(no subject)

[jayjaybear]

Bloodstone Pt. 2



The massive chamber echoed with the sounds of a great crowd as the
Hierocracy dispersed, their business concluded for the day. This was
the time when the complex but delicate web of agreements and
arrangements were rearranged, as this patriarch gently nudged another
into offering support for his own agenda, and that undersecretary
carried the invitation for a meeting between his master and another.
Dolmant, Archprelate of Holy Mother Church, held himself away from the
mind-numbing welter of deal and counter-deal that the lesser but still
bright lights of the clergy seemed to indulge themselves in endlessly.
His neutrality was too important to get involved in the power games.
Dolmant was the single voice which spoke unreservedly for the Church as
a whole, rather than for any particular Patriarchy or Primacy. While he
could and would deal with those who came to him with real problems and
emergencies, the petty market of favors and vote-gathering was a
dangerous distraction to his ability to concentrate his vision in the
proper directions.

As always, Sarathi, as the Archprelate had always been called as an
honored term of affection, exited the chamber as soon as he closed the
session. He was immediately surrounded by a detachment of the
Archprelate's Guards as he started for his office to continue the mounds
of paperwork in which he'd only managed to make a symbolic dent during
the dinner break earlier in the day. Sometimes Dolmant wished, in the
most secret parts of his mind, that he could magic away the things that
seemed to eat away at what little time he seemed to have. But he'd left
the Pandion order for a more spiritual path before he'd begun any real
training in the mysteries. Not that it would have been quite proper for
the Archprelate to be praying to Aphrael in any case.

Dolmant sighed softly. It was too bad that God did not respond to
prayer in the ways that the Styric gods did. Well, except for that one
exception.

Which brought his attention back to the report he'd received during that
very dinner hour and had only been able to skim through before the
session began again. The Secret Order. He hadn't been completely
comfortable with Preceptor Galeryn's plans to disperse cells of the
Order throughout the Elene kingdoms, to better perform their primary
duty. The prime directive of the Secret Order was to be just
that...secret. The problem with spreading a secret society far and wide
was the danger of it not being secret for very long. And this secret
was one that nobody involved wished to have exposed.

Dolmant sighed again, as he entered his office and seated himself behind
the solid and parchment-covered desk. His life had been so much simpler
when he was just the Patriarch of Demos. Sometimes he'd truly wished
that Emban had left the blonde queen of Elenia home in Cimmura that day
16 years ago.

======================================================

Their ship made landfall in Jiroch in the twilight. Desert sunsets were
beautiful, Sparhawk decided as he scanned the western sky, but he
wouldn't travel to Rendor just to see them.

"Where do we stay tonight, Lord?" Khalad asked him.

"There's an inn three streets inland," the rugged knight answered. "The
Golden Sands. The Order has more or less standing arrangements there."

Khalad nodded and set to the task of stewarding the party off the ship
in some semblance of order. Sephrenia took the lead on Chi'el, with
Aphrael riding nestled in front. Vanion followed on his old black
warhorse. Talen was next, followed by Kalten and finally, Sparhawk and
Khalad. They'd decided that seven people was more than enough for a
quick investigation. Rendor was mostly pacified and the few remaining
Eshandists were gathered in the far dunes a hundred leagues to the
south. There shouldn't be any great danger.

The party hesitated when a hooded individual emerged from the shadows
off the docks and approached. Sparhawk nudged Faran forward. Faran was
venerable for a horse, but still had more fight in him than any two
colts. Sparhawk had often wondered whether Bhelliom had given both of
them a bit of the same gift it had given to Sephrenia and Vanion. God
knew he didn't feel as old as he should.

"Anything we can help you with, neighbor?" the big Pandion asked the
shadowy figure standing in the street.

The voice that answered sounded normal enough, if a bit rough. "A
message for the lady, from a friend."

"Hand it to me. I'll make sure she gets it."

