Stonewiser

by Dora Machado

  “The men are on the other side of the wall,” Lexia said. “Don't ever go that way. They're kept ready, poor chaps. They're no more than high-strung bulls down here. Those are the breeding stalls.”

  Sariah missed a step.

  “Don't worry. You won't be going there for a while yet.”

  Who had conjured a nightmare like this? She had known the Guild was fickle and devious, but this was beyond reason, beyond indecency and cruelty.

  They made it down through two guarded gates. The women glanced her way, a few with a spark of interest, the majority with vacant stares that spoke of desolated minds. Lexia led Sariah to sit on one of the cots and furnished her with a cup of cold tea. Sariah's hands were heavy, painfully stiff and trembling, but she managed a sip. Lexia proved adept at deciphering Sariah's gestures.

  “You want to know how long I've been here? About five years, I think, since my master repudiated my lease and I was sent here. They said I had good blood. Look here.” Lexia turned and displayed her backside without a trace of modesty. Four vertical lines were etched above her buttocks. “I've earned my keep. I've birthed four wiserlings.”

  Wiserlings? Is that what they called their babies? She glanced around the chamber, looking for the telltale sign. At the edge of the low-backed garments, most every woman sported at least a scar or two etched on her lower back. Some had many more than two. What of their children's fates? During her time at the keep, there had never been more than two or three children gifted to the Guild each year. What happened to all of their offspring?

  “You get used to it.” Lexia patted her arm. “It's better than being a beggar, don't you think? Better than being dead?”

  There had to be a way out of here. How many guards watched over the pen? When did the guard change? Who kept the padlock's keys?

  “There's no escaping this place. Save yourself the grief. If you try, you'll fail. And when they catch you, they'll punish you horribly. Look at Violet over there. The one ready to burst. See? No hands.”

  Didn't they know that wisers went mad without hands?

  “She's already half-mad. They're just waiting for her to farrow and she'll be gone for good. Now sleep. You'll need your strength in the days to come. By the way, not that it matters much down here, but what should we call you?”

  Sariah traced the letters of her name on the cot.

  “S-A-R-I-A-H.” Lexia frowned. “Sariah? Formerly of the Hall of Scribes’ sixty-sixth folio?”

  How did the woman know her name?

  Lexia buried her face in her hands. “If they caught you, what hope is there for us?”

  Sariah lay wearily on the cot, yet unable to sleep. The fires had been put out. Darkness veiled the day's shocking sights. A cot nearby creaked under a heavy body, accompanied by a muted whimper. Unable to wise, cut off from her wiser's core, trapped, humiliated, forgotten. This place was a stonewiser's worst nightmare. What horrors awaited the women's children once born? Sariah corrected herself. This place was foremost, a mother's worst nightmare.

  She fisted her aching hands. They throbbed at the pulse of her glowing bracelet. She had to get out of here and fast. But first, she had to restore some of her essential links. Mia's healing practices. Would they work for her too? She closed her eyes and turned herself inward. There was work to do.

  Sariah tapped her fingertips against Lexia's and watched the woman's pupils. There. A slight dilation. Good. The mix was working. By combining the stone tapping she had learned from Malord with what Mia had shown her about stone healing, Sariah had succeeded in restoring at least some of Lexia's essential links.

  Lexia's eyes brimmed with tears. “I still can't believe you can do this. How?”

  Adding one of her unique skills to the mix, Sariah send a sequence of leveled emotions through her fingertips. Perseverance. Self-reflection. Concentration.

  Lexia gasped. “Did you just use emotion to speak to me?”

  Aye. She had just created an alternative way of communicating with the women. She couldn't tell if Lexia got it completely, but she repeated it, slowly this time, for her benefit.

  “Amazing,” Lexia said. “All this, with your fingertips only?”

