Stone of Inheritance

by Melissa McShane

  “I like this idea. You need to find this spell as soon as we get back to Fioretti.”

  “Back to Fioretti?” Perrin said, crawling out of the tent. He eyed Alaric, and Sienne saw him make the conscious decision not to bring up the events of the previous night. “I dislike going home in failure, but in this circumstance I do not think we can be blamed.”

  “We will have to think of another way to get the knife,” Kalanath said, emerging after Perrin. He, too, pretended nothing abnormal had happened, even though Alaric in the light of day looked like someone who’d spent the night running wild and then hadn’t slept. “We can help Tonia Figlari regain her title some other way.”

  “We could,” Alaric said, “but we won’t.” He nodded to Dianthe, who for once wasn’t making pained noises about too much sunlight and not enough coffee. Dianthe shot Sienne a look. Sienne blushed. For all her bold words to Alaric, she wasn’t sure she wanted her friends to know how their relationship had changed. True, they probably deserved to know, as it affected all of them, but she was a private person and it was a private thing. And there was a tiny part of her that kept screaming Don’t forget what happened with Rance! You thought he loved you, and he betrayed you! What makes you think Alaric is any different? She wished she could find that tiny part of her and force-bolt it into unconsciousness.

  Alaric stood and walked around the fire to where he could see all of them. “I apologize for failing you,” he said, and held up a hand to forestall denials. “I don’t mean in being mind-controlled. That might have happened to any of us. No, I mean in deserting you last night. That was selfish and dangerous and I should never have done it. I promise it won’t happen again.”

  Perrin opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, exchanging glances with Dianthe that Sienne couldn’t read. “As for going home,” Alaric continued, “it’s true we might abandon this job and feel not a bit guilty about it. We’re the first people in history to have survived a carver attack and we could return to tell everyone about it. No one would fault us for not going back. And I’m certainly not going to make the decision for all of us. But I can think of two reasons for us to finish the job.”

  He held up one finger. “We need that knife. Tonia Figlari may sound like a waif, but she was determined enough to put us in a position where we’d have to do her bidding. If she says she’ll destroy the knife if we don’t bring her the stone, she’ll do it. And getting the stone means walking back in there. So that’s one reason.” He held up a second finger. “The other reason is more personal, but still important. You people left my sword back there with the carvers. And I’ll be damned if I let them keep it.”

  11

  Sienne smoothed the sheet of paper flat on her spellbook, dipped the nib of her pen into the dish of blood ink, and began scribing the staccato lines of the summoning jaunt. The unknown wizard who’d owned the flowered spellbook couldn’t have been a beginner, if she had that summoning, but the rest of the contents of her spellbook weren’t much different from Sienne’s. Sienne had found three spells she didn’t already have: jaunt, drift, and mud.

  She wasn’t sure about the usefulness of drift, which made you temporarily light as a feather. It could keep you from dying of a fall, but being able to cast the spell while you were already falling would require practice and a lot of luck. But in the nine months since she’d become a scrapper, she’d learned that unusual circumstances called for unusual solutions. She would scribe all three, and see what uses she’d find for them.

  Jaunt was one she’d heard of but never been taught, on the grounds that a duke’s daughter wouldn’t need the ability to transport herself instantaneously between places. How short-sighted. Who knew what kind of need might develop in, say, a ball in which you wanted to escape the attentions of an obnoxious suitor? She wasn’t confident she could guess how to use it, or what its limits were. Range of sight? Any place she knew well? Anywhere at all within a certain area? And were there safeguards to keep you from jaunting into a solid object? She dotted the last line and threw the pen into the fire. She’d been taught never to use the same pen for scribing more than one spell, but not why that was necessary. Her education had the oddest holes in it.

  She set jaunt aside and picked up a fresh pen. “You know how boring this is,” she said without looking up. “Having you staring at me isn’t so much a distraction as a reminder that wizardry isn’t all that glamorous.”

  “I’ve packed our tent and I have nothing better to do,” Dianthe said. “Kalanath is practicing, Perrin is praying, and Alaric is pacing the riverside muttering to himself. It’s watch you or watch them.”

