The Godstone

by Violette Malan

  Arlyn made no effort to remove his own jacket, though I could see a sheen of dampness disappearing from his upper lip.

  “A parasol is what we need—” My breath caught in my throat. I patted myself. Silk shirt, linen-wool trousers with carved wooden buttons. Cuffs the same, pockets the same, boots the same. “My clothes haven’t changed.” Arlyn did not appear at all surprised. “We are in the same Mode. But there’s nothing like this near the City.”

  “We’re not near the City.” He clasped his hands, tapping his upper lip with his extended index fingers, something I had never seen him do. A crease between his eyebrows made my heart beat faster. What worried him that much?

  “Arlyn.” I weighted my voice with all the authority I had in me.

  He lowered his hands.

  “When I first found this lovely spot, I thought it was a new Mode. In fact, I thought I’d found the secret of how the Modes come into being.”

  “What do you mean? The Modes have always been . . .” I remembered what Medlyn had told me; I remembered that I did not know Arlyn’s age. “You are saying they haven’t always been.”

  “No, there used to be more. Practitioners traveling on the Road used to find themselves in a brand-new Mode. Not all the time, but sometimes. I wanted to know how it happened, so I created a forran I thought would work.” He waved around him. “This is what I found instead.”

  I checked the knots in my cravat with the tips of my fingers. “This isn’t our world at all.” I could not believe how normal my voice sounded. “What world is it, then?”

  “They have their own name for it, of course, but we—I always called it the New Zone.”

  “That’s it?” I licked my lips, feeling the moisture evaporate almost before it formed. “The mind that came up with the door that wasn’t there couldn’t think of a better name than ‘New Zone’?”

  Arlyn started to speak, stopped, and pressed both lips and eyes closed. Finally he turned to stare at the western horizon, as if he expected something.

  I squinted. The same landscape as far as the eye could see. I could feel my shirt wet against my back. “So what now? You teach me the forran and we go back through the gate, or portal, or maybe you call it a ‘door’?”

  Arlyn shook his head, but clearly not in response to me. He looked around again, apparently did not see what he was looking for, and sat down cross-legged on the ground. He indicated the space in front of him. “You might want to sit.”

  At first the ground felt too hot to sit on, but after removing three sharp rocks from under me, I became reasonably comfortable.

  Arlyn, wrists resting on his knees, looked as if the heat no longer affected him. “Don’t roll up your sleeves,” he warned me as I took hold of my right cuff. “The sun is strong enough to burn even your skin.” He waited until I’d re-buttoned my cuffs before continuing. “We need to find another gate.” Arlyn waved a hand in the air over his head. “One that you can use. This particular forran is one-use only.”

  “Wonderful. What genius thought that was a good idea?” Arlyn kept his eyes fixed on mine, but did not respond. “Ah, sorry.” Not that I felt apologetic.

  “Yes, well. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.” His tone was flatter than his words suggested. “That gate, and a few others, were meant to be used as bolt holes. I didn’t want anyone and everyone to be able to follow me through.”

  “So Metenari can’t follow us.”

  Arlyn shrugged. “Does he want to? He wanted the vault unsealed—”

  “And now it’s unsealed.” By accident. I squeezed my eyes shut. “I do not think he meant to push us through the gate.”

  “Not at all. Though you have to admit we’re neatly out of the way. With Lorist Tierell faded, there isn’t even anyone to ask questions about us.”

  “Ginglen, at the hotel—” I began. He would remember me, I thought.

  “If he does anything at all, he’ll apply to the White Court because a practitioner might be missing, leaving a horse in his stable. I don’t expect anything will come of that, do you?”

  Except I had asked them to look after Terith. I began to speak, and stopped with the words unsaid. I examined Arlyn’s face more closely. He looked at a rock to the left of his knee, focused, but not seeing it. I had seen that look before. The face of someone at a loss.

  “Arlyn, give me your hands.” I reached mine out to him. He flinched away from me and caught himself.

  “You might need all your strength,” he said, still withholding his hands. “When we find another gate, you’ll have to get us out of here.”

  “My strength isn’t all we will need. Without your knowledge, and the focus that being level gives you, we might be trapped here forever.” He looked at me a long time before he finally put his hands in mine. I closed my eyes.

  * * *

  • • •

  Most often Arlyn is lost in a deep fog. A wind comes with me, or brings me, I do not know which, and blows the fog away. At first just tiny wisps of it, then more and more until I see Arlyn completely. There are dark areas in the fog, and I wonder if it contains other lives, other beings, lost perhaps, or simply living their lives in their own time and place. I do not know what the fog is, or where it comes from, or whose mind contains it, mine or his.

  But this time the fog is dense, almost solid, as it is when Arlyn waits too long to be leveled. The light, brisk breeze I expected to use would do no good now. It would have to be closer to a gale. I struggle to call the wind to me, but nothing happens. Just as I think I feel a slight movement of cool air, a dark rivulet in the fog reaches out for me, touching me on the ankle the way a strange but friendly dog will sniff at you. I hold still, as I would for the dog, but my heart pounds and my skin is cold with sweat. A black terror washes over me. For a moment I am frozen in place, then my lungs heave, and I suck in a great breath of air. I can smell brine, and the sea. And then it is gone, and I am alone again.

