The Summon Stone

by Ian Irvine

  “What was that?” said Magsie. She raised her lantern. “Watchman, here!”

  He ran to her, panting. “What is it?”

  “There’s someone in the de-hairing shed.”

  “Why would a robber go in there?”

  “How would I know? Get after him, you imbecile!”

  The watchman ran down, swinging his lantern. Aviel backed away carefully; she must not fall in and be trapped here. Magsie was coming too, but she must have shuttered her lantern because Aviel lost sight of her. She probed ahead with the scoop. She would have to go around the far side of the pits and sneak along the wall to get out.

  She pulled her hood down over her hair. If she was spotted, she must not be recognised, though Magsie would only have to see Aviel’s limp to identify her.

  The watchman entered, holding up his lantern. Aviel ducked behind a pile of fresh hides; she could smell the blood and dung on them. He went down the other side of the shed. There were several pits between her and him. She was creeping towards the door when a shadow appeared there. Magsie! Trapped! She was going to be caught and it would be the end of her life.

  “Where is he?” Magsie said in an eager screech.

  “No sign,” said the watchman.

  “I’ll guard the door. Find him or you’ve got no job.”

  “Yes, Magsie.”

  His life must be utterly miserable if this job mattered to him, poor man. Magsie was moving back and forth just inside the doorway, blocking Aviel’s escape. Her only hope was a diversion. She heaved the top hide off the pile. It was very heavy and made a wet, slapping sound as it hit the floor.

  “What’s that?” cried Magsie, unshuttering her lantern and shining it on the stack of hides, then the hide on the floor.

  Her head darted this way and that; she made a gobbling sound in her throat, then moved towards Aviel’s hiding place. She was going to be discovered. Acting on instinct, Aviel swung the half-full scoop at Magsie. She tried to get out of the way but it struck her on her hooked nose and the stinking muck splattered across her face.

  She shrieked, choked, spat out muck, then, her arms flailing, fell backwards into the de-hairing pit with an almighty splash. Aviel stood there, frozen. She could not let the evil old lady drown, but to save her meant certain discovery. And Magsie would not be grateful.

  Aviel had just stepped towards the edge when the old woman surfaced, spluttering and gasping and spitting out sludge, and shrieked, “Get… me… out!”

  She was standing up and the urine level was only up to her shoulders. The terrified watchman came running. Aviel slipped out the door and limped, as fast as she could, up to the gate and out.

  That had been too close. She was never going near the tannery again, not even for a hundred summon stones.

  Was the Eureka Graveolence the most dangerous and terrifying scent potion in the grimoire? It was unquestionably the most sickening and Aviel was uncomfortably aware that she was trying to create a scent potion many years above the level of her experience.

  Extracting all the required scents, odours, reeks and stenches took five days of perilous toil, and most of those nights, plus more furtive trips to places she had no right to be, in terror the whole time that she would be caught. Her last trip was to the Casyme graveyard to collect ancient bones – the final ingredient for the graveolence was the stench from the burning skull bone from a hundred-year-old grave.

  The graveyard was a haunted place, and in the misty moonlight it seemed to be full of angry ghosts. After digging up a long-dead body, shuddering all the while, she ran all the way home with her pilfered skull bone, imagining the ghosts’ threats echoing in her ears. It was the wickedest thing she had ever done, and there was worse to come. Would using the bone to make a dark potion forever stain her young soul? Had she taken the first step on the road to ruin?

  But she had to keep going. The invasion had to be stopped, for her own survival.

  Aviel had also planned to create a Paralysis Stench for self-defence on her journey, but it required the sour earth from beneath a long-gone body. She wasn’t going back to the graveyard either; no way was she going any further down the black path.

  Finally the disgusting work on the Eureka Graveolence was done. She had completed the fifteen-step process and produced the last of the nine odorous oils. They had to be blended in just the right proportions, in exactly the right sequence, on the night of the eclipse of a blood moon – four days from now. If she had done everything properly, it would create the graveolence.

