Stonewiser (65 page)

Forty-seven

 

“L
EXIA, GIVE ME
the brooch,” Sariah said.

“What?” Lexia stared at her, openmouthed.

“The brooch,” Sariah said impatiently. “Do you have it?”

“Oh.” Lexia fumbled through her pockets until she found it. “Yes, here it is.”

It was Kael who took the brooch from Lexia. “Are you sure you want it?” he asked. “You've fought so hard to shed it.”

Sariah met his stare. “I am what I am. And this is the only way I know.”

Kael's kind green eye dominated his gaze when he relinquished the brooch. Sariah felt like a fake. Here she was, accepting the brooch, when she didn't have a lick of stonewiser power running through her veins. She wasn't wearing a stonewiser's robe, so instead of pinning the brooch between her breasts in the usual fashion, she clasped it on the mantle knot over her shoulder. It felt strange, heavy and baroque against the fur-trimmed mantle. But it was firmly on.

Then, as if she hadn't done herself enough wrong, she walked past the Council members, through the massive doors and down the jet aisle, the only route allowable by the wising trick entrapping her. Her friends followed. Lorian and Uma tripped over each other as they scurried to catch up.

She stopped short of the dais and turned to face the restless audience. Once, the Hall of Stones had been filled to capacity with black-robed wisers and pledges. Now less than a fourth of those remained, scattered in small groups among mostly empty benches. Their smaller numbers were no consolation to Sariah. The last time she had spoken to this crowd she had gotten a man killed. She had never formally addressed her fellow stonewisers, never dreamed she would, least of all on a day when she was nothing more than an ordinary woman forsaken by Meliahs and deserted by the stones. She was suddenly very frightened of the stonewisers before her, of the expectations she spied in their eyes.

“Go on.” Kael stood behind her like one of the sages’ statues. “They're listening.”

She didn't have a lot of time for talk. She took a deep breath and tried to suppress the tremor from her voice. “Do we all agree that this election is binding?”

“It was fairly done,” someone said.

“We voted freely,” someone else added.

“You said you didn't want to rule the keep,” Uma said.

“I said that, and I meant it. But if I've been—” the word got stuck in her throat “—elected, and if we all agree, then it follows that my decisions should be accepted by all the stonewisers in the keep.”

“That's why we elected you,” Lexia said.

“But you rejected rule,” Uma reminded her.

“I might have been a bit premature.”

Kael's broken eyebrow climbed high on his forehead.

The fingers on her right hand had gone numb. She needed the goddess's touch as much as she needed a hefty drink to steady her voice. In the absence of both, she resorted to pure confrontational bravado.

“And you?” She challenged the stonewisers in the chamber. “Do you agree to stand down and follow my directions?”

It was a testament to the direness of the Guild's situation that the majority of the stonewisers present murmured a muted assent.

“Very well, then. In my capacity as the keep's first elected ruler, I'll pronounce my first decree.” There. She sounded firm enough.

Kael stared at her in open puzzlement. Lexia, the two councilors and the rest of the stonewisers were perched on her every word. Even the keeper and the Hounds seemed interested, an astonishing break in their usually stoic demeanor.

“In accordance with the Guild's laws, I'll appoint one of the councilors as my deputy.”

She managed to shock them into total silence for a moment or two. Then Uma and Lorian exploded into questions.

“One among us?”

“Who?”

“The one best suited for the task,” Sariah said, sounding more assured by the moment. But who would that be?

“I swear to do as you say,” Uma pledged, forestalling Lorian.

So it was to be Uma first. Sariah didn't have time for a long elaborate argument, so she went for the kill right away. “I suppose you'll have to stop courting the little girl Mia then. She's just that, a little girl. Her kind of healing has nothing to do with yours.”

The words were as effective as bursting stones.

“Did you approach the abomination?” Lorian's brows knotted in a fearful frown. “Did you speak to that misbegotten thing? We agreed that no hall would pursue new pledges.”

Uma stuttered. “I didn't—”

“She who has the power will rule the world with her might,”
Sariah said. “Isn't that what you said to Mia?”

Lorian hissed. “You did approach the accursed girl!”

“She's a natural healer,” Uma said. “She belongs in the Hall of Healers.”

