A Cast of Stones

by Patrick W. Carr

  “They feel identical.”

  Luis dipped his head as if Errol had just paid him a compliment. “Thank you. We’re lucky that I’ve been to both of those cities often enough that I can hold a picture of them in my head as I work.” He stood. “Wait here.” The reader walked with purposeful strides over to his horse and pulled a plain burlap sack from one of the saddlebags. With a smile, he returned.

  Luis opened the sack and extended it to him. “Put them in here, gently. We don’t want them to get chipped.”

  Errol reached to the bottom of the bag before he released the wooden balls. After he’d withdrawn his hand, Luis took the bag and rolled it along the ground. Soft clacking sounds came from inside.

  “Why are you doing that?”

  Luis nodded in seeming approval. “When drawing a lot, it’s important to make sure the process is as random as possible. I’m trying to guarantee that you can’t determine which ball is which when you draw.”

  Errol recoiled in surprise. “Me? You want me to draw? I don’t know anything about being a reader yet.”

  Soft laughter rippled across Errol’s hearing. “It doesn’t matter who draws them, Errol. The craft is in the wisdom to ask the correct question and our ability to concentrate with single-minded intensity on each answer as we fashion the lots.

  “Martin,” Luis called. “We’re ready.” He lifted the bag from the ground and extended it toward Errol with an air of formality as he opened it. The smell of pine floated on the air.

  Martin raised his hand in supplication. “Choose, Errol Stone,” he intoned. “Choose and let the will of Deas be known.”

  Errol’s pulse quickened as he put his hand in the bag, felt the smoothed grain of Luis’s handiwork brush the ridges of his skin, and pulled out a lot. He held it out for inspection, but Luis shook his head.

  “You know enough of reading to recognize the difference between a W and an E.” His eyes brightened above his smile. “Tell me, Errol. Which way do we go?”

  Errol turned the wood against the light just as he had done with the stone orb in Martin’s cabin days ago. The process felt almost familiar to him now, but his heartbeat sounded in his ears nonetheless. And then he saw it.

  “It’s a W.”

  Luis leaned forward, cupped Errol’s hand, and turned the wooden lot before he nodded in confirmation. “Place the lot back in the bag. We’ll have to draw again.”

  Again? “Why?”

  The reader rolled the bag along the ground again as he answered. “The lots are less than perfect, which introduces error into the cast, but even were they sculpted from the hardest substance available to us, durastone, we would draw again to confirm the choice.” The olive skin of his face crinkled around his brown eyes as he smiled. “The conclave has striven for centuries to create the perfect lot, but it seems that skill is still beyond us.” He extended the bag again. “Draw.”

  Errol drew and held the wood to the morning light. “It says W.”

  Luis nodded. “Very well. It’s not what I expected, but we’re going to Windridge.” He turned toward the horses.

  A thought struck Errol, rooting him to the patch of earth where he stood. “What if I had picked the other one?”

  Luis smiled with a light of mischief in his eyes. “Every reader asks that. As a matter of fact, there are very few occasions when we don’t ask that.”

  “Then how do you know we’re supposed to go to Windridge? You said yourself it was a surprise.”

  Luis stepped back to him with the bag open. “Put it back in.”

  Errol did so and watched as Luis shook the bag, less gently than before. The clatter of wood against wood sounded again in the clearing.

  The reader held the bag out to him again. “Draw and choose, Errol.”

  Errol repeated the process, but as his hand entered the bag a sense of pointlessness swept over him. As he pulled out one of the lots and cupped it against the light of the morning, he knew what he would find before he looked. “It’s a W,” he said.

  Luis nodded, took the ball from him, dropped it into the bag, shook it, and commanded him once more, “Draw.”

  He put his hand in, grabbed a ball. At the last instant, he let go and dove for the other one. Smiling triumphantly, he held it against the light. There, in plain view was the W he had seen before. Shocked, he looked to Luis for an explanation.

  “Would I always draw the same lot if I continue?” he asked.

