by Dora Machado
Julean stepped forward. “Is there something amiss, Prime Hand?”
“Don't interfere with stone matters,” the mistress said. “Stand aside. Let us pass.”
Julean's scar trembled with the force of his clench, but he stepped aside. The Prime Hand banged on the iron portal. When it opened, Sariah and the others followed her through a narrow patio and entered a squat, marble building. With no windows inside, the place was dim and murky, illuminated only by a few smoky torches. Somewhere below, a door opened and closed. The tap of quick steps broke the tense silence. Two figures emerged from the dark, hand in hand, identical in all details and yet opposite.
“Welcome, mistress,” a woman said.
“To the Mating Hall,” the other woman said.
“We're pleased you've come,” the first woman said.
“How can we serve you?” the second woman asked.
Sariah willed her mouth to close. These two women shared the same round eyes and full-lipped mouths, the same curly hair cut short just above the ear, and a similar build of bodies, broad shoulders and narrow hips. But one was black as onyx while the other one was pasty white like the dead. Standing there, holding hands, offering the same dimpled smile, they looked like parodies of each other, complementing and contrasting at the same time, eerie and somehow wrong.
“Belana, Telana,” the Prime Hand said. “We've come to see the beam.”
“The curse of light?” dark Telana said.
“The bloodless scourge?” white Belana asked.
“Without delay.”
The women turned as one and led them down a marble staircase, through a door. They covered their eyes with their hands as they entered an underground chamber. The beam's brilliance hurt Sariah's eyes and broke the darkness of a room constructed entirely of the blackest granite. The light had burned a hole through the courtyard above. It was hot. The scent of stale sweat clung to every corner. Sariah motioned her Hounds to secure the chamber and approached the beam.
Aye. There it was. Just as she had expected. Illuminated by the beam, it lay on a round black granite table. Sariah admired the lively yellow and orange tones flaring in the angular construction, the way the sculpted stone refracted and dispersed the light, a naturally occurring prism. There was no doubt in her mind. This stone was part of the stone in the Dome of the Going, just like Leandro's game pieces.
She had a vision of her hand, returning the part to the whole in blessed reunion. She hesitated. Was it her duty to steal what was already stolen? Or was it her task to rescue the stolen from the thieves? Would she be freeing or destroying the truth with her deed? Was the tale she sought the seed for a new beginning or the revival of an ancient evil?
The Wisdom had given her no clear answers. She couldn't, wouldn't know, until it was all done. She snatched the stone from its perch so quickly that only when the beam retreated did the others realize what she had done.
The dark sister gasped. “It's gone.”
“It no longer hounds me,” the other sister said.
“What does it mean?” the Prime Hand asked.
Too many questions. Legions upon legions of questions. Later. Step by step, thought after thought. “We're leaving.”
The sisters tried to stand in her way, but the Hounds didn't allow it.
“You can't take it,” Telana said. “It's ours.”
Sariah couldn't stand to watch the pain on the strange women's faces. She tucked the stone in her pouch and started out of the Mating Hall, trailed by Delis, the Hounds and her prisoners. Wails rose from the building's bowels, screams of pain and anguish that stuck to Sariah like suckered tentacles and tore her heart to shreds.
“Are you all right, my donnis? Do you want me to carry that thing?”
Sariah realized she was crying. “I'm fine, Delis, but we have to get out of here.”
Julean and his men were waiting outside, swords unsheathed.
“Tell him to step aside.”
The Prime Hand gasped when, at Sariah's behest, the stone at her neck singed her skin. “Back away,” she hastened to say.
They trotted down the keep's main lane. Julean and his men kept up, encasing them from the sides and rear. Frightened faces peered from cracked windows and doors as they passed. Sariah could feel the urgency in her soul, her luck running out with the night, and the accursed stone heavy as a boulder in her pouch.
“Open the gate.”