Sephrenia just rolled her eyes at this, as did Aphrael. "Never mind,
Sparhawk. He's one of the licensed couriers...he's not the least bit
dangerous."

Chi'el walked over to the messenger and Sephrenia leaned down to take
the sealed message from him. "Sparhawk, give him something."

The knight reached into the pouch inside his surcoat, extracted three
coppers, and tossed them to the courier, who scooped them out of the
air, bowed, and walked away.

"What does it say, little mother?" Kalten asked.

"I don't know yet, dear one, and I'm not going to stand here in the
street and read it. Let's go."

Talen looked back at Kalten and shrugged, as the group moved on.

==================================================

The physic was troubled. Another case of the strange wasting disease
had been reported in the village of Jarid, a half-day's ride to the east
of Dabour. He'd also heard rumors of similar cases springing up in
towns and villages throughout Rendor, seven cases besides the one in
Jiroch. Neither he nor his colleagues had considered the case in Jiroch
to be communicable. Could they have been wrong? Another letter was
written, this time including the more recent cases, to be sent by
courier to his agent in Jiroch. He needed advice, and he knew he could
ask for no better advisor than the Styric priestess.

He bent his head over the writing desk, intent on his task, and so
missed seeing the wiry, dirty man passing in the street outside. As
he'd passed through seven other communities in the last ten days.

===================================================

The seven of them had been given a suite of three rooms, opening onto a
private sitting room. The inn was, like its counterpart in Cimmura,
more than it seemed. The shabby exterior and most of the first two
floors were in stylistic agreement, seeming to be no more than a
slightly run-down waystation with a small taproom. The third floor,
however, was more upscale, consisting of two such suites, furnished well
and mortared tight against the cold winds of the desert night. That
floor was informally reserved for the Militant Orders, and the long
years of the Eshandist uprisings had given it plenty of use. With the
suppression of the Eshandists, however, it had been little-used, and the
hostler had driven his servants into a frenzy of cleaning when Khalad
had given the signs that indicated a need for that floor.

They'd finally gotten settled into the rooms, and Sparhawk was standing
at the window as he usually did when returning to Jiroch, thinking about
his decade of exile. The bells for Vespers were ringing from the tower
of a monastery, maybe the one he'd managed to drag himself to that night
he'd been ambushed in the street. He couldn't be sure; there were
several in Jiroch. Finally making peace with his own mind, as he always
did when he came to Rendor, he turned away from the window and walked to
the straw-stuffed couch that occupied the space before the fireplace.

Sephrenia was sitting there, frowning as she read the letter the courier
had delivered. Aphrael was sitting beside her, frowning also. Vanion
paced the far corner of the room slowly, glancing occasionally at his
wife. Kalten was oiling and sharpening his blade, as Khalad was doing
for Sparhawk's. Talen had disappeared soon after they'd arrived. At
least they'd be able to get some idea of any rumors surrounding that
fireball when he got back.

The small Styric woman made a sound that seemed a cross between a sigh
and a worried hum. Both Vanion and Sparhawk looked at her.

"What's wrong, little mother?" Sparhawk asked her.

Sephrenia finished reading the letter and spoke. "An acquaintance of
mine from Dabour wrote me with the description of a strange disease that
was apparently the talk of the medical community here in Jiroch a few
weeks ago."

Vanion spoke then. "Do you think it may be something relevant to what
we're doing?"

"Possibly," she replied, "But it could be just that...a new disease.
The symptoms bother me, though, and I can't say why. It's very
frustrating."

The door slipped open with only the faint hiss of wood on carpet as
Talen entered the sitting room.

"Well?" Sparhawk asked.

"Rumors fly, Lord Prince Consort Preceptor Sir," Talen answered with his
usual impudent grin. Maturity had filled him out, but it hadn't changed
his basic irreverent nature. "The fireball incinerated the entire town.
The fireball was just an illusion. The fireball carried strange
creatures from another world who proceeded to incinerate the entire
town. The fireball was made of solid gold and the shepherd who found it
bought all of southern Rendor...shall I go on?"

