Stonewiser

by Dora Machado

  Sariah's eyes sprang wide open. “No blood licking between the two of you. Do you hear me? She's too young to understand the Hounds’ ways.”

  “But I do understand,” Mia protested.

  “And you, stay away from Uma,” Sariah said. “She's dangerous.”

  “She is kind of scary.”

  “Noble are the strong for they shall conquer fear,” the keeper said. “If you'd allow us to cleanse the filth from the land—”

  “I'm not granting the Hounds leave to scorch everything in your path,” Sariah said. “There are innocent people out there who don't deserve to die by your claws.”

  “From the stone we rose and with the stone we shall avenge all heresy. Let's do it, saba. Let's reclaim the world for Meliahs. What's anger but the self's denial? What's denial but a swift escape?”

  It was tempting. The keeper was calling on her rage. Stone Grimly to death, quarter Arron, destroy the Guild, eviscerate Ilian and the others for good measure. Would any of it satisfy her anguish, restore her power, save Ars, revive her son, bring back Kael?

  Mia's freckles blended with her flush. Her curls trembled with the effort. But she was anything if not determined. Sariah worried she was taxing the girl beyond her capabilities, sucking on the young wiser's strength like an overeager babe at the breast.

  But she was experiencing some relief. Her heart was beating more steadily. Her joints were loosening up. She was just beginning to feel the effect of Mia's healing when a commotion ensued outside her door.

  “Get your paws off me, you blood-licking lizard,” someone screeched outside Sariah's door. “This is my hall!”

  There was a bump and a crash, and then Lorian, First of the Hall of Numbers, stumbled through the door. The keeper grabbed her. The tall lanky woman twisted in his grip like a skunk about to spray. Sariah recognized Uma and Olden pushing into the room too, forcing themselves into the chamber like a flock of squabbling ravens.

  Lexia came in with the rabble. “Leave Sariah alone. She's ill. She can't cope with this.”

  Sariah didn't care if they tore into her with bloody beaks, but she cringed when Olden's crooked staff swung at the back of the keeper's knees. Swept in with the crowd, Malord interposed a stool between Olden's staff and the keeper's legs. Olden redirected his staff, clubbing everything and everybody in sight.

  The armed Hounds poured into the room. The councilors’ followers wielded clubs and knives. She had never seen stonewisers looking like thugs before. Her mind was slow whirling to action, but it seemed that Hounds and stonewisers alike shared in the bloodlust this day. Had the Council members arrived to fetch her for a stoning? Were the Hounds trying to prevent them from seizing her?

  “Stop it,” she said. “All of you. You're going to kill one another.”

  No one listened.

  “In Meliahs’ name, stop it, I say—”

  An arch of black flow surged across the room. It left a gaping Olden staring at the handle in his hand, the only part of his once elegant staff not singed to oblivion.

  A girl's voice broke the stunned silence. “Auntie said to stop it.”

  Every eye in the room fell on Mia.

  It was a good thing Mia's attention was on Sariah, because Uma mouthed the terrible word. “Abomination.”

  “I've told them to go away,” the keeper said, holding a squirming Lorian at arm's length. “They won't desist.”

  Lorian slapped the keeper's arm. “Of course I won't desist. This is my hall!”

  The keeper cocked an inquiring brow in Sariah's direction. As if she didn't have enough problems right now. But she didn't want more blood spilled in her name. “Release Lorian. Send your Hounds away, and the other stonewisers too. I want no one killed here today.”

  It struck her eerily strange that everyone did as she asked, not just the Hounds, but the councilors’ followers as well. Everybody left the chamber, with the exception of her friends and the three Council members. She tried to make sense of it all. She knew the balance of power had changed at the keep. But this?

  “Did you make her?” an incredulous Uma asked.

  “Mia is not of the Guild,” Sariah said.

  Olden pointed at the girl with his smoking handle. “You know what should be done with that thing.”

  Rig materialized next to Mia growling like a faithful mastiff. “Stay away from her, old man. You too, witches.”

