The Godstone

by Violette Malan

  “Is there something I can do for you?” A weird thought occurred. “Are you hurt? Do you need healing?” How long had it been trying to attract my attention? Years?

  “Yes.”

  Then it opened its eyes. “Come,” it said, holding out a hand large enough for me to step onto.

  I could hear my heart thumping in my ears, feel it hammer in my chest. “You want me to come with you?” I repeated.

  “Be with me, join me.” It held out both hands.

  But I was already a part of it, isn’t that what it had said? If I went—or joined—would I come back? What about Elva? I pushed that thought away.

  “Safe,” it said. “Both. Come.”

  It said it was injured. I had offered to help, to heal it. I had to at least try.

  “Only way,” it said, once again not quite answering a question I had not quite asked.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to regain control over the beating of my heart. I knew that I would help it. I did not understand what was happening, and this might be a way to find out.

  “Yes!” it said, with obvious enthusiasm.

  Licking my lips, I approached it with my hands held out. Its form became more solid and I lay both hands on the index finger of its practitioner’s hand. I blacked out again.

  When I came to, I was sitting cross-legged with my hands resting on my knees. I sat on the same beach, but it wasn’t the same. A blue sky dotted with a few white clouds arched overhead, seagulls called to each other, and the sun was warm on my face.

  “Can you hear me better now?”

  I blinked, and it was sitting cross-legged in front of me. Now there were feathers and tendrils of seaweed mixed into its body of pebbles and sand and shell. It was smaller, though still much larger than I, and less daunting. The bits and scraps that made it up still moved, but smoothly, calmly.

  “I can,” I finally managed to croak. I cleared my throat. “How?”

  “This is real space, not the space between. At first, I could only reach you there. Once there, here becomes easier.”

  If you say so, I thought. “What it is you need?” I asked. I could see no injury.

  “I am the World,” it said.

  “You . . .” I swallowed. “You are the world. Our world.” I wanted to ask about the other dimension, but this wasn’t the time. “Everything, the Modes, the people, this place,” I waved around me, “are all parts of you?”

  “Everything you experience, even yourself, even Elva.”

  Everything around me tilted and began to spin. For a moment I thought I would faint, and I put my hands down on the pebbles to prop myself up. I took several deep breaths, waiting until everything settled down again. I was speaking with the world of which I myself was a tiny part. So small, so unimportant that it had never bothered to bring itself to my notice before.

  What could it want from me?

  “I must be made whole.”

  A shiver swept through the being, as if it would crumble apart, and for the first time I feared for it. I reached out, but before I could touch it the shivering stopped, and every bit of debris settled back into place. I rubbed at my face. It waited until I looked up to continue with its explanation, and though its language skills had improved, I still could not fully believe what I was hearing.

  “Let me see if I understand you,” I said. It was not impatient with me, yet I felt a sense of urgency. “You are the incarnation—if that’s not too pointed a word—of the world I live in.”

  “Yes, an incarnation. But not where you live. You are a part of me. Every who, every where, every when, all are parts.”

  My stomach gurgled with nausea. “Everything that exists?”

  “Yes. You know healing. You know how the body works. Many parts make the whole.”

  A basic principle of the practice. The whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Like a practitioner’s pattern.

  The being nodded. “Yes. You are the pattern. Practitioners are. My pattern.”

  I waited for it to say something more and then realized that the last two statements were in fact one. “We are your pattern?” It nodded again. “We are what you use to make forrans for the world—for yourself?”

  “You travel through me, Mode to Mode, and I grow, I heal, I move. Injured now. I grow weaker and weaker. You, my children, no longer strengthen the pattern. I no longer heal and grow.”

  “The White Court,” I said. “Most practitioners do not leave it anymore. Now only apprentices travel, and even then as little as possible. You need practitioners to travel again.”

  “Yes,” it agreed. “But there is more.”

  The Godstone. “Is it the Godstone? Is it injuring you?”

  “Yes. No. Yes.”

  That was helpful.

  It was apparent that the being understood even unvoiced sarcasm. “Yes, it is Godstone. No, it is not injuring me. It is the injury.”

  I held my forehead between my palms, speechless as the meaning of the words suddenly struck me. “The Godstone’s a part of you like everything else. When Xandra Albainil thought he made it, he really tore it from you.” When I looked up, I was relieved to see the being had shut its eyes. “Trying to stabilize the Modes, is that injuring you?”

  “Yes. Must be movement, growth, change. Practitioners have the power to maintain, to clean, to fix, to heal.”

  “We’re the forrans that keep you healthy.” I nodded again. “That’s why we can see the Modes. When Xandra broke off the Godstone piece, and tried to stop the Modes from changing . . . you have been ill, all this time?”

  “Since the Godstone’s time. Yes.”

  How horrible. All my life the world had been injured, suffering, and I had not even noticed.

  “You noticed. You did not understand. Bring all of me here.”

  “You want me to bring the Godstone here? To, uh, re-attach it?”

  “Bring it here. I will do the rest.”

