Stone of Tears

Chapter 25

The horse was exhausted, but still ran with wild abandon. Adie held a tight grip on Zedd’s waist as he leaned over the horse’s withers, clutching her mane. Muscles bunched and flexed rhythmically beneath him. Trees in the dense forest flashed by in an endless blur. The horse leapt over rocks and logs without pause.

The skrin was only a heartbeat behind. Being taller than the horse, it struck branches as it ran. Zedd could hear the limbs snap and splinter. He had tried felling trees across the way right behind them, but it didn’t slow the bone beast. He had tried tricks and spells and wizardry of every sort. None had worked, but he refused to admit defeat. Admitting defeat established a mental state of resignation that would make it certain.

“I fear the Keeper has us this time,” Adie called at his back.

“Not yet he doesn’t! How did he find us? The bones of the skrin have been in your house, hiding you, for years! If they have been hiding you, then how did he find us?”

She had no answer.

They were running the path where the boundary had been, headed toward the Midlands. Zedd was thankful the boundary walls were no longer there, or they could have inadvertently run into the underworld by now. Boundary or not, this couldn’t go on for much longer, and then the skrin would have them. Boundary or not, the underworld would have them. The Keeper would have them.

Think, he ordered himself.

Zedd was using magic to lend strength and stamina to the horse, but even so, heart, lungs and sinew could not endure long past their natural limits. He was nearly as weary as the frightened animal. This couldn’t go on much longer.

He had to stop trying to slow the skrin, and put his mind to solving the problem. But that could be a dangerous shift in tactics. It could be that although what he was doing wasn’t stopping the skrin, it was keeping it from them.

He thought he saw a flash of green light to the left. A shade of green he had seen from only one place: the boundary. From the underworld. Impossible, he thought. The horse’s hooves thundered on.

“Adie! Do you have anything with you that the skrin would recognize?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know! Anything! It has to have found us by something. Something to connect us to the underworld.”

“I have nothing. It must have found us by the bones at my house.”

“But the bones have been what have been hiding you!”

There was no mistaking the flash of green light this time. It was to the right. Another came to the left.

“Zedd! I think the skrin be bringing up the underworld, to force us into it!”

Bones.

“Can it do that?”

Her voice wasn’t as loud this time. “Yes.”

“Bags,” he muttered into the cold wind at his face.

Eerie green light flickered between the trees. It was closer. If he didn’t think of something, they were going to die.

Think.

Suddenly the green light seemed to ignite into a solid wall to each side. It made a thump he could feel deep in his chest when it arrived, whole, in this world. The horse galloped down the path between them. The way between the walls was narrowing.

Bones.

Skrin bones.

“Adie! Give me the necklace around your neck!”

The luminous green walls of the boundary pressed in to each side. They were out of time. They were out of options.

Adie pulled off her necklace and put her arm around him again, holding out the bone necklace. Her hand was slick with blood. Zedd yanked his own necklace over his head and snatched hers in the same hand.

“If this doesn’t work, I’m sorry, Adie. I just want you to know I’ve enjoyed sharing time with you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Hold tight!”

The green walls of the boundary closed together ahead of them. Zedd held the horse firmly and gave her a silent command.

She dug in her hooves and spun around to a halt just before the trail ended in a wall of the underworld.

Zedd flung the two necklaces made with skrin bone into the green light, between a wide gap in the trees.

The skrin was upon them. Without pause, it followed the necklaces as they sailed into the boundary, into the green light. There was a flash, and a booming clap, like a lightning strike, as the skrin went through.

The green light, and the skrin, flickered and were gone. The dark forest was silent but for ragged breathing.

Adie laid her head wearily against his back. “You be right, old man. Your life be one act of desperation after another.”

Zedd patted her knee before sliding off the sweaty horse. The poor animal was so exhausted it was at the brink of death. Zedd held its head between his hands and gave it a dose of strength, and his sincere thanks. He laid the side of his face against her nose as he closed his eyes and gave reassuring strokes to her cheeks for a moment before going to check on Adie.

Blood still oozed from the wound on her arm. The size of the horse made Adie appear smaller than she really was. Her slumped shoulders and hanging head didn’t help diminish the illusion. She didn’t acknowledge any pain as Zedd inspected the wound.

“I be a fool,” she said. “The whole time I thought I be hiding under the Keeper’s nose, he be hiding under mine. He knew where I be the whole time. All these years.”

“We can take solace in the fact that it earned him no profit. He has wasted his investment. Now hold still. I must tend to this wound.”

“There be no time for that. We must get back to my house. I must get my bones.”

“I said be still.”

“We must hurry.”

Zedd scowled up at her. “We will go back when I’m finished, but the horse is exhausted; she must be walked. I’ll walk and let you ride, if you give me no further trouble. Now be still or we will be here the whole night quibbling.”

By the time they reached Adie’s house, dawn was breaking, offering a cold, weak light. It was a sad sight. The skrin had torn the place to splinters. Adie disregarded the leaning, holed walls as she rushed inside, stepping over debris, picking up bones, holding them in the crook of her other arm, as she worked her way toward the corner where they had last seen the round, carved bone.

Zedd was inspecting the ground outside when he heard her calling to him.

“Come help me find the round bone, wizard.”

He stepped over a fallen beam. “I don’t expect you will find it.”

She pushed a board aside. “It be here somewhere.” She stopped, looking back over her shoulder. “What do you mean, you don’t expect we will find it?”

“Someone has been here.”

She looked around at the ruin. “You be sure?”

Zedd waved his arm vaguely toward where he had been studying the ground. “I saw a footprint, over there. It isn’t ours.”

