by Dora Machado
Sariah had a mind to impale Vargas on her pitchfork and slap the man to his senses. She knew better. Words would not dissuade Torkel. Sariah had denied him the retribution he needed, and guilt had persuaded him best. He had made up his mind and convinced a great number of Hounds wielding Vargas's violent wisdom as his divisive weapon.
“But Torkel, your oath—”
“Is to redeem the worthy and forsake the frail, to lead Meliahs’ restoration or perish,” Torkel said. “Who are we but the fist that waits in the shadows to unleash the blow?”
“It's not that time yet.”
“It's past that time.”
As if any Hound would choose anything other than blood when readily offered. Sariah didn't know what was worse—the thought of Mia leaving her to wage war or the notion of the Hounds loose upon the Goodlands.
She turned to Kael and the others. “What can we do?”
Kael surveyed the deserting Hounds with expert eyes. “We'll have a bloody fight on our hands if we try to rush those Hounds. It could be a near thing. It will be bloody. And if Arron figures it out while we are at it—”
“This has to be stopped,” Lorian said. “If the Hounds leave, the keep will be left unprotected.”
“There are some Hounds here who remain loyal to Sariah and the keeper,” Kael said. “Lorian, call all the stonewisers you can get to take the place of the deserting Hounds on the walls as fast as you can. Call all the standards in the keep to duty, Domainers and Goodlanders alike. Get those guards who are willing to swear fealty to the keep out of the cages and onto the wall. Let's hope the Shield doesn't realize what's happening just yet.”
Lorian took off for the cages like a wrangling raven.
The keeper released and retracted his claws compulsively. “Saba, give me your leave and I'll kill Torkel. He's dishonored my pledge to you and given me cause for battle.”
The Hounds were split. Brothers were ready to beset each other for their tortuous Wisdom. “I won't have us killing each other to Arron's benefit today,” Sariah said.
Metelaus arrived at the gates, carrying Malord. “I don't understand. They said that—what's happened to Mia? Is it the urges again?”
“No,” Sariah said. “Not the urges. She thinks she should lead the Hounds in the fight against Arron.”
Metelaus faced his daughter. “Mianina, you can't do this. You're a girl, not a warrior.”
“Sooner or later we all have to grow up, Daddy.”
“Think of your mother,” Metelaus said. “She'll be so sad.”
“Sad,” Mia said. “Like me.”
“I'm your father. I forbid you to go.”
“Sorry, Father, but I'm sabita now. I will lead.”
“Over my rotting body,” Metelaus said. “I won't let you—”
The Hounds standing between Metelaus and Mia released their claws in unison.
“Will you command harm against your own father?” Metelaus said, incredulous.
“Only if you try to stop me,” Mia said. “Tell him, Auntie. Tell him that we all have our obligations.”
“This is not your duty,” Sariah said.
“It is. Rig told me. In the dream.”
“That's just your grief talking, Mia. Let me help you get through this.”
“Won't you believe me, Auntie? It's inscribed in the Dome of the Going, that I have a duty, that I'll lead my Hounds in the final battle.”
That's where Sariah had seen the image! On the frescoes formed on the Dome of the Going when the sages’ statues transformed to color and paint.
“Is this prophesy?” Malord asked. “Has it been ordained?”
Ordained to the rot pit, Sariah couldn't care less. This was no mysterious feat of the sages, no mischievous intrusion intervention. This was her Mia, leaving her, leaving them all, to go fight a war that wasn't hers.
“Mia, please.”
Sariah had never seen the cold sneer that overtook Mia's face. “You don't believe me. You never do, Auntie. You should, you know. You made me what I am.”
The accusation struck her like a low clobber to the gut. She recalled the day she'd had to break Mia. She remembered how thoroughly she had slashed at the remains of her common nature, how savagely she'd had to tear her old connections to allow her stonewiser's links to thrive. She had known then that Mia would hate her one day. She just hadn't realized how brutally that hatred would strike her.
