Chapter Thirteen Bonds and Stones
Chapter Thirteen
Bonds and Stones
Where Kell and Saeldian Need a Maze to Unwind the Truth
Shuahn had lived near water when Kell was a child, and her house in the Brewmistress’s domain stood astride the banks of a stream, with a footbridge traveling over her roof.
The ceilings were low enough that Lorzok would have to stoop if he were inside, and Saeldian had to duck when passing through doorways to get to the room in the center of the long, narrow house.
The damp wooden walls were plush with ferns and moss that spread across the floors to cushion their slippered feet.
Saeldian inspected everything tucked in the alcoves in the walls. They clasped their hands behind their back to keep from touching anything. Shuahn left them to it while she brewed tea.
“You’re both so quiet, someone would think you were going to your deaths,” Shuahn said. “A little chitchat, if you please?”
Kell had to show some goodwill so Shuahn would be satisfied. “I behaved badly this evening, Saeldian. I deliberately made your eggs the way you hate them when I knew I had been making them for you. That was childish.”
“Very prettily said,” Shuahn interrupted, “and every word of it true. So it’s amazing how insincere it is, Kell Redsong.”
“I’m trying to apologize.”
“But you don’t feel remorse.”
“It’s all right,” Saeldian said. “I can’t change his mind now that it’s made up.”
“Said with all the wounded courage anyone could ask for,” Shuahn remarked, “and you didn’t mean a word of it in the way you intended me to understand it.”
Saeldian shrugged. “It’s true, though. And if I were in his shoes, I would have come to the same conclusion. What should we talk about that would be more pleasant?”
“I don’t have experience with going to the gallows with a sense of cheer,” Kell said, “since I managed to escape Wyrm’s Rock and all.”
“Lucky. What happened to your fiddle?”
The one that Saeldian had ordered from Master Quirkilious, they meant. “Do you care?”
Saeldian huffed. “Never mind.”
He didn’t know where it had ended up. There hadn’t been time to search for it. It wouldn’t have survived the swim in the Chionthar at the end of his escape. Maybe someone had rescued it from an evidence chest and now played a reel on it sometimes.
Maybe he should tell them that he still thought about that fiddle when he played his new one? No. It didn’t matter.
“All right, here we are,” Shuahn said. “Wait to drink it. I want you to understand what you’re doing before you do it.”
Saeldian touched the side of the thin glass cup to test its heat, then leaned over and sniffed. “This is a tea for sleep.”
“You know herbcraft?”
“Not really,” Saeldian said. “I can smell magic here.”
“Interesting,” Shuahn said. “I’d like to test that, but later. You’re right. The trial you face will be in dreams.”
“And we need to sleep?”
Shuahn’s laugh croaked. “Being drowsy will make it easier to accept. I’m taking you into the dream. Do you see that hourglass?”
Kell followed her pointing finger to where a mouth-blown hourglass with gray-lilac sand rested. She crossed to hold it in her hands, and it was nearly as big as her head. “I turn this over, and we will be in the dream. You’ll meet a trial there that will force you to face what is in your heart.”
Saeldian took their fingers away from the cup. “I wouldn’t have to do this if Kell didn’t come along. Right?”
“Correct,” Shuahn said.
Saeldian looked at Kell. “You wouldn’t have to do this if you’d just stay here. You’re free.”
“You don’t want to face whatever you’d see? That’s interesting.”
Saeldian rubbed their chin. “So you’ll do it just because it’ll force me to do it? Isn’t that a bit immature?”
Oh, this was too good. The heat from Kell’s teacup seared into his fingers as he lifted it in a mocking toast. “Call me whatever you like. A way to make you face something in your life? There isn’t anything you could have said that would make me more ready to do it.”
He grinned right until the steam hit his nose and it was time to drink.
It was too hot. His tongue curled trying to get away from it, but he swallowed it down—grassy, dark, a little hint of mushroom and pungent valerian root. No honey, of course. Shuahn always liked things unvarnished. The heat spread like a fog as Kell covered his scalded tongue with smiling teeth.
“Drink up.”
Saeldian glowered, but they couldn’t refuse.
Kell enjoyed every second: The cup, perched on their fingertips. The futile way they blew across the top. Their first sip and swallow, then another, and one more, all the rest of it drank to the dregs.
Saeldian set the cup down and wiped their mouth with the back of their hand. “What now?”
Kell nodded. “Yes. What now?”
Shuahn spread her fingertips along the round glass. “I haven’t turned it over. You can go back to your rooms and get a good night’s sleep.”