Sariah seized the opportunity. “Who can blame Uma for promoting her hall's interests? It's only natural that wisers of the same hall stick together to protect their hall. The Hall of Healers is famous for hunting in packs. Do we remember to which hall Grimly belonged before becoming the Prime Hand?”

It had been nothing more than a hunch, but she knew she had hit home when Uma's golden complexion paled to silvery gray.

“Did the Prime Hand ask you to join Lorian and Olden so she could keep tabs on them?” Sariah asked. “Are you reporting to her about the situation here? Did she leave you behind as a plant to do her bidding?”

Gasps and whispers filled the hall and grew into outrage.

“Grimly's minion,” someone cried from the stands.

“We don't want a traitor at the top,” someone else said.

And just like that, Uma's chances were squelched. It was amazing how the facts had come together like the pieces of a wooden puzzle. Sariah had considered all she knew about Lorian and Uma, her observations, her hunches, the sequence of events.

“Uma should be stoned and quartered,” someone shouted.

Sariah's blood drained from her veins. She didn't want another execution, least of all in the Hall of Stones.

“We're charged with the stone truth,” she said with steel in her voice. “You might decide after a proper hearing that this woman should be punished for her actions, but we can't afford to repeat the same mistakes. No more mob lynchings. We must return fair rule to the keep with the justice of our actions.”

A murmur of agreement swept the hall. Uma was taken into custody, but she wasn't harmed or dragged away. Sariah experienced a new thrill—her voice had been heard and heeded. A sense of power flushed her body with warmth almost as seductive, sweet and pervasive as the heat of a stone trance. Then the bracelet squeezed tighter and her whole hand went numb from the wrench.

“So it is to be me.” Lorian tried to conceal the triumph in her voice.

No time for dillydallying. No inclination for mercy. Sariah shot to kill. “How long have you known about Grimly's trials at the Mating Hall?”

“Me?” Lorian stammered.

“My guess is you've known for a while. I think you knew as soon as Leandro's game disappeared from the Hall of Numbers.”

“Leandro's game?” Lexia asked.

“Only a brilliant mind from the Hall of Numbers could have created a wising as precise and logical as the one found in Leandro's game. I should think that since you've been the First of your hall for over twenty years, Lorian, you know what I'm talking about. Did you notice it gone? Was it stolen from you? Or did you give it to Grimly to aid her cause?”

“Is she in cahoots with Grimly?” Lexia's question was an accusation.

“It appeared so,” Sariah said. “Until I started thinking. What could the First of the Hall of Numbers do if her hall's sacred treasure disappeared under her watch? Denouncing the theft would be an admission of stupidity, gross neglect and incompetence. It would also cost someone like Lorian not just her position as the First of the Hall of Numbers, but her Council seat.”

“Did you lose the teacher's treasure?” Lexia asked. “Answer me, mistress. I belong to the Hall of Numbers. We have a right to know.”

“A right?” Lorian scoffed. “What has happened to the Guild when a ragtag wiser like you thinks you can question me?”

“Times have changed,” Lexia said. “We must all ad just.”

The chamber rallied behind her, including Lorian's own escort.

“I'm not incompetent,” Lorian said. “I didn't neglect the vaults. I've been a good First for my hall. When all the halls have scattered, the Hall of Numbers endures whole. Will no one see that? I didn't give the game to Grimly. She took it. It was there one day when we toured the vaults together. It wasn't there the next. I couldn't very well go to the hall and announce that our treasure had disappeared, but I couldn't accuse the Prime Hand either. So I did the next best thing. I started looking for it.”

And for her, Sariah realized. Lorian would have gone after Sariah, because she suspected Grimly wanted Sariah to find the teacher's treasure. It made sense. Grimly had stolen Leandro's game, Eneis's carved druses, from the Hall of Numbers and put it into play precisely because she wanted the stone reunited. Sariah had been Grimly's tool all along.

Beware of he who plays the stone and not the game,
the old crone in Alabara had said.
His tales are your demise.
A caught Domainer roamer would have been easy to turn for someone as cunning as Grimly. It was all becoming clear. Grimly's scam. Arron's catch.

