A Cast of Stones (40 page)

“As soon as I found out you'd survived, I came back to the library and removed every book I could find that mentioned the omne. I didn't count on Master Quinn's prodigious memory. This is a list of every omne that's ever served the conclave.” He slid the sheet across the table toward Errol.

His eyes ran down the list, at first with interest, but skimming toward the end. Names comprised a column down the left-hand side with dates of birth and death noted out to the right. “I don't understand. What's the point?”

Luis's mouth compressed into a thin line, and his brows furrowed. He looked like a man who'd eaten something sour. “Look at the dates.”

Errol did so. It took him a few minutes to realize the pattern, and a quick scan confirmed—not one omne in the last thousand years had lived past thirty-five.

“That's right,” Luis said. “They all died early. Many died and left the kingdom without an omne.” He shook his head. “The kingdom suffers in such times. Without an omne to verify the casts of the conclave, there is much opportunity for deception.”

“How?” He suspected the answer already, but he wanted, needed, to hear Luis confirm it.

“Some died of natural causes or an enemy's attack, but the rest went insane trying to create the versis.” He shook his head. “I think Deas reserves that power for himself.”

He shook his head. That couldn't be right. “Someone has done it. They tracked me across the entire kingdom. Night or day, they knew where I was.”

Luis nodded. “It does seem like a plausible explanation, but I don't think our enemies hold a versis. Their moves are at once too powerful and too weak to be explained by such. Consider . . . if they held such power, they could simply inquire as to the perfect time, place, and method to kill you, Liam, and the rest of us. No. If they'd managed to create a universal lot, the coming war would be lost already.

“Yet, you are right in that the precision and timing of their knowledge concerning your movements goes beyond what is currently possible in the conclave.” His shoulders hunched as if he squirmed under the weight of his ignorance. “I can only conclude that they have made some discovery that surpasses the knowledge of the conclave.”

“How come I've never heard of the Merakhi or the Morgols casting lots?”

Luis stood. “They do not. Those they find with the talent are turned toward a different craft.” He spat the last word. “Ghost-walkers. The kingdom has enemies without and within.”

Reticence marked the secondus's speech, his answers were uncharacteristically brief, and though he appeared relaxed, he seldom met Errol's gaze, finding, it seemed, one plausible reason or another to look elsewhere.

A sudden thought occurred to him. “If you and the primus don't want me to create a versis, what do you want?”

Luis eyes were intent, belying his relaxed pose at the table. “No more than what you've already proven you can do, Errol. Read others' lots.”

“You think there's a traitor in the conclave.”

The secondus turned away to fold his sanding cloth. “I acknowledge the probability, though I hope to be proven wrong.”

“Why not cast for it?” Errol asked.

Luis laughed ruefully. “We have tried, and not only with the
conclave. Remember that the question frames the answer. It is possible that we have not asked the correct question.” He sighed. “Yet I think it more likely that those who are working to our downfall do not see themselves as traitors, but as saviors of the kingdom. The question, as of yet, cannot be cast. However, since you can read any lot, you might be able to discover those in our midst who seek to do us harm.”

“When do you want me to start?”

“As soon as you complete your basic training with Quinn. Your movements will be easier to explain once you have done so.” He rose. “I must see Martin on a matter. I will speak to Master Quinn and have him instruct you on what is possible and what is not for a reader.” He gave a rueful smile. “I think his answer will be longer than you want, but Master Quinn is nothing if not thorough.”

Before Errol could say or ask anything more, Luis was gone.

He stared at the place where Luis had been, turning the conversation with the reader over in his head. Nothing Luis said spoke of deceit or dissembling, but he sensed Luis and Martin still held something from him, and it gnawed at him. But what could it be? He had already surprised them into as much as admitting Liam would be king.

What was left to hide?

He took his staff, and strode through the dim halls of the conclave, heading for the barracks. His steps echoed strangely, and he walked another ten paces before it dawned on him that the watchmen who normally accompanied him in the passageways were absent. Perhaps Cruk and Reynald had given up on luring the demon spawn into attacking him. It had, after all, been over a week since the last attack and no sign of ferrals or the abbot of Windridge had been seen or heard.

