by Stephen Leigh
Stephen Leigh is the author of sixteen science fiction and fantasy novels, most recently Dark Water's Embrace and Speaking Stones. He has also published several short stories, and was a frequent contributor to the Wild Cards series of books, edited by George R. R. Martin. Stephen lives in Cincinnati with his wife Denise and two children, and is currently trying to invent the thirty-hour day.
Give me stout, woman!" The words were flung in Maire's direction as pale evening light and the steep, verdant slopes of Goat Fell gleamed for an instant behind the figure of a man. Everyone in the tavern turned as one to look at the stranger. Then the canvas tarp that served as a door fell back down, returning firelit darkness to the single, small room. Maire pulled a mug from the rack and held it under the grimy tap of the wooden keg, watching as the newcomer chose a table near the fire and sat.
When the foam had settled, Maire picked up the mug and came from behind the bar. Her hand trembled as she placed the mug on the table in front of the man, the thick, brown foam shivering at the chipped wooden lip—trembling not from fear, but from the palsy that had afflicted Maire more and more over the last half-dozen years. She stood and brushed wisps of dry white hair back under her head scarf.
She stared at him until he looked up from the pressure of her gaze. I know what you are," Maire said to the stranger. "I'll wager I even know why you've come here."
The young man was thin, with eyes the pale blue of glacial ice and high cheekbones that cast shadows over a plain of ruddy stubble. His hair was short and oiled, tinged at the temples with the same red that lurked in his beard, and set well back on a high forehead. He was no more than twenty, Maire judged, though his face was already beginning to harden with experience, and the white line of scar ran from the bottom of his left ear to his chin.
He sat with his back to the wall at a table well away from the other patrons, facing the tarp door, his chair pushed back so that Maire could see the stained brown leather of his riding pants. One hand, his right, was at his waist, resting atop the ornate hilt of a dagger; the other hand rested on the edge of the table, and Maire could see ripcord muscles move in the wrist as the youth glanced up at her.
She might have found him attractive, thirty years ago and more. She might have put a hand on the curve of her hip and smiled invitingly at him when their gazes met. Now she only frowned, looking at him and seeing what he was.
"I came in here for a drink, not games," he said.
"That's what you say, but it's not why you're here," Maire answered.
"You know that, do you, old woman?" he said.
There was nothing young about his voice, surprisingly deep for a man so lithe, but soft and breathy. He didn't reach for the mug, but continued to stare at Maire: an appraising predator's gaze that slowly moved from Maire to the rest of the tavern. The room was crowded tonight, as it was every night. Their voices were loud, so raucous that Marie was surprised the young man could even hear her over the din, though he kept his own voice quiet: Old Pieter was here; the two Cullin boys; MacHeath and the sullen woman he called his wife; the aristocratic man in red silk she knew only by the name Tomlin; the muscular Arab from across the sea whose name she didn't know at all; and two dozen or more others.
Their voices filled the room, shouted dust from the roof beams, dinned from the mud-daubed walls.
A gold piece appeared between the stranger's fingertips; he placed the coin down on the weathered, ridged grain of the table, and tapped the crowned head under the lettering. "So tell me what it is you know, just to amuse me. Tell me true, and the coin's yours."
Maire took the smallest step backward, wiping her hands on her apron. Her voice sounded quavering and ancient against the stranger's tones. "You wanted to see the one who would leave a green stone on a corpse's left eye," she said.
There might have been the smallest twitch of the young man's mouth. Old Pieter, watching from his stool near the table, cackled. "That may be why I came, yes," the stranger said softly, tapping the coin again. "Let's pretend you're right. Thaf's the 'why.' But you said you also knew what I am."
Maire lifted a shoulder. The man's gaze was as cold as wind falling from the very crown of Goat Fell. She wondered if there had once been any softness about him at all. "You're like the Green Stone," she said. "Someone pays you, and you kill." The stranger started to speak, and Maire lifted a hand to stop him. "I know more," she said. "You wanted to convince the Green Stone to teach you. There was never anyone like the Green Stone, never anyone so quick, so deadly, so agile and fast, a specter never seen, not even by those who paid. You heard the whispered tales among those like you, the legends that are over twenty years old now. You thought that if you could show the Stone your skills, then maybe you might become a disciple, and the Green Stone would teach you all those wonderful, deadly secrets. So you came all the way across the Firth hoping to meet the Green Stone." Maire let her hand drop. Her head cocked to one side. "Have I earned that coin yet?"
He plucked the coin from the table with long fingers and held it up in front of his face, turning it slowly. His eyes stared at her over the gold, and for an instant, she thought there might be well masked apprehension there. "So are you witch, or seer?"
"I'm a barkeeper. Nothing more. You're not the first one who's come here looking for the Green Stone. You won't be the last."
"Were any of the others successful?"