  Sariah hadn't even known that Rig was in the room until this moment, but she was suddenly very glad that the boy stood by Mia with such unshakable grit.

  “On my oath,” Sariah said. “Target her at your life's peril.”

  “Is that the proper way to address your masters and mistresses?” Olden said.

  Sariah chuckled mirthlessly. “I quit the Guild. Remember?”

  “Is it true then?” Uma said. “That you won't heed our authority? That you won't obey us as you pledged?”

  “My pledge was to the stone truth, not to your persons.”

  “Traitor,” Olden mumbled.

  Mia's recent healing gave Sariah the strength to face the councilors. She steadied herself on her feet and squared her shoulders. She knew she made for a mad if not frightful sight, pale and gaunt like the dead, wearing a blood-stained nightgown and her coldest, most hateful glare. “Is there a point to your excursion here today?”

  Lorian actually took a step back. “Lexia and the others, they brought you here. I told them you were trouble, but they begged me. And now you hide in my guest chamber, under the guise of my own hospitality, thumbing your nose at me, at all of us?”

  “Sariah's been very sick,” Lexia said. “She doesn't know.”

  “Know what?”

  “You haven't heard?” Lorian stared at her in disbelief. “The Hall of Numbers has claimed preeminence at the keep.”

  “Meliahs save us from the piles of tribute,” Olden muttered.

  “Preeminence?” Sariah said. “That's a bold step, even for someone as crafty as you, Lorian.”

  “It's pure maneuvering, that's all it is,” Olden said.

  “Why should I be blamed if your beloved Hall of Masons scattered to the quarries?” Lorian said. “Is it my fault that Uma's Hall of Healers split? The Hall of Numbers has the greatest say because most of our wisers stayed together at the keep instead of following Grimly or Arron. And that may have something to do with me.”

  Sariah made a concerted effort to try to understand, even if her head ached and her wits were flowing as slowly as molasses.

  “There's no governance at the keep,” Lorian said. “We needed some kind of rule.”

  “How fortunate that you think it should be your rule,” Olden said.

  Lorian's countenance darkened. “Do you forget we tried to solve this problem among the three of us?”

  “Tried and failed,” Uma said. “What a joy that discussion was.”

  “The Guild is not used to chaos,” Lorian said. “We called a meeting in the Hall of Stones. We couldn't agree on who should head the new Council, so we decided to take a vote.”

  “A vote?” Sariah was shocked. It had to be a first. The Guild had always appointed their rulers. “The three of you agreed to a vote?”

  “It wasn't their idea,” Lexia said.

  “Our hand was forced,” Uma admitted. “The other stonewisers, they demanded a vote.”

  And the Council members had only agreed to save their necks, Sariah realized, astonished. In Grimly's absence, authority at the keep had deteriorated quickly.

  “So we took the vote,” Lorian said. “Guess who won?”

  “By his bitterness, it wasn't Olden.” Sariah hazarded a guess. “You?”

  “It should have been me.”

  “Who says?” Olden fumed.

  “I had the biggest following.”

  “By her own account, of course.”

  “But it wasn't me,” Lorian said. “Do know who it was?”

  Sariah shrugged.

  “It was you.”

  F
orty-one

  SARIAH HAD BEEN elected to lead the Guild.

  It was surreal, unbelievable, unfathomable. It was laughable, maddening, infuriating.

  “You've got to be kidding.”

  “Do I look like a journey jester?” Lorian's black eyebrows twitched with fury.

  Sariah's eyes fell on a skittish Lexia. “Did you have anything to do with this?”

  “Me?” Lexia cleared her throat. “Not me. The women of the pen. They're free now, they've returned to their halls. They told everybody. About you, about what you did at the Mating Hall. The Guild. The Council. It isn't right, Sariah. You saw it first. You've got to fix it.”

  Meliahs curse her rotten luck. She didn't want this. She had quit the Guild. She had never fathomed her attempts to rally the women of the pen would get her into a bind like this. Had they all gone insane?

