The Summon Stone

by Ian Irvine

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I’ll tell you later. Off you go.”

  She went reluctantly, giving Karan anxious glances and Maigraith hostile ones. She knew there was a link between Maigraith and Llian’s hasty departure.

  “How do I know this note is true?” said Karan.

  “Are you suggesting I made it up?”

  “You’ve manipulated me before. You learned your trade from a master.”

  “I have many flaws, Karan,” said Maigraith, her agitation showing in the way she precisely enunciated each word, the only sign that she was not speaking her native tongue. “But I am not a liar.”

  “Then whoever sent the message must be.”

  “It doesn’t say Llian did it. It says he stands accused of the killing.” Maigraith gained control of herself. “You must go to him. I will look after Sulien.”

  Karan stopped dead in the middle of the track and stared at her, dumbstruck. “You never give up, do you?”

  “I know you love Llian…” Maigraith’s thin upper lip curled, clearly thinking, though I can’t imagine what you see in him. “You’ve got to race to Chanthed and you can hardly take a nine-year-old girl with you. For the sake of our fellowship as triunes, I’m prepared to put my own business aside to help you.”

  Had it been anyone else, Karan might have been tempted, but she knew Maigraith too well.

  “No thanks.” She walked off.

  “Why not?”

  Karan waited until she had reached the manor before answering. “As I learned after you forced me to steal the Mirror of Aachan, with you no obligation is ever discharged. You always want more, and more, and more.”

  “When you change your mind,” said Maigraith, “I’ll be here.”

  “Not on my land!”

  Maigraith turned and headed up the track. Karan stood at the front door, fists clenched at her sides. This had to stop. Desperately needing someone to talk to, she headed down to Rachis’s office, then remembered that she had asked him to go to Tolryme to make a final plea for Benie’s life. She had done everything she could to save him, but neither the mayor nor the judge would listen.

  Sick at heart, she trudged back to the library. “Sulien?” She wasn’t there. Karan’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Yes, Mummy?”

  The panic eased as she saw Sulien’s elfin face peering out from under the old desk in the corner. She was lying on the floor, her hair in a fan across her back, reading a book.

  “I told you to do your geography lesson,” said Karan.

  “I did.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I test you. Show me Gendrigore on the big map.”

  Without hesitation Sulien carried the library ladder to the huge wall map depicting the continent of Lauralin and the surrounding lands. She climbed to the top, stood on tiptoe and indicated a small peninsula in the tropical north.

  “It’s here.”

  “What’s the chief product of Gendrigore?” said Karan. Sulien couldn’t possibly know that.

  “Mushrooms. It’s the rainiest place in the world. The only things that grow there are grass and trees and mushrooms.”

  “Then why aren’t its chief products meat or cheese, or timber?”

  “It’s surrounded by mountains and cliffs. The people can’t get out anything that’s heavy. But dried mushrooms are light. Porters carry great packs out over the Range of Ruin. Oh, and tea leaves too.”

  “That’s enough work for today,” said Karan, impressed. “Come for a walk.”

  As they went out the back door, Sulien called, “Piffle? Piff—” Her face crumbled. She reached up and took Karan’s hand. Karan squeezed it, her heart aching for her.

  “Where are we going?” said Sulien, sniffling.

  “Is there anywhere you’d like to go?”

  “Along the river. We might see some lizards.”

  They sat on a curving granite outcrop overlooking the largely dry bed of the Ryme. The sun darted in and out of high clouds moving across the mountains from the west. Karan looked up hopefully, but they did not promise rain.

  “There’s one!” said Sulien.

  It was a couple of feet long. Sulien skidded down the outcrop and crept towards the gravel bank.

  “Careful, they bite,” said Karan.

  “Everything bites, Mummy.”

  Karan’s eyes misted as she watched her. How much longer could their time together last?

