Weight of Stone (24 page)

It seemed outrageous to him, but his master nodded his head thoughtfully. “A possible scenario. Unlikely, but possible, and in truth a crazed mind could believe such a thing, and take steps to cause it. It is also possible that this Vineart, whoever he is, wishes not to rouse the gods but destroy them. But what purpose that might serve, when they are already silent, and few believe, much less worship their altars any longer …”

“Not the gods,” Jerzy said quietly, the realization unfolding in his head like new leaves uncurling. The bindings that tied it all together, the knots and snags, the memory of what he had seen and heard: the merchants in Aleppan, worrying about ships lost and taxes due; Kaï’s voice breaking as he spoke of his sister, his father’s madness; Mahl’s sadness looking at a rosebush and speaking of the ones her father had uprooted;
the voice of the shopkeeper suggesting that he, Jerzy, take over another Vineart’s yards … it all unraveled in a sudden understanding that made no sense at all. “Us.”

He lifted his gaze to his master’s, and saw no understanding in that granite-sharp face.

“A chip here, a crack there, piece by piece, until it all comes apart and shatters in fear and distrust. He seeks to destroy the Vin Lands.”

E
VEN ONCE
M
ALECH
understood, and accepted it as the only explanation that fit, they still had no idea who might wish it, or how to prevent the suspicion from becoming truth.

Master Malech had dismissed him after their discussion, the Vineart mumbling over the map on his desk and stroking the tip of his beard the way he did when he was hard-pressed on a thought. Much as Jerzy wanted to stay, he knew that he could offer no more assistance in the matter. And he was not entirely useless—while his master worried about the world around them, there was still work to be done here. The vines were healthy, and the weather was holding, but yards needed constant vigilance during the growing season, and there were yards beyond the House that needed to be checked.

And yet, two days later, Jerzy found himself unable to settle back into that daily, necessary work. Without other, more specific orders, he decided to ride out to visit the southern yard’s overseer.

It had been good to reacquaint himself with that yard, planted only ten years back with firevines, but the journey meant too many hours on the back of a horse, returning only that morning after a few hours of sleep in the overseer’s cottage.

He still did not enjoy traveling on horseback, preferring to use his own feet when possible, but the old gelding and he had ridden this road often enough that he trusted the horse to find its way along the hard-packed dirt, and not shy when a villager drove his sheep across it, or a flock of birds erupted from a grove of trees, or a fox came out of the ditch in the early-morning light and watched as human and horse went
by, its red plumed tail the same color Jerzy’s hair had been when he was young.

The memory brought back others, and for once, soothed by his exhaustion and the slow steady rocking of the horse below him, both like and unlike the feel of the
Green Lady,
Jerzy let them come.

The slaver’s caravan, packed leg to leg with other slaves as they were taken from market to market, offered not on a public stage with the livestock but set apart where others need not see them. The men who would come, one at a time, quietly, looking and never speaking, choosing one or two, sometimes three but never more. And those slaves would be gone, and the rest would be loaded back into the wagons, brought to another town, another land. The languages changed, but all else remained the same. New slaves were added, some others were removed, either from death—tossed to the side of the road, left for the carrion eaters—or because they had grown too old to be purchased, and were unwanted and abandoned with a set of clothes and a coin, to do as they might in the whatever land they were in.

For the first time, Jerzy remembered, and wondered what happened to those slaves. Were they taken in by the local villages or towns, seen as new blood, new backs for the working? Did they turn to theft, ending their days on the end of a rope, or the edge of a lordsman’s sword?

Had Master Malech not chosen him in that market, years before, what might have become of him? What had become of the slaves of Vineart Poul, who would not have run and yet were gone? What happened to them when there was no need for them?

