Stonewiser (58 page)

“Of course not.” It was Lexia who saw the truth first. “Whatever this seal is, it can't possibly affect a stonewiser's judgment.”

“How could you know that?” Lorian asked.

“Because Sariah's cause, the stone truth, calls on more than stonewisers. In fact, the majority of Sariah's followers are not stonewisers. Hounds. Domainers. Goodlanders. You've seen them come to the keep to swear allegiance to Sariah and her cause. They have no core. They can't bear a seal. They chose her cause freely. So did the stonewisers.”

It was a good argument, but it didn't convince the councilors.

“That's no proof,” Olden said.

“What's the seal's purpose then?” Lorian spoke over Olden.

“To control us,” Uma said without a trace of doubt.

They started bickering again, belittling Lexia, scorning Sariah, fighting among themselves like rats over scraps. One thing was clear—they were not going to be stopped by something as simple as reason.

“Lexia, I want you to kill these three.”

Lexia stared at Sariah, too stunned to speak.

“Kill them, I said.”

“You want me to kill the councilors?” Her eyes shifted from Sariah to the alarmed councilors and back to Sariah. “But why?”

“It doesn't matter why,” Sariah said. “Just do as I say.”

“But—”

“Are you going to kill them or not?”

Lexia stammered. “Well. E-hem. I—No, I don't think I will. I mean, I don't like them, but I don't really think that killing them is right—”

“There you have it.” Sariah faced the Council members. “Your proof.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I just commanded Lexia to kill you. But she didn't. Did she? She refused my command.”

“That just proves she's right of mind,” Lorian said.

“It proves more than that,” Sariah said. “It proves I can't make her do what I want, despite the seal. It proves that whatever this seal may be, your accusations here today have no merit.”

Sariah smiled like the triumphant huntress she was. She had defeated Lorian and the others single-handedly in the briefest of combats.

Sariah waited until the keeper escorted Lorian, Uma and Olden out of her chamber. They had been temporarily defused, but they would be back, she was sure.

She sat on the bed and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the mounting headache. She had so much to do. She had to go after Kael and figure out a way to recover the prism. But she also had to sort out this mess or risk losing whatever little support she had managed to garner thus far.

The election offered both, an opportunity to finish her search and a chance at surviving her stay at the keep. It was also the reason for the uneasy peace between the remaining stonewisers, the Hounds and their Domainer allies. It kept a fragile balance, one that could be easily shattered if the councilors succeeded in undermining Sariah. She had to figure out what was going on with the seal. But first, she had to get over the shock of hearing words like “Sariah's cause” and “Sariah's followers.” Since when did she have a cause and followers?

She thought of Mia, who had been sealed along with Sariah. She thought of Malord, with whom she had worked closely many times. Malord was there, sitting by the fire between Mia and Lexia, clutching what Sariah recognized as one of her amplifying stones. He must have felt her eyes on him, because he turned around. Was he sealed too? He paled under her scrutiny. She had her answer.

“How?” she asked.

“I don't know. It's not much of a seal, nothing as clear or defined as Mia's. It's a newer scar, pretty recent.” His voice died midsentence as if surrendering to some kind of betrayal.

“Why didn't you tell me? Is that why you follow me?”

“No, no. I followed you of my own free will. I didn't have a seal that night at Targamon when we found the seal on Mia's core. We looked. Remember? I don't feel like Mia, who needs you and knows where you are. It's only recently that I started to feel as if I wanted to be part of something, I guess. The greater story.”

That was a curious way to put it. At least he wasn't compulsively following her. “Can you recall when you started to feel like that?”

Malord thought for a moment. “The seal has nothing to do with how I feel. You were my enemy when you came to the Domain, but you've since proved yourself worthy, as a colleague, as a friend, and now you're like a daughter to me. I'm sorry if that offends you.”

Offend her? The words were stuck in her throat so she reached out to squeeze his hand and said nothing and hoped he knew she loved him too. She could feel the strain of the day testing her recovery, but too many questions begged for answers only she could grant.

“And you, Lexia? Do you feel you have to follow me?”

“I'm not compelled to do as you say, if that's what you mean,” Lexia said. “I just showed you. No matter what Lorian and the others say, I didn't vote for you out of compulsion. We suffered together in the Mating Hall, and together we'll see the Guild's new dawn.”

Until this moment, Sariah had never known that Lexia believed in a notion as ethereal as the Guild's new dawn. “But how, Malord? You weren't there when Zeminaya sealed me with the legacy. The intrusion couldn't have sealed you herself. Could she?”

Malord shrugged. “I don't know.”

Mia had been witnessing their exchange in respectful silence, but now she perked up. “The intrusion didn't seal you, Malord. Auntie did.”

Sariah's voice was too hoarse for words. “Mia, do you know when I sealed Malord?”

“It was just the other day, when we were healing you, Auntie. You were unconscious, but you did it easily, a quick kiss of links. I didn't think much of it. I thought you knew.”

Sariah's brain was boiling. Someone ought to put out the fire in the hearth. Despite the frigid weather outside, she was burning up. She had to face the truth. If she had sealed Malord as Mia said, then Lorian was right and she had sealed Lexia and the women of the pen as well.

