Stonewiser (59 page)

She traced the intricate lines of the ivy of knowledge edging the brooch, the intertwining vines of light that radiated from the black onyx, the four garnets on the subsidiary bosses, the honeycomb of silver filigree. She craved the brooch's presence between her breasts, the cold metal standing like a shield to her battered heart.

She shoved it back into Lexia's hands. “I don't ever want to see that thing again.”

“But Sariah—”

“The answer is no, Lexia, and no again.”

“But the stonewisers, they took a huge risk, they voted for you. Won't you at least think about it?”

“I can't come back to the Guild. I just can't.”

“Sariah, we need you. Those Hounds are ready to slaughter us at any time. We don't know what to do about the Domainers streaming into the Goodlands. The chill is never ending, the crops are sure to fail. And then there are those stories…” Lexia actually shivered.

“What stories?”

“There are tales, that stonewisers are no longer welcomed in some places. They say that Meliahs’ own, the stone eater, has returned to clear the land of stonewisers. They said Grimly sent a party to investigate the claims. They never returned.”

“Rumors. Who can believe anything that Grimly does or says?”

“Things aren't as they used to be,” Lexia insisted. “The world's changing. We're changing too. Think about it. Maybe that seal just gives stonewisers courage.”

Courage? Not when panic was running rampant and the keep boiled with frightening, improbable tales. The seal wasn't giving Sariah any courage at the moment either, but then again, she wasn't really a stonewiser anymore. Was she?

“You taught us to stand on our own,” Lexia said. “Did you know we made our own way out of the Mating Hall?”

Was that true?

“We took advantage of the siege,” Lexia said. “We followed your plan. We lit the fire at the height of the last attack. It wasn't the keep's guard we met at the courtyard. It was those creature warrior things—”

A knock startled them both. Lexia went to answer the door.

“I've got a message for Stonewiser Sariah,” she heard a man's voice say.

“I'm sorry, but she is sick and can't receive you.” Lexia began to close the door.

“But it's urgent,” the messenger said.

“I'm fine, Lexia.” Sariah stepped to the door. “What is it?”

“Mistress Lorian summons you right away.”

What did the witch want with her now? Sariah couldn't hazard a guess, but she had her own reasons for wanting to see Lorian.

“I'll go. Do you know what this is about?”

The grim expression on the messenger's face chilled whatever little warmth remained in Sariah's body.

“Something bad has happened,” he said. “The mistress says it's something terrible.”

“I'm not sure you should be up and about,” Lexia said.

“It could be a trap,” the keeper grumbled.
“She who walks without caution risks the final tumble.”

“You and your men are my caution,” Sariah said. “And I'm not going because Lorian summoned me. I have questions for her and her friends.”

Sariah, Lexia, the keeper and her Hound escort were following Lorian's messenger down the keep's busy main lane. Sariah was having trouble keeping up with the others. Her breath was short, her heart was faltering, but she had to find a way to secure the keep while she figured out the rest. Sariah didn't know what was more surprising—the sheer numbers crowding the keep or the astounding mix of people bustling about despite the frigid weather. Hounds, Domainers, Goodlanders and stonewisers were living together in an uneasy truce, a miraculous if nerve-racking sight.

The hostility among the different factions was palpable in the air. But the changes in the keep were almost shocking. Above the gates, the Guild's usually lonely black and gold standard was flanked by the Hounds’ five-bladed slash banner and the blue gonfalon of the house of Ars. Even if Kael wasn't there, the sight of his pennant warmed her heart. It was surrounded by other Domainer banners, including the yellow one with the three embroidered tupelo trees. The forester was playing her game. The green banner with the massive “T” on the oak's trunk gave it away as Targamon's new standard. Good old Mara. She had taken the legacy to heart. When had it all come to this?

Lorian met them in the back alley as high-strung as a charging bull. “No one must know. Do you hear me? If this gets out, we're doomed. Doomed.”

“Know what?” Sariah said.

“This is a day of penance and lamentation.” Olden appeared out of nowhere with Uma in tow. “Meliahs weeps at the sight of our wickedness. We must leave, before it's too late.”

“Leave?” Uma asked. “You mean abandon the keep?”

“Hush,” Lorian said. “Someone might hear you. How did you two find out about this?”

“About what?” Uma asked.

“It's all her fault.” The point of Olden's newly sculpted staff aimed at Sariah.

“He's right.” Lorian clutched Sariah's arm and dragged her along. “If you hadn't gone on about lies in the stones, if you hadn't caused a war and brought all these strangers to the keep, this would have never happened.” She halted abruptly before a crack in the cobblestones and yanked Sariah to her knees. “Look!”

Sariah couldn't believe her eyes.

“Are you happy now?” Lorian said. “For the first time in the Guild's history, the rot has breached the keep.”

The rot had breached the Guild's keep. With the wall so powerfully wised, it didn't seem possible. Sariah stared at the small lesions bubbling faintly among the cobblestones. At least it was the weaker kind of rot, the easier form to contain, like the lesser lesions she had seen at Targamon. Sariah struggled with the notion. The rot had defeated the wisings of generations and now simmered like an innocent little rain puddle just a few steps from the Hall of Stones?

She wondered if Meliahs and all her sisters had abandoned the land for good.

“Saba?” The keeper gestured with his head to one end of the alleyway.

Sariah's throat barely managed a dry gulp. A large group of Uma's stonewisers were blocking the way.

“I said nobody should know about this,” Lorian spat. “Why are they here?”