“Idiots, didn't you hear her?” Ilian shouted. “Open the damn gate.”
Sariah's eyes darted from Ilian's flushed face to the Prime Hand. What she saw there surprised her. A warning?
“Don't open the gate.”
The guards froze by the gate's levers. Sariah mounted the stairs to the gate bridge and peered over the crenel. Her heart jolted to her throat. She understood Ilian's uncanny presence at the keep now. Just in case Grimly's clever plan failed, on the other side of the gate, Arron and his Shield massed like an eel rave, waiting for her.
Thirty-four
DESPITE THE FEAR, despite the stone in her pouch, Sariah forced herself to think. Julean and the keep guard were behind her. Arron and his Shield stood before her. Arron wouldn't care if she blew the Prime Hand to pieces. In fact, he might prefer it. Would Ilian be enough leverage to let them pass?
If she couldn't get them out of the keep, Delis and the Hounds were as good as dead. Both Arron and Grimly would see little value in their lives. She couldn't take them back through the privies. By now, Julean had figured out how they came into the keep and would have secured the well. It was a matter of time before he started to kill her escorts one by one, to test her resolve. She looked at the men and women who had brought her this far, at their sweat-streaked faces. They were Meliahs’ true faithful. They didn't deserve to die.
Sariah had given her plan thorough thought. The keep's walls were wised with centuries of protective layers reinforced each year by the strongest of wisers. The wall's wising couldn't be erased. Tampering with it resulted in death. No matter how strong the inscription, her bursting stones couldn't dent those walls. It was wits over craft on this one.
She had considered every aspect of the keep's layout, every possible point of entry and exit. The keep had been impregnable when she lived there. But she had learned to think differently, to be resourceful and flexible while living with Kael and his kin. That's how she had come up with her escape alternatives. The trouble was, one option would work for Delis and her Hounds but not for her, and vice versa. It took her but a moment to decide what to do next.
“Up the ramparts. Quickly.”
The north tower was her closest choice. It was no less intimidating than the rest of the keep's walls, but it had advantages. First, the land there rose in a slight hill, shortening the distance to the ground. It was still a high jump, but Delis and the Hounds were stronger than the average man. Second, with the town's encroachment, the tanning vats were located beneath the tower.
“How did you ever think of this?” Delis leaned over the tower's battlements to look at the vats below.
“There was once a man, a thief, long ago, when I was little. They said he jumped from the north tower into the tanning vats. They said he broke both legs but made it alive. We can do better.” Sariah tried to smile with confidence. “Torkel, hang the longest rope we can string together to lessen the distance. Hang it over that one.” She pointed at the grossest of the tubs. “Cured skins are soaking in water with just a little liquor in that vat. It's less toxic.”
“How do you know that?” Delis asked.
“Ilian, over there, she liked to send me out to the tanning vats for penance.”
“Perhaps we ought to drop her down head-first?”
“A moment for every deed and a deed for every moment,” Sariah said. “Climb down until you run out of rope. Watch your legs when you jump. Those vats are not as deep as they look.”
“You first, my donnis.”
“If you make it, I know I'll make it.”
&nb
sp; “And if I don't make it?”
“I promise I'll find a safer way.”
Nothing else would have made Delis jump ahead of her. Eager to test the drop for Sariah, Delis climbed down the rope without a fight.
“Won't you go next, saba?” Torkel said.
“You go ahead. Only I can make the stones at their necks burst.”
The keeper was the last one to go. Sariah handed him her pouch with the prism in it. “Take this to the Bastions. Make sure it's safe. Wait until I arrive.”
“You must do it,” he said.
“You promised to obey me.”
“Are you afraid to jump?”
“No. I can't jump. Trust me. I have good reasons.”
“You must let me stay with you then.”
“Meek shall be the dragon at the foot of the stone.”
“You're quoting the Wisdom to me?”
“There is no wisdom greater than the Wisdom.”
“Why are you sending me away?”
