Grey Stone

by Jean Knight Pace

  Pietre rode Humphrey like a horse. He was nearly the size of one and with Pietre on his back, they could thunder from town to town at three times the speed Pietre could have moved on foot. Humphrey ran as though attached to wings while Pietre rang a large bell, and called men and dogs to arms. The Mal provided them with a window of time to openly gather troops to their cause. Still they had only a few more days before the summer solstice, before the Septugant would need to act. Pietre and Humphrey ran through the towns ringing and shouting out the names of those whom the Veranderen had destroyed or taken. They ran through the dogs’ lands too, and though many dogs and even their young had gone missing recently, they always shouted the same name—the name that had come to represent all that was senseless and needless in King Crespin’s kingdom.

  “For the murdered sentinel Silva,” they cried until their voices fell hoarse. “For Silva!”

  Wittendon stood in the darkness of his battle chamber, waiting to be released onto the field for the last match of the day. Sadora entered with perfect silence, but he sensed her presence as he always did. “How did you get in here?” he asked without turning.

  “It wasn’t through a tunnel in case you were wondering,” Sadora said laughing. “You’d be surprised what a guard will let a pretty face do.”

  “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t. What do you wish?”

  The room was pitch black, though his eyes had begun to adjust. He could see the golden bangles that lined her wrists and a slender rope of the same color that circled her waist.

  “I’ve come to wish you luck,” she said.

  He stiffened.

  “Though at this phase, you’ll hardly need it.”

  Her fingers searched for his arm in the dark. She found his forearm first and slid her slender fingers down to his wrist and into his hand. His skin tingled at every point her fingers touched and he wanted to pull back.

  “I am not a toy,” he said angrily.

  “I know,” she said, pressing something thin and cold against his palm. “I am sorry—more sorry than you can know—that you were ever made to feel like one. We begin, all of us, to feel like figures on a chessboard. Wooden, immobile, positioned forward and back at another’s will. This feeling of compulsion must never become a reality, especially at times of war.” She took a breath. “Please,” she said, pressing the object into his hand again.

  After a pause he closed his fingers around it.

  “Good luck, dear Wittendon,” she said quickly, and left.

  Wittendon felt the cool, thin metal warm in his hand. It was a delicate piece—like a fish’s scale. Or—he fingered it again—a rose’s petal. It was one of the pieces of the broken hilt. A reminder of his power before he had known what power he had. Carefully he held it against the hilt of his blade, concentrating. He felt it join with the metal and melt into the hilt, just where his hand always held it.

  A bell tolled, the door rose, and blinding sunlight streamed in. He raced onto the field, pressing his hand to his hilt and thinking of his mother.

  The bells of the city rang out, drowning out the sounds of Pietre’s tinny instrument, although he still rang it shouting names. Men gathered to the center of the town, armed as usual with blunt objects, sharp tools, and their wives’ best knives. Pietre assembled the groups into rank according to age and size, and gave detailed directions to the rebel camp deep in the woods. His margin of opportunity was brief. As long as the cheers and screams of the Mal sounded in the distance there would be few wolves and no Veranderen to hinder them. But at dusk every town must fall silent, every family go about its business as though men and boys had not left en masse to join the Septugant.

  Pietre was surprised at the ease with which human men were recruited. He was almost equally surprised at the scanty numbers of dogs. Their lands had been burned and branded, innocents killed, and lately many pups had gone missing—taken, the rumors went, and given as pets to royals who had come from other lands to view the Motteral. Even with such humiliation, for every fifty men who marched forth, only one or two dogs scrabbled from their packs, and even those seemed to leave their packs in shame.

  Pietre knew Humphrey was upset about this. A council had been arranged with Markhi and the arch hounds of the other nine packs. They would meet in the morning, though the gathering did not seem to hold much promise of support. Land and life, it was clear, did not mean as much for the dogs as language and independence. For the dogs those two virtues wrapped around each other so tightly that Pietre started to see how they choked everything else out. Or, as Humphrey put it, “Those stubborn mutts are going to strangle themselves with their precious words.”

  The last bell of the evening shook with a crack that seemed to loosen Pietre’s bones.

  Wittendon’s sword clanged against that of his opponent. The tall, wide Verander was hairy and thick-skinned even in his flesh form and had already gained two points more than Wittendon. The first round allowed no magic and no shifting, just a sword and any strength or cunning you had to use it. Wittendon had expected to do well, but with every point lost he grew more nervous.

  Wittendon’s opponent snarled, his humanish teeth streaked with brown lines of decay, his skin pocked from battles and training. “You move like a willow in the wind,” the Verander said to Wittendon. “And soon you will snap like one of its branches in a gale.”

  Wittendon pressed forward with all his weight, though he found his feet often sliding back through the dirt. Brown Tooth struck Wittendon’s shin and he stumbled back even further, losing yet another point. The Verander hovered over him, banging his weapon like a hammer against Wittendon’s head. The prince fell down, but managed to block the next blow from his position on the ground. He blocked like that again and then again. He remembered something his mother had said about willows—their wood was soft and often bent in the wind; they were much more likely to withstand a storm.

