Grey Stone

by Jean Knight Pace

  The gates of the palace stood open, awaiting the arrival of the prince. Jager gasped at the height of the bronzed doorways carved with glyphics of the deep red sun. He followed Wittendon, stumbling up steps that were too tall for regular men. As they marched through the gardens of the palace, Jager noticed that there was no horse dung to step over, no muddy straw stuck to his boots, and smells so fresh and lovely he could not quite believe they were within a city. Many of the sweetest smelling roses were thick-caned, deep in color, and masterfully wound around trellises and trees.

  Wittendon walked impatiently, shortening the ropes on his slave’s wrists, while a servant disappeared with a missive to the king.

  Jager was almost too stunned by the greenery to remember the ropes that held him. He knew that his wife, with her simple garden bed of nettle and purslane, could never imagine flowers like this. “How old, my lord, are the roses?”

  “Older than you, human, and many of my kind as well.” Wittendon paused so long that Jager considered the conversation ended. Yet, after some minutes, Wittendon spoke quietly. “The oldest roses were tended by my mother, the beautiful Loerwoei, and then later a human female who was my father’s servant.” Wittendon seemed to sag at the thought, and said nothing more.

  Jager looked around the garden. He knew the tale of Loerwoei. She had sickened among a race that never grew sick and died among a people who often lived through millennia. Some among his race whispered that she had carried a curse. If it was true, it hadn’t been passed to the flowers, which bloomed like maidens. “Carina would quite love this,” Jager whispered to himself.

  “When you speak in my domain,” Wittendon said harshly. “Do it loud enough that your prince can hear.”

  “I meant no disrespect, Lord Prince. I only noted that my wife would have found such gardens similarly soothing.”

  “Your wife would have found the gardens soothing until she tired of the work and fled like my mother’s useless she-gardener did.”

  Jager bristled, pinching his mouth closed.

  The prince’s eyes hovered like stormy clouds above the straight line of his mouth. “The roses that still live are tended as though they are babies, but new roses will never bloom again in this garden. My father forbade it after my mother’s death.”

  Jager spoke no more and the two continued quickly to the great hall, Jager trotting behind the tall Verander in an effort to match the long, silent strides.

  Wittendon left the prisoner in the hands of the guards. He needed to escape from humans and roses and memories. In not too many minutes, he found himself in one of the Motteral training rooms. He was surprised at where his feet had taken him. The Motteral Mal was not something that excited or soothed him.

  Wittendon wandered to the weapons wall and ran a sharp fingernail along the long curved blade of one of the scythes. The scythes were over three feet in length, the curved blade itself being well over a foot long and sharp on either side. Today, the shimmering tip was only steel, but at the real tournament, the tips would be made from the rare and poisonous metal his people called the Shining Grey.

  Wittendon lifted the scythe from its rack and swung it around. He cut and jabbed at the air from all directions. Even for those with magic, the Grey could prove deadly. It could disfigure, tear, poison, or cause pain so excruciating that the nearly immortal Veranderen could barely withstand it. For him…Wittendon didn’t want to think about it. His own body was tall and strong, his hide tough, his torso lean and hard, but even after years of his father’s tutelage and then months of intensive training with Sarak, he could not make the smallest amount of magic come forth. Such a weakness would ruin him at the tournament. With every swing he could feel his father’s disappointment at having a magic-less—a verlorn—son.

  Wittendon balanced the blade of the scythe on his palm, feeling the cool of the sharp metal against his skin. Sometimes when he dreamed, he remembered a time when prickles of magic sparked at the tips of his fingers and surged through his body. But then, that’s what dreams were made of—illusions, wishes. He sighed.

  One thousand years ago his father had won his first Mal tournament at the tender age of sixteen. Wittendon tossed the blade, letting it flip mid-air so that he could catch it again flat in his palm without getting cut. He held it for a moment, then lifted it over his head and swung it in tight, powerful circles. His father was every bit as strong now as he had been then. Stronger.

  Too bad he was a lousy cockroach of a father. And husband. Crespin had married the beautiful Loerwoei less than three decades earlier. Already she was gone. Wittendon’s father never spoke of her. Never explained her death or her illness in a race that rarely sickened.