  But would it show her where to find the source of the drumming, the summon stone? And if it did, what was she to do? There had been no word from Shand. Was it up to her to destroy it? She was alone in uncharted waters, carrying a burden far too big for her.

  That night something woke Aviel from a deep sleep. The stars told her it was after two. She rolled onto her back and piled her herb-stuffed pillows up under her head. The fragrance reminded her of the scent she had made for Wilm. She hoped Shand had given it to him, and Wilm had liked it, and things were going well for him in Chanthed.

  She was lying there, smiling, when she felt the pain in her midriff that always signified really bad luck. Then a sickening reek filled her nostrils, almost as bad as the sludge she’d taken from the de-hairing pit. But this was worse because she could tell it came from someone depraved and malevolent.

  Someone far away had just detected her.

  PART THREE

  THE MEGALITHS

  58

  IT’S RUINED!

  The pain in Snoat’s head was exquisite, but not in a good way.

  He lay on the floor, exploring the sensations. True physical pain was something that he, in his carefully managed life, rarely experienced. He must explore it further, but not now. There was something he had to do urgently. Something had gone terribly wrong.

  His specially tailored dress uniform was sodden; he was lying in a puddle. He raised his head and it spun as if he were intoxicated. He had got drunk once, for the experience. It had not been pleasant and he never wanted to do it again. How could anyone bear to lose all self-control? How could they stand to numb their senses so? He did everything possible to sharpen his.

  His head throbbed. He took a deep breath and the smell of spirits was so strong that it burned his nasal passages. Brandy, the Beacons barrel! He was lying in one of his finest; some swine had deliberately run it out onto the floor.

  Then memory came flooding back, and the horror of the interruption that had utterly ruined his private telling. He had stormed down the satinwood stairs and…

  The next memory was gone, though the evidence was clear; the back of his head bore the imprint of the cut-crystal decanter that had been used to knock him out. Snoat pushed himself up to a sitting position and his eyes went instinctively to the empty place on the shelf. The decanter of Driftmere, the finest brandy ever made, aged for one hundred and seventy-eight years, was gone.

  Had Llian attacked him? No, some villain had discharged the barrel of brandy to ruin the tale and bring him down here. But Llian had to be in on it.

  Then Snoat was struck by a thought so hideous that he groaned out loud. He came to his feet, swaying and staggering, drunk on the brandy fumes. He hauled himself up the stairs, clinging to the rail, and into the Little Theatre.

  It looked just as it had before. The lights were low save for the spotlight illuminating the centre of the stage. But Llian was gone and so was the manuscript Snoat had been fondling as he had listened, awestruck and overcome, to the greatest telling of the greatest tale he had ever heard.

  Both the telling and his perfect collection had been ruined, and the pain was so excruciating that it overwhelmed the agony in his skull. His famed self-control was no good to him now. He screamed.

  Then, from outside, someone bellowed. “Fire! Fire!”

  The screams, the yells and the clanging of warning bells took a long time to penetrate. Snoat looked around him, unable to work out where the racke
t was coming from; there were no windows in the Little Theatre. He stumbled down through his brandy room, out the door and into the hall. There, through a window, he saw something so awful that his knees gave under him.

  He clung to the window frame, staring at his library and making a keening sound in his raw throat. Brown smoke was boiling out through the tall windows and the skylight above the gallery, where his formerly perfect collection had been on display.

  He could lose everything in his library and museum and still smile. Even if every other precious thing in his life’s collections was to be destroyed he could bear it as long as he still had the core, imperfect though it now was. As long as the first twenty-two Great Tales remained his, he could dream and scheme to get the twenty-third back.

  He staggered across to the library, gasping like a sprinter at the end of a race. Foamy slobber was oozing down his chin but he did not have the strength to wipe it off. Half his staff and many of his guards were outside, and faithful, perfect Ifoli was directing them to save all the most precious things they could get to.