  “Kalanath’s practicing is beautiful,” Sienne said, tracing the swooping lines of the transform mud. This one, she had plans for. Transforming stone to mud was less elegant than sculpt, but for freeing the falcon stone from the wall, it was ideal. It was unfortunate she had to be in physical contact with the stone she transformed, because none of them were sure the wall the falcon stone was in supported the keep’s structure, but it was the fastest way to get it loose.

  “So is your writing. What little I can see of it. If I watch for more than a few seconds, my eyes start to water.”

  “That’s because the human mind can’t comprehend magic in its pure state. You forget the first part of a spell before you get past the middle of it.” Scribing spells from a book was much harder than having them dictated to you. Sienne was good at concentrating, but she could feel a headache coming on. She finished mud and began working on drift. “I want to test these before we implement the plan.”

  “You have time. Perrin said he thought he would have to argue with Averran over the blessings he wants.”

  “I hope Averran is in a giving mood.” If he wasn’t, mud wouldn’t matter. Sienne drew a final curving line, tossed her pen into the fire, and gathered up the metal bowl containing her blood ink. There was a splash of blood left in the bottom. She summoned a glob of water over the bowl to fall into it, turning the dark red blood pink. Pink like carver’s blood. Sienne shuddered and walked to the river to toss the bloody water away. She’d had her blood used against her by a wizard once, and while she didn’t think that was likely to happen now, she never took chances.

  “Finished?” Alaric said. The cold wind ruffled his loose shirt, but he didn’t pick up his cloak that lay nearby, just crossed his arms over his chest. His short hair barely moved in the wind.

  “Nearly. I have to make the pages invulnerable.” The wind ruffled the spell pages too, pinned down by a stone from the river bed. “When they’re dry.”

  “I don’t think you should test the featherweight spell in this wind. What if someone got blown away?”

  “I’m not sure it works that way, but I intend you to hold onto my wrists, just in case.”

  He smiled at her, his eyes alight with amusement. “You do, eh? There are easier ways to convince me to hold you.”

  Sienne blushed and looked around. Nobody was near enough to overhear them, except maybe Dianthe—Sienne had learned never to underestimate the range of her friend’s hearing. “Should we… Alaric, I don’t even know what this is between us! And I’d feel stupid announcing it to the rest of the team when I don’t know what I’m announcing.”

  Alaric took a couple of steps toward her. “It is two people exploring their attraction to each other,” he said in a low voice, “and I agree, it’s a bit premature to make it public. Much as I’d love to sweep you off your feet and kiss you whenever the opportunity arises.”

  This close, she could smell the faint musk of the unicorn, and realized it was Alaric’s own scent, if much less strong. “I’d say the same, but it’s unlikely I could sweep you anywhere,” she said, making him laugh. “I suppose there aren’t many chances for us to explore out here, but when we get back to Fioretti…”

  “Exactly. Keep thinking like that. We’ll get the damned stone and exchange it for the knife, and then… actually, I haven’t thought past that. Too many thing
s could go wrong.”

  Sienne sighed and retrieved the pages. She concentrated briefly, and they went stiff and faintly brown. “I can’t stop seeing them pouring out of the keep’s front door. There are so many of them.” She inserted the new pages into the back of her spellbook and closed its complicated latch.

  “And one of them is a wizard. Sienne, I want you to promise me something. If she controls me again, I want you to knock me out.”

  “We need you fighting!”

  “You don’t need me fighting you. Promise me. If you can’t get a clear shot at her, stop me before I hurt anyone.”

  His expression was so bleak it frightened her. “I promise I won’t let you hurt anyone. But if Perrin is successful, it won’t be necessary.” She put her spellbook back into its harness, next to the flowered spellbook—she should be able to make some money off it in Fioretti—and cradled it in her arms, open to drift. Extending her left arm to Alaric, she said, “Hold on, and try not to let go. I don’t know how this will feel to you.”

