Stonewiser (41 page)

“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

 

T
HE 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 brilliancy, 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.

“I'm not sure what will happen,” she said to the keeper. “It could be dangerous. It could be deadly.”

“We couldn't make them go if we wanted to,” the keeper said. “It's their right to live or die by the domes. Do as you must. So will we.”

Damn the Hounds’ rights. They shouldn't be there. But Sariah knew of no way to persuade them to leave, and a cursory glance at her bracelet reminded her she didn't have time to waste. Courage's link was at the top, as if the goddess's sister was urging her on. She picked up a game piece from the bag. Carefully, she set a little snake, bottom first, into the outermost gap. It fit perfectly.

The coiled snake sparkled to life. It fused to the geode seamlessly, as if it had always belonged there. One by one, with deliberate care, she fit all the pieces in place. Something nipped at her mind each time. She could feel the energy gathering in the stone, the void reaching out to draw from her strength. She had a sense of loss, knowing that with each snake and scorpion she yielded, she was forsaking the stones that had led her to the Bastions.

At last all the gaming pieces but one were in place. She had to chuckle at the stone's eerie grin. A mouthful of snakes and scorpions. Who by the rot pits thought of that?

The botched scorpion was the last one. Only one slot remained at the hollow center. Sariah noticed something strange then, something that had been concealed by the light's refraction on the surrounding crystal. There was a portion missing. She didn't think it was nature's work. It was a clean, straight-edged extraction. Precision was a human trait. Would the wising work with a piece of the stone missing? Was it a provision or an omission?

Nothing to do but try. The light gained brilliancy as she pressed the botched scorpion into place.

The geode's core ignited, hot as simmering fire. A fist of hot air blasted Sariah and pinned her against Tirsis's statue. A short beam uncoiled from the stone and broke apart into four columns of humming light. The columns pierced the statues’ colored eyes. The stone sages glowed. Their arms lifted. They clasped each other's hands, trapping Sariah in an indomitable circle of energy.

Poe's lips moved. “Behold. We have returned as it was foretold to redeem our theft and ourselves. Our dreams turn to tale. Our tale turns to blood.”

Sariah's mind refused to accept what she was seeing. A thousand wild thoughts interfered with her reason. Stone. She needed to commit this moment to stone. She fumbled for the little memory stone she wore around her neck and pushed her memories out of the way. She would be incapable of remembering every detail. If she lived through this. If she survived.

She looked up to see that Tirsis's face was liquid on her stone façade. Her laughter filled the dome, brisk, joyful and sweet.

“Fear not, my beloved,” Tirsis said. “You're ready. The goddess blesses your path. The stone leads you to its lair.”

“Why must we perish to thrive when we thrive without perishing?” Eneis said.

“Because we're pledged to Meliahs,” Vargas said. “Because we were born and bred to die. Of the stone we were created. With the stone we'll be avenged.”

Sariah could only hope that her simultaneous inscription was working and that she would live long enough to understand the sages’ words, because every word they said triggered a hundred questions and every one of her questions had a thousand possible answers.

Tirsis's eyes settled on her, and even though she knew that the woman had been dead for hundreds of years, she couldn't help but gape at the sage's vitality, at the beauty of her broad face, at the wisdom burning in her stare.

“Our ways are most likely primitive to you,” Tirsis said. “But it was all we had.”

Primitive? If only Tirsis knew. The Guild's prohibitions had weakened stonewising, forcing the craft to revert to its simplest and earliest stages. Only Zeminaya's wisings matched the complexity of these sages’ wising and even then, her work had been buried and suppressed.

Questions. Sariah had questions. Was the sages’ extraordinary wising capable of interaction? There was so much she wanted to know, about the Hounds’ origins, about the Guild and the sages, about the Wisdom, about the amazing stone powering their revival. Where to start? The tale. She had to focus on her search.

Sariah's voice was raw to her own ears. “Where can I find the bane of the pure, the tale that can unite the Bloods?”

“See with your eyes,” Tirsis said. “Feel with your heart. What you seek is beyond proof. It's reality.”

“What's pure but stone?” Eneis asked. “What's more credible than proof, more credible than action and moment, but substance itself?”

“The dream dreamed us thieves for a purpose,” Poe said.

Sariah's hand was numb from clenching her stone. Her knees were weak from the effort. She slid down and sat against Tirsis's legs. Her own strength was being sapped to power the sages at a time when she needed it most to make sense out of chaos.

“I don't understand.”

“Stonewiser,” Tirsis said patiently. “You've found the bane of the pure.”

“I have?”

“This
is the pure.” Tirsis's ethereal hands cupped the brilliant stone at the center. “And we, my beloved child,
we
are its bane.”

Meliahs help her. All that time looking for a people called the pure, when she was instead looking for the stone these sages called the pure! She wanted to kick herself for her ignorance. Yet she had wised this stone already, and the tale it had sung to her had been sweet and peaceful, but it wasn't the tale she was looking for. Where was the tale that would bring unity to the Blood? Where was the one tale that was going to satisfy the justice gathering, the executioners, and both Domainers and Goodlanders?

Vargas eyes flared. “Can you sense it? She's sealed. She's Zeminaya's spawn!”

“One of Zeminaya's?” Poe said. “Just as I dreamed it.”

Tirsis's crystal clear laughter filled the dome again. “She tried and she triumphed, Meliahs bless her skillful hands.”

“She should be destroyed,” Vargas spat.

“But aren't there different climbs to the same summit?” Eneis asked. “And who's the thief? She or we? Who shall prevail in the end?”

“As if we could know the end to any beginning,” Tirsis said. “We have no choice but faith alone. Time's done. Our blessings and our apologies, stonewiser.”

“For what?”

“For what has been, is, will be. For the legacy unleashed, for the burdens bestowed.”

“What burdens?” Sariah asked, but the sages were no longer listening to her. They raised their linked hands towards the dome.

“I grant you leave to live my dreams,” Poe said.

“I add my questions to yours,” Eneis said.

“To you I entrust my Hounds.” Vargas glared. “You'd best be faithful to my beasts.”

“Wait. Wait. I don't want—”

“The waiting's over,” Tirsis said. “The scent is the spark of a reckless life. What thrives in the light yields only to its own darkness. What restores the whole destroys the parts. I give you a warning: two fortnights. That's all the beam will last, or else the darkness of generations.”

The light changed, pouring into the statues at an accelerated pace, igniting them crimson. The heated draft of the noiseless explosion rendered Sariah flat on her back. The entire dome shook and seemed to expand with the blast. The earth quaked. For a few, long moments, she couldn't breathe the scalding air singeing her lungs. Words burst from her mind. Voices settled on the surfaces of her wiser's core and then sank into her consciousness. The Wisdom. She could hear it all at once, a chorus imprinting itself on her soul.