  Sariah gestured for Lexia to try it on her. It took Lexia a little while to master the tapping, but when Sariah surged above the pain and finally felt the weak connection come to life in her mind, she grinned. From their usual posts at their respective looms, the rest of the women smiled in quiet delight. Sariah crossed her lips with her finger to remind them that this had to be their secret, but she was as happy as they were, especially when she noticed some of the women's vacant stares flickering back to life.

  “Hey, you,” a guard barked from the railing above. “Move on, will you? The mistress told us all about you. Don't try your tricks on us.”

  She walked obediently on to the next loom, carrying along a full basket of black skeins. It was the best pretext she could find to circulate among the women working the Guild's looms. Although it was extremely dangerous, it allowed her the rare occasion to work one on one with each woman.

  It wasn't as if she was able to restore the women's ability to wise. The muzzles, combined with the blocking stones implanted in their palms, contained the bulk of the wising functions with brutal efficiency. They also penalized any attempt at fooling the stones with mind-numbing pain. Stone tapping, however, was not a common wising function. Neither were the related finger tapping, the link healing, and the emotion infusions that Sariah had devised. She had wagered that since the Guild didn't teach those, the muzzles weren't designed to restrain those skills. She had been right.

  She had only been able to teach stone tapping to a handful of women thus far, but the discovery had changed the chamber's mood. Smiles graced the previously desolated faces, and the occasional giggle could be heard in the work chamber. There was interaction among the captive group, meals shared and secret gatherings after dark where the women tried to revive their truncated links. There were even occasional whispers hidden by the creaks and taps of the levers and pedals that powered the Guild's upright looms.

  How strange. Sariah had never once wondered where the black cloth the Guild used to make the stonewisers’ robes came from. Now, every day when she followed the other women into the adjoining workshop and sat before her assigned loom, she wondered how many Guild wisers knew that they wore the product of their peers’ forced labor and sweat.

  “Someone's looking for a paddling today,” another guard said from above. “Your loom has been idle too long, woman. You want me to call the mistress?”

  No. Sariah didn't need the mistress's attention at the moment. She hurried on to the next loom. She had something else she wanted to do, but the guard was right. She couldn't stay away from her own loom much longer. Failure to deliver the required cloth yield resulted in a paddling proportional to the lapse, ten strikes per yard missing. She knew the sting of the punishment well enough. It was painful, humiliating, and effective. In deference to her bottom's tenderness, she was becoming a most proficient weaver.

  Sariah offered the basket to Pru. Pru sank her hands in it as if rummaging for a good skein. Sariah made as if to help, all the while tapping her fingertips against Pru's beneath the sea of yarn. Without a tongue, Pru had not been able to express herself in years. Perhaps because of that, she had become quite proficient at finger tapping very fast. Sariah braced to try yet a new combination. She called on her imprinting skills, the same process she used to infuse a stone with a tale. Then she shaped the images she needed in her mind, and, testing the tale's reach, tapped it against Pru's fingertips.

  Without a stone, the images had no staying power. The tale found no solid lodging and therefore evaporated quickly. But Sariah was counting on the human mind, and more specifically, on Pru's well-honed memory. She allowed the snippets of images to flow. The Guild's Council. Mistress Grimly's face. Master Arron. A short sequence of the bloody battle at the wall. A quick sight of Targamon's bubbling rot. A memory o
f the fragmented Council meeting at Arron's tent. Then her own thoughts in the form of an opinion: It's not right.

  With a faint nod, Sariah settled the basket in Pru's lap. Pru understood. It was her turn. She grabbed the basket and went down the loom rows, repeating the process Sariah had created, sharing the images with the others. Sariah returned to her loom as proud as a Domainer teacher.

  “This is crazy,” Lexia whispered, after her exchange with Pru. “How do you know all that?”

  “Is this true?” Lexia's loom neighbor, Celia, mumbled.

  “These must be your own projections.” Trea said what they were all thinking.

  Sariah shook her head. Without their wising abilities fully restored, the women couldn't probe her wising to ensure that she was telling the truth. Instead, Sariah had to find some other way to gain their trust. She put her fisted hand to her heart.