  “How do I get it here?” I was not even sure I knew how I had arrived here myself.

  “You know. Take its power.”

  “That I most definitely do not know how to do.”

  “Yes. You do know. Make it low.”

  Sixteen

  Elvanyn

  HOW DID YOU get here?”

  Elva spun around, both guns out and cocked. The Godstone stood at the near end of the bridge, one foot braced on the parapet, leaning forward over its knee. It looked more like Xandra now, leaner, sharper of feature and with darker hair than the Arlyn he’d first met with Fenra. Even the mouth was flatter, as if it should have been smiling, but wasn’t.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you really here?”

  “Don’t you see me?”

  “You were swallowed by the chaos beyond the door, you and that little third-class girl.” The Godstone straightened and looked around. “Is she here too? I could use her.”

  “I don’t know where she is.” Elva had never been happier to tell the truth. At least the hollow empty space in his chest distracted him from his fear. “I’m not even sure I know where I am.”

  The timbers under his feet shivered. He looked down but didn’t see anything unusual. The river was quiet.

  “Didn’t see that, did you? Or did you?”

  “See what? I felt a little tremor, that’s all.”

  “Ah, that’s interesting.” Just for a second Elva saw an expression he’d seen a lot in the old days, Xandra wondering about something. Then it was gone. “The Mode just changed,” it said. “You know what I mean, even if you can’t see it.”

  Elva glanced around, but no, everything looked just the same as it had moments before.

  “Did you do it?” he asked.

  “Well, yes, in a manner of speaking.” Elva winced. He’d never seen that too
thy smile before, and with luck he’d never see it again. “At least I started it all going.”

  “And is it working?” Elva walked toward the Godstone. He wasn’t any safer further away, and closer he’d have a better chance of killing it before it could move. “What you wanted to do. Is everything becoming the same now?”

  All expression left its face suddenly, and just as suddenly the teeth gritted in anger. “You don’t understand anything about it. You wouldn’t even know what questions to ask.”

  Elva hoped his smile didn’t look as fake as it felt. “I never did. That’s what you liked most about me.” Absolutely true, Elva realized as he followed the Godstone off the bridge across a cobbled yard and into the inn’s wide main room. Xandra had been too suspicious of his fellow practitioners. At least he could be sure Elva wasn’t trying to steal any ideas.

  “Well, I can ask this question, at least. What happens next?”

  The Godstone stood in front of the fireplace in the west wall of the room, staring down into the flames. What could it see in there? “You see? A stupid question. What do you think I’ll do? Continue, of course, finish the experiment.”

  “But if it’s out of your control—”

  It took a step toward him, the fireplace poker suddenly in its practitioner’s hand, raised in a white-knuckled fist. “Who said that? Who told you that? Was it that third-class girl? Is she here too? What do you know? Tell me!” It spun around and flung the poker across the room, narrowly missing a servant girl who dropped the tray of dishes she carried into the room.

  Elva jerked his head at her, though she didn’t need any encouragement to run, and drew his left-hand pistol, aiming for the back of the Godstone’s head.

  “Hold still a minute, would you?”

  * * *

  Fenra

  At first I could see nothing, and I feared I had somehow lost my sight between the beach where I spoke with the World and this new place. A chill breeze touched my cheek, lifting the hair that had slipped free from my braid. At this touch all my senses snapped awake. Above me the sky full of stars, around me the sounds of the wind in trees and bushes, an owl hooting nearby, the rustle of small animals through grass and hedges. The air smelled of recent rain, and the sound of moving water was beneath my feet.

  A bridge. I stood on a bridge. Though made from timbers, and not the stone I expected, I knew it for the bridge over the Daura that Elva and I had tried to reach together. I had no doubt that he had arrived without me; the World had said he was safe. It had diverted only me. But what had happened to him in the meantime? How long had I been on the beach? Hours? Days? I took myself firmly in hand. I had been given my instructions, and I could not allow thoughts of Elva to distract me.

  Even so, I kept thinking of the time he insisted that he stay behind in Medlyn’s old office. He had wanted to make sure that the guard, Rontin, was well, and would not be punished for failing in her duty by allowing us to escape. I had told him then we had larger concerns, and he had told me there were no larger concerns.

  I pressed the palms of my hands together and felt for the connection I had with Arlyn. After a moment it led me toward the bank of the river on my left. Despite the trees, there remained sufficient light for me to make out the dark outline of buildings with here and there the soft light of lamps or candles showing through cracks in the shutters. Walking as softly as I could on the uneven timbers, I reached the end of the bridge and stepped off onto a roughly cobbled stretch of roadway. There were buildings on both sides, but the larger one on the right, where the lights were, looked most like an inn. In the City, even in a town, I would have expected a lamp at the entrance, but no one here would waste an outside light after the household had gone to bed. The silence told me that the night was well advanced. Earlier, and there would have been people still in the common room.

  This inn was not on the Road, though if I followed the Daura downstream it would bring me there. It seemed that all of Xandra’s hidey-holes were off the Road.

