Stonewiser (8 page)

Sariah didn't believe in monsters. Instead, she believed in fear. Any beast, especially if unknown, became a monster in the eyes of the frightened. Imal didn't grant a visual tale of the terrors because she had not seen them, but she did mention that on a roamer's account, these monsters guarded what she translated from the old tongue as the purity of the land.

It was a wild tale, most likely based on hearsay, probably embellished by someone's vivid imagination, but Sariah's heart still raced when she heard it. It was the only allusion vaguely related to the pure she had been able to find, and she had searched hard and thoroughly. If she hadn't been able to confirm a source, she may have overlooked the tale as a coincidence. Instead, she deepened her recognizance.

“Back.” She pressed beyond the tale. “Beyond Imal.”

It took a great deal of effort and strength to press a tale. It wasn't something the Guild taught. On the contrary, it was a forbidden skill, one she had learned from Zemi, the intrusion who had led her through the seven twin stones’ wising. Her efforts were rewarded again. Sariah witnessed the storyteller who had first told the story to Imal, standing on the roof of a deck shelter, surrounded by an attentive audience and reciting the tale of the pure. A mother sheltered her child's ears when the man told about the monsters, but most people grinned and giggled when he spoke.

“Back,” Sariah commanded. “Beyond Imal, beyond this storyteller.”

A sharp whistle pierced her eardrums and screeched in her mind. Pain stabbed at the back of her eyes. No wonder the Guild prohibited the practice of tale pressing. A less experienced wiser could be fatally hurt. Not Sariah. She would sport a headache akin to a canundro hangover tomorrow, but she would be fine after that.

The tale buckled and swayed, torn from its hinges, revealing a tenuous scene where the storyteller spoke to yet another man, a pale and ashen fellow whose face sported the rough stubble of a scruffy beard and strange, anxious eyes. Indeed, his tightly contracted pupils were encased in small black and gray irises, swimming aimlessly in a web of busted capillaries.

“I tell you the truth,” Leandro said. “I saw it with my own eyes. Monsters, I say, to protect the pure.”

“Come on, man, you want me to add a wild tale to my range?” the storyteller said. “My audience will know your tale for a fake. My reputation will be ruined.”

“It's not fake, I tell you. Truth. All truth.”

“Did you find them?” the other man asked. “Did you find the pure?”

Leandro's lips drooped. “Them monsters. Wouldn't let me pass. All truth. All the others. Dead.”

“It's a strange tale,” the storyteller said, “but I'll be fair, I may use it someday. A little horror always works up a crowd around the fire.” He dropped a tarnished coin in the man's dirty hands. “Don't bet the whole of that coin. Get something to eat and hang on to your wits if you can. Be well, my friend.” The already tenuous tale blurred. The link began to fade.

“Back.” Sariah's mind pressed harder, against the pain, above the screech. “A name. A place.”

There was a bump in the link, a halt on the flow and an unhealthy reverse that squeezed Sariah's stomach. The storyteller's face reappeared on the tale like the dead recalled from Meliahs’ yonder. His lips moved out of step with the sound. “Be well, my friend,” he stuttered. “Be well, my friend, Leandro of Nafa.”

The stone dated to a recent festival. Examining the tale's contents and fashions, the exchange between Leandro and the storyteller seemed recent as well. Sariah exhaled slowly, allowing her mind to relax. She dipped her brush in the ink and set it to the parchment to record her wising. A very faint noise interrupted her concentration.

A ripple's quiet murmur. A silent dribble of drops. A foot, rising slowly out of the water. A year ago, she would have thought nothing of a ripple and a drip in the vast expanse of dead water, but now her ears were attuned to the flats and trained to understand the dangers. The deck swayed imperceptibly. Whoever was coming for her was good. Sariah reached for her rotfish fang dirk, the one Kael had been training her to use. She tucked herself to one side of the shuttered door. A trickle of sweat ran the length of her spine. She waited.

The sudden attack came not through the door, as Sariah expected, but from the side. A long weaved body crashed through the small window and landed in a crouch, facing her. Sariah remembered her basics. Survey your enemy. Find the strengths. Find the weaknesses.

The trouble was the warrior before her seemed to be all strength and no weaknesses. He was a full head taller than she was. Muscles bulged on his upper arms and shoulders. A long lithe leg struck first, aiming at Sariah's dirk. Sariah blocked the kick, but found herself trapped in the corner between the assailant and the wall. A gleaming hatchet descended on her like the belch's rage. Sariah blocked the blow with her forearms. She feinted high but came up from beneath, seeking her opponent's underbelly. Her blade clashed against the hatchet instead.

Sariah barely stepped back in time to avoid a hammer to the head. With blades on one side, a hammer head on the other and topped by a wicked spike, the hatchet was a fearful weapon. Sariah tried to reach for her pocket but the assailant anticipated her move. The ax slashed through Sariah's weave, ripping her pocket open, spilling the stones on the floor. She tried to make the stones burst, but without her palm's recent contact, the stones didn't work. The hatchet's blade bounced off her banishment bracelet, shocking her with a painful jolt. The pain propelled Sariah forward. She managed a fist to her opponent's face. She drew blood in the process.

“So you fight with more than stones, kitten,” her opponent rumbled. “Not bad for a Goodlander weakling.”

A woman. Sariah now knew she faced a woman. Not that it made any difference, because the woman was obviously a deadly warrior. She launched a fulminating attack—a series of kicks that left Sariah weaponless and pinned under her knee.

