Introduction

Between truth and deception, between justice and abuse, a stonewiser stands alone with the stones. Or so begins the stonewiser's oath. But what happens when a rebellious stonewiser discovers that lies have tainted the stone tales? In a world devastated by the rot's widespread destruction, only the tales preserved in the stones can uphold the truth and defend the Goodlands. In this world, stone truth is valued above anyone's word, and stonewisers are the only ones capable of retrieving the tales from the stones, the only link between past and present, order and chaos. Sariah is the most gifted stonewiser of her generation, but her talent does not atone for her shortcomings. A survivor of the Guild's brutal training, she is curious, willful, and disobedient. Yet not even Sariah is prepared for what she finds when she steals into the Guild's Sacred Vaults: A mayhem of lies and intrigues that shatters her world. Hunted, persecuted, and betrayed, Sariah must make an unlikely alliance with Kael, a cynical rebel leader pledged to a mysterious quest of his own. The fate of their dying world depends on their courage to overcome centuries of hatred and distrust. But not even the grueling journey has prepared them for what they're about to discover. Because nothing is really as it seems, and the truth is more intricate and devastating than they ever suspected . . . Vibrant with detail, alive with compelling characters, and packed with intriguing action and unforeseen twists, Stonewiser is an unforgettable adventure, an exquisite, heartwarming tale from a mesmerizing storyteller.

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Excerpt

ONE

STONEWISER SARIAH KNEW she was dying - murdered, she surmised, and not by the stones she clutched in her hands as was often the fate of unwary stonewisers. Kneeling on the Sacred Vault's cold ground, the stones were scalding to her palms. Her hands throbbed, her muscles cramped, her shoulders strained as if she balanced the full weight of Meliah's colossal boulders on the crumbling structure of her neck. The forbidden twin stones she was trying to wise offered an intriguing tale, but Sariah wouldn't live long enough to understand it unless she acted quickly. Who in the Guild had wanted Ashmid gone and Sariah dead, and for what dark purpose?

Sariah tried to break the trance, the unique bond that her stonewiser's mind was able to forge with the stones. Even by the Guild's stringent standards, her gift to reach into the stone's realm this wising had gone terribly wrong. She couldn't break the trance. Somehow, she was stuck in the stone realm at the worse possible time.

In the stone tale, Sariah found herself lying on harsh rock, craning her neck to look at the rot pit that blazed at the center of a long vault. The ancients moved between the rows of slabs lining the walls. The air was thick with steaming vapors. The stench of blood mixed with the scent of acrid corruption, dilated her nostrils and singed her lungs.

The pain announced that she was in the witness's skin, sharing the stone realm with the woman who had lived the tale. Through her eyes, Sariah was looking up at a circle of strangers, recoiling from their assailing hands. The light of a torch reflected on her bloated belly. Jagged rocks grinding through her gut would have been painless compared to the agony that convulsed her. She tried to maneuver for a more comfortable witnessing, but the power of the twin stones was arbitrary and the locked trance defined her attempts to shift within the tale. Her lungs struggled for air. Her throat seized. She wasn't just choking from the witness's pain or from the toxic fumes corrupting the vault's air; she was suffocating in the dangerous world of her own reality, dying slowly from lack of breath, immobile and helpless as long as she was trapped in the stone tale.

To escape a twin stones' locked trance was a deed seldom survived. Rumor was that twin stones were jealous of those they claimed, likely to ruin a stonewiser's mind before allowing a trance to break. Still, Sariah tried to shed the stones. Her bones cracked as she struggled to stretch her fingers. The stones lashed back with a rabid sense of beating. Movement was by far the trance's hardest lock to break. How much time did she have left?

Her thoughts raced along with her frantic heartbeats. Where was her minder? Luar should have batted the stones from her hands by now. Dead. He had to be dead. Nothing else could explain his desertion. Meliahs help her. She'd killed them both.

