A Cast of Stones

by Patrick W. Carr

  “Let that be a lesson to you both. Battles can turn on the smallest of incidents. The next time it may be you, Errol, whose footing is less than perfect.” He nodded toward the onlookers. “Come. Let us see if any of them have the skill to understand what they’ve seen.”

  A score of gazes swept across him before settling on Liam as they approached.

  A woman with olive-tinged skin and dark, limpid eyes, seemingly overwhelmed, pressed herself against Liam in admiration. “You were magnificent.” She gushed with praise. “Tell me, are you yet betrothed?”

  Liam’s mouth worked, but no words came out. A slender girl with the reddish tint to her hair that proclaimed her Erinon heritage, pressed against him on the other side. She regarded the first girl with undisguised venom. “That was tactless, Liselle.” She brushed Liam’s hair back from his shoulder. Her hand returned to caress his cheek. “My name is Kyra. How can it be that you are not yet a captain of the watch, milord?”

  Liam tried to back away. “Um, I . . . That is . . .” He cast a look of desperation Errol’s way.

  “You might have to use your weapon to clear a path,” Errol said. The women clustered around Liam sniffed in disdain at Errol’s laughter and renewed their intimate admiration of Liam.

  Lord Weir shouldered a blond-haired beauty aside to approach. “Why did you stop?” Weir asked Liam. His voice sounded polite, almost deferential. “You seemed on the verge of giving the runt the beating he deserves.”

  Liam’s expression never changed, but he shook his head in disagreement. “Errol had me beat, even if it wasn’t obvious to all.”

  “Pah!” Weir said. “I saw the peasant back off in the middle of your bout, nothing more.”

  Reynald stepped forward. “Then you still have much to learn. Perhaps you’d care to come out to the courtyard and allow Errol to give you more instruction?”

  Weir flushed. “I have no intention of giving some peasant with a grudge an excuse to attack his better.” He turned, knocking over a chair, and left. A pair of men followed, but the women remained, clustering more tightly around Liam.

  Errol moved away from the spectacle to retrieve his cloak and knobblocks. He turned to find Adora considering him, her green eyes intent and curious.

  “Is it true that you’re both from the same village?” she asked.

  He nodded, not trusting himself to speak without his voice cracking like an adolescent. His heart should have begun slowing by then, but for some reason it continued to race. “We’ve known each other since we were children.” He looked over to where Liam floundered, beset by the women who surrounded him. “He’s always had that effect on women.” Errol laughed and shrugged. “Can’t say as I blame them. He’s as near to perfect as a man can be.”

  “Really?” Adora asked. Her lips pressed together in a tight smile.

  “Yes, my lady. Liam is good at everything, and not just good, the best. He’s more of a god than a man.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “But you defeated him just now. Doesn’t that make you the better fighter?” The lilt of her voice, an Erinon accent, gave her words an almost musical quality.

  Errol laughed. Honesty compelled him to shake his head. “There’s a lot of difference between a bout and a fight, my lady. Unfortunately, I’ve been in too many of both lately. Bouts are nice, clean, and they stop when a man is down. Battle is something else altogether—messy, bloody, unpredictable. You can’t judge by a bout. Any man who thinks he can is a fool. Truthfully, if I were going into battle, I’d want Liam at my side.”

  “You’re a strange man.”

  Adora’s frank assessment left him speechless. He gaped.

  The king’s niece slipped her fan from one sleeve and tapped her right ear with it before snapping it open to fan herself in slow, measured strokes.

  With a flush, he raised his hand to stop her. “Your Highness, Weir is right; I am just a peasant. I’ve heard of the fan language. I even saw it once on the way to Erinon, but I don’t know what you’re saying and I wouldn’t want to embarrass either of us by pretending otherwise.”

  The fan disappeared back up her sleeve. “You may say whatever you wish, Errol Stone, but you’re not just a peasant. My uncle taught me nobility comes from the heart, not the blood.” She glanced over her shoulder at the press that still surrounded Liam before regarding him again with those impossibly green eyes. “Not every woman desires perfection.”

