The Godstone

by Violette Malan

  “What is it you find funny, Arlyn?” He was rubbing the palms of his hands together, as if they were suddenly cold.

  * * *

  Fenra

  One of Metenari’s older apprentices, a young man called Predax, came in with Elva’s weapons, the sword carried by the hilt, and the guns by their holsters.

  “They’ve been checked for forrans,” he said, before I could ask him. I suppose the practitioners felt themselves in no danger from mundane tools. “Please, finish your lemonade and cookies. I’ll come back in a while to show you to your rooms.” His nod was a little formal, but his smile was warm enough as he left the sitting room.

  “We should go.” Elvanyn finished buckling on his holsters, hung his sword on his belt, shrugging until everything felt right. “Before they realize they haven’t told us to stay.”

  I stayed in my seat on the sofa. “Where?” I said. “No, I’m not disagreeing with you, but if Metenari gets the Godstone—”

  “He won’t.” Elva went through his weapons ritual. “First, he can’t make Arlyn tell him where it is, and second, even if Arlyn tells him, Metenari won’t be able to open the cabinet. No one can open anything the great Xandra Albainil has locked. Never have, and never will.”

  An odd note of pride lifted his tone.

  I shook my head. “I keep telling you, Metenari is not stupid. My mentor told me there’s a way to use a family member to open a sealed vault. Metenari admitted that was his intention. So, we cannot leave without Arlyn.”

  Elva got down on one knee before me and looked up into my face. He took my hand. Such dramatic gestures. So many of his gestures were, I realized, as though he acted always for some unseen audience. “Is there another reason?” His eyes searched my face.

  “Arlyn is my friend,” I said. Elva’s hands were warm, and I could feel sword calluses. So different from Arlyn’s. “And besides, the village children like him.”

  Elva looked at me for a long time, and finally smiled. “In that case, we’ll rescue him.” He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it.

  * * *

  Arlyn

  “Xandra didn’t lock the thing up because he was afraid,” I said. “It doesn’t do what he designed it to do.” Metenari looked thoughtful. I continued, “You know he was a great designer. Look at all his forrans that are still in use.”

  “If it doesn’t function properly, how can it be so dangerous?”

  Clenched my teeth. Screaming at him wouldn’t achieve anything. Too smug. “It’s because it doesn’t function properly that it is dangerous. It doesn’t just sit there. It changes the world all right, but not in the way Xandra planned.”

  “Come now. It’s obvious what happened. No one as acclaimed as your ancestor would want a story of failure passed down in his family. No, he’d tell a tale of his brave and fatal action to save the world from an artifact too dangerous to use.”

  Rubbed my face with my hands, massaging around my eyes with stiff fingers. This fool would never listen. Not to a mundane. Never. Closed my eyes, felt the world fall away. Would be peaceful, wouldn’t it? My worries, everyone’s worries, gone.

  “I’m not Arlyn Albainil,” I said aloud, opening my eyes.

  His face sharpened, eyes narrowed, lips pressed together. “Who are you, then? How did you know how to find the workroom?”

  “I’m Xandra Albainil.”

  A flicker of emotion crossed his face too fast to identify. Fear? Doubt? Uncertainty? Then he closed his eyes and sighed. “I suppose I should have expected that. If you are the great and powerful Xandra Albainil, how is it you’re sitting here, unable to leave until I allow it? Why haven’t you wiped me and my apprentices from the face of the earth?”

  My turn to sigh. “Even in my day that kind of thing would have been frowned on. Maybe I was more powerful than anyone else, but I wasn’t more powerful than everyone else.”

  “But Xandra would be stronger than I am, right now, wouldn’t he? Why not get up and walk away? Take back your workroom and your vault? Rejoin the White Court? Why don’t you stop me?”

  “Fenra said you had no imagination. Think! If I could have, I would have destroyed the Godstone and that would have been the end of it. As it was, it took everything I had just to lock it safely away.” Almost told him what I’d felt at the time. That horrible fear that it wasn’t completely dormant, that I had only tricked it into sleep, that without trickery I would have failed. “Do you understand me? I was the most powerful practitioner in the White Court, and it took all my power. And you think you’ll just free it and use it?”

  “Arlyn, you must see how utterly ridiculous your assertion is. Nothing removes a practitioner’s power—gods know enough people would have tried it. Practicing isn’t an easy life.” He slapped his hands lightly on his knees, looked over his shoulder at the apprentice standing at the other end of the room.

  “Noxyn, has there been any further progress?”

  “I’m afraid not, Practitioner. We think we’ve narrowed it down to three cabinets, but we can’t open any of them. Perhaps if you . . .” The boy arched his eyebrows and glanced my way.

  Metenari nodded, looking at a spot on the carpet before he got to his feet. “Bring him,” he said as he turned away from me.

  * * *

  • • •

  The light looked different. No windows, so not that. Was it so many others in the room? Somehow I expected to see Fenra and Elva, don’t know why. Three, maybe four, of Metenari’s boys scattered about. All boys, huh. Some angling closer out of curiosity, some inching away for other reasons. One stayed in the doorway, chewing on a fingernail.