“Fierceness in all things. Killing AND caring.”
“But—”
“We have to secure the stone at all cost.”
“Don't make me do this,” the keeper said between his teeth.
Apparently, she was going to have to. She unsheathed her knife and pricked her forearm above the wrist. “Drink.” She offered her welling blood. “Drink!”
Ilian looked like she was about to vomit.
The keeper's tongue lapped slowly at first, but then his resignation turned to anger and his lips sealed on the wound and sucked hard, a small, painful vengeance.
“That's enough.” She snatched her arm away.
He fastened her pouch to his belt and went to the rope tamely, defeated, dejected. Sariah felt his pain, the clash of duty and loyalty, friendship and obligation, pride and submission.
“May you die well, my friend,” she said.
The steel returned to his eyes. “And you.”
“Are you really not going to jump?” Ilian gaped.
Grimly smiled. “Didn't you hear what she said? She can't.”
“Why not?”
“It's none of your concern,” Sariah said.
“Oh, but it is,” Grimly said. “Do you forget who gave you the means to achieve your ends?”
Sariah willed the Prime Hand to keep her mouth shut. She wanted to seal her lips with the heat of the bursting stone. Yet she still needed the woman to get out of the keep.
“She's going to kill us,” Ilian stuttered hysterically. “Why else would she stay behind?”
“Don't be silly,” the mistress said. “She won't do anything of the sort. She needs us.”
“For what? She kills us and she jumps.”
“Are you really that blind, Ilian?”
“Is she afraid of breaking her legs?”
“No, not her legs,” Grimly said. “She's afraid of breaking the baby in her.”
Hackles rose on the back of Sariah's neck. An inexplicable urge to tear out the mistress's throat with her own teeth left her shaking with fury. Instinctively, she reached for the amplifying stone in her pocket and strengthened the protective weave around her womb. For as long as no one knew, the babe had been safely hidden in her body. Now, the cunning witch knew.
The mistress smiled. “You carry small, I give you that. But you're showing.”
“She's—?”
“Aye. Our dear Sariah is with child.”
Ilian stared. “You mean willingly?”
“What are you?” Grimly said. “Maybe four months along?”
Meliahs help her. The mistress was fingering the stone on her neck, studying Sariah's body as if she were a foaling mare.
“Down the stairs and to the right.” Sariah conveyed a spark of heat to the hostages’ stones as added persuasion. Ilian gasped. Sariah caught a glimpse of Julean's guards retreating at the bend ahead of her. She picked up her pace.
Mistress Grimly spoke. “If you're thinking about escaping the same way you and your New Blood friends did the last time—”
“Be quiet.” Sariah had no doubt that the underground passage had been found and blocked after her escape.
“Why are you so eager to leave?” the mistress said. “The keep is your home. The Guild is your kin. You're welcome to stay here and live in the safety you deserve. Aren't you tired?”
She was tired. Of the journey, of the intrigues, of the intricacy, of running away and seeking and planning and hurting and anticipating, of knowing and not knowing, of trusting and not trusting. She also knew that she had to get out of there. She turned into the secondary corridors behind the kitchens. The mistresses were lost in the maze of narrow servant passages, but because she had spent hours on end doing penance in the kitchen, Sariah knew them by heart.
“Even if you find a way out,” the mistress said, “Arron will be waiting for you on the other side.”
“Then we'll see how much he values Ilian here.”
Ilian croaked. She didn't know either.
“Understand, child,” the Prime Hand said. “As things stand, I can't protect you from Arron if you go outside the keep.”
Sariah had no delusions that anyone would protect her here. It was up to her now. Up ahead, she spotted her destination—the beggars’ vent. It was one of a set of four small, square openings in the wall, typical of the keep's architecture, designed to circulate fresh air through the stifling back kitchens. Over the years, overworked servants had sneaked in bundles of kindling into the kitchens without having to maneuver the stairs and the long march to the sheds. Under the cover of the encroaching town's back alleys, beggars offered bark, dry sticks, cones, and the likes in exchange for leftovers. As a child, Sariah had been a party to a few of those exchanges.
