The Godstone

by Violette Malan

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I am facing a harsh truth,” I said. “Any rational being, most especially any practitioner, knows that a single person has no importance compared to the fate of the world . . . you just never really think that’s going to apply to you.”

  Medlyn reached over and patted me on the shoulder. “When I was younger than you are now, I might have thought of this as a great adventure. Now? I have to say I’m more than a little relieved that I’m too old to do anything but give advice.”

  I took his hand in mine. I felt bone, and skin, and very little else. “Is there something I could do?”

  His laugh brought a smile to my face. “Here when I’ve just told you I’d be relieved to miss this particular experience? Thank you, my dear, it’s kind of you to offer. But I’ve reached the point where not even someone of your talent can do very much. It’s come a little faster than I expected, but I’ve seen my days, and I’m ready.” He patted my hand. “I’m glad you came, though I’m sorry for what brought you. I’m sorry . . .”

  “At least come outside with us, just for a bit, for fresh air if nothing else. It’s a month at least since you came to see me, have you left your rooms since then?”

  His face broke into a warm smile. “Oh my dear, you’d be surprised where I’ve been lately, and how I got there.” He held up his hand. I thought I saw it trembling. “But not today,” he added. “Though I thank you for asking.”

  “In that case.” I stood. “I will take my final leave now, if I may. I do not know where my next days will take me.”

  He took my face in his hands. His fingers were like ice. “You were not my best pupil—though you came close! Very close. But you were my favorite.” His eyes twinkled. “Be well, Practitioner Fenra Lowens, craft-daughter.”

  “Farewell, Lorist Medlyn Tierell, craft-father. I will.” This would be the first and last time we used those words to each other. A relationship always known, and never before acknowledged.

  I was at the workroom door, my hand on the knob, when his soft voice called me back.

  “I almost forgot. I must have known you were coming today, my dear. I brought this with me. It would have found its way to you, after, but since you are here, take it with you now.” He pulled at a chain around his neck, freeing a gold locket with a blue enameled design on the cover from under his shirt. He held it out to me. I stepped toward him, hand outstretched, and then I hesitated.

  “I have no blood kin left, Fenra, no kinsman of any kind,” he said. “With this, you will not need one.”

  The locket was still warm from his skin.

  Luckily for me, Arlyn did not want to talk on the way back to the hotel. He must have seen that Medlyn’s private words had affected me greatly. We both pretended to find the buildings we passed of overwhelming interest. Once back at Ginglen’s, I let Arlyn go up to our rooms alone. I needed to see Terith. He would be missing me as much as I was missing him. I told him my news while I stroked his face, and he told me his, puffing air into my ears. He had been well looked after, I was happy to hear, though he suspected Dom Ginglen paid for first-class oats and received second-class. Suddenly Terith raised his head, and flicked his ears in the direction of the far end of the mews. Lifting my eyebrows, I followed his suggestion and went to find the source of the noise.

  The mews was narrow, but long, and probably ran behind both the hotel and the house next to it. The cobbled yard was surrounded by a dressed stone wall, with a gate in the end nearest Terith’s stall. I followed the narrow yard to the far end, where I pushed open the stall door. Three faces looked up at me, two startled adults with mouths open, and one young girl with lips pressed tight together to keep in the sound of pain. Pain I could do something about.

  “Let me help,” I said, stepping into the stall and crouching down next to where Dom Ginglen knelt at the girl’s side, a footman I had never seen before on the other. Both adult faces were now impassive, though the footman was noticeably pale.

  “Thank you, Practitioner, but it isn’t necessary. We can manage.”

  “You are not managing, that is the point. Let me help.”

  “We can’t pay,” the footman blurted out.

  “Did I ask for payment?” As gently as I could, considering my feeling of urgency, I took him by the shoulders and set him aside.

  “Practitioners can’t work without a permit,” Ginglen said. “And we can’t afford one.”

  I looked up from the injured girl’s sweating face. “What? Since when?”

  “Since four years ago come the equinox,” he said. “We tried to make an appointment, but even the surety they asked for was more than we had. We tried to take care of her ourselves, but she’s getting worse.”

  “Of course she is,” I said. “An infection has started.” I sighed and rubbed the palms of my hands together.

  “They said,” the footman offered tentatively. “They told us that in any case a new theorem would have to be written, and that would cost extra.” I noted the new City term for a forran. Things had been heading in this direction even while I was still an apprentice.

  “We tried to sell our Albainil, but the only one who offered to buy it wouldn’t give enough.”

  “What next?” I shook my head. “This is why I stay away from the City.” When I felt my hands had reached the temperature of the girl’s skin, I set them carefully around her face. I felt the source of infection as a cold spot just under the skin, below her left armpit. A rib had cracked and a small sliver of bone had broken free and punctured the lung. Just a tiny puncture, but made slightly worse every time the girl took a breath.

  “Sleep,” I told her, and she did.

  This was a garden, a little overgrown, as if the gardening staff had been on holiday since the start of the season. I walked quickly past what would normally be pretty borders, beds of flowers, and topiary animals of the kind that would delight a child, ponies, puppies, kittens, and rabbits. Then I found a place where a spiky-leaved ivy had overgrown its ornamental urn, poking a new tendril into a nearby rosebush.