  “We’ll begin here.” Metenari stopped in front of the wrong cabinet. Lucky. One in three. “I’ll trouble you to put your hand on the latch.”

  Don’t know what, left to myself, I would have done. As it was, two held me while Noxyn took hold of my practitioner’s forearm and hand. Metenari brought his hands, lightly pressed palm to palm, up to his lips and began blowing air into them. When he pulled his palms apart, a faint glow, like breath on a cold day, hung between them. Seeing his mentor ready, with his own hand holding mine, Noxyn placed my fingers on the latch, just as if I were intending to open it. Glow settled over my hand. Curled my fingers through the handle, put my thumb on the lever.

  Pressed down.

  I laughed at the look on their faces. Just to myself, quietly. Tears in the back of my eyes.

  “It’s a low day,” I said out loud.

  * * *

  Fenra

  Elva eased the door closed again. “Not locked,” he said, “but there’s a guard in the corridor, a real one this time. Not in uniform, but no one stands looking for that long at a picture he must have seen a hundred times already.” He swept off his hat and dusted it with the back of his hand. It had been clean to begin with.

  “If we could get him to come in, I could knock him out.”

  “Can’t you do it from here? That’s what Xandra would have done,” he added when I frowned.

  “What Xandra Albainil might have done isn’t the guide I would use myself,” I said. “I give people sleep all the time, if they are in pain. But usually I touch them. Casting such a forran from a distance . . .” I shook my head. “It doesn’t feel right.”

  Elva settled his hat on his head, tugging down one side of the brim, and pulled out one of his strange pistols. “I can easily shoot him from here,” he said. “But I’ll bet the noise will bring someone running.”

  I lifted one eyebrow. “You have convinced me to try. And stop smiling.”

  I placed my hands palm to palm and thought about the forran for sleep. Restful sleep. It wasn’t the first time I had seen my pattern when practicing, but working with Arlyn had me looking at it in a different way. I mentally traced it, watching it strengthen. I pulled my hands apart. The pattern moved, forming a cat’s crad
le of light between my fingers. I blew on it, Elvanyn opened the door, and with my practitioner’s hand I flicked the light in the guard’s direction.

  The man shook his head, as if a fly bothered him. Points of light bobbed around him. I repeated the forran. He leaned against the wall, and slid down until he was sitting on the floor.

  Asleep.

  “That was well done.” Elva led the way out of the room. “Will he wake up?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ah. That wasn’t always true when Xandra did it.”

  “Again, not all that interested in doing things his way.”

  * * *

  Arlyn

  I could have told him the lock wouldn’t open. Wasn’t for the reason he thought, however. I remembered Elva’s telling us about fingerprints. My pattern in my hands. Yes, that might have worked. Maybe on the right cabinet, if I wanted it to. Which I didn’t.

  “There, you see how easily I can prove your story is nonsense? If you were in fact Xandra Albainil, the combination of the forran and your skin touching the latch would have opened the door. Fortunately for me, there is another way. Though it’s unfortunate for you, I’m afraid.”

  Sounded sincere. Must have been telling himself he was working for the greater good. That the sacrifice of one mundane was worth it. An argument I recognized.

  They held me down, cut my right wrist, lengthwise, not across the veins. Clots slower that way. Watched Metenari weave his hands in the air. Knew what he was doing, though couldn’t see it. Extract my pattern from my blood. There, for anyone who knew how to look.

  Should have banned this forran, along with some others I designed.

  When he lowered his hands wet surfaces glinted in the light. Wet red surfaces, as though he wore gloves made of blood. He wouldn’t frown so much if he knew it made him look like an angry pig. I shivered. Cold floor. Never noticed it before. Voices over my head as they lifted my practitioner’s arm. Too much work to open my eyes. Shifted me over to another spot. Warmer. Closer now.

  Felt the light and the heat when the door opened. Heard voices calling, feet thumping.

  Think I smiled.

  * * *

  Fenra

  The gas lamps were hung in such a way that they highlighted the beauties of the courtyard, though their light didn’t penetrate very far into the shadows under the arcade. Elva heard someone coming long before I did and drew me with him into an even deeper shadow.

  “If it looks like they can see us, I’m going to hold you against the wall and kiss you.”

  I almost smiled. “I’ve read that book,” I told him. “Actually, I think everyone has read that book. Trust me, if they are guards they will check.” I was about to tell him there was another way when his lips brushed against my forehead and I felt his breath warm against my skin. He smelled like chocolate.

  The entrance at the far end of the court was flanked by two enormous doors, perhaps eight or ten feet tall, deeply carved, with huge iron hinges, and bolts as thick as my forearms. They’d never been closed in my memory, and for some reason this was the time I picked to wonder if they could be. We were off to one side, and had only an oblique angle on the corridor beyond the doors. Which meant whoever was in the corridor would have the same angle on us. And we stood in shadow, while from the look of things, they carried lights.

  The glow came nearer, and we saw the silhouettes of three men passing the open doorway. I thought the shorter one might be Predax, but he went by before I could be sure. Normally people carrying lamps would be at the front and at the back of any group moving at night, but their hands were empty, and the light came from behind them.