She'd been a fool to try to wise forbidden twin stones. If only she'd been a more obedient stonewiser. Obedient? Not even the stone wrath could sustain such a delusion. She'd never managed obedience and the Guild had earned many profitable returns for her trespasses.

The Guild. A surge of pain twisted her belly. The Guild would have her hide if they caught her, and well they should. By all reasonable accounts, she should have sided with the Guild. Instead, she was stuck between the Guild and her master. Curse Ashmid. Where was he? Gone, maybe disgraced, maybe condemned, maybe even dead - all fates that he might very well have deserved if Sariah's fortunes had not been unavoidably linked to his. Damn the man. She couldn't stand the thought of belonging anew.

The stones obliterated Sariah's sputtering thoughts, forcing her to return to their realm. In the tale, she was still in the witness's skin. A babe protruded between her legs, a tiny quivering creature drenched with slime and blood. Sariah was in awe. She had never seen, let alone experienced, a birthing. Her wonderment turned into angry disbelief. Despite her pleading cries, the ancients wrenched the newborn from the mother. The woman's anguish left Sariah panting, as if a vital part had been hacked from her body.

An abrupt shift in the wising confused her. A new presence eclipsed the tale and captured her senses. A woman materialized next to Sariah, a striking figure with white hair hanging straight down to the back of her knees. Her fierce expression distorted her face's harmony. The sharp angles of her chin, nose and cheeks were soft compared to the intensity of her blue eyes and the fury of her thin-lipped smile.

"I know what you're thinking, wiser," the woman said. "You think I don't belong here. You're right. You're wrong. We all belong here in one way or another."

The woman didn't fit the tale the twin stones told. Her blue dress was of a different time. Her image was diaphanous yet vividly colored. Her shape's outline was charcoaled against the tale's background as if traced b a heavy-handed child. Sariah drew on the training to identify the improbable. An intrusion? No. It couldn't be. Intrusions were an ancient myth, a dark forbidden notion that the Guild punished with death.

"I'm Zeminaya, witness to the breaking of the blood," the white-haired woman said. "I was sworn to find the way through the stones and I discovered in grief that the blood had been estranged. Into the world came a new child, born not out of the flesh but of the stone, outside of the care of a fallen goddess.

How? Sariah's throat buckled, unable to ask the question.

"Beware," the intrusion said. "One tells a truth, but six yield the seventh and only seven grants the truth."

The white-haired woman disappeared. The stone tale reclaimed Sariah's mind with renewed zeal. Sariah's strength waned along with the mother's faltering heartbeat. Her own life was ebbing like the blood gushing from the dying mother's womb. Blurred faces examined the baby's features.

"It is not," one of the ancients said. Without warning, he cast the babe into a pool of corruption bubbling in the center vault. Like lard tossed on a scalding skillet, the child's flesh dissolved. The hissing flow gnawed at the babe's bones until they too melted into the rot. Sariah would have screamed if she'd had a voice, if the killing hands constricting her neck had allowed her throat the luxury of horror.

Strangulation was a fitting end to one who had defied the trance and ignored the Guild's rules, more violent than the suffocation that usually killed inexperienced stonewisers, but equally lethal. It left a mark, though, a bruise on the deceased's skin and perhaps a broken neck, something left for the Guild to ponder - a warning, maybe?

A lightness in her left hand announced she had managed to drop a stone. A screech rose in Sariah's ears, the remaining stone's protest, punishing her neglect. She couldn't drop the other stone. Instead, she aimed for a simpler task and focused her mind on opening her eyes. Her eyelids stiffened, heavy with the trance's subversion, but Sariah fought until she managed to rip them open in a harsh spasm.

Bright light hacked the murky darkness of the trance's withdrawal, attacking her defenseless pupils. Brilliant white flashed in a burst of pain. For a moment, she thought she must have blinded herself, a common occurrence among the Guild's newest pledges. But then images began to emerge between flashes, shapes and colors as painful as the light itself, quaking triplicate sights she had to transform into coherent images if she was to survive this day.

