Stonewiser

by Dora Machado

  “What weaver are you delivering to?” Alfred demanded.

  Sariah sensed Kael's hesitation. For a moment, she feared he didn't know the name of the settlement's weavers.

  “Katrina.”

  Meliahs be thanked. Kael had been thorough in his research.

  “Katrina on the fifth level? Good.” Alfred ripped a bunch of bundles out of the small lot. “She's not bad looking. You tell the little bitch to come see me if she wants her full load. She knows what to do.”

  Sariah caught the warning in Kael's eyes. Hold your tongue, it cautioned. She realized Kael's reluctance to utter the weaver's name stemmed not from ignorance, but from concern. He knew these men. He had tried to protect the innocent from the vultures’ attention. Too late now.

  “Move!” Alfred struck Sariah's butt as if she was an ox, and like a good ox, startled her into pulling. “Do you think you're the only ones who want in before nightfall?”

  Sariah pulled like a maniac to get out of the man's way. A kick in the knees, that's what the filthy brute needed. She would be glad to do the honors.

  They pulled the deck under the settlement's massive structure, a dead water maze of decks, wooden pillars and ladders, choked with gutweed and trash. It took a while, but at last, they found a place to moor their deck, a corner near a bank of ladders, supported by a thick pillar in good repair and not too far from the gates.

  Kael didn't bother stripping his weave or his pulling harness. “Shall we go find your Leandro?”

  “Quickly, please. This place gives me the shivers.”

  Around them, the enormous structure shifted and groaned, straining under the massive weight like a loaded beast.

  “It's lasted two hundred chills,” Kael said. “It should last us another day.”

  “That might be,” Sariah said. “But I can't help the feeling we are stuck in the very belly of Menodor's giant.”

  The inhabitants of Alabara scurried ahead of the night. As the sun set, people trekked up and down the ladders in hurried hordes. Sariah had been worried about someone recognizing her, or worse, Kael, but nobody paid them heed as they climbed from one level to the next, carrying bundles of flax on their backs.

  “There has to be a better way of taking things up,” Sariah puffed, when they reached the third level.

  “There are pulleys around.” Kael patted the locked wheel standing beside the ladder. “But you get to pay Alfred's men for those and it seems that tonight, even Alfred and his minions have gone to bed early.”

  “Strange. There's less and less people on the lanes by the moment.”

  “Let's see if we can find out what's going on. Excuse me, sir,” Kael asked a man hurrying up the ladder. “Might you be able to help us with directions?”

  “It's late,” the man barked without stopping. “Go inside.”

  “So much for the Domainers’ reputed hospitality,” Sariah said. “There's someone else coming. Stop, madam, a question, if you will?”

  “Mind your business. I mind mine.” The woman disappeared down the next set of steps.

  “Alabara.” Sariah sighed. “The happiest place in the Domain.”

  “That was foolish.” Kael tackled the next ladder.

  “What?” Sariah followed.

  “You talked to the woman. Thank Meliahs she was too busy to notice the contrast between your voice and your garb.”

  Ooops. “Sorry. But by the look of things here, I could be wearing only the bracelet and nobody would notice.”

  “I'd notice.” Kael flashed his best roguish grin. “I'd like to notice.”

  “Five people to a deck make for piss-poor chances. You've got better odds of getting a welcoming banquet in Alabara than of bedding me any time soon.”

  “We'll have to improvise,” Kael said. “If we don't, I'll be doubling over on my knees and useless from protracted wanting. And you, you'll be kicking thugs and wiseasses in the knees like a discombobulated mule. Don't think I'm missing the signs.”

  Sariah laughed. “Cool yourself and embrace the kicking and the braying. We can't and we won't until we find Leandro and get out of this accursed place.”

  They rode yet another rickety ladder to the fifth level.

  “There.” Sariah spied the weaver's sign. “Let's see if she'll talk to us.”

  “Let me speak.”

  “But I might be able to—”

  “Our deal was that I'll speak or you go back to the deck.”

