The Godstone

by Violette Malan

  She let one of Arlyn’s wrists go, and pulled the locket she wore out of her shirt with her left hand. It seemed impossible, but like the floor, and her hand for that matter, it was clean, without any trace of blood. She looked at him, back at Arlyn on the floor, and then back up at him, her lips very slightly parted. He understood. With Arlyn unconscious she couldn’t hold on to both of them and the locket at the same time.

  “Take him,” he said. “Go.”

  “I’ll come back for you.”

  “I’ll be here.” He turned away so as not to see her go. He drew both guns and took up position in the doorway. The enemy would be coming up from his right. He’d see them before they saw him.

  He knew this tower well—he’d been a guard in the White Court most of his life before the exile—and the echoes told him they were at least two levels away, approaching slowly. He could hear the sound of boots, and voices, and then, the soft click of a pistol being cocked. With his revolvers he had the range on them, so he’d aim high. Avoid killing when you can, is what he’d always told his deputies. He’d have to hope that the range of forrans hadn’t improved.

  Shadows appeared against the curve of the staircase wall. One more turn and they would be in sight.

  * * *

  Fenra

  I could not hurry. Healing takes its own time, always. But I knew that every minute I spent on my knees in Medlyn’s vault, holding Arlyn’s wrists in my hands, was a minute of danger for Elva. If he was right, and the Godstone rode Metenari—a possibility Arlyn had never mentioned—then anything could happen. I began to hum, and to sing under my breath, in part to support the forrans, and in part to help myself relax.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the cuts on Arlyn’s wrists closed and disappeared, leaving only the old marks I had never been able to erase. I had returned most of his blood to him while we were still in his workroom, but until the cuts closed I could not let go of him lest the blood pour out again. Now I was able to set him down on the well-padded sofa, and cover him with a throw woven from silk and linen. I wondered why my old mentor would have had such an item here, but I chased that thought away. I had to concentrate.

  Most of his blood wasn’t all of it, and I had to find a more mundane way to replace what was still missing. Using real liquids was fastest and least tiring. Most people do not realize it, but practice is, more often than not, only a part of healing—albeit a large part. The rest is common sense and everyday medicines. I thought I had seen . . . yes, a pitcher and a small tray holding three glasses sat on a table in the corner. If it had ever held liquid, I should be able to call it back again. It’s the nature of jugs to hold liquids, and the nature of liquids to be held by jugs. I took a deep breath and forced myself to let go of Arlyn entirely.

  The jug was not only already full, it was cool to the touch. And if I needed any further evidence of the breadth of Medlyn’s practice, the contents smelled like juice, not water or wine. I dipped the tip of a finger into it and tasted. Vegetables, root vegetables to be precise. Carrots, parsnips, and yes, beets. No parsley, salt, celery, nothing to help the flavor. I made a face. Well, I was not the one who had to drink it. I grabbed the jug and a glass and took them to Arlyn.

  I propped Arlyn up on the arm of the sofa, using two soft pillows and the folded lap rug. His eyes opened, just slits, but I thought I could see some recognition there. “Drink this,” I said, hoping that he was conscious enough to help me. Pouring liquids into the mouth of an unconscious person is trickier than most people think. I set the edge of the cup against Arlyn’s bottom lip and tilted it slightly. I thought about the many hundreds of times I had done this, with children, with adults old and young, even on occasion with animals, though I rarely used a glass for them.

  Arlyn’s lips moved and he managed to swallow most of what was in the glass without spilling too much down the front of his shirt. I would need to find him clean clothes, first thing.

  No. First I had to go back for Elva. I fed Arlyn another two glasses of juice, as much as I thought his stomach could take at one time. I pulled up his left eyelid and examined the whites of his eyes and the color of the lid’s underside. I pulled down his lower lip and examined his gums, and I pressed the palm of his hand with my thumb and watched how long it took for the color to return. The results of my practice were better than I had hoped. I could do no more without draining the strength I would need to retrieve Elva.