  Steadily, Wittendon regained his footing. He blocked once more and then he struck and struck again. He stood against his opponent, not with weight this time, but with flexibility, cadence, and skill. His arms and shoulders moved together rhythmically, like the ticking of a clock. Brown Tooth took a step back, then another. The sound of their swords connecting drowned out the noise from the crowd. Wittendon could hear nothing now but his blade, could feel nothing now but its connection with that of his opponent. Soon his attack became more intense. He pierced the other Verander’s side then stabbed his shoulder. Brown Tooth growled and held up his sword to block. With an enormous movement, Wittendon brought his own weapon down and as he did his opponent’s blade snapped.

  Brown Tooth fell backwards and when he did, Wittendon pressed his sword to his throat. “Did you say something about a branch?” Wittendon asked as the king came to the field and held Wittendon’s arm up—victorious.

  Wittendon sheathed the sword, willing the metal petal to disconnect from the hilt and fall into his hand. He held it tightly, feeling his mother and Sadora in its weightlessness. Without meaning to, he looked to the royal box and smiled.

  Chapter 42

  When Wittendon returned to his bed, tired and sore, Zinnegael sat perched on his bedpost like a long, skinny owl.

  “Your magic,” he said, taking off his armor. “You use it in the oddest ways.”

  “Such is my destiny. Well, that or to sell roadside souvenirs—the tea leaves were a little unclear there. But anyway, what’s the point of being super human if you go about using it for all the usual things?” she asked.

  “If you were anyone else perched in my room late at night, I’d assume you hadn’t just come for tea, but knowing you—”

  “Well, I certainly am never opposed to a good cup,” she said. “But it’s true—that is not my main reason for being here tonight.”

  Wittendon sat on the bed and she came and sat next to him. He wondered how it would have been if they had grown up together like Sarak and Sadora.

  “Well?” Wittendon said, taking off his shoes.
/>   “I just came to tell you that you need to win the Motteral Mal.”

  Wittendon laughed. “Because?” he asked. “Wait—let me guess. You have a fondness for the game and would love to see your brother become the next Chancellor of the world?”

  Zinnegael crossed her arms. “Because only by winning will you be able to empower the Zonnesteen in the correct place without being disturbed.”

  “The zonne-who?”

  “Steen,” she said. “Zonnesteen—stone of the sun. Stone of the source.”

  “Well,” Wittendon said sarcastically. “Glad you cleared that up. And you need me to do this because?”

  “Because how else will the appointed one be able to take it to the Sacred Tablet and change the course of our world forever?”

  “So I’m going to empower a stone and then give it away?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And whoever I give it to is going to take it to the tourist attraction at the top of the hill that lovers go to and kiss for luck?”

  “Exactly. The Zonnesteen will be placed in that little dip at its left—the spot people spit in for victory.”

  “Of course.” He banged his shoe on the floor. Caked on dirt came off in stinky clumps.

  “And who, exactly, will be taking it?”

  “A human.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one who shows up to take it from you, of course.”

  “Naturally,” Wittendon said, wrinkling his nose at the smell of his own feet. “Well, I’ll do my best. You know you really have more in common with our father than you’d like to believe.”

  She made a sour face, but even in the squinchy lines of her eyes—especially the copper one—she didn’t look entirely convinced that he was wrong.

  “And how exactly will I empower this zonne-whatever?” Wittendon tossed his shoes.

  “You going to clean that up?” she asked, nodding to the pile of dirt and grass clods.

  He shook his head. He could be found out and tried as a traitor at any moment. Why waste precious time on sweeping? “The stone?” he reminded her.

  “Yes. The stone of the source.” She pushed the dirt to the corner of the room with her foot. “I’ll show you where to empower it—it’s a lot more secluded than the Tablet, but it gives a nice, clear view of the sun and moon, which you’ll need. And then that night you’ll know what to do. The ancient writings indicate that it should be instinctive, like having a baby.”

  “Wonderful,” he said. “Because that’s what I’ve always wanted to do.” He looked out his window to the hills. “And why don’t you empower it yourself? Why don’t we sneak up there right now and get it over with?”

  She sighed as though explaining something to a very dense child. “For starters,” she said. “I haven’t even got the stone—that’s another order of business to be dealt with. And for middlers, it has to be done at the summer solstice—the night of the fullest moon on the shortest night just at the moment when moon and sun gaze upon each other across the horizon. It should be about the time you would be winning the Mal.” She nodded as though to confirm this detail. “And for finishers, I can’t do it.”

  “Why?” he asked. “You are the most powerful among us.”

  “Because,” she responded, “I am not a werewolf.”

  He grimaced at the word, but she ignored it.

  “Through this stone, you will take something from your own and give it to someone else. I cannot give something to another when it is not in my possession to give. You, werewolf prince, can give it.”

  “You ask me to take something from my own people?” He looked at her, all the sarcasm and joking gone.

  “I ask you to alter the sun and moon that control this world,” she said, meeting his gaze. “A change that would alter the balance of power among the races.”