  She turned away, left him staring at her back.

  Later that afternoon, he pored over his work in the conclave library, scanning his book for some clue to the creation of the versis. Time after time, his thoughts wandered from Klose’s dry pronunciations to consider a cascade of golden hair and a pair of green eyes. He turned the page with a profound lack of motivation when a word in the middle of the second paragraph caught his attention.

  Omne.

  Bending forward, he dove into the text, reading and rereading until he felt confident in his conclusion. After the fourth time through, doubt and mistrust filled him. Was it possible that Luis had never read this particular text? Did the secondus not know the capabilities that Klose ascribed to an omne?

  No, of course he knew.

  Why had Luis concealed Errol’s abilities? If Klose’s speculation was true, if Errol could create a versis, they would be able to find their enemies. If they asked their questions carefully, they would even be able to determine exactly how to defeat them.

  Why wouldn’t the secondus want to find out if an omne, if Errol, could create the versis?

  Errol gritted his teeth and, carrying the book with him, went in search of Luis.

  He found him in his private workroom, black gloves on his hands, polishing a durastone lot. As soon as he saw Errol, he locked the lot in its cabinet and returned to his seat.

  Without a word, Errol place the codex on the table and pointed to the passage.

  Luis nodded, his face somber. “I had hoped you would never find it.”

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  The secondus’s eyebrows rose. “Lie? I didn’t lie, Errol. I merely withheld information I thought to be harmful to you.”

  His surprise must have shown. Luis slipped off his stool, moved to one of the cabinets that lined the room, pulled a key from his pocket, and opened the thick mahogany door. He returned to the table cradling a book stuffed with loose pages in his arms. He flipped it open to a spot marked with a peacock feather and extracted a single page.

  “As soon as I found out you’d survived, I came back to the library and removed every book I could find that mentioned the omne. I didn’t count on Master Quinn’s prodigious memory. This is a list of every omne that’s ever served the conclave.” He slid the sheet across the table toward Errol.

  His eyes ran down the list, at first with interest, but skimming toward the end. Names comprised a column down the left-hand side with dates of birth and death noted out to the right. “I don’t understand. What’s the point?”

  Luis’s mouth compressed into a thin line, and his brows furrowed. He looked like a man who’d eaten something sour. “Look at the dates.”

  Errol did so. It took him a few minutes to realize the pattern, and a quick scan confirmed—not one omne in the last thousand years had lived past thirty-five.

  “That’s right,” Luis said. “They all died early. Many died and left the kingdom without an omne.” He shook his head. “The kingdom suffers in such times. Without an omne to verify the casts of the conclave, there is much opportunity for deception.”

  “How?” He suspected the answer already, but he wanted, needed, to hear Luis confirm it.

  “Some died of natural causes or an enemy’s attack, but the rest went insane trying to create the versis.” He shook his head. “I think Deas reserves that power for himself.”

  He shook his head. That couldn’t be right. “Someone has done it. They tracked me across the entire kingdom. Night or day, they knew where I was.”

  Luis nodded. “I
t does seem like a plausible explanation, but I don’t think our enemies hold a versis. Their moves are at once too powerful and too weak to be explained by such. Consider . . . if they held such power, they could simply inquire as to the perfect time, place, and method to kill you, Liam, and the rest of us. No. If they’d managed to create a universal lot, the coming war would be lost already.

  “Yet, you are right in that the precision and timing of their knowledge concerning your movements goes beyond what is currently possible in the conclave.” His shoulders hunched as if he squirmed under the weight of his ignorance. “I can only conclude that they have made some discovery that surpasses the knowledge of the conclave.”

  “How come I’ve never heard of the Merakhi or the Morgols casting lots?”

  Luis stood. “They do not. Those they find with the talent are turned toward a different craft.” He spat the last word. “Ghost-walkers. The kingdom has enemies without and within.”

