Stonewiser (38 page)

It was an act of desperation. The boards where she stood caved in as she launched across the beam. The beam's dry heat scorched her back even as she kneed the gaming pieces off the cloth board. With the pieces scattered, the beam quit and with it went the burning on her back. Her hands landed on the keeper's legs. Her fingers contracted around his calves. Her palms pressed against his skin like thirsty leeches. She struck.
Stone Wrath.

The keeper howled like a gutted man. He flopped on the quaking floor like a dying fish. Sariah grabbed him by the ankle an instant before he fell into the moat. She was as astounded by her attack's strength as the sages were. Out of desperation, she had created a new weapon. Had she been too late?

The lever began to fall again, this time towards the last notch, despite all her efforts. It happened too fast. The keeper clutched the back of her neck. His fingers breached her mouth with extraordinary force, bruising her lips, scouring her teeth, smearing her tongue with his blood. Sariah gagged. Fresh blood.
The life taste of the waiting dead.
It trickled inevitably down her throat to her sickened stomach. She tried to bite him. He didn't budge. Bloody saliva dribbled out of the corners of her mouth. She had to swallow.

“What you are to me, I am to you,”
the keeper said.

The sages lifted their hands as one. The impassive warrior wedged his spear across the lever. The lever bounced on the Hound's spear, and stopped. The boards beneath Sariah's feet held. The acrid taste of the keeper's blood was ablaze in her mouth.

Twenty-eight

 

S
ARIAH CRINGED WITH
the vinegar's sting.

“Welcome is suffering, for it shall not be wasted,”
the woman cleansing the wound on her arm said.
“Wise are those who suffer in the flesh, for they are strengthening their souls.”

“Don't tell me.” Sariah winced. “Tirsis, the Seer.”

The woman beamed.

They were in a small airy room on the top floor of a mud brick house. Jars and bottles lined the shelves while dry flowers and desiccated leaves dangled from the ceiling's rafters. The kind woman had scoured Sariah clean of blood and filth and was now stitching the slice above her wrist.

Sariah looked out the windows. The house was nestled within a sprawling settlement of two- and three-story buildings. They had walked over a maze of rooftops to navigate the streetless place. Twin domes rose in opposite corners of the city. The sheer size of the settlement and the number of people who lived there astounded her.

The keeper stumbled down the ladder like a teetering toddler.

“Are you still feeling the jolt in your legs?”

He took a chair by the window and, ignoring her question, arranged his skirt on his lap.
“The goddess's greetings, for she is just and fair to all her children—”

Sariah couldn't stand it any longer. “I know you don't have to speak to me in the Wisdom. You talked to me at the dome.”

“Wise is he who speaks what has been wisely spoken before him, for his wisdom cannot be doubted.”

“That's Tirsis again.”

“Who needs the burden of a voice when all has been properly said?”

“The teacher, Eneis. He asks questions all the time. But I don't want to speak to the sages. I want to speak to you.”

The man made a big effort, as if his mind had forgotten how to translate independent thought into word. His mouth curled in disgust, but he finally spoke his own words. “Why speak to me when you can speak to the sages?”

“Because the sages are gone and dead. Because they can't tell me what I need to know. Don't you want to speak for yourself?”

“There is no wisdom greater than the Wisdom.”

“I don't have time for this.”

The man's claws popped out of his right hand.

“What are you doing?”

The blade froze against the keeper's forearm. “Do you want me to speak without the Wisdom? Fine. I do. I trespass. I cut myself.”

“No, nay, no.” Sariah was horrified. “I want neither your pain nor your blood.”

“You want my words but not my blood?” He stared at her as if she was both crazy and dumb.

“You. Your people. Do you cut yourselves every time you don't speak the Wisdom?”

He nodded.

“Meliahs spare us. I just want to speak to you. Without bloodshed. Can you do that?”

The man's Adam's apple bobbed helplessly up and down his throat. “Only if you command me to do so.”

“You would heed my command?”

“I'm your keeper now.”

“Oh, no.” She wasn't falling for it again. “I'm not your pet or anything like it. And you're not mine.”

“Pet?” The man considered her dubiously. “Of course you're not my pet or I yours. But you can command me as you wish.”

Strange. One moment she had been fighting the man on the bloody pedestal and now he wanted to obey her? “I really don't want to command you. I just want to talk to you.”

“Now that the sages have found you true, you can do as you want.”

“And you won't cut yourself?”

“It's a strange command to follow, but if you want, I won't cut myself when I speak to you.”

“And you won't make me drink your blood again?”

His eyes flashed with fury. “Do you find my blood unworthy?”

There was much more to the blood drinking than she knew. “I just don't
like
blood.”

“You don't like blood?” His brows clashed in complete incredulity.

Was that so hard to believe?

“Perhaps you find my blood unimpressive.”

“Unimpressive?” Sariah was lost. “You don't need to impress me. Your claws did that.”

“You won the fight.”

“Oh, that. It only happened because I thought I was going to die. Otherwise, I'm sort of clumsy with the blade.”

“I thought so.” A flash of teeth broke right beneath his nose's audacious septum. “But you didn't have to tell me. You're unexpectedly unassuming.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but I'm in a hurry. I need answers and I need to rejoin my friends.”

“They've made such a ruckus at the cliffs.”

