Stonewiser: The Heart of the Stone, page 44
Sariah rummaged through the bulk of those connections to find the ones she'd worked so hard to preserve. There. Currently buried but intact. Empathy. Righteousness. Duty. She stoked those with a dose of her own, communicating with Mia, not through words but rather through emotions, the only way she knew to bypass Zemi's hold on the little girl's mind.
Mia answered. Affection. Meliahs help her. She didn't deserve it. Loyalty. She was her kin. It must have been difficult for Mia to stop herself and recognize that Zemi was using her, but the girl did it with extraordinary swiftness for such a young wiser. Mia looked up to Sariah, a sparkling blue and green gaze that said she was ready to follow. Sariah nodded. Mia's links opened to Sariah's mind with blinding brightness. They rode slick, fast and direct, and Sariah marveled at the feel of them.
Zemi struck, squeezing Sariah's heart until Sariah doubled over in agony, stealing filaments of power from both, girl and woman, triggering more explosions along the wall, blowing up the east bridge in the process. An infusion of strength jolted Sariah's heart to rhythm, from Mia no less. A huge stone boulder came crashing down in the bailey, just a few paces from the quartering block. They didn't have time to linger in either realm.
Sariah didn't know how intrusions were created, but in the throes of the wising, when she should be dying, she was an intrusion in the intrusion's tale. She loosened Mia to block Zemi's attempts at destructions and devoted herself to stalking whatever part of a wiser's mind that drove the intrusion. That was easy to find in the brightness of Mia's links, because purpose was Zemi's unifying core. She recognized it on the myriads of commands flowing through the links. She recognized it as an emotion.
In the stone realm, Sariah caught the notion of Zemi. She was shocked. The intrusion's core was complex and intricate, beyond the scope of such a narrowly defined creature. Zemi was as convoluted as the human mind, as full of anger, fear and frustration as any other mind she'd touched. But above all, she was strong; she was made to endure the generations, to prevail at all cost. Every link Sariah hacked re-formed. Zemi was as close to eternal as Sariah had ever encountered.
“You can't destroy me.” Zemi squeezed and Sariah's heart refused to pump. “My purpose fuels my strength.”
Zemi's purposes. Sariah remembered something the intrusion had said when she wised Aya's single clue stone. My purpose is my only death, and only its legacy can endure beyond me. What happened when a purpose-driven intrusion no longer had a purpose? Meliahs help her. She had to try.
“We could stay here forever, the three of us, fighting each other, trapped for no purpose at all,” Sariah said. “Or you could carry out your duty and be done with it.”
“The Blood is not one,” Zemi said. “The wall still stands.”
“You can destroy the world well enough, but how will you heal it?”
The intrusion wavered, a slight release of Sariah's lungs. “What do you mean?”
“You can stop, now, Zemi. Go ahead. Make your legacy mine.”
The violence of Zemi's wrath evaporated. Her image was blurred on the broken stones, ragged and incomplete on the crumbling wall. Her face was stricken with grief. Sariah cleared her links of all defenses and opened her mind to Zemi.
“I can't spare you the burden of my legacy if you ask me,” Zemi said.
“I am asking.”
The touch was painful, like heated iron to naked skin, but it was also brief. Mia gasped. Meliahs help her. She'd not offered the child, but Mia had followed suit and now they were both similarly branded.
“In the name of Meliahs and the injustices of her betrayal, you've granted me the right to die and die again,” Zemi said. “Be brave, wiser, be strong like the stones, for now that I'm gone, you are the stones’ only heart.”
The pain in Sariah's chest eased. The stones’ rumbling ceased. The tremors subsided. The broken wall was suddenly stilled, and like a beast, defeated and appeased. Mia fainted and her little hands slipped out of the stone.
“I got her,” Malord said. “She's fine.”
Sariah's mind was blessedly free of the intrusion. She could breathe easier, but she was still trapped in the spectral hands. The tale played for all on the stones as if the wall's destruction had never occurred. It returned to the night of Zeminaya's execution at the hands of the Guild.
