Stonewiser (44 page)

She was in dire need of a plan. They would be waiting for her. They would be ready. How would she gain access to the place chosen by the beam when everybody else knew too? She wagered that the sages in all their wisdom didn't think of that small detail. Or had they?

She rummaged through her pocket looking for the memory stone where she had imprinted the tale of her latest wising. Perhaps she had missed something, a clue that would better her chances. She pulled the memory stone from her pocket, together with the amplifying stone she always carried and the larger bursting stones she kept there just in case. She spied another stone among the others, a small white pebble she didn't recall putting there.

It wasn't one of hers, she was sure. She tapped the stone and sensed a peculiar wising, a unique, almost imperceptible vibration that came at equal intervals. What by Meliahs’ rot pits was this stone doing in her pocket?

Horatio Maliver. His amorous advances had had a double purpose, to test her resolve and, most importantly, to put a tracer stone on her. She had heard about those. The Guild councilors used it to track their leases when they went on wising-trading missions away from the keep. Only they knew how to make tracking stones. That narrowed her field of suspects. Who was Horatio Maliver working for?

She tossed the little stone in the air and caught it on the way down. She had been right to suspect Horatio's reappearance. The man was a walking justification for murder. Was the tracking stone's wising somehow anchored to Horatio Maliver? Probably. She was suddenly very glad she had decided to keep Horatio with her. Horatio himself was most likely being tracked by whoever tracked her. His tracking stone could be anywhere, hidden among his belongings, sown into his clothing, even lodged in his body, smuggled in his food or forced down his gullet with or without his notice. Horatio's abrupt disappearance or a sudden separation from Sariah's path would tip off her stalker. Even now, when she knew all that, it wasn't time to get rid of him. He was an advantage she wasn't willing to relinquish just yet.

Her coin was on Grimly. He had to be working for the Prime Hand. Horatio couldn't be bought with promises for coin or power. That's all Arron had to offer. Mistress Grimly, on the other hand, knew how to make a hard bargain. A shrewd and experienced player, she knew people bent at complex angles. She had the skills to figure out Horatio's needs and use them as leverage to obtain her own ends. Besides, the past couldn't be ignored. Horatio and Grimly had been allies before the breaking of the wall. They had worked well together. They had made a formidable foe.

Sariah considered the little white stone in her hand. It was newly chiseled. The gouges were fresh and the ridges were sharp. She sighed. She needed to know. She took a quick lick, a touch of tongue to stone. Salt. Pepper. Cumin. Mustard. She smiled. The stone had been recently harvested from the keep's underground stores, a group of caves used to store valuable spices, a place she knew well from her errands as a Guild pledge. With the Guild split and Arron locked out of the keep, only Mistress Grimly had access to those stores.

Sariah returned the white stone to her pocket. Whoever was set on finding her would do so—at her convenience. If Horatio Maliver was working for Grimly, he was more than a traitor, more than a lying, cold bastard. He had become her best opportunity.

The wind that chilled Sariah was ice's purest breath. It cut through her mantle as if she wasn't wearing every garment she owned at the moment. Even her eyeballs felt frozen. For as long as Sariah could remember, the chill had never punished the Goodlands with cold as bitter and unrelenting as this.

She was happy to step away from the wind and into the protection of the spacious cave the Hounds had found to make camp this night. Exposure was likely to kill anybody who braved the weather tonight. A quick foray beyond the mouth of the cave confirmed that the beam continued to lead them in the same direction it had glowed the night before. Part of her was glad for the consistency. The other part was terrified.

She made her way down the dark passage. For an instant, a ripple of movement tripped her balance. Pebbles and dirt trickled from the ceiling. She hunkered against the wall, just in case, but it was only a mild earth tremor, nothing like yesterday's bone-rattling quake. Regardless, the ground was too restless since they left the Bastions. Sariah prayed it had nothing to do with the rot.

A plan was beginning to take shape in her mind, dangerous by all accounts, but viable. She wished, not for the first time, that Kael was with her. She missed his mind's brilliant strategic eye as much as she missed his body's warmth next to her every night. He wouldn't be such a fool as to undertake a journey on a night like this. Would he?

The campfire's orange glow burned in the cave's safe depths. Sariah smiled to the sentinel and halted just beyond the light's reach. Her Hounds loitered around the fire. Some of the warriors were sharpening their claws, some were sleeping, some were sipping hot cups of the thick brew they favored, listening to Torkel, who sang verses from the Wisdom in a mesmerizing raspy bass.

Horatio, Delis and the keeper were engaged in quiet conversation apart from the others.

“I don't understand,” Horatio Maliver was saying. “At least she gave me something once. But you two, you follow her like tame pups after a full teat. You're not so deluded you think she may let you suckle, are you?”

“What I am to her, she is to me,”
the keeper said.
“Quiet strength and subtle beauty is always simple and done.”

“The Wisdom.” Horatio Maliver sneered. “And what do you get for your troubles? Not what your blood-licking fellows get for theirs, that's for sure.”

“She who comes from the night must learn to enjoy the sun's glare.”

“And you're a very understanding chap.” Horatio laughed.

Had the keeper ever had any expectations from her? Had he waited patiently for her to realize those expectations?

Horatio Maliver shifted targets. “And you, rot spawn, why would you choose her as your donnis?”