  “With wood you might draw the same lot seven out of ten times. With stone, even more often,” Luis said. “I commend you. When I first took my orders as a reader I spent a night and a day with the same lots trying everything I could think of to change the outcome. For a week afterward, I wouldn’t go near the conclave where the other readers worked. I was convinced they’d seduced me into some sorcery.”

  He took the lots and threw them into the thick underbrush. “Come. We need to be leaving. Windridge awaits.”

  They mounted their horses and set off to the north. Liam’s absence weighed on Errol. Though the two of them were hardly friends, he didn’t want anyone else to drop out of his life. That train of thought awoke a craving for ale inside him. “How is Liam going to find us?”

  Cruk smirked. “He’ll find us. I’m going to leave him a trail.”

  “Won’t Merodach be able to follow it?”

  The big man shook his head. “Not much chance of that. Liam knows what to look for, and he is a better tracker than he is a horseman.”

  Errol rolled his eyes. “Is there anything Liam doesn’t do better than anyone else?” he muttered under his breath.

  He hadn’t spoken quietly enough. Martin gazed at him until he squirmed.

  Cruk only laughed. “No, boy, there isn’t. With a couple more years training, there won’t be a man in the kingdom he can’t best with a sword, Merodach included.” He paused, pulling at his jaw muscles. “He may be close to it already. If he drew on me, it’s not a sure bet I would win.”

  Errol digested that before he spoke. Surely, there was something Liam didn’t do well. “What if they catch him?”

  Cruk snorted. “Not likely. Whoever is tracking us is going to be at least a day behind by the time he gets done with them, maybe two.” He twitched the reins, and they cut back to the west following the remains of an old track.

  Errol pushed away a stab of jealousy. Liam’s perfection grated on him. “Why don’t we just ride in a straight line, then?”

  “It’s nice to see you can think if you want to.” Cruk gave him a nod of approval. “The chances of Liam getting caught are slim, but just in case he does, I don’t want to make it easy for them to find us.”

  “Who’s them?” Errol asked. “Merodach?”

  Cruk shrugged, his massive shoulders rolling underneath his tunic. “It could be Merodach. It could be bandits. At this point it doesn’t matter. I’ll rest a lot easier when we’re safely inside Windridge.”

  They continued riding in switchbacks for the rest of the morning, and Errol found his mind wandering. Horace followed after the other horses without encouragement, which left Errol time to think about his ultimate destination. Luis’s pronouncement that Errol possessed the talent to be a reader forced his life into an unfamiliar route—like water diverted by a change in the riverbed. Radere’s admonishment still hung in his ears, but how did one learn to be a reader? Would he have to learn to carve as well as read? How did anyone learn what questions to ask? In spite of Luis’s demonstration back in the clearing, Errol had nothing on which to base his expectations.

  It had something to do with those stones Luis carried. The man hovered over them as though they held the power of life and death. They went wherever the reader went. The intricate carvings of animals, exquisite in their detail, had been left at the cabin without thought, while those stone balls had been carefully, almost lovingly, packed into padded crates that Luis and Martin kept tied to the back of their horses.

  Errol made up his mind. Compulsion or not, when th
ey got to Windridge, he would corner Luis and demand answers.

  A little after noon, Cruk led them west toward a line of hills just visible through the infrequent gaps in the trees. An hour later their horses stepped onto the road that ran north toward Windridge. Without a word Cruk nudged his mount into a canter. Errol groaned. Sure enough, Horace slowed after half a dozen strides and lapsed into that torturous trot.

  Sore and frustrated, Errol dug his heels into Horace’s flanks. Holding the reins with one hand, he reached back and smacked his horse on the rump. His hand stung, but his mount responded with an unexpected burst of speed and galloped until they caught up with the others.

  Cruk smirked at him before he returned to his methodical scan of the terrain ahead. “I was wondering when you’d get frustrated enough to teach that bag of bones you meant business.”

  Errol didn’t know whether to smile at Cruk’s backhanded compliment. His hand still stung. “I don’t like hitting things.”

  The smirk slid off Cruk’s face. “Fair enough, boy, but we’re not in Callowford anymore. Martin, Luis, and I have been out of Erinon for five years, and the truth is we don’t have a clue about what’s going on there. We know people are trying to kill us. Not me. Not Martin and Luis. Us. That includes you. If you get into a scrape and hesitate because you don’t want to hurt someone, you’ll die.”