  “Fenra.”

  I took Arlyn’s groping hand in mine. “You do not need to tell me Metenari has the Godstone. We saw.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So I should hope. I hope you have learned your lesson and will give your word never to do such a thing again.”

  The shadow of a smile passed over his face. “I promise.”

  “Good. Now if you think you can rest here quietly, without trying to get up, or anything else as foolish, I have to go—” Arlyn’s grip tightened, but before he could say anything, I continued. “I must go back for Elva,” I told him. “He held the door for us, when I could not bring you both at once.”

  “Help me sit up, and get me a pistol. Just in case.”

  “No one can get here without me,” I said, though I helped him anyway. He would do better sitting up.

  “It’s not impossible for someone to overpower you, force you to bring them here,” he told me when I had him sitting up.

  I opened my mouth, but closed it without speaking, shaking my head. I did not have time to argue. I pulled two of the pistols out of the display on the wall above the worktable. There wasn’t much chance of coming across weapons like these in the outer Modes, but I remembered how they worked and brought Arlyn shot and powder as well as the guns. As soon as he had them in his hands, he could see them, as he had previously seen the book he was holding. While he loaded and charged the first pistol, I looked into a walnut clothes press standing against the opposite wall from the gun display, just in case. My clothes were filthy.

  There were clothes in the press, but oddly there appeared to be only one set. I picked up the shirt and held it against myself. Just my size. I pulled off my boots, tossed them to one side, and pushed down my trousers.

  “That’s very interesting,” Arlyn said.

  “You’ve seen me change my clothes before,” I said, pulling on the new trousers and buttoning up the flies. It was a pleasure to be wearing something clean.

  “But I’ve never seen you without practitioners’ colors.”

  I stopped and looked down, holding my hands up at shoulder height as I twisted to see myself from all angles. The trousers were a deep rich blue, cut quite narrow, with a small strap across the instep to hold them in place over socks of the same color. I inspected the other clothing. The brocaded waistcoat was white, as was the shirt, the cravat brilliant rose, the jacket a green so dark as to be almost black. And the jacket itself hung swallow-tailed to the knees, held shut at the waist with a single button, with lapels and tails cut so the waistcoat and trousers were revealed. I pulled on the pair of black, medium-heeled shoes that came with my clothing and put on the wide-brimmed hat with a tilt to the left. Elva would have approved.

  “Would have been better if the shoes matched the socks,” I said, standing up and stamping my feet to set the heels. I tied my cravat and straightened the set of my waistcoat. I shrugged into the coat and examined myself again. “The colors still haven’t changed.”

  “Might not mean anything. We’ve already established things work differently in this vault. Who knows what colors you’ll be wearing once you’re back in the real world.”

  “Wait,” I said, with the locket in my hand, “Why didn’t Elva’s ‘revolver’ change?”

  Arlyn glanced up at me as he tamped down the ball in the second gun. “It’s not from this dimension,” he said. “Artifacts don’t change, remember?”

  That wasn’t exactly what he had said, but I
decided there would be plenty of time to ask questions once I retrieved Elva. I opened the locket.

  I was a little disappointed when I found Medlyn’s old office empty. I would have liked a chance to explain to the new occupant—and maybe apologize. On the other hand, would she believe anything I told her? As it was, the sun was already well up, and shopkeepers, artisans, and school children would already be out, beginning their daily work. I had to dodge several other practitioners—luckily no one who knew me—before I reached the Singing Tower. Guards and watchers had not been replaced. My stomach sinking, I ran up the stairs as quietly as I could, slowing as I got closer to the door to Arlyn’s workroom.

  There was blood on the stairs.

  I flung open the door, and found the room empty. No Elva. No one left here to capture me. So Elva had not given me away.

  Either that, or he was dead.

  * * *

  Elvanyn

  “Tell me again why I shouldn’t hang you.”