She let the bones in her arm drop to the floor. “Who?” He laid his hand on a beam that hung from the ceiling, its end resting on the floor. “I don’t know, but someone has been here. It looks to be a woman’s boot, but it isn’t yours. I suspect she will have taken the round bone.”

Adie pawed through the rubble in the corner, searching. At last she stopped. “You be right, old man. The bone be gone.” She turned, seeming to inspect the very air with her white eyes. “Banelings,” she hissed. “You be wrong about the Keeper wasting his effort.”

“I fear you’re right.” Zedd brushed his hand clean on the side of his leg. “We had better get away from here. Far away.”

Adie leaned toward him, her voice low but firm. “Zedd, we must have that bone. It be important for the veil.”

“She has covered her trail with magic. I don’t have any idea where she went. I only saw one footprint. We must be away from here; the Keeper might expect us to return. I’ll cover our trail, so no one will know where we’re going.”

“You be so sure about that? The Keeper seems to know where we be, and sends his minions for us at will.”

“He tracked us by the necklaces we wore. He will be blind to us for the time being. But we must get away from here. He may have eyes watching, the same eyes that took the bone.”

Her head sunk lower as she closed her eyes. “Forgive me, Zedd, for endangering you so. For being a fool.”

“Nonsense. No one knows everything. You can’t expect to walk through life without stepping in the muck now and again. The important thing is to maintain your footing when you do, and not fall on your face and make it worse.”

“But that bone be important!”

“It’s gone. We can do nothing about it now. At least we foiled the Keeper; he didn’t get us. But we must be away from here.”

Adie bent to pick up the bones she had dropped. “I will hurry.”

“We can’t take anything, Adie,” he said quietly.

She straightened. “I must take my bones. Some of them be important. Some have powerful magic.”

Zedd took up her thin hand. “Adie, the Keeper knew where we were by one of the bones. He’s been watching you. We can’t know if he would recognize any of these, too. We must leave them, but we can’t risk having someone else taking them; they must be destroyed.”

Her mouth worked for a moment before she found words. “I will not leave them. They be important. They were extremely difficult to obtain. It took me years to find some of them. The Keeper could not have marked them. He could not know the trouble I went to.”

Zedd patted her hand. “Adie, he wouldn’t have placed one he wanted you to have, to mark you, right in your path. He would have made you struggle for it, so you would value it and keep it close.”

She yanked her hand back. “Then he could have marked anything!” She pointed. “How do you know this horse was not given by a baneling?”

Zedd gave her a level look. “Because it was not the one offered. I took another.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. “Please, Zedd,” she whispered. “They be mine. They be how I was going to reach my Pell.”

“I will help you get your message to your Pell. I have given you my word, but this is not the way to do it; it hasn’t worked yet. I’ll help you find a new way.”

She limped a step closer to him. “How?”

He regarded her stricken face with sympathy. “I have a way to bring spirits through the veil for a brief time, to speak with them. Even if I can’t bring Pell through, I might be able to get a message to him. But Adie, you must listen to me; we can’t do it now. We must wait until the veil is closed.”

Her trembling fingers touched his arm. “How? How can such a thing be done?”

“It can be done. That is all you must know.”

“Tell me.” Her ringers tightened on his arm. “I must know you speak the truth. I must know it can be done.”

He weighed the decision a long moment. He had used the wizard’s rock his father had given him to call the spirits of his father and mother to himself, but they had told him explicitly not to call them again until this was finished, or they would risk tearing the veil apart. Using the rock in such a fashion was dangerous even in the best of times, and he had been cautioned not to do it except in the gravest circumstances.

Opening a path to the spirits was always a great risk. You never knew what you could be letting through, unintended. Enough dark things were getting through without his helping them.

Even though Adie was a sorceress, this use of the wizard’s rock was not for her to know. It was a secret, like many others, that wizards must keep. His heart felt heavy with that responsibility.

“You will have to trust my word that it can be done. I’ve given my word that I’ll help you, and when it is safe, I’ll try.”

Her fingers still dug urgently into his arm. “How can such a thing be? Are you sure? How could you know such a thing?”

He straightened his shoulders. “I’m a wizard of the First Order.”

“But are you sure?”

“Adie, you must take my word. I don’t give it lightly. I’m not sure it will work, but I believe it may. Right now the important thing is to use what we know, what you and I know, to stop the Keeper from tearing the veil. It would be wrong to use what I know for selfish reasons and thus endanger the safety of everyone else. Maintaining the veil requires a delicate balance of forces; this could disturb it. It could even be that such a use would tear the veil.”

She took her hand from his arm and wiped a stray strand of gray hair from her face. “Forgive me, Zedd. You be right. I have studied the cusp between the worlds for most of my life. I should know better. Forgive me.”

He smiled as he hugged her around her shoulders. “I’m gratified that you hold your vows to be so important. It means that you are a person of honor. There’s no better ally than a person of honor.”

She looked around her shattered home. “It just be that . . . I have spent my life gathering these things. I have been their caretaker for so long. Others have entrusted them to me.”

Zedd walked her out of the rubble. “Others have invested their trust in you to use the gift you were given to protect those without power. They are the ones who wrote the prophecies. You have been brought to this point for a reason. That’s the trust you must keep.”

She nodded, rubbing a thin hand on his back as they walked away from the remains of her home.

“Zedd, I think several other bones be missing, too.”

“I know.”

“They be dangerous in the wrong hands.”

“I know that too.”

“Then what do you plan to do about it?”

“I plan to do what the prophecies say is the only thing that gives us a chance at closing the veil.”

“And what be that, old man?”

“Helping Richard. We must find a way to help him, for the prophecies say he is the only one who can close the veil.”

Neither looked back as fire roared to life, roiling and racing through the ruins, dancing through the bones.