The Godstone

by Violette Malan

  Arlyn put the fingers of his practitioner’s hand on the latch that had taken us so much strength and trouble to close. I imagined I saw his hand shaking, but it could very easily have been me.

  “Let’s leave these children here to tend to things,” he said. “I’ve got coffee in the next Mode.”

  “Oh, coffee! Would you believe I forgot about coffee?” He hesitated. “Through there? Are you sure?”

  Arlyn managed to chuckle. “It’s the other door that’s dangerous.”

  If I had not already seen that this being was not Metenari, the ease and grace with which he crossed the room would have told me. In everything physical but his actual practice, Metenari had been no better than awkward, and more often clumsy. I wondered whether that accounted for his leaving the City so seldom. I wished I had liked the man better. I wondered why I was thinking of such irrelevant things.

  The Godstone stopped arm’s length from Arlyn and gestured at him to open the door. Smiling, Arlyn took a firmer grip on the latch. I knew that smile. He had smiled at Elva that way, and now that I thought of it, at me as well. I would have given anything in that moment to be able to stop him. He stumbled, and the Godstone took him by the arm, above the elbow, as if to steady him. I saw Arlyn take a sudden breath, almost a gasp, and I thought the being had hurt him somehow. Arlyn’s smile faded, and then grew warmer again.

  This was my moment. I moved to one side for a better angle on them. Arlyn acknowledged me with a twitch of an eyebrow. I signaled I was ready. He lifted the latch. Instantly the chaos sucked them off their feet and through the opening into the nothing that lay beyond. Arlyn did as planned, retaining his grip on the door latch while he kicked at the thing clinging to his arm. Bracing myself, I parted the hands I’d kept clasped and drew lines of power around Arlyn to steady him and strengthen his grip on the latch. At the same time, I directed energy against the Godstone, trying at once to loosen his grip and push him farther out the door. In that moment he looked at me, and I saw awareness and understanding in his eyes, and anger. Yes, and fear.

  Finally, when I thought I must stop or collapse, their hands slid apart, and Metenari’s body flew off into the nothing. I immediately reversed the flow of my power, pulling Arlyn back into the room and slamming the door shut.

  For a moment he stood with his forehead and his hands pressed against the surface of the door, his shoulders heaving as he drew in breath after breath.

  “Fenra,” he said. Without lifting his head, he reached his hand out toward me.

  Twelve

  Elvanyn

  ELVA WAS REACHING for Arlyn when Noxyn shoved him aside, almost knocking him off his feet. Arlyn still braced himself with his practitioner’s hand on the door, and when Noxyn took his free arm, Arlyn looked at him as though he didn’t know who he was.

  “Stop where you are.” The snap in Fenra’s voice would have been enough to freeze braver men than Noxyn. Elva grinned. “Let him go.”

  The apprentice whipped around, aiming a look at Fenra that was more than half sneer. “Stay out of this. You’re nothing but a third class and lucky to be that,” he said.

  “And you are an apprentice without a mentor,” she said coolly. “Metenari is gone, and I am the ranking practitioner in this room. Let Arlyn go.”

  Noxyn opened his mouth to argue, but something in Fenra’s face made him release Arlyn, who immediately sagged against the wall. The apprentice took a position Elva recognized, feet squared, hands open and rising. Fenra mirrored the stance almost exactly, rubbing her palms together slowly, deliberately. Elva put his left hand on the grip of the gun under his right arm, leaving his right hand free for his sword. Clearly Noxyn, pale with rage, intended to hurt, perhaps even fade Fenra, while she very obviously planned on stopping the apprentice without hurting him. A much dicier proposition. Elva drew his gun.

  “You tricked him,” Noxyn said, his cold eyes fixed on Fenra’s face. Elva wondered which “him” Noxyn meant. “You lured him through that door and now you will get him back.” Noxyn held his practitioner’s hand over Arlyn’s shoulder. “Or I will destroy this worthless piece of—”

  Bang!