She met Kael's eyes. He had figured it out as well. Grimly had turned the Domainer roamer Leandro and forced him to take Eneis's game into the Domain to bait Sariah. The ordeal caused Leandro to go mad, but still, he put the tale out there and Sariah followed it dutifully. Arron must have discovered Grimly's plan, at least in part. He knew enough to track Leandro. So he sent his Shield into the Domain to find Leandro, and once found, held him prisoner as evidence of Grimly's plot.

“Ilian took you to see Leandro,” Sariah said. “Uma and Olden went with you. But Leandro is completely mad now, and you weren't convinced.”

“And now, after playing all your games, you want to rule the keep?” Lexia was unable to conceal her contempt. “I don't think so, mistress. There's no vote that will ever elect you.”

A murmur of agreement rose from the stonewisers in the hall.

It struck Sariah hard how quickly allegiances changed in the keep, how fast Uma, Lorian and even Lexia had positioned themselves for a quick ascent to power. It must have struck Lorian even harder, because her head hung low on her stringy neck.

Sariah had succeeded at splitting Vargas's proverbial timber, but so far she had only managed to speed destruction's crafty ways. She was keenly aware of the time. The numbness was advancing up her wrist. The little she had gained could be lost in a moment's balance.

On the other hand, what would happen to the Goodlands if the Guild crumbled? What would happen to a leaderless Guild? How could she favor the Domain over the Goodlands or over the land beyond the Bastions without a trace of remorse? Could she just let the Guild die?

In that instant, she had the wherewithal to wonder if the seal was influencing her thinking, propelling her to protect the lives and livelihoods of stonewisers across the centuries. She supposed anything was possible when considering Zeminaya and the sages. But she was different from them, and seal or not, her thoughts and emotions were clear. The Blood could only thrive in unity.

She might have been sealed with someone else's legacy, but looking at her fellow stonewisers’ expectant faces, she realized that she had her own legacy to impart. She believed in the power of a united people—Domainers, Hounds, Goodlanders, stonewisers—to defeat the rot, restore the land and return to Meliahs’ ways, labor and sweat. She had been elected by her fellow stonewisers. Elected. That was no intrusion trick, no sages’ meddling.

She made up her mind. She took the wrinkled parchment out of her pocket and held it up with her left hand, because her right hand wasn't working anymore.

“Do you know what this is?”

No one spoke. There was no room for long explanations or lengthy discourse. She had to do this now and move on, or risk forsaking everything she had pledged to protect, everything she cared about.

“This is an old-fashioned document. It was addressed to the Council, yet I have a copy of it, and others, apparently many people, have copies of it as well. I wonder—is there a person in this hall who hasn't read it yet?”

Nobody met her gaze. She unfolded the parchment and read it aloud.

“I, Sariah, free stonewiser of the one Blood, formerly of the Guild's Hall of Scribes’ sixty-sixth folio, hereby swear and affirm that I have wised the seven twin stones before credible witnesses and that the tales confirmed that we are all of the one Blood. It is a discovery which frees all of us to reconcile, to stop the bloodshed, to build a new tale together; for what is the call of the stones if not justice for all?”

Absolute silence met her reading, until at last Lexia cleared her throat and broke the chamber's tense stillness. “Anybody who had access to the Council could have copied that document.”

“Are you saying that you know who copied it?” Sariah asked.

“I've been in the Mating Hall for five years,” Lexia said. “I couldn't have.”

“Yet you knew of it.”

“No—”

“When we first met you told me you had hope until they caught me. Perhaps your hope came from reading this?”

“My hope came from word of mouth, rumor.”

“As you once said to me, information was hard to come by at the Mating Hall.”

“The goddess spare me, Sariah. I'm your friend. You don't think I could have written all those copies, do you?”

“I'm trying to make a point. Somebody capable of commanding hundreds of copies thought of it. The head of a hall, perhaps?”

Uma started. “But that would be—”

“Treason?” Sariah smiled. “Aye.”

“Do you know what could happen to a treasonous hall?” Lorian said. “It could be disbanded, scattered, ruled out of existence.”

“Yet someone thought the message in this document was important enough to run such risks.”

“How does this have anything to do with who rules the keep next?” Uma asked.