Sparhawk looked sour, then replied, "No...don't bother. It's just the
usual gossip. Although I can't say that the one about creatures from
another world makes me feel any better. What if it's a repeat of
Klael's army? That could start a war that goes on forever."

"It's just rumors. The thing probably set fire to a few shepherds' tents
and as good as disappeared," Kalten offered.

Sephrenia looked thoughtful. "Still, we have to investigate. The
prophecy doesn't offer much in the way of detail, but it does mention
the fireball, and that's our only lead."

Sparhawk almost grinned at the small woman's casual use of logic.
Apparently she had been changed by Vanion as much as she had changed
him.

"In the morning, then, we'll go to Khorentz," he said. The group
dispersed to get some sleep before the journey.

===============================================

Most Holy Sarathi,

May this missive find you in good health. I have recently received a
report from my vice-preceptor at the monastery in Rendor. I'm afraid
you won't like what he has to say. I am including his report, coded as
this letter is. I await your thoughts on this matter, my friend.

Your servant,
Galeryn
Preceptor

--

Dolmant was reluctant to open the report. It wasn't as if he'd been
begging for a crisis that would increase his backlog even further. And
a crisis it almost certainly was; Galeryn was a master of
understatement, and if he said Dolmant wouldn't like what the report
said, then Dolmant was almost certainly going to feel worse about it
than that. He turned to the slim stack of pages that had been inserted
into the courier bag with the letter, and began to read.

/Concerning the Recent Fireball Over Southern Rendor/. Lovely, thought
the Archprelate, not only is it bad news, it's dusty prose, too.

/After careful investigation by two of our best knights, it has been
determined that.../

Yes, yes...Dolmant skimmed over another four paragraphs. The Secret
Order always seemed to bury their conclusions in pages of what seemed to
him to be irrelevancies. He understood why they detailed everything,
but he wished that Galeryn would take the time to snip out the details
he knew were irrelevant to the Archprelate.

/...conclusion.../ Ah, here it was. /...is that the fireball itself is
now completely harmless, but the stone which was carried on the
meteorite is of a different and more dangerous nature. Having only a
trace to work with has unfortunately made our findings most tentative,
but considering the strength of evil in that trace it would be better to
act on the assumption that the stone should be a major object of
interest to both the Order and the Church itself./

Galeryn was right. Sarathi didn't like it one bit.

=============================

The corpse, such as it was, was discovered by Ussif when he entered the
baker's shop to beg for a bit of bread for his widowed mother. Hassan
the baker was assumed to be visiting his sister and her husband, as he
did occasionally, since he hadn't been seen for several days. Ussif
determined to try the door, to see if he was home but not baking for
some reason. If he was away, and the door could be opened, Ussif would
have stolen a few old loaves. Better to sin and be forgiven by the
priest than to starve to death. But the bread was forgotten when Ussif
saw what was behind the counter.

Twelve days dead, the local healer had said. Some sort of wasting
disease. There was barely enough of the baker left to put in a box and
bury.

Within a day, the gossip had begun. On the surface, everyone praised
Hassan to Heaven itself. In whispers, however, they recounted every
scandal and public spectacle the baker had ever been involved in.
Several remembered when he had been discovered with the Desert Warden's
daughter, "teaching her how to bake." It may have been true...she
undisputedly had a bun in the oven six months later. Others remembered
the more recent spectacle of Hassan berating a beggar outside his shop.
The man had been scrawny and filthy, but had demanded charity as if he
were the Beggar King in the Winter Play. Hassan had tossed him out of
the shop. It was the last time anyone had seen the baker alive.