  Elva blew smoke away from the end of his gun barrel. “Well, what do you know. They work fine here, just like at home.”

  Noxyn stared down at the spreading bloodstain on the front of his shirt, slowly pressing his practitioner’s hand against it. Fenra ran forward and caught him just as he fell against the wall, almost dragging Arlyn down with him. She tried to take hold of both of Noxyn’s hands, but he wouldn’t give her his practitioner’s hand. She touched his face, the muscles already gone slack, the eyes empty.

  “Elva . . .”

  This time Elva wasn’t exactly sure what the look on her face meant. “You couldn’t have stopped him,” he told her. “Not and be certain of saving Arlyn. Trust me, if we’d left him alive, we’d spend all our time watching our backs.”

  “Elva’s right. Nothing we said would have changed his mind.” Arlyn’s voice sounded as though he’d been screaming all night. He tried to sit down where he stood, his shoulders braced against the wall, but his knees wouldn’t unlock. Elva went to help him, but Fenra didn’t move aside to let him past. She held his gaze with hers for a moment before she glanced at Predax, standing well back with both hands pressed tight over his mouth, his eyes wide and staring.

  “Are you going to shoot that one as well?” Her voice cracked with anger.

  “No, I’m not.” Elva re-holstered his gun to prove it. “He’s not such a poisonous idiot as his schoolmate here.”

  “He’s right,” the boy said, lowering his hands. His voice was higher than usual, but steady. “I’m not. This is way over my head. I don’t want to know any more about it, I just want to get back to the City and never leave the White Court again in my life.”

  Fenra flicked her gaze back to Elva. “We can trust him,” he said. “Predax was already having second thoughts about Metenari before we ever arrived here.”

  “And he doesn’t want a shot in the heart like his friend.” Arlyn cleared his throat and pointed at Noxyn’s body with his thumb.

  “Noxyn was no friend of mine,” Predax said. The tone he used left no one in any doubt that he spoke the truth.

  “Fenra, I need to sit down.” Before Fenra could move, Elva wrapped Arlyn’s arm around his shoulder and led him slowly to the chair nearest the fireplace. He felt Arlyn trembling, and as soon as he was seated Elva covered the man’s lap with the heavy wool rug hanging over the arm of the chair.

  Arlyn sighed and rested his head against the chair’s high back, his eyes closed. “We’ll have to get the body out of here if we plan to spend the night,” he said.

  Elva glanced around to where Fenra still stood over the corpse. She hadn’t moved from her position at Noxyn’s side, not even to wipe the blood from her hand. Elva turned to her in concern. “Did the killing upset you?”

  Her face still stiff, she waved him away. “I have seen death before. I am not usually on the killing side of things, but I know all about having to remove bad tissue so that the good can live. I do not have to like it.” She looked at each of them in turn, wiping her hands on a handkerchief she pulled from a pocket of her waistcoat and then folding it carefully to dust off the sleeves of her jacket. Her hands trembled slightly, and it was obvious she was using these ordinary gestures to distance herself from the body at her feet. “I take it we are in agreement that he was bad tissue?”

  “If I may, Practitioner?” Predax took a short step forward, clearing his throat. “I think Noxyn hoped the Godstone would prefer him to Practitioner Metenari. He, my old mentor, he was ambitious, but a good man. He thought he was helping. I don’t think he would have welcomed the Godstone, if he’d known what would happen when he found it. Noxyn . . .” He shrugged. “Well, I heard them talking. Noxyn thought he could control it, even when it was obvious Metenari
couldn’t. Maybe especially because.”

  “Just curious, was he? Metenari?” Elva found it ironic that Arlyn would say that.

  “Not just curiosity, but, well, yes.” Predax blinked and looked around at them. “If you tell me where to put him, I’ll, uh . . .” Predax gestured at the body.

  “Better let me.” Elva had rarely seen anyone look so relieved. He’s the one who’s never seen death before, he thought.

  “Take him all the way outside, if you would,” Fenra said. “Terith is not keen on dead bodies either.”