  Some of his staff were helping her. Others, people he had trusted, were secreting precious items in pockets and behind bushes. Time was when he would have had them executed, after appropriately exquisite excruciations, but only one thing mattered now.

  “Ifoli?” he said in a cracked voice. “The Great Tales. Are they safe?”

  “We can’t get up to the gallery, Cumulus.”

  “We must! Find a way.”

  Fear fleeted across her perfect features – she was afraid of fire. But then, and he had never admired her more, she overcame it. She nodded, took a square of cotton from her sleeve and wiped the slobber off his chin. Momentarily, Snoat was overcome by a feeling he had never felt before: tenderness. After this he should give her what she clearly wanted – his name.

  She gave orders crisply, and his people raced to obey. Wet blankets were brought. She wrapped him in one. The foreman of his fish ponds ran up with two pairs of goggles. Ifoli fitted Snoat’s, then her own, and tied a wet pad across his nose and mouth. She fixed her own in place and pulled a dripping blanket over her hair. Her eyes searched his as if weighing his resolve.

  “If I can’t save my Great Tales,” said Snoat, “I might as well be dead.”

  Another servant appeared, carrying two dripping satchels and several large pieces of oilcloth. Ifoli folded the oilcloth inside the satchels to protect the precious books from fire and water.

  She enveloped herself in her wet blanket and they went into the burning library. The smoke whirled and tumbled, boiled up around him and plunged down again like a waterfall. He turned round and round but could not see a foot in front of him. Despite the wet pad he was drawing smoke in with every breath; it was searing his nasal passages and burning his throat.

  Panic swelled and he felt an awful urge to scream, tear off the confining rags and run, but he no longer knew which direction he was facing. Ifoli’s warm hand caught his cold one and her face emerged from the smoke.

  “This way. Don’t let go of my hand.”

  Snoat did not plan to – she was the only solid thing left in his crumbling life. He allowed her to draw him across the library, bumping into shelves that were invisible until he was a few inches away, knocking over stools and crashing against tables. Precious books rained down behind him. He had no idea how she was finding her way; he could not have done it.

  There was less fire than he had expected, though it was growing at either end of the great room. And the smoke would be worse up on the gallery level.

  “The stairs!” said Ifoli.

  She doubled over, coughing so hard he expected her to bring up blood. Despite the goggles, her eyes were streaming. They went up. His battered head was throbbing again; the smoke was much worse up here. Every breath scorched tracks up his nose and down his throat, and his lungs felt as though they were filled with mud. It hurt to breathe, and no breath gave him enough air.

  As they reached the top the air cleared a little, but then flames licked up the stairs, bony fingers of fire that might have been directed at him by a malevolent enemy. They played across his face and he smelled burning hair; the folds of blanket over his head were smoking.

  Snoat threw up his hands to protect himself but the fire, as if enchanted to attack him, curved around and over his fingers – the pain! – then shot at his face. The rag across his mouth and nose caught fire. He wrenched it off. His nose was blistering and his hands were burning but he could not move.

  Ifoli jerked him out of the path of the flames. “The Great Tales, quick!”

  Her perfect control of body and mind was fading. Her face was white, her eyes blood-red, and every breath was a gasp. But her loyalty to him was absolute. Almost too absolute?

  Snoat wondered where that thought had come from as she dragged him across the gallery where he’d had that wonderful dinner with Llian and Thandiwe the other night. An almost perfect dinner.

  He crashed into a table, so hard that it bruised his hip. He was ­doubled over, rubbing it, when Ifoli screamed, “Get the books!”

  She had done it; this was the display table for the twenty-two Great Tales. He reached out, his hands shaking. His fingers were blistered and blackened and terribly burned, but he felt no pain. He began to gather the books, holding each one up to his face to be sure before sliding it into the oilcloth wrapper inside his satchel. His fingers left black smears and weeping fluid on the covers.

  He could not see Ifoli; he assumed she was doing the same at the other end of the table. The air thinned again. Flames roared up the stairs and he felt that panic again – there was no going down them now.