  Alaric took her wrist in a firm grip. His hand was dry and callused from years of sword fighting. “If you start to blow away,” he said, “I reserve the right to hold you close.”

  Sienne smiled. “Now I’m not sure what to wish for.” She read off the sweet syllables of the transform. As she read, she felt a strange bubbling sensation in her stomach that spread to her limbs, almost like the tingling of circulation returning after being cut off, but pleasant rather than painful. She felt light, as if her bones and organs no longer weighed her down. The sensation of wind blowing against her body grew more intense, but she didn’t feel as if she were going to blow away, just that walking against the wind would be difficult.

  She finished casting the spell and lifted one foot cautiously. It was surprisingly hard to make it move. She felt as if she had less control over her muscles now that they weighed practically nothing. She took a couple of steps toward Alaric. “Does my arm feel any different to you?”

  “Not at all. You look as if you’re swimming through air.”

  “Why don’t you try lifting me?”

  Alaric raised his eyebrows, but took hold of the back of her waistband and lifted like a mother cat picking a kitten up by the scruff of its neck. Sienne squeaked as she flew upward. If she hadn’t been tethered by his grip, she was sure she’d have sailed into the sky to hang like dandelion fluff before drifting downward. “Let go my trousers, and let’s see how long it takes me to fall,” she said.

  “You still have mass,” Alaric pointed out, “and momentum. I bet it takes some time, though.”

  “Astonishing,” Perrin said, coming up to where they stood. He smelled of brandy, and his steps were unsteady. “Perhaps transporting the stone will be easier than we thought.”

  “It only lasts a few minutes,” Sienne said, “but if I do it right, I can make the stone fall lightly instead of dropping to the floor and maybe breaking.” Her words brought a memory to mind, of something odd about the stone she’d noticed just before the carvers had appeared. Or, rather, that she’d noticed something odd she couldn’t identify. She still didn’t know what had struck her. She decided not to worry about it. They had enough troubles without her dwelling on possibly imaginary ones.

  “You’re moving like a soap bubble,” Dianthe said. She and Kalanath joined their little group, and everyone stared at Sienne, floating gracefully to the ground.

  “I feel fizzy,” Sienne said. Just as she said that, the fizzy feeling vanished, and she dropped the last two inches to land awkwardly on her feet. Alaric helped her find her balance, then released her. “That was interesting. It didn’t feel like flying, because I had no control. Just floating.”

  “So it works,” Kalanath said. “But will it work when we are surrounded by carvers who try to kill us?”

  “It had better,” Sienne said. “It comes down to how fast I am.”

  “And the protections we have,” Perrin said. He waved a handful of rice paper squares and smiled in a slightly drunken way. “It took a large quantity of brandy, but Averran has been generous, if irritable at the specifics of my requests.”

  “Which are…?” Alaric said.

  Perrin took out needle and thread and began binding the squares together at one corner. “Normally, I leave it to Averran to decide what we need. In this case, I had to explain the nature of the carver wizard’s magic and ask for something that would negate it—something that would affect all of us.” He knotted and bit off the thread, and drew out his colored pastels to mark each blessing according to what it did. “He was not pleased with the request.”

  “That seems strange,” Dianthe said.

  “Averran teaches that human will should be developed through challenges and trials. He seemed to be of the opinion that we should fight this wizard’s dominance unaided. I had to plead and cajole to get him to understand that such fighting is beyond our capacity.” Perrin carefully didn’t look at Alaric. “The blessing he gave me, in the end, will not prevent our being controlled, but will give us mental clarity to allow us to fight her domination. It is, I am afraid, the best I can do.”

  “It’s better than nothing,” Alaric said. “What else?”

  “I decided I should leave the rest entirely to Averran, having pestered him quite enough for one day. There are healing blessings—not many, for which I am grateful—a few shields, one of which is the full protective dome, and one I do not fully understand. It has something to do with communication, but it has lines that indicate it is to be used offensively, not as mental speech between us.”

  “I’m just as happy it’s not mental speech,” Dianthe said with a shudder. “The one time we had that was more than enough.”

