How would one recognize the voice of stone? First concentrate on hearing in preference to the other senses. Dismiss colors, images, tastes, and tactile sensations. Soft, Kol had described it, and so I dismissed the noisy, loud, and brightest sounds, the florid trumps and horns, the bawling of donkeys, the screams of prisoners, and cackles of madmen. With utmost authority, he’d said, and so I dismissed the quiet nattering of birds and insects, the trivial speech of gossips, and the soft mouthings of lovers, the pale colorings of everyday living. As if the entirety of my perceptions were bedcoverings, I peeled away layers, hunting a voice of solidity, of weight, of dense, slow changes…
Saints and angels, this is impossible! As if slogging through desert dunes hunting for one particular grain of sand, I would push one thought aside only to feel five thousand more cascade into its place. But in the end, when all else was stripped away, a soft word rumbled through my spirit like distant thunder, like the shudder of an avalanche halfway across the world. A burden settled on my shoulders…ponderous…immense. Hold. And some interminable time later came another. Forever.
This was no dialect a mouth could imitate. Truly I heard no speech at all—no sentient mind produced such words. Rather I experienced an expression of unyielding heaviness and stalwart density, stiffening my back and chest, forcing thigh and shoulder taut. Unmoving. Unshakable. Just as I was about to release my concentration and declare victory, for of a certain no entity but a mountain itself could speak with such weight, another word boomed from a wholly different direction. Crush. I held breathless, as if the massive boulder and its fellows were grinding me to powder. Pound. Squeeze. This voice drummed cold and harsh. Then came another voice—smaller, lost. Deep. Tumbling. Diminished. Dizzy, I imagined smooth rounded stones washed endlessly in a mountain river, their substance ground inevitably away.
Fascinated, I sorted through the slow-moving litany, seeking the voice of the particular rock before me, for the words came one and then the other with great gaps in between. Was this a conversation? I decided not. A foolish notion, and yet what would I have said a few days previous to anyone who told me I would hear words in the voices of stone?
Shattered. Waves of blazing heat rolled over me, and more of wet and brittle cold, an uneasy pressure culminating in explosive power and breaking—this rock, whose fractured shoulder lay prostrate beside it, whose enduring memory spoke destruction and ending.
I’m sorry, I answered. Not that I believed the slab could think or understand, only that its overwhelming desolation required some response.
Satisfied and weary, I released the sensory textures of the world to intrude once again. How small and weak they seemed. Not trivial. Not unimportant. But eminently controllable. This must be what Kol wished me to understand. Closure.
Excited, I nudged and poked at the clutter, recalling the depths to which I’d gone to hear the stone. The act cleared a small space where I could have a thought without intrusive clamor. Of course, my newfound order quickly collapsed into confusion again. This would take practice. I gave up and opened my eyes.
Mist had crept up the mountain and enfolded me, soft and damp. The bulging moon hung in the sky, thinly veiled like a pureblood bride. A rush of air overhead marked a hunting eagle’s quiet passage.
“This rock misliked its breaking, vayar,” I said, grinning as I straightened my back and twisted my neck, stretching out muscles too long still. Had someone told me I’d sat before the confounded rock three nights in tandem, I could have believed it. I needed a piss so badly, I felt like to burst.
No one answered. And I felt no presence behind me. I peered first over my shoulder and then around the rock.
Kol stood slightly higher on the slope, conversing with another male of his kind, this one shorter and wider in the shoulder, though yet lean and tautly muscled. The moonlight illumined moon-white hair, bound into a long tail tied every knuckle’s length with scarlet. The gard on his broad back—a twisted pine as you might see on a mountain crag—gleamed a sharp and vibrant cerulean. The two of them were arguing and did not glance my way.
I shifted my position slightly, so that I could observe the two less obviously. Clearing away the clutter inside my head, I picked out Kol’s voice.
“…told the tale of my kiran as if he had himself designed it. He touches the earth to know these things. He saw my changes, Stian. He claims to see the kiran patterns themselves.” Kol’s voice rang tight. Anxious.
Stian…my Danae grandfather. The eldest of my family. Wonder held me speechless.
“And this is the same sorcerer who brought death to Aniiele’s meadow? Who violated Clyste’s sianou so that now thy sister, too, lies poisoned by the Scourge? How canst thou look upon a human without loathing? How canst thou ask me to approve a halfbreed as my charge?” The elder crouched beside a cracked slab of rock and picked at a tangle of vegetation, tossing aside dead leaves and stems. “The Cartamandua…healthy for them both thou didst hide this history from me. Humans are a breed of vipers.”
I held my place behind the rock, excitement quenched. Fortunate that experience had given me no expectations of warm family welcomes.
Kol stood his ground above the older man. “Indeed, this Valen broached Clyste’s sianou, but only his companion sullied the water that day. And I’ve told thee repeatedly that he saved Aniiele, though I did not understand how so at the time. The hands of the Scourge had struck down the victim and left him to bleed. But this sorcerer gave back the victim’s choice as to the manner of his passing, and so, at the last, the victim’s blood was freely given. Aniiele lives, Stian sagai, by virtue of this man’s deeds.”
Great Iero’s heart…Kol had watched me murder Boreas! That terrible night had etched a vivid horror on my souclass="underline" the black, blood-smeared lips of Sila Diaglou and her henchmen; my old friend captive of agony and despair; the sweet meadow that had felt as a part of heaven stained in so vile a fashion by his blood and torment. Blood freely given…Aniiele lives… Though naught could cleanse the blood from my hands, Kol’s words brought a measure of comfort I had never expected.
“I have tried to dismiss him,” said Kol. “But he sticks to me like thorn. I have named him as insolent as his sire, yet he sounds the streams of earth with reverence and respect, using skills unknown to our kind. He hungers for learning and does not hold back. He led me to the poisoned Well, and I danced beside it. Had my kiran not been flawed with anger and grieving, I might even have reclaimed the Well. And Clyste…Thy daughter was no birdwit child, Stian, tricked into mating with a pithless fool. The Well chose her as its guardian, and she chose the Cartamandua as her child’s sire. She never explained her choice even to me, but just this day I’ve wondered—Feel the waning season, sagai. The true lands are dying. Just this morning I’ve had to reclaim yon garden vale yet again. The Well and the Plain are lost, and my heart speaks what my mind cannot grasp—that the Canon is diminished by far more than we can remember. If this halfbreed’s claim is true, if he can see the patterns, might he be—?”
The elder burst to his feet and shook his finger at his son. “Thou art our answer, Kol, not a halfbreed Cartamandua. Each season brings thee closer to perfection. All recognize it. Thou shouldst dance the Center this season. But thy petulant exile sours the archon and the circles, and as a storm wind among roses hath thine errant rescue of the halfbreed pricked Tuari’s wrath. He would see thee bound and buried for the shame thou hast brought on our kind before Eodward’s son. Only thy irreplaceable ability keeps thee free. Break the halfbreed. Give him over.”
“Have I shamed thee, Stian sagai?” Kol’s words cracked and snapped as does a frozen lake.
The white-haired Dané clasped his hands behind his neck and pressed his arms inward, as if to squeeze out the thoughts Kol had implanted in his head. Only after long silence did he release his grip. Tenderly he drew his fingers along Kol’s hard cheek and tucked stray red curls behind the younger man’s ear. “Nay, jongai, never shame,” he said softly. “It is only…for good or ill, the archon’s word speaks our Law. My human son has met his mortal fate. My daughter ne’er will dance with me again. I would not lose thee, too.”