“Heed me, I have so little time,” the Zeminaya of her time said in the stone tale. “Deception is the way of the land and no Blood is innocent of the destruction. We are not who we think we are. Beware, wiser, the stones can show you anything you want to see.”
There was no mistake. The sun was rising in the stone tale and setting over the Shield's fortress, but regardless of the light, Zeminaya's eyes turned colors—blue and blue, blue and green, green and brown, brown and gray, gray and black, black and blue.
“What's worse than death?” Zeminaya asked. “What's true death to the stonewiser?”
The ax came down with a mighty blow. The blood splashed on the quartering block and ran in the gutters. Zeminaya's hands lay flat on the stone, still warm from the wising, forgotten treasures left to rot for the crows. Sariah wailed with her pain.
The pain shot through her spine. Her mind pulsed around a gaping hole. The stones were empty of images. The wall was a cruelly abandoned tale. She writhed on the ground, desperate for breath. She stared at the fleeting interludes of darkness and blinding brightness, seeing things she hadn't seen before. Aya's crude perspective of Meliahs’ pact, the babe's face as she drowned in the rot, Zeminaya's eyes as she died, gleaming with truth, details that she had missed because she was blind like the rest of the Blood.
“Breathe.” Somehow, Kael had a hold of her. “Breathe.”
Sariah wanted to tell him that she couldn't, that her body had been deserted of its purpose, that the world as they knew it had ceased to exist, that a wiser was crippled without hands.
He straddled her on the ground, holding her in place with his weight, precariously riding her thrashing. “Sariah, you're hurting yourself,” he said. “You're hurting me, too.”
His face lent her a measure of fortitude and his voice restored some semblance of command. “Take a breath. Now.”
Sariah inhaled. “Her hands,” she wailed when air reached her lungs. “My hands.” She unleashed a sea of bloody tears.
“Hush, Sariah.” Kael gathered her in his arms. “You endured. Your hands are fine.” He lifted her hands to her face. “See for yourself.”
Sariah saw her trembling fingers, dirty with chunks of ground and crowned by broken nails, but intact. The pain was still with her, the awful hack, the moment of nothingness and then the terrible pain again.
“Your hand.” She kissed his bandaged limb.
“The pain will lessen, I promise you.” He rocked her as if she was a babe in his arms. “The loss you learn to live with.”
“Did the stone hurt you?” Mia's sparkling eyes were wide like moons. Sariah was relieved to hear her voice.
“Is she well?” Malord's face came into her field of vision.
“Has she gone into the madness?” the Prime Hand asked.
“You're well,” Kael said for Sariah's benefit.
“The stones,” Sariah mumbled.
“Property of the Guild now.” The Prime Hand had already removed all the stones from the quartering block and was now tying the sack to her belt.
Sariah already regretted the three-way trade.
“Did you hear what Zeminaya said?” Sariah asked Kael.
“Aye, I heard. The Shield as it was meant to be died with Zeminaya.”
“We are a false Shield?” Horatio Maliver said. “How many chills of lies?”
Another spurt of arrows landed in the bailey. Kael, Sariah and Mia huddled under the shield Kael held. “Against the wall,” he said.
They crawled to safety under the ramparts and pressed themselves against the wall. The others followed.
“Did you hear the rest?” Sariah asked. “Did you hear what Zeminaya said?”
“We all heard it,” Malord said. “It was on the walls, inside and out.”
“But do you know what it means?”
“That both Bloods have made mistakes in their histories?”
“More than that,” Sariah said. “It means that both Bloods have acted in vengeance; that we are not who we think we are.”
“I suppose no man ever is,” Kael said.
“No, nay, no!” He couldn't understand her desperation. “The stones can show you anything you want to see. Anything. But when you look, when you see the details of the tale they tell, then you can see the truth.”
A massive stone flew over their heads and crashed against the opposite side of the fortress. The weakened wall shattered and crumbled, revealing the Barren Flats beyond.