  “Wiser's oath?” Lexia whispered. “You're swearing on your stonewiser's pledge?”

  “Do you think you're doing us a favor?” Violet stomped on the pedals of her beater violently. It was a wooden contraption that punched the ready weft and tightened the weave, the only job remotely adapted for a woman without hands. “This is too dangerous. If they figure out what we're doing—”

  “You're just irked because you can't do it yourself,” Lexia said. “This is the best thing that has happened to us in a long time. Please, Sariah, don't take it away from us.”

  As if Sariah could. Once stimulated, the revived links were active again. Sariah reached out and tapped her fingertips against Violet's arm, issuing a quick burst of emotion. Compassion was most likely what came through to Violet, although Sariah tried to convey a sense of peace as well.

  The pain that struck her in the arm left her reeling with shock.

  “Keep your hands to yourself!” The guard cracked his lash again, this time against Violet's shoulder. “Or do you want another taste of the lash, dears?”

  Sariah rubbed the sting of the vicious welt swelling along her arm, making a conscious effort to stop her body from trembling. She had almost gotten caught. She bent over her loom, nauseous with dread and stole a look at Violet. Violet was beating the pedals as if she were crushing scorpions under her feet.

  It was only hours later, during the guard shift change, that Lexia dared a whisper. “Hey. Sariah. Sariah!”

  Sariah glanced at the parapet above and then back at Lexia.

  “Could these be used as weapons?” Lexia twirled her fingers under her tucked chin.

  At last. They understood. Sariah was happy that the women enjoyed their newfound skills, but enjoyment wasn't the reason for her efforts. She stole another glance at the guards, and, finding them busy, she pointed to her fingertips, to herself, and shook her head. Because of the muzzles, alone none of them could create enough of a jolt to stun a guard. But together—she swept her hand in a wide circle—they might be able to do something.

  “You mean like escape?” Lexia asked.

  That's exactly what Sariah meant. Disable the guards with concentrated communal jolts of power. Escape the keep. But she couldn't dare an attack on the guards with only a few women able to tap. To succeed, she needed to teach all the women.

  “We could try,” Celia whispered.

  “I don't know,” Trea muttered under her breath. “They'll kill us if they find out.”

  “It's a better option than this,” Cara said.

  “We could flee the keep and quit the Guild. Sariah did it. We could live on our own.”

  “And eat what? Shoe soles for dinner?”

  “At least we'd have shoes.”

  “I'd settle for shoes,” Lexia said. “Hush. Here come the guards.”

  They waited for the pair to pass.

  “We could keep our babies,” Celia murmured.

  “What would you do with a snotty wiserling?”

  “We could wise stones again.”

  The mere notion silenced the wide-eyed group.

  Sariah tapped her temple. They had to think this through. It was risky. They would have to act in concert. She waited until another pair of guards marched over them before reaching out and tapping a few quick images against Lexia's fingertips.

  “Outside?” Lexia said. “We need to find out what's going on outside the Mating Hall?”

  Sariah nodded. Timing was very important. If they were going to succeed in their escape, they needed to know as much as they could about the keep and its surroundings.

  “Information is hard to get in here,” Lexia said, but her eyes, along with the other women's stares, were on Celia.

  Celia blushed.

  “Your guard,” Lexia said. “Not that there's much talking when the two of you meet. You could trade your, errr, services for more than apples.”

  “But I like apples!”

  “Think of it,” Lexia said. “We could all be free of the Mating Hall.”

  Quiet fell on the chamber, ominous and expectant.

  A small version of Celia's voice broke the silence. “I suppose I could try.”

  Sariah breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Our luck may be changing,” Lexia whispered. “Not only have we learned finger tapping, but there hasn't been a summons in days.”

  A summons? Sariah mouthed.

  “The sisters. They haven't worked on us at all. With the golden prism?”

  Did the sisters use the prism to intimidate these women? Apparently so, judging by the terrified expressions on their faces. Sariah pointed to herself and waved a hand in the air.

