The Godstone

by Violette Malan

  I patted the woman on the shoulder. “He wants to come back,” I reminded her. “And generally speaking, what Arlyn Albainil wants, he gets.”

  “Well, remember, we need you just as much as we need him—and the children like you, too.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Where the Road passes by the village it is little more than a track. In a few places two ruts show where wheels regularly pass. In this, as in any Mode, soft spots on the Road are reported by couriers, and strengthened with rocks and stones by what the White Court calls Wayfarers, apprentices doing solo tours of all accessible Modes before they take their class exams. The Road is their special business. Couriers are apprentices also, but their special business is information. A few practitioners, like me, do not return to the City from their tours.

  I love to ride, but I always tell people, if I do not walk, I could lose the use of my leg entirely. It’s my favorite bit of misdirection. Terith can be as happy on the move as in a stable with his nose in a bag of feed—such bags as he was himself carrying, as it happened.

  “Why carry so much food anyway?”

  Arlyn’s question surprised me. “I know you have not strayed from the town since I have known you, but you must have arrived there somehow, and if not by horse, how?”

  He shrugged. I sighed and rubbed my eyebrows with the thumb and middle fingers of my right hand. “The grazing that can be found by the roadside is minimal.” I indicated the trees growing close to the Road. “Every animal that has passed this way has been eating it.”

  “But the fields—”

  “Are owned by someone likely in a position to make their complaints heard.”

  He nodded then, brows drawn together as if he had never considered this before.

  A few hours later we came to one of the Wayfarers’ rest stops, in this Mode no more than a small lean-to with a fire ring made of carefully placed rocks. These shelters are also for mundanes to use, not just practitioners, so learning the differences and matching the Mode is part of an apprentice’s course of study. I unloaded Terith and left Arlyn to make a fire while I tied the horse around back of the structure, making sure he could reach what little grazing there was. I told him I would break out a feedbag for him later. He wrinkled his nose in what horses use for a smile.

  I found Arlyn standing with his thumbs hooked in his belt, staring at the pile of twigs and dried leaves as though it would light itself.

  “Can you light the fire?” he asked. “Without a sparker, I mean.”

  “I know what you mean.” I lifted my chin and examined him. His eyes looked into the present and his facial muscles were relaxed. It was too soon for him to be low again.

  “So can you?”

  I squatted on my heels, most of my weight on my left foot. Though I had not bothered for years, I remembered how it was done. I reached my practitioner’s hand through the nest of twigs Arlyn had created and touched one particular dry leaf with the tip of my finger. Everything works better if you know where to start.

  But apparently not today.

  “Isn’t calling fire the first forran practitioners are taught?”

  “Calling light is, actually. But even the easy forrans need practice,” I said, accepting the sparker he handed me.

  Supper consisted of two strips of dried venison, a large potato, and three carrots, all simmering in a small travel pot on the fire as we shared a cup of mint tea. Between us Arlyn and I had food for about three days, what we had been able to assemble out of our own stores. We would use the money in my saddlebags to buy more supplies when we reached a town that had them to spare.

  As we were cooking Arlyn finally asked the question I’d been waiting for.

  “Why did you help Jera, if you knew she would die?”

  I poked at the stew with my ashwood spurtle, grimacing at the heat of the fire. “I might have been wrong. I did my best to prepare the parents, though I knew in the end it might bring me grief.”

  “How so?” Arlyn took a sip from the cup of tea.

  “They will remember it later, and they will believe I did not try hard enough, having already decided there was no point.” I sat back on my heels.

  “You sound as though this has happened before.”

  I turned my head to better look him in the face and lifted my left eyebrow as high as it could go. He shrugged and nodded at the same time. “Sorry. Stupid thing to say.”

  As we ate the stew a young badger rustled though the underbrush, curious, but beyond the light of the fire.

  “I’m no hunter, but if you call the animal to you, I think I could manage to stab it. For tomorrow,” he added when I froze, my spoon halfway to my mouth.

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  “The animals come to me because they trust me. If I abuse that trust, they will never come again.”

  “That can’t be true.” He waved his spoon at me. “I’ve seen practitioners do it repeatedly at court.”

  And when were you at court, that you saw all this? “It may work that way for them, but not for me.”

  After staring at me for a moment longer, he lowered his eyes to his bowl and started eating again.

  * * *

  Arlyn

  “You might as well tell me what it is.” Fenra was riding, so her voice came from just over my head.

  I opened my mouth, shut it again. How much to tell her? How much would the cabinet maker she thought I was reasonably know? At least she’d waited until daylight to ask. “It’s a dangerous artifact,” I said finally. Absolutely true. “I don’t know where he found it, or how he took charge of it.” Not true at all.

  “How dangerous?” From her tone, she’d been doing a bit of thinking since we’d set out.

  I was ready for that. “Xandra said it could bring irreversible damage to the world, perhaps even un-Make it.” Now I looked up at her face. “What?”

  She shrugged. “Just a little surprised to hear the village superstitions coming from you. You seem a little sophisticated to be referring to the Maker of the World.”

