Stonewiser (25 page)

“It's delicious. Taste it.”

“No thanks. I've had enough exhilaration lately.”

“And you?” She offered Delis.

“No, my donnis. It's for you.”

Sariah realized with a start that Delis had been holding her breath with the expectation of pleasing her.

“I've been very anxious about your safety,” Delis said, “but the child assured me that you lived.”

Mia admired Leandro's gaming pieces, neatly set up for the next game. “They're beautiful. Can I play?”

“Try your Uncle Kael. He's easy to beat.”

“Your auntie is gloating again.”

“The pieces are wised.”

“Wised?” Malord scooted to the board faster than a rolling wagon.

“I have news, my donnis. From Alabara.”

“You didn't go back in there after we sent you off, did you?”

“No need, my donnis, I heard the stories wherever we went.”

“You mean about Orgos's death?”

“Death? No, my donnis. Orgos isn't dead. He's alive, although his forehead is said to bear a hole deeper than a sunken cave. Orgos is alive and pissed. He's looking for you.”

“He nearly killed us for no good reason.”

“The channel's stones gave way a few days after we left,” Delis said. “Alabara is dying and Orgos says it's your fault.”

Nineteen

 

P
LAYING SNAKES AND
scorpions with Malord was futile. The old man always won. The repetitive defeat was an exercise in wiser discipline to Sariah, intended to shed light on the riddle's mysterious words:
Every game triumphs well before the end is played
.

“You are unbeatable,” Sariah said, after losing again. “Was there a point in this game when you knew you had won even before you won?”

“It was a struggle to the end,” Malord said. “At every play, you could have thwarted my victory.”

“Not a compliment to my brilliancy. I thought I had lost long ago.”

A burst of wind howled outside and rattled the deck on its claws.

“I can't sleep.” Mia's tremulous voice came from under her blankets.

“Come sit with us, Mianina. It's just a bit of rough weather.”

“But those people, yesterday, they said that doom was coming to the Domain.”

“They were just a bunch of babbling idiots making a run for the wall.”

“What about the blood-drinking rot monsters they talked about?”

“Overactive imaginations, if you get what I mean.” Sariah twirled a finger around her ear and was gratified by the little girl's grin. “Don't worry, Mianina. There are no monsters about.”

Well, maybe there were monsters around, not the kind Mia feared but rather the ones Sariah dreaded. Where were Kael and Delis? When would they return? What if they didn't return?

She had to stop thinking like that. Neither Kael nor Delis had stayed on the decks that night. In rare agreement, armed and weaved from head to toe, they had slipped into the dead waters earlier and lost themselves in the night. They had gone to investigate a cluster of suspicious decks they had spotted earlier in the day. They had been gone a long time.

“Blood,” Mia said. “You're bleeding from your bracelet.”

“Oh.” Sariah stopped twirling the bracelet and blotted the bloody scrapes. “It's nothing.”

“Does the bracelet hurt?”

Only in her heart. “Not really.”

Malord finished resetting the game. “Your move.”

Sariah threw the dice and considered her options. “This is giving me a headache.”

“My mommy gives me persimmon water with honey when my head hurts.”

“Sounds delicious. We have no persimmon but I happen to have very good honey.”

“Not again.” Mia giggled. “You're going to go wide at the hips, that's what my mommy would say. And you're going to lose to Malord if you don't pay attention to your game.”

Malord winked. “She's going to lose to old Malord even if she pays attention.”

“Are you that good?” Mia asked.

“I'm unbeatable.”

“I bet you Thaddeus could beat you.”

“You mean that scoundrel brother of yours? Never.”

“Oh, yes, he could. With his lucky dice. A double three, a three and five, a four and three, a double five, and a double two. Ten plays and he can't lose.”

“Surely good Thaddeus doesn't cheat?” Sariah said. “Your mother would never allow him to have a pair of loaded dice.”

“Mamma doesn't know. I'm the only one who knows. He always beats me. I told him I'd tell Mamma. That's how I got his secret winning numbers.”

Something fluttered in the back of Sariah's mind.
Beware of the one who always wins
, the old crone had said in Alabara.

“The secret winning numbers? Do you know about this, Malord?”

“Never heard of it, but then I'm not a seventeen-year-old apprentice trying to force my luck for the sake of coin.”

“You won't tell Mamma, will you?”

“Of course not,” Sariah said. “Tell me again. If you throw those numbers, do you always win?”

“If you follow the right order, you'll win no matter what.”

Beware of the one who always wins. And every game triumphs well before the end is played
. The fluttering feeling coalesced into a concrete thought. Could it be?

“Put it back.” Sariah repositioned her scorpions quickly. “Put it all back.”

“What?” Malord asked. “Why?”

“Humor me.” She played a double three. “Does it matter what the other person plays, Mia?”

“For you to win, Malord's got to play the reverse.”

“That would be a double two, right?” Malord moved his snakes.

“Now me,” Sariah said. “Three and five.”

“This can't possibly work.” Malord played the double five. “It doesn't make any sense. How can a person ensure the dice will throw the right numbers?”

Mia leaned over to Malord and whispered. “That's the cheating part.”

“You must use loaded dice,” Sariah said. Maybe even wised dice?

It all began to make sense. Wised dice would assure the required throws. Did Leandro know this? Sariah doubted it. He would have been a much richer man if he had owned wised dice. And he would have needed a prohibitive amount of coin to procure something as rare and forbidden. Just to make sure, Sariah pressed the dice against her palm. They weren't wised. They weren't even a loaded set.

“Four and three for both of us,” Sariah said. “Is it possible, Malord? Do you see a trend? Something?”