  “Indeed. And then there is a blessing I do not recognize at all. It hints at breaking, but there is no suggestion as to what.” Perrin frowned. “It will have to be a last resort.”

  “You’re right, Averran was generous,” Alaric said. “What about the other thing?”

  “Hah. Averran rose to new heights of crankiness when I asked him for that guidance. In the end, the vision I received was nothing more than the sun, high in the noonday sky. I presume that the day we choose matters less than the time at which we make our assault, so we may attack today so long as it is near noon.”

  “That’s better than I’d hoped.” Alaric let out a deep breath. “All right. So we can’t count on the carvers being asleep, or absent, but Perrin’s vision says we’ll have the best chance of success if we attack at noon. We don’t know if they can be invisible while they attack—”

  “If it were true invisibility, maybe,” Sienne said. “But their ability is more like camouflage. I think—I don’t know, maybe we shouldn’t depend on this, but I think they only stay hidden so long as they’re not moving.”

  “So it’s possible, but unlikely, that we’ll be fighting invisible enemies,” Alaric said with a nod. “Dianthe and Kalanath, did you observe any other unusual tactics while you were fighting them?”

  “They can distract you with their eyes,” Kalanath said. “Until I realized this, I looked them in the eye and forgot what I was doing.”

  “That’s how they got me,” Dianthe said, rubbing her now-uninjured left arm. “It only lasts for the space of a breath, but a lot can happen in such a short time.”

  “We already know they’re no more invulnerable than a human when it comes to their bodies,” Alaric added. “So as long as we avoid their eyes, and can keep the wizard from casting whatever other spells she has on tap, we can hold them off while Sienne retrieves the stone.”

  They all looked at Sienne. “Mud radiates out from where I touch the wall,” she said. “And I don’t know how long it takes to turn stone to mud. The closer I can get to the falcon stone, the faster it will be. But…” She hesitated, then went on, “There was something strange about the stone I couldn’t put my finger on when we saw it. There wasn’t time to work it out because we were attacked, but… something isn’t right.”
/>   “Something dangerous?” Alaric asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Just something off about the stone. It probably doesn’t matter as far as retrieving it goes. I’m sure it will come to me once we’ve got it safely away.”

  “Just so long as you’re sure. I don’t want any more surprises than we’re already certain to have.” Alaric nodded. “Then the plan is to sneak up on the keep and get as far as we can before engaging in combat. Dianthe and Kalanath will fight off the carvers while Perrin defends Sienne. And I will get my sword and keep that wizard from attacking anyone else.”

  No one spoke. Sienne saw indecision on Dianthe’s face a moment before it hardened into resolve. “Shouldn’t we worry about defending against their attacks, no matter who brings them?”

  Alaric’s face was stony. “This is not up for debate,” he said. “Sienne convinced me that I resisted her control more than anyone could be expected to. With Perrin’s blessing, I expect that resistance to become even greater. I intend to keep her attention off the rest of you and, Sisyletus willing, I’ll take her head.”

  Sienne knew that look. There was no point arguing with him when he looked like that.

  “Perrin, how long will that blessing protecting us from being controlled last?” Alaric asked.

  “Half an hour, perhaps a little longer. But I doubt retrieving the stone will take us half an hour, unless the mud spell is considerably slower than we expect.”

  “It’s slow. It’s not that slow,” Sienne said.

  “Then it’s time we move out,” Alaric said.

  They took the donkeys and all their gear to the ford, to wait on their return. This time, when Sienne cast fit on Alaric to make him tall enough to ferry them across the river, he didn’t look uncomfortable or afraid. His hands lingered on her waist longer than was necessary, and she smiled at him and felt warmed by the smile he gave her. He hadn’t lost his confidence, he was ready to face the carvers… if not for his insistence on fighting the wizard himself, she would have thought him untouched by his experience. His reasons made sense, but she knew—they all knew—sense was not what motivated him. She wasn’t sure he was wrong. If killing the wizard was what it took to exorcise his demons, she would cheer him on. And pray he wasn’t so set on his personal revenge he put the rest of them in danger.