A measure of relief washed over Sariah. If Kael and the others were able to make a ruckus at the cliffs, then they were alive and in good condition. Just to make sure, she asked.

“You haven't hurt them, have you?”

“Not much.”

“I must see to them.” Sariah shook off the woman's attentions and stood up.

“The body's healing precedes the mind's peace,”
the woman said.

“Meek shall be the dragon at the foot of the stone,”
the keeper replied.

“Fierceness in all things,”
the woman spat.
“Killing
AND caring—”

These two were fighting. With the Wisdom's words. Incredible.

Sariah spoke to the woman. “Thank you, but I don't need your services anymore.”

The woman glowered at the keeper before she left the room.

“I want to see my friends,” Sariah said.

“You can't leave,” the keeper said.

“Am I your prisoner?”

The man's eyes widened in surprise. “Of course not, but there's much you must yet see.”

“I've got a people to find. I've got a beam to follow, and very little time. And I won't abandon my friends to the Shield or to your monsters down there.” It all came out a bit more blustery than she meant.

“Peace, stonewiser. Perhaps I can help.”

“How?”

“Given the circumstances, I can try to persuade the sages to admit your friends into our lands without a lien of conversion.”

“A lien of conversion? What is that?”

“It's the customary way of admitting outsiders. A way must exist to turn treason into faith if one of Meliahs’ defectors is brought up the cliffs.”

“Are we talking about Goodlanders who want to come here?”

“Defectors never seek the truth on their own.”

“Let me see if I understand this lien of conversion. You abduct people from the Goodlands, bring them up here against their will and make them your slaves?”

“Only until they have learned and accepted the Wisdom.”

No wonder people were scared of Meliahs’ Hounds. “And what happens if one of these defectors wants to return to the Goodlands? What happens if they're just dumb and cannot learn a lick of the Wisdom?”

“We kill them, of course. There's no value to a life without the Wisdom. But don't worry. Their souls are not forfeited. We drink their blood, even if it's bitter, and we commit their remains on hallowed land as is proper and fitting.”

Mara's terrifying abduction tales made perfect sense to Sariah now. So did the thousands of earthenware vessels she and Delis had seen at the foot of the Bastions.

“Why do you bring these defectors up the Bastions in the first place?”

“In obedience to the Wisdom.
Be fruitful and multiply,
commands Vargas,
for we must be prepared to inflict the blow with honed claws for every hand. We must turn the soul to flesh and the flesh to stone until they're one and the same.”

This was a culture of war, blood, violence, zealousness. “This conversion lien, does it apply to me?”

“Of course not.”

“But I don't know the Wisdom. Am I a defector too?”

“You survived the dome. The Wisdom is in your heart.”

“Can you assure me that my friends won't be submitted to a lien of conversion or anything like it?”

“Not unless you wish it.”

“Why would I wish it?”

“For a friend who's perhaps not such a good friend?” The keeper smiled. “I'll help with your friends.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I'm your keeper. It's my job.”

“I don't need a keeper.”

“You do.”

“Is this a trick? I don't like tricks. Will there be another keeper tomorrow?”

“For someone else, perhaps, but for you, it will be me tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow.”

“Do you have a name?”

“I'm Jol.”

“Why you, Jol?”

“It was me the day you came and it was my blood you licked.”

She gagged. She could almost taste it in her mouth.

“You'll need to set off the beam again.”

She was instantly suspicious. “Why?”

“Only you can do it.”

“What do you mean only I can do it?”

“You've been dreamed,” the keeper said.
“The beam shall only answer to the call of the branded beast.”

Sariah felt as if she had been smacked on the face. It wasn't the stone she placed on the checkered cloth board which acted as a safeguard to trigger the wising in Leandro's game. It was she, or more to the point, the brand stamped on her hands and on her core that released the game to call the beam. She had been shallow in her appraisal, overly confident and yes, even cocky. A complex wising required complex answers, not cheap wising tricks.

Sariah scolded herself. Mistakes were dangerous. Mistakes cost lives. To think she had felt accomplished when she thought she had cracked the wising in Leandro's game. Instead, the wising had cracked her. The snakes and scorpions were wised to somehow recognize Zeminaya's seal. That's why she was able to call the beam. That's why no one else who played the game—wittingly or unwittingly—could trigger the wising.

“That's why you are important,” the keeper said. “Besides, how else will you know where the beam leads you unless you call it?”

The man was right. Sariah had to overcome her bewilderment and think clearly. She wouldn't underestimate the stones again. She had to get her new bearings, and as long as these people went along, it would be safer to do it from behind the Bastions’ protection. At least now she had a new bargaining tool. She was the only one here who could call the beam.

“Fetch my friends and I'll call the beam.”

“I'll go meet with the sages now and return with news.” He stopped at the bottom of the ladder. “Be at ease, wiser. It will all happen as foretold.”

“Foretold?”

The keeper was gone and she was alone with her questions.

Decisions were made slowly in the land of Meliahs’ Hounds. That's how Sariah had begun to think of the people who lived beyond the Bastions, fierce in resolve and stubborn by nature. They shared that notable trait with their Domainer cousins. Although they had split from the whole of the Blood before the execration, they also shared something else with the Domainers—the intensity of a fateful purpose.