Without planning to, Jerzy sucked at the inside of his mouth, drawing a flood of saliva onto his tongue. The tang of firevine grapes filled his senses, the mixture of fruit he had tasted the afternoon before blending with the finished wines, the smell and feel of the soil under his hand and the touch of the leaves against his skin … and the undercurrents of something else, more acidic, cooler, with a hint of stone and salt …

Weathervines. The memory still within him, the pull of the sundrenched soil of the Aleppan hills, of cool sun and freshening winds like
those that filled the sails of a ship when it turned and ran with the prevailing breeze. Things he should not know, would not know, save for his master breaking tradition and sending him away. And he did not have the strength, in the early-dawn hour, to push it away, but instead let the two blend in his mouth, not thinking, not directing the quiet-magic, but letting it rise within him almost curiously, to see what it might do.

It was wrong, this blending. His master had warned him to never try to mix spells; Sin Washer’s Command forbade him to use another Vineart’s vines, but to step back, keep his distance, use only the finished
vin magica
of another’s work, the same as anyone else. Was this wrong, this thing that made his heart beat faster, his limbs shiver in anticipation, until the gelding stopped underneath him of its own accord, aware that something was happening, that something was not right.

And yet Jerzy felt nothing but that anticipation, a surge of satisfaction; none of the black taint that had buried itself in the dead flesh of the sea serpent, or flowed from the mouth of the aid in Aleppan. It could not be wrong, not the way that had been …

He urged the gelding forward again with his knees, his hands slack on the reins as he tried to follow the feel of the quiet-magic, subtle and fresh within him. He cast his memory to that taint, to confirm that they were nothing alike, in no way the same.

The first blow was an utter surprise, nearly knocking him off the horse. Only instinct made him close his hips and legs to stay upright, dropping a hand to the gelding’s neck to reassure it, even as Jerzy tried to determine what had hit him. He looked around, expecting to see a branch that had somehow fallen from a tree, or a cudgel thrown by a would-be brigand, and he reached back for his own, strapped across the back of the saddle.

Shifting, the quiet-magic shifted within him as well, and the lash of taint slapped across his awareness even as another blow came, this one aimed not at his torso, but the horse beneath him. The horse let out a scream that sounded like a woman in agony, and lost its footing, struggling and then collapsing on his side. Jerzy was able to swing free of the
saddle just in time not to be crushed underneath, pulling his foot free of the horse’s bulk at the last second and scrambling to the side of the road as though there would be safety there.

He spit into his palm, dirty from hitting the ground, and saw the red-tinged spittle mix with the dirt to create a smear of mud. In another place, that might have worried him, but not here, not in The Berengia, not so close to his own yards. Here, that dirt would not weaken the spellwine, but strengthen it.

When the next blow came, sweeping low over the dying horse, Jerzy was ready.

“To the defense, rise,” he cried, lifting his spittle-covered hand, palm out as though that alone could stop the blow. Now, looking, ready, Jerzy almost saw the attack, as though the wind had shaped itself to the great paw of a catamount, white claws stretching for his face, ready to rend open his face the way it had the side of the gelding, breaking his neck as easily as it had broken the horse’s.

Instead, the quiet-magic he called stopped the paw midswipe, holding it in place. Jerzy’s arm trembled from the strain, as though he were wrestling with some physical beast, and sweat ran on his skin, dripping down into his eyes, his own body fighting against him, willing him to fail.

“Not here. Not on my soil,” Jerzy said, and his toes curled within his shoes as though to make contact with that dirt, trying to feel the roots of the vines that spread not so far from here.

Hold.

Here, the Guardian could reach him easily, and although the creature did not leave the confines of the House grounds, Jerzy felt its cool weight settle on his shoulder, the stone claws gripping his flesh as it had that very first morning, claiming the slave Fox-fur for the House of Malech.

“Begone!” Jerzy yelled, and thrust his arm forward as though flinging a weapon from his empty hand.

And the wind died, the giant paw was gone, and he was left in the road with only the carcass of the gelding to prove that anything had actually happened.

Jerzy waited, breathless, a moment, and then another, until his heart stopped pounding and the wetness on his hand dried to a sticky mess. The tainted magic did not return, but he did not trust himself to move until a tarn flew overhead, calling softly as though to sound an all clear. He stood then, feeling his knees crackle in protest, and made his way, carefully, to where the gelding lay, having bled out into the road.

