Weight of Stone (39 page)

“If it were a fish, we would be set,” Kaïnam agreed, not taking offense. “But I am not a butcher, no.”

“If it’s not able to continue in the morning,” Jerzy said, “we let it go loose. Either someone will find it and give it a home, or—”

As though on cue, there was another deep coughing noise just out of reach of the firelight; the humans jumped, while the beasts shuddered, crowding in closer to the fire and the relative safety there.

“Or something else will make use of it,” Jerzy finished.

This close to their goal, he felt his stomach twisting inside him, the doubts he could not speak making their presence known in other ways. What would they do, on the morrow? What would they find? And what in Sin Washer’s grace had made him think that he—that they had a chance against anyone who could work such magic, that could reach out and kill a Master Vineart in his own House?

That thought brought him square back to the question he had been avoiding since they left the
Vine’s Heart.
All four were so focused on finding the source, revealing it as the cause of everything gone wrong, that they were not going beyond the idea of discovery. If the source was here, if the taint he sensed grew in this soil … what sort of vines had created that magic? A wild vine, a legacy that had gone feral … Jerzy
identified the twisting in his gut was as much anticipation as fear; the idea that there was a spellvine that had not been identified, that was unknown to the Magewine, to the scholars in Altenne, to the rest of all Vinearts piquing his interest the way a woman or a man never could. If he could bring a cutting home with him, see if it would grow in The Berengia … try to erase the taint from its magic … or try to erase the taint already here … there was no Command against that.

Save that the Vineart here might easily kill them as share a cutting. Save that Jerzy might have no yard to plant it in, even if he were allowed to return. Save the Command that an apostate Vineart’s yard be burned and salted, and Vineart Malech no longer stood in the doorway to stop them.

Guardian, protect them, he thought, touching the tasting spoon hanging from his belt, biting his lip hard enough to draw salty blood. He was helpless, trapped by his obligation, bound by the charge given him: find the source, bring it to light, save the House of Malech from destruction. Guardian, he thought again, reaching for the stone dragon’s presence. There was a suggestion of cool weight pressing against his chest, and then it was gone.

“Everyone get some sleep,” Kaïnam said. “I’ll take the first watch, and we’ll do shipboard rotation, and be on the road at sunrise, with or without all the beasts.”

Holding on to the ghost-touch, Jerzy unrolled his blanket and found a comfortable place near the fire, to get as much rest as he could before his turn on watch.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Tag-ear seemed to have recovered enough to escape becoming anyone’s meal. After a deeply unsatisfying breakfast and the last of their
vin ordinaire
cut with water from the tiny stream, they packed up their campsite and kicked dirt over the remains of the fire. If anyone was following them, they wanted to leave as little trace as possible.

Mahl and Jerzy hitched Blacktail and Barrel to the harness, while
Ao, who had drawn the short twig, checked Tag-ear’s hooves again, then tied the still-limping
zecora
to the back of the cart while Kaïnam repacked their belongings. By the time the sun had risen fully above the horizon, they were on their way, and by midmorning, they crested over a hill and found themselves at their destination.

The flat-topped mountain that had been their constant, if distant companion to the east rose more sharply ahead of them, forming jagged peaks, but the sloping hills directly below them were coated with plantings, twisted brown arms wreathed with leaves the shimmering brown and red colors of Harvest.

Vines.

Something caught in Jerzy’s chest, and his fingers flexed inward, curling into his palms. Mahault touched his shoulder, and when he looked at her, she smiled, as though telling him that she understood he was feeling something, even if she didn’t know what. He nodded back, not sure what to say, either, and then looked back down the road, trying to see the vineyard with less yearning and more the way he thought Mahault or Kaïnam might: distanced, evaluating what might wait for them.

Unlike the bunched rows Jerzy was familiar with, or the more extended lines Vineart Giordan had cultivated, these were a thickly gathered mass, so much that the eye tried to tell the mind that it was all one massive plant, covering the entire slope.

There were only a few bodies moving in the yard, weaving in and around the vines. That, plus the glorious leaf colors, told him that the Harvest had been completed. The air had not lied; the seasons were all turned around in this land, the way Ao had claimed.

