by Dora Machado
“Let me in.” Kael's voice was like a pounding at the door.
“In a moment.” Her mind stepped into the tale cautiously.
Arron was pacing back and forth in what looked like some kind of pavilion. Had he finally quit the keep? Had he been expelled from the Guild? The last time she had seen Arron was almost two chills ago at the breaking of the wall. Back then, the Guild's highest ruling body, the Council, had been split into two factions. Arron, the Council's Speaker and second in the line of rule, had been leading a ragtag army against Grimly, the Guild's Prime Hand for the last forty years. Targeted by both factions, Sariah and a badly wounded Kael had barely escaped the battle with their lives. At the time they fled, the Guild's powerful army, the Shield, had been under the Prime Hand's command. What had been the outcome of that battle?
Deep in the Domain's isolation, Sariah didn't know. News from the Goodlands was sparse and often confusing. She wondered if Mistress Grimly was dead. She doubted it. The witch had a proven knack for survival, political and otherwise. Sariah surprised herself pitying the Council, split between its main leaders. She pitied the Goodlands more.
In the tale, the light of a brazier flickered over Arron's features, revealing a pensive expression. He looked heavier, no less imposing than she remembered, but wide at the hips and bulging at the belly. A little extra flesh was a trait of prosperity in the Guild, but obviously, he had been indulging lately. He was alone, twirling the gray stone in one hand while sipping from the horn he clutched in the other. The man liked his luxuries. Sariah had no doubt the wine was of the best vintage.
Arron was imprinting the stone he clutched in his hand as he spoke. “If you are wising this stone, then you are still at large, living like a fugitive among the vermin. Sariah, you aren't made for the hardships of the Rotten Domain. Return to me, my beloved pupil.”
Beloved pupil? Sariah had an urge to puke. When had Arron's so-called kindness resulted in anything but pain and frustration? And why was he speaking kindly in the tale, instead of issuing insults and threats like he did in his other messages? With her usual thoroughness, she scouted the stone tale for tricks one more time and, finding none, opened her eyes.
“You've got to see this.” She put her hand over Kael's heart, allowing the tale to filter through her mind, body and palm, and into Kael's mind. She could feel his emotions too, the steely resolve he commanded to withstand whatever came, the wariness of the warrior called to battle.
“It's all right.” She closed her eyes. “The only trickery so far is this new tone of his.”
“Sariah,” Arron said. “Your burdened heart may not allow you to consider the consequences of your actions. You have no guidance, no sound counseling. You know your duty. You alone can deliver justice to my cause. And you know, deep inside, none of this would have happened had you not escaped my tutelage, had you not forsaken my lease.”
Kael scoffed. As if Arron hadn't been trying to wrestle control of the Council for years. As if his plots and schemes had not been ongoing since well before his ascent to the Council. Sariah was willing to accept responsibility for her acts, but not for Arron's intrigues.
“How long do you think you can hide?” Arron said. “How long can you keep running? My messages before this one may have scared you. They were the lamentations of a wounded teacher. It's my duty to find you. No matter how well you hide, how far you run, I'll find you. And if you don't heed my call, well, you might as well expect the worst.”
Kael's emotions surged with the unspoken threat, hatred, revulsion, violence. Sariah remembered the type of revenge Arron favored with dread, but she didn't allow his insinuations to terrorize her. The tone of Arron's message was odd. It held none of the angry ranting of his earlier messages, none of the rage he had directed at her in the stones he liked to plant throughout the Domain. Those stones had been like an epidemic, appearing at random sites, sickening Sariah. Compared to his other messages, Arron was being mild, almost polite. That merited some thought.
“I make you a most unusual offer,” Arron said. “A truce, a last chance to make it all right.”
A truce? Sariah's breath caught in her throat. Kael chuckled in disbelief. Arron was offering her a reprieve? Easier to see the sun yielding the day to the moon.
“If you come out of the Domain,” Arron said, “if you abandon your efforts to spread the lies you have unleashed and declare your support for me, I'll welcome you back into my service. You'll recant the lies you've told and you'll submit yourself to my will.”