  Elva suddenly felt an overwhelming reluctance to leave Fenra with that look still on her face, but he shook it off and bent to grab the corpse by the ankles. “Hold the trapdoor for me, Predax.” He pulled the body over to the opening, and saved himself some trouble by pushing it through onto the hard-packed dirt of the floor below. Predax put his free hand over his mouth and turned away. Elva touched him on the shoulder and waited until the boy relaxed before turning to climb down the ladder. The horses snorted and shifted themselves to the other side of the stable. Though Terith moved with the others, he never took his eyes off the body.

  “Sorry, Terith,” Elva said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Next time I’ll call out first.” Elva didn’t know what surprised him more, that he meant what he’d said, or that Terith seemed to understand him.

  The warmth and the light of the early summer evening startled him. He felt like hours had passed. Birds still sang. The sun was just sinking behind the hills. The distant trees had leafed out, but the foliage wasn’t the dense canopy it would be later in the season. Elva dragged the body around to the far side of the tower and left it, taking his time to walk back round to the door. It felt odd just to leave it. At home—in the New Zone, he meant—he’d be complaining about wasting time digging a grave, but he’d be digging it. He should have asked Fenra if she had any corpse packets with her; most practitioners traveled with a couple. He’d wished for one often enough when he’d had a shovel in his hands. Just sprinkle the body thoroughly, say a few words of comfort to the bereaved, and walk away. Sunlight did the rest, though some swore by rain. In some ways it was better to be here.

  * * *

  Arlyn

  “I have never seen you like this. You are almost glowing with energy.”

  The woman sounds worried, and looks exhausted, so I take care to stay sitting down and breathing deeply.

  Fenra was smarter and more skilled than she let people know. As soon as I had that thought, I stifled it, before he could hear it and get ideas.

  “I feel so light,” I say. “I didn’t realize just how much this was all weighing on me. How relieved I’d be once it finally ended.”

  “Do Jordy and Konne know where we are?” I asked Predax, getting the question out before I could be stopped.

  “No sir, not exactly. Practitioner Metenari felt the fewer who knew exactly what was going on the better.” Predax starts at the sound of Elva’s feet on the ladder and looks away as Elva pulls himself through the opening. Clearly Predax doesn’t even want to think about what Elva has been doing. I might be able to use that.

  “I should set wards.” The woman, hands on her knees, pushes herself to her feet.

  “Is that necessary?” I ask her. “What could possibly be a danger to me here?”

  “If we plan to stay overnight it is.” She looks at me sideways. “We are far from the Road, and horseflesh is a great temptation, even when indoors.” She looks straight at me, frowns.

  “Of course, naturally,” I say.

  Listen, watch, listen, I said to myself, hoping somehow that Fenra would hear me—and that he wouldn’t know I was thinking at her.

  “Which means I’d better go too.” Elva rises to his feet, checks his guns, his sword. “Wouldn’t do for some varmint to get her before the wards are set.”

  I turn my attention inward. What is he trying to say?

  * * *

  Fenra

  “Arlyn feels . . . different.” I shivered, though the air still held the sun’s warmth. My eyes automatically scanned the ground around me for loose rocks, old seedpods or pinecones, and stray twigs. I did not know how much I wanted Elva to disagree with me until he did not answer.

  “He’s been through a lot,” Elva pointed out finally. “Not a surprise he’s so shaken.”

  I breathed on a handful of twigs and set them down in pairs, crossed over each other. “Do you know the names of Metenari’s junior apprentices?” I asked him.

  “Of course I do,” he said. “I’ve met them often enough in the last few days. He was always sending them on errands around the Court.”

  “I did not,” I pointed out. “I did not even know Predax’s name until you used it.” I looked at him over my shoulder, my practitioner’s hand hovering over a likely anchor rock. “When do you suppose Arlyn heard them?”

  “Maybe when they were using him to search the vault?”

