Weight of Stone

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Jerzy sat back and stared at his gathered tools, thinking hard. If he could use two vinas, prepared but not yet decanted, it might work, but he did not have access to any unspecified weathervine vina. If, however, he were to use two incanted wines, equal in all other respects, then it should work. The flagon he had bought was wind-rise, the most basic of Giordan’s spells, and so he selected an equal measure of heal-all, the most basic of Master Malech’s work.

  Equal … but not crafted in the same way. Giordan had shared the secret of his craft: the weathervines were stubborn, and needed a sacrifice from the Vineart to bind them to his will.

  Could it be that simple? No other spellwine was prepared that way, according to Giordan, and yet …

  Jerzy picked up his knife and pricked the tip of his finger. There was no pain, the blade nicking a bit of flesh away easily, the bright red welling to the surface, so similar to the shade of an incanted firewine it nearly took his breath away.

  Holding his blooded finger away, careful not to let the blood spill, he grasped the two flagons, one in each hand, and slowly, carefully, poured them in equal measure into a third, empty vessel. As the two spellwines merged, he tilted his injured hand so that the welling drop of blood fell downward, into the waiting vessel.

  The drop hit the blending liquids, and the two spellwines swirled together as though an invisible finger stirred them, the way the river Ivy rippled when passing under a bridge, turning and turning around the immovable object.

  He held his breath and waited, then lifted the cup toward his face, breathing in the scent of the liquid. It was … odd: familiar and yet unrecognizable. Stone and soil from two different locations, and a sour floral scent like a bloom turning brown. Not pleasant, but not off-putting, either. And the tingling sensation that alerted him to the presence of magic, the gentle, inexorable pressure in his chest, rising as the two vinas mingled and combined, the blood forcing them to do his bidding.

  Jerzy took a deep breath and focused. Decantations were simple, if you knew what you were doing. Like riding a horse. Incanting, however, was more like breaking that horse to saddle, after it had run free all its life. Since an incantation, once specified, could not be stripped out of the wine, he needed to convince the two spells somehow to work together, to join their magic to a common end.

  Others, non-Vinearts, thought that the decantation was the most important part. When Jerzy had been tasked to deliver spellwines, the first thing asked was, “How is it decanted?” In truth, it was the incantation that mattered. To take the wild potential of mustus and make it express your intent, to craft the intent so that it controlled the magic; that ability was what made a Vineart. All else was merely knowledge and training.

  “Air and flesh combine, to give protection against harm.” As he spoke, he visualized what he wanted the vina to do, asking it with as much force as he could gather to do this thing and only this thing.

  The liquid shivered, still swirling, and then it stilled. The surface shimmered, as though glowing with its own reddish light, and Jerzy could sense something happening inside the cup, some change occurring in the spellwine. It was not quite the same change that he felt during an original incantation, though. This was deeper, heavier, building pressure like a storm about to break. Jerzy leaned forward, drawn by the sense of something tremendous happening, something new, and then he felt the cool, hard voice in his head again.

  Run.

  The Guardian’s voice never raised or lowered, it did not change in tone or inflection, but there was something in that cool hard word pressing into his thoughts that did not allow Jerzy any chance to hesitate or question. Something had gone wrong.

  Not bothering to put his tools away, thinking only to grab the flask of Giordan’s weatherwine, he bolted off his stool, and out of the cellar, the Guardian a wingspan ahead of him, its heavy stone body moving through the air, not even bothering to flap its unneeded wings in its urgency. Jerzy slammed the heavy wooden door behind him and, driven by the Guardian’s word, kept moving up the narrow stone stairs to the main level of the House.

  “What rot chases you, boy?” Malech met him in the circular hallway, coming out of his study, Detta hard on his heels. Then Malech’s face changed from annoyance to concern as the Guardian’s warning reached him as well. He grabbed the front of Jerzy’s shirt and pulled him forward, his other arm shoving Detta backward, all three of them retreating back into Master Malech’s study while the Guardian took up a defensive posture in front of the open door.

  “What?” Detta started to ask, then subsided, clearly deciding that she could get answers after whatever had them so worried was dealt with.

  “Master?” Jerzy had been braced for something to happen since the dragon had warned him, but there had been no blast, no thunder, no upswing of magic that could have been the cause of their flight.

  “Hush, Jerzy,” was all Malech said. “Listen.”

  The way he said it told Jerzy that his master wasn’t talking about a sound that might be heard with his ears, and so he reached inside, instead, to where he sensed the vines whisper to him, where the Guardian’s voice echoed. And there, quiet, almost hidden under the sound of his own heartbeat, he found it. Like the slither of a snake through ground cover, or the whisper of wind in the trees, it was soft and seemingly harmless … until the underlying tone rose into Jerzy’s awareness, and he almost gagged.

  Something terribly, terrifyingly deadly was filling the room where he had just been working. Something he had caused, or created.

  I hold.

  The cool words were as reassuring as its earlier one had been alarming. The Guardian was containing whatever it was below them, within the room it had been born in.

  “How long?” Jerzy asked, not sure if he was asking his master, or the dragon.