Had Arron won the battle? Was he the new Prime Hand? Sariah couldn't help but wonder where Grimly was, who had control of the keep, who the stonewisers at the keep regarded as their leader. She also wondered what parts of her wisings Arron wanted her to recant, since all of them were true. Did Arron really think she would submit herself to him? He was beyond deluded if he thought she would. He was fit for the atorium.
“Face it, Sariah,” Arron said. “You and I, we have the same goals. We want peace and prosperity for the Goodlands. We want to return the Guild to its rightful ways. You won't survive long, not with so many going after you, blaming you for the land's demise.”
The shock of Arron's next words left Sariah reeling and smarting from the recoil of Kael's emotions.
“Come to me,” Arron said. “Allow me to help you. Come find me and wash away your regrets.”
Sariah turned the glowing bracelet around her wrist. Around and around went Hope, Courage, and all Meliahs’ sisters. Deep in thought, she was mostly unaware of the pain. The links scuffed and scratched as she twisted them, yet she found the compulsion satisfactory. Defiance came in all forms.
She was startled when Kael's hand entered into the bracelet's spectral glow to still her hand. “You're hurting yourself,” he said. “Can't sleep?”
“Sorry if I woke you.”
“I was awake.”
He lay between Sariah and Delis like one of the Enduring Woods’ substantial buttress roots. He leaned on his elbow, watching her with resigned patience, waiting.
Sariah made a show of silence. She didn't want to talk about Arron. Or about the wall. Or the wrecked atorium. In the last week, they had put quite a few leagues between themselves and the ruins. Exhaustion had required this stop tonight, but only for a few hours. Sariah closed her eyes and saw the blackened decks wilting in the rot, the speared man gaping without a jaw.
“We'll find them,” Kael said. “Wherever they went, we'll find them. Most likely, they sought out help from the closest settlement, Alabara. The people there must know what became of the atorium's survivors.”
“What if Leandro died?” Sariah said. “What if he was one of the bodies we found? Or worse, one of the bodies we didn't find?” The dead water, the rot and the eels had had plenty of chances to consume the bodies before they arrived.
“Wait and see. No need to jump to conclusions.”
The man was a pillar of icy pragmatism.
“I know you're worried,” Kael said, “but I think Arron is the one stealing your sleep.”
So much for keeping her thoughts to herself. “Arron managed a remarkable tale. He actually sounded concerned at times.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Do you think I've gone dumb all of a sudden?”
“Just asking.” He was quiet for a moment. “Going to Arron would be madness, Sariah. We've got to concentrate on finding the tale.”
“I know. But I'm worried. His message. The setting. The assurances. He feels powerful, more powerful than before. I think Arron may have defeated Grimly. I think Arron might have become the Guild's Prime Hand. You must declare yourself for me. What else could he possibly mean?”
“He needs you,” Kael said. “He needs you as much as he wants you.”
Sariah was unable to repress the shiver that shook her.
Kael pulled her close. “He won't have you, we won't let him, but the reality is he thinks you can be of use to him.”
Sariah recalled
Arron's words. “You alone can deliver justice to my cause. What justice? Everybody in the land wants me punished and dead.”
“Not everybody.” He kissed her forehead and then settled on her mouth to scatter her worries into complete disorder.
Sariah tried to disentangle herself from his enterprising lips. “Not now.”
“Then where and when?” His lips fluttered over her throat and settled over the breast he had liberated from her shift.
“We can't—”
“She's not watching.”
“Yes, I am,” Delis piped up.
“Meliahs’ dung,” Kael cursed. “Mind your business, wench.”
“I mind my donnis.”
“I'm not your donnis.”
Delis ignored Sariah's remark. “My donnis doesn't want you to—”
“Watch yourself,” Kael said. “My patience with you is at an end.”
“Your patience?” Delis hissed. “What about my patience?”
They both sprang to their feet and faced each other like quarreling bears. Delis swiped a fist a Kael. Kael blocked it and grabbed Delis by the neck. With her eyes bulging and her face nearly blue, Delis still managed to clamp her powerful legs around Kael's waist and pummel his liver with her heels.