"As successful as you're likely to be, child," Maire answered gently, and Pieter cackled again behind her. The stranger looked only at Maire. He flipped the coin toward her; she caught it and it disappeared under her apron. He reached forward and took a sip from his mug.
"Then he's dead," the youth said. "The Green Stone's already in the ground." He sounded faintly disappointed.
She hesitated a moment too long before answering, and the young man set the mug down again. Grudgingly, she realized that he was perhaps less than hopelessly dim and naive. "No… no, he's still alive," the stranger said even as Maire started to open her mouth. "Don't bother lying to me, old woman. I can see it in your eyes. You know him, don't you?"
"Yes, I know the Stone," she answered. Maire gave a short, bitter laugh, and Old Pieter cackled with her. "But you wouldn't, even if the Stone was here in the room with you. No one ever saw the Green Stone who wasn't supposed to. If you know the tales, you know that. Even Great Robert, the Bras himself—may his bones rest in peace—never saw the Green Stone, never talked to anyone but the Stone's emissaries. The only ones who saw the Green Stone were those who died, and a very few trusted friends, friends who would die rather than betray the Stone."
"And they never talked," the stranger finished for her. "Especially the dead ones," he added, and Old Pieter howled at the poor jest. Maire only shook her head.
"You don't understand," she said. "You don't understand at all."
"And you do? You know the Green Stone that well?" Mockery rode easily in the young man's bass tones, as if it were used to being there. Maire won-dered how he could have become so hardened so quickly.
"I do," Maire answered stubbornly, rifting her chin. "All of us here do," she said, and the voices around her shouted affirmation: the Cullins, Tomlin, MacHeath… Pieter merely smiled. The stranger ignored the hubbub, his attention still on Maire.
'Tell me something about the Green Stone that I don't know, old woman. Prove to me that you're one of the Green Stone's friends."
He didn't believe her. Mockery still rode the deep umber of his voice. Maire sniffed and rubbed her hands on her apron, glancing at the others around the tavern.
"Tell me your name first," she said.
"Would the Green Stone have told you his name, in the same situation?" the youth scoffed.
"No," Maire admitted. "But the Stone would have given a name for the other person to use—to make it easier."
"Then call me…" Lips pursed, his eyes went distant for an instant. "… Scar," he said, and fingered the thick ridge along his chin. Old Pieter sniffed loudly behind Maire; "Scar…" he said, rolling the long and low with his graveled voice and puckering his lips. "Ooh, such a pretty name." MacHeath guffawed; the Cullin boys slapped each other on the back. The youth ignored them.
"Scar's a painful name," Maire said. For a moment, she felt pity for him, but the emotion vanished a moment later.
"No more painful than looking at you, old woman." he answered. Maire could hear nothing but self-concern in his voice. No empathy, no joy, no concern.
"Do you want to know my name?" she asked.
"I want to find the Green Stone. Nothing else. You said you know him; tell me something that would make me believe you."
Maire nodded. "All right," she agreed. "I'll tell you what no one knows except the Stone's friends." She glanced at Pieter; he shrugged. "There were always two stones," she said finally. "One for the left eyes, which was left behind, and another for the right eye, which the Green Stone took."
"Really?" Scar almost laughed, tipping his chair back and taking a long drink of his stout. "And why was that? This is truly amusing—I'm learning so much more about the Green Stone, and from an old tavern woman whose tits hang to her waist."
Maire ignored the insult, though Pieter's stool scraped against the floor as the old man shifted in his seat, suddenly alert. "People like the Stone often have rituals," she said slowly. "Those who kill for a living are superstitious, and so they search for a pattern that makes them feel safe. For the Stone, it was the green stones from the flanks of Goat Fell. You see, the Green Stone believed that the eyes held the last thing the victim saw: the face of their killer. So the Stone placed small, flat pebbles on each eye. The left stone was only the Stone's calling card—the sign that the contract was completed. But the stone on the right eye, the side of ego… well, the Stone believed that the stone over the right eye would absorb the victim's final conscious sight. By taking the right stone, the Green Stone stole that last vision so no one else could ever see it. But the stones held something else, too, something the Green Stone didn't realize."
"And what was that?"
"Torment."
Scar leaned his head back and laughed aloud; Old Pieter roared with him, though his voice held no amusement, and the others chortled and snickered and guffawed. "Don't laugh at me," Maire said. "I tell you the truth."
"So that is what the Green Stone's friends know, old woman? Odd that I've never heard that one before. Tell me, are you the Green Stone's lover as well as friend? Does he like wrinkled bags of sagging flesh?"
Maire drew herself up. Her eyes narrowed, and she pointed a finger at him, quivering with the palsy. "I was young once, not so long ago as you think, and as attractive and comely as any. There was a time when all the eyes here would have been on me when I entered."
