by L. W. Jacobs
“You—have visited them all then? Recently?” the Seinjialese man asked, interest lighting in his eyes as the tension left his shoulders. It left Tai’s too—the Seinjial believed them, and strange though it was, he appeared to be the one in control here. They were safe.
“Unfortunately, no,” Nauro said. “Just the one on the Yersh plains, and of course the Seingard rock on our way here.”
“And did you—find what you were looking for?” the lighthaired one asked, pinched eyes looking just as greedy.
No doubt about it—these were shamans, they knew about Semeca’s power, and they were trying to take it for themselves.
Which meant if they figured out who he was, they’d try to kill or thrall him.
Great.
“Oh, yes!” Ella cried, once again playing the bubbly Councilate lady perfectly. “The stones are truly fascinating. Did you know their width is always in golden proportion to their height? The one in Yershlands was excavated in the time of Lucian the Fourth, and it holds that golden mean all the way down, hundreds of feet so it’s said, though much of that earthwork has been covered up again. Isn’t it just amazing?”
Ollen’s eyes had gone flat. “Indeed. Well, you are certainly welcome here, though I’m afraid we don’t have much to offer in the way of food or shelter.”
The lighthaired man cleared his throat. “A word, Ollen, if you would please?”
Tai rolled his neck as the two men withdrew and spoke in low tones, the lighthaired one gesticulating forcefully. Ollen had clearly written them off as not a threat to his attempts to take the power, but lighthair looked unconvinced. What was the relationship between the two? Who would make the final decision?
The group stood in awkward silence, all of them too aware the outcome of the strangers’ conversation would mean everything to how the rest of this went. Whether they would be able to set up their guyo, or be forced to fight for their lives.
The two seemed to reach some kind of agreement, and came back with the lighthair in the lead. Tai checked his resonance again, eying the trees, planning out how to make the best of this. If they were able to take these two hostage…
“My apologies,” the lighthaired one said. “I have been unkind, and to kindred spirits, in the middle of the wilderness. My name is Credelen, and we too are here for academic purposes, although different than your own. You are most welcome here, and I look forward to getting to know you better. Now if you’ll excuse us, the hour grows late, and I’m sure you have your own preparations to make for the night.”
Tai relaxed, and saw a similar tension leave the shoulders of Feynrick and Marea. They were safe, for now. The men’s story was a flimsy one at best, and it was impossible to know how much they believed the tale Ella and Nauro had spun, but either way they wouldn’t be fighting tonight.
“Look to the revenants,” Nauro said in low tones, as they led the elk into the bowl and settled on a site to make camp, across the unnaturally circular depression from Ollen’s camp.
Tai unfocused his eyes, and nearly stumbled. The site was full of them, air positively muddy with watery forms. No wonder the shallow bowl reeked of dead leaves, despite the fresh green grass underfoot. Similar gasps came from Ella and Marea.
“Are they attracted by the stone?” Ella asked, keeping her voice low.
“They are attracted by initiates, journeymen, and seekers,” Nauro said, “of which I would guess their party is at least half.”
“Shamans,” Tai muttered, leading them to a relatively level area. “But they haven’t figured out how to open the stone yet? The power is still here?”
Nauro’s mouth twisted. “The power’s not here.”
Ella stopped in her tracks. “What do you mean it’s not here? We’re too late?”
“No,” Nauro said. “This isn’t the right stone.”
14
“Not the right stone?” Feynrick bellowed. “Then what in the piss—”
Marea hissed at the giant oaf, jerking her head toward the other camp. He went on in a lower tone, thank the Prophet. She was not about to get murdered by shamans in the middle of the Yati wilderness.
“Not the right pissing stone?” Feynrick bellow-whispered. “Then what are we doing here? Let’s get away from these soulsuckers while we can.”
“It is not the right stone,” Nauro said, “but it is a stone, one of only nine in the world, and relatively unpeopled and unguarded. There are things we can learn here.”
