by Dora Machado
“Will you let us grow more wiserlings for you?” Belana asked. “We can grow them good. We promise. We make only a few mistakes.”
It was Kael who answered. “No more growing wiserlings.”
“Will you kill us then?” The sightless eyes were trained on Sariah's face.
“Growing wiserlings is not the only thing you can do,” Sariah said. “We'll find something better for you to do, something that doesn't hurt people.”
“You think we could do that?”
“That and more. But right now, I need you to help me.”
“How?” Belana asked.
“Can you wise stone?”
Belana's lips curved down in a sad expression. “We can't. The stone doesn't like us that way. What we do is more like the opposite of wising.”
It was a strange way of putting it, but Sariah suspected it was the truth. “It's fine, Belana, don't be sad. Even if you can't wise stone, you can still help me. I must ask a great favor of you.” She whispered the rest.
“You want me to do what?” Belana croaked. “Are you crazy, little sister?”
“This is very, very important.”
Sariah sat on the cellar's floor and braced herself against the wall. She wished she had a different alternative. She also wished Mia was around for a loan of strength. But Delis hadn't come back yet and Sariah couldn't afford to wait any longer.
Belana shook her head. “But you didn't like it before—”
“There's no other choice.”
“What do you mean to do?” Kael knelt by her side. “Is it safe?”
It was far from safe. But what else was she supposed to do?
She lifted her tunic and exposed her navel. She took the stone from Belana, who let go of it reluctantly. Sariah's hands were shaking. She wasn't able to aim the prism's sharp point, mostly because of pure terror of the thing. She was liable to pierce herself badly if she kept at it.
“Hold this.” She gave the stone to Kael. “Place it against my navel's center. Here.”
“I want no part of this. If this is going to hurt you—”
“Please, Kael. Ars. Our son. This might be the only way.”
His eyes were storming with doubt, but he bit his lips and steadied his hands. The point of the prism hovered over her navel's deepest fold, a contact so slight that Sariah could barely feel it.
“Hold it steady,” she said. “Now you.”
“But we don't want to,” Belana said.
Not even in her wildest nightmares had Sariah fathomed that she would ask for it. “Belana, a lot is riding on this. Please. I need you to hurt me.”
The first bolt of the prism's power left Sariah's ears ringing. The second jolt reminded all corners of her body of the meaning of pain. By the third bolt, she had broken into a cold sweat, her belly button was oozing blood, and she was in danger of losing consciousness.
Belana begged. “We don't want to do it no more.”
“One more time.” Sariah wiped the sweat from her brow. “I'll catch it this time.”
Damn the stupid bracelet. It had been sapping her wising essence for days now, emptying her power from her core like a sucking drain.
“This is the last time,” Kael said. “Do you hear me?”
“Do it,” Sariah said, before her body rebelled and ran away from her mind's tyranny.
The jolt zapped her like lightning. Her arms and legs jerked. Her joints echoed the power's buzz with a throbbing ache. The world went dark. A single glimmer of power uncoiled from her depths and slithered at the very edge of oblivion. Sariah pounced on it. She rode it like some unwieldy massive serpent. She held on to it, spurred it, until it sparked one of her links to life, and then a second and a third.
The scent is a spark of reckless life, she remembered Tirsis's words. Sariah was using the prism's torturing jolt to spark her sputtering stonewiser's power. In turn, her own wavering life force was fueling the stone. It was an uneven exchange, one that could kill her at any moment, but it was worth the risk if it yielded the tale.
It wasn't working too well. She had to modify her approach to compensate for her lack of power. She collected the remnants of the prism's power humming in her joints and slung them back into the prism. She held her breath. She hoped the prism wouldn't refract the huge blow back to her.
A deep amber light flickered in the stone and strengthened with her body's contact. Slowly, the glow stabilized, sustaining a shimmering luminosity. Thank Meliahs. All she had to do now was keep the stone going, stay alive, and of course, wise the damn tale.
Sariah embraced the stone's trance with a lover's passion. The prism's optical prowess extended to her eyes and this time, she didn't have the need or the strength to curtail the visions. Fantastic lights projected onto the black screen of her closed eyelids, toying with her pupils to match the stone's phenomenal patterns. When she opened her eyes, the tale she saw flowed through the prism and projected onto the cellar's floor. The three-dimensional images of the four sages and Zeminaya took shape from the light. The tale began where it had stopped the last time. In the stormy night, the sages faced each other over the most beautiful stone Sariah had ever seen.
“That stone,” Kael said. “Can it be?”
“Aye,” she said. “The stone of creation.”
It was the stone Meliahs used to fashion the world, to give life to the Blood, to make stonewisers. It was the very stone stonewisers of old had misused to break Meliahs’ prohibition, to make simmering fire and flesh. Again, in Grimly's hand, a portion of it had been used to repeat the mistakes that led to the execration, to fashion wiserlings.
In the tale, the stone's extraordinary call reigned supreme over the stonewisers’ senses. It was hard for the four sages and Zeminaya to withstand such seduction while keeping to their purposes. It was hard for Sariah too, but if the others had done it, so could she. She shook herself out of the stone's subversive influence and concentrated on the tale.