Metelaus came to a quick decision. “Lazar will take care of Ars in my absence. I'm going after Mia. She won't kill me. I have to believe that.”
“But you'll need us,” Sariah said.
“You can't come,” Metelaus said. “We both know what you have to do.”
“Kael, I can't just let her go.”
“Trust Metelaus to do right by Mia. He's her father.”
“She's been through so much.” Sariah beheld the beautiful little girl flanked by Torkel and the horror of his best Hounds. It was a contrast too strong to stomach. The pain was rife in her soul, the infectious stab of staggering loss and betrayal. She had expected it from the Guild, from the councilors, from almost anybody at any time. But from Mia?
“Don't do this.” Sariah took a step toward Mia and then another. “There's much work to be done yet. The time to face Arron is not now.”
“I said stay away.” A shot of flow gushed from Mia's palms, turning the space between her and Sariah into a trail of ashes. Sariah staggered back, shocked.
“Don't try to stop us again,” Mia said. “Good-bye, Auntie. May you die well.”
Sariah watched Mia go, reeling like a mortally wounded woman. Mia walked through the gates without looking back.
“What by the rot happened to you?” Kael said.
Sariah turned to see who he was talking to.
Delis stumbled toward them. Blood crusted her nose and flowed down her chin. In her arms, Belana was barely conscious. Kael relieved Delis from her load and settled Belana on the ground. Sariah rushed to Delis's side.
“Are you all right?”
“My donnis, I was going to fetch you, but those wily rot spawns rushed me. When I next knew, I was knocked out flat on my back and those foul mongrels had escaped.”
“It's fine, Delis, as long as you're not harmed, the executioners served their purpose. They were free to leave as they wished. Are you sure you're not badly hurt?”
“No, my donnis, you don't understand. They took the stone with them, the prism.”
Fury and disbelief flattened all of Sariah's emotions. “Why?”
“They said that it belonged to them.” Delis rubbed her head. “They said even if they had been robbed of Ars and all the assurances, they could at least reap some gains from the prism.”
“Benefiting from the might of the stone?” They didn't even know how to work it. It was preposterous. It was dangerous. It was pure, greedy profiteering. It was not so different from what the Guild had done since its inception.
She looked up to see Lorian returning from the cages with Lexia in tow. “The wall's secure,” she said, “at least for the moment.”
“Sariah?” Kael called.
It would be nothing less than irresponsible to leave the prism in the executioners’ inexpert hands. “We'll have to retrieve the damn stone—”
“You better look at this,” Kael said grimly. He was crouching by Belana, propping up the woman in his arms.
Sariah knelt next to them. “What happened?”
“Are you free, little sister?” Belana asked.
“I am, thanks to you.”
“Good.” Belana's eyes lost their luster. “Us too.”
It was then that Sariah noticed the blood bubbling fluidly from the tiny puncture in Belana's wrist, the purple-black stream trickling over the ghastly pale skin and pooling on the ground like a vast lake.
Belana was cold and heavy in Kael's arms. Grimly's creation, Meliahs’ forsaken, wiserlings’ nightmare, Sariah's torturer and little sister was dead. Sariah caressed the ghastly fac
e and lowered the lids over the milky eyes. The pain. In her heart. Was she grieving over one lonely child who never got the chance to grow up or two? Was she grieving over thousands or millions?
Disregarding the others’ spooked whispers, Sariah swiped her finger on Belana's spilled blood, closed her eyes and licked it.
“What I was to you, you are to me,” she whispered. Who could tell apart the goddess's wishes from her myths?
Malord inspected the puncture on Belana's arm. “She wasn't made to heal.”
“Grimly's cunning,” Lorian said. “This poor creature was made to destroy the very evidence of her existence if she was ever probed.”
Why was Sariah's heart aching like a gouty joint? “She was just a child.”
“Come on.” It was Kael, gently shifting Belana out of his arms and helping her up.
“She gave up her life,” Sariah said. “For mine?”
“So that we could know,” Kael said. “For sure. All of us.”
Sariah was suddenly very tired. “We have to bury her.”