“If what we’re learning is how to get our souls sucked,” Feynrick said, “ye can count me right out. I’ll swim the pissing Yanu river first.”
“I’m with you,” Marea said. The sooner they turned back toward civilization, the better. And civilization was always downstream.
“Nauro’s right,” Ella said. “If we can practice here, it will make the real one much easier. And Ollen’s party may know something we don’t.”
“Which wouldn’t be hard,” Marea said, “because we know basically nothing, right?”
Ella and Nauro had talked about this some on the journey here, and it had sounded like Nauro was making the best of basically having no idea how to open an ancient and indestructible stone. Which kind of made the whole trip seem pretty stupid, when they could have just used the rivers and been nearly to Worldsmouth by now.
“Not nothing,” Nauro said. “And this is not the time or place to discuss it. Let’s get the guyo up first, and talk once I can deaden the air a bit.”
No one explained what deaden the air meant, but that was pretty par for the course. Feynrick wouldn’t know, Tai wouldn’t have the words to explain, Nauro would think she was too stupid, and Ella would be too lost in her own thoughts to remember Marea might want to know.
“That’s fine,” Marea whispered to Bellows, sliding the guyo furs from his back and rubbing him down. “I can figure it out.” Farts snorted because he still had his pack tied on—he was the jealous type. Marea went to work on him.
The conversation continued once they were all in the guyo, Ella looking particularly exhausted because she’d had to do Nauro’s work plus her own.
“I’d advise we stay here a few days at least,” Nauro said. “They seem to have accepted our story for the time being, and we may not have this kind of chance to practice when we get to Semeca’s stone.”
Marea cringed, all too aware of the all the people that would want to kill them on the other side of the circle, if they overheard. “So, I guess you deadened the air then?”
“Yes,” Nauro said, sipping at his cup of broth. The man seemed to eat basically nothing. “A little trick we use to keep anyone from overhearing.”
“Does it stop mindseyes too?” Tai asked.
“Yes,” Nauro said, sounding put out by a stupid question. Marea hid her grin in another ladle of wintergrass soup. Nice to see the teacher’s pet getting his fair share once in a while.
“This is one of the things you can do with uai that are outside the resonances?” Ella asked.
“Exactly. One of many, which our friends will be able to do too. I know of two cells in Seingard, and both had respectable power, at least when last I made contact.”
“Which was?” Marea prompted.
Nauro gave a pained smile. “Eighty years or more, I expect.”
“Eighty years?” she cried. “Seingard wasn’t even a protectorate that far back!”
“It wasn’t,” Nauro said. “Things have changed a lot recently. Still, there might be a member or two I know still alive.”
She still had trouble believing the man was a hundred and forty—he would have been sixty already when he was visiting them!—but he had no reason to lie.
“All this to say,” the shaman went on, “that we must stay vigilant. I can deaden the air around us so long as you stay in close proximity, but Tai and Feynrick, you might do well to stay distant or practice mindseye defenses, if you know them. Just because they accepted our story doesn’t mean they won’t be double-checking.”
“Ollen accepted it,” Tai said, popping his neck. “Credelen I’m not so sure about.”
“What’s their deal anyway?” Marea asked, thanking the Ascending God she was hungry. There was no other way to eat wintergrass soup. “Pretty strange to see a darkhair ordering a lighthair around.”
“Not so strange among us,” Nauro said. He set his bowl down, half-drank. “If I had to guess, I would say Ollen is a seeker, the highest of their cell, and so he is in command. Credelen is likely a full shaman or advanced journeyman, but providing much of the financing, and so he’s used to special treatment because of his money.”
“Always are,” Feynrick mumbled, stretched out as best he could in the tight confines.
“Probably part of the reason they bought our story so well,” Marea said, seeing the connection. “In the story you told them, you two have the same kind of scholar-patron relationship.”
Nauro’s eyebrows went up—the old goat hadn’t thought of that, apparently.