What would they do now? King Rodran, the archbenefice, and the primus seemed content to bide their time and wait for their enemies to make their next move. To Errol it felt as if they waited for the headsman's axe to fall. With a twitch of his shoulders, he
dismissed the matter from his mind. Nothing he could do would change events, and it seemed unlikely that the powers that ruled the kingdom would take him into their confidence.

He passed a group of monks, their shuffling gait barely intruding on his thoughts.

A whiff of corruption warned him.

He faced them, brought his staff up as clawed hands ripped off robes and charged. Mouths opened to reveal jagged teeth under eyes that looked too human to belong in those beast-like faces.

Eyes filled with bloodlust and madness.

The five demon spawn came flooding toward him without a sound. Errol watched as they spread along the hall, dropping to all fours. There were too many.

He filled his lungs. “Guards! Guards!”

They were on him.

The end of his staff took the first spawn in the throat, but as soon as the creature dropped, another took its place. Errol spun, caught another in the shoulder with the knobblock, but the thing shrugged off the blow and leapt at him.

Teeth sank into his right leg, and he howled in pain. He ducked one spawn and clubbed another. Then he thrust the end of his staff into the face of the creature on his leg.

It wouldn't let go.

Jaws clamped around his arm.

He couldn't fight.

Heavy paws hit him in the chest, and he fell backward. His head struck the granite stones of the floor. The last sound he heard before darkness took him was the ring of bared steel.

Errol swam toward consciousness, fighting to wake against a tide of pain that seemed to come from everywhere. He fought to push himself off the stone even as a weight against his chest forced him back down.

“Stop!” a voice thundered. “You'll bleed to death. Be still.”

He lay back down, working to open his eyes. When at last he managed to force his lids open, the hall swam as though he peered through rushing water.

“Who?” he asked.

“Liam,” a voice answered. A hint of blue eyes and blond hair swam in his vision. “Lay still,” he commanded.

Pressure on his wounds made him cry out. Oblivion called to him, promising an end to the pain. He drifted to it.

“Stay with us, boy,” a voice snarled. Cruk. Fingers pried his lids open and the watchman's lumpy face filled his vision.

Footsteps pounded down the hall, and men carried him while Liam and Cruk kept pressure on the worst of his wounds. They carted him, ignoring his moans and curses past the barracks to the castle infirmary where four men took him and laid him on a slab of stone. Someone forced a thick syrup of bitter-tasting potion down his throat.

Everything faded.

Consciousness returned so gradually that he found himself staring across the sheets at the people who surrounded him without realizing he'd awakened. Luis, Martin, and the primus occupied chairs at the foot of his bed, their faces wan in the fading light that suffused the room. Of Liam and Cruk there was no sign.

He wanted to speak, but the effort made his head swim.

Men he didn't recognize came to stand over him, their faces serious, grave. “You've lost a lot of blood. We've slowed the bleeding, but by the best of our art, we can only slow it.” He looked Errol in the eye. “Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Errol nodded. “I'm dying,” he whispered.

The healer nodded. “These wounds are beyond our ability to heal. We've never seen their like before. If only we could stop the bleeding . . .” He moved away.

Errol's eyelids closed, burdened by the weight of his blood
loss. His thoughts seemed slow to come to him, as if they kept time to the sluggish beat of his heart.

Bleeding.
What did Adele and Radere give for bleeding? There had been a boy in his village, Corwin, who had bleeder's disease. At his birth, a midwife told his parents he wouldn't make it past his first year, but the herbwomen scoffed at the prediction.

Something.
They had given him something to make his flesh and blood knit more quickly. It almost made him normal.

What was it?

So hard to think.
He beckoned to Luis, the barest crook of a finger that felt as though he'd lifted the world. The reader stood by his bedside without apparent transition. Errol hadn't seen him move.

“Urticweed,” he whispered.

Luis straightened. “Urticweed. Do you have any?”

“It's not an herb we use,” the first healer said. “I don't know.”

“Well, find out, man. We're losing him.”

Boots pounded away.

The pain from his wounds faded from his awareness and he floated. Later, he coughed as warm liquid coursed down his throat. He tried turning his head. The fools were trying to drown him.

Hands held his head steady, and voices urged him to drink, to hang on. Hang on to what? He couldn't find an answer to the question. Darkness took him.