  The guard captain’s uniform resembled Elva’s old one in color only, a royal blue cropped jacket instead of tabard, gray trousers instead of breeches. Elva sat as much at ease as he could, pretending that he wasn’t being held in his chair by some forran. Metenari watched from behind his desk. Elva wondered why he wasn’t conducting the interrogation himself.

  “What were you doing in that room?”

  “Look, I’m just here for the lady. She sends me to go look at a room, I go. I’m a hired gun, as we say where I’m from. I’ve got no dog in this fight. Hire me, send me on my way, it’s all the same to me.” He grinned. “Besides, did I kill any of your boys? No, I did not. And why? Because I’ve got—”

  “No dog in the fight, yes, you’ve said that already. If that’s so, why did you attack my men?”

  “Hey, now listen, that was self defense. If they hadn’t shot at me first, I’d have come along quietly. But a man has to defend himself.”

  “So the lady, as you call her, hired you?”

  Elva leaned further back, testing the limits of the forrans that bound him. “Where I’m from a gentleman helps a lady when she’s in trouble. I didn’t like the look of that guy with her.”

  “Where you’re from . . . ?” Fenra’s old classmate straightened in his chair.

  “The Dundalk Territories.” Elva looked Metenari up and down. The practitioner’s shoulders were further back, his posture straighter, and Elva could have sworn the man was slimmer. His head cocked to one side, he turned one of Elva’s revolvers over in his hands, probing the mechanism with the tips of his fingers, in a way that tugged at Elva’s memory. He’d never seen Metenari handle a gun before, so why should it seem familiar?

  “What kind of pistol is this?” The captain had the other revolver in his hand. There was nothing but plain curiosity in his voice.

  Elva shrugged, leaned forward until the forrans stopped him. “Just a regular gun. A Pope 45, long barrel, if you want to get picky. A top quality gun.”

  “Why didn’t it change, now that it’s in a different Mode?” Metenari sounded as if he was asking himself.

  “I don’t know what you mean. Why should it change?” Elva decided to answer as if the question had been meant for him.

  Metenari stood up and came around the table, approaching Elva from the right, still holding the revolver in his hands. He spun the cylinder, watching it move with his eyebrows raised. When the cylinder stopped, he pulled back on the hammer and pointed the gun at Elva. From this distance even a blind man would hit him. Elva smiled. In the heat of the moment, he hadn’t counted his shots. The question was, had he fired six shots from this gun, or only five?

  Shot with my own gun. Lucky thing his deputies would never know about this. He could hear Lugg laughing now.

  “I could shoot you,” Metenari said. There was nothing pompous about the practitioner now. His face was cold, calculating.

  “You could.” Elva was pleased at how steady his voice sounded. “But if you wanted me dead, you’d have killed me already.”

  Without any change to his expression, Metenari pulled the trigger. Elva blinked. He heard a gasp behind him, but he couldn’t turn to see which of the apprentices it was. The gun was empty after all. He let his breath out slowly, smothering another smile. Lucky they didn’t know how to reload, even though they had the gun belts.

  Metenari rubbed at his left temple with the heel of his hand, face scrunched up as if in pain—or as if there was an itch inside that he couldn’t reach. Finally, still holding the gun, he lowered his hands and held them out in front of him, brows drawn together, perplexed. Still holding his hands out, he looked at Elva, head tilted to one side. A glint sparkled in his eyes.

  “Do you know me?”

  “I met you the other day. You went to magician’s school with Fenra.” He deliberately used the Dundalk word for practitioner.

  “But you knew me before that?”

  “How could I?”

  “Yes, of course, how could you.” Metenari set the gun down and Elva relaxed. The practitioner clasped his hands together and tapped his lips with his index fingers. Elva suddenly felt cold, his skin crawling under his clothes. He knew that gesture, knew it very well. He’d seen it a thousand times. But it hadn’t been Santaron Metenari he’d seen doing it. Could this be an effect of the Godstone?