  This has never happened before. Could it be because we are in a new world? I concentrate again, calling the wind, but cautiously, as delicately as I can. Finally it comes, bringing back with it the smell of the sea, and my heart beats faster. But this time the wind behaves itself, blowing away more and more of the fog, until I can see Arlyn sitting on a rock jutting out of a sandy beach, the water just lapping at his toes.

  The fog has gone.

  * * *

  • • •

  When I opened my eyes Arlyn was looking at me. Whatever the lowness is, it doesn’t affect his appearance—at least, not until the point where he does not care whether he bathes, or if his clothes are clean, or his hair needs cutting. But when he is level, he carries himself differently, there is a spark of light in his eyes. I thought I would be able to get a straight answer out of him now.

  “How do we get out of here?”

  “You know how you call animals to you? Do the same, but call for help to come.”

  I blinked in surprise. Definitely not the answer I expected. “Help isn’t an animal, Arlyn. It’s more of an abstract idea. How do you suggest I call it?”

  He shrugged. “How do you call animals? I mean an animal you can’t see, but you know must be out there? Not every practitioner can do it.”

  That was true. Annoying, but true. “I visualize it.”

  “Well, help is out there. Visualize it.”

  I decided I almost preferred his listlessness to this know-it-all attitude. “I take it back. I could not have learned anything from you in the past few years.”

  “Humor me.”

  * * *

  Arlyn

  Fenra shut her eyes, laid her hands palms up on her thighs. It’s a good thing her skin is so dark, or this sun would have been burning her already. She slowed her breathing down to where I couldn’t be sure her lungs were still working. When I saw her shoulders lower, the musc
les of her face relax, I asked her:

  “Which way is help? Point to it.”

  I knew it was coming, but I still jumped when Fenra’s arm shot out, pointed to her left and slightly behind her. Not the way I expected, but I trusted Fenra’s power.

  “Wake up, Fenra. Don’t lose the direction of help, bring it back out with you. Wake up.”

  She took a deep breath and opened her eyes.

  “Do you still feel it?”

  Her teeth flashed white. “I do. I wonder what other abstract concepts I can find?”

  “Experiment later, rescue first.”

  * * *

  “Wonderful.” Metenari passed his hands through air that a moment before had contained Fenra Lowens and the Albainil man. Or had it? “Check the outside room, is anyone there?”

  “No, Practitioner, it’s empty. What happened?”

  “A dimensional gate, it has to be.” Metenari grinned. “But how did the carpenter know it was there? That’s the question.”

  “He knew about the vault,” Noxyn pointed out. “And how to find the workroom.”

  “Correct.” Metenari believed in giving credit where it was due. “It seems more knowledge was passed down in the Albainil family than I’d thought. More, in fact, and less corrupted than I would have believed possible considering the span of time.” A careful look around the vault made plain that there were no chairs. Metenari spotted a low table. It would serve as a bench until he could have some chairs brought in. He was more tired than he’d expected. It seemed the gate forran used an unusual amount of power. He might set a couple of the junior apprentices to finding it. A gate could be very useful.

  “Practitioner?” Noxyn’s voice was tentative. “This place looks remarkably like the workroom.” The young man gestured at the open doorway, kept open, Metenari felt sure, by his precaution of having Predax, his second apprentice, stand in it. “Though there’s not as much open shelving. More drawers and closed cabinets.” Noxyn was still talking, giving his observations as though this was a test or exam. Just as Metenari smiled at this thought, Noxyn reached out a finger, as if he meant to check the shelf in front of him for dust.

  “Freeze!” For a moment Metenari thought he’d actually frozen him, then saw that Noxyn still breathed. With a hand to the boy’s sleeve, he drew him away from the shelves. “Be careful, my boy. If we know one thing about this place, it’s that there are likely to be other traps. If I had only been more careful, more suspicious, we would not have lost Fenra Lowens. I knew she wasn’t up to the challenge of dealing with the forran of a master like Xandra Albainil.”

  “Was the dimensional gate a trap?” Noxyn looked back over his shoulder at Predax, standing with his shoulders hunched and his lips pressed tight together. The boy’s nerves could use some work.

  “Very likely. Why position it in the doorway otherwise?” Predax shifted his feet. Metenari gave him a reassuring smile. “Not to worry, my boy, I’ve neutralized that forran, for the moment, and we’ve nothing more to fear. No, the difficulty was that unsealing the vault as Fenra Lowens did, clumsily, almost by accident, she triggered the guarding mechanism, and the gate. If the unsealing had been left to me, there would have been no harm done. As it was, pushing them out of reach by shoving them through the dimensional gate was the best I could do. It was either that, or let them die right there as they stood.”

  “But you’ll be able to get them back?” Predax said from his post at the doorway.