  Very subtle, I told myself.

  As I was restoring the errant tendril to its own place and rearranging the disturbed rosebush, I heard something rustling behind me, but by the time I turned around I saw nothing moving. I smiled. Had the topiary bunny twitched its nose? I gave it a pat on the head as I fell back on my rump, grazing the palms of my hands on the cobblestones of the stall. My knees were jelly, and though my arms propped me up, I could feel my elbows shaking.

  “Her color is better,” the footman said, as he took the girl’s hand. “She’s my niece,” he added, turning to me. “She just came to work with us last month. I don’t know what I would have told my sister.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you, Practitioner. Are you going to get into trouble for this?”

  “Not if no one speaks of it.”

  “We were told the White Court would know if someone used the practice without permission. Some machine tells them.”

  If I had been stronger, I would have laughed out loud. “That they cannot do, I assure you. It’s only something they say when they wish to frighten people into obeying. There’s no one left who can create so complicated a machine as that.” Maybe Arlyn could have written such a forran, when he was Xandra. “I am sorry things in the City have reached this state. It was different in my day.”

  “You say we don’t have to pay you, but surely—we won’t charge you for the room.”

  “It’s not me you are charging, it is my companion.”

  “There must be something—”

  “There is.” I accepted his help in rising to my feet. My legs still felt rubbery, but a meal should take care of that. “Look after Terith.” I waved at where he looked with interest through the opening in his own stall. “If something should happen to me, take care of him.” I turned back with my hand on the stall door. “Oh,
and by the way, you should check the quality of your oats. Your grain merchant may be cheating you.”

  * * *

  • • •

  We had only been in the City a little more than two days, and the change in Arlyn was noticeable. On the Road, he had been ready to follow my lead, relying on my more recent experience. This City version of Arlyn was more confident, assertive, even decisive. In the village, I had only seen him like this when he was beginning a new piece of furniture.

  I felt I was starting to understand what might have caused Arlyn’s lowness. A practitioner’s power began with an unconscious inclination to travel, and grew, through study and practice, to a fully conscious awareness of internal power—an awareness that never faded. Having the awareness without the power would be more than enough to loosen Arlyn’s grip on his self, and on the world around him. It had taken him a long time, exactly how long I was still afraid to ask, to reach the state of catatonia in which I had found him. I wondered how long it would have taken him to die of it. If, indeed, that was possible.

  Back in our suite, I found Arlyn leaning over the dining table, braced on his hands. He must have begged some paper from one of the servants. The suite had come furnished with writing instruments and paper, but there hadn’t been so large a piece as this. Arlyn straightened as I joined him at the table, rubbing his upper lip before resting his chin in his hand.

  “I couldn’t get any colored inks,” he said. “Can you color these lines for me?”

  I frowned at the paper. “Is this ink made from cuttlefish or charcoal?”

  “Cuttlefish, why?”

  “I do better with things that once lived—and do not talk to me about charcoal, the cuttlefish lived more recently.”

  I forgot how tired I was when I examined Arlyn’s design more closely. Asymmetrical, and yet pleasing to the eye. I knew what it was, of course, I just hadn’t thought Arlyn still capable of drawing one.

  “What colors do you need?”

  “This line here.” He pointed to the line that, while weaving into and through the rest of the pattern, also formed an outer edge. “This should be gold. This one, lavender, this one sage, and this last periwinkle.”

  I raised my eyes to his face. “Rather sprightly, aren’t they?”

  He shrugged. “My focus is crystal,” he said. “Only the prism colors come to me.”

  I nodded, took a deep breath, touched the tip of my left index finger to a spot on the gold line and released the air in my lungs as slowly as I could. There was linen in the paper, glue from bones, and that was enough to help me. For a moment I thought my focus hadn’t been tight enough, but suddenly the line under my finger changed to the warm orange color practitioners call gold. The other colors came more easily as my confidence grew. I remembered, touching the locket under my shirt, that Medlyn used to say there’s a reason what we do is called “practice.” When the colors were all in place I took a step back, brushing the ends of my fingers together to clear the residue of power.

  “Well.” I coughed and cleared my throat. Arlyn handed me a glass of water from the pitcher on the sideboard. “How does it look?”

  A shadow crossed over Arlyn’s face. “I can’t see the colors, you’ll have to tell me.”

  I opened my mouth to respond—and got to a chair just fast enough to save myself from hitting the floor. Arlyn pushed a plate of biscuits within my reach and poured me out a cup of chocolate from a pot covered by an insulating hat. As I crammed a biscuit into my mouth, he took my practitioner’s hand and began massaging it. I could feel the roughness and the calluses on his carpenter’s fingers.

  “What will this do?” I asked, indicating the paper with a nod.

  “When we reach the vault, you’ll use it to call up my seal without having to touch it,” he said, giving the heel of my hand a final rub with his thumbs. “This is the pattern you need to look for.”

  My breath stopped in my throat. His pattern. Arlyn’s pattern. It was as though he put his beating heart into my hand.