“What now, Jer?” Kaïnam asked.

As quickly as that, the moment they saw vineyards, they were looking to him again.

Jerzy stared at the vines spread out below them, feeling the familiar hunger rise up again to be down among them, listening to them whisper. Not his vines; not his soil. He did not know these vines, and he
feared what they were able to do. And yet at the same time, he wanted them, with a hunger that surprised and dismayed him more than a little. It could not be normal. Vineart Giordan’s weatherwines had not effected this pull on him, not even when he had a taste in his blood.

Maybe it was not the Vineart who was to be feared, but the vines.

The thought was so startling, Jerzy almost tripped and fell.

“Jer?”

“I am thinking,” he said.

“You’re drooling,” Ao retorted.

Reflexively, Jerzy swiped at his chin, then turned to glare at Ao when he realized what he had done—and that his chin was utterly dry. But it was good to see Ao grinning at him again, and, despite the uncertainty of the moment, he smiled back.

Mahault brought them back to the moment. “Do we sneak around? Go down and introduce ourselves? Go back to the
Heart
and pretend that we never found this place?”

All of those choices sounded equally appealing to Jerzy. But only one would accomplish what they had set out to do.

“We go down and introduce ourselves,” he said finally. “That is protocol, when you enter another Vineart’s lands. If we follow protocol, we will know what to expect.”

Ao and Kaïnam both nodded, but Mahault shook her head, even as she was following them down the road toward the front gate.

“Only if they know and follow protocol, too,” she said, casting a worried look up at the vast expanse of open sky, as though already expecting some sort of attack. “If they don’t …”

If whoever tended the vines below did not, they were likely walking into a trap.

T
HE GATES THAT
marked the start of the vineyard were made of a dark wood that arched over the road the same way the vine-twined arch did the entrance to the House of Malech. Jerzy braced himself for the same
sense of gentle interrogation, if not the welcome he always felt when he passed under that arch, but there was nothing.

Whoever this Vineart was, either he hid his protections—or he did not have any. Jerzy wasn’t sure which possibility made him more uneasy.

“Ah-ah!” They were greeted by a slave dressed in a waist wrap made of the same brightly colored pattern as they had seen on the villagers four days back. His skin was not quite as dark as theirs, but his hair had the same night-black tone and tight-curled appearance, although it was trimmed close to his scalp. He also wore a white metal necklet, the square amulet hanging against his bare chest. Jerzy felt the urge to touch the token still tied around his own neck for reassurance, although he doubted Master Malech’s name would mean anything here, in this place.

Or if it did, it would be nothing good.

“Welcome to the domain of the Vineart Esoba of the House of Runcidore.” The slave spoke near-perfect Ettonian, the trade-lingua remnant of the ancient Empire, with only a trace of an accent, and made a formal bow that would have been perfectly in place in the Aleppanese court. “You have come far, and will wish refreshment before meeting with my master.”

It was not a question, and they were not given the chance to answer, as two more slaves, less brightly dressed and wearing no jewelry, came forward to take the reins from Ao and to help Mahault down from the cart, leaving Jerzy to scramble down on his own.

“Civilized men,” Kaïnam said quietly, in halting but clear Berengian, and Jerzy nodded. They were almost too well mannered, considering protocol had already been broken; slaves had no business greeting visitors. Jerzy would have thought this man some sort of servant or aide, except that he was dead certain the man was a slave. There was something, a tingling of the hairs on his forearms, or an itch behind his ears—it was how a Vineart could choose whom to buy, out of a crowd of scared, filthy, untrained children. That knowledge came to him as though he had always known it.

Perhaps he had. Or it might have been the Guardian, even at a distance, giving him what he needed. Jerzy grasped at the second explanation and clung to it. Anything to not feel so ignorant and isolated here.

The senior slave clearly expected them to follow. Lacking any other options, they did so, entering the vintnery proper without fanfare or obstacle. House Runcidore was a simple structure; there was only one story, and the windows were open to the air, rather than being glassed in, but it was strongly built, with pleasing lines. The door was open, too, but when they entered, they saw that there was a heavy wooden door set inside, and at each window as well, to be fastened from within.