=========================================================

They set out in the early morning, shortly before dawn. Sparhawk had
merely smiled at the usual morning complaints and groans coming from
Kalten and Talen. He hadn't realized just how much he'd missed this
sort of thing in the last decade or so. Statecraft was intriguing in
its own right, but this was what he'd been bred to do, through
generations. It was actually somewhat surprising how little hands-on
work a Preceptor of one of the Militant Orders had the opportunity to
do. Sparhawk sometimes felt that he was picketed to his desk with
chains made of paper. This, he thought as he looked over the group
riding through the city gates, was what being a Pandion was really
about.

Aphrael rode with Sephrenia, as usual. The child-goddess had a slightly
confused look on her face, as if she were trying to work through a
problem.

"What's wrong with Aphrael, little mother?" Sparhawk asked the
white-clad priestess. "She looks as if she swallowed a lemon and a
green apple, and can't decide which one's more sour."

Sephrenia looked down at her patroness, frowning. Aphrael made a brief
gesture and returned to her concentration.

"She's sensing two different trails. One recent one coming in from the
south and another one that's older and more general, as if the being
that made it were a regular visitor to Jiroch."

Sparhawk appraised Aphrael, who was studiously examining the horizon as
if the answers lay beyond.

"Could they be the same thing? Maybe the being that made them lived in
Jiroch years ago, and recently returned from the south?"

Aphrael gave a small sigh and looked up at him.

"Since I'm not going to get the quiet I need to concentrate," she said
with a sharp look at Sparhawk, "I might as well answer your questions
myself.

"No, they're not the same being. One is unimaginably older than the
other, but all I get is relative ages, nothing absolute. They're both
undeniably supernatural. Whether divine or of the dark I can't tell.
All I can feel is the trace of the presence, not the personality."

Talen looked thoughtful. "Priests?"

Sparhawk looked at him in disgust. "I was hoping that leaving Ulath in
Cimmura would keep the cryptic comments to a minimum, Talen."

"What I mean," Talen explained, laughing, "is could a devoted worshipper
of a god carry around little bits of that god without realizing it? For
instance, could one of the Thousand be able to detect your presence when
Sephrenia's around, even if you're not?"

"Not under normal circumstances. Of course, if she had been doing magic
it would," the goddess answered, then lapsed into sudden
thoughtfulness. "It's possible. This doesn't feel like any of my
cousins, though. I think we should keep on to Khorentz. I'll want to
investigate this fireball in any case, and I'm not going to lose either
trail any time soon."

The party of companions fell quiet except for the clop of hooves on the
road before them.

=================================================

"When did they leave, good innkeeper?" the courier asked at the desk of
the waystation.

"About two hours ago," the old hostler replied. "Heading south to
Khorentz."

"Thank you, good sir," the courier answered as he walked out the door.

Damn! he thought. He didn't want to kill a horse catching up with them
now. And he didn't want to be stranded in the desert when the horse
gave out on him.

They'll come back through, the courier thought to himself. Their ship
has a regular dock schedule in Jiroch. They'll be back for it.

Plenty of time later to give the woman the letter he carried.

He headed for his home office, to get indoors before the full heat of
the day fell on the city.

=================================================

Brother Caretaker hummed a tune as he pulled the canvas tight over the
smooth-melted rock in the storage shed. An interesting addition to the
research stock indeed. You didn't often get such a large and perfect
microlite in one piece. The brothers in the laboratory would go crazy
over it.

He tied the last corner off and locked the door to the shed behind him.
He was curious about what the original investigators had found at the
site. He could imagine the damage the thing had caused. Of course, the
only things out that direction were a few sheep folds. Crispy mutton
for everyone, he was sure.

Brother Caretaker hummed all the way back to the dormitory, preparing to
tackle the repair of the water system. He hated plumbing. With a
passion.

A shadow detached itself from the darkness in the corner of the compound
and moved silently for the storage shed. The lock was picked and the
door slipped open enough for something short and lean to enter the
structure.

The figure looked at the small mound under the canvas, then reached its
hand out to untie one of the ropes that surrounded the shape.

A flash of light blinded him, as hot air assaulted his face and body.