“We must go,” Kael said. “Neither faction will favor us.”
Sariah clutched his sleeve. “No Blood is innocent.”
“I know,” Kael said. “Both Bloods are one blood.”
“Yes, but no, nay, no.” Sariah couldn't believe that she was the only one who understood the terrible truth. “Think Kael, you, your kin, the people of the Domain, are you the New Blood?”
“We are.”
“That's a lie, Kael, because we are not who we think we are. You're, in fact, the Old Blood.”
FORTY-NINE
“SHE'S GONE MAD,” Mistress Grimly said. “Don't listen to her rantings.”
“Think of it,” Sariah said. “Who was guilty of the breaking of the pact?”
“The Old Blood broke Meliahs’ pact,” Kael said.
“Aye, not the New Blood but rather the Old Blood. When Zeminaya witnessed the tales in the twin stones, she returned to the Council and reported that Old Blood wisers had created simmering fire and human flesh in defiance of the prohibition. Who do you think were the people of the execration?”
“The Old Blood committed the offenses,” Kael said. “But were they judged and condemned?”
“Zeminaya was committed to justice; she wouldn't have blamed the innocent. Except that the innocent became vengeful. Zeminaya tells us that justice turned righteous and righteousness turned vengeful. The New Blood were an angry people, embittered by slavery and toil. They took advantage of the execration to purge the Old Blood from the world and to secure the Goodlands for themselves.”
“I've loathed the Old Blood all my life and now I'm one of them?” Kael was beyond disturbed, stunned.
“Meliahs help us all,” Malord whispered.
“That tale said nothing of the sort,” Mistress Grimly said. “We are the Old Blood. Just look at our matching eyes.”
“She makes a good argument,” the Shield said. “Everybody knows that the New Blood have mismatched eyes.”
“Eye color is a difference between the Bloods,” Sariah said.
“You think we have it backwards,” Kael realized.
“Remember Aya's engraving of Meliahs’ prohibition? Remember that odd perspective she used with the people looking away from Meliahs? What color were the people's eyes?”
Nobody could remember. Kael twisted the case he carried on his back and pulled out the hanging's first panel. The people making the pact with Meliahs, the Old Blood, were shown frontally. Their eyes were wide open and painted in detail.
“Their eyes are mismatched,” Sariah said. “Aya wanted us to see two colors of eyes on each face clearly because she thought it was suspicious as well. When I first saw this engraving, I thought it depicted the New Blood's arrival to the Old World. Now I know better. These people are of the Old Blood. The Old Blood have two-color eyes.”
“Impossible,” the Prime Hand said.
“The same thing happened in the tale of the stone births,” Sariah said. “A babe is tossed into the rot pit, not because her eyes matched, but rather because her eyes didn't match, meaning that she was of the Old Blood, not the New Blood breed that the wisers were attempting to create.”
“She's right,” Malord said.
“And did anyone notice something strange when Zeminaya was dying on the quartering block?”
“She did something with her eyes,” Kael said.
“Her eyes changed colors,” the Shield remembered.
“Aye,” she said. “Zeminaya gave us clues throughout her intrusions. In the execration tale, she told us that she was the killer of her blood. She was killed for defending the justice of the execration and disagreeing with the decisions of the Council. She opposed the creation of the Guild and the false Shield. But she was also killed because she was of the Old Blood, and the New Blood were purging the Old Blood from the Goodlands.”
“But her eyes were blue,” the Prime Hand said.
“She made them blue in the stone tales,” Sariah said. “But she also told us that she had the power to change them.”
“This is chaos waiting to happen,” Malord said. “How do we tell this to our people?”
Kael's face was grim as ashes. “One truth at a time.”
“This is all a monstrous confluence of coincidences,” the Prime Hand said.
“You, who have sought these stones for so long, now refuse the tale they tell?” The Shield couldn't conceal his contempt. “I don't like the tale in the least, but it explains much.”
A volley of arrows took a toll at the ramparts. Wounded and dying men rained from the wall and a new load of catapulted stones crushed the barracks’ roof. Julean and a group of his warriors rushed through the courtyard and took cover beside them.
