Stonewiser

by Dora Machado

  “I was rather vocal demanding to see you,” Delis admitted. “But your friend helped much.”

  “My friend?”

  “He insisted on coming up with me.”

  The latest load of warriors stepped out of the hoisted lift. A wall of Hounds parted to let their ward pass. Sariah blinked, once, twice, three times. Surely it was a trick of her eyes. She had not expected to see him again. Ever. The reality of his presence struck her like the chill's cold wind. For reasons she couldn't begin to fathom, Horatio Maliver had found her again.

  “Why are you here?” Sariah broke the silence of the smallish chamber where they waited for her audience with the sages. She didn't disguise the hostility in her voice. She didn't need to. Horatio Maliver knew very well how she felt about him.

  “He said he had to find you.” Delis circled the man like a famished raptor. “He said he had to warn you, that finding you would save great hardship and much blood.”

  “I can assure you, whatever reason brings him here isn't related to my welfare.” Sariah met Horatio Maliver's cold gray eyes, as empty of life as always. The stubble on his square jaw hinted at a day or two without shaving, a major break in his compulsive neatness. He remained lean and strong, with a full head of curls meticulously oiled away from his face. He wasn't wearing the Shield's uniform, but that was to be expected—he was a deposed Main Shield now. As to his soul, it had been in frank putrefaction a long time before they met. She didn't think the damage was reversible.

  “Still cynical, my little wiser?” Horatio Maliver said. “You don't believe I'm a changed man?”

  Nothing was capable of melting the iron encasing his heart.

  “Tell me why you came,” she said. “Answer my question or I'll have you returned to the Goodlands, without the lift's assistance.”

  “So you have gained a little authority up here,” he said. “I haven't found him yet.”

  His son. He was still looking for the boy he had fathered years ago by raping Kael's blind sister, Alista. To find the boy, he had deserted his post as Main Shield during the breaking of the wall. That was after he hunted Sariah and Kael throughout the Goodlands and the Domain; after he tried to kill Kael on the quartering block, and after he forced Sariah to trade more than just information with him in order to save Kael's life.

  “I know nothing about your son,” Sariah said.

  “But that mate of yours does.”

  “As you can see, he's nowhere near here.”

  “As if the hand could stay away from the arm.”

  It was a cruel jest from a man who excelled at quartering.

  “Even if he knew,” Sariah said, “he wouldn't tell you. You've wasted your time coming here.”

  “I don't think so.” He flashed his mirthless smile. “I intend to stick to you like the stitch to the weave. I'll follow wherever you go. I'm prepared to stalk you until the last crumb of land succumbs to the rot if necessary.”

  As if she needed more of that. It had started with the executioners, with Delis herself, with the mob and Josfan, Arron, Grimly, Orgos of Alabara, and maybe even others she didn't know about. Was she destined to be hunted and hounded for the rest of her life?

  “Do you want me to kill him?” Delis looked as if she was about to do so regardless.

  “Another classy acquaintance, I see,” Horatio said. “In what wretched pit do you find your dogs and bitches, wiser?”

  Delis's hatchet was at his neck.

  “She won't let you kill me,” he said. “She has a weak belly for blood, and I wouldn't have come here without some assurances. You see, I have something your wiser here wants. She's likely to be curious.”

  Sariah didn't bite.

  “I was hoping you'd remember the gilded mirror for the sights it reflected more than for the valuables it contained?”

  She hated Horatio Maliver.

  “I removed them,” he said to Delis. “The stones. Only I know where to find them. That's why your wiser here won't kill me. I have a cache of rare stones she has always wanted.”

  That was true. But right now, she was considering killing him anyway.

  The door opened and the keeper beckoned. “We're ready.” Jol's black eyes fell on Horatio Maliver. “What shall we do with him?”

  Right now, Sariah had to concentrate on facing the sages and finding the pure. She didn't have a lot of time to consider Horatio Maliver's shocking arrival, but knowing him, she was sure that neither his appearance nor its timing was coincidental. He might be looking for his son, but he hadn't come just to exchange information or to tempt her with rare stones. He was here for a different reason, a devious purpose which could mean nothing but grief and danger to Sariah and her friends. She would have to figure it all out later.

