“Way cool!” she said, fingers tracing the winged shape of the red-gold ornament.
“Yes. It is.” His eyes settled on me. He cocked his head. “You do not recall.”
“Recall what?” I asked, swiping at tears with my sleeve.
“You too are a stone in my river of eternity. When the
time
comes,” he said, a peculiar accent on the word
time
, “you
will
remember.” It was more command than assurance. He carried Audric to an outcropping and spread his wings, easing them between the trees. “Soon it will be night on the face of the earth. Darkness will swarm the moment the sun falls below the horizon. Even now, they mass on one peak of the Trine. Hurry.” With a single thrust of his wings, he shot up into the sky, dodging branches. And he was gone from sight.
“Seraph stones,” Thadd whispered, cursing even though a seraph was still perhaps close enough to hear.
“Fire and feathers,” Rupert said, less dangerously.
“Sweet seraph,” I mouthed, a sense of awe finally stealing over me.
“I like him. He's cool,” Ciana said. “And you're a mage. That's even cooler. Don't worry. I won't tell.”
My first thought was to release a rune of forgetting over her, but taking away a first, and perhaps only, encounter with a seraph seemed a cruel punishment. And then I remembered. A seraph knew I was living among humans. I wouldn't be around long enough for Ciana's memory of me to matter.
“I see the horses. Let's get out of here,” Thadd said, his face tired, his eyes on the town below us. He glanced at me as he swung Ciana up in his arms. There was compassion there. “He'll be all right. All the accounts say so.”
But he'll be bound, I wanted to say. Instead, I was silent, fighting tears made worse by his sympathy.
Rupert and I followed the cop down a steep incline, scattering shale, and helped to reclaim the horses, who were grazing on a patch of grass. Homer's flank was blood caked, a jagged flesh wound, but not reeking of Darkness. We mounted, Thadd riding point, Rupert taking up the rear, and Ciana and me on Homer between them. Silently, we headed home.
As we rode, I realized two things. The seraph hadn't recognized Thadd. The ring he wore had fooled a winged warrior. And the seraph hadn't wrapped me in chains. Hadn't made me go back to Enclave. Hadn't condemned me. He even seemed to recognize me.
You are a stone in my river of eternity.
What in heaven's name did that mean?
Â
We made it back to Mineral City not long after the sun set, and I spent nearly two hours in the small stable with Zeddy, grooming the two oversized horses, and Rupert's mule, and cleaning up Homer's injury. The bullet that grazed his haunch left a deeper wound than my quick inspection on the mountain had revealed. Zeddy, who worked with the town medic and who could pass as a skilled assistant in a pinch, sewed up the four-inch gash, a layered closure that really needed the town veterinarian or a healing amulet. Doc Hampford, however, was on his honeymoon, and wouldn't be back for a week. And my amulets were totally drained.
The wound across Homer's beautiful black flank would likely leave a white scar, which brought me to tears as Zeddy worked. I sniffled, collected bloody rags, passed over cleanser, antibiotics, and sterile thread, and cried like a tot over my horse. Homer, who glanced back in curiosity several times during the procedure, ignored us except for an occasional quiver, the kind used to discourage irritating flies.
The energy gifted to me by the seraph lasted until I showered, ate, and fell into bed, when it drained away in a wash of misery and heartache. I couldn't stay here. Not anymore. The seraphs wouldn't allow it. I could run from humans; I could take my packed bag and my blade case and disappear. But not from seraphs. Once they had scented and located a neomage, they could follow the trail anywhere. Any minute now, they would descend on me and take me away from my friends. Forever. As the minutes ticked away toward midnight, my last hours here, my tears collected in my ears, dried on my face, and my grief intensified. In the dark of my home, I sobbed.
Exhausted, yet unable to sleep, I wallowed in my sorrow, staring at the rough-hewn rafters over me, broken-hearted over losing my home, my bed, my stuff. I loved my home, loved its rich history, loved every rafter, every slate shingle, every board and tile on the floor. And I was going to have to leave it. I was going to have to leave Rupert and Jacey. And I was going to have to leave the child of my heart.