"Usif!" a voice boomed. The boy trembled and flung himself out flat in
front the rock. He lay there whimpering with fear and repressed sobs.

"Usif," Brother Jothran, the abbot, repeated. "Why are you here in the
shed?"

Usif looked up, his face dark with shame but lit with relief at the same
time.

"I'm here to see the stone that killed my father," he replied, trying
unsuccessfully to keep his voice steady.

Jothran strode over to the stone, not very large for the damage it had
caused. He uncovered it for the boy.

"There it is, Usif. It's just a stone that fell from the sky. There's
nothing particularly dangerous or evil about it now."

"It's not hot...how did it burn him?"

"It's not hot _now_. Have you seen how the Church Knights joust when
they visit during the holy days?" the abbot asked. Usif nodded.

"So you know that when they're moving very fast, they hit each other
harder and do more damavge because they have more energy built up. It's
the same way with this stone. It fell very, very quickly from a very
high place. Every piece of dust or speck of feather or anything it hits
in the air heats it up a little, because the energy has to go someplace,
and the easiest place for it to go is into the rock. By the time the
thing has gotten to where it could be seen easily, it was already
dangerous. Your father was just in the wrong place. Do you understand
now?"

"I think so, my lord."

"Good, run home now. I'm sure your mother needs you for something now
that you're the man of the house."

"Goodbye, my lord!" the boy smiled as he waved.

The abbot waved back, then stood in the doorway in thought.

"Not entirely accurate, you know," came a voice from the side. Brother
Archivist walked over to the shed to stand with the abbot.

"I know, Rolyn. But if I'd started talking about air pressure and
potential and kinetic energy, the boy would have understood none of it.
You know as well as I that _when_ we teach, we're to do it in such a way
as it can be understood. That's the Third Rule, and it's at least as
ancient as the first two."

"True, my lord," the aged brother agreed. "I hold the Way of Discovery
as highly as you. I just wanted to be sure that _you_ knew the theory
accurately."

"Still testing, Rolyn. Just as you were when I was a novice." Jothran
sighed wearily. "Was it truly so long ago, my friend?"

"Thirty years, my lord."

"Where does the time go?" the vice-preceptor asked softly.

The pair stood and silently watched the sun rise over the tops of the
white monastery walls.

==================================================

Zanjel wandered the streets of the sleeping village, his mind on other
things than his surroundings. He found that he didn't need to sleep
anymore. Every time he felt his alertness starting to flag, or his
stomach begin to growl, he felt a great surge of energy. He knew the
stone was doing this. It told him so. Sangulyth, it called itself, and
promised him great treasures and a life unlike anything he'd ever
experienced if he did what it said. And if he didn't, it gave him a
taste of what it could do to him.

It didn't appear to be able to hear his thoughts if he didn't want it
to. He was quite capable of thinking rebellion against the soulless
domination of the stone, and often found himself wishing he'd never even
seen that depression in the sand. The problem came in doing anything
about it. He'd tried to leave the blood-red rock behind on the sand
once, just off the trade road. His hand wouldn't unfold from around
it. It simply wouldn't let him get rid of it.

Zanjel was not used to that sort of thing. He'd spent a fair amount of
his life not obeying the words of kings and priests. But that was
mostly passive. Not obeying and refusing to obey were two very
different things. One was passive, realized mostly in inaction:
skipping out on taxes, smuggling to avoid import duties, shying away
from his religious obligations. The latter was active, requiring some
effort: struggling against compulsion, fighting pain when the stone
decided to punish him...unclenching his hand against the will of
Sangulyth. He found it much easier to merely do what the stone told him
to. And in return, he got the benefits of renewed vigor and unflagging
energy.

Both of which were fading now. It had been three days this time, over
unbroken desert, moving to a point which only the stone knew. His
thinking was slowing down and his feet burned like he had stepped into
the middle of a bonfire. He found himself wishing for the flow of
energy that burned the clouds from his brain and eased his aching
muscles.