  “Until it dissipates, hopefully.” Malech’s voice was thin, strained. There was also, Jerzy noted with resignation, a sharp undercurrent of anger. Deserved—his actions had caused a danger of some sort to be unleashed within the House, and for that …

  For that a slave would be killed, and no one would gainsay the judgment. Endangering the vineyard was the sole unforgivable act.

  Jerzy did not think that Master Malech would kill him. But he did not doubt that there would be punishment. He held that thought, uncomfortable and yet reassuring; the order of the House restored. Detta, unable to sense what was happening, went back into the study and, with the faith of a lifetime of service, returned to the ledgers. Jerzy envied her that stoic calm; his own body was so tight, he thought the wrong word or movement might cause it all to come apart in a violent blast. Master Malech appeared to feel the same, still caught in his listening pose, his sharply pointed beard practically quivering with the intensity of his concentration.

  And then it came, the blast that Jerzy had been braced for. Not a physical blast: the solid stone of the House barely trembled, and Detta merely paused as she sorted markers into piles. To Jerzy, it was as though a giant wind had tried to pick him up and shake him, and an equally powerful hand held him firmly in place, causing him to feel as though he were covered in bruises without having moved an inch. Then the blast moved beyond them, spreading out like ripples from a rock tossed into a stream, and was gone.

  Clear.

  Malech sighed, a long, tired sound; his narrow shoulders sagged, his bearded chin tilting down toward his chest.

  “We are safe?” Detta asked, resuming her counting.

  “We are. For the moment.” Master Malech turned his cold blue stare at Jerzy, and even expecting it, Jerzy quailed at the anger in that look. “What rot have you been up to, boy?”

  “WHAT WAS THAT?” A Washer lifted his head from his studies, his face alight with curiosity as a deep wail rose and fell through the hall of the Colloquium. They were in the Library, where all sounds were muted, so the wail was particularly disturbing. Two students, their pale blue robes and shaved heads marking them as such, broke from their quietly intense debate over a pass
age and lifted their heads as well, to better listen and identify the noise, then looked toward the two Washers to see if a response was required.

  “It is the alarum,” his companion said, rising from his seat. He saw the students watching him and made a gesture with his hand, to indicate that they should continue with their studies. He replaced the protective cover over the age-delicate pages he had been reading, the purported journal of a contemporary of Sin Washer, and shook his head sadly. “The House of Malech has broken the seal we placed on them.”

  “So you were wrong, Brother Neth,” the first Washer said, not without a tinge of malice.

  “It appears,” Neth agreed calmly, “that I was. Come.”

  The halls of the Colloquium were aware of the alarum—it was impossible to ignore—but most of the brothers they passed in the hall seemed to be doing exactly that, secure in the knowledge that someone somewhere else was dealing with the cause. That was as it should be, and Neth would not have wished for disorder, but a part of him wondered if that security, that arrogance, was not about to be sorely tested in the coming months.

  He did not speak any of this to his brother Washer, sure that his thoughts would not be taken well by that particular worthy.

  Still, the fear lingered, even as they arrived at the commons room to see three of their brothers already gathered there, and the discussion in full swing. The alarum still rose and fell, louder here than in the hushed sanctum of the Library or the tapestry-shrouded halls, and their voices rose to compete with it.

  “It is proof!” Brother Roderick. He was hot-tempered but not unreasonable, normally, but the way his face was red-mottled suggested to Neth that he would not be swayed from his stance this time, would not be forced down from demanding that the boy and his master be punished, to set an example.

  “It is proof of nothing!” Brother … Sin Washer, what was his name? Neth couldn’t remember. The newcomer had been promoted only the season before, but that was no excuse. “We have no ideas what triggered the alarum,” the nameless brother reminded them.

  “Magic,” Roderick said, in the tone of someone presenting the killing blow.

  “And what else would you expect a Vineart to be doing—baking pies? Writing poetry?” Neth couldn’t help himself; the words simply fell out of his mouth, causing his companion to snort in reluctant amusement.

  Brother Ranklin came in on the heels of that retort, attended by an aide and followed by two other Washers, Omar and Matthias. The council of the Vineart apostasy was now fully, if not officially, convened.

  “This was not crafting,” Roderick protested. “This was—”

  “What was it?” Brother Ranklin asked gently, disarming Roderick’s frustration with his very presence. Ranklin was nearly ninety, and needed his aide’s help to perform his daily physical functions, but his brain was as keen—and his tongue as sharp—as when he had taught most of the Washers in this room their first lessons.

  “We do not know what it is.” Neth stepped in, hoping to direct the conversation where he wished it to go. But gently, carefully. “That was what the seal was placed to identify—anything that we could not recognize. Anything that might indicate a deviance from Vineart tradition—and a path toward apostasy.”

  The rest of the Lands Vin might assume that Washers merely counseled and consoled. They did not need to know the vast amount of research accumulated over the centuries, the layers of information gathered … or the size of the spellwine cellar that lay underneath the Collegium grounds, filled with the work of the finest of Vinearts, including many spellwines now lost to the rest of the Vin Lands.