  Wittendon dropped his blade carelessly on the floor.

  From a chest in the corner of the room, Wittendon pulled out one of the practice dummies. If he was going to stand in a practice room, feeling angry and swinging a three-foot long curved weapon, he might as well have something to hit. Wittendon let his body relax and expand—felt his skin tighten and toughen as the fur grew in thick, though still fair, across his face, trunk, and legs. The tall, stuffed dummy stared at him with glass eyes. Wittendon circled the dummy, and then lunged—centering his weight at the stomach of his unmoving victim. Weak or not, strange or not, his mother had been strong and steady in her kindness and love to him. In the few memories Wittendon could recall of his mother, she had shown more love than he’d known in the nineteen years with his father. He remembered his mother’s sweet smell, her hair, and the way her eyelashes had brushed against his face and nose.

  Wittendon raised the scythe at the dummy and struck. Again and again he angled the blade into the flesh of his pretended opponent. The more he thought about his father and his dead mother, the deeper his blade went. A pale blue-ish purple rose had been her favorite—sterling roses the human gardener had called them.

  “Sterling,” Wittendon whispered to the shredded dummy—the same color his mother’s eyes had been, nearly the same color as the deadly Grey.

  And on that thought, the stuffed dummy suddenly lifted its arm. Wittendon gasped and stumbled back, only to hear Sarak laughing.

  “Sarak, you crazy dog,” Wittendon said, turning toward him. “Do you mean to kill me with shock before I even make it to the tournament?”

  “Might save you some embarrassment,” Sarak wheezed through his laughing tears.

  Wittendon paused for a moment to look at his oldest friend. Watching Sarak laugh was better than drinking a relaxation tonic. Wittendon felt the tension seep out of his neck and shoulders, felt a smile creep onto his face. “You’re laughing harder than you did when we went on that campout as kids and you lined the opening of my canteen with serentaug venom. It burst as soon as my mouth touched it. My lips were numb for days.”

  “And the gasses from the explosion made it so you had to tell the truth,” Sarak added. “Let’s not forget about that. Oh, that was the best.”

  “I should have had you arrested then.”

  “You did better than that. You told Mericina that I liked her. And I couldn’t deny it because everybody knew I’d made you tell the truth. That was the end of potions for me. I went back to regular magic.”

  “Yeah,” Wittendon said, smiling just a bit. “That was a piece of sweet revenge. Too bad I couldn’t taste it because my lips were numb.”

  “I just couldn’t help it,” Sarak said, still laughing. “Then, or now. Finding you alone in a practice room was strange enough. Whispering to a thoroughly mutilated practice dummy was just too much. I could see you weren’t going to give him any advantage, so I decided to.” Sarak wiped his tears with a hairy hand and then raised both of his arms, magically moving the arms and body of the dummy so that he walked around strutting like a chicken.

  “Hilarious,” Wittendon said, sitting down on a bench, still holding the scythe.

  “Oh, but it was.” Sarak let the dummy fall to the ground and sat beside his friend. “You should have seen yourself. What w
ere you telling it anyway—that you planned to use its stuffed ribs to pick your teeth?”

  “Not exactly,” Wittendon said, standing and righting the dummy. Sarak had been raised by his half-crazed nanny and an ancient lady of the court—a woman he had called ‘aunt’ although many said she was no more than a distant cousin. As a lower lord with unclear parentage, Sarak couldn’t compete in the Mal, but his magic was powerful.

  “How’d you do it?” Wittendon asked.

  “What do you mean?” Sarak asked. “You know the principles of magic.”

  “Yes, I do,” Wittendon said, thinking about how his father had hammered them into him for as many years as he could remember. First you’ve got magic—that’s good. Second you understand the science of what you’re trying to manipulate—that’s better. Third you have experience with the thing you’re manipulating—that’s best. “But,” Wittendon said.

  Sarak raised an eyebrow, waiting.

  “But how does it feel?” Wittendon pressed.