Sariah fumbled for a weapon. She singed her fingertips against something hot. It was her little desk lamp, which had tipped over onto the floor. The flammable mud in it still burned brightly. In one swift motion, she snatched the scorching lamp and smashed it against the woman's back.

Flames flickered over her opponent's weave. Sariah dove for her dirk, but even with her weave on fire, the other woman beat her to it. She kicked Sariah to the corner and then crashed back-first against the door shutters, smothering the flames.

The back of Sariah's head cracked against the corner post. The world swayed with the deck. The moonlight streaming through the broken window dimmed and blurred in painful sequence. The woman loomed over her, smoldering like a demon crawling out of Meliahs’ rot pit. Sariah knew she should be dead by now. The woman was simply too good a fighter. Why then was she still alive?

“You fight good, kitten, but not good enough for Delis,” her assailant said in a low raspy voice and a thick accent that lengthened her vowels when she spoke. “It's a pity I have to kill you. I would so like to keep you.”

Blue and violet eyes stared at Sariah, feverish with death. The lethal hatchet rose in the air and began its final descent. A whistle broke the silence, and then a solid thump. The woman froze. The hatchet slipped from her hand and clattered on the floor. She toppled over Sariah, trapping her under an avalanche of muscular weight. Sariah struggled to get out from under the woman, trying to understand what had just happened.

Blood. It stained Sariah's hand, but it wasn't her blood. An arrow protruded from her attacker's back. The deck shook with the steps of many feet. Faces peered through the smashed window. A crash shattered what remained of the door's shutter. Four or five people broke into the shelter. With a cursory look at them, Sariah understood. She had gone from bad to worse—the mob had found her.

The bearded man snorted like a rutting pig. “What do we have here? If it isn't the hawk and the snake sharing the nest?”

The woman stirred. Despite her wound, she pushed herself off Sariah and slumped against the wall, eyeing the newcomers with open hatred. Her hands fumbled for her hatchet. The man took a knee in front of her.

“Delis, darling, is it you?” He peeked under the weave that covered her face. “Thank you for disarming the wiser witch for us. They sent the best after this one, I see. We've paid our fees. We've found our prize. Why is it you insist on stealing our reward?”

Delis snarled. “Up your arse, you peddler's bitch. You'd sell your mother for dung—”

The man cuffed her in the face. “I cannot kill you with my own hands, not for lack of want, mind you, but on account of the law. I won't be blamed for your loss.” He called on the other men. “Throw her out into the dead water.”

Wounded as she was, Delis kicked and punched and crashed against Sariah before no less than six men were finally able to drag her out of the shelter.

“She's wounded,” Sariah said. “She'll die.”

“That's the point, you slow-witted slut,” the man said. “We'll let the Domain do some of the murdering this night, but don't worry, we won't let it do all of the killing. Fire the deck,” he said to his minions. “Let none of her foul witchery survive the night.”

Sariah recognized the man's broad nose and the stubbly beard. The mob's leader was the same man who had tried to kill her at the nets and who had defied Kael afterwards. Josfan. That was his name. Coin aside, he was set on eliminating her and all traces of her passing. Two men dragged Sariah to her feet. A shovelful of flammable mud later, the deck ignited with a muted swoosh.

She eyed the flames. “Why are you doing this?”

“It's our right, isn't it? We paid for it and we'll get paid for it too.”

“But you, Josfan, you really want me dead. You paid a lot at the nets to shoot at me. Did someone send you after me?”

“Wouldn't you like to know?” Josfan flashed his hideous smile. “Justice it is, wench, that you who broke the wall and tried to destroy the New Blood will end up as a sprinkle of ashes fizzling in the dead water.”

“If you burn me, you won't have a body to collect on.”

“But I don't need your body to collect my reward. I just need your bracelet.”

Of course. The bracelet would offer more than sufficient proof of her death. Sariah struggled with the thugs who tried to stretch out her arm. Her shoulder and elbow ached from the strain. Her forearm ended up splayed on her desk anyway. A serrated saw appeared in Josfan's hand, a big rusting brute of a blade which could have easily belonged to an enduring wood cutter or to one of the Shield's quartering blocks. Josfan wetted his lips and tested the saw's teeth against her forearm.

“I wouldn't do that, if I were you.” Sariah unclenched her fist. A black stone gleamed on the palm of her hand. “Step away from me. All of you. Or do you wish to join me in a quick trip to Meliahs’ rot pits?”

Josfan froze. The men let go of her and scurried out the door, cursing and making the sign against evil. The stone had been Delis's surprising parting gift. The woman must have lifted it from the floor while resisting Josfan's cronies. She had also used the ruckus to sneak the stone into Sariah's hands. Sariah owed the woman a most unlikely and unexpected debt.

“You witch,” Josfan spat. “You wouldn't blow yourself up just to spite us.”

“Stay and find out.”

The saw wilted in Josfan's hands. He took one step back, and then another, before diving for the door and abandoning the deck. Sariah tracked his retreat as closely as she was tracking the fire. She had only a few moments to act.

“We won't let you out of here alive,” Josfan shouted from a safe distance. “We just have to wait until the fire burns you. I'll have your bracelet even if I have to sift through your ashes. You've made a huge mistake. We've got you surrounded. You've worked yourself into a death trap.”

Meliahs help her. Perhaps she had.