Bloodstone (3 page)

Sighing, she surveyed her father’s worktable. There was but one reason a gem cutter and goldsmith of his skill should live so sparsely. The butcher would by now be saying, “Did I promise you beef, Tolbert? I’m so sorry, but it’s old this time of year. I can let you have pork next week, if you don’t mind waiting.” Just as the weaver had said to him last month, in her presence, “My apprentice, you know, was taken ill, and I’ve had to do the work of two. I promised you a cloak of dyed wool, but all I have is this short cape. Will that do?”

Mirianna would have held out for what was due, but Tolbert, with his eager smile, had bobbed his head and accepted the cape. “Better to take what you can than to leave with empty hands,” he told her when she remarked it would hardly keep him as warm as the formerly agreed upon cloak.

“Then, at least,” she said, “ask for more than your work is worth. That way, you can bargain and still receive full value.”

Tolbert’s watery blue eyes widened. “Never!” He threw aside his mallet. “I have a reputation to uphold.”

Mirianna had bent to kiss his head between scattered strands of graying hair. He was right, of course. He’d lived fifty-two years on the principle of personal integrity, and she with her meager twenty winters could hardly dispute his experiences. She only wished others in Nolar adhered to the same principle, or that he would occasionally listen to her about insisting on full payment. Perhaps then she could divert some of their income for living expenses before her father spent the coin on some unique gem or another handful of uncut stones.

She busied herself with his worktable, organizing his tools so each would be in its assigned place when he sat down to work. It was a task she performed at least three times a day. If she didn’t, Tolbert would tear the cottage upside down looking for a chisel he’d laid down an hour before, in plain sight, on the opposite side of the table.

“Mirianna! Mirianna!”

It was her father’s voice, breathless and...frantic? She spun to the half-open cottage door and gripped it.

Tolbert burst through the gate, his balding head glistening and as red as his cheeks under the wisps of gray beard clinging to them. He bustled through the door she opened for him, dropped two bundles on his worktable, and grabbed her hands.

“What news I have!” he cried, spinning her around with the energy of a twenty-year-old. “What wonderful news!”

Mirianna clung to his hands as they whirled past crockery, kicked over the broom, and landed with a thud on the bench beside the door. “Papa, Papa, what?”

“Flowers!” He gamboled to the worktable and grabbed one bundle. “Flowers for my lovely daughter’s hair, for her hands, for our table!” Thrusting a bunch of peonies into her lap, he kissed her cheek and tucked one huge pink bloom behind her ear.

The blossom drooped. She caught it beside her cheek. The fragrance, heavy and sweet, welled up around her. She closed her eyes, momentarily drunk with it. “Papa...?” she whispered.

But he was already shaking out the other bundle. “A cloak!” He draped it across her knees with a flourish. “The finest in Nolar and the same color as your hair, lamb.”

Mirianna stared at the cloak, at the fine, tight weave and rich, oak-brown color. She touched it, gingerly, and knew at once it was worth more coin than her father had seen in months. “Papa, where—?”

“I’ll make you a turquoise clasp set in silver.” Tolbert rummaged in the tiny drawers of a set of shelves standing on the wall side of his worktable. “I have the stones already. I’ve been saving them for years because, well…” He glanced at her and his already high color deepened. “Because they remind me of your mother’s eyes, and yours, too, of course.” He turned back to the tabletop. “Ah, here they are.” He pulled on his apron, sat down, and sorted through his tools. “I made two clasps last month. Let’s see, where did I put them?”

Mirianna laid the flowers carefully to one side on the bench. Gathering the cloak in her arms, she plucked a scattering of peony petals from it, and then draped it over the bench back. “Papa,” she said, rising and placing her hands on his shoulders as he worked, “everything—the cloak, the flowers—is lovely, but...how did you get the coin to buy these?”

Tolbert lowered the gem he had been sizing. “Didn’t I tell you?” He looked for a moment befuddled, then laughed. “Why, it’s wonderful, child. The Master of Nolar has commissioned me to make all the jewelry for his betrothal and wedding! His manservant saw me delivering the butcher’s ring and insisted I see Master Brandelmore immediately.”

