by Dora Machado
Help him? Was it vengeance the Prime Hand wanted? If it was, the horror of hurting her baby was the worst possible revenge. But revenge was more Arron's style. The Prime Hand had always been deliberate in her purposes, set on the Guild's grandiose goals. How could killing her baby contribute to the mistress's goals?
“I'm a faithful admirer of creation's beauty,” the mistress said. “Yours will be the pinnacle of this generation. Done naturally, no less. I expect great things from you. Do you know what this is, Sariah? Can you guess?”
A trickle of sticky warmth leaked from the packet and dripped down Sariah's side. The mistress cut the twine and unwrapped the bundle. A putrid stench stunk the room.
No. She willed Meliahs. Please, no.
It was too late. On her belly, the keeper's blood-crusted hand still clutched the yellow stone prism.
With the sharp point jabbed in the depths of her navel and the power firing from it, the prism was like a pick to the entrails. The stone was lit from within, shimmering with shifting geometrical patterns as the sisters rotated it against her navel. And the pain. Sariah couldn't stand the pain. It wracked her body with increasing intensity, leaving her rattled and bruised.
Belana held on to the prism with the intensity of a rider trying to tame a bolting charger. “Not too much longer.”
Telana's hands were tightly wrapped over her sister's. “Are we making a change?”
“Hard to tell,” Belana rasped. “Very opaque in there.”
Opaque? Was blind Belana somehow gifted to look into her womb?
“Give it some more,” Telana said. “We should've finished by now.”
Sariah couldn't understand. The keeper. He must be dead. Why were they doing this to her? The sisters didn't want information from her. They asked no questions; they issued no commands. She thought perhaps the excruciating torture was meant as Grimly's punishment. But why the prism?
She forced herself to pay attention, to function despite the pain. She tracked the stone's power as it rammed through her defenses. She made an extraordinary effort to test the powerful jolt, to taste it with her mind, just like Kael tasted the water for traces of the rot with his tongue. The pain seared her as if she had indeed drunk from the rot, but what she saw in that terrible flash frightened her beyond pain. How could it be?
The stone's power had both intent and direction. It was directed at her unborn child. It targeted the baby in a very specific, brutal way, to grow him, to accelerate him, to change him in ways Sariah didn't quite understand. She wouldn't allow it. She had failed to protect the child before. She wouldn't fail now. She strengthened the protection she had weaved around her womb.
How long had the Mating Hall served as a screen for torture? How many of the keep's wisers had been born of pain like this? How many had been murdered here? She wished she could get a message out to Kael. She needed him to know that she was alive, but with her wiser's skills muzzled and without access to a stone— Wait. She had access to one stone and one stone only. The very stone she needed to wise. Was it possible?
She had to try and quickly, before she lost the unlikely opportunity. A wiser was more than palms, more than fingers and hands, more than a freestanding core separate from the rest of the mind. But there had to be some carnal anchor between the stone and the flesh. No way around that.
She concentrated on her tortured navel, where the prism's sharp point made agonizing contact. She visualized the spot until it held preeminence over the rest of her aching flesh. She trapped the prism's own power on that spot and merged it with the flesh. Pulse by pulse, she grew it into an elongated cord, a combination of her own matter and one of her freed links. An amalgamation of flesh and light crept up her spine, a cold serpent slithering up her backbone. It was an unnatural creation, a deviance, a feat of desperate necessity she would have never dared under any other circumstances. It split at the base of her neck. One string crept further up to her wiser's core. The other slinked down along the bones of her shoulders and arms towards her hands like some malignant ivy.
Between painful spasms, she managed to bring the tips of her fingers together. There. A sense of contact. A buzz. The prism's rage seethed in her fingertips, stone power routed to serve as a bond between the link and the flesh. She knew she had it when she felt the curious inquiry of a trance knocking on her mind. She had done it.
She drew a deep breath and gathered her wiser's voice at the tip of the tale. She thought of Mia, of the unique link they shared. She visualized the aberrant connection she had created within herself, hovering over the seal stamped on her wiser's core. She flexed it, aimed it, and flexed it again. Then she rammed it into the seal.