  Yet in a perverse way, everything made perfect sense. She'd had followers all along, other stonewisers who supported her. Grimly had spoken of them as silly people, disquieted by Sariah's adventures. And Arron, in his stone tale message, had wanted Sariah to declare for him to enlist her supporters to his cause. The free women of the pen had galvanized her supporters and spearheaded the vote. Her own actions had brought her to this point. She didn't want any followers. The hefty weight of their expectations bore down on her already burdened shoulders.

  “We had to ask ourselves,” Olden said. “Why this sudden wave of support?”

  “There had been rumblings about you,” Uma said.

  “Exaggerations.”

  “And then, poof.” Olden snapped his fingers. “You're it. We had to wonder how. Do you care to tell us?”

  That's why she wasn't dead just then. That's why Lorian, Olden and Uma were at the foot of the bed, speaking to her, instead of at the head of a stoning crowd. The unprecedented election had inadvertently protected her from the Council's wrath. That, and the Hounds’ ferocious claws.

  “Must you really do this now?” Lexia said. “Can't you see that she's not well yet?”

  “Precisely,” Olden said. “She's in no condition to rule. So you'll need to acknowledge the election, Sariah. Then you'll declare yourself too sick to carry out your duties and transfer your election to us.”

  “You want me to transfer the election to you?”

  “To all three of us,” Uma said. “To the new triumvirate we'll form to shoulder your many duties.”

  Sariah's eyes shifted from petite and golden Uma, to lanky and raven-haired Lorian, to bold and hunched Olden. They were very different, yet very much alike. She realized what they were doing. A delegated transfer of power. They could be counted on to conceive the most creative solutions on matters of law. They were running their own power sprints. They had been denied rule by their fellow stonewisers, but they were going to seize it regardless.

  Sariah had to think fast. What were the chances she could complete her search with these three ruling the keep? Could they provide unity and stability to the divided Guild? Sariah had no doubt about both answers. These three were an omen for destruction.

  “Not that I want to rule the keep,” she said. “I resigned the Guild, but why would I grant the keep's rule to any of you?”

  “You have no choice,” Olden said. “Did you think we wouldn't discover your trick?”

  “What trick?”

  “But we did discover it,” Uma said. “And if we tell those stonewisers who remain, those fools who believe in you, you can be assured there will be a stoning at the keep.”

  “We've been investigating,” Olden said. “Who wouldn't, with so much at stake?”

  “We probed our respective stonewisers,” Lorian said.

  “Without their knowledge?” Sariah asked.

  “The First of a Hall doesn't need permission to probe her members.”

  It was pure old Guild thinking, without remorse or doubt.

  “Do you know what we found?” Uma said. “Do you know what we found on Lexia and the Mating Hall's women?”

  “A seal,” Olden said. “We found your seal on their cores.”

  “My seal?” Sariah's mind spun with the blow. “I don't have a seal.”

  “The triangle within the oval,” Olden said. “Do you remember it now?

  Zeminaya's seal. The one she had found on her own core, on Mia's core, the one that created the strange attachment between Mia and her. But how had it spread to the other stonewisers?

  “You deceived them,” Lorian said. “You told them you were teaching them to stone tap. You did a little more than that.”

  “That seal is the reason they elected you,” Uma said.

  “That seal is influencing the stonewisers to your advantage,” Olden added.

  Sariah raked her hands over her scalp's bristly hair growth. How could she have accomplished something as complex as passing on Zeminaya's seal when she was curbed and unaware? “It can't be. It doesn't work like that.”

  “Oh, so she admits to it readily,” Olden said.

  “There's more to it,” Lorian said. “Do you know that the seal is spreading? Your seal is contagious, like the plague.”

  Contagious?

  “They could be lying,” Malord warned.

  Somehow, she knew they weren't.

  “How can we stop it from spreading?” Uma asked.

  Sariah couldn't figure out how the seal had been passed on in the first place, let alone how to stop it from spreading. “I don't know.”

  Olden scowled. “Do you deny the seal powers your followers’ fervor?”