 29 
Tracks

H
E WOKE,
light-headed and hungry. Darkness filled the room, relieved only by the flickering of candles placed at regular intervals in the sconces along the wall. Thick bandages covered one arm and both his legs, exerting pressure on his wounds.

The pain in his arms and legs had subsided, and the temptation to move his limbs beckoned to him. Errol lifted his head to see Luis slumped in a chair at the foot of his bed, head lolling to one side.

“Luis.”

The secondus stirred and, seeing Errol awake, raised himself, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “How are you, boy?”

Errol shrugged. Nothing hurt overly much, which he took to be a good sign. “I don't seem to be dead.”

Luis smiled. “You have keen powers of observation.”

The wall of secrets between them still stood, but Luis seemed relieved. Errol took a deep breath. It would have to be enough. Perhaps in time he would be able to figure out what, exactly, Luis and Martin kept hidden from him. “How am I?”

“The urticweed saved your life. The healers have been dosing you with it at every opportunity. I think they'll want to talk to you as soon as you feel up to it. They have a newfound respect for herb lore, it seems. Your wounds finally stopped bleeding and your flesh seems to be knitting fairly well. They want to keep you here until you've recovered some of your strength.”

“Why?”

Luis frowned, his dark eyebrows coming together, shadowing his eyes in the dim light. “They want to keep you from tearing your wounds open and bleeding to death. Healers hate that sort of thing.”

“No, why do they keep attacking me, in spite of my fighting them off ?” He watched Luis's face as the secondus pondered the question, searching for any sign of untruth or dissembling.

The reader leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “It is as the archbenefice said, they sense some threat in you.”

Errol laughed, his mirth sounding like a sigh of wind. “You give me thoughtful answers that don't tell me anything, Luis. Tell me, how many attacks have come against Liam since Windridge?”

Luis leaned back, his face impassive.

“If you don't answer, Luis, I will simply ask Liam the next time I see him. He'll tell me. He's incapable of lying.”

The sound of a sigh ghosted to him. “You're right, of course. The truth is he has not been attacked—none of us has been. Only you and certain readers of the conclave have been targeted, and only you have survived. Yet, Liam has been surrounded by men, offering little opportunity for the enemy to strike.”

The long familiar stab of jealousy struck Errol again at the mention of Liam's name, but time and circumstances had served to lessen its impact. Memory came to him then. “What did the Merakhi mean when she called him
soteregia
?”

Luis grew still. “It's an old word, so old that most people would no longer know its meaning, though the tongue is ours. It means savior and king. Since the time of Magis, every king
of Illustra has borne the title of Soteregia. The word is engraved across the royal seal.”

It made sense. Liam would be the savior and king of Illustra. He searched the ward. A healer's assistant, tall and clothed in white, stood by the entrance, too far away to hear their conversation.

“Is that the question you spent the last five years casting?”

Luis nodded. “It's practically all I've thought of for that time.” He laughed, and a network of wrinkles made crow's-feet around his brown eyes. Light from candles danced from the smooth dome of his bald head. “I'm looking forward to the day when I can concentrate on something else.”

“But if Liam is so important, why do they keep attacking me?”

“It is impossible to know what is behind their actions.” The reader's face stretched in a rueful grimace. “We don't even know who our enemies are. More, we can't be certain how much knowledge of you and Liam they possess. They know you can defend yourself—else they would not have risked sending five ferrals to attack you. They know your village of birth, and by now they must know that you are attached to the conclave. I pray they do not know you are an omne, but the possibility cannot be discounted.

“Yet I think our enemy knows something about you that we do not, something beyond even your ability as an omne.” He pulled at his jaw, and his eyes focused somewhere above Errol's head. “It may be that they cast against their greatest threat and determined it was you. If that is so, then they may not know exactly what makes you dangerous to them and they simply seek to kill you. In truth, their inability to see Liam as a threat is just as troubling. Either our craft has betrayed us or there is a power at work we do not understand.

“I must ask your pardon, Errol, and I think Martin seeks your forgiveness as well. We underestimated the determination of the enemy and so thought you would be safe with a pair of the watch to guard you. In that, we were wrong.”

The mention of the watchmen who had trailed him for days
waiting for just such an attack prompted him. “What of the guards? They were not with me when I was attacked.”