“This is as much desertion as it is thievery,” Zeminaya was saying. “Here I am, trying to prevent catastrophe, yet you steal life and destruction as if it were nothing but mule baggage.”
“It won't do any more damage,” Poe said.
“You've seen what comes, dreamer,” Zeminaya said. “It's not just the five of us.”
“Zeminaya's right,” Tirsis said. “As long as the stone is whole, the Blood will be divided by the power it wields.”
“What are you saying?” Vargas said.
“A partition for the sake of unity,” Tirsis said. “A way to enable creation and discourage destruction.”
“A way back for the Blood,” Zeminaya said, “if the Blood ever wants a way back.”
“Come, my friends,” Tirsis said. “We have a hard night of wising ahead, our last together. For we too must part, and like the stone, break for good.”
Sariah struggled to hold on to the trance. It was as slippery as an oiled hand. Or was it her core failing instead? She knew she had this one chance to wise the stone. Her body couldn't endure one more of the prism's torturing jolts and survive. Her frail hold on the trance weakened with every moment that passed. The images failed. Her focus faltered. She gathered whatever little power simmered in her joints and tried again. This time, she was able to return to the tale.
A workshop took shape from the light. Tirsis labored over the stone. It was still warm from the recent wising, puffing golden vapors like a dragon's breath. Tears dripped from Tirsis's eyes as she tapped her mallet over her chisel with a steady thump.
“She was of the Hall of Masons tradition,” Kael said.
Aye, a wise sage like Tirsis would have been.
In the tale, the stone cracked open into two uneven parts. Tirsis gestured to the larger portion and addressed Poe. “To you we entrust the greater part of the whole, so that it may be worshipped for Meliahs’ pleasure, so that it might escape destruction and persecution.”
“And so it shall be,” Poe said, bowing formally.
Tirsis handed the smaller portion to Vargas. “To you we entrust this smaller part of the whole, so that it may disappear and thus become the last of all assurances. You're destruction's last warden.”
“And so I shall become.” Vargas pressed her pitchfork against her breast.
“A stone divided into two parts is still easy to put together,” Zeminaya said.
“Patience, my friend. We're not done yet.” Tirsis wiped the tears from her face and bent over the larger part of the broken stone. She began to harvest the druses from the geode's center at random, chiseling the ones most likely to remain whole, a good lot of them. She wrapped the pieces in a silken cloth with great care and gave them to Eneis.
“To you we entrust this part, further divided but together, so that it can only be found by the witted studious.”
A mixture of disbelief, despair and sadness darkened Eneis's homely face as he beheld the broken pieces in his hands. “Who can puzzle out faith and destruction if not the witted studious?”
Sariah's mind slipped from the tale like a climber dangling from a larded rope. Not yet. She needed a few more moments. She focused all her strength on the tale and somehow made it back.
“We need a fourth part,” Zeminaya was saying. “Four parts will daunt even destruction's greatest seekers.”
The veins in Tirsis's hands bulged. Her chisel glowed with her sight engraver's power. An issue of soft white light carved a section out of the stone's core. Carefully, she pulled out the newly chiseled piece. It was still sparkling with the light's refraction. Several flat, highly polished surfaces met in a triangular base that thinned out into a point as sharp as a whalebone needle.
“What will you do with this last part?” Zeminaya eyed the stone on Tirsis's lap.
“This stone I'll wise myself,” Tirsis said. “But she who wises this stone cannot be its warden. So you, Zemi, you who'll remain in the world at large, you'll be its warden. It must be found by those who search for the truth, even though it must be protected, foremost from greed.”
Tirsis closed her eyes and imprinted the stone for a long while. After she was done, she ran the tips of her long delicate fingers over the even edges of her newest creation. She cried out when she pricked her thumb at the tip.
A beam of symmetrical light shot up from the newly carved stone to project a kaleidoscope of brilliant light on the ceiling. It grew to tremendous complexity before it was done. It was beautiful, an elegant combination of geometrical and scrolled shapes which shifted three times before its final flare was imprinted on the ceiling.
Kael gasped. “By the rot—”
The image of Tirsis returned to command the tale. She was smiling, beholding Zeminaya and the others. “A part to be worshipped, a part to thwart destruction, a part to lead the way to the truth, and a part to stand witness to the Blood. We've done our best. Meliahs save us from the rest.”
Sariah was stunned. These five sages had wielded the goddess's courage to split more than stone: themselves. Friends and foes, allies and opponents, they had conspired together and reached across the generations to grant the Blood the possibility of a future. In the process they had touched Sariah with the miracle of their Wisdom.
A new realization rattled her. “Grimly wanted the stone whole.”
“To gather not just the prism's power,” Kael said. “But all of the stone of creation's power.”
She had found and wised three out of the stone's four parts. How close had she come to doing Grimly's bidding?
Kael's touch was as soothing as his voice. “Don't fear, Sariah. She can't do it. We have three of the stone's four parts.”
Aye, but the close call didn't make her feel any better.