  “Yes, well, maybe I was once.” I could hear a tautness in my voice, so I looked up at her and smiled.

  Her eyes clouded. “Can the artifact be destroyed?”

  My mouth opened before I meant it to. It’s the schoolteacher tone, we all respond to it. “If it could, wouldn’t Xandra have destroyed it himself?”

  “Something so powerful is a great temptation for a gifted practitioner.”

  That worried me a little. I didn’t think she’d recognized the name. “How do you know he was gifted?”

  “Because I have never heard of him, and it’s only the really gifted ones who choose to keep themselves out of the records. Only they have reason—such as something to hide.”

  That part was truer than she knew. “You think he was tempted, then?” I kept my eyes on the track ahead. Apparently Fenra didn’t notice that I moved us along at the horse’s best walk—respectable on the smoother surface at this part of the Road. Trips to the City have been known to take months, but we didn’t have that kind of time.

  “Of course, anyone would have been. He would have found a dozen excuses for doing as he wished. That’s what they are like. The powerfully gifted ones.” She must have seen something in my face, because she changed the subject. “How can you be certain your cousin did not make a testament since the last time you saw him?” She shifted in the saddle, made a small disgusted sound, stopped the horse and slid off, landing on her good leg. She looked over at me, lifting her left eyebrow in that irritating way she has.

  “Even if he did, he would never have named me executor. Never. No one in my family would have, I can be certain of that.” I looked away; let her think I was studying the fields to the left of the Road. Farmers would be cutting the hay soon, if t
he weather held.

  “And why would that be?”

  When I didn’t answer right away she just waited. People use that technique because it works. “I wasn’t always a furniture maker.”

  “I know you have scars that woodworking won’t account for.” She pointed toward my right wrist with her chin.

  “I was . . .” I smiled. I was about to tell her a true story. “I was a highwayman.”

  “What?”

  The look on her face was priceless. “I robbed people on the Road—”

  “I know what a highwayman is.” Her voice snapped. “When did you learn to make furniture?”

  “Oh, the furniture came first. I ran away from my apprenticeship with my uncle—Xandra’s father—and I swept the roads for . . . actually, I’m not sure how long exactly.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I was caught. I was to be hanged. My cousin came and rescued me.” I said this as matter-of-factly as I could. This was the tale-as-I-wished-it, not the tale-as-it-was.

  “How?”

  “There’s money in the family.” I looked sideways at her, shrugged. From the look on her face she knew firsthand that money provided a lot of solutions. “He was the only one who hadn’t already disowned me. Xandra would never have made me executor if there was any chance I’d have to deal with the family again. Never.”

  “I have a great many questions,” she said.

  “I imagine so.” She wouldn’t get any more answers just now. There’s a limit.

  “Unless we are to go our separate ways, I will need to know what to expect. You will have to tell me everything, soon or late.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s make it late.”

  * * *

  Fenra

  “You sure you don’t want to ride?”

  “Walking is good for my leg muscles. Keeps them warm and alive.” With my thoughts spinning around and around what we had—and had not—talked about, I forgot to take more care with my limp. Usually, once I am walking, people forget I am lame. Oddly, it is when I am standing still that they most notice the twist that turns my right foot inward.

  “So why a horse in the first place?”

  “Sometimes people need a practitioner faster than I can walk to them. Besides,” I added, looking at him out of the corner of my eye and trying not to smile, “Terith is better company than most people.” The silly beast shook his head, making his ears flap. He knew I was talking about him.

  Our fifth night on the Road found us without even a Wayfarer’s shelter. We had reached the well-used track leading to the small village of Drienz in the latter part of the afternoon, but Arlyn wanted to press on. I did not argue with him, though I was more or less certain we had entered a different Mode two nights before. Without an inn, I had no way to be sure. I seemed to remember that these things were clearer the last time I walked the Road. In any case, without shelter the safer choice for a camp was off the Road completely. The terrain here was well on its way to being mountainous, and we had to find a spot four feet could manage as well as two. Finally I chose a place where spaces between the pines encouraged me to believe some wider, flatter bit of clear ground might be nearby.

  I found a clearing far enough off the Road to suit me, with only one low bush, and enough dead leaves and pine needles on the ground to make for softer sleeping, despite the slight slope. I freed the pack that sat on Terith’s rump and unbuckled his saddle. While Arlyn gathered rocks to make a fire spot, I began creating wards. I like to use found anchors, stones, twigs, even dried dung if it’s big enough and dried enough. For me, using natural objects in their natural state makes the wards stronger. And it saves me from carrying a lot of paraphernalia.

  I took my time, placing each anchor carefully after breathing on it. Done right, the warding would make us invisible to almost everyone.

  “Fenra?” The sharpness of Arlyn’s tone brought my head around. “Where are you?”

  Apparently I was concentrating a little too much on invisibility. I moved out of his direct line of sight before restoring myself. “Here, just setting wards.”

  “You haven’t done this before.”