It was a lot to consider. The headache didn't make it any easier. What creature was capable of generating something like a seal? What did it take to imprint a seal on another wiser's mind?

Arrogance. The belief that one had the right to intrude in another person's core. She, who had once been a slave, was horrified by the mere notion.

If she lacked the will to do it, how could she have done it in the first place? Was there a trick to the seal or was her wiser's mind able to project it forward at will? Why, if she'd had the seal since her encounter with Zeminaya almost two years back, had she just recently sealed Malord? She had been unconscious, for the goddess's sake. Could the seal propel itself onwards without her leave?

A self-perpetuating seal.
The notion struck her as fantastic, but it was the only explanation that fit. What was its purpose? What was the extent of its power? And how did the damn thing work? What was it that Tirsis had said at the end of her tale?
Our apologies, stonewiser, for the legacy unleashed, for the burdens bestowed.

Sariah sank her face in her hands. She had been used. By long dead, recklessly scrupulous people whose ideals prevailed over time and space. Zeminaya. The sages. One had provided the seal. The others had powered it to spread. All she needed was a wising contact with her fellow stonewisers to transfer the seal, and ostensibly, the legacy. Oh, yes, it was pure Zeminaya; it was pure and devious sage wising. The legacy had never been a task to carry out, as she believed. Rather she, Sariah, had been the legacy's carrier all along.

“I'm going after Kael and the prism.” She ducked behind the changing screen.

“You can't go,” Malord said.

“He's right, Auntie. You're not well.”

“She has a fever,” Lexia said to the others. “Do you think she could be hallucinating?”

Sariah struggled with a pair of unwieldy leggings and a rebellious tunic. She stumbled out from behind the screen just in time to spy the bewildered expression on Malord's face.

“Perhaps you ought to wait for Kael to return,” the old wiser said.

“Wait?” Sariah grabbed her boots. “We have very little time left. How can I wait?”

Her latest discovery reaffirmed what she believed. Her search for a tale to reconcile the Bloods had become much more than a way to save Ars from the executioners’ encumbrances, much more than a way to save her life. It had become the only viable part of an ancient effort to unite the Blood, the only remaining way to save a world teetering at the brink of destruction.

It struck Sariah then that she wasn't just working on behalf of Ars and the Domain, on behalf of the refugees at Targamon, or the Hounds, or to preserve the Goodlands. She was working on behalf of the whole Blood, and that included the Guild. To accomplish the legacy, she would have to try to fix the Guild too. It was the last source of order in a putrid world, a critical part of the healing that had to take place if their world was to survive.

Curse Zeminaya and all the sages. What right did they have to use her like that? And what if Lexia had been wrong? What if the seal was designed to influence thinking and free will? Was anything in her life her own doing?

Answers. Sariah needed answers. She needed proof that her life was more than someone else's game, that she was still the mistress of her own fate. She also needed a mantle. She rummaged through the pegs on the wall until she found one that would do.

The stones. She grabbed them from under her pillow. She held the amplifying stone's river-smoothed shape in one hand and her polished memory stone in the other. She had to make sure she had all her facts right. The mere thought of wising stones made her stomach churn. Her palms were healing well enough, but she feared the shock of a sweltering tale decanted into her brittle mind. She gritted her teeth and pressed the stones to her palms.

She got only pain from the touch, a cold jolt to the soul. If that wasn't alarming enough, in a sudden wrench, the banishment bracelet coiled around her wrist. Sariah swore she felt the strike of a single fang on her arm. She doubled over in a flash of body-splitting pain. The room spun like a wobbly wheel.

“What is it?” Malord said.

“Auntie, are you all right?”

The blood in her veins turned cold. Her bones froze. Her skin grew taut and brittle all over. The soft, sensitive plane of her palms thickened and dulled. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but there was something very wrong with her.

She couldn't understand. A quick check revealed there was still a pure red glow in the center of the bracelet's last stone. She had a few more days, maybe. But what was it that the executioner had said?
When the time comes, Mercy will not hesitate. She'll suck you dry of your essence before abandoning you to die as it's your sworn fate.

She sought out the power that had fueled her since her breaking, the persuasive warmth that fired her palms, the heat that streamed seductively through her veins. It wasn't flowing through her core. Instead, it was spouting out of it like brew spurting from a punctured flask.

What was a stonewiser's essence if not stonewising itself?

Terror. Without her stonewiser's power, her body was an empty shell. She had been muzzled before. She had survived. But this was different. Back at the Mating Hall she had known that her power remained in her body, beyond her reach but inside of her. Now, her power was deserting her, too slippery to grasp and too fluid to stop. How long could she live without it?

“What's wrong, Auntie? What's the matter with her?”

A tremor began in her core, a distant murmur growing to a roar, rattling her bones and pounding in her head. Sariah used the last of her strength to bring her thumb to her lips and surrendered to the darkness.

Forty-two

 

“T
HERE, THERE, IT'S
past now,” Lexia said. “You're back and you mustn't be afraid.”

Sariah's joints ached like the rot. “Has there been word?”

“No news from your man.”

“What happened?”

“You've had your first bout with the prism's darkness,” Lexia said. “It happens sometimes. The Council members’ visit may have had something to do with it. Stress brings it on. Or anger. It's all that darkness. It stays with us even after the prism is gone.”