*Now* the voice of the stone spoke in his mind. He felt the stream
begin, his mind clearing as he began to walk a bit straighter, the pain
he felt in his legs and feet fading as if they were being washed away by
a cool river. Zanjel sighed in pleasure, and continued toward the
unknown destination.

In the village behind him, a woman moaned in her sleep as her face began
to age. Her strong goodwife's hands began to curl into the mottled
claws of the very old. She began to shrink in height, as her spine
collapsed forward on itself. And then her moans stopped, and would
never begin again.

================================================

"Not very impressive, is it?" Talen noted as they climbed the last hill
before the town of Khorentz. The place looked like a thousand other
towns and villages out here in the semi-desert before the true sands
began. White stucco and red tile dominated the scene, with an
occasional black outcropping where some fanciful architect had imported
basalt from the north. The scents were the usual Rendorish mix of sheep
and chickens, with a large population of goats doing their part, and the
spices the Rendors used in almost every meal. The pungent bite of
garlic and the face-smacking sting of the tiny hot peppers called
_jiele_ were prominent.

"No more impressive than Demos is from a distance, Talen," Sephrenia
admonished the young man. "I'm sure that a native of Jiroch would find
Cimmura to be just as strange and even more unimpressive. At least
here, the weather isn't a perpetual shade of wet."

Talen looked back at her. "I suppose that's true. But after all, little
mother, I _am_ a thief. Thieves like poor weather. It keeps our
victims' minds on other things than their purses."

Khalad gave him a look that said volumes all by itself. While none of
Talen's brothers particularly approved of his 'profession', they knew
that argument would get them nowhere and even took a peculiar kind of
pride in the fact that the "baby of the family" was the heir apparent of
Platime's underground empire.

Sparhawk watched the town below for a few minutes, then turned to the
others. "There's a monastery on the far side of town, if I remember the
paperwork that came across my desk a few years ago. One of the
scholarly orders."

"Why did you get the paperwork for the establishment of a scholar's
monastery?" Kalten asked.

"All of the preceptors get courtesy copies of monastery and chapterhouse
establishment orders," Sparhawk explained. "The official reason is that
all of the patriarchs receive that sort of thing. The real reason is
what happened to me 26 years ago in Jiroch. A refuge is no use if you
don't know it's there."

"So why don't I know about this place, if the knights are supposed to
know these things?"

"Kalten, you _do_ read the annual report that gets circulated at all the
chapterhouses, don't you?" the Pandion preceptor asked, knowing the
answer already.

"There's an annual report?" Kalten replied, blinking.

Sparhawk shook his head and motioned them to follow as he rode down to
the gates.

=========================================

"My lord!" a voice called out. Jothran, finishing a regular report for
the Preceptor, recognized the voice as the brother who'd been on
surreptitious guard duty outside the monastery walls.

A knock sounded at his door and Jothran called, "Come in, brother!" A
man who was just slightly too well-muscled to be spending his days in
contemplation entered and came to a stop beside the desk.

"Yes, Carmer?"

"A party of northerners are approaching, my lord. Two definite
Pandions, another possible Knight, a Styric woman and child, and two
civilian Elenes. They seem to be moving in our direction."

Jothran sat back and thought for a few seconds.

"Greet them as any traveler, Carmer. Masquerade is active as always.
We're just a scholarly group of monks, bringing God's peace and teaching
to the frontier."

Carmer smiled momentarily at that, then brought his face back under
control. "Yes, my lord."

The monk shut the door softly behind him, and Vice-Preceptor Jothran
brought his hand to his chin.

"What could you possibly want, Sir Knights? I'm willing to bet a year's
supply of incense that the meteor in the shed is involved. This could
become an interesting little dance. Very interesting."

Jothran returned to his report, making a mental note to keep an eye on
this group in the immediate future.

The Secret Order hadn't stayed secret for thousands of years by
accident, after all.