Stonewiser (36 page)

The beast exceeded all expectations of evil ugliness. As the long claws began a slow arch toward her throat, she realized with a start that it was an all too perfect incarnation of mankind's worst nightmares.

“Are you Stonewiser Sariah of the Hall of Scribes’ sixty-sixth folio, formerly of the Guild?” the creature spoke, in a neatly accented speech, no less. The long claws came to rest beneath her chin, tilting her face up. Her mouth snapped shut at the cold lifeless touch.

Another beast stepped down from its lumbering heights, leaving a pair of enormous legs standing on their own. “Are these yours?”

He clutched a rumpled parchment in one clawed hand and a crystalline scorpion in the other. Sariah couldn't help it. She laughed. She cackled, uncontrollably, like a mad woman, like the sickest of the atorium's boarders. She laughed until her belly hurt, despite Delis, who stood pale and wide-eyed, flanked by more of the beasts, despite the icy stare of the horrid creatures gathering around her. The last thing she remembered were the beast's claws, aligning fatefully, and the side of a fisted paw coming at her face.

Twenty-seven

 

S
ARIAH WOKE UP
groggily. She had a faint recollection of a fast ascent, of dark stones rushing by, an endless plain streaked with coppery veins. For a moment, she thought perhaps she lay at the bottom of the Bastions, but then her vision cleared and she saw the tall dome above her, an array of richly carved panels adorned with elaborate dotted designs. The dots came together to form a colorful mural, a collection of stylized images that showed a hoard of ragged people traveling a spiral path across the dome, from a walled city, through streams and mountains, to kneel around the cupola's opening. Remarkable. Where had she seen similar designs before?

Sunlight streaked in through the dome's hollow middle, warming her skin. Her shoulder bag lay beside her. She pushed herself to her feet. She was in the middle of a round dais that stood at the chamber's center. It wasn't very large, maybe twenty spans across. She took a tentative step. Light came through the empty cracks between the boards. A sudden sense of vertigo struck her. She forced the dizzying sensation out of her mind and inched toward the edge.

A tall, single pillar supported the dais where she stood. Beneath the boards, several posts and dowels extended at different angles, supporting the platform like sturdy branches. Above her, a ledge rimmed the lower part of the dome like a rail-less balcony. But it was useless. A wide moat surrounded the platform on all sides. She couldn't jump the distance if she tried. She looked down.

An army of barbed spikes covered the moat's floor. A few decomposing bodies were impaled on the spikes, one or two recently killed, judging by the stench of blood and feces, the rest desiccated or rotting. Rats scurried between the spikes. Bones lay scattered about. Perfect. Whatever she had gotten herself into was no benign or harmless venture.

A movement on the ledge above caught her eye. A tall figure, dark against the dome's lighter hue, stood flanked by the frozen outline of one of the human beasts she had seen before.

“Who are you?” Her own voice echoed painfully in her head.

“Today's keeper,” the man said. “I was waiting for you to wake.” He wore a straight garment, a bright, colorful wrap which covered him from armpit to knee, exposing bony, narrow shoulders and long sculpted calves. A thin crust of short, tight curls topped his narrow face. Even though he stood a ways away, Sariah noticed the impressive curve of his nasal bone and his matching brown eyes. But it was the macabre row of horizontal scars on his forearms that caught her attention.

“Why am I here?” Sariah asked. “And why are those people dead in the moat?”

The man spoke stiffly, formally, as if his lips were not used to putting thoughts into words. “Those are your predecessors. That last one, he died the day before yesterday.”

“Why did you kill him?”

“He killed himself. From ignorance. We found him quite interesting.”

“Then I'll strive to be boring.”

“You'll be anything but boring.”

“How do you know?”

“He told us.”

Sariah glanced at the dead man in the moat. He had landed on his back. The spikes had skewered him through the ribs, the abdomen and a leg. A slow death then. Death's rigor had preserved the pain on his face's expression. The wide nose, the scrabbling beard, she had seen that face before.

Josfan. The dead man in the moat was the shooter who had tried to kill her at the nets, the ruthless mob leader who had destroyed their deck at Nafa. Had he been the one who had always been a step ahead of her? The one who had warned Alabara's marcher of her coming and contracted out her capture with the forester? Had he been Arron or Grimly's agent? She would never know now.

“The sages will come,” the keeper said. “They will speak through the Wisdom and only through the Wisdom. Your questions shall be answered. And so will theirs.”

A set of beastly claws burst from the keeper's fist. Without flinching, he ran a single blade against his skin, slicing another notch above the crook of his arm. Blood trickled from the wound. Sariah's horror turned to revulsion. The man lapped at his own blood like a famished bat.

Before she could make sense out of the keeper's actions, the human beast beside him came to life and blew a long horn that stood on a gilded stand. A single note issued from the horn, a powerful blast that filled the chamber.

In the dome, the row of panels above the keeper's ledge opened. People began to emerge from those openings. Sariah counted fourteen men and women, some old, some of average age, some barely children, all dressed in the same colorful garb the keeper wore. They stood on small ledges in front of their respective openings, looking down on her.

“This is Sariah,” the keeper announced. “Daughter of the Hall of Scribes, quitter of the Guild, wiser of the seven twin stones, breaker of the wall, banished of the Domain, wanted of the Goodlands, procured of the Hounds.”