  “Before we were on the Road.” I answered without turning around, continuing to pick up and replace objects in a rough circle that took up almost the whole clearing.

  “Do healers generally make good wards?”

  I could feel him watching me, and I stifled an eye-roll as I turned around. “Unlike the fire forran, I have had recent practice with this, if that’s what worries you. Half of healing is warding off sickness. It’s only the other half that cures. Now, if you do not mind.” I went back to work.

  “I’m sure they won’t be needed,” he said.

  “Perhaps so.” I did not bother pointing out the pair of eyes just visible on the edge of the light. I waggled my fingers in greeting, and once the fox had had a good look at us, he trotted away.

  Hours later my eyes blinked open in the dark. The fire was out, the night too warm to make it necessary for more than cooking. I could see stars through the thin canopy of trees, the outline of Terith, dozing with his nose almost on the ground. If he slept, what woke me?

  A shadow passed between Terith and the trees behind him. I sat up. “Arlyn? You may want to wake up. My wards are about to be tested.” It would be something, not someone.

  Arlyn surprised me by waking like a soldier, throwing back his blanket, rolling upright, and putting a hand to his knife. “The horse didn’t wake up.”

  I pulled my hair back off my face, re-tying the cord that had loosened while I slept. I stayed cross-legged on my bedroll, my wrists resting on my knees.

  “Excuse me.” The whisper came out of the darkness on the uphill side. “Can you help me?”

  I clapped my hands and a light appeared, hovering over our heads.

  “Now you can do it.” Arlyn thought I could not hear him if he muttered.

  A young girl inched forward into the light. She was no more than twelve or thirteen, barefoot, her homespun trousers and tunic wet and dripping, soiled with streaks of slimy green, and torn. Laces, I noticed, not buttons, which told me the Mode. Her light brown hair hung tangled, dripping rivulets of water onto her shoulders, and she had a streak of mud high on her left cheekbone. “Can you help me?” she said, reaching out her hands. “I’m lost.” Her face was turned toward me, but her deep blue eyes didn’t quite focus.

  I looked between her and Arlyn. “And Terith’s still asleep,” I pointed out. “You would think a helpless little girl like this would wake him up.”

  “So young to be so cynical.”

  I shook my head, matching his smile. “Do you recognize her?”

  “No, should I? I’d have thought we were still too close to the Road for fetches to manifest.”

  Interesting that he knew that. “I have heard they have been increasing lately. For a generic fetch this one has great detail. Just look at the dirt in its nail beds, the seaweed and algae in its hair.” A tide pool, I thought. That’s what it smelled like. For a moment the leaves looked like seaweed, but when I looked again they were just leaves. “It must have been someone real. Perhaps the last person who fell for it.” I pushed myself to my feet, dusting off my hands on my trousers. As I took a step closer to the wards, the fetch held out its hands to me, looked over its shoulder, squeaked, and ran off into the dark. I found myself rather pleased with it for maintaining form and substance. Most don’t have power enough for that level of verisimilitude.

  I was not at all pleased by its next attempt. A noise brought us round to the downhill side of our camp. This time we saw a young man, dressed in apprentice practitioner’s gray, with the white collar and cuffs and the little black cap everyone had to wear. He was brown-eyed, with dark hair and a very straight, very thin nose. His lips were also thin, but wide for his face. Perfect in every detail, right down to the
button hanging crookedly on the front of his jacket. I had sewn that button on myself. I drew in a sharp breath and then pressed my lips tight together.

  “Fenra?” The voice was deeper than I remembered.

  “Who’s it supposed to be?” Arlyn approached the wards, head tilted to one side. “How does it know you?”

  “Not so close,” I warned him. He stopped, but stayed within touching distance of the invisible barrier. “We studied together.”

  “Fen, Fen, it’s me. It’s Hal.”

  I sighed. I had never liked being called “Fen.” The way some people said it you just knew they meant “swamp” and not “marsh.” I took a deep breath and flexed my fingers, turning my rings around and rubbing my palms together.

  “No, Fen, please. You can’t! You have to help me, you don’t know what it’s been like.” The fetch stepped close enough to brush the edge of the ward circle and it tolled like a deep but distant bell.

  “Fenra . . .” Arlyn looked between me and the fetch.

  I held up my index finger and he nodded, stepping back. I put the tips of my fingers together and drew them apart slowly. Arlyn’s eyes narrowed, as if focused on the thin lines of rose light connecting my fingertips.

  “No, Fen! Fen, let me in, you can’t leave me here. You can’t! Fen!” As I paid no attention, keeping my eyes on the light between my hands, the fetch stopped pleading and started to threaten.

  “You did this to me, you bitch! Saved yourself and left me to fall. This is all your fault. Help me! Let me in and I’ll forgive you.”

  “Be gone.” I made a flicking motion with my fingers, and the rose light jumped like sparks through the wards, showering over the fetch and dissolving it. The voice lasted longer than the body, so the words “help me” and “your fault” echoed in the darkness after the image faded away. I took a final deep breath and dusted my hands off. “Its mistake was to use someone I knew was dead.”