “So the royalty maintains,” Sadora replied.

  Wittendon looked at Sadora with her human hair tied back into a loose knot at her neck—golden strands woven through the fiery red like rays through the sun. “It is madness,” he said.

  She sat back in her chair and pressed her fingers together until the pads became white. She stayed there for so many minutes that Wittendon figured he could have just up and wandered the tunnels if he had wished. The rest of her council sat just as still. Wittendon looked at Sadora, wishing he could see through the sculpted stillness of her eyes. Finally, he said, “I will not submit to such insanity, but supposing I did, what exactly would you expect your verlorn prince to do?”

  Wittendon didn’t think the room could get quieter, but somehow it did. Finally, Sadora spoke, “The blades of Crespin.”

  Wittendon did not reply, wondering what she wanted with the blades his father had used to kill the council.

  “They are the blades of rebellion. And revenge.” Sadora turned to the cat. “Ellza.” The cat looked up and Sadora nodded. With a voice like a wraith, wispy yet brittle, Ellza began to chant.

  Twelve Grey blades of needle-like thinness.

  Eleven bespotted with the blood of their victims.

  One pure and clean awaiting its destiny.

  Seeks he to whom it has fidelity.

  Sadora continued, “The blades are more powerful than any known before or since in the kingdom. The Grey of their tips does not deteriorate with time, maintaining both brightness and strength. One of the blades is especially strong, and empowered by magic to destroy the elder Tomar—he who escaped your father’s plot—or his descendants.”

  Wittendon just stared at her.

  She smiled at him. “And there is someone I know who would be better suited than any other to wander freely through the castle looking for those blades. Someone who can stroll into libraries and cellars and tunnels without turning a glance.”

  “You want me to find the blades?” Wittendon asked.

  “Each spear is tipped in three inches of the Shining Grey. Each is nearly indestructible, and could be used by human hands.”

  Wittendon could not help but growl. “Used by a human against a Verander?” The idea was repulsive. Until now, he had not been truly afraid, but now he stood, raising his voice, bracing to run if he had to. “You wish to allow the humans to kill our own kind?”

  Two of the humans rose, holding daggers at their sides, but Sadora didn’t move. “I wish no such thing. But the humans must be able to hold some power in their hands. They must stand as some kind of a threat. Look at them,” she said gesturing to the two who had stood. “Both are brave, large men. Both are trained to fight and willing to do so. Both could kill any man who defied them. And yet both would be torn to pieces by our kind in mere moments. Look at them Wittendon; they tremble before you.”

  Wittendon looked. It was touching, in an odd way, that they would stand as though to protect Sadora—much like a brave and noble child might stand to protect his parent.

  “The blades of Crespin would be weapons,” Sadora said. “Powerful weapons. But more than that, they would stand as symbols. The spears represent revolution. Your father himself would recognize that. With such weapons in our hands, your father would begin to see these rebels—the Septugant—as something more than doodled sevens.”

  “But why?” Wittendon asked fiercely. “If it’s even possible—which I doubt it is—why change everything?”

  Sadora looked at him without moving. Deep in the earth, she looked t
oo still, too pale, a figurine of herself. “The races are strongest when they work together. This rebellion, I believe, proves that. But Crespin and those who came before him have perverted that relationship—yoking the humans, manipulating the dogs, coddling the wolves. Even among our own kind there is a certain inequality. Those who care to look will notice powerful family lines vanished or verlorn. Even that of the elder Naden, one of the strongest lines, is completely gone after your father’s friend Draden disappeared. Others of powerful Veranderen lineage are in asylums, slums, or impossible to find. Your father is a cunning monarch—one able to control, to contain those who might defy him. Which explains better than anything his treatment of the humans.”

  Feeling almost as weak as the humans in front of him, Wittendon said, “The humans have what they need.”

  “Ah, and now you sound like Sarak.” She looked off into a corner of the room. “Although my brother has not yet realized this, he and I do not agree on what ought to be the fate of the other races, particularly the humans. He has, unfortunately, seen much of their darker side.”