  “What light is so bright?” Elva’s breath tickled my ear. I just shook my head and tightened my arms around his neck. Something practical, for certain. No natural substance could give off that bright a light. Not gas lamps, and certainly not oil.

  As the light neared the doorway I found it hard to look directly at it, and my watering eyes made it even more difficult to identify. I blinked. That couldn’t be right. It looked like a person, walking slowly. It had Metenari’s stocky shape and size, but it walked taller, with shoulders straighter and pulled back. Elva’s left arm held me closer while his right hand loosened and drew out a pistol, holding it close to my side, where the skirts of my coat would hide it.

  As the glowing body reached the midpoint of the opening, it turned its head, and seemed to look directly at us. For a moment I thought it was about to raise its hand in greeting. I did not need the tightening of Elva’s arm to keep me from moving. But the body didn’t stop; it kept its steady pace across the open doorway, heading to Metenari’s suite of rooms.

  “The Godstone,” Elva whispered against my ear. As if it could be anything else.

  “Did you see Arlyn?” I whispered back as the last of the attendants passed by and the opening turned dark again.

  I felt Elva shake his head. “If they left him in the vault, or the workroom, we may already be too late.”

  “We still have to look.”

  This time I felt him nod.

  I do not know how a man carrying a sword, two pistols, and belts full of bullets crossed over his chest can move so quietly. Even his footsteps were silent.

  We found the entrance to the old building unguarded, and Elva gave me a pointed look. “Not a good sign,” he said. “It’s telling the world there’s nothing of importance left inside.”

  “From your reaction, you’ve seen the Godstone before?” I had to ask.

  “Once. I wasn’t sure at first, but I recognize the light. It’s a . . . I’ve seen it look like a crystal.” He held his hands about a foot apart to show me the size.

  “Was he carrying it? Metenari?”

  “Or it was carrying him.” We passed a window, and I saw Elva’s eyes flash in the moonlight as he glanced at me. “That’s one of its dangers.”

  “Did it always glow like that?” I tried to imagine how it could have been kept a secret all these years.

  “Not at first, and then not unless Xandra activated it.”

  “So it’s activated now.” I tried to keep the rush of panic from overwhelming me. Metenari never actually said what he planned to do. He might have some benign idea, but so had Arlyn, and look how that had ended.

  “Here we are.” Elva put his hand to the latch of Arlyn’s workroom door and hesitated. “Can you tell whether they left him in the vault?”

  I concentrated for a few moments, and shook my head. “I should be able to. I have leveled him so many times I have a feel for his presence. Once, when he was lost, I found him in the woods where the villagers hunt for boar.” I shook my head again. “But I sense nothing now.”

  “As you said, we still have to look.”

  “And the vault?”

  “If he’s inside, then it should open for me—unless he changed it, you know, afterward.” He laid his palm flat on the door. “It was set up so that I could come in, but only if he was inside.” He shrugged.

  “He must have trusted you very much,” I said.

  “He did. Unfortunately, he didn’t also listen to me.”

  Elva pushed the workroom door open with the barrel of the gun in his right hand and started to step in. I caught him by the sleeve, and jerked my head back. He grinned and made a flourish with his hand, inviting me to enter.

  I smelled blood as soon as I cleared the doorway. Smelled blood and heard the faintest of breaths.

  “Sweet holy god,” Elvanyn said. I could tell he was cursing, though the idiom was unfamiliar to me.

  I ran to Arlyn’s side and knelt in the blood. His blood. I took a wrist in each hand, and instantly I was in a thick, briny fog. Of course, I thought. Low and bleeding to death. I ignored the approaching dark form. I did not have time to waste. I swept the fog away. No time to be gentle. I found Arlyn sitting up against the rock
he normally sat on. He grinned when he saw me. His lips and gums were pale.

  “Fenra,” he said.

  “Shut up.” I reached into him and found his pattern. Faded like an old tapestry. Some spots seemed completely worn away, and my heart sank. I had seen the thing recently; would that be enough? Practitioners’ memories were carefully trained.

  Somehow I felt Elva turn as he straightened to his feet, pulled out his guns, and headed for the door.

  “You’d better hurry,” he said.

  Eight

  Elvanyn

  WITHOUT LOOKING UP, Fenra said, “It takes as long as it takes.” She was speaking to him, but she sounded far away.

  “People are coming,” he told her. “We don’t want to be here if it’s Metenari. If they could leave him for dead,” he gestured at Arlyn, “imagine what they’ll do with us.” Elva flexed his hands, tightening and releasing each muscle in his arms and shoulders, shaking loose each foot and checking the lay of his pistols. “And what happens to our cover story? They’ve already caught me here once.”

  Fenra looked up at him. She still had Arlyn’s wrists in her hands. “I can’t move him yet.”

  All the blood on the floor was gone, as if the body—as if Arlyn had re-absorbed it. When he had time, he’d ask her how she’d managed that. He had the feeling that there were many questions he might never have time to ask.

  “You’d best figure out a way. If they reach this door they block our escape. We have to move now. We can carry him up the tower stairs. These aren’t soldiers or hunters, they won’t think to look up. That may buy us some time.”