The First Stone Read Free Page A

safe. Aryn is to have her own child soon, is she not? I am certain she will enjoy seeing our little one. And when I am finished with my work in the south, I will send word.”
    “I believe you are trying to distract me,” Lirith said, giving him a stern look. However, she could not keep it up, and she laughed as she hugged Taneth to her. “I confess, I long to see Aryn with my eyes, not just hear her voice over the Weirding. And if I stayed here, I imagine I would do nothing but fret and worry about you.”
    “Then it’s settled,” Sareth said. “You will go to Calavere at once. I will ask Damari to accompany you.” He scratched his chin. “Or maybe I’d better make that Jahiel. He’s much less handsome.”
    “Damari will do just fine,” Lirith said. Then her mirth ceased, and she leaned her head against his bare chest, Taneth between them. He circled his arms around them both.
    “Promise me you won’t worry,
beshala
.”
    “I will be waiting,” was all she said, and they stayed that way, the three of them together, as dawn turned the sky to gold.

3.
    Sareth left that day, taking only one other—a broad-shouldered young man named Fahir—with him. Word had been sent to the fastness of Golgoru, in the Mountains of the Shroud, but there were few
T’gol
these days. Nor was it likely one would reach Al-Amún sooner than Sareth; from here it was only a half day’s ride to the port city of Kalos, on the southern tip of Falengarth, at the point where the Summer Sea was narrowest. Sareth hoped to reach the city by nightfall and book passage on a ship tomorrow.
    Before he left, his al-Mama called him into her dragon-shaped wagon and made him draw a card from her
T’hot
deck. His fingertips tingled as they brushed one of the well-worn cards, and he drew it out. As he turned it over, a hiss escaped her.
    “The Void,” she rasped.
    There was no picture on the card. It was painted solid black.
    “What does it mean? Do I have no fate, then?”
    “Only a dead man has no fate.”
    He swallowed the lump in his throat. “What of the
A’narai
, the Fateless Ones who tended the god-king Orú long ago?”
    She snatched the card from his hand. “As I said, only a dead man has no fate.”
    His al-Mama said no more, but as Sareth left the wagon he glanced over his shoulder. The old woman huddled beneath her blankets, muttering as she turned the card over and over. Whatever it portended, it troubled her. However, he put it out of his mind. Perhaps the dead had no fate, but he was very much alive, and his destiny was to return to Lirith and Taneth as soon as possible.
    They reached Kalos that evening as planned and set sail the next morning on the swiftest ship they could find—a small spice trader. Fahir, who had never been at sea before, was violently ill during the entire two-day passage, and even Sareth found himself getting queasy, for the Summer Sea was rough, tossing the little ship on the waves. The ship’s captain remarked that he had never seen such ill winds this time of year.
    Fortunately, the voyage was soon over, and they disembarked in the port city of Qaradas, on the north coast of the continent of Moringarth, in the land of city-states known as Al-Amún. Sareth had traveled to Al-Amún several times in his youth; it was a custom among the Mournish of the north that young men and women should visit the southern continent, where most of the Morindai dwelled. Qaradas was just as he remembered it: a city of white-domed buildings and crowded, dusty streets shaded by date palms.
    “I thought the cities of the south were made of gold,” Fahir said, a look of disappointment on his face.
    Sareth grinned. “In the light of sunset, the white buildings do look gold. But it is only illusion—as is much in Al-Amún. So beware. And if a beautiful woman in red scarves claims she wishes to marry you, don’t follow her! You’ll lose your gold as well as your innocence.”
    “Of the first I have little enough,”