  I hesitated. Arlyn had been very weak, close to death, but after all, if he had heard the names even once . . . practitioners had remarkable memories. I would have felt much better, however, if Elva had sounded more confident, and if the icy spot in my belly would go away. “So when he asks Predax whether Jordy and Konne know where we are, it is only to learn whether they can come after us? Why would that matter?”

  He waited too long to answer. I set down the final pinecone before turning to him. “What is it you do not want to say?”

  “I watched Metenari say and do things that only Xandra would have said or done. And now you’re telling me that Arlyn is showing the same symptoms?”

  “If I am right, if he knows things he should not know—”

  “That doesn’t make him Metenari,” Elva interrupted me. “It isn’t Metenari that we know can jump into a body. It’s Xandra.”

  “You mean the Godstone.”

  “The Godstone thought it was Xandra. I don’t know, maybe it was. All I know is Arlyn isn’t—wasn’t—much like my old friend Xandra, but the new Metenari was. And now . . .”

  “Now what?”

  Only long practice of disciplining my physical reactions saved me from jumping or even squeaking aloud at the voice from behind me. Elva apparently had the same kind of experience. I straightened slowly and dusted my hands off on my trousers before answering Arlyn.

  “Fenra was just saying that now’s a good time, now that the danger is passed, for her to return to the outer Modes, and I’m trying to convince her that a lady of her skills would be very useful back home.”

  “Home? You’re going back there? It’s home to you now?”

  “Well, yes.” Elva leaned against the stone wall, arms crossed. “I’ve been living there longer than I ever lived here. Except for you, there’s nothing left here for me. And you can always come to visit me.”

  “And how is it, precisely, that I’m to manage that when I have no power and can’t operate the forrans?” Arlyn smiled and my heart grew cold. “You’d better leave Fenra here with me, don’t you think?”

  Elva’s lips parted, but I could see his mouth was empty of words. “I expect he thinks of the forran in the doorway of your vault, the one that opens the dimensional gate—”

  “When someone tries to open the vault.” Arlyn nodded. “And how am I to do that without you, Fenra? Can you explain that? Do I convince one of the other practitioners to lend me their power? Do I give them access to my pattern? Do I reveal who I am?” He looked from me to Elva and back again. “Or is it that I’ve already done so?”

  I do not know what look appeared on our faces, but I was totally unprepared for his sudden laughter.

  “Oh, you should see your faces.” He scrubbed at his face with both hands, and the smile I saw when he lowered them slowed my heart rate. I knew that smile. It was Arlyn’s.

  “Yes,” he said, grinning. “I’m the same Arlyn that you�
�ve known all these years. And also, as Elva seems to have guessed, I’m not that same Arlyn anymore. But it isn’t what you fear—stop touching your gun, Elva. The Godstone went into the chaos with Metenari. What jumped from him to me was the part of me the stone stole in the moment I contained it. That part of me that was my, my fire, my . . . my joy of life.” He smiled at me in particular, and my heart thudded heavily. “Perhaps even my power.”

  “And now it’s back?” I confess that the muscles in my back eased. Arlyn’s regaining the parts of himself he had left behind with the Godstone—especially if that included his power—would explain everything that concerned Elva.

  “It’s early to be sure, but yes, at least I think so.” He lowered his eyes and looked away, but he did not seem uncertain to me, he seemed self-satisfied and clever.

  “Then there really can’t be any reason for Fenra not to come with me—unless, of course, she doesn’t want to.” Elva shifted over until he was standing closer to Arlyn than to me. I hoped he had no thoughts of protecting me.

  I gave Elva back a smile as good as the one he gave me. I did not know if he was serious, or what my answer might be if he were. “I have a responsibility to the people of the village. I will have to think more before I can make such a decision.” I thrust my hands into the pockets of my trousers. Now if the warmth could only stop them from trembling. I needed sleep.

  Arlyn clapped his hands together. “The brain needs fuel and rest if there’s going to be all this thinking going on. I could use some planning time, myself. I suggest we all go back inside before the rain begins, and see what there is to eat.”