  I approached the building, humming softly in the back of my throat to calm any animal within hearing. I walked through the stableyard without disturbing the horses, the dog, or the boy asleep on a pallet near the wall under a pile of old horse blankets. I needed to find Arlyn and get him out of the inn, into some open space where there would be less danger to others, and I could be in direct contact with the World. It struck me that my forrans had always worked better when I was standing on earth. In the village I was often barefoot. I would have to remember that if I had a future to remember it in.

  I pushed the main door open and stopped in the doorway of the first room, my hand lightly on the latch. I could smell gunpowder. Someone had fired a gun nearby, and not too long before. At what stage was this Mode? Would there be guns? Muskets were known in all but the outermost Modes, but this did not smell like that kind of powder to me. There was a more metallic tang to the odor.

  Elva, I said to myself. He has shot someone. Perhaps more than once.

  * * *

  Arlyn

  As soon as the bullet hit me I was completely myself again, as though the pain and the heat drove him out. I wish I’d known that before. My knees hit the wooden floor with a crack and I thought, That’s going to be a bad bruise, and just before I stopped having any thoughts at all, I felt familiar hands on my shoulders, heard a familiar voice.

  “What have you done?” Fenra. That was Fenra.

  “I shot him. I should have done it ages ago. Hey, don’t fix him!”

  “Really? A bullet will only kill Arlyn, remember? Only the body.” I’d heard Fenra use that tone before. Nice it was being aimed at someone else for a change. “It will free the Godstone, unharmed and capable of transiting to someone else.”

  “The someone else being you, since you’re the only practitioner here? I’ll just point out that you weren’t here when I pulled the trigger and I had no reason to think you would be.” The tension drained out of his voice. He’d been so afraid he had lost her, I realized, and that fear had turned to relief, and the relief to anger. “Where were you?”

  Would she answer him? Had she heard the question?

  “I met the World.” I heard the truth in her voice. I didn’t understand it, but I heard it.

  “You’d better explain,” Elva said.

  Good idea, I thought. I blinked. I could see again. I wasn’t alone. I could feel him now, but he was stunned.

  “This—” her hand left my shoulder to gesture, “—all of this is a living being, the City, the Road, the Modes, all parts of its body.”

  “And we’re the fleas?” Elva. Skepticism.

  “Not at all. We are like blood, circulating through the body, moving needed elements from place to place. Arlyn did not create the Godstone, as he believed—”

  My ears perk(ed) up a little here.

  “He broke off a piece of the World.”

  “That’s why it can affect the Modes?”

  “Exactly, and the World wants it back. Needs it back, in fact, to return to perfect health. Without it, it is going to die. If it dies, we die with it.”

  “Not true.” Wasn’t me speaking. I didn’t know. Might be so, or not. More wrong than I thought, then. “I’m not a part of anything,” I say. “What are you trying to do? It wasn’t the world you spoke to, silly girl. It’s the Maker of the world.”

  “No,” I said. “Listen to her.” I struggled and Fenra helped me sit up. “This is part of her special connection. She knows.”

  I wave this away. “What difference does it make?” I ask. “Look how long it’s taken to get to the state we’re in now. How much longer do you think it would take for the thing you met to actually die?” I cough to clear my throat. I’m breathing easier now. “Generations. More. You’ll all be long gone. But I’ll still be here. I’m not a part of it!”

  I felt hot, could feel the blood in my face. N
ot my rage, though. I sighed. “Lowness will get you long before the World dies.”

  Felt Fenra looking at me. Me, not him. Careful not to meet her eyes.

  “Is that what’s happening to you? Why the body is so tired?”

  “Yes. And it’s happening to you too, apparently.”

  “If this lowness is so strong that it can affect you even when I’m here, why hasn’t it killed you before now?”

  That was my opening. “Fenra.” I tried to shrug, show my indifference. Couldn’t manage. Made sure he noticed. Weak.

  “What? She’s been keeping you alive?”

  Managed to nod. “Yes.” Explanation took too long.

  “So she’s good for something.” Now I turned to look at her. I hoped she understood. Not like I could kill myself. He reached out for her, hesitated. “She doesn’t have this lowness?”

  “Shall I shoot him again?” Elva asks. I hear a metallic click.

  “You have said it yourself,” Fenra says. I know she’s speaking to me. “I could not carry you any more than this mundane could. I am not strong enough. It must be a first-class practitioner. Like Xandra. I may have a talent for healing, but I am only a third-class practitioner.”

  “Then fix him. Fix us now.”

  * * *

  Fenra

  “Fenra, don’t do this.” Elva gripped my wrist. I knew why he protested. He believed that if I did not level Arlyn he would eventually shut down, trapping the Godstone. But the World had not given me “eventually” as an option. The World wanted him now. This might be our only chance.

  “I must keep him alive,” I said. “While he is, the World still has hope.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” The Godstone laughed. “You need me, so you have to keep me alive, even though my being alive is the last thing you need.”