He unfastened a pouch from his belt and dropped it onto the table. “Look! He’s advanced me coin to buy the gems.”

The pouch had landed with a solid chink, and now it sat bowing out like a distended belly from its knotted neck. Mirianna was certain there was more coin within than her father had seen in his lifetime. Even if the Master’s fortress sat atop the bluff overlooking Nolar valley, and even if Master Brandelmore owned most of the vineyards and all of the forests for several leagues in all directions, this had to be coin he counted dear.

“Papa,” she breathed, “there’s so much.”

“The Master of Nolar wants only the finest.” He pushed the pouch aside. “He’ll pay me the rest when I deliver the finished pieces.”

“There’ll be more?” Mirianna whispered.

Tolbert leaned an elbow on the table and combed fingers through his beard. “I’ll see Burl for the emeralds, amber, and diamonds. He should have amethyst, too, but not the jet and bloodstone.”

“Bloodstone! He’ll give his bride that?”

“Said he wanted her bound to him in blood. The rich...” He waved his hand. “Too much at stake, I suppose.”

Mirianna shivered. If she were Master Brandelmore’s bride, she’d hardly be comforted to receive petrified drops of the legendary Last Dragon’s blood as a sign of the marriage bond.

“I’ll have to go to Ar-Deneth,” Tolbert mused. “Perhaps I should go there to see Ulerroth first, before I see Burl. After all, the size and shape of the bloodstone will determine much about the companion gems.”

“Ar-Deneth!” Mirianna gripped his shoulders again. “But that’s across the Wehrland!”

Tolbert nodded absently. “It’s the only source if you have to have bloodstone.” He straightened and patted her hand without looking at her. “The two men the Master’s giving me as escort will be here in the morning. Be a lamb and pack my things while I finish this.”

She nodded, but the rest of her body stood frozen in place by the shock of his announcement.
This must be the fear my mother had for so many years. Now it’s mine, and I don’t know what I should do.

Her father had traveled to Ar-Deneth several times. It was the last, when she was nine, she remembered most vividly, watching her mother’s hollow eyes stare at the western horizon day after day. Tolbert was three months late that time. He’d started out twice and each time been driven back, first by marauding Krad, second by heavy snow. Finally, he’d joined a group of fur traders and forged his way across the mountainous no-man’s land. Adelia thinned dramatically after that and, although she never spoke of it to her daughter, Mirianna was certain the memory of that fear hastened her mother’s death a year later.

Now her father was about to embark on a similar journey, but one he hadn’t taken in eleven years. Mirianna studied her father. His hands moved quickly, confidently from tool to gem to setting. His eye was still sharp, requiring his magnifying glass only for fine detail. But his shoulders had stooped so, she could see over the top of his head when they stood side by side. On the occasions he made the four-day trip to Burl’s, he returned complaining of pains in his knees and back. One ankle swelled in hot weather, and he coughed at night if he forgot to drink the tea the town herbalist specially mixed for him.

“I’ll pack,” she said, “but I’m going with you.”

Tolbert cocked his head as if trying to grasp her words. He laid down the clasp and turned, his forehead grooved into three curving furrows. “You—but that’s the Wehrland.”

She didn’t want him to know she feared for him or he’d refuse her instantly. No, she must choose her words and make him believe her fears lay elsewhere. “You’ll be gone for at least a month. What will I do here alone for that long? And if you’re delayed? We have no relatives here. I’d be a woman alone.”

Tolbert frowned. “Our neighbors will look after you. They’ve done so before.”

“Yes, but that was for only a few days at a time. This could be months.”

His frown deepened. “I hadn’t thought of that. All the excitement...” He gestured to the bag of coins sitting in the center of the table.

Mirianna could see confusion in his eyes. One more subtle idea, carefully planted, would be enough. She lowered her gaze and smoothed wrinkles from her apron, letting her hands worry the edge of it. “Besides, the miller’s apprentice has been looking at me lately, and—”

“That little weasel?”

She nodded, keeping her gaze averted. “He makes me uncomfortable when he...when he stares like that.” He was no worse than the others, but her father didn’t need to know that.