Three men stood before her framed by the severe curve of the vault's low arch. Or were her aching eyes seeing the same man thrice? She tried to focus. The men's features echoed on each other's faces. They all had fair hair and light skin bronzed and weathered by the sun, but they were different from one another. One had a beard. One was shorter. The tallest stood in the middle. All three carried rare half-moon swords. Where had she learned to fear such weapons?

They stood cautiously flattened against the wall, perhaps stilled by the sight of Sariah, of a wising gone wrong. There was something fierce about them, something alien and alarming. Slowly, as if in a dream, the tall man stepped forward, whirling a triply loaded sling. It hummed a low-fluted warning as he aimed and fired.

Darkness blinded Sariah. She waited for the pain of impact, but no, the man had not shot at her, he had shot at something behind her. The darkness stemmed from her struggle with the trance, a fight she wasn't ready to concede. Real sound slammed her ears when the light returned. Someone gasped and cursed behind her, and suddenly air traveled through her crumpled gullet and filled her shriveled lungs. The Sacred Vault's dampness replaced the stone realm's toxic odor. The scent of sweat and soil, of hard travel and salt came from the men crouching before her. The half-moon swords, the formidable weapons belts, the rare faces - these were features Sariah was trained to recognize, she was sure.

The stone remaining in her hand flared with vengeance. The reliefs carved on the stone blistered her palm. The burn blazed through her flesh in an agonizing trail toward her bones, heralding a fate similar to that of the stone tale's murdered babe. Sariah clung to her consciousness but only because she was too stubborn to relent. A wail echoed in the chamber - her wail.

The shorter man eyed her with suspicion. "Is she dead?"

The bearded man considered the stone in her hand warily. "I don't think so. Not yet."

The taller man dared to touch her cheek. "She's burning up. Curse the stones. Take them."

Aye, remove the stones, she wanted to say, but she didn't have the strength.

"It's not our tale to tell," the bearded man said.

The taller man scoured her with his disturbing stare. "We owe no honor here. Should we just let her die?"

"If we're caught here, we won't survive."

"After what we've witnessed, neither will she." A scar fractured the line of the tall man's eyebrow, but that wasn't what made his unsettling stare chilling. His irises. One was sparkling green, the other one was jet black. These men's eyes - she'd seen those discordant eyes before in the stones of judgment's earliest tales, the ones every pledge mastered before becoming a stonewiser. Those eyes had been born of heresy, eyes whose colors never matched on a New Blood's face.

The Guild had fallen prey to the land's violence. Her master had disappeared without word. Intrusions lurked in the strangest of stone tales. A stonewiser was dying in the Sacred Vaults, namely her. As if that wasn't enough, the New Blood walked freely in the keep, bringing corruption to the Hall of Stones. Had the stone madness seized her mind and confused her life's wisings into an evil jumble? It was the only fitting explanation.

The stone in Sariah's hand hissed a final torturing shriek. Then it was gone and with the shock of its absence, Sariah lost her pain and her senses. Her last thought was that death was by far preferable to the stone madness.

TWO

SARIAH OPENED HER eyes. A wave of nausea slammed her breathless. Her head pulsed with a throbbing ache. She willed herself to breathe. She recognized the ornately sculpted walls of the Hall of Stones. She lay on a narrow bench in one of the antechamber's curtained alcoves. Light entered through the only window in the room, a tiny opening high on the outside wall, grossly insufficient to alleviate the suffocating heat trapped within the massive walls. The normal after-wising reaction, mild disorientation and the occasional fever, seemed magnified a thousand fold. She felt ill, and she ached everywhere, as if a giant pestle had grounded her bones to chalk.