“It will be done,” Lorian said.
“Like a person,” Sariah said. “Like the child she was.”
“We'll take care of it, little sister,” Lexia said.
“Aye.” Sariah clung to Lexia's hand. “Little sisters of the prism we are.”
Sariah watched the sun fight the darkness and win. It was a weak sun and a tenuous triumph, a late start to a short day that had begun in ashes and smoke. But it was a new day, and despite the bad odds and the night's losses, she had to believe that it still held promise.
The sights from atop the keep's wall were deceiving. The land looked peaceful. The keep seemed orderly. And yet Sariah knew better.
The smallish cloud on the horizon was the last trace of Mia and her Hounds, a storm of blood spewing from a young girl's rage. Metelaus would not be far behind. Delis would be that speckle on the western road, chasing the executioners to make sure Ars's encumbrances were duly lifted and charged with retrieving the stone. West and South, Mara, her Panadanians and a few thousand more were hunkering down to fight both the rot and the Shield. Lorian huddled in the Hall of Numbers with Malord, debating justice pertaining to all the Blood. Lexia had just started her labor. Sariah regretted she couldn't stay for the birth. In the courtyard, the keeper had assembled his remaining Hounds to chant the Wisdom's lament. The morbid bass echoed beyond the keep like battle drums beating a somber retreat.
Sariah felt lonely. Just as it had happened with the stone of creation generations ago, the friendships that had brought her this far had broken up into separate pieces. Life had scattered them like seed in the wind and the crop was far from assured.
Kael came up to stand beside her so quietly that Sariah felt him before she heard a sound from him. He was a commanding sight, shouldering the bags Delis had prepared for them, dressed for traveling and fully armed, Meliahs’ treasure.
“How did you figure it out?” he asked. “How did you know to use the stone in that way?”
“Remember when I wised the tale of the stone of creation? I realized that we were looking at Tirsis's blood print then. In the tale, Tirsis said that the prism's purpose had been to be a witness to the Blood. Belana had told me that before Grimly, the prism had been only a hound for the blood. That's when I realized that the tale I sought, the proof we needed, was the blood print itself.”
It was her turn to ask. “Would it matter to you if my blood was just like Belana's?”
“You mean if you were one of Grimly's creations?” He thought about it. “Would it matter to you?”
Sariah shrugged. She was so many things that she never thought she would be. She was stonewiser and mate, friend and mother. She was teacher, foe, aunt, wall-breaker, rot-fighter, sister, seal-spreading plague and who knew what else. Some she had dreamed of, some she had never wanted, yet fate didn't make a distinction. “What's one more brand for the iron-kissed?”
“You're thinking about the lines on that parchment that Grimly had,” Kael said. “I can't know how they connected or not as they approached your name, but this you ought to know—you are Meliahs’ own, made by her command and for her pleasure, an excellent sample of her fondness for beauty.”
Sariah smiled. “Wise is he whose tongue spreads joy, for he will taste happiness.”
“The goddess is sparse with her blessings,” Kael said. “Whatever you are made of is great and fair to me.”
He kissed her and she knew the answer for sure. No. He didn't care.
“Will you really walk away from all of this?” he asked.
“This?” Sariah surveyed the hectic keep, the crowded roads, the bustling town, the burning countryside. “Easily.”
“You know what I mean.” Kael straightened the brooch on her shoulder. “You've been elected. You've got houses pledged to your name, troops sworn to your command. You are the Bastions’ anointed saba. You could reclaim your Hounds and send them to search in your stead.”
“If I thought the Hounds would give us some advantage, I wouldn't hesitate to bring some with us. But numbers will not help this hunt. Stealth will. Besides, this is my duty, my search.”
“Our search,” Kael said. “You might yet find some advantages to rule.”
“There are many others well suited for this kind of thing. I'm not walking from it, I'm more like running.”
“They'll have a tantrum when they find out.”
“They're all needed here.”
“Still, Lorian will be livid. Malord will be even worse. The keeper, well, I can't even begin to imagine the howling.”