  “Look,” he said, doing his best to keep both fear and suspicion out of his voice. “It’s like Fenra told you. She thought that Arlyn fella was her friend. I don’t know what he was trying to get out of his great-grandad’s hidey hole, but he took advantage of her to get at it.”

  “You became her champion very quickly.”

  “She reminds me of my sister. Look, all I want is to take the lady and go home. You can do that, can’t you? Send us back?”

  “It seems we have a somewhat common goal. You would like to rescue Fenra Lowens, I would like to find Arlyn Albainil. You believe where we find one, we will find the other. So, we will work together.”

  “Does this mean I’m on the payroll?”

  “You may have a position in the guard—Captain?”

  The other man shrugged. “It’s true he didn’t kill anyone when he could have. There’s no question of his skills. If the rest of the men have a different opinion,” he turned to look at Elva, his eyes steely cold, “you’ll just have to deal with that yourself.”

  “I’m a sheriff where I come from,” he said. “I know how things are.”

  “One more thing.” The smile on Metenari’s face was difficult to see. “Do you know where Arlyn Albainil is?”

  “What, we’re back to that? I told you, I was up in the tower looking for them when your boys showed up and started shooting.”

  * * *

  Fenra

  All the blood was on the stairs outside of the workroom. Which meant that Elva might still be alive. I began to relax. If he was free, where would he be? We had agreed to meet in the market by the East Bridge if we were separated. There wasn’t much hope he would be there, but I had nowhere else to look. I had managed to pick up some dust on the sleeve of my coat, and I froze with my hand in the air before brushing it off. My clothes had not changed. They were still what they had been in Medlyn’s vault—which raised still more questions about my old mentor that I had no time to explore.

  I brushed off the dust and, feeling a little more confident, went back down the stairs and out into the street. On my way to the bridge, two practitioners I did not recognize walked right past me, only an arm’s length away, without even looking at me. At first I was warmly pleased at how well my disguise was working. But slowly, as still more people passed me by without seeing me—not even those who pushed past—I began to feel frightened, and yes, a little resentful. Since I had become a practitioner, I had always been deferred to. What a difference clothing made.

  Of course, my clothes would change the moment I
crossed into another Mode. At least I thought so. I discovered I was not eager to find out.

  I was careful to maintain my pace as I neared the bridge. The gates there had been open for several hours, and tradespeople had already set up their booths of food and other goods that weren’t grown or made within the White Court. The market had started years before, when an enterprising spice merchant had set up tables against the wall of the old lecture hall. Soon others came, and tables and stalls spread into the space between the hall and the bridge.

  I strolled casually across the small square, watching for Elva, staying out of the way of people carrying things on their shoulders, and occasionally stopping to examine the merchandise on display. I made a mental note of the location of the booth selling meat pies and dried fruits. With luck I would be able to come back and buy some. As I looked ahead, a group of people in the unmistakable blue uniforms of the White Court Guard came out of the alley opposite.

  My path would take me right past them, but I counted on the anonymity of my clothing to keep me unnoticed, though I was acutely aware that, unlike everyone else around me, I carried no marketing basket. A familiar movement caught my eye, and I saw Elva among the guard. My heart leaped to my throat, but I kept walking. He appeared to be armed, with his own pistols and what looked like his own sword. He was listening with a smile to something one of the other guards was telling him. I turned my face away, examining a selection of preserved fruits, and walked into the alley the guards had just exited, heart pounding.

  He was not a prisoner. Not armed, in uniform, and walking about so freely—though how free he truly was surrounded by guards I could not say. Were they using him as bait?

  I also had to consider another, less palatable possibility. Elvanyn might have switched sides. I could not—I did not want to believe it. I had only known him for a short time, but I had come to depend on him, on his humor and on what I had taken to be his sense of honor. But . . . did he hate Arlyn so much? I pulled the locket out of my shirt, and in the first dark corner, when I was sure no one was looking, I opened it.