Sariah forced herself to breathe. She didn't know who these people were. In turn, they knew exactly who she was.

“You shall fetch and drag the impostors before you,”
the keeper said.
“And they shall die in horror for their falsehood until truth prevails to the Wisdom's satisfaction.
First decree of the Lawman, Vargas.”

Why was the keeper speaking as if in quotes? Who by the rot pit was the Lawman Vargas? And why had she been brought here in the first place? Could this odd assortment of people on the ledges, young, old, matching eyes and not, comprise the people she sought? She looked up at the reliefs on the dome. Was the answer there? Had she finally found the pure?

The sages intoned a communal prayer.
“Hollow are the impostors’ claims, dark is the truth's journey. Grant us wisdom, merciful goddess, to redeem the worthy and forsake the frail, to lead your restoration or perish.”

Raised in the ways of the Guild, Sariah recognized ritual easily. She sensed a certain familiarity in the strangers’ words. No, not in the words—Sariah was sure she had not heard the prayer before— the familiarity stemmed from the tone. She had heard the same fervor in the Domainers’ sacred oaths and in the Guild's mandates. She had seen the same determination that gleamed in these people's eyes, in the Domainers’ mismatched stares and in the Guild members’ steely glares. These strangers shared in the Blood's zealousness, an emotion she respected as much as she feared. However far removed from their kin, they were of the Blood.

With great ceremony, the keeper lifted a huge lever embedded between a set of evenly notched posts. With a loud thump, the lever dropped to the higher notch. A rattle of chain and pins clattered beneath the boards. The scaffolding under Sariah's feet quaked. A good span of the dais's fringe uncoiled from the rest and fell away before her very eyes.

“Your time will be done when the pedestal is no more,” the keeper said. “May the goddess bless you with her wisdom.”

How much time did she have? A minute? An hour? Sariah didn't have the slightest idea. She stole another look at the moat. Those corpses down there had failed at whatever ordeal these people proposed. Would she end her days impaled in the rat-infested moat?

Sages. They couldn't be too different from the Guild's masters and mistresses. She cleared her throat and called on her best pledge's manners. “Respected sages, why am I here?”

A little boy with slanted eyes stepped forward on his ledge.
“In falseness, many will come. In truth, one will become it.
The Seer, Tirsis.”

Did these people always speak in riddles? What had the keeper said?
They will speak through the Wisdom and only through the Wisdom.
Were they following an ancient protocol? Were they speaking words they had been taught, perhaps quoting from a communal source? Aye, Sariah decided, on both counts. A child of the Guild was trained to recognize tradition and authority.

An old man spoke.
“A sunless dawn. A branded beast. The life taste of the waiting dead. They are Meliahs’ sacred tools and Hounds will wield them in her stead.
The Dreamer, Poe.”

How was she supposed to make sense out of that? Delis. First of all, Delis.

“Where's my companion? Is she hurt?”

A tall woman stepped forward in her ledge.
“Why shall the wise converse with the sinful? Why shall the pious reach out to the ignorant?
The Teacher, Eneis.”

She took that as a your-Delis-is-fine-thank-you, but with a bit of skepticism. They didn't give a lick about Delis. She did. “Were those monsters in the forest your warriors?”

“The beasts shall rise to defend the truth,” a young woman said. “The hearts of warriors shall beat with the strength of the fiercest Hounds.
The Lawman, Vargas.”

Meliahs’ Hounds.
No wonder they were legendary. That's what they called their brutes. Whoever bloody Vargas was, he would have been utterly satisfied to see the monsters he commanded. Tirsis, Poe, Eneis, Vargas. Seer, dreamer, teacher and lawman. Their sayings seemed to comprise what the keeper had called
the Wisdom.
The sages didn't speak for themselves. The Wisdom spoke through them or better yet, they spoke through the words of… who? Their rulers? Wisers? Long dead soothsayers?

The thud of the lever dropping to the next notch startled her. The boards rumbled beneath her feet. A new portion of the platform's rim disappeared. How many notches on the beams? Time. Sariah remembered she didn't have it to spare.

She went for the basics. “Who are you?”

A young woman stepped forward.
“Who are we but the witnesses of treason, the heresy's spurners, Meliahs’ faithful followers? Who are we but the fist that waits in the shadows to unleash the blow?”

At least they saw themselves as Meliahs’ own. “I too worship Meliahs. I was seized while pursuing the stone truth. I must continue her work.”

The young woman shook her head.
“Many are those who claim the goddess's service. Few will serve her faithfully.”

They were as suspect as they should be. “Look, I don't know what you want from me—”

“You shall not be deterred,”
a tall woman said.
“Just as strength is rewarded with life, weakness can only be cured with death.”

In the Guild, they beat you to get your attention. These sages slapped you equally hard, but with their verses. “Are you the people called the pure?”

The sages exchanged odd looks. A moment passed before the boy stepped forward and said,
“What's pure but stone? What's impure if not all but stone?”

Her hopes that she had found the pure collapsed. This place wasn't it. But if she hadn't found the pure, could she at least find confirmation that she was on the right path?

“Are you the keepers of the truth?”

There was general laughter and a burst of applause. Sariah gathered she had gotten the answer to her question right. Yet she despaired at the cryptic exchange. What could she tell these people that might prevent her death? What did they know about the Guild and the stones, about everything that had happened in the last few years? Would they believe anything she said?