  Sarak stood, a little more serious now. “It fills you up. Say you want to make something hot. You think about how heat works—the molecules speeding up, racing through you; you think about your experiences with heat—a sweltering day, an angry heart. But it happens quickly—it fills you; it becomes you. For this dummy, I concentrated on the arm, the way muscles and sinews work, the way my own muscles felt. But that wasn’t all that connected me to the dummy. For a moment all those thoughts, all those feelings about muscles became me; and I moved the dummy. For some it starts slow and they have to really concentrate. For others, it comes in a flash, and they connect themselves to the magic.”

  “And for those with no magic?” Wittendon asked.

  Sarak sighed. “Then there is no connection, regardless of the level of concentration.”

  Wittendon frowned.

  “Look, maybe we should start at the beginning. Shift into your flesh form and let’s start where the tournament does.”

  The Motteral Mal began in the Verander’s weakest form—the flesh. Then as the match progressed, one of the competitors would suffer a defeat or reach the point where he needed to shift to his wolken form to survive. Which also signaled a loss. Round two was fought in the wolken form, but without magic. It was only in the final round that magic could be used. Magic and the Shining Grey—the two things Wittendon feared the most.

  “No, let’s go to round three,” Wittendon said. “I’ve spent enough time in that cursed flesh form today.”

  “Now you sound like your father,” Sarak said.

  Wittendon kicked the dummy. His mother had shifted with ease. As most of the nobility did. But his father was called The Unshifting—he would not be seen in any form that was not pure strength.

  “Seems like you had a rough day,” Sarak said, rescuing the stuffed dummy from further abuse.

  Wittendon paused. “My father sent me to collect a wolf killer. Only the man I got wasn’t the killer.”

  “Well, that’s about as clear as a crow’s foot pie,” Sarak said, tossing the dummy to the side of the room. “Don’t waste your pity on humans. I can assure you they wouldn’t waste any on us. In fact, I really doubt they bother to waste any on their own.”

  Wittendon thought about Jager’s face as he pulled him away from his wife and wasn’t so sure.

  Sarak snapped his fingers, bringing Wittendon back from his thoughts. “Okay, round three it is. It seems you’ve already given round two all you have and more anyway,” Sarak said. “Now let’s work some magic.” Sarak raised his hand and a weapon from the wall flew into it. “Do not neglect your scythe in the final round. Magic alone is not enough. Magic, in fact, is best used to enhance your blade and everything else around you.” As he said this, Sarak’s scythe began to glow. “You can make it hot, cold, flaming, trembling, leafy, or ticklish for all I care, but make it something.”

  And before Wittendon could think Sarak had sprung at him, hot blade in hand. It tipped Wittendon’s shoulder and he winced and stepped back a pace.

  “Come, friend,” Sarak said. “Concentrate and strike.”

  Wittendon did and while it was a fierce strike that met Sarak’s blade with a clang that went to his bones, nothing—hot, ticklish, or otherwise—happened beyond that.

  “And again,” Sarak said, growing more focused.

  Sarak’s hot blade swung over and over at Wittendon’s scythe. Wittendon could feel the heat from Sarak’s blade warming the metal of his own, but still he could not change the temperature of the blade himself.

  All at once, Sarak’s blade turned as though to ice. He struck Wittendon’s now warm blade and with the sudden change in temperature from Sarak’s icy blow, Wittendon’s blade broke solidly in two.

  Wittendon threw it to the ground, but with one deft movement, Sarak kicked the jagged hilt into the air, so Wittendon could catch it. “Do not give up so easily. Even the hilt can help you. Heat it,” he commanded. “Heat is the easiest to master, since usually a battle inspires such emotion. Focus your energy and your anger into the matter of the thing you hold.”

  Sarak struck, again circling his friend, stabbing at his side, shoulder, neck, and hide—jabs that all would have weakened Wittendon if they’d been done with the Shining Grey. It did make Wittendon angry—hot.

  He focused on that heat, thought everything he could about heat, and tried to center it on the jagged-tipped hilt.

  Sarak was light on his feet, but Wittendon was just as quick. He jabbed at Sarak’s hand, scratched his cheek, but no heat came from the weapon. As Sarak’s blows became fiercer, Wittendon felt his father’s disappointment leak into his thoughts, Your magic is weak, my son, if it is there at all. And then, he heard the whispered word that had hovered around him since childhood. “This one,” they murmured. “Verlorn.”