  Errol found himself both repulsed and fascinated by Cruk’s businesslike attitude. “How many people have you killed?”

  The big man shrugged. “About twenty years ago the nomads swept off the steppes and flooded through the Ladoga Pass in waves. They overran the garrison at Tampere as if it wasn’t there and were on the doorstep of Soeden before we could sail enough men through the Noric Sea to slow them down. I joined the Reine garrison. They sailed us up the Perik River. Our job was to find a way to slow them down. We got to the battle line a day after we landed. I didn’t have time to count kills.”

  Cruk hung his head for a moment and then shifted his gaze to the horizon. “After the war, I challenged to join the watch. I hadn’t killed a man since.”

  Errol frowned. Twenty years? “Until Dirk found us.”

  Cruk nodded. “Until Dirk. Church politics has always been messy, boy, but it was never like this. By the three, members of the watch aren’t even supposed to leave the city unless the king does, and Rodran’s too old to travel. He’s been too old to travel for years.”

  They rode north in silence after that, the mountains to their left and the forest to their right. Late that afternoon they caught up to a merchant caravan, its wagons and horses stretched along the road in a sinuous column.

  Cruk looked toward Martin. “It might not be a bad idea to ride along with them, Pater, if we can spare the time.”

  Martin nodded. “As long as we make Windridge by nightfall. Morin may offer to guest us in the abbey. A dangerous offer, but better the enemy you can see than the one you can’t.”

  Luis snorted a catarrhal sound that reverberated in his throat. “He hates you. What would make you think he would want you as a guest?”

  Martin sighed. “Morin’s always been well connected. He’s bound to know more than what we’ve learned about what’s happened at Erinon. I’m hoping he won’t be able to resist the opportunity to prove it.”

  Luis looked unconvinced. “Just try to keep your temper in check. Your last meeting with the abbot was hardly the essence of polite discourse, don’t forget. It’s a sure bet he hasn’t.”

  Though most church matters put Errol to sleep, he found his curiosity piqued in spite of himself. “What happened?”

  Luis smiled, showing his white, even teeth in a huge grin. “Our esteemed priest, the man who used to be one of the most influential clergymen in the kingdom, hit Abbott Morin.”

  Martin blushed.

  Cruk laughed.

  Errol stared. “You struck an abbot?”

  The priest turned his head, clearing his throat. “Yes, well, theological discussions can get pretty heated at times, and Morin has always been insufferable.”

  “What were you talking about?” Errol asked. The idea that Martin would actually hit another clergyman both astonished and amused him. He looked at Martin in a new light.

  Martin’s eyes lost focus as he stared ahead. “Morin’s men captured an herbwoman in the act of talking with a spirit, or said they did at any rate. She said she was speaking with Aurae, but the abbot insisted on digging up the centuries-old proscription against consorting with spirits.” He turned his head and spat. “The fool. As if anyone, even a backwoods herbwoman, could confuse a spirit with one of the malus.”

  Errol tore his gaze from Martin’s remembered anger and turned to look at Luis and Cruk. Both men wore expressions of understanding—Luis, sad and resigned, Cruk, as angry as Martin.

  “What is a malus?”

  Martin gave him a long steady look before answering. “When men say ‘by the three,’ they’re referring to, invoking, Deas, Eleison, and unknowable Aurae. There are some among the herbwomen or herbmen who claim to speak with Aurae, to know what is unknowable. The notion that Deas would send Aurae to communicate to them directly is ridiculous. But even so, they are good people and gifted healers.”

  “A malus—” he sighed—“is something very evil, a spirit aligned against Deas, so different from Aurae. Not that Morin really cared.” Martin waved toward the hills on his left. “He dragged the old woman in from somewhere in the hills. She confessed, of course—soon or late, they all do.”

  Errol’s stomach fell. Radere. Adele. “What happened?” The words hung in the air before dying, leaving an oppressive silence behind them.

  Martin didn’t answer, and Errol didn’t ask again.