  “Fine, but you better get something from her. With the alehouses closed and the people gone from the lanes, she's our only chance.”

  Kael knocked on the door.

  “It's after dark,” a woman's voice said. “Go away.”

  “We only need a moment of your time,” Kael said.

  “I'm closed, be off with you.”

  “We've got flax for you. A gift, if you'll talk to us.”

  The door cracked open just enough for a pair of eyes to survey the lane first, then Kael and the bundles they brought.

  “Free, you said?”

  “Free.”

  A long nose poked out of the door crack, followed by a pudgy face. “Why?”

  “We need information.”

  “Why bring your trouble to me?”

  “Flax is all I have.”

  “And all I need.” She considered Kael broodingly. “You wouldn't be one of Orgos's thugs, would you?”

  “No, madam. We're not from here.”

  “Like I couldn't tell. Hurry. Give me the flax. You fools ought to be inside. What is it you want to know?”

  Kael handed her a bundle at a time. “I'm looking for the caretakers who used to run the atorium out in the flats. It seems the place burned down and they've come here. Do you know where they dwell?”

  “Haven't they suffered enough?” the woman said. “Why do you want to find them?”

  “I have some business with the caretakers.”

  “It's not fair to charge tribute if the atorium's gone. Orgos charges enough as it is.”

  “You mistake my intentions. I'm no tax collector.”

  “Then why are you looking for the atorium's caretakers so discreetly? You can't trick me. I'm not dumb. If your intentions aren't evil, why the secrecy?”

  Kael exchanged a quick glance with Sariah. “You're right, madam. I best tell you the truth.” He paused contritely. “I've come for help for my brother here.” He patted Sariah's back as if petting a dog. “He's lame and mute and now he's turning deaf and dumb as well.”

  Deaf and dumb?

  “The poor thing's not fit for a decent life, you see. I'm his only kin but I can't care for him the way my mother did. She passed away and I thought perhaps, if there's a place—”

  “A terrible thing to have to deal with such a dreadful matter,” the woman said. “And your poor mother dead. I had a sister once, born not so good of the head. Took care of her for fifteen years. That's a long time, isn't it?”

  “Hard work. I'm sure you did the best you could.”

  “We didn't have atoriums back then.” The woman was abruptly aware of the time. “You must go. Be off. You'll be caught.”

  “Caught?”

  “A most dreadful matter.” She dragged in the last bundle of flax and began to close the door. “Go back to your deck. Seal your doors and windows. Search tomorrow.”

  The door bounced off Kael's foot. “And the atorium?”

  “Oh, that. The seventh level, right tower. But look tomorrow.” The door slammed shut.

  “Seventh level it is.” Kael hurried to the nearest ladder.

  “Deaf and dumb?”

  He chuckled. “It's not so far from the truth.”

  “I really ought to kick your rear.” Sariah halted in her tracks. “What's that?”

  A monstrous sound overtook Alabara, a rumbling crescendo. A guttural belch resonated through the pile of decks. Croakeee. The sound grew to a gruesome chorus. Sariah thought it was the wood breaking, the beams screeching as they split, the impe
nding groan of the settlement's destruction. Something cold brushed her shoulder on its way to the floor, followed by more of the same, raining from the upper stories.

  Kael caught something between his hands. “I've seen these in the Goodlands, although never gathered in such great numbers.”

  A huge green-lipped orange frog spanned the full cup of Kael's palms, staring at Sariah with red eyes that matched its long-toed feet. Croakeee. It belched. Croakeee.

  Sariah was surprised to see three or four smaller frogs piled on top of the bigger frog. She looked around. Thousands of likewise loaded frogs claimed the ladders and roofs around them. They hopped on the decks and perched on the railings, coating every surface with the viscous substance oozing from their bodies.

  “Now we know why people here wanted to go home in a hurry.” Sariah shook a frog from her foot. “Are they poisonous?”