Luis shook his head. “Once you were moved to the infirmary, Cruk went in search of them. I have never seen him so angry. I think he meant to convey his displeasure at their failure with some physical demonstration.

“What he found shook him.” He lowered his gaze until he looked Errol in the eyes. “Your guards are dead, taken by surprise. They raised no alarm. Their throats were torn out.”

Errol's vision swam and he slept.

A bar of slowly moving sunlight moving across his face woke him. He thought of food first. His next thought was an awareness of Adora seated in a chair by his bed. As before, her presence fuddled him, and he felt an odd comfort in the knowledge that he couldn't trip over his own feet there in the infirmary.

“How . . .” he started and then thought better of it. “What's the hour?”

Her hair caught a shaft of sunlight and held it. “It's midmorning.” She smiled, and her green eyes shone. “My uncle has forbidden disclosure of your attack. He doesn't want to alarm the people, but I overheard two of the watch talking and thought you might want something better to eat than the food the healers offer.”

She lifted a cloth from the tray. The aroma of food flooded over him, and his stomach growled. Adora laughed. “I think I came just in time.” Placing the tray on his lap, she handed him a fork and knife.

Errol looked at the utensils, his face burning. “Your Highness . . .”

“Adora,” she corrected.

He nodded. “A-dora.” His lips stumbled over her name as if he had never heard or thought it before. “I'm unfamiliar with the manners of court. I would ask your pardon if my ways seem offensive.”

She straightened, and her posture and tone became formal. “Errol Stone, you will not offend me unless you continue to think that I would place so high a value on such things.”

“Thank you, Your Highness . . . uh, Adora.” Grabbing his fork and knife, he proceeded to attack the mountain of food on the tray.

“I thought that since you needed time to eat without the burden of questions, I could teach you the basics of the fan language.” She smiled. “Would you like that?”

He nodded.

She pulled a blue-and-green fan out of her sleeve and, with a well-practiced flick of her wrist, snapped it open and began fanning herself. “If a woman fans herself slowly, it means she is at peace with herself and those around her.” The fan moved more quickly. “This means she is agitated with her present company and desires them to leave.”

Errol swallowed. “What about the signal you gave me at the courtyard.”

Adora's cheeks pinked, but she gave no other sign that his question bothered her. “This . . .” She tapped the fan against her ear and ran it along her jaw. “I was telling you that I would like to talk with you sometime.” She dropped her gaze. “It was an improper thing to say to someone I'd never met before. My mother always told me I spoke my mind too quickly.” She moved to make another motion with the fan.

“I saw you in the city the day I arrived,” Errol said.

Her fan stopped, obscuring half her face. “I often visit the shops.” Adora's tone created distance between them.

Errol pressed on anyway. “Is a healer's shop among them? I passed one on the way in. I have heard that lemongrass makes soulsease tea a little easier to drink.”

The princess dropped her fan, scanned the infirmary before speaking. “Please don't tell anyone, Errol. Uncle would be furious.”

“I won't. Why do you do it?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes I do it to pick up information
that I think Uncle needs to know. Most courtiers never leave the palace. The only reports we get from the city are from the guard. Mostly I do it because the people of Erinon need help. Nobody in the palace really needs me, but they do.”

A weight in his gut forced the next question from his lips. “Did you come to see me for the same reason you go to Healer Norv's?”

She gave a small shake of her head, her hair flaring in the light. “No.”

“Then why are you here?” he asked.

“To bring you food and teach you the fan language.”

He shook his head. “The infirmary would feed me, though not half so well, and though I appreciate your company, it is unlikely that I will ever need to know the fan language.” At the risk of driving her away, he repeated his question. “Why are you here?”

Her eyes darkened from the shade of spring to that of storm-tossed seas. “I told you before that not all women seek perfection. I saw the mercy you gave Weir at our first meeting—mercy he didn't deserve—and recognized something rare in you. As for the fan language . . .” She snapped hers shut and rose to leave. “You may be surprised by what you may need to know in the future.”

Errol passed the next two days in the infirmary, eating and drinking as much food and water as he could cram down. On the third day he woke to the sound of panic—clipped voices shouted instructions. Healers and guards swarmed into the infirmary.