  “Do you have a jail?” Sariah asked the keeper. “Can you lock him up for now?”

  “We can gift him to Meliahs’ defectors,” the keeper said. “Or kill him, whichever you prefer.”

  “But gifting him to Meliahs’ defectors is a lifelong sentence, isn't it?”

  “Once given, the life can't be retrieved but by the Wisdom's miracle.”

  “So it's either slavery or death,” Sariah said. “Nothing in between?”

  “Wise is she who destroys the weed before it stakes its roots, for she will have no enemies.”

  It was a notion as absolute as the Hounds, as uncompromising as the Wisdom itself. And it was rather tempting. But gifting Horatio to the defectors would make him permanently inaccessible. His purposes would remain a mystery, a dangerous pitfall stalking Sariah's every step. And there was the small matter of justice. Could she condemn a man to death or slavery without proof of his crime?

  She was stuck. She couldn't get rid of Horatio Maliver just yet. In fact, by the expression on the keeper's face, she'd better keep Horatio close by or risk losing him to the Hounds’ much swifter sense of justice. Horatio's calm expression gave credit to his courage. Perhaps his willingness to face such grim fates related to his mission's importance. Perhaps it was a measure of his desperation. Most likely, it was the sure bet of a cunning, calculating man who believed that Sariah had neither the will nor the guts to kill him.

  She was very tempted to show him otherwise.

  Instead, she faced the man who had come to muddle the present with the past.

  “I think I'll keep you with me. For now. But don't get too comfortable, Horatio. Delis here is the best executioner of her generation, and when she's busy, some of my Hound friends will be keeping you in very close company.”

  “We can do that,” the keeper said. “For now.”

  From top to bottom, the Dome of the Coming was crawling with people. Small ledges extended from the thousands of square panels that formed the dome, crowded with three and four people per ledge. Horatio and Delis couldn't help but stare. The dome was swarming like a hornets’ nest. Looking up, Sariah felt like a wretched midge.

  A lavishly carved bridge spanned the moat to reach the restored pedestal. The keeper gestured and Sariah crossed without glancing down. The sages’ decisions had been a close thing. She still feared an untimely death in that moat.

  The dome settled into an expectant silence. Sariah sensed they wanted to hear something from her, but she didn't know what to say. Instead, she knelt down and set up the game. She didn't bother with the stone. She knew now that it didn't matter. She went through the motions quickly. Within moments she was done playing Leandro's game.

  The roar from the people standing outside the dome preceded the beam. Then, as the light made its way through the dome's opening, the roar extended to the ledges above her, drowning even the beam's powerful hum. It was fascinating to see it glowing in the dome, as if it belonged there, as if the goddess's divine finger had pointed at this precise time and place to favor her children with her light. A sob caught in Sariah's throat. Her tears’ refraction only enhanced the beam's brilliancy.

  “This way,” the keeper said.

  “Where are we going?”
>
  The keeper led Sariah over another bridge, to an outside balcony. Here again, people spilled from the dome, from other balconies, from windows and doors and rooftops. Sariah stood on the balcony surrounded by today's sages, the ones who had granted the last necessary sanction to fetch her friends and call the beam. Sariah followed the path of light ascending high above the dome, only to find that it descended precipitously in a tight arch onto the opposing dome.

  It was there, what she sought, the reason for her long, exhausting journey, the object of Leandro's game.

  They made their way over the rooftops from one dome to the other, pushing through the tides of people surging around Sariah and the Hounds escorting her. Flushed faces interrupted Sariah's sight, competing for her attention. Eyes cried, mouths moved, frantic hands reached from the crowd. By far, the worst offerings were those extended limbs proffering blood. Arms, hands, fingers, all dripping with blood, aimed for Sariah's lips.

  “Gross,” Horatio Maliver had the gall to mutter. “What's wrong with these people?”

  Sariah didn't want to think about it. She feared she would falter if she did. She feared she would run away and never look back if she thought too much about what was happening.

