Chapter 27

TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO

S zeth’s father, Neturo-son-Vallano, knelt beside the new stone. Szeth’s mother, Zeenid-daughter-Beth, was overseeing painting classes in the town, so they’d sent her a message via Tek, one of their carrier parrots. Wind blew across them, bringing with it the pungent scent of the gathered sheep in the nearby pasture.

Szeth hid behind his father, peeking out. He wasn’t certain why this new stone frightened him so. He loved their rock, and a new one was surely cause for celebration, but shamefully … he wished he hadn’t found it. Something new meant possible celebration, possible attention, possible change. He preferred quiet days full of languid breezes and bleating sheep. Nights beside the hearth or the firepit, listening to Mother tell stories. He didn’t want some grand new thing. Szeth had what he loved.

“What do we do, Father?” Elid asked. “Call the Stone Shamans?”

“It depends,” he said. “Depends.”

Their father was a calm man, with a long beard he liked to keep tied with a green ribbon at the bottom, matching ones on his arms, together forming his splash. He got to wear three, as his duty of training other shepherds elevated him. His head was shaded by his customary tall reed hat with a wide brim, and he had a bit of a paunch that spoke to his talent as a cook. He had all the answers. Always.

“What about it is uncertain, Father?” Szeth said, peeking around at the little stone. “We just do what is right.”

Father glanced at their larger stone, then at this one. “A single rock is a blessed anomaly. Two … might mean more. It might mean the spren have chosen this region.”

“What do you mean?” Elid asked, hands on her hips.

“I mean there might be other rocks,” Father said, “hiding beneath the surface here. Stone Shamans will want to set aside the entire region, preserve it and watch it for a few years to see if anything else emerges.”

“And … us?” Szeth asked.

“Well, we’ll have to move,” Father replied. “Tear down the house, in case it’s accidentally on holy ground. Set up wherever the Farmer finds land for us. Maybe in the town.”

In the town ? Szeth turned, looking into the distance—though the rolling hills prevented him from seeing Clearmount unless he climbed up on top of one. It was close enough to walk to in an hour or so, but he found the place noisy, congested. In the town, it felt like the mountains weren’t just around the corner, because buildings blocked them out. It felt like the meadows had gone brown, replaced by dull roads. You couldn’t smell the sea breezes.

He didn’t hate the town. But he got the sense that it hated the things he loved.

“I don’t want to move!” Elid said. “We found a rock! We shouldn’t be punished. ”

“If it’s right though,” Szeth said, “then we have to do it. Right, Father?”

Father stood up, pulling at his trousers, and waited. Soon Szeth picked out his mother hurrying along the path between hills toward their home. She wore a long green skirt as her splash—while it was only one piece, that size … well, it was an audacious amount for her station. She had a white apron over the front, and curly light brown hair that bunched up around her head like a cloud.

She was carrying one of the town’s shovels—a relic crafted from metal that had never seen rock, Soulcast by an Honorbearer and gifted to them.

Szeth gaped, his jaw dropping. That couldn’t mean …

Mother hurried up to them, shovel on her shoulder. Father nodded toward the new rock, and Mother let out a relieved sigh. “So small? Your note had me worried, Neturo.”

“Mother?” Szeth said. “What are you doing?”

“Merely a quick relocation,” she said. “I borrowed one of the shovels, but didn’t tell anyone why. We’ll dig up the rock and move it a few hundred yards. Let it rain a little, so it seems to have naturally poked up, then tell everyone.”

Szeth gasped. “We can’t touch it!”

Mother pulled out a pair of gloves. “Of course not. That’s why I brought gloves, dear.”

“That’s the same thing!” Szeth said, horrified. He looked to his father. “We can’t do this, can we?”

Father scratched at his beard. “Depends, I suppose, on what you think, son.”

“Me?”

“You found the rock,” Father said, glancing at Mother, who nodded in agreement. “So you can decide.”

“I choose whatever is right,” Szeth said immediately.

“Is it right for us to lose our home?” Father asked.

“I …” Szeth glanced at the house.