  All at once, Wittendon turned and again tossed aside the hilt. “It is enough,” he said, but Sarak continued to thrust, nicking Wittendon’s ear and then nearly drawing blood from the wrist.

  “Pick up the hilt,” Sarak said, his voice a low, threatening rumble. “The fight continues.”

  “No,” Wittendon said, folding his arms and holding his ground.

  “Do it,” Sarak shouted, lifting his free hand so that, with a tossing motion, his magic sent the hilt flying at Wittendon’s throat.

  “I said enough,” Wittendon shouted back, catching the hilt and growling as a sudden image of his mother in her garden flew through his thoughts and he saw a rush of the metallic blue roses. At the final word, Wittendon crushed the hilt. It fell in pieces, like petals to the floor.

  Sarak stopped and leaned on his scythe like a cane, all the battle-fury gone in an instant. “Well, then, I suppose it is.”

  Wittendon glared at his friend—surprised at the strength that had poured out of him, though he knew it still wasn’t magic. “I haven’t got it,” he said furiously, dusting the metal from his hands.

  Sarak bent down to examine the pile of shavings from the metal hilt.

  “Do you know much about flowers?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Metals?”

  “A good bit more, but still not enough to perform the simple act of heating it.”

  “Yes,” Sarak said. “So it seems.” He touched a flake from the metal hilt. “Something is stopping you from the magic. Something I don’t understand. It’s like your desires are turned elsewhere and your magic is lost within them.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Wittendon said, turning his back to his friend. “I’ve spent my whole life working to find my magic.”

  “But working does not always equal desiring.”

  “And I’ve desired nothing more this last half hour than to send a hot bolt of it shooting through your backside.”

  “Now that I am glad to hear,” Sarak said, gathering several bits of the destroyed hilt. Sarak stood up with a handful of metal from the ruined weapon. “Rather like rose petals don’t you think?”

  Wittendon ignored him and said fl
atly, “Whether it’s desire I can’t find, or magic, the end result is the same. Nothing comes out.”

  “Oh, but something does,” Sarak said. “The blades practically hum now at your presence. As though waiting for your magic to be released.”

  “That’s not funny,” Wittendon said, kicking the pile of metal that was once his hilt.

  “You’re right; it’s not,” Sarak said, “and that is most unfortunate because I do love something funny.”

  Wittendon waved an irritated hand in his friend’s direction. “They’re going to kill me—at the tournament.”

  “No,” Sarak said. “You might not win—don’t get me wrong, but creatures strong enough to crush metal into petals without magic don’t wind up dead. Plus,” he grinned, “I think you’ll impress the ladies.”

  As Wittendon turned to leave, Sarak called after him, “Do you mind if I take these to my sister. She’ll think they’re pretty.”

  Wittendon rolled his eyes and called back, “Take all you want. Compliments of his majesty, the verlorn prince.”

  With that, the magic-less prince walked out the door and almost directly into Sarak’s sister, Sadora.

  “Pardon me, Lord Prince,” she said dipping her chin to her chest in a graceful bow. “I am come only to find my brother.”

  “No,” Wittendon stammered. “It is I who should apologize. I was not looking and I…I…” She wore a simple green gown and a plain locket, but her light cinnamon hair was shot through with honey-gold strands so that when she moved it was like watching the red sun itself.

  Sarak came out of the room and tapped his sister lightly on the nose. “Old Witt’s just been squeezing in some extra practice. Apparently, he’s worked so hard, the blood now fails to run to his brain.”

  Sadora smiled shyly. “I am sure the blood runs where it must for these things. And how goes your training, Lord Prince?”

  Wittendon didn’t even bother to speak and looked to Sarak for an answer.

  “See,” Sarak said. “What’d I tell you?” He took his twin’s arm and began leading her to their quarters. “If you must know, the metal sings when it is in Wittendon’s hand. Not quite literally of course, though that would impress the gentlefolk of the court. Oh, but that reminds me that my dear friend’s practice has landed me with a gift for my sister.” He reached into his robe to retrieve the leaves of metal.