Sariah's body arched like a quaking bridge. Her mind felt shattered. Her brain was bruised. And in that instant the protective weave she kept around her womb flickered, allowing the prism's jolts to get by. But she pulled herself together just in time to restore the weave and enable the heresy. The silent words shot out of her mind like an arrow to her seal. Keep. Mating Hall. Alive. Beware. Arron's Shield. All around. Amplifying stones. More. When I can.
“Stop,” Belana cried. “Stop.”
The prism's point eased away from Sariah's navel. The power quit. The elaborate cord flamed and crumbled to sudden oblivion. Sariah's strung body collapsed on the birthing chair, filthy with her discharges. Her throat ached from her soundless screams. She gasped for breath. Would Mia be able to hear her message?
“Did you feel that?” Belana said.
“Did I feel what?” Telana asked.
“Something, like a bump in the link. Didn't you feel it?”
“No, sister, I didn't. Your sensitive nature must be acting up. Try again.”
“But—”
“One last rush. If the mistress senses no quickening today—”
The surge lanced through an exhausted Sariah. She flopped on the chair like a speared fish. The baby jerked, and a cry that wasn't hers echoed in her mind.
Sorry, she whispered wordlessly to her baby.
Sorry. She mourned her dead keeper.
Sariah was on fire. She turned and tossed in an uneasy sleep, aching, throbbing and buzzing with the remnants of the prism's torturous power, dreaming a nightmare she had once wised out of a tale. In the nightmare, she wasn't a witness in the tale, but rather herself.
The air was thick with steaming vapors. The stench of blood, mixed with the scent of acrid corruption, dilated her nostrils and singed her lungs. She lay on a bed of black rock. Dark blood flowed between her legs. A circle of strangers accosted her. Blurred faces examined her baby's features.
“It is not,” Grimly said. Without warning, she cast Sariah's son into a pool of corruption bubbling in the center vault. Like lard tossed on a scalding skillet, the child dissolved. The hissing flow gnawed at the babe's bones until they too melted into the rot.
Sariah woke up drenched in sweat, trembling and gasping for air. She would have been screaming if she'd had a voice; she would have woken the entire keep if her throat had been allowed the luxury of horror.
Against Meliahs’ prohibitions, wisers of old had created flesh. They had divided the Blood to make slaves, betraying Meliahs’ ways, labor and sweat. It wasn't so different here. Was it?
The baby was the real reason Sariah was still alive. Sariah's purported good blood, mixed with Kael's, son of the powerful stonewiser Aya, was attractive to Grimly. And suddenly she understood what Grimly was trying to do at the Mating Hall, although not necessarily the why or the how.
The Mating Hall routine ground down even the hardiest of souls. After another long day at the looms, Sariah more or less dragged herself to the tidiness line and stripped her worthless garment before taking her place behind Celia. Celia wiggled her fingers behind her back. News. Sariah shook off the day's weariness. She followed Celia down the stairs and stepped into the cold water of the long cleansing pool. It got crowded at that end of the pool, a perfect opportunity for a brief attempt at underwater finger tapping.<
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A flash of Celia's lewd deeds filtered through the woman's untrained mind, but after that, Sariah caught a sense of her conversation with the guard the night before. Across the bars, the man was boasting about his cushy assignment at the Mating Hall, gloating because he didn't have to stand guard on the walls day and night like his fellow guards had to do.
The contact broke when Celia's turn arrived. Then it was her turn. Sariah withstood the sponging. She resented the stern hand that forced the washing on her as if she was nothing more than a well-used work beast hosed down after a grueling day in the fields.
She stepped out of the pool and waited for her turn to be dried. She forced herself to focus on the important things. Why were the bulk of the keep's guards posted on the wall night and day? She donned a clean garment and moved on to the table. She downed the tasteless porridge without enthusiasm. The lukewarm gruel was purported to provide all the nutrition necessary to grow wiserlings. It was the only reason to eat it.
