Stonewiser (62 page)

“Open it,” Sariah said to the guard.

“Are you sure? She bites and scratches like a wild cat.”

“I'm sure.” Sariah stepped into the cage, scattering the rats with her cautious steps. “Belana? Are you all right?”

The creature who struck from the shadows wore horror's face. The ashen pallor, the gruesome snarl, the guttural growl that turned into a hiss through bared fangs sent Sariah tumbling against the bars.

“Don't hurt her.” Sariah stopped the guard. “Your light. It bothers her.”

“The woman's blind, my lady.”

“But the light hurts her.”

Indeed, Belana was clawing at her eyes as if the torch were a relentless sun.

“Is that better?” Sariah asked when the guard withdrew. “I've brought what you need.”

“Do you have it?” Belana sniffed the air like a she-wolf. “Did you bring it?”

“Right here.” Sariah placed the prism in Belana's anxious hands. The sister clutched the accursed thing against her breast and sobbed like a weeping widow. Sariah hesitated before patting the wretch's back. Despite the spectrum of her terrible memories, Belana seemed frail and alone in the cage's darkness. Her arms locked around Sariah's waist. Kael was by her side in an instant, but Sariah waved him off.

“She's dead,” Belana whimpered. “Little sister's dead.”

Sariah didn't know quite what to say.

“It was awful. We felt it. It hurt. He killed her.” Belana's nostrils flared in Kael's direction. “That putrid stink of a mongrel killed her. We'll scratch his eyes out, we swear.”

“No, nay, please don't.” Wordlessly, Sariah pleaded with Kael for forbearance. “He thought Telana was my enemy, you see. He thought you wanted to kill me.”

“We didn't want to. I promise we didn't want to.”

“I know, but he's my mate. He thought you hurt me.”

Belana wrinkled her nose. “Stonewisers don't have mates.”

“I do,” Sariah said. “I couldn't tell you before, because I couldn't speak. Remember? He went looking for Grimly, but he found you and Telana instead.”

“The light,” Belana said. “It hurt. We needed the prism. We had to have it.”

“You have it. You're fine now.”

“We were one in the womb, all alone with the stone. What will we do now?”

“It's all right. I'll take care of you.”

Kael mouthed a soundless but definitive no.

“You won't like us.” Belana sobbed. “The mistress said it. What we need. Nobody but she will give it.”

Grimly had probably been right about that.

Sariah stilled her churning stomach. “We'll have to find another way. A little cream, perhaps some cake?”

“Cake tastes nice to the tongue,” Belana said. “But it does nothing for the belly's growl. We are what we are.”

That's what they had been raised to believe. This poor oddity, how could she believe otherwise? Why would she consider herself anything other than what Grimly said she and her sister were? And even if Belana tried, could she, Sariah, overcome her own revulsion to keep an oath?

She held Belana's grisly face between her hands. She stared at the ghoulish complexion, at the bizarre sightless eyes, at the feral expressions on her quasi-human face. She inhaled the scent of ripe olives and lard, seeking her senses’ acceptance. It wasn't easy. The woman's smell provoked her bile. She had lost so much to the sisters. She asked so much of Belana. Could she give in similar measure?

Compassion. Sariah summoned it, from where, she didn't know.

“Ooooooooh.” Belana's lips puckered in wonderment.

“We can be who we want to be,” Sariah said.

Belana's hot tears soaked through Sariah's tunic and drenched her belly. All Sariah could do was cradle the odd creature who was going to help her to find both the tale and her son.

Forty-five

 

“T
ELL ME AGAIN,”
Sariah said. “Where was the mistress going? What did she intend to do? Did she travel with my baby?”

“Baby?” Belana grimaced a puzzled frown.

“Wiserling. Did Mistress Grimly travel with my wiserling?”

Belana turned to Kael, fangs bared in a chilling smile. “More, please?”

Sariah cautioned herself not to look, but her eyes meandered to Kael's bloody hands, picking the brains of a slaughtered piglet and offering Belana a share.

“No core?” Belana asked.

“No core,” Kael said.

“Shame.” Belana pouted. “A wiserling's core is the best part.”

Sariah stumbled to the bucket and wretched.

“Sorry,” Belana mumbled through bloody teeth.

“It's hard for Sariah,” Kael said.

“It's delicious for us,” Belana said.

Belana's feeding was the foulest of spectacles, one that evoked memories Sariah would rather forget. But Belana had been starving and Sariah knew that the woman couldn't be of any use unless her basic needs were satisfied. If she would just finish quickly. A sliver of pure red was all that remained in the bracelet's ninth crystal, a tiny dot filling up fast. Sariah was hard pressed to restrain her urgency. But at least Belana was calm now, looking much better.

They had found a small, dark storage room in the Hall of Numbers’ cellar. It was clean, warm and rodent free. Fresh straw piled with clean blankets in a corner to make for a comfortable nest and the single light of a shielded candle didn't bother Belana's eyes. The food selection had been Kael's idea. It wasn't to Sariah's liking, but it was a damn good choice considering the alternatives.