  Wittendon raised an eyebrow and Sadora continued, “Do you know that when he was twelve, his assignment was to open the gates for the Blødguard when they returned in the morning. Often he would hear their laughter and speech. They spoke of conquest of course, but just as often they spoke of those who had been abandoned by the humans—the elderly and infirm, the deformed babies and handicapped youth—those who were purposefully left in the woods to be consumed by the Blødguard.”

  Wittendon nodded. He did know this.

  “Sarak’s responsibility, too,” Sadora continued, “was to dispose of the tiniest bones left from the hunt—those of the humans so young that the wolves could not consume the bones for fear of choking. It was…” she paused, “sobering to say the least. Scarring. Fortunately, Sarak’s skill with magic was soon noticed by the court and his assignment was changed. But no type of magic could erase his memories of the baby bones picked clean by the wolves. The Veranderen, as Sarak sees it, are not a race that abandons its own. A point on which I also disagree.”

  Wittendon had not known this last part of Sarak’s story; his friend had never told him. “And these people who murder their children and elders are the people for whom you plan to fight?” Wittendon asked.

  “No,” she said, looking to her council. “I fight for the rest. I do not believe it good to forget a majority merely because a disgusting minority often exists. I believe, in fact, that that minority would be reduced if their lives were less harsh, their fates less cruel. It is difficult to extend mercy or to nurture those less fortunate, when you have known naught but hunger, filth, and disease. The fact that most of the humans would protect their own and even others is actually what I find so extraordinary. You have walked the villages, Wittendon,” she said. “You have seen what Sarak refuses to see.”

  It was all she had to say. Wittendon could see Jager and his wife as their foreheads met; he could see the golden-haired boy’s figure as he retreated from the mines. He could see the miners—sweaty, hungry, and about to return to a dim cell instead of a warm fire in their own homes. He could see beggars he had rejected and disregarded throughout his life. He could smell the human hovels, built up on the most infertile lands in his father’s kingdom. He could see the mutilated remains of the unlucky humans who had been hunted after dark.

  Wittendon snarled, feeling himself waver. Yet just as he did, he suddenly saw his mother’s gardener sitting side by side with his mother, and then he remembered vividly—as he hadn’t in many years—his mother in tears alone in the garden, and then his mother in bed, sick in a way that those of his kind had never been sick before. “They have done evil to our kind.”

  The cat sniggered softly. “Have they?” the feline asked, standing and stalking toward Wittendon. “Have they hunted your kind into near extinction? Have they taken your furs to hang on their walls, encased your faces and bodies in glass at museums? Have they killed litters full of your helpless young and laughed at the victory?”

  Wittendon stood, facing the cat. “They have done evil,” he repeated, holding onto his hate for the gardener, even as a scent flooded his memory—the fresh graves, left by the she-hound accused of killing Grender—her innocent babes caught in the crossfire of the king’s commands.

  The cat looked without blinking into Wittendon’s eyes. “There are those of your kind,” she said steadily, “who do not need assistance in doing evil—to others; or their own.”

  Wittendon growled, placing his hand on his hilt. The cat did not move. No one in the room moved. Wittendon looked to the Veranderen of the council, expecting that they were just as angry at the cat’s words as he was. He was surprised to feel a pulse of magic coming from their bodies—a magic that was prepared to fight. And not on his side.

  “Wittendon,” Sadora said at last, “if you do not wish to join us, I understand. You have much to lose. Though I think you might be surprised at what you’d find to gain. Nevertheless, if you wish to leave, a Verander of the council will show you the way out. I ask only that you agree to smell a flower. It will cause you to forget this interview unless I wish for you to remember it.”

  She stood in a way that signaled she did not expect discussion on the matter.