“That does it!” Tolbert slapped his hand on the table. “Wehrland or not, you’ll just have to come.” He turned back to his work with a dismissive wave. “Don’t just stand there, girl. Hurry up and pack.”

“Yes, Papa.” She turned away quickly, hiding her smile.

Halfway up the ladder to the loft, her excitement waned. She’d convinced her father to take her, but just what was he taking her into? Even small children knew the Wehrland was a place from which not everyone returned. And those that did return, with her own ears she’d heard some swear they’d never enter it again.
Well,
we’ll be together at least, and I can watch out for him.

****

At his campsite, the man stoked his fire, raising flames. He passed his knife three times through the fire’s heart, making sure every trace of the beast-man burned away and the blade was purified, before laying it on a rock to cool. A branch burst in the ash, shooting a spiral of embers toward a sky streaked with twilight. He straightened and watched them catch the breeze, scatter like fireflies, and, one by one, wink out. An all-too-familiar urge to join them, to explode brilliantly and then...
dissipate
shook through his body. If only he hadn’t survived that day, hadn’t awakened to the horrible aftermath and the…
abomination
it had made of him.

He stared at his gloved hands, at the black fabric cuffing his wrists and extending up his arms, over his head, and down to his feet, concealing every inch of his flesh.
Dear Koronolan, even I can’t bear to look!
Groaning, he sank down on a rock and cradled his head in his hands. “I should have let the creature kill me! Then I would be free.”

You’d be dead,
said the Voice in his head.
How is that being free?

Be still!
But the voice was right; he would never allow himself to die at the hands of a Krad. Not even now, after more than a dozen years of this…
existence
, doomed to hide himself from everyone, with only a damned, annoying voice in his head for company. Talking to it—to whatever part of his splintered self had spawned it—kept him sane.

The horse whinnied. Eyes rimmed in white, the gray stallion shook its head and stamped.

Rising with an effort, the man followed the stallion’s gaze to the edge of the clearing. The Wehrland lion sat in lengthening shadows, its eyes pinpoints of reflected firelight.

By Kiros, not the damned lion again!
He bent to retrieve the knife lying on the rock, muttering, “Fresh-killed Krad not to your taste? Don’t think you’ll find a meal here.”

A slight tilt of the she-cat’s head made him freeze in mid-motion. Behind him the fire hissed and popped, but the feline gaze glowed now with a steady luminescence, a steady, unnerving, yellow-green luminescence. The man’s skin prickled. He swallowed, but he had no power to pull his gaze away. No power at all...

“
—
I saved you, Durren
—
”
said a voice,
not
in his head.

The man whirled, knife in hand. His stallion reared, squealing. Overhead, a night bird veered off with a sudden beat of wings.

“Who’s there?” the man cried. But no shadow moved, no creature detached itself from the forest’s edge, no form materialized from the gathering darkness.

“I’m hearing things.” He slammed his knife into its sheath. “You’ve done it!” he shouted, swinging back to the lion. “You brought the Krad! You made me—”

The lion was gone.

The man stood, shivering as the breeze licked up his back. “I’ve had enough of the Wehrland.” Striding to his horse, he weighed the gem pouch at his waist. “It’s time to go to the valley and trade these cursed things.” The bloodstone alone would fetch as much as the others combined. Together, there should be enough to buy supplies and go home.

Yes, home,
said the Voice in his head,
where illusions won’t call you by name... Durren.

The name burned in his gut like the twist of a knife. He sucked in a breath, enduring, before he spoke, saying it out loud so there would be no mistake. “That name is dead.”
If only the nightmares would leave it buried.
They might, if he could leave the Wehrland tonight and return to the caves, the tunnels, the deep silent blackness he longed for in the bowels of Drakkonwehr fortress.

But first he forced his fingers to unclench and comb through the stallion’s mane, first they would have to go to Ar-Deneth. And he would have to deal with people. Well, it would have to be done. He shivered again and flung on his cloak.

****

In Ar-Deneth, the White Boar Inn, days later
...

Gareth rolled away from the jostling hand. “Get up, boy,” Ulerroth said, pulling him out of a dream. “I don't pay you to sleep.”