  Luis pulled his horse over to Errol’s until the two of them rode knee to knee. “Not all adversaries carry a bow,” he murmured. “Once we enter Windridge, say little.”

  An hour later they crested the last hill. Errol gaped at Windridge spread out before them. A stone wall ten feet high surrounded an area large enough to hold the villages of Berea and Callowford a dozen times over. A road running north and south through massive beamed gates teemed with carts, horses, and wagons that jostled for position along the rutted track. Houses and shops, some of them three stories high, competed for space like saplings fighting for light.

  He stared, a sense of something wrong nagging at him. The city didn’t look right. More than just the size, something looked out of place. At last he realized what it was. There were no thatched roofs. Even the houses and shops were covered in the bluish slate that sheltered only the churches in the Sprata foothills. Hundreds of chimneys thrust into the air, and tendrils of smoke mingled and writhed until their tenuous existence frayed on the breeze.

  “What do you think, Errol?” Martin asked. The gray-haired priest smiled at him and his eyes twinkled.

  Errol eyed the commotion that still lay silent in the distance and shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve heard people talk about cities before, but I always thought they were exaggerating. Why do they live here?”

  “Money, mostly,” Martin shrugged. “Cities spring up wherever trade routes cross, and Windridge holds an envious position.” He pointed toward the river. “The river gives them access to the villages and provinces to the west while the road lets them trade as far south as Basquon and as far north as Soeden.”

  They regarded the city as the caravan they’d accompanied pulled away to join the press to enter the eastern gate. Errol looked at the other members of their party, but no one made any motion to move forward.

  “What are we waiting for?”

  Martin gave him a glance that might have held a measure of disappointment. “Liam hasn’t joined us.” He turned his disfavor to Cruk, who jerked his head in a nod of acknowledgment.

  “The boy will be here,” Cruk grunted. He looked Martin in the eye. “He has to be—does he not?”

  Martin’s eyes tightened at this, but Luis looked uncomfortable.

  As t
hough the mention of his name held the power to summon him, a thunder of hooves sounded from behind and Errol twisted in his saddle to see Liam, bent low over the neck of his horse. His blond hair flew and his smile was visible even from a distance.

  “Humph. You see,” Cruk said. “Deas’s chosen.”

  Martin cut the air with one hand. “Let no one, no one, hear you utter those words.” He looked back at the city. “Especially here.”

  Liam thundered up, sawed the reins to bring his lathered horse to a stop. He leaned down, patted his stallion heavily on the left shoulder. The horse tossed his head and pranced.

  Errol looked down at his mount and, with a shrug, gave his horse like treatment. Horace breathed deeply and leaned down to pull a tuft of grass loose, chewing without interest. Errol rolled his eyes in disgust. “That’s showing them, Horace.”

  “You’re late,” Cruk said to Liam.

  The smile slipped a fraction from Liam’s face. “I wanted to make sure they took the bait. A couple of times they looked ready to turn around and begin searching to the north.”

  Cruk gave a grudging nod. “How many?”

  “Hard to tell.” Liam shrugged. “I doubled back as often as I could to lay down more than one set of tracks, but if they look closely they’ll know it was only one horse.”

  Cruk nodded approval. “If they think to dismount and take a close look.”

  Martin turned his horse toward the city. “Come, I want to meet with Morin tonight.” He turned toward Errol, gave his clothes a quick glance. “And I think it’s time that we began dressing Errol in something more suitable to his future.”

  They rode through the gates of the city without a challenge from the soldiers at the entrance, who they seemed more interested in extracting a bribe from the caravan just ahead of them. Then they entered into noise. All around them people of a thousand varieties teemed and pressed in on them from every side, in endless whirlpools of humanity. Men, women, and children laughed, cried, and yelled to each other across the streets.

  Errol had never heard the like, yet in all the variety, none of them looked like him. He tried to look everywhere at once. A hundred voices fought for his attention as shopkeepers competed with street merchants. A woman old enough to be his mother strutted through the crowd and proclaimed her wares. She sauntered up to Liam on his horse, her heavily painted eyes sultry.