  “I don't think so.” Kael swiped a dollop of slime and held it up against the light of a torch. “I think some of these are hatchlings in the slime.” Before their eyes, tiny tadpoles popped out from the membrane like pebbles from a slingshot.

  Kael tried to step around the critters, but since the floors were piled with frogs of all sizes, it was impossible. “We should hurry. The footholds will be slippery in no time.”

  Sariah overcame her revulsion to follow Kael up the ladders. The monstrous croaking was unbearable and the repugnant slime dangled from ceilings and railings like spit from some slobbering creature.

  “It's like a plague.”

  “A plague? Maybe. But there are species whose natural habits favor congregation for reproduction. What if this is natural behavior? We wouldn't know, would we? Because there haven't been frogs of this kind in the Domain for generations.”

  “You're thinking it's all linked. The fish, the red hawk, this.”

  “I'm not sure what to think, but something's changing, and I can't tell what it means for the Domain.”

  The seventh level on the right tower was the most decrepit part of Alabara. The floorboards were slanted to one side at an alarming angle. The few railings still standing were broken and unreliable, and the entire level swayed when the breeze blew. Sariah broke out into a sweat as she balanced over a wobbly ladder hung in lieu of a bridge to cross to the tower. An incipient fear of heights bloomed in her mind.

  Despite the frogs’ spectral serenade, the sounds of the atorium's refugees guided them to their quarters. The moans, cries and even the shrill laughter drifting from behind the closed door carried the identifiable mark of madness. Sariah's knuckles had begun to ache by the time the door finally opened.

  “We're not taking any more,” a weary woman said. In the shadows behind her, bodies sprawled on the floor and piled in close quarters, not unlike the frogs outside.

  “We've come to inquire after one of your boarders,” Kael said. “We'll settle his account while we're here.”

  “A paying boarder for a change.” The woman allowed them entrance. “Come in at your own discretion. Nights like these, anything can happen.”

  The room brimmed with anguish and irrational fear. Sariah could feel it in the air, in the boarders’ repressed whispers, in the quiet wails that escaped the bound, the catatonic and the ailing.

  A frog dropped from the rafters onto a crowded pallet. A single scream spread through the room like simmering fire. The caretakers knocked the screamers senseless with wooden bats, until the outburst of communal panic was broken by the forced silence.

  Sariah's throat was too dry to swallow.

  “Don't blame the caretakers,” the woman said. “After the attack and the journey here, it's been hard on them. Boarders don't take good to change, and this place is not good for the sick or the sane. They hate it here.”

  That was easy to see.

  “You said you came to inquire about a boarder? What's your relation?”

  “I'm a friend of the family,” Kael said. “His daughters asked me to look in on their father and to bring back news of his condition. They said they paid good coin for his keeping and if their father is well, they're willing to pay some more.”

  “Aye, well, it's been a rough year,” the caretaker said. “I'm sure you know we were attacked. Attacked. Since when is a poor atorium a target for thieves and murderers?”

  “Did you lose many during the attack?”

  “We lost a few, but not as many as we feared at first.”

  Sariah kept her hopes up.

  “We lost more on the journey here than in the raid,” the caretaker said. “On account of the fiery fever.”

  Damn the fiery fever.

  “What's the boarder's name?” the caretaker asked. “When did he start with us?”

  “Six, maybe seven months ago,” Kael said. “His name is Leandro, originally from Nafa.”

  “Leandro?” She thought for a moment. “You mean the wild one? His daughters paid good, I remember. Lizard's gills, it had to be one of them.”

  “One of them?”

  “And you with coin and everything.”

  Sariah had to steady her voice before she spoke. “Was Leandro one of the ones killed?”

  Kael hushed her with a warning glower.

  “Killed?” the woman scratched her armpit. “I'm not sure.”

  “What is it?” Kael said. “Is Leandro dead or alive?”

  “They took a few,” the caretaker said. “Leandro was one of them.”