The winged brooch the seraph had given her marked her as protected by the High Host. It was a better amulet than anything I could have created for her; I knew that. Yet, near midnight, I eased from the covers, dressed, and made my way downstairs to the workshop. My feet ached as I walked, my spine was stiff; every muscle cried out for the return of the amethyst energy I had hoarded to myself. Out of curiosity, I opened one of the metal cases the amethyst had arrived in and discovered that the stone within was dull, somnolent, with only a bare spark of the vibrant warmth it had once contained. Part and parcel of my total defeat.
Closing the ammo case, sealing the metal strips back in place, I turned on lights and found the remaining bloodstone. Half carved into a cat shape, it was lovely, a rich green periphery with a bleeding heart of bright fuchsia, a curious hue for bloodstone. Turning the nearly fist-sized piece of rough, I studied it, considering a curved triangular section, vaguely sickle shaped, that could become something else. A second cat? I flipped on the wet saw and slid into my coveralls. Goggles and mask in place, I secured the partial cat into the saw and carefully excised the sickle shape. The piece of rough had contained a second sleeping cat.
Two hours passed, my body relaxing into the rhythms of working stone. Under the attention of the saw, the drill, and various picks and tools, the cats began to emerge. Ciana's cat was longer, more narrow than mine, lying on its side with paws and legs curled into its body, green along the spine, with a pink tummy. Mine was a fat, tight ball, smaller than originally planned, with paws just visible beneath its chin. Predominantly pink, my cat had green paws, jaw, and nose, a mottling of green across its back.
When I had the basic shapes ready, I set them together on the counter. They looked like mother and child napping, and the comparison brought tears to my eyes. I had to finish them both tonight. I might not have a tomorrow. The polishing alone would take hours. As I worked, I noticed that Ciana's cat had one eye partially open, just begging for a hint of lavender. Turning the larger cat, I found a place on its neck where a nugget of amethyst could be inserted, as if part of a collar. I had plenty of lavender stone that no longer performed like it should, so I went to the storeroom and gathered a small lump for working.
I teased off a single crystal shard, and, still holding the amethyst in my left hand, I lifted both bloodstone cats in my right. Suddenly, I was outside, sunlight dappling the ground all around me. I was disoriented, feeling the stone in my hands, the bloodstone and the amethyst. I raised one elbow and it hit the workbench in front of me, a workbench I could no longer see.
I was standing on crushed granite and tortured grass, blackened and wilted. The sun was hot, too hot, on my shoulders. Far below me was Mineral City, Upper and Lower streets black with asphalt. Between my booted feet and the town was devastation, houses and sheds that had imploded or been blasted into debris. Cars were overturned and burned. I smelled cordite and sulfur and the reek of my friends, recently dead.
I turned away from the town and looked uphill, toward the Trine, felt my surprise that the hill was no more, that a mountain stood there, three-peaked, barren rock over two thousand feet higher than only a week past. I put out my hand and touched the low mound of rock and wreckage rising up from the ground at my feet. I saw my hand rest on a single broken piece of lavender stone, felt myself respond to the amethyst. Below it, hidden in the rubbish of bomb-blistered rock, I saw the gold glint of navcone. Navcone, here and not-here, seen and not-seen. There was no one to find it. No one to report it to. Not now. Perhaps never again.
Around me were a dozen ordinary granite rocks and boulders, sharp edged, ripped from the heart of the mountain. Decision made, I lifted a small boulder, felt the strain in my shoulders and back as I carried it to the navcone and set it over the bit of shattered amethyst and glinting gold I could see only when the light hit it just right. Sadness welled inside me, but I pushed it away and lifted a second stone, placing it near the first. I was making a cairn of stones to hide the remains. What else could I do?
I saw my hand as I lifted it away, the odd shape to the long fingers, the index extending past the middle, tapered, like my father. My father, whose bloodstone ring I now wore. I saw the ring on my finger, a small green stone with a single fleck of red, the setting a pitted nugget of raw gold. After a moment of rest, I went back to work. The scene blurred and returned, crisp and clear.
I had finished the cairn and buried a series of mines along the ridge over the pile of amethyst. Pushing a small button on a black box, I triggered a sequence of explosions. The resulting landslide hid the wheels. My work was done.