Delis didn't answer.

“I've watched you. You have a weakness for a sound pair of teats and a round arse.”

“The heart's reasons are for the goddess's ears alone,”
Jol said.

“Is she really your pet?” Horatio asked. “Or are you her fetching mongrel instead?”

“What would a mangy dog like you know of the donnis honor?” Delis spat. “You're not even worthy of a rotting leper.”

“I wouldn't speak too loudly, if I were you. You stink worse than a leper to Sariah's very fine nose.”

“Wise is he who refrains from judging the unknown. Understanding will favor him.”

“Poor blood-licking keeper.” Horatio pouted mockingly. “What is it that you keep? A vigil? A pathetic, slobbering wait for what? A taste of her blood?”

The color rose in the keeper's cheeks. Delis's hands fisted by her sides. What sick pleasure did Horatio Maliver derive from taunting her friends?

“Can't you see?” Horatio said. “She despises your blood-licking ways. She abhors your executioner's blood. She has already chosen her beast. He's no better than you, but she doesn't care. She flaunts her indulgence before you like the carter waves the carrot in the asses’ noses. She's like a splinter: The more you scratch the itch, the deeper she sinks into your soul.”

Sariah was furious with Horatio Maliver, for mocking her friends, for stirring matters that were best left alone. Too late. She saw the provocation in Delis's blue and violet eyes, the hurt in the keeper's frown. Horatio had stabbed them in the gut and left the wounds open to fester. Furious, she twisted the bracelet around her wrist. The sight of the coupled rings adorning Loyalty's link enraged her even more.

Sariah couldn't explain the need that fueled her actions. Was it outrage against Horatio Maliver or a loyal defense of her friends? Was it an act of revenge or an act of justice? Was it a sudden settlement between her oaths and her obligations or a spontaneous release of her own dark cravings?

In three steps, she knelt between Delis and the keeper and laid a hand on each of their shoulders. She closed her eyes and summoned all the gratefulness that dwelt in her being, the devotion she felt for those who had extended to her even the strangest forms of friendship, the passion she had for their lives.

It came out in the form of affection, the emotion she was most used to conveying. And even as it poured from her palms, it flared with new and unique furor. There was something self-indulgent about the act, a tenuous flirt with sedition to the oaths she had made to Kael, to the stones. But this moment was due. It was fair and necessary to cure the wounds Horatio Maliver had inflicted, to enable her friends to heal themselves, to free herself from every instance of neglect and regret. It felt right.

Delis and the keeper gasped in unison. Their bodies tensed and trembled beneath her hands.
Affection. Passion. Elation.
She allowed the bulk of her emotions to pour out, until the keeper's eyes bulged and Delis's throat issued a whimpering moan. In the end, Delis's unfocused eyes and the keeper's white-lipped release proved Horatio Maliver's taunting right and wrong. It didn't, however, prove her friends’ loyalty lacking or her own trust misplaced.

The explosion cracked in the air like the strike of a whip.

“What was that?” Sariah asked.

“Over here.” The keeper was already sprinting towards the source, veering off the trail and into the wintering forest. Steam was issuing from a tiny fracture on the ground next to an old oak tree. A bit of bluish liquid bubbled from the ground, a smallish fountain that froze on contact with the frigid air.

“I've never seen anything like it,” Delis said.

Horatio Maliver shook his head. “Maybe lightning struck here?”

Sariah put a fistful of frozen dirt to her nose. She didn't recognize the scent. It was irritating and sulfurous, like the rot, but it was also saltier, like brine. The little fountain sputtered, fizzled, and died.

“I guess that's all there is to see here.” Delis followed the keeper back to Torkel and the Hounds guarding the trail.

Sariah was about to do the same when the ground swelled under her feet. Within seconds, she had risen four or five spans on a thin bubble of frozen earth. A gurgle resonated from within the ground. A jet of blue gas shot from the expanding hole in the bubble's middle.

The oak groaned and tilted to one side. Half its branches snapped in the air. Sariah grabbed on to a root. It broke. She dropped into the swelling's deep crease. For a moment, she lost sight of the sky, buried in the shifting crust. Smothered, she recalled the snail's spastic gut, the box's oppressing darkness. She tried to scream but inhaled a mouthful of frigid dirt instead.

The earth rose beneath her back, shooting her upwards. The sky. She struggled to reach the surface. A face. She groped for a handhold. Horatio Maliver? A stern pull of her hair. Pain. The stink of ozone. Light again.

“Hold on!”

They tumbled down the side of the swell and hit the icy ground hard. Clinging to each other, they scurried away from the thing. It had grown as tall as a tower and as wide as a pond, and it gargled loudly like a full-throated pelican.

Horatio groaned. She realized she had landed on top of him, entrenched between his arms. His heart was beating wildly against her own.

Delis came running from the trail. “My donnis, are you all right?”

“I think so,” Sariah rasped.

Sariah pushed herself to her feet and shook the dirt from her mantle. Horatio was slower getting up. She offered a hand.

“For a skinny thing, you've got some weight to your bones.” He took her hand and gave her a sober gray stare. “I thought you were gone, wiser.”

“Me too.” She helped him up.

Horatio stared at the pulsing boil. “What by the rot is it?”

Sariah was looking at him. “By the rot, I have no idea.”