Saeldian said nothing while Kell let himself roll around in this feeling he should not like so much.
“I’m not afraid to face what’s in my heart,” he said. “Go ahead and take us to the dream.”
Shuahn led them to the door on the other side of the house, this one low enough that Kell had to duck through it too.
When he stood up straight, he saw the path away from the stream was paved in geometric five-petaled stones, with tough green vines persisting in its gaps.
Just ahead, a surprisingly formal garden spread between the opening of two beech trees that had grown together.
Shuahn passed through the gap and walked straight to a tall hedge maze.
Kell pinched his wrist, but he didn’t wake up in Shuahn’s green-filled parlor. This garden and its maze hadn’t been there. A quick glance behind him showed the humped bridge with Shuahn’s house roosting underneath. He couldn’t hear the water.
“Second thoughts?” Saeldian asked.
“You wish.”
Kell strode between the beech trees and into the garden. The hedges were perfectly trimmed red-berried holly, and their leaves looked too pointed, too sharp. Dangerous.
Just before the entrance stood a basin on a pedestal filled with leather-covered balls.
Shuahn pointed. “Take one.”
Saeldian took theirs, so Kell did the same.
“Listen carefully.”
Shuahn had become…more. Power gathered around her as she spoke, and it felt like every word in her croaking voice curled in the cups of Kell’s ears.
“In every meeting of people, in every friendship and brotherhood and partnership, in every courtship and marriage, every meeting carries the potential to build a bond or lay a stone.”
The air around them stilled and paid attention.
“Bonds are shared. Happiness, grief, annoyances, experiences. Stones are held by one person, but they lie between them both.”
This was a ceremony. Shuahn was telling them both what the ceremony did and what it meant.
“Stones are secrets. I don’t mean that having secrets is what puts stones between people. If you have to keep someone else’s secret, that is a small stone, and easily moved past. I mean the secrets you keep that build between you.”
When Kell glanced at Saeldian, they looked back, their golden-blush skin gone to ashes. He wanted that to feel good. It didn’t.
“You’re hurt by the other’s words, and you choose to say nothing. You worry how the other will react, so you choose to say nothing. Your own hurts and painful lessons build stones that you put between you and everyone you meet.”
Saeldian’s breathing became very controlled.
Shuahn went on. “Leave enough of these stones, and the bonds aren’t strong enough to withstand them, even if they never break. And when those bonds don’t break, even though the stones have built so high and so thick you can’t see each other, that is the worst of all. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Kell and Saeldian said.
“Throw the balls into the hedge.”
Kell lobbed his in a high arc. It landed far from Saeldian’s, whose ball went off to the right.
“Go in and get them, and put them in the bowl like this one at the center of the maze. Then you’ll be ready.”
Kell stared at the hedge and then back at Shuahn. “So that’s it? We have to use teamwork to get our ball back. That’s how it works?”
“You find your own ball. If you find the other’s, it will refuse to be touched by you.”
“Shuahn, I really appreciate this,” Saeldian said. “Your words about the stones make so much sense. But I don’t think we can put things back the way they were.”
“You don’t need to put the bonds back where they were. You can’t ever get that back, honestly. But you have to unsnarl them enough that you can start the business of mending.”
“To be friends again?”
“To clear the stones enough that you can see each other, not the wall you’ve built. Friendship once more? I can’t guarantee that.”
“But we’ll be able to go to Hearthaven’s Repose.”
“Yes.”
“Understood.”
Saeldian walked away, straight into the maze. Kell followed, but just at the entrance, he turned back—
And started in surprise, because Shuahn was right there.
“Did you have one more question?”
“What if I can’t let my feelings go? What if it’s not a safe thing to do?”
“Then I’m not taking you to Hearthaven’s Repose.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll never get out of here again.”
Shuahn shoved Kell so hard he stumbled. When he regained his balance, he was standing on the moss-and-slate path in the maze, and the holly branches closed behind him while Shuahn watched.
He was trapped.
Ordinary mazes on Faer?n weren’t difficult.
Keep turning left, and eventually you got out—unless there were tricks and magic that kept you from that solution.
Before the water flask on his hip was half empty, Kell had started tying twine in different knot patterns to signal his next move to try to solve it.
One sip remained by the time that strategy had sent him to the same knot three times.
Solving the maze wasn’t the answer.
“Saeldian!”
He didn’t expect that would work, but their voice returned to him. Off to the right. “Here!”
“I think we have to do this together.”
“You might be correct,” Saeldian called back.
“Did you see my twine marks? With the knots?”