  “Oh, undoubtedly. We’ll continue our examinations of the old documents and I’m sure we’ll find the forran we need. After all, we may need Arlyn Albainil again, who knows what other knowledge he has.” Metenari rose to his feet. “Now, let’s see what we have here.” Standing in front of the nearest bank of drawers, he placed his hands together, fingertip to fingertip, and concentrated. Start with the simple. One of the first precepts of the White Court. He drew his hands apart until only the fingertips were touching. Even more slowly, he drew his fingertips apart, nodding at the lines of orange light stretching between his hands. He pointed his left index finger at the pull of the drawer.

  “Hah! The pull resists even the greatest pressure I can bring to bear. I wouldn’t have expected anything less.” He clapped his hands and smiled. The smile vanished as he sat down again, much faster than he’d intended.

  “Practitioner?”

  Both apprentices took a step toward him and he held up his hand, this time taking no chances but using power to stop them in their tracks. Suddenly out of breath, he coughed and cleared his throat.

  “Stay in the doorway, Predax,” he said. “We wouldn’t want it to close on us, would we?”

  “But Practitioner . . .”

  “Not to worry. Use of magic tires even one as experienced as I am. Learn that lesson early. Don’t ignore the demands of the body.”

  Somewhere in here, he thought, in one of the drawers, on a shelf, or behind a cupboard door, he’d find the Godstone. But not today. He’d have to come back rested, and well fed. He’d need all his strength and energy. He pushed himself to his feet.

  “Now, Noxyn, Predax.” Both boys straightened up. “What is to be done about the opening? How would you leave it?”

  Predax chewed on the inside of his lower lip, throwing glances at Noxyn. That was perfectly understandable. He was newer, and less experienced. As Metenari expected, Noxyn answered him.

  “For the doorway to the workroom,” he began, “we don’t need to do anything. Now that we know it’s there, we’ll always be able to see it. As for the opening to the vault, it looks like we’ll have to leave someone here to hold it open, at least until we’ve found a forran to neutralize the seal and the trap both.”

  “Good, good. Well done, Noxyn. Predax, I’m afraid that duty falls on you for now. I’ll send Noxyn back with some food for you, and perhaps a scroll for you to study as you wait.”

  “Yes, Practitioner.”

  * * *

  Fenra

  We walked in the direction from which help was coming. Sometimes the practice is like that, it just comes to you, without patterns or forrans. Medlyn once said that just as every practitioner uses a particular focus point, every practitioner has a gift peculiar to them. He said the White Court didn’t focus on individuality anymore, so it wasn’t nurtured the way it once was.

  I could not help thinking that if Xandra Albainil was the product of a focus on individuality, they were probably right to abandon it.

  We were soon covered with dust. I looked down at my knee boots and grimaced. Not only were they filthy, but they were entirely the wrong footwear for walking on hot uneven ground. My feet and calves felt baked, and the soles were meant for City pavements, not this rough ground. Arlyn’s boots were thicker-soled, and for the first time since I was issued them, I regretted my practitioner’s colors. Black isn’t the best choice when there’s a strong sun overhead.

  There were birds high above us. Circling.

  “Vultures a bit premature, aren’t they?”

  I shaded my eyes and looked upward. I welcomed a reason to stand still, even for a moment. “Not vultures,” I said. “Eagles.”

  “Eagles? What are they doing up there?”

  “Floating.”

  Just as I began to think the afternoon would never end, Arlyn touched my arm and pointed. Neither of us had spoken for at least two miles. We could not afford to lose the moisture in our mouths. I narrowed my eyes and focused on the distance. A plume of dust. A wagon or cart at the least. Here was the help I had called to us. Without speaking a word, we both stopped.

  “Sit down,” Arlyn whispered.

  “You,” I said.

  “Take turns.”

  I did not have the willpower to argue when I knew he was right. One of us would rest while the other remained standing as a target for the help that was on its way.

  A wagon,
not a cart, drawn by two horses looking bored. I had ample opportunity to examine them, as they did not stop moving until they had put noses on me, snuffling and blowing. Their breath smelled of hay, and was no hotter than the air around us. I ran my hands up their faces, stroked their necks, and gently tweaked their ears. They stopped looking bored.

  The man holding the reins had his head tilted to one side as he watched my face and my hands. He was dressed in trousers so faded I could not tell the original color. His thin shirt might once have been white. He wore an old limp leather vest open over the shirt. The vest had embroidery on the front panels where lapels would be. He was so slim I could not be sure of his height. His skin color, though as dark as mine, was at least partly the result of the sun. White braids hung down out of his wide-brimmed black hat. His eyes were a very startling green, examining me as thoroughly as I was examining him.

  “You’re for the sheriff.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded when Arlyn did. “Water here.” He indicated the bed of the wagon. “One there, one up front.”

  “Why the sheriff? Are we trespassing?” Arlyn asked, holding me back. I almost bit him. I needed to sit down on something that wasn’t the ground, and I swear I could smell the water.

  The carter was shaking his head. “You’re new. Sheriff sees everyone new.”