“Storm shutters,” Ao said quietly, looking around. “They must have bad storms here, in season.”

The main hall was exactly that—a giant open space, with two open, arched doorways at the far end. There were no tapestries on the walls, nothing but whitewashed walls and sconces where candles flickered with the clean, smokeless light of a well-crafted firespell. Despite the simplicity, there was an elegance to the building that had been lacking in the rough clay-brick structures of the village.

“I have never heard of Vineart Esoba,” Ao said, still keeping his voice pitched low, to avoid the slave’s overhearing.

“Nor have I.” And that was more worrying. Mahl and Kaïnam would only have encountered the few Vinearts who did business with their homes, and Ao’s people had no traffic with spellwines. There was little reason for them to have known the name of a Vineart so far away. But Jerzy had learned the names of many of the Vinearts of note, even the ones far away, and he had never heard of Esoba, or the House of Runcidore.

Name was everything; you were always the student of your master, and lineage mattered as much to the Vineart as the legacy of their vines. Even Master Giordan, who admitted that his master had not been a great Vineart, acknowledged his name and his teachings, even if he did not keep the House name for himself. The fact that Master Malech had
so eclipsed his master had shifted the name of his House, but that was exception, not rule.

“Is there a market for an unknown Vineart’s spellwines, Jer?” Ao asked, following some thought of his own. “I mean, if we are the first to encounter him, if I could broker an Agreement …”

It was reassuring, to hear Ao mutter to himself. The world could not be too odd, if Ao still had his eyes on the trade.

“Jerzy, how can a Vineart be, beyond the Lands Vin?” Mahl was still looking around, but she had edged closer to the other three as she spoke, as though afraid the walls themselves might take offense at her question. “I thought the spellvines only grew there, not anywhere else? And a Vineart does not go away from his vine….”

“The traditional borders were designated by the First Growth,” Jerzy said, keeping his voice soft as well, although he was saying nothing that was not known. “That is why even lands where the blooded grapes no longer grow, for whatever reason, are considered within the Lands Vin.” He did not want to mention wild vines; they were rare and unlikely, and none of an outsider’s concern, anyway. “It is possible to carry rootstock away for replanting. If, unlike Caul, the roots will take hold in this soil, this location seems to be well suited for the vines.”

“Indeed it is,” a voice said. “Indeed, most wonderfully suiting.”

The man who greeted them was tall, taller even than Kaïnam, and broad in the shoulders as Ao, and dark-skinned as any of his slaves. A cloth of bright red and blue bands was slung over his shoulder like a cloak, falling to his waist over a short wrap of dark blue cloth. A double-wrapped leather belt encircled his hips, and a battered silver tasting spoon and a short, unsheathed knife hung from it, moving as he walked.

Vineart.

“Be welcome, brother mage!” he said to Jerzy, not waiting for introductions. “Oh yes, yes, I feeling you on the road, coming. And you are feeling me the same, it must be. Else there is nothing here—we are a young vineyard, only one legacy, and not many visitors, only the traders who coming buy my wine. So be welcome, and be at home.”

The Vineart stepped forward and embraced Jerzy, not seeming to notice the way the other stiffened at the contact. Jerzy had not sensed the Vineart, only the taint. Was it the isolation that made the man’s sense so keen, or had Jerzy failed somehow?

“Jerzy of House Malech,” he said, and waited for some reaction.

“And these, your companions, you are welcome as well. My slaves will take most care with your belongings.” Jerzy might have made up names, for all the notice the other man took of them, turning to greet each of Jerzy’s companions, placing his hands in front of his body, palms flat together rather than cupped, and bowing slightly over them. He paused when he came to Mahault, taken aback slightly, and cast a sideways glance at Jerzy, as though to ask how he should approach this female.

Jerzy looked back at him, keeping his face impassive. In the Vin Lands, a woman belonged to her family name—or she was a solitaire. Mahault had neither protection, but he knew her well enough to know that she would not thank him for trying to offer it, himself.