  “Saba, have we done right?” a woman cried.

  “Saba, will we die by our own claws?”

  “Why are they calling you that, my donnis?”

  As if she wanted to know. Sariah's heart was beating too fast. She was breathless with anticipation. It was a cold day, yet sweat drenched her brow as they made it through the Dome of the Going's gates.

  Today's sages were already on their ledges. Although the cupola in this dome was plain and unadorned, as in the previous one, it teemed with people. Faces peered through open panels. Ledges strained under the weight of too many. The air was thick with the stink of perspiration, the warmth of thousands of breaths and the beam's pervasive heat.

  The beam. It was coming through the dome's opening and landing on a pedestal not unlike the one where she had stood at the Dome of the Coming. But this pedestal didn't hold anything similar to Leandro's game. Instead, the light fell on four life-size statues.

  Sariah forgot the people around her. She forgot the crowds waiting outside, the panic pounding in her chest. Mesmerized by the sight before her, she walked across the bridge and circled the statues.

  The beam landed in the center of the four statues, where a stone-sculpted chest stood unassumingly. The light bounced off the chest's polished surface and reflected on the sculptures’ faces. The chest was vividly carved to look like wood and leather, but it was the keyhole carved on the rounded lid that caught Sariah's attention. She stared at it for a few moments before she decided what to do.

  “Bring me Leandro's game.”

  Delis darted over the bridge and out the gate. Sariah returned her attention to the statues. A name was carved on the low platform beneath the stone figure of each of the sages.

  Eneis would have been hard on his pupils’ eyes. Bold, short, squat and portly, his girth almost exceeded his height. Sariah gasped. She recognized the man. She had seen him before. He was the plump toad-faced man who had originally wised Leandro's snakes and scorpions!

  Sariah rushed to examine the rest of the statues. She didn't recognize the other faces. Poe had been a tall, reed-thin man with small, slanted eyes lost on a face wrinkled with age. Tirsis had been a stately woman whose full lips somehow echoed the elegance of her tall figure and the sinuous curves of her breasts and hips. Vargas, the biggest surprise, had been a small woman loaded with a good measure of excess flesh around the middle and an impish smile.

  The statues were carved in the red coppery stone of the Bastions’ cliffs. They were not painted, except for the eyes. Eneis, Poe and Tirsis's eyes had not matched. Vargas's had. These had been the Hounds’ first sages, the Wisdom's eminent makers.

  Sariah was struck by their ordinary poses. Eneis held between his hands what Sariah realized was probably a book, sculpted faithfully in its original tattered state. Tirsis held a small chisel. Poe, whose expression seemed a little deranged on second thought, clutched a small indistinguishable object. Vargas, the bloody law lady, wielded a pitchfork, a broken pitchfork. Sariah repressed a chuckle. The crowd's ominous silence reminded her of the solemnity of the occasion.

  Abruptly, the beam receded from the statues. The crowd stirred, murmuring uneasily. Delis had succeeded at her task. The conclusion of Leandro's game was nearing and Sariah was about to find out the whereabouts of the pure. She had to wait for Delis's return. She was curious. The Bastions were protected by a powerful wising. The beam was fueled by similar powers. Had the original sages been able to wise stone?

  She laid her palm against Tirsis's stone body, looking up at the ancient sage's striking face. Her pupils had been black and green, like Kael's. The trance overtaking her mind was gradual and kind. A mellow voice spoke without words. “The goddess's greeting, for Meliahs is just and fair to all her children.”

  Despite their people's singular devotion to the Wisdom's oral traditions, the original sages had taken precautions to protect the Wisdom. It endured in these statues, not unlike a sense of their spirits, committed to eternity in the care of wised stone. One after the other, Sariah tested the sculptures and found each buzzing with the precepts of its respective sage. She marveled at the clarity of purpose which supported the original sages’ existence. She wished she had years to translate the Wisdom into fitting engrossments. She couldn't help but wish that the sages were alive in this time of terrible trouble.

  “My donnis.” Delis offered her the bag with Leandro's game.