  “I have fourteen,” yelled Ifoli. “How many have you got?”

  He counted them. Suddenly his fingers were excruciatingly painful, and so was the tip of his dripping nose, and his chin. “Seven. There’s one missing.”

  She scrambled onto the table, sweeping her arms from side to side. He felt around as well.

  “Here!” she said. “The Tale of Rula.”

  He packed the slender volume into his satchel, folded the oilcloth down and closed it. The satchel was dry now and his wet blanket was rapidly drying in the fierce heat. Fear stroked his backbone. Dry wool would provide only a little protection from fire. Could it be enough?

  “Come on!” said Ifoli.

  He looked around what he could see of the beautiful gallery for the last time. It contained many of his finest treasures, collected over a lifetime, and in a few minutes they would be gone. Agony racked him. But all was not lost; he might yet get the Great Tales out. If he could not, burning to death would be the lesser torment.

  Ifoli took his hand again and dragged him towards the secret stairs, but doubled over in a coughing fit. There was blood on her lips when she finished. Useless woman! Don’t fail me now!

  It was desperately hot and getting hotter; Snoat’s head was spinning and his mouth was so dry that when he moved his tongue it crackled. They reached the location of the secret stairs. He pushed the hidden catch that opened the way in, but it did not budge. It was locked and he did not have the key with him. He could not have used it anyway; his fingers had locked into blackened claws.

  “We’re dead!” said Snoat. To his chagrin, his voice, which he had worked so hard to make refined, had a self-pitying whine. “It’s all been for nothing.”

  He saw the whites of Ifoli’s eyes, and in them something he had never seen before. Fury? Contempt? She reached down to her hip and unfastened a hatchet. Was she going to cut him down?

  She attacked the wood around the catch, hacking at the polished cedar. Splinters flew. She exposed the catch and slammed the back of the hatchet into it over and over, until the lock broke.

  Ifoli put her small foot against the door, kicked, and it opened. Inside, it was blessedly free of smoke. They went through and she shoved the door closed, but it swung open again. She put her shoulder to it, jamming it shut.

  “Go down, Cumulus!” she
said softly. Her voice, though it had a slightly smoky rasp, was still beautiful. How dare she be more controlled than he?

  He stumbled down into the dark. It was incredibly hot in the stairwell, sandwiched between the fire in the museum and the blaze in the library. Stiflingly hot. Down and down. Something in the museum collapsed with an almighty crash. Above them a fiery gust blasted the door open and a rain of red cinders came whirling down, making beautiful spiralling patterns against the blackness. He was unable to appreciate their beauty as fully as he once would have.

  They reached the lower door, which was also locked. This was a far more solid door and it took a long time for Ifoli to break it open. She was so exhausted now that she could barely raise the hatchet.

  “Hurry up!” said Snoat, his voice like sandpaper rubbing on steel.

  She gave a last, desperate hack, slammed her shoulder against the door, and it opened. Ifoli stood aside.

  “You first, master,” she said with a bow that might have been ironic – or even contemptuous.

  He was too dehydrated to think about it. He shoved past and staggered away to a safe distance. The library and museum were burning fiercely now, and so was the gallery upstairs.

  His servants and soldiers retreated, leaving an empty semicircle around him. Snoat tore off his blanket, laid it on the lawn, smoky side down, and tipped the manuscripts out of the satchel. He could not open his charred fingers to pick any of them up. The pain was awful.

  “Ifoli! Bring my books.”

  She lugged her satchel across. It was far heavier than his. She swayed, coughed up more blood and wrenched off her goggles, mouth cloth and blanket. She looked haggard; her eyes were red-raw and surrounded by goggle-shaped soot rings, and blood from her lip was smeared across her right cheek. He felt a surge of irritation. She looked far from perfect now, almost ordinary.

  Her eyes were expressionless. She had regained her self-possession. Perhaps he had imagined it earlier.