“Even so, Nauro’s right,” Tai said. “We need to watch our mouths, watch our movements, watch who we talk to. The less contact the better, because Nauro and Ella are outright lying, and there’s no reason for any of us to be coming from Ayugen.”
“And the second they recognize you,” Nauro said, “We will be in a lot of trouble.”
Fear spread like spilled milk in Marea’s belly. “And it’s really worth staying here despite that?”
Ella’s face softened, and Marea hated that Ella felt bad for her, even as some other part of her liked it. Feelings were confusing.
“I’m sorry to have to put you through this,” Ella said. “I will keep you safe if anything happens.”
“Aye,” Feynrick spoke up. “Ye can swim the Yanu with me.”
Tai and Nauro chimed in too, and Marea shifted uncomfortably. It was nice, but she wasn’t kidding herself about how it would actually go down: Ella would protect Tai, Tai would protect her and whatever they needed to win, Nauro would do whatever was best for himself, and Feynrick would probably try to help them all and end up stuck to the earth or plastered in furs as all the shamans unleashed their powers.
“Thanks,” she said. What else could she say? These people were not her people. She couldn’t really ask them for more, even if she wanted to.
“And in the meantime,” Ella said, “we need to try to open this stone without tipping our hand. There are too many of them to wait for a time when no one’s around, so we’ll just have to disguise it as part of our research.”
“And once it’s open?” Marea asked. “Won’t that be kind of… obvious?”
“Once it’s open,” Nauro said, “We play our parts. Act surprised. Answer their questions with misdirection. And leave, as soon as we can.”
“What are we trying, anyway?” she asked. A woman’s best protection is knowledge, her mother used to say. “Nauro, you said all you know is that it’s something about uai, right?”
“He who seeks uai from the stone must first give it,” Nauro quoted. “That’s all I’ve been able to uncover, but my resources have been admittedly sparse in the month since, ah, Semeca’s death.”
Even here he wouldn’t say Tai’s name aloud. Gods. “So it has to be a man?”
“No, that’s an artifact of translation. The original doesn’t specify gender.”
“Okay,” Marea said, drawing it out as she thought through the implications. “So we just resonate at it?”
Ella gave a rueful smile. “That’s my first guess. Or maybe strike resonance but not use it, so our uai is available. Maybe it needs a critical amount of uai to open, or—” She shrugged. “We’ll just have to try and see.”
“While making sure they don’t figure out what we’re doing, don’t mindread that we’re from Ayugen, and don’t realize who Tai is and then shaman-slay all of us?” Marea asked. “Great. Who’s ready for bed?”
15
Better to swim in unknowing than drown in truth.
—LeTwi, Reflections
Ella woke to worship songs. The songs continued through breakfast, through getting dressed and making plans, unperturbed as they emerged from the guyo and approached the stone to play their part of second-rate researchers. Tai had left for the morning to hunt, not wanting to give the others any more chance to recognize him.
Almost the entirety of Ollen’s party stood in a circle around the stone, colorful Seinjialese garb in stunning contrast to the unseasonably green grass, strange and massive rock rising from their center. Ella was eager to get a closer look at it, but she and Nauro stayed behind the line of singing shamans, not wanting to disturb them.
Not that it was hard to see: the stone was massive, rising perhaps forty paces from the smooth green lawn, and thick enough at the bottom that she doubted all ten people could clasp arms around it.
It was strange too—stone almost seemed the wrong word for it. While the rock was gray and appeared slightly weathered, its surface had a depth to it, looking smooth at a distance, but on closer inspection revealing intricate lines and whorls covering the entire surface, without marring it. Instead they seemed to run just under the scuffed surface, like quartz veins laid in intricate designs.
Most powerful of all, though, was the thing’s presence. While Nauro swore this was not Semeca’s stone, that they would feel something much more if it were streaming all her unclaimed uai, still there was an almost holy feeling as you approached, like you had reached the ocean after a long journey, or the highest mountaintop, or the bottom of the sea. An undeniable uniqueness to the thing.