“My lord, they are attacking the broken parts of the wall,” Julean reported. “What shall we do?”
“I no longer serve the Shield,” Horatio said.
“My lord?”
“You heard me.”
“Are you going to let your warriors die here this day?” Kael asked.
Horatio's eyes were dull and empty. “They were never mine.”
“Recall your forces from the fire and mind the west wall,” Kael said to Julean. “Reinforce the archers at the main gate and let no enemy enter unharmed. Forget the east wall. The New Blood won't take part in this war.”
“I won't listen to vermin,” Julean spat.
“Suit yourself, then. Die of your own right.”
“If the Main Shield is too cowardly to battle Arron, I'll take command,” Mistress Grimly said. “There are many battles that must be won today, many tales that can't survive this night.”
“You mean to kill us anyway,” Sariah said. “You never meant to let us go.”
“I never swore an oath on your lives. That was the Shield, not me.” The mistress signaled and a host of warriors surrounded Sariah and her friends. “You leave me no choice. Your brand of truth could destroy the Guild and the appeased Goodlands. You understand that. Don't you?”
“I—I can't kill the Main Shield,” Julean stammered.
“Well, you don't have to,” the mistress said. “It's a good thing that I was prepared for the contingency. As you can see, I've got my own little following among the Shield and they'll be suitably rewarded for their loyalty.”
“You've got a following?” Horatio said. “Among the Shield?”
“Don't be naïve,” the mistress said. “Of course I do. I'm the Prime Hand. And I've made my own provisions. Horatio Maliver, you are no longer the Main Shield. And for the Goodlands’ protection, this wiser and her New Blood friends must be purged from the land. Come with me, Julean. We'll let these warriors do the job. I don't need you to kill the Shield. I just need you to defeat Arron. Oh. I can't forget. I'll be taking this as well.” She seized the case with Aya's hanging, ignoring Kael's furious glower. “You won't be needing it anymore.”
The mistress reached out to caress Sariah's face. Sariah flinched away from the witch's touch. The mistress sighed. “Don't be cross, Sariah. You know the Guild ways. This is the only practical way to keep your dangerous claims from spreading. If only you knew. Your loss is quite regrettable to me. Such a marvelous gift.” She sighed again. “But a ruler's choices are never easy. It is as it must be. Good bye, child. May the goddess welcome you in her arms.”
A crash sounded against the fortress's west gates and an explosion shook the earth to the south. Julean and the Prime Hand hastened to reach the ramparts. The mistress's shielded warriors, a contingent of at least thirty, tightened the circle around Sariah and her party with their barbed pikes ready. Thirty against four. Perfect.
Surrounded by the warriors, with their backs against the wall, the odds were dismal. There was no room for escape, but Horatio unsheathed his sword, Malord picked up a splintered board from the floor, and Kael clutched a broken shard of stone from the wall. Sariah followed suit, imbuing her stone with her hatred for the Prime Hand and the Guild. Did they have the time to imprint something useful?
Hope was a little girl's merry voice. “Uncle Kael, would you use your sling right now if you had it?”
Sariah couldn't believe the little girl's calm in the face of thirty warriors armed to kill. She for one was barely managing her knees.
The furious battle smile was on Kael's lips. “I reckon I would use my sling, Mianina. If I had it.”
“Is my life in danger?” Mia asked cheerfully.
“How does it feel to you?”
Mia tilted her head and thought about it.
Meliahs help her. Sariah cursed her misguided attempts to keep Mia from using her power. She willed the little girl to act now. She willed Kael to hurry, but he didn't rush the child in the least. Rather, he stood by Mia, waiting in absolute stillness as if the thirty warriors before them were a fresh breeze passing through in an otherwise perfectly sunny day. Maybe the loss of blood had damaged Kael's wits.
Sariah snapped. “Do you really think this is the right time for a lesson?”
“You can only learn to fight well fighting,” he said.