  Apart from occasional pain spikes at the top of her skull, presumably the magiz trying to break through the block but failing, there had been no sign of her in over a week. But maintaining the block and being on alert day and night was taking its toll. Karan was exhausted, mentally and physically. There was no way she could keep it up until the invasion. Not with Llian to worry about as well.

  This murder charge could not be a case of wrong time, wrong place. The evidence must have been fabricated to destroy him. Was this why Sulien’s nightmare had shown him dead?

  These were troubled times, and murdering an important, helpless old man was one of the worst of crimes. Llian’s accusers could have him tried, convicted and executed very quickly. She had to go to him right away.

  Sulien had crept to within a few yards of the lizard. The breeze ruffled her curls. Karan debated how much to tell her. The child was a worrier, and Llian’s troubles were a huge burden to put on her, though Sulien was bound to find out. She always did.

  “Sulien? Can you come here for a minute?”

  She came back and perched beside Karan. “It was eating beetles. I could see halfway down its throat – disgusting bits of legs and wings and heads, all chewed up. Yuk!” She studied Karan’s face. “Daddy’s in trouble, isn’t he?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “They’re saying he murdered old Wistan.”

  “Who’s saying that?” cried Sulien. “They’re stinking liars!”

  “Yes, they are,” said Karan. “But I don’t know what to do.”

  “We’ve got to save him. You’ve saved Daddy before, lots of times.”

  “Well, several times,” Karan conceded. “But I was younger then.”

  “I’ll help you.” Sulien jumped up. “I’m going to pack.” Karan did not move. Sulien looked down at her. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  Sulien shivered. “You’re not leaving me behind. You’re not!”

  “I’ve got to travel fast.”

  “If you leave me here, Maigraith will get me. You can’t leave me behind, you can’t. You can’t!”

  It took half an hour to calm her down, by which time Karan was more rattled than before. Her healed bones throbbed, as they often did in times of stress. She wanted hrux.

  She had a mental exercise to stave off the pangs. Karan imagined herself going to the larder and opening the little box, but closing it at once. There was only enough for one proper dose and, though it was nearly the time of year when Idlis brought more, his arrival time could vary by weeks.

  But by the time she and Sulien had eaten lunch and the table had been cleared, the pain was worse.

  “Is it really bad this time, Mummy?” said Sulien, watching her anxiously.

  “It’s not the worst—” A spasm struck her in the right thigh, where she had suffered the worst break. Karan lurched to a chair and fell into it, almost weeping. “It’s pretty bad.”

  “Why is that rotten old magiz trying to hurt you?”

  “I think she’s trying to provoke you into a reaction, using your gift.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “So you’ll reveal yourself and she can attack you. Whatever happens to me, no matter how much pain I’m in, you must not use your gift to help me.”

  “But Mummy—”

  “Promise me. No matter what.”

  “All right,” Sulien said reluctantly. “Are you going to take more of that… nasty stuff?”

  “There’s hardly any left. And Idlis—”

 
Sulien shuddered. “He scares me.”

  “The Whelm are strange,” said Karan. “But if not for Idlis and Yetchah, I would never have had you.”

  “I try to like him, but I just can’t.”

  Rachis’s cart rattled into the yard. Karan went out to help him unharness the horse. “How did it go?”

  He shook his head. “Badly. The judge is hearing six more cases caused by the drumming: another murder, two assaults and three thefts, all by decent citizens who’ve never been in trouble before. The law sees it as an epidemic to be crushed without mercy.”

  “Should I plead with him again?”

  “He isn’t seeing anyone else. He only gave me a minute. It’s hopeless, Karan. They’re going to hang Benie at two-thirty.” Rachis glanced at the angle of the sun, his old head nodding. In the bright sunlight he looked a hundred years old. “And it’s two now. Even if you galloped all the way, it’d be… over before you got there.”

  Poor Benie – guilty yet innocent – and with only thirty minutes to live. Karan could not bear to think about it. Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen. The pain was very bad now. She tried her mental exercise again but this time the pain was too strong, the longing too desperate. She had to relieve it – she would never be able to think of a plan in this state.