“Enough,” Sariah cried. “Stop it.”
Delis wasn't the executioners’ best murderess without good reason. It took Kael a few moments to disentangle from the woman's thighs without tearing her limbs apart bone by bone. When he was done, Sariah was fairly sure Delis would be limping and Kael would have a backache tomorrow.
“What do you say, wiser?” Kael asked. “Do you want her out of this shelter? I know I do.”
The woman looked pleadingly at her, but Sariah was in no mood to be charitable. Delis had deceived her, and she was not anyone's donnis. Plus, she realized shamelessly, she wanted to lay with Kael, even if it was for a short moment. Sariah gathered Delis's blankets and dumped them outside the shelter. Delis limped out the door. The dejection on her face made Sariah feel guilty, but she got over it quickly.
Kael wiped a bit of blood from his nose. “What have we come to? Now I have to fight the wench to bed you?” He sounded sullen, but he was grinning.
“You know what they say.” Sariah stamped a kiss on his lips. “All in the spirit of conquest.”
“Aye, well, and you know what they say too.” He took her hand and rubbed it against his groin. “Violence is the best aphrodisiac.”
“Your liver might be shot, but I see the best of you is working hugely well.”
“Let's attend to it promptly.”
Delis cleared her throat at the door. “My donnis?”
Kael groaned. “Go away.”
“Sorry, my donnis. But you better come and look. We've got company.”
Eleven
A lamp swung from side to side in the darkness, the Domainers’ signal for peaceful approach. Kael swung their lamp in response, but not before donning his weapons belt and tossing her hatchet back to Delis. Sariah fingered the stones in her braid. But it was Lazar who emerged from the night. His handsome smile was brilliant under the light of Kael's lamp. His blond curls were drenched with perspiration from pulling the heavy traveling deck behind him.
“What are you doing here?” Kael jumped in the water and hugged his brother, helping him to pull the last few steps to their deck.
“A charge from Metelaus, I fear.” Lazar greeted Sariah and took a grateful swig from the skin she offered. “I've run a new record, I think. You've been difficult to track.”
“Uncle, Auntie!” Mia leapt from Lazar's deck to theirs, seizing Sariah with a lung-crushing embrace.
“What are you doing here?” A surprised Sariah hugged the child to her breast.
“The better question is, what is she doing here?” Lazar's blue and green eyes were fixed on Delis's net-stamped temple.
“It's a long story,” Kael said. “Don't mind her.”
“Don't mind an executioner?”
“The wench has been defused.”
“Really?” Lazar's tone bore little conviction.
Delis circled Lazar, peering into his deck. Abruptly, she pounced into the shelter and wrestled with something in the darkness. “There's more in here!”
“Stop, Delis,” Sariah shouted above the noise of a fierce scuffle. “Stop it, I tell you.”
Delis emerged from the shelter clutching a squirming bundle. “Here's treachery, my donnis. Should I kill it?”
“It?” Malord twisted in Delis's hands like a fiend cat caught.
“Let him be.”
“Sorry, my donnis.” Delis dropped Malord on the deck like a sack of overripe turnips.
Lazar gasped. “Donnis?”
“I'll tell you about it later,” Kael said.
Sariah rushed to Malord's side. “Are you all right?”
“Manhandled like a rotten cask by a rot spawn?” Malord straightened his weave with an angry tug. “Of course I'm not well. A fortnight of the flats and now this?”
“Why are you here?” Kael asked.
“We saw your burnt deck at Nafa,” Lazar said. “We feared the worst, until we met with the forester—”
“I pledged my cause to Sariah's search,” Malord said. “I was there when you needed me, and I fought with you at the wall. And now you snub me, leaving me behind?”
For Meliahs’ sake. “Malord, we didn't leave you behind. I had to leave and not because I wanted to.” She shook the banishment bracelet under his nose. “Have you two gone mad bringing this innocent child here, knowing my circumstances?”
“Innocent?” Malord mumbled. “Ha.”
“He spurns you, my donnis. Should I remove him from your deck?”