“Olden told me we might need them,” Uma said defensively.

Sariah eyed the other way out of the alleyway. Her hopes were for naught. Olden's stonewisers blocked her path with hefty chunks of stones in their hands. She wasn't sure she was going to get to ask her questions after all.

“Stone her,” someone cried out from the crowd.

“She's brought the rot to the keep.”

Sariah's voice was a hoarse whisper. “Keeper?”

“Wise is he who survives the trap, for he shall never be caught again.”
The keeper's whistle strummed Sariah's eardrums.

The window shutters on both sides of the alleyway flew open. The few doors opening onto the narrow lane blew from their hinges. Armed Hounds were everywhere, inching down the lane with their backs against the walls, deploying at either side of Sariah, perched on the window sills, standing along the distant rooftops wielding claws, arrows and spears.

A massacre. That's what Sariah had on her hands. One wrong move, from anybody, and the uneasy truce that held the keep together would be over. Panic bubbled in her belly like a ready stew. She surveyed the faces in the alley. The stonewisers were angry, resentful and bitter. The Hounds stood rigidly, ready for the fight.

“Wait,” Sariah said aloud. “We can fix this.”

“Fix the rot?” Lorian said. “How?”

“There's a group of Domainers trained to fix this weaker kind of rot,” Sariah explained. “They're from Targamon. Some of them might even be here. We don't have to abandon the keep.”

“Are you sure?” Lorian asked. “Will you swear?”

“On my stonewiser's oath.”

“Can't you see that she's lying?” Olden said. “She brought the rot to the keep. What are you waiting for? Stone her!”

“So you still believe the old legends?” Sariah let the question hang in the air for a moment. “Please, Olden. Times have changed. We all know that the rot doesn't travel on the bottom of the Domainers’ feet. We can fix this. All this time, you've been playing your own game.”

“This might be a game to you,” Olden said with an aggrieved look on his face. “Me, I'm for the good of the Guild—”

“Save it.” She had to sound confident. “I overheard you at Arron's tent.”

“Overheard me?”

“At Arron's tent?” A few gasps came from the crowd.

Sariah was thinking on her feet. “I was there the night that you, Uma and Lorian visited Arron in his camp. What was it that you promised Arron after the others left his tent? Ah. Yes. You promised you would try to talk some sense into them.”

“Preposterous. I'd never try to—”

“You have been trying to persuade them to join Arron all this time, and when that failed, you tried to empty the keep of stonewisers, a move that could only weaken the defenses here and allow Arron to retake the keep. That would have been a sweet triumph over me, not to mention Grimly.”

It was Lorian who bit on Sariah's lure. “How exactly has he been trying to empty the keep?”

She had only a few moments to transform a convoluted turn of events into irrefutable proof. How? Tell the story. Quickly. Make the case.

“This place that I just mentioned, Targamon. It's a farm out in the borderlands. The family there never looked kindly on Arron's Shield. One day, the rot's shallow lesions appeared in the backfields. There had been no earth tremors, no failed fields, no indications of rot until that very day.”

“What happened then?” Uma asked.

“Even as the rot arrived in Targamon, it was a lighter version. The bushes continued flowering and the soil was fertile. Still, the farm was ruined. The laborers left in droves. In lieu of the orders, the Shield came and took the last of the seed. Coincidence, you think?” She met the riveted stares. “I don't think so. Instead, I ask, how come the farms and villages that refuse to help Arron have a higher incidence of this lesser version of the rot?”

“How does this have anything to do with what's happening at the keep?” Lorian asked.

Instead of answering Lorian's questions, Sariah asked her own. “How was Olden so quickly informed when you found the rot? Did you send a messenger to him?”

Lorian's head swiveled on her wiry neck. “No.”

“Then how did he know to show up here? Why did he bring Uma along, and all these other stonewisers?” She didn't wait for a response. “Because he knew. Because he decided to use the same strategy Arron has been using to control villages and farms—planting rot roots on the lands of those who defy him. It was Olden who carried the rot root into the keep, the only possible way of bringing the rot inside these thoroughly wised walls.”

“Olden planted a rot root in the keep?” Lorian's mouth wouldn't close.

“How else does this lesser version of the rot make sense?”

The crowd went into a stunned silence. A gust of icy wind blew through the narrow lane, chilling Sariah and the crowd. Anger rose from the alleyway like vapor steaming from a boiling pot. It happened suddenly.

“Stone him! Stone him!” the crowd began to chant.

“He should be quartered first,” someone else yelled.

“Wait,” Sariah said. “What you want is justice—”

An irate Olden confronted his followers. “Are you so stupid as to believe her word over mine? Did I not tell you about the seal she forced on you? Can't you see this is not your own doing, but rather the seal working its strange power on you?”

Sariah couldn't let the notion go any further. “Did I call you here today? Were you forced to come to this alleyway and stone me out of a sudden compulsion? Did you hear strange thoughts in your head? Did you experience some sudden decrease in will that made your actions possible? No? Neither did I.”

Olden tried to speak. “But—”

“I came here because Lorian called me, with words, brought by a messenger. She called me. Somebody called you here as well, not with a mysterious seal that somehow affects your reason but with words, with rumors, perhaps even with innuendos. Why? Because someone wanted you to kill me. I ask you, why would I try to command you to kill me? How will that serve my purposes? And if I have this power over you through this mysterious seal, why are we here at all? Why haven't I asked you to kill Olden instead? Or Lorian, or Uma for that matter?