  She fetched the little case from the pantry and put it in her pocket – another small but necessary defiance. Twenty minutes. Twenty-five. The pain eased, as it sometimes did when release was close, but not enough.

  Thirty minutes. Karan hooked her fingers around the edge of the table. It could not be happening, not to that kindly lad she had known all his life. She imagined him crying out for help and finding none. Then she felt a jarring pain in the back of her neck, a thud and nothing save emptiness.

  She laid her head on her arms and wept.

  Another half-hour went by. She had to come up with a rescue plan for Llian but could not focus on anything save an awful last image of Benie.

  She found Rachis in his office, talking to Sulien. “I’m going for a walk,” said Karan. “I need to think.”

  “Where?” said Rachis.

  “Over to the escarpment. I might even go up to the forest, if I feel up to it, as far as the Black Lake.”

  “That’s a tidy step,” said Rachis, “in your—”

  “Condition, you were going to say?” Karan said coolly. “I’m not an invalid.”

  Rachis and Sulien exchanged eye rolls, and they both laughed.

  “If I don’t get back till late, will you take care—”

  “Yes, I’ll look after Rachis,” Sulien said, and giggled. Clearly, he had not told her about Benie.

  Karan filled her water bottle and packed some bread and cheese, and headed off on the path to the broken cliff that separated the lower, productive part of her estate from the more extensive upland section, which, due to difficult access, was almost unused. The brisk walk helped; by the time she reached the base of the escarpment the pain had faded to a dull throb.

  It quickly returned as she began to climb the steep natural stairs though, and by the time she reached the top, five or six hundred feet higher, she could barely walk. A grassy slope ramped up to her right, towards her Forest of Gothryme, which extended in a narrow strip for miles along the terrace above the cliff. The Black Lake lay just inside the upper edge of the forest. To her left the slope was broken by a series of rugged, thickly wooded gullies.

  Karan took off her boots and socks and lay on her back on the cropped grass near the edge, the breeze cooling her hot feet. She closed her eyes and found herself drifting, the endlessly cycling terrors slipping from her mind…

  She could not afford to sleep. She needed a peaceful place to escape her worries and plan how to save Llian, and the pavilion on Black Lake was the most peaceful place she knew, imbued with happy childhood memories. She headed up through the forest.

  The pain returned as quickly as it had gone, and by the time she reached the lake she was fighting the urge for hrux with every step. The water looked black when in shadow, though now, with the sun angling through the trees onto the surface, it was a deep red-brown colour, like strong tea.

  The granite pavilion beside the water was so old that no one knew who had built it; even the stone was crumbling. Its roof, a quintet of small metal peaks surrounding a tall central spire, was mostly intact, though stains on the paved floor showed that it leaked in half a dozen places.

  A box with a stone lid held a few camping items – a battered old pan, a small cooking pot, some plates with the enamel chipped around the edges, and fishing lines with corroded brass hooks. Four blocks of stone arranged in a hollow square made a fireplace. Karan had often come up here with her father when she was little; they had caught fish and fried them in the pan, then sat by the water until late in the night, Karan swinging her little legs over the edge of the old jetty while Galliad had told her the Tales of the Aachim.

  The drumming sounded, a triple thump followed by a double, two singles and another triple. It was stronger here. Her sensitive gift felt stronger too. She could visualise the ruin Snoat’s army was spreading: families torn apart, livelihoods destroyed, long guarded treasures plundered.

  Pain spiked through the girdling bones of her pelvis. Hrux, now! She fumbled in her pocket, trying to lift the lid of the case one-handed, then forced herself to stop. Hrux dulled the wits, and if ever she needed them about her it was today.

  She sat where the balustrade had broken away save for a few crumbling stumps and waited for calm to come. The dark water teemed with fish, but their moving shadows echoed another shadow in her mind, one that was growing every minute – Maigraith had followed and was coming ever closer. How to deal with her? Karan had to, before she could go after Llian.