  Reticence marked the secondus’s speech, his answers were uncharacteristically brief, and though he appeared relaxed, he seldom met Errol’s gaze, finding, it seemed, one plausible reason or another to look elsewhere.

  A sudden thought occurred to him. “If you and the primus don’t want me to create a versis, what do you want?”

  Luis eyes were intent, belying his relaxed pose at the table. “No more than what you’ve already proven you can do, Errol. Read others’ lots.”

  “You think there’s a traitor in the conclave.”

  The secondus turned away to fold his sanding cloth. “I acknowledge the probability, though I hope to be proven wrong.”

  “Why not cast for it?” Errol asked.

  Luis laughed ruefully. “We have tried, and not only with the conclave. Remember that the question frames the answer. It is possible that we have not asked the correct question.” He sighed. “Yet I think it more likely that those who are working to our downfall do not see themselves as traitors, but as saviors of the kingdom. The question, as of yet, cannot be cast. However, since you can read any lot, you might be able to discover those in our midst who seek to do us harm.”

  “When do you want me to start?”

  “As soon as you complete your basic training with Quinn. Your movements will be easier to explain once you have done so.” He rose. “I must see Martin on a matter. I will speak to Master Quinn and have him instruct you on what is possible and what is not for a reader.” He gave a rueful smile. “I think his answer will be longer than you want, but Master Quinn is nothing if not thorough.”

  Before Errol could say or ask anything more, Luis was gone.

  He stared at the place where Luis had been, turning the conversation with the reader over in his head. Nothing Luis said spoke of deceit or dissembling, but he sensed Luis and Martin still held something from him, and it gnawed at him. But what could it be? He had already surprised them into as much as admitting Liam would be king.

  What was left to hide?

  He took his staff, and strode through the dim halls of the conclave, heading for the barracks. His steps echoed strangely, and he walked another ten paces before it dawned on him that the watchmen who normally accompanied him in the passageways were absent. Perhaps Cruk and Reynald had given up on luring the demon spawn into attacking him. It had, after all, been over a week since the last attack and no sign of ferrals or the abbot of Windridge had been seen or heard.

  What would they do now? King Rodran, the archbenefice, and the primus seemed content to bide their time and wait for their enemies to make their next move. To Errol it felt as if they waited for the headsman’s axe to fall. With a twitch of his shoulders, he dismissed the matter from his mind. Nothing he could do would change events, and it seemed unlikely that the powers that ruled the kingdom would take him into their confidence.

  He passed a group of monks, their shuffling gait barely intruding on his thoughts.

  A whiff of corruption warned him.

  He faced them, brought his staff up as clawed hands ripped off robes and charged. Mouths opened to reveal jagged teeth under eyes that looked too human to belong in those beast-like faces.

  Eyes filled with bloodlust and madness.

  The five demon spawn came flooding toward him without a sound. Errol watched as they spread along the hall, dropping to all fours. There were too many.

  He filled his lungs. “Guards! Guards!”

  They were on him.

  The end of his staff took the first spawn in the throat, but as soon as the creature dropped, another took its place. Errol spun, caught another in the shoulder with the knobblock, but the thing shrugged off the blow and leapt at him.

  Teeth sank into his right leg, and he howled in pain. He ducked one spawn and clubbed another. Then he thrust the end of his staff into the face of the creature on his leg.

  It wouldn’t let go.

  Jaws clamped around his arm.

  He couldn’t fight.

  Heavy paws hit him in the chest, and he fell backward. His head struck the granite stones of the floor. The last sound he heard before darkness took him was the ring of bared steel.

  Errol swam toward consciousness, fighting to wake against a tide of pain that seemed to come from everywhere. He fought to push himself off the stone even as a weight against his chest forced him back down.

  “Stop!” a voice thundered. “You’ll bleed to death. Be still.”

  He lay back down, working to open his eyes. When at last he managed to force his lids open, the hall swam as though he peered through rushing water.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Liam,” a voice answered. A hint of blue eyes and blond hair swam in his vision. “Lay still,” he commanded.