Idle servants scattered like roaches when they saw the black robes. Sariah had been right. Delis and the Hounds couldn't sneak out this way. The wall's protective wising wouldn't allow a living body to pass through the vents. But with a little work, she would.
She put a kitchen stool under the vent and placed the two small stones she had prepared at either side of the window.
“You first,” she said to Ilian, “and don't even think about fleeing when you get to the other side, because my mind can reach a ways.”
Ilian climbed on the stool reluctantly. “But the wising. It won't let me pass—”
“Do as I say.”
“You've wised those two stones to serve as a buffer, haven't’ you?” Grimly said. “They can't affect the wising in the stone, but they can affect the empty space in between. They're triggered by your wiser core. That's why you can get Ilian and yourself through, but not your friends. Marvelous. Well done.”
As if Sariah needed the Prime Hand's praise. She climbed on the stool herself, gave Ilian a boost to make it through the vent, and watched as the woman cursed, slid headfirst down the wall and landed clumsily in the mud.
“You've learned so much since the last time we met,” Grimly said. “You're a treasure, a wiser marvel.”
“Not that it did me any good when I lived here.” Sariah braced herself at either side of the vent. A little heave and she would be through.
“You must understand,” the mistress said. “It's difficult for me. I can't let you go.”
“You have no choice.”
“But I do have a choice,” the mistress said. “An easy one.” She struck.
Pain burst from Sariah's ankle and shot up her spine, a bolt of stinging fire. She looked down to find the mistress's hand clutching her leg. Damn the witch, she had killed herself. Sariah commanded the stone to explode.
There was no explosion, no burst of stone and flesh. The only thing that happened was that the strength ebbed from her body, until her hands withered like dead flowers and her knees failed. Next she knew she was on the floor in Grimly's arms.
Why hadn't the stone burst? Sariah's eyes shifted from the mistress's wrinkled breast to the new faces appearing around her. Guards. The memory of the Prime Hand's long
fingers toying with the stone at her neck flashed in her mind. The witch had disabled the stone's inscription. How?
“Don't struggle,” the mistress said. “Try to relax. That was a very clever plan you had. But you made one small miscalculation, my dear. Do you know what it was?”
The world was spinning. Her spine was on fire.
The mistress smiled. “You forgot that you're not the only one capable of learning new tricks.”
Thirty-five
FOR DAYS SARIAH sat in an isolated cell awaiting news of her fate. The guards had stripped her stones and weapons and manacled her to the wall, just in case she had devised a way to wise the lock away, she supposed. Unfortunately, she hadn't. Frustrated, she watched the silvery haze's advance on her bracelet's red crystals, cursing every precious hour wasted in her solitary confinement.
She had plenty of time to chide herself for her mistakes. Despite knowing that the Prime Hand was dangerous, she had fallen prey to the witch's cunning. Grimly had used the last year and a half wisely. How many of Sariah's wising discoveries had she mastered? What other new or ancient skills had she incorporated into her impressive capabilities?
She had been so close to making her escape. She had secured the prism, but she had to wise it, soon, before it was too late. What if the executioners learned she was trapped by the Guild? Worse, what if they assumed she was dead? She couldn't know for sure, but there was a high probability that the keep walls’ formidable wising could prevent Mia from sensing Sariah at all. She had to find a way to get a message to Kael. She wasn't ready to surrender Ars and neither should he.
Why wasn't she dead? She should be. Her death would effectively end the threat to the Guild's rule and the search for stone truth. It made no sense that she lived on. And what about her baby? She had pledged to herself that if she was able to finish her business, she would find a way to sit out of danger and give the child a chance. Instead, in a moment of stupidity, she had forfeited both their lives.