  “How do you know I can use it?” I had a sudden image of what would happen if the pattern failed just at the wrong moment.

  For an answer, Arlyn indicated the sheet of paper. “You were able to add the necessary colors to this version, so obviously you can interact with it. What?” he added when I did not respond.

  “I am thinking how much I could have learned from you over the years of our acquaintance if I had known who and what you were.”

  He went still as a statue for a long moment before answering. “You might have learned how to be so sure of yourself that you endangered the whole world.”

  * * *

  Arlyn

  We passed through the arched stone opening leading to the enclosed space known as the Headmaster’s gardens. I wondered who was Head now, and whether the position was the same as when I had turned it down. I looked around with interest, recognizing very little except the pattern of the original flagstone paths, grown uneven and mossy under trees and shady areas. The oaks I remembered had been replaced with fruit trees, apples, peaches, oranges, medlars, pomegranates, and mulberries—most of which wouldn’t bear in the same season outside the White Court. New gravel walkways led off toward the distant buildings. Long shadows caused by the setting sun.

  We mingled easily with the students still using the gardens. I walked with my hands clasped behind my back, while Fenra used her silver-headed stick to point out plants and fruits of interest. There were several other people, including one group of seven recently arrived students on a guided tour, doing much the same thing. I got a couple of sideways glances, but otherwise no one took any notice of us.

  We’d agreed that Medlyn Tierell’s office would make the perfect place to wait until dark. It was obvious Fenra wanted to check on the old man, and I wouldn’t mind a chance to ask about some of his wooden models, especially the ones I didn’t recognize.

  We entered a familiar courtyard through a tiled arch I’d never seen before. “Is the Singing Tower much changed?” I looked up and around until I saw the familiar façade against the darkening blue of the sky.

  “Not when I was here last,” Fenra said. “Too many offices and workspaces in use for much renovation to be done.” We walked by three splashing fountains, along another arcade, and through another arched opening, this time one I remembered, and finally to the ancient red stone building we had visited that morning.

  When we reached the third-floor landing I took hold of Fenra’s sleeve cuff with the fingers of my right hand. With my left I indicated the office’s open door.

  “No worries,” she said, her teeth flashing white against her skin. “He always leaves it that way if he’s alone.” She rapped on the door’s middle panel with one knuckle, pushed the door wider open at the same time.

  “Medlyn . . .” Her rough voice died away. The room was emptier than empty. No carpets, no books, no artifacts, no lorist. The same furniture, but all polished and clean. And two boxes, I now saw, full of scrolls and books. I had hold of Fenra just above her elbow; I could tell she felt no touch at all. I increased the pressure of my fingers, gave her a little shake.

  “Fenra.”

  “No, it’s all right.” She touched her cravat as if she was feeling for something under it. “I think I knew when he gave me—but I hoped I was wrong.” She patted my hand and I let go of her.

  “Do we have a new plan?”

  “I think so.” She pulled a locket out of her shirt by its chain and a light dawned. Tierell must have given it to her—I’d never seen it before. “If you agree,” she said, “there is somewhere even safer for us to wait.”

  Fenra stood in the cleared space in front of the desk, and reached for my practitioner’s hand with her right. She held the locket up to eye height in her practitioner’s hand, rubbed it between her fingers. The enameled side would feel warm, the gold side cool. Finally sh
e held it to her forehead, lowered it, manipulated the tiny release to open it, enameled side up.

  At first nothing happened, but just as a frown began to wrinkle her brow, fog spilled slowly out of the open locket. I stood closer to her, careful not to squeeze her hand.

  I saw the fog, I saw the pattern as it began to emerge. I saw no colors. None.

  The pattern moved, expanded, settled around us. The fog disappeared. We were standing in an oval room paneled in a dark streaky wood. Wood paneling in an oval room? I went immediately to the wall to examine the joints. As I suspected, there were none.

  “It feels like him.” Fenra spun slowly around, chin lifted.

  “What do you see?” I asked her. I could tell she was looking at more than bare walls.

  “Books,” she said. Her smile was sad as she stroked the air between two shelves. “You?”

  “Oval room. Zebrawood paneling. Could use a little oil.” I pointed. “Oak bookshelves, empty, section of paneling, bare, a couple of cupboards, and over there some chests.”

  She spun around on her heel. “Nothing more?” Her brow wrinkled, then her expression cleared. She took my practitioner’s hand in hers. The room leaped into life around me.

  She was right. Books, and not just books. Scrolls, tablets, loose papers covered with elegant writing, mechanisms I didn’t understand but that my fingers itched to touch. Since she had me by the hand, I followed Fenra over to a shelf holding a series of wooden models of bridges, fountains, and other public structures. Some of these I’d seen before. Tierell must have moved them from his workroom before he faded. They must have been very precious to him. I wondered if he’d carved them himself, but I didn’t want to ask. Fenra touched a bridge model with a strange smile on her face, and I knew she was lost in some memory. I pulled a book off the shelves, and when I let go of Fenra’s hand, I could still see it.

  Two hours later I put the book back on the shelf, and it and every other artifact in the room disappeared.