“That's why we're not telling them.” Sariah pulled the hefty ladder out of the sack she fetched from the stone gutter. “That's why I asked Delis to plan our escape.”
“The wench did well.” Kael hooked the ladder on the cleverly disguised iron spikes protruding from the crenels. “An old-fashioned escape. No one would expect that at the keep. Won't the wising in the wall be a problem?”
“It would be, if our bodies were to make contact with the wall directly. The wall is wised to repel human flesh. See this?” She ran her fingers through the ladder's thickly padded sides. “Domainer gutweed. With a little bit of care, it should keep us clear of the stone.”
“She did well, our Madame executioner. But how did Delis manage that?” He gestured towards the guardhouse, where the extraordinary sight of four Hounds snoring placidly would have shocked Meliahs herself.
“She fed them her blood, fortified with a large dose of sleeping oil rubbed on her skin. Blood is the one temptation Hounds can't resist.”
Kael was still laughing when he dropped the ladder. It unraveled against the wall for quite some time. “It's a high wall. Are you sure you can handle the climb down?”
Sariah sighed. “What's rest but a short reprieve? I'll be fine.”
“We'll find time for you to regain your strength on the road.”
“No, nay, no. We've got to hurry, Kael. She might be hurting him. She might break him. She could kill him, or worse—”
“She could turn him into one of hers.” He knew the risks as well as she did. He shared her fear as well, the dread lodged in the pit of her soul.
“But he's strong,” Kael said. “He'll fight the witch. I know he will.”
“He's just a little child.”
“I can go. I can travel fast. I can do this on my own.”
“Not a chance.”
He grinned his furious smile. “I thought you might say that. Are you ready, then?”
Sariah took the hand he put out, brought it to her lips and kissed it. “I'm ready, love. Let's go find our son.”
The End
A LOOK AT THE CONCLUDING BOOK
IN THE STONEWISER SAGA,
STONEWISER
The Lament of the Stone
prologue
DESOLATION AWAITED KAEL at the top of his steep climb. The trail he had been following for the last few days ended abruptly in a barren landscape. He c
rouched at the edge of a sloping crater. A sterile field of shattered stone sprawled beneath him. The stones were strewn in all directions, as if crumpled by a giant hand. But it wasn't only the gray vision of fractured rock blending with the leaden sky burdening his senses. It was the silence, the total absence of movement and life stifling the air. Doom had a silent way of claiming its territory. Death stalked this place like a curse, hovering over him like an ax ready to split his skull.
He followed the footprints to the stone field. The drizzle had washed away some of the tracks, but he was well practiced in the sport of the hunt. A few days. That's all that stood between him and the beast who had stolen from him. He crouched when he spied the sandaled footprint. Not only was it smaller than the others, but it was also fainter, as if its owner walked above the rest of mankind, as if she deigned not step over the same path everyone else followed. She could not run forever. And he would be waiting for her when forever ended, preferably tomorrow or the day after that.
He surveyed the trampled place where the party split. The bulk of the warriors had waited here, although for what, he wasn't sure. There were no signs of camps or fires, no traces of idle lingering or carelessness. But there had been a late addition to the group, a man who had traveled here from a different direction. Someone of means, Kael noticed, examining the prints of a pair of doubly stitched soles that sported the faint outline of the Guild's master cobbler's seal. It was this new man who had gone into the barren stone field accompanied by a guard. It made perfect sense. She would have never taken the risk herself.
What did Grimly expect to find there? Kael knew firsthand the folly of trying to guess the cunning crone's purposes. The Guild's former Prime Hand was the most dangerous foe a man could face; driven, devious, brilliant, as skilled at intricate deception as she was brutal. He couldn't afford to guess Grimly's game. He had to do better. He had to know her game.
The stones crunched under his cautious steps. The one-way tracks led him into a deepening gulch and stopped at the gully's end, as if the men had suddenly vanished. Kael inspected the rocks. They were crammed together and solid. There were no dragging marks, no signs of struggle, no indication of hidden entrances.