She waited until the guards doused the fires to begin her work. Sariah couldn't stray far from her cot, because her bracelet's glow was too hard to conceal. Instead, one by one, the women came to her cot quietly, cautiously, perhaps even faithfully, so that Sariah could try to awaken dormant links and train clumsy fingers into a semblance of rhythm. It was slow, risky, painstaking work, but at least half the women were able to stone tap now, and the other half showed promise.
“Are you sure about this?” Cara whispered when it was her turn. “You said you'd stolen the prism, but it's back and it hurts as much as ever.”
Courage, Sariah tapped the emotion against Cara's icy fingertips. The next time, they wouldn't get it back.
Trea was in a nostalgic mood. “Will I ever birth a child and keep it, you think?”
Confidence. Sariah forced herself to convey the difficult notion. She thought of her own child, of the dangers that stood in the way of her son's existence. Hope. She visualized the elegant roses etched on her bracelet's link, infusing Trea's mind with the sight of a hundred red buds blooming into stunning, exquisite wreaths. She could almost whiff the sweet scent of her own hope, perfuming both her infusion and her dreams.
Celia's whisper brought her back to the pen's stark darkness. “Don't you think we should try it tonight?”
“Not yet,” Lexia said. “We'll get one chance. It's got to be right.”
A muted clang sounded by the lower gate. Celia got up and went to meet her guard. Sariah waited impatiently. Time had no true measure in the Mating Hall. The days were long. The nights were endless. Yet the silver haze's advance on her bracelet's crystals wasn't deterred. Every day she spent at the Mating Hall was a day lost.
The prospect of another quickening was enough to squelch any attempts at optimism. Sariah made an effort to think about the things she liked, like flowers, cherries and honey. True, some of those were really Kael's favorites, but she had learned to share in his pleasures. She thought of him, of the memories they had made together. She recalled his scent, dark spices and fresh laurel draping her like the warmest blanket. She sighed like a lovesick maiden. Pathetic. If only she knew that Kael had gotten her message.
After a while, Celia slipped back into her cot.
“Anything new?” Lexia whispered.
“Fighting,” Celia whispered back.
“Against who?”
“He's not that dumb.”
It had to be Arron. He must be trying to take the keep by force. Sariah had seen him there, massing at the gates, waiting for her. At last, he had gotten tired of waiting.
Sitting on the birthing chair was an act of pure will. Sariah stilled her trembling limbs and focused on the task ahead. She had lived through several quickenings thus far, each worse than the previous one. But whereas other women returned with their bellies grown by several weeks after each quickening, Sariah's seemed to be growing at a more natural rate. It was her way of defying the mistress, the sisters and the prism's power. And after several failed attempts, a good bit of thought, and much preparation, it wasn't her only way.
“You've got to help us, little sister,” Belana said.
“You've got to let us do our work,” Telana said.
“Or would you rather the mistress's wrath?”
“For you, for us, the danger is much.”
One jolt of the prism had Sariah squirming like a half-stomped worm. She had to fight her body's desperation, before she was able to master her fumbling will. Working through the awful pain was the hardest part. She had already sweated the bulk of her body's water by the time she managed to reestablish the aberrant connection between the prism's power and her flesh, core and seal.
She wasn't sure a tale could transcend time and distance with such flimsy anchors. The seal made it theoretically possible, but only if Mia had heard her before, and if she was close enough and actively listening in the company of her amplifying stones. At best, she might get a glimpse of the tale. Surely Mia would tell Kael. It was Sariah's way of smuggling the tale out of the keep, of sharing her discoveries with someone who might be able to act on them.
She prodded the prism for a trance, lightly, so as to not to alert the sisters to her intention. The stone surprised her. It was swift like an eager harlot. Sariah had to tame the stone's strong will towards visions to keep the wising secret. She reached beyond the painful jolts to grab the trance. It was clear enough, and best of all, it announced a straightforward tale.