I was lying on the workroom floor, cold, more stiff than when I'd crawled out of bed. I had dropped the bloodstone and the amethyst. They rested near my hand, pulsing with lavender warmth, even the bloodstone. Using my heels, I scuffed myself upright, sitting with my back against the leg of the workbench.
Had it been a true vision? A prophecy? A memory? I recalled the image of the town, with its paved streets, and realized that there had been no sign of snow, not anywhere. It had been hot, hotter than any summer had been in decades. I had been sweating as I worked. A memory, then, gifted me by the amethyst when it touched the bloodstone. Bloodstone, like the ring on the man's hand.
I had seen that ring once, worn by Lucas' grampa. Had he been buried with the ring? I didn't know. I only knew that once upon a time, bloodstone had come in contact with the amethyst on the Trine. And I knew a golden navconeâwhatever that wasâwas buried near the mound of amethyst we had found today, the smaller mound, the cairn of stones built by the man in the vision. Rupert had sat on it today. I had to go back to the site of the vision. Soon.
I picked up the bloodstone cats, pulsing with dim lavender energies, and inspected the amethyst. Some of its power had been restored, yet something was different now. After a moment, I realized that the beat of its energies was subtly altered, as if its heart rate and rhythm had changed. I pressed the larger bloodstone cat to the small lavender crystal, opened my mage-sight, and let myself slip into the matrix of the rock, down into the quartzite hearts, where light and matter danced and moved and swirled. I realized that the amethyst was harnessed to the bloodstone cat, under its control. That shouldn't be possible.
Curious, I went back to the storeroom and opened the case I had inspected earlier. The rough within was pulsing weakly, softer now, a steady, delicate rhythm that matched that of the bloodstone cat. Sudden fear made my heart skip a beat and then speed up.
The rhythm of the stone matched my heart rate. The stones pulsed with it. At a dead run, I raced upstairs and grabbed my necklace of amulets off the bedside table. Each amulet vibrated softly lavender, in time with the steady beat of my heart. Except when I used them in a conjure, they never pulsed. Until now.
“Glory and infamy,” I swore. The amethyst wasn't harnessed to the bloodstone; it was harnessed to me, acting just like a prime amulet. I dropped to the rug beside my bed, intensely aware of my heartbeat, of the feel of my blood throbbing through my veins and arteries. “Saints' balls.” I was tied to the amethyst.
Something had happened on the Trine; something weird. I remembered the explosion of light when the conjure I was working was sucked into the ground, when I was drained of all power and left gasping. That was when it happened, I was pretty sure, whatever
it
was, the explosion that drained my heat away.
I turned my prime amulet over, scrutinizing the mended place. The fine line of bloody stone that had filled the crack now glistened like faceted rubies set with lavender diamonds. Like scales or cells of a living thing. The melding of the bloodstone and the amethyst had given me power over the stored amethyst in the storeroom. And over my heat?
The seraphâRaziel, I remembered his name from the TV reportsâhad touched my chin. Nothing had happened. No heat, no wild rapturous mating on the mountainside. No instant death from the Most High. Raziel had been surprised. He'd been curious. Seraphs hadn't been curious about anything, not once, in all the decades of their presence on earth.
I separated the stones, turned off the machinery and lights. I had to polish the cats, but later. After dawn. I showered off the bloodstone dust and crawled naked between my sheets, taking with me the amulets and the half-finished cats and the amethyst.
Chapter 20
T
uesday passed in an agony of anticipation and worry. No seraphs appeared to take me in. No cops arrived with handcuffs, leg shackles, sharp knives. No one ran me off or arrested me or suggested I should undergo torture. No lynch mobs gathered in the streets. The day passed slowly; the weather continued to warm, and snowmelt to race downhill. The Toe River grew until I could hear its roaring as I worked. Early spring?
In February?
An end to the ice age? SNN was rife with conjecture about the weather and with speculation about the seraphs reputed to still be near Mineral City, the reporters giddy with excitement at the sightings. Seraphs had been filmed in Asheville, in Boone, in Linville, and in Black Mountain. Two other seraphs had been filmed leaving the New York Realm of Light, one smoky gray, one teal. I kept the overhead TV on between customers, one eye on the screen, and I turned up the volume for each update.