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“Nothing,” she said. “Not yet, anyway. At this point it is only potential—a thunderhead on the horizon. The stones may yet say this storm is to pass us by.”
Watching as she gathered up her stones, he was overcome with a sense of dread. “Enough of this—you need to rest. Why don’t you let me help you up, now, Althea? I’ll make you something to eat.” He watched her pluck the last stone, the one in the center, off the board. “Leave your stones for now. I’ll make you some nice hot tea.”
He never before thought of the stones as anything sinister. Now he felt as if they were somehow inviting menace into their lives.
He didn’t want her to cast the stones again.
He sank down beside her. “Althea—”
“Hush, Friedrich.” She spoke the words in a flat tone, not in anger or reproach, but simple necessity. The rain drummed against the roof with rabid intensity. Water cascading off the eaves roared. Darkness out the windows faltered in fits of lightning.
He listened to the stones rattle, like the bones of the dead speaking to her. For the first time in their life together, he felt a kind of defensive hatred for the seven stones she held, as if they were some lover come to steal her away from him.
From her seat atop her gold and red pillow on the floor, Althea cast the stones down onto the Grace.
As they tumbled across the board, he watched with resignation as they came to rest, natural as could be, in the exact same places. He would have been surprised only if they had fallen differently.
“Seven,” she whispered. “Seven times seven stones.”
Thunder rumbled in a deep resonant tone, like the voice of discontent of spirits in the underworld.
Friedrich rested a hand on his wife’s shoulder. A presence had come into their home—invaded their lives. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there. He felt a great weariness, as if all his years had come at once to weigh him down, making him feel very old. He wondered if this was in some small way what she felt all the time when she became so weary from casting a telling. He shuddered to contemplate always swimming in such emotionally turbulent waters. His world, his work of gilding, seemed so simple, so blissful, in its ignorance of the swirl of tempestuous forces all around.
The worst of it, though, was that he could not protect her from this unseen threat. In this, he was helpless.
“Althea, what does it mean?”
She hadn’t moved. She was staring at the smooth dark stones setting on her Grace.
“One who hears the voices is coming.”
Lightning ignited in a blinding angry flash, illuminating the room with white incandescence. The scintillating contrast between bright light and smothering shadow was dizzying. The intense strike flickered on as thunder crashed with a boom that shook the ground. A ripping crash followed on its heels, the clamor adding a confusion of sound to match the flashing of light.
Friedrich swallowed. “Do you know which one?”
She reached up and patted his hand resting on her shoulder. “Tea, you say? The rain gives me a chill. I’d like some tea.”
He looked from the crinkled smile showing in her eyes to the stones on the Grace. For whatever reason, she wasn’t going to answer that question, for now. He asked another, instead.
“Why did your stones fall like that, Althea? What does something like that mean?”
Lightning struck nearby. The crack of thunder felt as if it split air made of solid stone. Fists of rain beat against the window in petulant fits.
Althea finally looked away from the window, from Creation’s fury, and turned back to the board. She reached out and placed her forefinger on the stone in the center.
“The Creator?” he guessed aloud before she could name it.
She shook her head. “Lord Rahl.”
“But, the star in the center represents the Creator—his gift.”
“It does, in the Grace. But you must not forget, this is a telling. This is different. A telling only uses the Grace, and in this telling the stone in the center represents the one with His gift.”
“Then it could be anyone,” Friedrich said. “Anyone with the gift.”
“No. The lines coming from the eight points of the star represent the gift as it passes through life, through the veil between the worlds, and beyond the outer circle into the underworld. Thus it represents the gift in a sense that it conveys with no other person: the gift for magic of both worlds, the world of life, and the world of the dead: Additive and Subtractive. This stone in the center touches both.”
He glanced back at the stone in the center of the Grace. “But why would that mean Lord Rahl?”
“Because he is the only one born in three thousand years with both aspects of the gift. In all that time, until he came into his gift, no stone I have cast has ever landed in that place. None could.
“What has it been? Two years, now, since he succeeded his father? Less, since his gift came to life in him—which in itself leaves questions with only troubling answers.”
“But I recall you telling me years ago that Darken Rahl used both sides of the gift.”
Gazing off into dark memories, Althea shook her head. “He also used Subtractive powers, but he did not do so by birth. He offered the pure souls of children to the Keeper of the underworld in return for the Keeper’s favors. Darken Rahl had to trade for the limited use of such powers. But this man, this Lord Rahl, has been born with both sides of the gift, as those of old were.”
Friedrich wasn’t sure what to make of that, what danger it could be that he so strongly felt. He remembered quite distinctly the day the new Lord Rahl had risen to power. Friedrich had been at the palace to sell his small gilded carvings when the great event had taken place. That day, he had seen the new Lord Rahl, Richard.
It had been one of those moments in life never to be forgotten—only the third Rahl to mile in Friedrich’s lifetime. He remembered quite clearly the new Lord Rahl, tall, strong, with a raptor gaze, striding through the palace, seeming completely out of place, and at the same time belonging. And then there was the sword he carried, a legendary sword not seen in D’Hara since Friedrich had been a boy, way back before the boundaries had been brought into existence, cutting D’Hara off from the rest of the new world.
The new Lord Rahl had been walking through the corridors of the People’s Palace along with an old man—a wizard, people said—and a sublime woman. The woman, with long lush hair, wearing a satiny white dress, made the grandeur and majesty of the palace seem dull and common by comparison.
Richard Rahl a
nd that woman seemed right together. Friedrich recognized the special way they looked at each other. The commitment, loyalty, and bond in the gray eyes of that man and the green eyes of that woman was as profound as it was unmistakable.
“What of the other stones?” he asked.
Althea gestured out past the larger circle of the Grace, where only the gilt rays of the Creator’s gift dared go, to the two dark stones sitting in the world of the dead.
“Those who hear the voices,” Althea said.
He nodded at having his suspicions confirmed. In such things dealing with magic, it wasn’t often that he was able to guess the truth from what appeared to be obvious.
“And the rest?”
Staring at the four stones resting at the cusps of lines, her voice came softly, mingling with the rain. “These are protectors.”
“They protect Lord Rahl?”
“They protect us all.”
He saw then the tears rolling down her weathered cheeks.
“Pray,” she whispered, “that they are enough, or the Keeper will have us all.”
“You mean to say, there are only these four who protect us?”
“There are others, but these four are pivotal. Without them, everything is lost.”
Friedrich licked his lips, fearful of the fate of the four sentinels standing against the Keeper of the dead. “Althea, do you know who they are?”
She turned then, putting her arms around him, pressing the side of her face to his chest. It was as childlike a gesture as he could imagine, one that touched his heart and made him ache with his love for her. Gently he put protective arms around her, comforting her, in spite of the fact that in truth he could do nothing to protect her from such things as she rightly feared.
“Carry me to my chair, Friedrich?”
He nodded, lifting her in his arms as she hugged his neck. Her withered, useless legs dangled. A woman of such power as could enforce a warm and rain-swept swamp around them in winter, yet she needed him to carry her to a chair. Him, Friedrich, a mere man she loved—a man without the gift. A man who loved her.
“You didn’t answer my question, Althea.”