“There might be dozens of rocks underneath here,” Father said. “If that’s the case, then we should absolutely move. But in the hundreds of years that rain has fallen on this region, only two have emerged. So it’s unlikely. Moving the stone a few hundred yards will still make the shamans watch this area, but with the rocks being farther apart, the worry will be more nebulous. But that requires us to move it. In secret.”

“We hate the stonewalkers,” Szeth said, “because of how they treat rock.”

Father knelt down, one hand on Szeth’s shoulder. “We don’t hate them. They simply don’t know the right way of things.”

“They raid us, Father,” Elid said, folding her arms.

“Yes, well,” he said. “ Those men are evil, but it’s not because they live in a place with too much stone. It’s because of the choices they make.” He smiled at Szeth. “It’s okay, son. If you want us to turn this in now, well, we’ll do it.”

“Can’t you just … tell me what to do?” Szeth asked.

“No, I don’t think that I can,” Father said. “Unfair to put you in this spot, I know, but the spren gave you the first sight. You should decide. We can move the rock, or we can move our home. I’ll accept either one.”

“Maybe we should let him sleep on it,” Mother said.

“No,” Szeth said. “No. We can … move the rock.”

All three of them relaxed as he said it, and he felt a sudden—shameful—resentment. His father said Szeth could choose, but they’d all clearly wanted a specific decision. He’d made it not because it was right, but because he had sensed their desires.

But how could they all want it if it wasn’t right? Maybe they saw something he didn’t—maybe he was broken. But if so, they should have simply told him what they intended to do, and then done it. That would have been fine. Why give him the choice? Didn’t they see that made this his fault?

Mother pulled on her gloves and started digging. Szeth winced each time the shovel scraped the stone. That metallic sound was not natural. He hoped that they would discover the rock was enormous—so that the plan had to be abandoned. In the end, it was small. Eight inches long, and a dull grey color. He could have held it in one hand, if he’d wanted.

Molli the ewe, seeming to sense his tension, rubbed up against him and he gripped at her wool, her warmth. Even Mother seemed a little unsure, now that she’d dug the rock out. She stepped back, leaving it in the hole.

“You scraped it,” Elid said. “That seems … kind of obvious.”

“Once we’ve buried it again,” Mother said, “nobody will see the scrapes.”

“How much trouble would we be in,” Elid asked, “if someone found out?”

“I suspect the Farmer wouldn’t be happy,” Father said. He laughed then, and it sounded genuine. “Might require some cake to make up for it. Don’t get that look, Szeth. We show devotion because we choose to. And so, the kind of devotion we make is ours to decide.”

“I … don’t understand,” he said. “Don’t the Stone Shamans tell us what to do?”

“They share the teachings of the spren,” Mother said, as she shouldered the shovel. “But we interpret those teachings. What we’re doing here today is reverent enough for me.”

Szeth thought on that and wondered—as this was not the first clue in his life—if perhaps this was why they chose to live outside the town. Many shepherd families lived at least part of the year inside it. His family visited each month for devotions, so he didn’t dare think that his family wasn’t faithful. Yet the older he got, the more questions he had.

How did he feel about his parents doing something he knew the shamans wouldn’t approve of?

They were still all standing there, staring at the rock, when the horns sounded. Father looked up, then whispered a soft prayer to the spren of their stone. The horns meant raiders on the southern coast. Stonewalkers.

Szeth felt an immediate panic. “What do we do?”

“Gather the sheep,” Father said. “Quickly. We must drive them toward Dison’s Valley on the other side of the town. The Farmer has troops in the region. We’ll be safe inland.”

“But this?” Szeth said, gesturing to the rock. “ This! ”

Mother, suddenly determined, reached down and grabbed it in her gloved hands. Together, all four of them froze, then looked toward their family stone. It sat there, unmoving. None of them were struck down. Szeth thought he could tell, from the way his parents slowly relaxed, that they hadn’t been certain.

At least this indicated his parents hadn’t been secretly moving rocks around all his life. Mother walked over to a tree nearer their house, then carefully placed the stone into a gnarled nook among the roots and hid it with leaves.

“That will do for now,” she said. “If raiders do come here, they’ll think nothing of a stone. They don’t reverence stone or the spren who live within them. You all gather the sheep; I’ll return this shovel.”

Father and Elid went to do exactly that. Szeth hugged Molli, wishing this day had never begun.