The stone of creation had been divided, like the Blood, but it was real. The largest part dwelt among the Hounds at the Dome of the Going, to be worshipped. The second part was lost, thank Meliahs, entrusted to Vargas precisely to avoid an ill-intended unification. The third part, recently reunited with the first, were the carved druses, cleverly disguised by scholarly Eneis as Leandro's game. The last part was the prism carved from the stone's center by Tirsis herself, the stone Sariah held in her hand. Sariah knew that Grimly had refashioned it to serve her own interests.
What's pure but stone? Eneis had said. What's more credible than proof, more credible than action and moment, but substance itself?”
At last, Sariah knew with certainty what she needed to do to furnish the tale.
Sariah stood up in too much of a hurry to mind her aching joints. “We've much to do.”
Belana clung to her leg. “Don't leave us, little sister.”
Meliahs grant her patience. “You won't be alone.”
Kael opened the door and beckoned Malord, who had been instructed on the subject of the white sister. Malord had seen his share of bloody deeds during his long life, but still, when he saw Belana picking at the piglet's remains, he blanched.
“This is Malord,” Sariah said. “He and some of my Hounds will stay here with you. Do you promise you'll be nice to him?”
Belana sniffed Malord and then tentatively reached out to probe his truncated limbs. “Did somebody eat your legs?” she asked. “Were they good?”
Forty-six
SARIAH FOUND DELIS drinking more than ale in the keep's old guardhouse. Several off-duty Hounds waited around for a trade of tastes.
“What do you think you are doing?” Sariah whispered, furious.
Delis had the gall to look completely unabashed, even as she wiped the blood off her mouth with the back of her sleeve. “Didn't you send me to find Mia for you? She is with the Hounds. They went to fetch her. So I'm making the most out of waiting.”
“Would you like some of my blood, saba?” One of the Hounds extended his arm with impeccable courtesy.
“No, thank you.” Sariah managed to smile.
She dragged Delis aside, away from the Hounds’ appraising looks. “For Meliahs’ sake. Why would you take up blood licking?”
“Isn't it obvious, my donnis?”
“Don't tell me. You think that when you offer your blood, your life's continuance is assured in those men's veins? You believe that when you take their blood, they live on in you?”
“I don't know about that.” Delis shuffled embarrassedly. “But you said we had to make allies, and the Hounds are restless creatures. There's no surer way of making friends with a Hound than blood licking. You should try it, my donnis. You need all the friends you can get.”
Sariah didn't know if she should scold or praise Delis, but by any account, she didn't have time to decide. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Of course, my donnis.”
Sariah told her.
“Now?” Delis asked. “My donnis, you're not well yet and the toad wisers—”
“The who?”
“Toad wisers.” Delis flashed a quick grin. “That's the Hound's nickname for the black-robed fools croaking in this crowded pond.”
Sariah fought the smile tickling her lips.
“In any case,” Delis said, “the toad wisers won't let you. They need you. I don't even know if the Hounds will have it either—”
“They don't need to know.”
“It might be too soon—”
“Or too late.”
Delis thought about that. “Do you think it can be done?”
“I think that if anyone can do it, it's you. Something without entailing toxic fumes would be nice.”
“Aren't we getting picky these days?” Delis said. “And the old wasp?”
“He knows.”
“Should I be pleased the man is back?”
“Very pleased.” Sariah squeezed Delis's hands. “I'm sorry if I hurt you before. What I said, about the oath, I didn't mean it like that—”
“I know.”
“You were the one who realized what—no, who I needed. You fetched him for me. The truth is that no one has been a better friend to me than you.”
Delis's blue and viol
et eyes considered her thoughtfully. “Still, he's the one you trust the most.”
Sariah didn't miss the chagrin in Delis's voice. “But I'm donnis only to you.”
“So if it wasn't him…?”
“Aye,” Sariah said, and she didn't think she was completely lying.
The simple sight of Kael warmed Sariah's heart. But it was the warrior in him who joined her hurried march across the bailey towards the Hall of Stones, in command of an escort of twenty Hounds who blended with her own escort seamlessly.
“Metelaus?” she asked, without missing a step.
“He knows what to do,” Kael said.
“So you talked to him? You know about the changes in the Domain?”
“Briefly. He showed me the reports. The rot is acting in strange ways. The weather is crazy everywhere, including here.” He surveyed the darkening skies and inhaled the cold air. “Can you smell it? A storm is coming. It smells like a whiff of the belch.”
“That would be a first. The belch has never reached beyond the wall to the Goodlands.”
“Whatever is happening is affecting the entire land.”
“Great.” Sariah grimaced. “We're all going down. Together.”
“I wish I had the time to study the changes,” Kael said. “All that time wasted dodging foes and friends alike—”
“So the Domainer delegation did find you?”
“Find me they did, although not for long.”
“You got away from them. Didn't you?”
“Not that I don't want to help them, you know, but we have so little time.”
Sariah could see that the land-healer in him was fascinated, curious and eager. But he knew they had to live through today to gain a right to tomorrow.
“What are the odds your plan will work?” he asked.
“Half and half.”
“Not very good.”
“Yesterday, I had no chance at all.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“To secure the tale and to find my son, I would bet on worse odds. So yes, I'm sure.”