Dark brows clashed above Malord's sharp nose. “It's very strange. Since we started playing these numbers, the board has become blocked, eliminating any choices to the moves. To play the numbers, the pieces can only move into certain spaces. Remarkable.”

“Auntie's gonna win!”

“Five and five.” Sariah moved. “Three and five, you. Can any kid figure this out?”

“This is the scam of a brilliant mind,” Malord said, “a mathematician perhaps, one who I've never met in the Domain.”

It struck Sariah like a hammer to the knee. “Someone from the Hall of Numbers spent a lot of time figuring this out.”

Malord gaped.

“Who else?” Only the Guild, and only a wiser trained in the Hall of Numbers could manage a feat of this kind. “The secret numbers may be out in the back alleys among betting players, but the original maker of this scam belonged to the Guild.”

But something else was bothering Sariah. “Even if Leandro had wised dice—which I doubt—how did he, or any other cheating player who knew the winning numbers for that matter, manage to win the game without triggering whatever trick was wised into these snakes and scorpions?”

“A fair question,” Malord said. “Whoever went through the intricate process of creating this game would have safeguarded the trick from the casual player.”

“And that safeguard must be something else, something not available to the typical player, something that only a stonewiser would have and readily recognize as rare and valuable.”

Malord frowned. “Are you thinking about the missing wised dice?”

“I'm thinking about what the missing wised dice
represent
once the winning numbers are known.”

They both said it at the same time. “Wised stone.”

Sariah fumbled through her pockets and took out a handful of stones. “Any wised stone?”

“Not a memory stone,” Malord said. “Those would have been all too common, at least among Domainers.”

“What then?” She thumbed through the stones. “A bursting stone? Too risky. A festival tale stone? Too diluted.”

“An ancient tale,” Malord said. “The oldest tale you have in your collection.”

“Maybe even a forbidden tale?” She held out the stone where she had imprinted the tale of her wising of the seven stones.

Malord grinned. “Ideal.”

Sariah placed her stone on the middle of the checkered cloth board, on a square which had always puzzled her because it was the only one painted black among the red and white ones. Hers wasn't an original stone, but it was worth a try.

She played a double two. “Your turn.”

A tremor betrayed Malord's hand as he played a double three and moved the last of his snakes into place.

Nothing happened.

“You win!” Mia jumped up and down, hugging Sariah. “Auntie, you finally beat Malord.”

Sariah wasn't thrilled. Beating Malord had become decidedly unimportant in the great scheme of things. “Maybe we need the wised dice after all. Maybe we didn't do it right.”

Malord was no less disappointed than she was. “Do you want to try it again?”

“Wait. Do you hear that?”

Pop. Pop. Blast.
She knew those sounds. Somewhere out in the night, Kael was using his bursting stones, small and large. Sariah ran out to the deck. The night was dark and the wind was ferocious, but if she had doubts, a burst of fire in the distance revealed the dire extent of their trouble.

A deck went up in flames not half a league away. The flames shed light on the surrounding cluster. The wind carried the sounds of the fray—grunts, cries, the clang of weapons—a terrifying racket.

Sariah twisted the bracelet around her wrist. “Do you think they need our help?”

“Kael and Delis didn't take on those decks without good reason,” Malord said. “They're not mad.”

Sariah wondered.

“Is that a shooting star?” Mia asked.

Sariah turned just in time to watch a blinding streak slash the sky with unfathomable speed. It was like a shooting star, only bigger, and lower, and brighter, and… It was coming directly toward their deck. A muted rumbled stirred the flats’ dead waters into a quivering tide. The deck rattled and sloshed under Sariah's feet. A strange hum grew in intensity. It strummed her eardrums into unbearable vibration.

Mia covered her ears. “What's happening?”

The impact shook the deck and sent Sariah and the others crashing to the floor. The scent of smoke and burnt thatch filled the air. Ashes and cinders flew everywhere. Green smoke poured through the deck's open door and out of the busted windows. Sariah ran to the door.

“The rot take me.”

The beam had burned through the scorched thatch roof and landed squarely on Leandro's game, igniting each piece into glowing embers. A pulse of energy brightened the glow every few moments, accompanied by the throbbing hum.

She tracked the strange beam. “North by northwest.”

Malord stammered. “Is it—?”

“Pointing the way? I think so.”

“It looks like Ars's bridges,” Mia said. “Only bigger.”

“I guess it's sort of a bridge, leading us.” But where?

The hum was so loud that they didn't hear Kael and Delis until they thundered onto the deck, panting like racing mastiffs.

“What's that?” Kael's face wrap was torn. Sweat streamed down his face. His weaved hands were dripping blood. Delis didn't look any better.

“It's not a map,” Sariah said. “It's like a guide, a pointer.”

“Whatever it is, turn it off.” Kael clipped his harness to the ropes.

“We just got it to work. I can't just turn it off!”

“Turn it off, cut it out, smother it down, whatever it takes.”

“And hurry.” Delis was already pulling the other deck.

Shouts rang in the night. Voices cried out in the dark coming from where the decks were burning and nearing fast.

“We just got it to work. We don't know if we can—”

“I got the stars,” Malord said.

“Me too,” Kael said. “Turn it off or we die.”

Sariah ran into the shelter and halted before the beam. The deck was already going at a good clip but the light didn't waver, fixed stubbornly on the game set. How on earth could she stop the beam from shining on the snakes and scorpions?

She exposed her fingertips to the throbbing beam and found out quickly that it was hot. She wrapped her hand in a spare weave and groped at the cloth that served as game board. After a few scorching tries, she managed to grab the corner and pull. The little pieces toppled and scattered. The hum boomed inauspiciously. The beam retreated through the smoking hole and drew back to wherever it came from, the very place Sariah needed to find.