“You might destroy it if you try to save it,” he said.
“Tell that to Vize. What was he doing down in the Tangle with Gerda?” I asked.
Brokke stared into his glass, swirling the claret now and then. He was powerful enough to use such a small surface area for scrying, but I didn’t feel anything. One of Heydan’s rules for Yggy’s was no scrying on the premises. “Vize was helping her recover a stone ward she lost a long time ago,” he said.
The idea that Gerda Alfheim had had the leanansidhe’s stone bowl at some point didn’t defy imagination. If anything, I was more surprised a leanansidhe had it than a powerful elf. Many things were lost after Convergence and ended up in odd places. “How did she lose it?”
“Gerda wasn’t anyone important years ago. She worked her way through barter and trade before she gave her skills to the Teutonic shadow network. At some point, she came into possession of the stone and sold it without realizing what it was.”
Another Guinness appeared on the table. “Who did she sell it to?” I asked.
“I’m aware of your investigation with your detective friend. You already know. Nar Veinseeker,” he said.
“And she thinks he still has the stone?” I asked.
Brokke shrugged. “That I could not determine. The most I learned was that Gerda knew him after Convergence and that they had a falling-out of some kind.”
“He seems to have a knack for that,” I said.
“Then you know more than I. He knows where the stone is. Gerda wants that information,” he said.
“Well, Gerda apparently knew something about where it is. She already found the leanansidhe,” I said.
Brokke’s forehead wrinkled. “I saw no leanansidhe in my visions.”
“They’re using her like a bloodhound. She’s attuned to the stone. I’ve seen her operate. Veinseeker doesn’t have the stone, Brokke. They want him for something else,” I said.
“My visions have shown no connection between the stone and a leanansidhe. Tell me what you know, Grey. Leave out no detail,” he said.
“The leanansidhe survives by absorbing essence. There’s a darkness inside her that pulls essence to itself. She uses her ability to feed on that essence as it passes through her into the darkness. She’s sensitive to the stone. It draws her to it.”
Brokke looked around the busy bar. “I have seen such a creature years ago. Few of them exist, and we can all thank the Wheel for that. I think you are wrong about this. The stone is bound to the Wheel and is too strong to yield to something like a leanansidhe. It would be of no use to it. I don’t think Gerda was working with one of these creatures.”
I had seen the leanansidhe use the stone. Hell, she had shown me how to use it. The stone gave its power with no resistance. In Shay’s apartment, it had worked with no effort by anyone at all. It was a directionless thing, a producer of raw power for the taking. That Brokke believed otherwise didn’t sound right. His reputation for accuracy was based on the truth of his visions. For him not to understand the stone didn’t ring right with me. “You seem pretty sure of yourself, Brokke. If the stone wouldn’t be of use to a leanansidhe, what good is it?”
“When it chooses someone, the wielder has the power to stir hearts to his cause. His followers become formidable warriors, stopping at nothing to achieve the goals of the wielder.”
When I had touched the stone bowl, I felt nothing more than the surge of essence. No spells were bound to it. The pure essence flowed without purpose or restraint. I didn’t sense that adoring masses were dying to follow me to the grocery store. An uneasy feeling came over me. “Can you describe the stone, Brokke?”
Brokke made a triangular shape with his hands. “I have seen drawings and renderings of it in records across Europe. It rises and falls in both our histories, Grey, sometimes with the Celts, sometimes with the Teuts. No one can say whether it was created by someone or simply appeared at the beginning of time. It’s roughly three-sided, about the size of a fist, and made of deep blue quartz. You might say it looks like a heart.”
The leanansidhe’s stone was carved from quartz into the shape of a bowl—but it was bloodstone, a deep green with splashes of red. We weren’t talking about the same stone. “What do they want it for?”
Brokke frowned. “I would think that obvious. It’s a faith stone. It inspires people to the cause of the wielder.”
I shook my head. “I can’t imagine a stone so powerful it would turn people into terrorists. Vize may be crazy, but I don’t think he’s delusional.”
A sudden uncomfortable look passed over Brokke’s face. His eyes shifted out toward the crowded bar. “I don’t recall saying Vize wanted it for himself.”
For once, Brokke was revealing something he knew rather than uttering his usual evasions. He could be talking about only one person. The Elven King would benefit the most with such an artifact, and he conveniently happened to be in town to force Eorla back into the fold. If he could make the faith stone work on her, he would have a potent weapon to use against the Seelie Court. World opinion has always been in Maeve’s favor. If the stone worked the way Brokke said it did, Donor Elfenkonig could tip the balance of power in his direction. “Dammit, Brokke. I’ve been trying to connect Vize to the Elven King for over a decade.”
“And you won’t this time either, Grey. Donor knows how to distance himself from people like Vize. The stone will be found and out of this city before you or anyone else can do anything about it,” he said.
“Have you seen that?” I asked.
He sighed. “The only thing I can tell you is that the stone will be found. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. My vision failed two nights ago. So did everyone else’s. That happens when profound change is imminent, and the future is in flux.”
Meryl had said she couldn’t remember her dream vision. The same thing happened to Briallen before the Castle Island catastrophe. Now one of the most powerful scryers in the world was saying he was blind. “I have to stop them, Brokke.”
Brokke sipped his claret. “No, you want to. It’s one of the reasons my vision fails. Your darkness obscures more than your mind.”
The sounds of the bar whirled around me. I had been about to shrug off his comment, discard yet another hint from the always-mysterious Brokke. Murdock’s words about seeking answers in unlikely places came back to me. “What do you know about it, Brokke?”
“The darkness is a rare thing, Grey, but the leanansidhe isn’t the only fey that touches it. I’ve seen it far too many times recently.”
“So have I. Something drained the essence from the dwarf victims. If a leanansidhe didn’t do it, who did?”
He considered me with surprise and annoyance. “Vize, of course. He has the same darkness in him as the leanansidhe. It’s the same thing in you.”
My memory flashed to the leanansidhe hissing in the dark. She’d called me “brother.” The night of the riots, I saw Vize, saw the darkness in him, and recognized it as the same thing in me. “You’re wrong, Brokke. It’s not in his head. It’s in his hand.”
He gestured with his glass at my arm, the one with the silver-branch tattoo, hidden beneath my jacket sleeve. “Does that need to be in your head for it to have power?”
Self-conscious, I slid my arm off the table and dropped it in my lap. It was pointless to ask him how he knew about the tattoo. “How does he know how to use it?”
“How do you?”
I wasn’t about to confess my personal involvement with the leanansidhe. “Answer my question.”
“I have, in a way. You showed him, Grey. When you touched him with your darkness the night of the riots, you disturbed something within him. I was on the bridge that night, too. I saw what happened. The darkness in Vize exploded when you attacked him. You showed him the way,” Brokke said.