“I think you've had plenty.” Sariah wiped Belana's face with a wet rag. “About the wiserlings. Where's Grimly going?”

Belana shrugged. “Bright place. Cold, wet, bad. We cried and cried with the hurt. We needed it.” She kissed the prism in her hands and turned to Kael. “We think your eyeball would taste good. We'd eat it, if you give it to us.”

“No, thanks,” Kael said. “I think I'd rather keep it.”

“Thirsty.” Belana squeezed Sariah's breast. “Is there any left for us?”

Sariah fought the urge to slap her. Instead, she took a deep breath and removed Belana's hand from her breast. “My milk's long dried up.”

“Pity. We liked mother's milk. We drank it all the time. From the stonewisers. It goes sour when they die.”

Sariah gagged.

Kael intervened. “How do you grow the wiserlings?”

“We were made for it. Before us, the stone was only a hound for the blood. But the mistress, she found a new way.”

It was just what Sariah had concluded that fateful night at the Mating Hall. Grimly had adapted the stone's unique power in an attempt to create the powerful stonewisers she coveted. It was a trespass as old as the execration, a foul deed prohibited as early as Meliahs’ pact. Sariah had felt the prism's struggle in her own flesh. She didn't dare consider the effects of that struggle on her child.

“Will you let us grow more wiserlings for you?” Belana asked. “We can grow them good. We promise. We make only a few mistakes.”

It was Kael who answered. “No more growing wiserlings.”

“Will you kill us then?” The sightless eyes were trained on Sariah's face.

“Growing wiserlings is not the only thing you can do,” Sariah said. “We'll find something better for you to do, something that doesn't hurt people.”

“You think we could do that?”

“That and more. But right now, I need you to help me.”

“How?” Belana asked.

“Can you wise stone?”

Belana's lips curved down in a sad expression. “We can't. The stone doesn't like us that way. What we do is more like the opposite of wising.”

It was a strange way of putting it, but Sariah suspected it was the truth. “It's fine, Belana, don't be sad. Even if you can't wise stone, you can still help me. I must ask a great favor of you.” She whispered the rest.

“You want me to do what?” Belana croaked. “Are you crazy, little sister?”

“This is very, very important.”

Sariah sat on the cellar's floor and braced herself against the wall. She wished she had a different alternative. She also wished Mia was around for a loan of strength. But Delis hadn't come back yet and Sariah couldn't afford to wait any longer.

Belana shook her head. “But you didn't like it before—”

“There's no other choice.”

“What do you mean to do?” Kael knelt by her side. “Is it safe?”

It was far from safe. But what else was she supposed to do?

She lifted her tunic and exposed her navel. She took the stone from Belana, who let go of it reluctantly. Sariah's hands were shaking. She wasn't able to aim the prism's sharp point, mostly because of pure terror of the thing. She was liable to pierce herself badly if she kept at it.

“Hold this.” She gave the stone to Kael. “Place it against my navel's center. Here.”

“I want no part of this. If this is going to hurt you—”

“Please, Kael. Ars. Our son. This might be the only way.”

His eyes were storming with doubt, but he bit his lips and steadied his hands. The point of the prism hovered over her navel's deepest fold, a contact so slight that Sariah could barely feel it.

“Hold it steady,” she said. “Now you.”

“But we don't want to,” Belana said.

Not even in her wildest nightmares had Sariah fathomed that she would ask for it. “Belana, a lot is riding on this. Please. I need you to hurt me.”

The first bolt of the prism's power left Sariah's ears ringing. The second jolt reminded all corners of her body of the meaning of pain. By the third bolt, she had broken into a cold sweat, her belly button was oozing blood, and she was in danger of losing consciousness.

Belana begged. “We don't want to do it no more.”

“One more time.” Sariah wiped the sweat from her brow. “I'll catch it this time.”

Damn the stupid bracelet. It had been sapping her wising essence for days now, emptying her power from her core like a sucking drain.

“This is the last time,” Kael said. “Do you hear me?”

“Do it,” Sariah said, before her body rebelled and ran away from her mind's tyranny.

The jolt zapped her like lightning. Her arms and legs jerked. Her joints echoed the power's buzz with a throbbing ache. The world went dark. A single glimmer of power uncoiled from her depths and slithered at the very edge of oblivion. Sariah pounced on it. She rode it like some unwieldy massive serpent. She held on to it, spurred it, until it sparked one of her links to life, and then a second and a third.

The scent is a spark of reckless life,
she remembered Tirsis's words. Sariah was using the prism's torturing jolt to spark her sputtering stonewiser's power. In turn, her own wavering life force was fueling the stone. It was an uneven exchange, one that could kill her at any moment, but it was worth the risk if it yielded the tale.

It wasn't working too well. She had to modify her approach to compensate for her lack of power. She collected the remnants of the prism's power humming in her joints and slung them back into the prism. She held her breath. She hoped the prism wouldn't refract the huge blow back to her.

A deep amber light flickered in the stone and strengthened with her body's contact. Slowly, the glow stabilized, sustaining a shimmering luminosity. Thank Meliahs. All she had to do now was keep the stone going, stay alive, and of course, wise the damn tale.