“Of course not,” Sariah said.
Lazar turned to his brother, frowning. “Who is whose donnis?”
“Sariah pledged to Delis.”
“I didn't,” Sariah snapped. “Not knowingly, anyway.”
“We'd best go inside.” Kael smothered his lamp and bid Lazar to do the same. “Just in case.”
“Surely you don't mean the rot spawn also?” Malord said.
“Better a whole rot spawn than a half-man,” Delis snarled.
Malord slapped her legs. “Get out of my way.”
“If you touch me again, I'll kick you back to the top of the Crags.”
“Not with two broken legs you can't.”
“Auntie.” Mia was jumping up and down like a mad rabbit. “Auntie!”
Sariah rubbed her temples, sensing the wrath of an impending headache swooping down on her.
“Well, well. What a sweet family reunion, I see.”
A woman Sariah didn't know stepped out of Lazar's shelter, a striking figure as tall as Kael and as svelte as Delis, although notably more curvaceous. As if the spirit of concord had arrived in the flesh, her appearance froze the incipient fray. The newcomer's sleeveless tunic displayed her shoulders’ smooth ebony skin. It was generously cut to showcase the admirable swell of her breasts and the strength of long and shapely legs.
“Hello, Kael. Kaelin,” the newcomer said. “I'm glad to see you again. Will you be so kind and make the introductions? There are some here I don't recall meeting before.”
The woman's smile was just another stroke of perfection on a flawlessly crafted face, endowed with a luxurious pair of sculpted lips and large yellow irises that almost matched in the purity of her eyes’ bright whites. It was remarkable. For the first time since Sariah had met Kael, he blushed like an eight-year-old, stammering through a feeble attempt at an introduction.
She put an end to that quickly. “I'm Sariah. Who might you be?”
The woman's grip was harsh like the snatch of a hang rope. “I'm the Lady Eda, the forester.”
“I can't believe you burnt your father's deck, Mianina,” Kael said while slicing a strip of dried eel, meticulously salting it, and passing it on to Eda. “How did it happen?”
Eda flashed a splendorous smile of overdo
ne gratitude. In the safe enclosure of their shuttered shelter, the gesture seemed particularly intimate to Sariah. She wondered what was wrong with her this night, why she liked Eda so little when everybody, except Delis perhaps, seemed to adore the woman. Why did she have a sudden urge to punch the forester in the nose on account of a salted strip of eel?
“I didn't mean to burn the deck,” Mia said with her mouth full. “It was an accident. It just happened.”
“My, my,” Eda said. “It seems like a very bad year for the Ars brothers’ decks. We might have to grow a new forest just for you and your brothers, Kaelin. But don't worry. I'll give Metelaus a great price on his timber. A kinship special, you may call it.”
The men in the shelter laughed as if someone was tickling their toes. Sariah didn't think Eda was funny. She didn't like the way she used Kael's nickname so frequently, ending with a quick lick of pink tongue over sumptuous lips, as if his name was a spoonful of molasses melting between her lips.
Lazar set his drink aside. “Since Sariah left, Mia has been experiencing these bouts. She's unable to contain her powers. She tried, poor thing, but she can't.”
“I was sad,” Mia said. “I was angry.”
“At first, short bursts of unexpected flow escaped her, singeing a thing or two,” Lazar said. “But then, the bouts got worse. They began to happen more often, until she couldn't control them at all. After his deck burned, Metelaus thought it would be too dangerous to keep Mia away from Sariah for much longer.”
“There's a special link between a stonewiser and her breaker,” Malord said. “Sariah, you broke Mia. It's very possible the child is too young to be separated from you.”
Sariah put her arm around Mia, stroking her skinny shoulders. Sariah's palms were warm, infusing Mia with calmness, appeasing the child's emotions as she had done since the first day Mia had been broken. But even as she was able to draw peacefulness from her inner reserves to comfort Mia, Sariah was troubled. A link that strong was likely to cause great suffering. An attachment developed to such extent could tap into Sariah's weaknesses, cause the child serious injuries, maybe even kill her.