  “No,” Wittendon said with a firmness that surprised even him. “You have tricked me into these caverns and asked me to commit a crime against my own father. This creature has insulted my race. If you wish to keep me as a prisoner, that is your choice, but if you wish to release me, then release me—no strings attached.”

  Sadora was silent for several minutes. Wittendon watched her gaze as it slipped over the faces of the leery humans and uneasy Veranderen.

  “Do you plan to let him leave, my lady?” asked a small, thin human who sat in the corner. Two Veranderen had quietly stepped into protective positions in front of the door. Wittendon put his hand on his sword and, like mimes on feast day, they imitated this action, never looking at Wittendon, never acknowledging they had any intention to fight. But preparing.

  A weather-worn Veranderah—one who looked to be one of the verlorn peasants—placed a five-petaled flower on a small wooden stone. With the hilt of her dagger, she crushed the petals flat, so that the fragrance would be pungent when placed near Wittendon’s face.

  “I will not willingly smell it,” he said, looking straight at Sadora. “Is this what you do? Trick creatures? Capture them? Then force them to forget?”

  “No,” said a sturdy human with a long scar through his left eye. “That is not what we do.”

  “Really,” Wittendon said. “Because that’s what it looks like you’re going to do.”

  The human jumped up and ran at Wittendon. Wittendon drew his sword. A Verander disarmed the prince just before Wittendon attacked the human. Wittendon regained his sword by kicking it into the air as Sarak had taught him to do and then the rest of the council got up, several running at the prince.

  Sadora stood and from her fingers, she shot a burst of light that shattered against the walls in a blinding whiteness. Everyone stopped and when they did, the solid stone floor turned to thick tar beneath their feet. No one could move. No one except Sadora. Her fur thickened and grew—deep rust that ran down her back and arms, her back broad and strong, her fingers like arrows. Her eyes were a shiny copper, her teeth long, narrow, and sharp as iron nails.

  The cat, Wittendon realized, was also free, though she chose not to move, instead carefully cleaning each pad of her foot as though politely trying not to notice the others’ entrapment.

  Sadora walked freely through the room on all four of her limbs. “Is it,” Sadora asked, “comfortable to be stuck, unable to attack, unable to move freely in the way you feel you should?”

  No one spoke.

  “I understand the feeling,” she said calmly, rising onto two legs. “I feel it much more clearly than many of you can understand. The purpose of this council, of this rebellion, is to allow eac
h of us a level of freedom, of progression.” She looked at each face, pausing to stare for a long time at Wittendon. “If we would like to succeed, we have to be able to move. And if we want to move, we have to find solutions, preferably ones that do not involve gutting each other.”

  Sadora released the floor, which returned to stone. The members of the council fidgeted, sheathing their weapons and returning to their chairs except for the two Veranderen who remained near the door. Wittendon stood, his sword lowered, but still unsheathed.

  Sadora slipped back into her flesh form like a woman taking off her shoes. At last Sadora’s gaze settled on Ellza, who looked back through narrow slits of eyes. “You must let him go,” the feline said.

  To keep him here, would serve but brief,

  to this great cause to bring relief.

  “Nice rhyme,” Wittendon said.

  “Nice repartee,” Ellza replied.

  “Oh, good Grey,” Sadora said. Ellza and Wittendon both gave her a strange look. “What?” she said. “I can make things rhyme, too. Anyway, I believe that what your new friend means,” Sadora said, turning to Wittendon, “is that if we cannot trust you, all may well be lost anyway.”

  “Besides,” Ellza said, forsaking her rhyme and addressing Sadora. “There is a loyalty to this cause that I suspect runs through his blood.”

  Wittendon looked at the cat quizzically, speaking to her as politely as he could manage. “How so?”

  The cat turned to the prince,

  Your father’s blood,

  But half of you.

  The other part,

  runs flower blue.

  She might as well have chanted in another language for the look Wittendon gave her.

  “It is true that if he doesn’t join us, we will certainly fail,” replied the scarred human. “But it is also true that at this point, our necks will only break in the noose if he talks.”