  Driven by the drumming, Maigraith was bound to make another attempt to sway her, but what did she really want?

  31

  I WILL NOT ALLOW IT!

  Karan had not eaten since breakfast; no wonder she could not think straight. She baited the hook of one of the fishing lines with a piece of bread and cheese squeezed into a lump and tossed it into the water. After tying the other end around one of the baluster stumps she gathered dry wood and kindling, and set a fire.

  When she had been little, she and Galliad had often camped here for days, exploring the forest, catching fish and gathering wild herbs. She could see two varieties of bitter greens, creeping rogid and tall wild mustard with foot-long leaves mottled green, red and purple. At this time of year they would be as pungent as freshly mixed mustard, stinging the nose and taking the breath away. They would certainly clear her head.

  The drumming repeated three times, then stopped. She lit the fire and gathered a pan full of shredded mustard greens and rogid leaves. Some of the mustard plants had gone to seed. She shook the seeds out of the papery pods for seasoning and collected some dandelion leaves as well. And lastly, three hard green limes from the tree she had planted here twenty years ago.

  The line was taut. She drew the fish in, hand over hand. A small one. Karan killed and gutted it and tossed the line back, then scaled her fish and prepared it for cooking. It would soon be dark. Where was Maigraith?

  She closed her eyes and tried to sense the shadow she had detected before, but it wasn’t there. What if Maigraith decided to take Sulien? Rachis worked in the east wing, forty yards from the keep; he would not hear her cries. She would be gone, just like that. That fear was a physical pain, worse than the one in Karan’s bones.

  Now she was being silly; Maigraith was obsessive and single-minded but she wasn’t a monster. Karan wiped sweat from her forehead and checked her line, which was jerking. A big fat fish this time, almost enough for two.

  As she finished filleting it, Maigraith appeared on the forest path, moving silently in the gloom. She had learned such skills from the Faellem, who lived in harmony with nature – though not with the other human species.

  “Has it helped?” said Maigraith.

  “What
?”

  “The solitude.”

  “I haven’t had enough of it,” Karan said pointedly. She probed the fire with a stick, pushing the burning ends in so they would make a good bed for the pan. “Are you hungry?”

  “Somewhat.”

  She filled the pot with water and put it in the corner of the fire, tore up a handful of dandelion leaves and tossed them in. They would make a slightly bitter but refreshing tea. The drumming started up again.

  “What’s that?” cried Maigraith, holding her hands over her ears.

  Her indigo and carmine eyes flashed in the firelight, reminding Karan that she was very powerful… and very dangerous.

  “That’s the drumming.”

  “I thought people were making it up as an excuse for their own bad behaviour.” The implication was, Nothing like that could possibly affect me.

  “It’s real. I’ve heard it many times.”

  “It doesn’t affect you?”

  She shrugged. “Nor Rachis.”

  “Why am I hearing it here?”

  “It’s getting stronger. Maybe it’s even starting to affect people as insensitive as you.”

  Maigraith did not take it as the insult it was meant to be. She was insensitive, and knew it.

  “About Sulien,” said Maigraith.

  “What?” Karan snapped.

  “Since she’s triune too, she may have a great destiny, but she needs to be nurtured and challenged. A change would broaden her outlook and give her new perspectives.”

  “Call me selfish, but I want my only child to live with me until she grows up.” Karan banged the pan onto the fire, scattering embers across the stone.

  “But this is bigger than both of us,” said Maigraith. “Julken and Sulien are also triune.”

  Karan stiffened, for she had just remembered something Maigraith had said ten years ago, when they had been pregnant together. Now it struck her like a thunderbolt.

  Who else can a triune’s son mate with but a triune’s daughter? From our loins spring a new people, a new species, perhaps with more of the strengths and fewer of the weaknesses than those that engendered us. Let us agree to pair them, now.