  “You took it?” Celia gaped. “You couldn't have.”

  “You're lying,” Violet said.

  “Is it gone? Are you sure?”

  Violet sneered. “It may be gone now, but it'll be back. Those two can't live without it. And the mistress, she'll go after it with a vengeance.”

  Sariah prayed the keeper was safe and well on his way to the Bastions.

  “What's the meaning of this?” Julean stood at the gate, glaring. “Have you all decided that the Guild doesn't need its share of good cloth? Stop chatting and work those looms, you idle sluts.”

  The women's attention returned to the looms. Except Sariah's. She met Julean's glower and regretted it immediately. His eyes swept over her unabashed, reminding her that she was little more than a sow for farrow. His finger targeted her like a straight arrow.

  “Come. The sisters will want you.”

  Sariah's stomach sank like a stone in water.

  Thirty-seven

  “WAKE UP, FREAKS, you have work to do,” Julean said. When nothing stirred in the far corner of the black granite room, he turned to Sariah. “Wake them up. I can't bear the sight of those things.”

  Sariah crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. She had no intention of following Julean's orders.

  “Feisty, aren't we?” Julean said. “Do you think you have common men like me on the run? I've got no qualms about witches like you. There are thirty men on the other side of that door who would gladly cater to your whore's tastes. Defy me and by the time the freaks wake up, they'll have to unhinge your knees from your ears.”

  The man's visceral hatred hit her in the gut. But it was about survival now. She went to the other side of the room. A black granite box was built into the corner, almost invisible against the walls. A round hole near the floor seemed to be the only opening. Sariah knelt down. The mere notion of going in there gave her the chills. She peered in and spied the strangest of sights.

  The sisters slept in a dark nest of straw and blankets, tangled in each other's arms. Like wintering cubs, they cuddled close together, Belana, an ethereal shape of waning white, wrapped about Telana, her black shadow. It was odd enough to see grown women sucking their thumbs while they slept, but it was even stranger to see that they suckled on each other's thumbs.

  Who were these bizarre creatures? Where had they come from? What tragic circumstances had brought them to Grimly's service? It couldn't be easy for them. Julean's contempt
was probably the most common reaction they elicited from people. Despite everything, Sariah pitied them.

  Balancing on her hands and knees, and reluctant to leave any part of her body hanging out for Julean's insolent perusal, Sariah crawled in the box. Inside, it was warm and somehow moist, rich with the scent of lard and ripe olives, and quiet with an insulated peace broken only by the hushed rustle of the sisters’ breaths. The enclosed space seemed smaller by the moment. Sariah's heart broke out into a panicked race.

  “Meow.” The freckled face of an oversized kitten peeked from under Belana's neck. The black-footed cub climbed on Sariah's lap, a clumsy bundle of fur, huge ears, needle-like claws and enormous yellow eyes. Petting the purring creature settled her nerves. Her hammering heartbeat eased. What kind of cat was it? She couldn't tell.

  “Hurry up.” Julean's bark sent the kitten scrambling into hiding.

  Sariah shook the sisters gently, until Belana's sightless eyes fluttered open. “Is that you, little sister? Sweet awakening, how kind of you.”

  Telana uncoiled like a mighty python and looked out of the box. “It's back. I can feel it. Julean is here too.”

  “Sorry, little sister,” Belana said. “We have to work.”

  Sariah was seriously worried. Belana was leaking black tears and Telana was securing Sariah to the birthing chair as if the belch was coming. Without a voice, Sariah couldn't persuade the sisters from their course. She shook her head. She tried to motion with her bound hands.

  “You don't understand,” Belana said. “She wants the pain.”

  “Silly,” Telana said. “She wants the progress.”

  What progress?

  “The progress of the Blood, of course.” Grimly strode into the chamber carrying a small package that she set to balance on Sariah's belly. “I don't want to hurt your baby. On the contrary, I want to help him.”