"Oh, I'm certain of it," Scar answered, still laughing. "I'm sure the Green Stone taught you all his best tricks while he was plowing between your thick legs."
The others were no longer laughing with the young man. Instead, they were staring, waiting, leaning forward like spectators at a game. Old Pieter's cackle had gone grim and dangerous, and he'd risen from his stool. Maire waved him back, a single movement of her hand.
"Give me your knife," she told Scar. She held her hand out toward him, watching her fingertips shake helplessly. When he simply gazed back at her, she laughed herself. "Are you scared of a bag of sagging flesh, Scar?"
"Why, of course. You might kill me," he said in mock horror, and laughed again.
"Perhaps I already have," she answered. "I knew what you were when you came in, remember, and the Green Stone must be protected. How does your stout taste, Scar? Is it more bitter than you'd expect?"
With those words, the Cullin brothers quietly left the tavern. Scar's eyes widened slightly, for just an instant, and this time Maire laughed. "There, you see? You can be afraid of an old woman."
A silent flash of steel and Scar's dagger was out, the keen point a scant inch from her throat. His reflexes were fast, she had to admit, nearly as fast as the Green Stone's had once been. But experience was more deadly than sheer speed. She heard Old Pieter start to rise again from his stool; again, she waved him back. Scar's voice hissed through the tavern's smoky haze. "You lie," he said.
"Yes," she answered simply. She reached out with a palsied hand and touched the wrist of his knife hand. Her fingers closed gently around his wrist so that the youth knew he could pull away at any moment; when she moved her hand, he allowed his hand to be guided, unafraid.
The Green Stone would never have allowed someone to touch the knife hand.
"Cut me here," she said, pulling the knife point gently to the pouch of loose skin under her throat, "and I live unless you cut deep. Cut me here"—she moved the knife until the cold, keen edge touched the side of her neck "—and you'll sever the artery, and I will die. Or is that something you know already?" She wanted to look at Old Pieter, to see if he was watching, for
Pieter knew best what she had just told Scar. But she remained motionless, feeling the chill of the blade, her rheumy eyes locked on the young man's.
Pieter must have heard her thoughts, for he stirred. "Ask him how many he's killed," Old Pieter said. "Ask him…"
Scar was still glaring at her, his face very close, the knife still at the side of her neck. "How many have you killed?" she whispered. "How many?"
"I won't tell you that," he answered, and she knew by his tone that it was not many. "But one of them was the one who did this." He touched the scar at the bottom of his face with his free hand. He pulled the knife away from Maire's neck. She felt the hilt graze her fingers and she wanted to close her hands around it, but let it go. He slid the blade back into the scabbard on his belt.
"Ask him if he hears them," Pieter urged, his voice anxious. "Ask him."
Maire glanced at Pieter, at his wrinkled, ancient face. The tavern was empty now except for the three of them. All the others had fled with the sudden glint of steel. "Do you hear them?" Maire whispered to Scar. 'The ones you've killed, do they talk to you? Do their voices call you? Do they haunt you?"
"What are you talking about?" Scar snorted derisively. "No. You think I care one whit about the people I've sliced? Someone pays me to kill; I kill. The same as the Green Stone."
Old Pieter howled at that, his gap-toothed mouth wide. "That's what the Green Stone believed, too," Maire said. "The Stone was so gifted, the killing was so easy, and the money… The Stone was never troubled, either, just as you say that your soul isn't bothered at all by what you do. The Green Stone killed far more than you before it started, but it did start: the torment I spoke of. The voices came slowly; first in dreams, then sometimes walking, then all of the time. First it was just one, then two, then many—all of the ones the Green Stone slaughtered, each of them, accusing and shouting and screaming. And not just the voices, no. The Green Stone saw them, too. All of the time. How could the Stone kill, when all the Dead Ones watched and shouted and wailed? How could the poor Stone stay sane in the face of the dead?"
Behind her, Pieter sobbed once, a gasping breath.
"Are you saying that the Green Stone's crazy? That he's insane?" Scar lifted his head, the icy eyes looking at the shadowed beams of the tavern as if searching. Maire saw Pieter give her a sad glance and move away, vanishing into the shadows with surprising grace for one so old, so quietly that Scar didn't notice his absence at all. Pieter nodded once to Maire as he left. "So that's why he's faded from sight. He's daft, haunted by his own demons…" Scar seemed to find that amusing. He began to laugh, softly at first, then louder. "Oh, that's rich," he said. "Such a lovely moral tale: the heartless assassin finally done in by his victims. That is simply wonderful."
