Chapter 472: The Death Stone

"They said yes," I whispered. "You were welcomed at their fire."

"They did welcome me." He looked at the heads as if in thought. "The lion was cautious, but the dwarf had already offered before the lion could stop him. Dwarfs are like that. It is one of the better things about them... and it is the reason they will be the first race to vanish from this world."

"Even after you were welcomed, and you knew they were not the ones you were looking for, you still killed them."

"Not immediately." He seemed to think this was an important distinction. "We talked for most of the night. I asked about you, and they lied to me very badly, all of them, which is how I knew the painting had the right faces." He paused. "The boy was the worst liar. He said he had never heard the name at all, and then twenty minutes later he said it in his sleep."

I sat and looked at the fire. It was not that I was frozen by the unexpected loss of the warband. There was grief inside me, yes, but mostly I was not doing anything because I had noticed something about the inside of my own chest, and it was hunger... the same hunger that had pushed me into becoming what I am, and it was burning.

For one crazy moment, I wanted to set my second anchor right here and disregard everything of the future, and kill this stranger in ten thousand different ways.

For a moment...

∞

"You have gone quiet," the stranger said.

"I’m... thinking."

His tone went up a bit with interest. "Oh... about what?"

I looked at him, and my hand, which I had unconsciously clenched, loosened. "About whether you understand what you’ve done."

He made a small, considering noise. "I have found that everyone thinks their own dead are a special case. It is not a criticism. It is simply the way people are built." He turned his palms up. "But I have taken a very great many people from a very great many fires, and I promise you that the arithmetic does not change based on who was sitting at them."

I cocked my head to the side. "That’s not what I meant. I was not talking about them."

"No?"

"No." I put another piece of wood on the fire. My hands were perfectly steady. This stranger did not know that I process loss differently. For me the pain did not come when people died. It was seeing all the ways in which they died that I could not prevent. Those always hurt.

I sighed. "I meant that you have gone to a considerable amount of trouble to arrange a situation you do not understand."

To his credit, the man did not look annoyed. In fact, it was the opposite. "Enlighten me."

I thought about it for a moment and still decided to speak. "You came here to restore balance... That’s what you said."

"It is."

"And the balance you’re restoring is that I am out of place." I nodded at the heads. "So you removed these people whose only crime was standing next to me."

"Yes."

"And you did all of that," I said, "because you think I am something that can be corrected... by you."

The stranger tilted his head, and he did not seem to have an immediate answer.

∞

"You are taking this better than I expected," he said at last.

"I’m not taking it at all yet."

He paused. "That is an unusual distinction."

"I have a lot of practice." I looked at him across the flames. "Can I ask you something, since we are being sociable?"

"Please."

"You told me you lost your village," I said.

"I did."

"And your workshop, and everyone who ever needed a wheel from you."

"All of it."

"That’s a good story," I said. "And it made me sorry for you, which I imagine is why you tell it. I wonder how many travellers you have told it to. But most of all..." I nodded at the heads in the grass. "I would like to know whether there was ever a village."

He did not answer immediately, which I think was answer enough.

"There was a wheel," he said at last. "The rest is decoration. I find people are more comfortable with a man who has lost something."

I looked at him. "You are still lying."

A beatific smile broke across his face. "You wound me, Elric, truly you do. But you should be careful. I come at the behest of another, the Necromancer, and calling me a liar is an affront to her domain."

Then I looked at the vast murder of crows and cocked my head to the side, now aware of a subtle presence that had been with me all this while.

For a mortal it would have been impossible to sense it, because they would only ever see a small part of the picture, but I was able to draw backward, and I saw that every single crow here was not an individual. They were part of something vast, each one a single cell in a body, and when I pulled back far enough, I could see that the overall shape of the crows was a head, so vast that it was measured in miles, and the head clearly belonged to a woman.

Her vast mouth was open, and at the centre of it was the fire, and me, and this stranger. I did not know when it had happened, but I was already inside the mouth of the Necromancer, and she could snap it shut and end my existence.

"Ah, so you have seen her," the stranger said pleasantly. "She is always listening, bad habit of hers, but she pays well... very well. So well that I am willing to make you an offer."

I slowly drew my perception back from the crows and returned it to the stranger beside me, and I sneered. "I was wondering when we would get to that part."

"It is a good offer. I do not make many." He gestured at the ground between us, at the nine heads lying there in the grass in the firelight. "Give me the Death Stone."

My eyes tightened. Was he referring to the crystal? "No."

"You have not heard the rest."

"I don’t need to."

"Humour an old wheelwright." He said it without irony. "Give me the Death Stone, and I will carry it back to where it belongs, and the balance is restored. I will walk out of this valley and the crows will go with me. You will still be here, and nobody will come looking, since I will make sure there is nothing left out of place to look for."

So it was the stone that was out of place. Not me. I filed that away.

"And them?" I nodded at the heads.

"They are dead," he said, kindly. "That already happened. Nothing either of us does tonight will alter it, and I would ask you not to pretend otherwise."

"And if I say no?"

"Then I will take the Death Stone," he said. "I will try not to be too cruel, but I will kill you and take it from your corpse. I have done this a very great many times and I am good at it, and you will find it is quicker than you expect."

I stroked my chin. "You are not the only ones after this stone, are you?"

The gentle smile on his face suddenly vanished.