  Most spellwines did not age well, their potency fading over the course of a year or more. Brother Adem, over a hundred years past, had found a way to enhance a spellwine so that it would retain its potency, so long as the bottle remained unopened. The Brotherhood kept this a secret, known only to a select few—many of them in this very room. Some were ordinary spells, the work of Vinearts dead and disappeared from the Lands—and some were terrible things, entire casks bought and stored merely to keep them from the grasp of others who could not be trusted with such power. The Brotherhood would use those spells if it were needed, with due consideration and lasting regret. Sin Washer had given unto the Washers the responsibility of maintaining the balance … and so they would. By whatever means available.

  “You think Malech is crafting a new spellwine?” Matthias asked.

  “Master Vineart Malech,” Brother Ranklin said, correcting him sternly. “You will show him respect, even here.”

  The reprimanded Washer, a burly man in his mid-years, looked as abashed as the student he had once been, ducking his head and mumbling an apology.

  “I do not believe that Master Malech is the source,” Neth said. He had been the one to place the seal, so the others let him speak, even before Ranklin gestured for him to continue.

  “It was my opinion that Master Malech acted as he did, sending his student beyond his House borders, out of concern for recent events and a need for more information. He now has that information, and knows that further incursions will not earn him anything other than trouble. More, he must know that we would not leave him entirely unguarded. No, he would not cause this sort of commotion.”

  “The boy, then? You questioned him, Neth. What is your take of the lad?”

  This had all been in his report, but Ranklin often asked for second or third iterations, less for himself than to force the speaker to reconsider initial judgments. Therefore, Neth did not take offense, but answered carefully.

  “He is young, headstrong, but not stupid, and not foolish. Master Malech thinks highly of him, but has not in any way coddled or spoiled him. In an ordinary lifetime, Vineart-student Jerzy would have grown to be an unexceptional Vineart, crafting spellwines that would have profited both his House and the Vin Lands entire.”

  “And in this, unordinary lifetime?” Brother Omar hailed from the same desert lands as Master Malech, his skin nearly ebony to Malech’s olive, but their elongated build and sharp features were otherwise similar.

  “The boy has been exposed to the things we guard against. I believe he was an innocent, meaning no harm … but there is a reason Vinearts are limited to their own yards, and he has broken that. A blast of magic of this sort? Something new, unexpected? It bears the imprint of his hand, yes.” Neth regretted that; he had liked what he had seen of the boy, liked what Brother Darian had reported back in Aleppan—even if Darian himself had not been charitable in his assessment—and felt the loss of the Vineart the boy would have become. But there was no other choice.

  An apostate Vineart could not—would not—be allowed to live.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, there was still a tension in the House that had nothing to do with the toxic fumes yet lingering in the lower workrooms. When questioned, the boy had admitted attempting to combine spellwines of two different Houses—not merely decanting them together, but attempting to reincant them!

  Malech was not sure if he was more horrified by the idiocy or the arrogance of the attempt. While he calmed his temper, he set Jerzy to the task of airing out the space. If he had his way, the boy would have been doing it by hand, with one of the wooden fans Lil used in the kitchen, but that was not feasible. Instead, he had given the boy one of the weakest aetherwines they had, and told him to keep at it until the rooms were habitable again. Aetherwines were rare and expensive, and the thought of using it … still there was nothing to be done for it.

  At best, the effort it would take to cleanse the air of all the poison would exhaust the boy to the point where he would not be able to even think of another such folly for at least a day.

  By then, Malech hoped that he would have come up with a plan to deal with the inevitable repercussions of this disaster.

  He is young.

  “And stupid.” All his hopes for the boy seemed rotted, now. Even if they were to survive their enemy’s plans and Jerzy avoided the most dire of pu
nishments from the Washers, which seemed unlikely now, he would never be allowed to come into his full power. Would never follow Malech in crafting the spellwines of this House. The Collegium would never allow it, not with that stain on his reputation.

  He is frustrated. As you would be, hedged in such a manner.

  It was unlike the Guardian to take a side, so much so that Malech stopped what he was doing to consider not what the dragon was saying, but what it wasn’t saying.

  “You think that I am at fault? For not constantly reminding him that the Washers would still be observing us, waiting for a sign that one of us was not …” He could not think of the word he wanted, and so settled for “obedient?”

  Ser veh.

  It took Malech a moment to identify the phrase. Ettonian, an older dialect, formal. “What was, continues.” In this context, it suggested an air of inevitability, of fate set in motion.

  “I don’t believe in fate,” Malech said irritably. “We make our own choices, and the various gods can keep up as best they will.”

  The Guardian had no response to that, but stared down at the Vineart. Fate—forecasting—had brought it into being. How could it not believe in it, as much as it could believe in anything?

  “I hold no faith in fate,” Malech said again, stubborn in the face of his own past, and then an idea glimmered in his mind. “But coincidence … that’s a fruit I can work with.”

  There was a symmetry to it that appealed. He had called the boy off his search in order to show his innocence, and to protect them all from the Washers’ ire. Now, to protect them again, he would send the boy back. What was the saying his master had used? “Once the cup was lifted, the draught must be drunk.” He, Malech, had started this, merely by noticing things beyond his walls … and now he must finish it.