  Sariah sifted through the bag, looking for a particular game piece. She needed a scorpion, the botched one, the one missing one of its front claws. Her hand was trembling as she clasped the critter. She hesitated.

  She couldn't know the nature of the wising she faced, but by her estimation, it couldn't be an easy one. She had to consider the dangers. She didn't think she had the option of refusing or delaying it. The tale had to be found and the Hounds weren't about to let her walk away from this wising without licking her spilled blood from the floor. On the other hand, she owed the little soul she sheltered in her body a chance at life, an oath of protection as binding as her stone oaths.

  The keeper nudged her. “Wiser?”

  “A moment.” She closed her eyes and grabbed the amplifying stone she carried in her pocket. She entered the trance and weaved a protective sack around her womb, a strong encasement of luminous links. It was a skill she had learned from Malord. If it had worked to trap a powerful intrusion once, then it should serve to protect the baby.

  “Be brave,” she whispered.

  She was ready. She stepped up between the sculptures and inserted the botched scorpion in the stone chest's keyhole. It fit. She turned it. It clicked. The light spilled through the keyhole first and then from the sides of the lid. Sariah opened the chest.

  A stone glimmered in the chest's center, a fiery dawn, a rounded geode with a hollow middle, crammed with globules and spikes of yellow quartz druses. It was a large stone, one she wouldn't be able to lift on her own. It was gorgeous. A wiser could lose herself in the wondrous world of its shimmering charm.

  “Sacred is the sight of the guide,” the keeper murmured, “for it shall lead us home.”

  Sariah's emotions surged with the light. The call of the stone taunted her senses. She was almost afraid to touch it. She looked at Tirsis's sculpted face, at the crowded dome, at the expectant sages. She closed her eyes and dreamed for a moment, as Poe may have done. She dreamed of peace, of Kael, of a search, done. Then she opened her eyes and studied the stone, knowing in her heart that it was likely to offer anything but the peace she sought.

  Thirty

  THE STONE THAT lay in the coffer between the sages’ four statues was not a common wised stone. The strength of its call revealed it was of the highest potency. Ignoring the crowd's anxious oversight, and despite the light's brillia
ncy, Sariah took her time examining it.

  It was a fiery stone by birth, twined with large quantities of slowly cooled crystal, blossoms of yellow and orange streaks that overshadowed the stone's other components. She didn't recognize them. Were they traces of wulfenite? Mimetite? Perhaps orpiment? A wiser from the Hall of Masons might know. She was sure of one thing, though—Leandro's little snakes and scorpions were made of the same dazzling combination.

  Sariah dared a gentle tap on the stone. She was prepared to fight a violent trance. Instead, a pleasant murmur coursed through her mind, a joyful invitation to play. Sariah obliged.

  The stone whispered a melody exclusive to her mind. “Wise me, wiser, tenderly, bring me to my tale. Don't you know me, child of hers, don't you know my name?”

  The stone's voice was a lullaby to her senses. The song was an exquisite caress to her mind. She could have stayed in that trance for a long time. She could have leaned on the gentle melody and rested for years on end.

  The dome. She had to get back to the dome. Sariah released the trance's peace reluctantly, regretfully. It had been an extraordinary experience. There had been no stern command, no mandate like that which permeated the Domainers’ protective stones, no violent tale like the ones contained in the seven twin stones and no lurking intrusion waiting to wrestle her powers.

  Don't you know me, child of hers, don't you know my name? There had been something familiar, something soothing and intimate about her link to this stone, a sense of belonging, like the safety of Kael's embrace.

  She returned her attention to the stone. It had a smooth, egg-shaped underside, but it was broken on top. It seemed to have been split open like an overripe pumpkin, revealing the crystal druses inside the geode's hollow, a ghoulish yellowish grin.

  She noticed the small gaps that stood at regular intervals between the hollow's crystals. Regularity wasn't common to the natural world. She counted them. Just as she thought. Forty-eight. There was a pattern to those gaps. They started at the edge and spiraled towards the hollow's middle. She knew what she had to do. She strengthened the baby's protective weave and eyed the crowded chamber.