He did not want to leave it there, abandoned like an old shoe, but he had no choice. Stripping the saddle and bags from the animal’s back, he patted its thick neck softly, the cool heavy feel of the flesh such a change from the usual warm liveliness that he shuddered. He had seen men die, watched them be eaten by a serpent, beaten to death by the overseer, broken in two by a broken wagon, and yet the sight of this simple beast turned to so much useless weight made his throat swell from the inside, as though he had something caught within.

“Thank you,” he said, feeling foolish, then hoisted the saddle over his shoulder and started walking for home.

By the time he walked up the cobbled-stone drive to the House, Jerzy felt as though he might as well have dragged the horse’s body home, he felt so weary. Summoning a slave from the garden, he handed over the saddle and bags, and told the boy to tell the stable master what had happened to the gelding. If the carcass was still there, it would go into the stewpot for the slaves that night. To the end, everything served the House.

Everything served….

That thought bore him company as he entered the House through the side door only he and the Vineart used, taking the stone steps down to where his master waited, in the workroom cellar where
vina
became
vin magica.

“Master Malech.”

The Vineart looked up, taking Jerzy’s muddied and torn clothing, his exhaustion, in one evaluating sweep from head to toe. “The Guardian said something happened. A beast attacked?”

Jerzy shook his head. “No beast. Magic. The taint.”

That got his master’s attention. “How? What happened? You are unharmed?”

“I …” Jerzy hesitated. He should tell Malech everything, what he had done, what he had been thinking. But the words caught in his sore throat, and he dropped his gaze, staring instead at the polished stone floor. “I don’t know.” He shifted, swallowed. “I was riding back this morning, and thinking about the slaves that went missing, Vineart Poul’s slaves.”

“Yes?”

The ability to lie had never been bred into him; he might say nothing, he might avoid answering, but he could not lie, certainly not to his master.

“I was thinking of the slaves, wondering what had happened to them, and of the taint, and I called the quiet-magic. I did not mean to, but I did, and I think it found me that way; because I was thinking of it, using magic.”

“Like gazes meeting across a room,” Malech said, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers the way he did when deep in thought. “If our enemy can do this, yes. It would explain … it would explain why some have been targeted merely for mischief, and others for devastation. Sionio …” The Vineart who had disappeared, a year or more before, leaving his vineyards untouched. “He was powerful, and brash, and would have gone after any attacker, be it mortal or magical. The ones who have gone missing, they must have done as you did … but you held it off.”

“I knew it was an attack,” Jerzy said. “They did not.”

“Yes. But you must do nothing more to rouse its attention, Jerzy. Not until we are ready. Do you understand?”

Jerzy had no desire whatsoever to face that taint again. He nodded.

“Good. Now go, put on fresh clothing and eat something before you fall over. And speak to no one of this, do you understand? No one.”

H
E HEADED IMMEDIATELY
for the kitchen, hunger driving him more than the need to bathe and change. The House was filled with the smell of something roasting in the fireplace. A small child, one of Detta’s newest kitchen children, was sitting by the ledge, conscientiously turning the roast slowly on its spit. Jerzy had offered, once, to craft a spell that would do that for them, but Lil had refused, claiming that no spell could ever tell when meat was properly cooked.

Detta, who was sitting at the table talking to Lil as the cook directed events, scowled when Jerzy walked in, but did not comment on the state of his clothing, merely telling him that he was not eating near-enough.

“Detta, he eats everything in sight,” Lil protested, but she was laughing, most of her attention on the action in the kitchen.

Detta scowled, and broke off half the loaf of bread Roan had just placed on the table to cool, pushing it across toward Jerzy with an air of finality while Lil put together a plate for him.

“You’ve grown a handspan high and another handspan in the chest since you left on that foolish quest of his. Do any of your clothes still fit you?”

“You made ’em large,” he said around a mouthful of the warm, crusty bread. Detta glared at him, and he swallowed the rest before speaking again. “They’re fine. I’m not going to get much taller. Not like Master Malech.”