The tale arrived with a stormy night. The stink of ozone filled her nostrils and freshened her overheated lungs. She recognized the people right away. The four sages were fleeing through a muddy vale. They carried something heavy in a litter between them. Lightning flashed ahead, revealing a figure standing in the middle of the narrow trail. White hair. Sharp features. Piercing blue eyes. Sariah would have recognized the woman anywhere. Zeminaya—wiser, marcher and First Shield—in her time, before the execration.
“Escape is not the way,” Zeminaya said. “The rot has come and the land's dying, but as far as I'm concerned, stealing is still a trespass.”
“I've seen what comes.” Poe rested his side of the litter on the mud. “This is the only way.”
“Fool,” Zeminaya said. “We can all see what comes. Dreaming, that's easy. Change, there's a dare.”
Vargas aimed her rusty pitchfork. “Step aside. You'll have us go along with this mad journey you propose. The execration. A generation punished for trespasses against Meliahs. Do you really think it will ever be enough?”
“It has to be,” Zeminaya said. “We can't survive divided.”
Eneis shook his head. “Who speaks unity but the wall's very builder?”
Zeminaya's blue eyes skewered the teacher. “Who takes the stone in the night while I stay with the rot and the circling buzzards?”
The rain trickled like tears over Tirsis's sad face. “We don't undertake this journey lightly, my friend. We know the burdens as well as you do.”
“And yet you're still leaving.”
“We were dreamed thieves for a purpose,” Poe said.
“That could be,” Zeminaya said, “except for what you steal.” She was upon the sages in one stride. In a swift movement, she pulled off the litter's covers.
Sariah gasped. A large stone sparkled with delicate luminosity where the rain's drizzle touched it. It shimmered with an intense amber coloring that seemed to glow with the light. It was whole, complete and beautiful. It exuded limitless power. The memory of its sweet voice rose above the noise of the sisters’ torture to soothe Sariah's mind. Wise me, wiser, tenderly, bring me to my tale. Don't you know me, child of hers, don't you know my name?
Dear Meliahs. She should have seen it before for what it was, but she had been too rushed and awed, too needy and ignorant. Poe was right. The dream had dreamed them thieves for a purpose greater than most. It wasn't an old myth, a lie, a legend. It was true.
Grimly's malicious plan coalesced in Sariah's mind, grander than she ever imagined, unholy, m
aleficent, sickening, not just the what, but the why and the how. How could she?
Another jolt of excruciating pain shook Sariah's fortitude. The sisters increased the quickening's violence. They had found the weaknesses that inevitably developed in the protective weave when Sariah's attention shifted to the wising. Sariah scrambled. She had to finish wising the prism.
“It's not working,” Telana said. “We've got to try the other way.”
“But I don't like that other way,” Belana bleated.
“And you like the mistress's wrath better?”
“All right.” Telana jabbed the stone prism in Sariah's navel, but Belana's hands migrated elsewhere. “I'm sorry, little sister.”
Sariah hissed. It was only a knuckle, two at the most, but the intrusive presence of Belana's forefinger in her body shocked her. The prism came alight. The jolt struck, doubled with power, skillfully routed from opposite directions to convene at Sariah's center. Her womb convulsed in agonizing contractions. She went into a shuddering rigor.
The jolts flamed through her like fire arrows. She couldn't hold the wising. She had to drop the trance. With every blow, Sariah had to yield bodily control to keep up the shreds that remained of the protective weave. Her mouth dribbled. Her bladder spurted. Even her nipples trickled clear colostrum tears. She was hanging on by a bare string of will that threatened to snap at any time.
We're here, the message arrived with the pain. We're near.
Shock. Elation. Agony. She couldn't think beyond the pain. Mia had heard her. She felt a renewed sense of strength. The child was fighting too, rolling and kicking in her womb, throwing up waves of surprisingly effective protection. Sariah waited for a lull in the sisters’ assault and managed to issue a rush of hope to travel on the wings of her affection. Holding on. Together.
“I haven't seen such great strength in a wiserling before,” Telana said.
Belana agreed. “It's got secrets from us.”