Part of that might have been the unnatural heat. It was warm enough in the bowl that she hardly needed her furs, a welcome break from the week of bitter cold. “Prophet’s patience,” she said, playing the role of a breathless Worldsmouth lady in case someone was listening. “The stories just don’t do it justice.”
“Agreed,” Nauro said, sounding his normal self, though she trusted him to play his role. She might not trust him otherwise, but self-preservation she didn’t doubt he did well. “The Sightfarer is much as I’ve read and yet so much more.”
“Have you read the theory,” Ella asked, using the time to scan the people around them, “that the heat is caused by the stone acting as some kind of pump, to pull the energy of our sphere up and outwards, as one experiences in deep mines?”
“Oh yes, my lady,” Nauro said, his eyes also casually roaming the crowd. Ollen’s party was entirely men, but beyond that a true mix of personages: old and young, light- and dark-haired, muscled and fat, with expressions ranging from educated and wise to rank and shallow.
They were united in one thing: singing. Old Eschatolist hymns, apparently.
“And do you believe it?” she asked. The hymns had to have something to do with the stones—but what?
Whatever it was, it wasn’t working.
“I don’t disbelieve it,” Nauro said. Prophets, if they could just talk openly. What was he thinking? Could the stones even be opened before the spear inside was putting out uai?
Ollen seemed to think so.
Presently the hymn ended, and Ollen approached them, wearing a casual Seinjialese waistcoat and fur cap. “Blessings on the morning,” he said to them. “I’m afraid I never got an introduction to the fairest of your party.” He nodded to Marea.
“Marea Fetterken, if it please you,” she answered, the soul of Councilate courtesy, with the hint of condescension that usually accompanied it. Ella loved the girl, but she was Worldsmouth through and through.
Ollen accepted Marea’s offered hand, brushing lips against it, then turned to Nauro. “We don’t mean to impede your work, but it is our tradition to begin each morning with a round of song.”
“Are you so religious, then?” Nauro asked, leaving unsaid the question of how such mixed company could possibly share a faith.
“Just myself, I’m afraid,” Ollen said in an affected tone. Ella doubted the man believed in much but power, if he was a ninespear. “The others don’t ha
ve much of a choice.”
His story was so flimsy it felt intentional. Ollen could make up better excuses, but he had no need to. He was in control here, and almost seemed to be inviting them to question it, to give him a reason to want them gone.
“Would there be time for us to approach the stone, then?” Ella asked. “I’m pining to lay hands on it. It has such a presence.”
“Feel free,” Ollen said, sweeping a possessive hand at the stone. “We’ll likely break for tea now, and pursue more individual avenues of study the rest of the day.”
Excellent. While she was curious to touch the stone, what she was dying to do was push some uai into it. To learn what they could through experimentation.
Though she had a nagging feeling what they stood most to learn from was whatever Ollen knew, that was driving him to sing to the stone. He wouldn’t be so committed if he didn’t have a solid theory.
The trouble would be finding it out.
First things first. “Well,” Ella said, adjusting the parka around her shoulders. “Shall we?” She took balls of yura from an inside pocket and distributed them.
Ollen watched with interest, the devil. Likely curious to poke holes in their story too.
“For resonances,” Ella explained. “Nauro has a bit of mindsight, and I dabble in resonating too. We thought it might help in experiencing the stone, which some theorize was created from the Prophet’s own powers.”
Ollen raised his eyebrows. “An interesting theory. I’ll leave you to it.”
Ella tongued her moss—they didn’t have much, but certainly needed to keep up appearances. If Ollen knew they had overcome their revenants it would raise all kinds of questions they didn’t want to answer.
“All together then?” Ella asked, then squeezed her eyes shut, as though striking resonance took all her concentration. She didn’t actually strike hers—timeslipping would come in handy for digging through their camp, but would do little here—but felt Nauro’s high-pitched tone and Marea’s higher whine in her bones. Blanks had the highest-pitched resonance of all.