  ”You make it sound as though it will hurt my people.”

  “It will take another people up to the same standing.”

  “But only the same? Not greater?”

  “That, brother, is a question I cannot fully answer. It will create a level field. What happens on the field after that is not for me to say.”

  “And why can’t we create a level field in some other way? A new constitution perhaps, with another ruling council. It could even maybe have humans included as some of its members. Like the Septugant.”

  Zinnegael cocked the eyebrow above her green eye. “That is a lovely idea. I’ll just go present it to King Crespin and the Veranderen right now.”

  Wittendon glared at her. “Look, I know it wouldn’t be easy, but it does seem possible. Different races are already gathering to support the Septugant after all. I just don’t understand why the entire world has to change.”

  Zinnegael sighed and sat on the bed beside him. “Crespin—for all his shortcomings—has done one thing for his people. There is no war. It has made his people forget what war can mean. It is not brief, brother. It is not a few days of battle and all is ended. It is months and years of fighting, bloodshed, strategy, advances, and retreats.”

  Wittendon tried to interrupt, but Zinnegael held up a hand. “It is more gruesome than you or any of your kind can imagine. I believe, and Sadora concurs, that changing the suns, and with them the current balance of power, would significantly reduce the death toll and eliminate conflict of any significant length.”

  Zinnegael pressed her dress down flat over her knees before continuing. “In addition,” she said. “You must understand that under the red sun, with the power it and the ever-hanging moon grant to the Veranderen, no war of any length is likely to be successful. When one group is in possession of significantly more power, convincing them—as a body—to let that power and position go is difficult, almost impossible. The power is too alluring. Even if some are willing to contain and control their powers for the greater good, many will not.”

  “Which means?” Wittendon asked.

  “Which means that after years of war, even in the event that we win and establish a new constitution, it will be shaky at best. The Veranderen are so powerful. They will want to return to that dominance.”

  “So changing the suns will reduce my people.”

  Again Zinnegael sighed. “To be truthful, no one is entirely sure what will happen at the sun change, but yes, we can assume that some of your powers will be adjusted.”

  Her words should have hit him like a fist, but Wittendon found that they didn’t. Having spent much of his life without power, it was easier than he cared to admit to see things from the other side. Yet, having his power so newly restored, he was somewhat hesitant to lose it—a fact that also supported Zinnegael’s argument. Of course, that didn’t mean he was excited about her plan.

  Wittendon looked at her and then flopped back on his bed. “I must think on it, sister.”

  “Then think. And watch. Both should do you good.”

  She left by vaulting over his bed and out the window using her staff.

  He laid his head on his pillow. “Stone of the sun,” he murmured, wondering why that should seem familiar. “Stone of the source.” Suddenly he sat up, banging his head on the wooden headboard behind him. “The Sourcestone,” he whispered.

  Chapter 43

  They met at dawn. Ten dogs walked from the cool shadows of the woods like dewy phantoms. They were all known for their intelligence, strength, and loyalty to the pack, though each had different gifts—one lean, long and intensely fast; one beautiful, her voice a song; one heavy and strong; one agile; one brilliant; one secretive; one ancient; one hunter; one planner; and Markhi, with his perfect sense of smell and almost infallible ability to track. Yet while their bodies, abilities, and voices were different, they shared one quality: none looked happy to be there. Markhi put on a good front, but his eyes were tired and his body seemed to sag.

  Humphrey cleared his throat and Pietre began to speak. He had scribbled a few arguments to make the night before, but now that he stood before grumpy, snarling, sometimes b
ored dogs, the paper served only as something he could crinkle nervously between his fingers while he stammered through his thoughts about how the Septugant needed the dogs in order to succeed. Needed their strength and numbers, their speed and teeth, their noses and words and talents.

  A laugh rang out from the circle of shaggy faces, gentle and sing-song sweet. “But why, dear boy,” the beautiful one seemed to hum. “Why does this conflict need to exist at all?” At the music of her words, Pietre could not remember or at least not explain.

  “Why?” Humphrey said, not nearly so enchanted. “Your land lies blistered. Your head sentinel dead. Food sources have become scarce—especially surrounding the burned firelands. Your kin begin to taste their hunger, a hunger that will only deepen as the dogs’ ribs grow sharp against their skin. Not to mention the more shocking fact that the pups have begun to vanish—twenty-seven in just the last few days.”

  “’Tis true,” grumbled the ancient one. “It happens every hundred years. No one quite knows why.”

  “But of course we know why,” barked the battle planner. “They use them. They give them as gifts during the Motteral Mal.”

  “It’s never actually been proven,” the old one grumbled.

  “Yet even if it was,” the singsong voice replied. “And do not think me harsh—only realistic—it happens but once a century. As for the burning and the sentinel—the king will soon repay us in more land, and the good Silva, while valiant and strong, was but one.”

  “But one,” sputtered the agile one who was also a female. “And our young gone too.”

  “Yet it is true,” said the planner. “Assuming we can conquer a force so great that it has survived for thousands of years, what benefit would it bring us compared to the small losses we occasionally encounter?”