Scar's laughter cut off, as if severed by the blade at his side. "And I don't believe a word," he said to Maire. He leaned over the table, picked up the mug of stout, and drained it, slamming the mug back down on the table so that it wobbled dangerously. "If's too pat. Did he make up this tale for you, I wonder," Scar said. "Is this how he keeps everyone away? You see, I
know," Scar continued. "I know others have gone out looking for him, and they came away without ever meeting the Green Stone. For all I know, some of them talked to you and you gave them this same fable. You know what I bet, old hag? I'll wager you my gold coin that the Green Stone is sitting fat and happy in a hidden stronghold in one of the isle's valleys. I'll bet he even comes to this tavern now and again, and drinks your stout and maybe tweaks your old nipples when you lean over to serve him. I'll bet he's gotten old and slow, and that's why there are no more corpses with green stones on their left eyes. But his mind is still as keen as my dagger, and I want what he knows. Old and slow he might be, but he can teach me, and I can be his blade." Scar leaned forward again, so that his face was a hand's breadth from her own. She could smell the alcohol on his breath. "Tell me where he is, old woman," he husked. "Tell me."
"I won't," she said. "And I haven't lied to you, Scar. What I said was the truth. I meant it as a warning to you. You need to be smart enough to hear me."
"I'll take that answer from the Green Stone," Scar retorted. "Not from a whore he once kept."
The Green Stone would have killed him for that, Maire knew. The Stone would have first kicked out his left knee, before the boy even realized how vulnerable his stance was, and then as Scar started to crumple, the hard strike to the throat would follow. The Stone would have stood over Scar, watching him gasping for breath through his crushed larynx and slowly choking to death, his face going blue then pale, pale white. And then, afterward, the pebbles on the eyes, the color of the ocean in winter… Maire glared at Scar, her hands fisted at her sides. "Get out," she told him flatly. "Get out of here."
"Not until you give me my chance with the Green Stone," he answered.
"You've had your audition, Scar," Maire told him. "Had it and didn't even realize it. It's over. I can tell you that much. The Green Stone has seen you and made a decision. You'll never be the Green Stone's apprentice. You'll never meet the Green Stone at all."
"What do you mean? He was here, watching?" Scar glanced around as if he might find the assassin watching from the shadows of the tavern, and then his gaze came back to Maire. "In this empty place… ?"
Maire said nothing. She picked up the mug from Scar's table and went back to the bar with it. "It's late," she said finally. "I'm closing."
"Tell me where he lives," Scar insisted. "Let me talk to him."
Maire swept a rag over the bar top. Scar grabbed her by the arm, dragging her toward him. His voice hissed in her ear. "I will kill you if you don't tell me where I can find him, woman. I swear it."
As he pulled her in, Maire grabbed for the knife at his waist, sliding it easily from the oiled, worn scabbard. She pressed the point against his belly; he hissed in surprise, looking down, and then smiled at her. "You're an extraordinarily stupid man-child," she said.
"And you're a weak, lonely, sad old woman," Scar answered. Watching her, he reached down slowly. His eyes dared her to move, to plunge the knife in. It seemed a minute or more before his hand finally closed over her wrinkled fist. "You see. I know you as well as you know me. You're a broken-down hag with a foul, dark inn. No wonder you have no customers."
She released the knife, letting it fall into his hand. His right hand still clutched her arm.
Maire glanced up at him. "Hurt me, and you'll be found one night with a green stone on your left eye, Scar. Kill me, and I guarantee that until the night of your death, I'll haunt you the same way the ghosts of the dead haunt the Green Stone. I will be one of the voices in your head. You'll hear me, every moment until your own fate comes. I promise you that. You wanted a chance to learn what the Green Stone knows. Well, this is your chance. Are you going to take it?"
Scar glared at her. She could hear his breathing, heavy and angry. Then, slowly, his fingers loosened their grip on her arm. He took a step back, straightening his clothes, slipping his knife back in its sheath. "You couldn't have helped me anyway," he said. "You know nothing."
The flap over the doorway lifted, fell again. He was gone.
Maire took a long breath, glaring at the stained, ancient tarp holding out the night air and the sight of the stars over Goat Fell. "I could have killed you," she said. "I could have killed you a dozen times tonight because you have no idea what you see in front of you. Know me?" she grated out, and spat on the floor. She reached beneath her apron, plunging her hand into a small pocket in the folds of her skirt. She pulled out her fisted hand, opened the wrinkled, thick-knuckled finger, and looked at the polished green stones nestled in her palm. As she looked at them, she heard the voices again, and when she glanced up, the room was crowded once more. They had returned, and they were talking, all of them. Talking to her.
"Never again," she said softly to them: to Old Pieter; who had haunted her the longest; to the Cullin boys, MacHeath and his wife; Tomlin in his red silk; the nameless Arab from across the sea; all of them whose lives she had taken. "I promised you. There will be no more of you."
She closed her fingers around the green stones once more and placed them back in her pocket. With her apron she wiped the table where Scar had sat, the voices swelling around her—the slain voices, the voices of those who had once seen her face in the night and the shadows, the voices of the green stones.