  In that moment, Sariah's hopes of deciphering the mystery of the pure crashed. All the time traveling to Alabara had been wasted, misspent following a worthless lead. Sariah wanted to hit something or someone, preferably someone who deserved it, but a door or a wall would be fine as well.

  “Who took him?” Kael asked.

  “Who else? The Shield.”

  “Why?”

  “How am I supposed to know why they took Leandro?” the caretaker said. “The wall's broken. The whole world has gone crazy. The land is like a huge atorium.”

  Perfect. Not only was Leandro not at Alabara, but he was lost to them, and they didn't even know why. Sariah's search was as wrecked as the atorium.

  “What will you tell his daughters?” the caretaker asked. “They can't expect retribution on a madman, can they? I can't be blamed for this tragedy.”

  “I'm not sure what I can do,” Kael said.

  “Wait.” The woman scurried to a small chest in the corner. “There might be a way.”

  Kael exchanged a glance with Sariah. There was nothing more to do here. It had been a worthless errand and now the best thing to do was leave Alabara quickly.

  The caretaker pulled out a tiny sack from the chest. It was marked with Leandro's name in large crude letters. “His gaming set. I was going to keep it for fees. Perhaps the daughters will be appeased by their father's belongings? Will you take it to them?”

  “I suppose it's the least I can do.” Kael accepted the little sack. “We'll be leaving now.”

  They had not taken more than three steps toward the door when a boarder, an old woman, blocked their way, pointing at the sack with a filthy finger. “That's not yours.”

  “It's all right,” the caretaker said. “I gave it to them.”

  With amazing speed for someone her age, the old crone lunged to snatch the sack from Kael. She missed, but her jagged fingernails caught on the sack's cord, ripping it open. A cascade of little snakes and scorpions spilled on the dirty floor.

  “That's not very nice,” the caretaker said.

  Kael scooped a handful of gaming pieces from the floor and returned them to the sack. Sariah picked up a tiny scorpion and held it on the palm of her hand. It was a perfect diminutive replica of a live scorpion. It had a sleek, elongated body, endowed with four pairs of legs and a set of impressive claws. A segmented, artfully carved tail curled high in the air and ended in a sharp stinger. It was masterfully sculpted from very fine stone, some type of deeply veined orange-yellow rock imbued with sparkling, iridescent crystal. It must have been Leandro's ve
ry own little treasure. No wonder the caretaker had wanted to keep it.

  A strange sensation tickled her palm, and for a moment Sariah thought the scorpion's fanged tail had stung her hand. She recognized the feeling. Could it be? She pressed the piece to her palm. Meliahs help her. It was wised!

  The old woman dropped to her knees besides her. “Will you take me with you? Please, I beg you, take me with you.”

  “I'm sorry, I can't.”

  Was there a tale in the game piece? Could it hold a viable trance? Sariah tapped the scorpion's base. A face flashed in her mind, Leandro's stubbly profile. Excitement blazed through her veins. Had the man imprinted his tale in these stones? Was the trail of the pure still fresh in the game pieces? If only she could wise these right now. Would each piece hold a different tale? Or would each piece hold a part of the same tale?

  “We need all forty-eight pieces.” Sariah scrambled on all fours, scouring the floor for snakes and scorpions, trying to shake off the boarder. But the pleading crone was stronger than the bones sticking from under her rags suggested. She clung to Sariah's leg with determined zeal.

  “Take me with you,” she pleaded. “The cold demons. They're coming.”

  “Hush,” Sariah said. “You'll wake up your friends.”

  Other boarders began to stir, a murmur of dark draped shapes rising in the shadows. The old crone got a hold of Sariah's veil and wouldn't let go.

  “He said someone would come,” she whispered. “For my soul. For yours.”

  “Who?” Sariah asked. “Who told you I would come?”

  “Madam, please.” Kael had come to help. “Let go.”

  “She knows something.”

  Unexpectedly, the old crone dodged Kael and fell on Sariah, an assault of coarse blankets and flinging arms, a flash of wild eyes and sharp claws. “You've brought doom to us.”