She held Lizanne’s gaze, beseeching some kind of absolution. But Lizanne was not a priest.
“What did it need?” she said, seeing the distress on Alestine’s face dissipate at the hardness of her tone. “You said it needed something to match the Blood-blessed. What was it?”
“What else could it be?” the Artisan said with a shrug. “A Blood-blessed of its own of course. One with the right kind of mind.”
“What kind of mind?”
Alestine blinked and turned away, grunting in pain as she shifted closer to the rivulet of blood still flowing from the wound the iron spike had torn in the White’s hide. “Madness is a common trait amongst humans,” she said. “But the non-Blessed are many and we are few. And it needed to be the right pitch of madness, coloured with enough cruelty, envy and resentment to see what it intended for the world as right and just. All those centuries ago it never found the right mind. In your time, it would be more fortunate.”
She leaned closer to the stream of blood, face tense in expectation and fear.
“You drank,” Lizanne said. “You drank and saw that it would rise again.”
“I saw . . .” Alestine lifted a trembling hand and touched her fingers to the blood, wincing as the tips turned white in the flow. “Many things, Lizanne. Terrible and beautiful, cruel and kind. For that is life, and I saw it all. But there was a greater gift to be had here.”
She reached into her pocket and drew out a flask, drinking down the contents in a few gulps before tossing it aside. Lizanne saw the strength flood Alestine’s body as the Green took hold, the woman rising to her feet and taking a firmer grip on the iron spike with both hands. A few hard tugs and she had drawn it out, raising it to let the diminishing flames play on the dark, near-black substance on the spear-point tip.
“The heart-blood of a White,” she said. “For someone who had spent much of her life seeking knowledge, how could I resist it?”
Alestine pressed her ruined mouth to the spear-point, jerking in agony as the blood made its way past her exposed teeth and down her throat. The cavern disappeared, leaving them floating in what Lizanne at first took for some kind of giant fish-bowl. Forms swirled around them, some indistinct, others vibrant and shimmering with colour. They were constantly shifting, a formless misty swirl one second then a human face or a fully realised body, sometimes naked, sometimes clothed. There were men and women, infants and elderly. Lizanne realised she could hear them, a thousand voices babbling at once. Not voices, she realised. Thoughts. These are minds.
“Indeed they are,” Alestine said. She floated close by, whole and beautiful once again, a mix of wonder and dismay on her face as she surveyed the swirling minds. “Every Blood-blessed drawing breath at the moment I drank the White’s blood. And they were all mine. All I had to do was reach out and take one.”
One of the shimmering minds veered towards them, Lizanne recognising the face of a woman in the misty shape. “Curious thing about heart-blood,” Alestine mused. “The abilities it conveys never fade. They are seared into your being, an eternal gift . . . or a curse. And one that can be shared.” She flicked her hand and the woman’s mind flew away, soon lost amongst the multitude.
“This is how you called the first one to you in Scorazin,” Lizanne said. “And how he called the next.”
“Yes. A great and unforgivable sin. But one I had to commit if this world was to survive. There wasn’t just heart-blood on the spear. I saw what was coming, and I saw you and I saw the clever boy and knew it was my role to bring you together.”
The huge fish-bowl turned into a grey mist, which soon coalesced into something familiar. Lizanne found herself regarding walls of uneven stone lit by the light of an oil-lamp. She turned at the sound of scraping chalk and saw Tinkerer at the smooth patch of wall he used as a blackboard. The flat surface was covered in an incomprehensible mélange of numbers and formulae, some of it so dense the stone was completely covered in chalk. He gave no sign of having noticed Lizanne’s presence, his hand moving in a blur as it added yet more wisdom to the wall.
“It wasn’t like this when I lived here,” Alestine said in a croak, appearing at Lizanne’s side. “The others must’ve enlarged it over the years.” Her form had recovered its wounds, though the burns appeared much older now, the scars pink and mottled rather than puckered and blackish red. Lizanne could see wrinkles on her undamaged skin and she stood with a pronounced stoop, grey hair hanging over her ruined face in slack, unwashed tendrils.
“How did you come to be here?” Lizanne asked.
“I wrote a letter to an old friend when I returned to the Empire.” Alestine moved to peer at Tinkerer’s wall, frowning in bafflement. “And I thought I was clever,” she muttered.
“Azireh,” Lizanne said. “She put you here.”
“It was what I asked for, somewhere to hide and remain hidden for all time. A reward for all the marvellous trinkets I brought back from Arradsia. She was effusive in her thanks and prompt in granting my request, but never came for a visit, not that I blame her. No doubt the Imperial agents who escorted me here gave her a fulsome report on my appearance. Hey, boy!” She snapped her fingers beside Tinkerer’s ear. “Not polite to ignore your guests, you know.”
Tinkerer’s chalk kept moving and he betrayed no indication of having heard her. “Always knew he’d be a rude bugger,” Alestine said, aiming a cuff at the back of Tinkerer’s head but her fingers passed through. “Not my mind, y’see,” she told Lizanne. “This is all his. Doesn’t want to see me so he doesn’t.” She leaned closer to Tinkerer, shouting into his ear. “Can’t stay in here forever though, can you?”
Lizanne went to stand at Tinkerer’s shoulder, looking closely at his face, which displayed the habitual blankness that overtook him when he lost himself in a task. Perhaps he doesn’t want to come back, she thought, turning her gaze on the mass of calculus. Perhaps this is all he wants. She fought down an upswell of guilt as she raised her hand and placed it over his, stopping the chalk in its tracks. What he wants doesn’t matter. Alestine had a task and so do I.
“Looks like he’s happy to see you,” Alestine said, moving away. “Time for me to go, I think.”
“Wait,” Lizanne said. “You said the ancient Blood-blessed freed some of the Spoiled. How?”
“I don’t know. Tree Speaker’s people had no tale to tell on that score. The White’s blood showed me a battle, great and terrible, Spoiled and human and drake locked in a struggle to the death. You were there, Lizanne, fighting and bleeding.”
“Do we win?”
Alestine’s aged and stooped form slipped away and she was once again the same woman Lizanne had met in the clearing, beautiful and brave but now with a vast weight of guilt behind her eyes.
“I saw nothing beyond this,” she told Lizanne. “This song is played out and now will end, as all songs must.” She cast a final, unreadable glance at Tinkerer and stepped away, disappearing into the wall and leaving them alone.
Lizanne turned back to Tinkerer, finding herself shocked by his wide and fearful eyes. “I . . .” he began, faltering over the words in a halting rasp. “I have been here a very long time. Months, I think. Perhaps years. Perhaps longer. I couldn’t count the minutes, or the hours or the days. It was . . . disturbing.”