  Pressure on his wounds made him cry out. Oblivion called to him, promising an end to the pain. He drifted to it.

  “Stay with us, boy,” a voice snarled. Cruk. Fingers pried his lids open and the watchman’s lumpy face filled his vision.

  Footsteps pounded down the hall, and men carried him while Liam and Cruk kept pressure on the worst of his wounds. They carted him, ignoring his moans and curses past the barracks to the castle infirmary where four men took him and laid him on a slab of stone. Someone forced a thick syrup of bitter-tasting potion down his throat.

  Everything faded.

  Consciousness returned so gradually that he found himself staring across the sheets at the people who surrounded him without realizing he’d awakened. Luis, Martin, and the primus occupied chairs at the foot of his bed, their faces wan in the fading light that suffused the room. Of Liam and Cruk there was no sign.

  He wanted to speak, but the effort made his head swim.

  Men he didn’t recognize came to stand over him, their faces serious, grave. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. We’ve slowed the bleeding, but by the best of our art, we can only slow it.” He looked Errol in the eye. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Errol nodded. “I’m dying,” he whispered.

  The healer nodded. “These wounds are beyond our ability to heal. We’ve never seen their like before. If only we could stop the bleeding . . .” He moved away.

  Errol’s eyelids closed, burdened by the weight of his blood loss. His thoughts seemed slow to come to him, as if they kept time to the sluggish beat of his heart.

  Bleeding. What did Adele and Radere give for bleeding? There had been a boy in his village, Corwin, who had bleeder’s disease. At his birth, a midwife told his parents he wouldn’t make it past his first year, but the herbwomen scoffed at the prediction.

  Something. They had given him something to make his flesh and blood knit more quickly. It almost made him normal.

  What was it?

  So hard to think. He beckoned to Luis, the barest crook of a finger that felt as though he’d lifted the world. The reader stood by his bedside without apparent transition. Errol hadn’t seen him move.

  “Urticweed,” he whispered.

  Luis straightened. “Urticweed. Do you have any?”


  “It’s not an herb we use,” the first healer said. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, find out, man. We’re losing him.”

  Boots pounded away.

  The pain from his wounds faded from his awareness and he floated. Later, he coughed as warm liquid coursed down his throat. He tried turning his head. The fools were trying to drown him.

  Hands held his head steady, and voices urged him to drink, to hang on. Hang on to what? He couldn’t find an answer to the question. Darkness took him.

  29

  TRACKS

  HE WOKE, light-headed and hungry. Darkness filled the room, relieved only by the flickering of candles placed at regular intervals in the sconces along the wall. Thick bandages covered one arm and both his legs, exerting pressure on his wounds.

  The pain in his arms and legs had subsided, and the temptation to move his limbs beckoned to him. Errol lifted his head to see Luis slumped in a chair at the foot of his bed, head lolling to one side.

  “Luis.”

  The secondus stirred and, seeing Errol awake, raised himself, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “How are you, boy?”

  Errol shrugged. Nothing hurt overly much, which he took to be a good sign. “I don’t seem to be dead.”

  Luis smiled. “You have keen powers of observation.”

  The wall of secrets between them still stood, but Luis seemed relieved. Errol took a deep breath. It would have to be enough. Perhaps in time he would be able to figure out what, exactly, Luis and Martin kept hidden from him. “How am I?”

  “The urticweed saved your life. The healers have been dosing you with it at every opportunity. I think they’ll want to talk to you as soon as you feel up to it. They have a newfound respect for herb lore, it seems. Your wounds finally stopped bleeding and your flesh seems to be knitting fairly well. They want to keep you here until you’ve recovered some of your strength.”

  “Why?”

  Luis frowned, his dark eyebrows coming together, shadowing his eyes in the dim light. “They want to keep you from tearing your wounds open and bleeding to death. Healers hate that sort of thing.”