  “Of course not.” It was Lexia who saw the truth first. “Whatever this seal is, it can't possibly affect a stonewiser's judgment.”

  “How could you know that?” Lorian asked.

  “Because Sariah's cause, the stone truth, calls on more than stonewisers. In fact, the majority of Sariah's followers are not stonewisers. Hounds. Domainers. Goodlanders. You've seen them come to the keep to swear allegiance to Sariah and her cause. They have no core. They can't bear a seal. They chose her cause freely. So did the stonewisers.”

  It was a good argument, but it didn't convince the councilors.

  “That's no proof,” Olden said.

  “What's the seal's purpose then?” Lorian spoke over Olden.

  “To control us,” Uma said without a trace of doubt.

  They started bickering again, belittling Lexia, scorning Sariah, fighting among themselves like rats over scraps. One thing was clear—they were not going to be stopped by something as simple as reason.

  “Lexia, I want you to kill these three.”

  Lexia stared at Sariah, too stunned to speak.

  “Kill them, I said.”

  “You want me to kill the councilors?” Her eyes shifted from Sariah to the alarmed councilors and back to Sariah. “But why?”

  “It doesn't matter why,” Sariah said. “Just do as I say.”

  “But—”

  “Are you going to kill them or not?”

  Lexia stammered. “Well. E-hem. I—No, I don't think I will. I mean, I don't like them, but I don't really think that killing them is right—”

  “There you have it.” Sariah faced the Council members. “Your proof.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I just commanded Lexia to kill you. But she didn't. Did she? She refused my command.”

  “That just proves she's right of mind,” Lorian said.

  “It proves more than that,” Sariah said. “It proves I can't make her do what I want, despite the seal. It proves that whatever this seal may be, your accusations here today have no merit.”

  Sariah smiled like the triumphant huntress she was. She had defeated Lorian and the others single-handedly in the briefest of combats.

  Sariah waited until the keeper escorted Lorian, Uma and Olden out of her chamber. They had been temporarily defused, but they would be back, she was sure.

  She sat on the bed and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the mounting headache. She had so muc
h to do. She had to go after Kael and figure out a way to recover the prism. But she also had to sort out this mess or risk losing whatever little support she had managed to garner thus far.

  The election offered both, an opportunity to finish her search and a chance at surviving her stay at the keep. It was also the reason for the uneasy peace between the remaining stonewisers, the Hounds and their Domainer allies. It kept a fragile balance, one that could be easily shattered if the councilors succeeded in undermining Sariah. She had to figure out what was going on with the seal. But first, she had to get over the shock of hearing words like “Sariah's cause” and “Sariah's followers.” Since when did she have a cause and followers?

  She thought of Mia, who had been sealed along with Sariah. She thought of Malord, with whom she had worked closely many times. Malord was there, sitting by the fire between Mia and Lexia, clutching what Sariah recognized as one of her amplifying stones. He must have felt her eyes on him, because he turned around. Was he sealed too? He paled under her scrutiny. She had her answer.

  “How?” she asked.

  “I don't know. It's not much of a seal, nothing as clear or defined as Mia's. It's a newer scar, pretty recent.” His voice died midsentence as if surrendering to some kind of betrayal.

  “Why didn't you tell me? Is that why you follow me?”

  “No, no. I followed you of my own free will. I didn't have a seal that night at Targamon when we found the seal on Mia's core. We looked. Remember? I don't feel like Mia, who needs you and knows where you are. It's only recently that I started to feel as if I wanted to be part of something, I guess. The greater story.”

  That was a curious way to put it. At least he wasn't compulsively following her. “Can you recall when you started to feel like that?”

  Malord thought for a moment. “The seal has nothing to do with how I feel. You were my enemy when you came to the Domain, but you've since proved yourself worthy, as a colleague, as a friend, and now you're like a daughter to me. I'm sorry if that offends you.”

  Offend her? The words were stuck in her throat so she reached out to squeeze his hand and said nothing and hoped he knew she loved him too. She could feel the strain of the day testing her recovery, but too many questions begged for answers only she could grant.