Belatedly, she remembered that hers had been anything but a normal wising. Meliahs help her, she'd wised forbidden twin stones, she'd been trapped in a locked trance, and yet she was somehow alive. She willed herself to rise on her elbows. Her right hand was merely bruised; her left one was bandaged. She wiggled her cobalt-stained fingertips. Meliahs be blessed. She was whole for the moment. She hoped she hadn't damaged her gift.

"The Guild's parrots are smarter than you," a voice said too close to her ear. "What oxen-minded make-believe wiser dares defy the Council and steal into the Sacred Vaults?"

"Mistress Ilian," Sariah said hoarsely. She supposed she should count herself lucky to be alive, but it was difficult to feel fortunate when the mistress was staring, no, glaring at her. The mistress's face would have been pretty except for the scowl clawing at her features. The First of the Hall of Scribes wasn't there to keep her company through the post-wising feebleness. Of that, Sariah was sure.

Mistress Ilian crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, glaring at Sariah with a viper's cold stare. "You don't look well."

As if she cared.

Sariah's bruised throat ached when she spoke. "Someone tried to kill me."

"Then someone botched the job," the mistress said. "You ought to be dead, Sariah. Dead."

Despite the piercing headache, Sariah forced herself to reason. Had Mistress Ilian commanded her murder? Possible. Probable. Perhaps even justifiable by nature's horrid ways. Sariah wondered, not for the firs time, if her golden brown complexion, arched brows, and thickly lashed brown eyes were remnants of the mistress's blood in her. Could a link as tenuous and irrelevant as blood-sharing fuel murder?

"Luar." Sariah remembered suddenly. "I need to speak to my minder. Is he well?

"Well?" Mistress Ilian sneered. "Luar is alive, if that's what you mean, no thanks to you."

"Thank Meliahs." But if Luar was alive, what had happened in the vaults? He wasn't one to shirk his duties; yet he hadn't come to her assistance when the trance locked. And what about the three strange men? Were they real, or were they just her mind's delusions? She sat up on the bench, fighting the dizziness overwhelming her senses.

"The Council has punished Luar for his trespasses," Mistress Ilian said. "He's done minding you."

"But it was my deed. He's not liable for punishment."

"The Guild does as it wills, not as you want. In any case, what were you doing in the Sacred Vaults? Did your little incursions have anything to do with your master's disappearance?"

Of course it did, but the feebleness hadn't completely wilted Sariah's wits, and she wasn't about to tell Mistress Ilian the little that she knew - that Ashmid had stolen into the Sacred Vaults several times before his mysterious disappearance. She knew. She'd followed him. She squeezed her temples, trying to soothe the headache. Why by Meliahs' earthly babes had Ashmid favored these twin stones? Why had he been so keen on them?

Power. Coin. Those stones must have somehow carried at least a promise of profitable progress. Ashmid was an ambitious lout; that's what drove him. She remembered the twin stones' vivid tale. She was fully trained and truth-sworn and yet she'd never wised that tale before - why not?

Too many questions. The elaborate stone carvings on the nook's walls swirled about her. Vipers coiled, dragons snarled, fanged faces grimaced grotesque, mirthless smiles. Sariah shut her eyes and waited until the hall's stillness reclaimed her spinning world. What exactly had she witnessed in the twin stones' wising? An unknown tale? A lie? An ancient intrusion?

Impossible. Rumors of lies in the stones were just that, rumors, and even a casual reference to the implausible concept of an intrusion was considered heresy. She couldn't stand the thought of lies or intrusions corrupting the stones. Then what had she seen?

A forgotten tale. It had to be. Had Ashmid rediscovered a forgotten tale buried in the Sacred Vaults? Had he been killed for his findings? Meliahs help her. The Guild needed to know. Not Mistress Ilian, not her. Had she killed Ashmid to either mask or claim his discovery? Curse the headache, she couldn't think straight. The Council would know what to do.

"Answer my question," Mistress Ilian said. "Were you looking for your master?"

Sariah tried to match the mistress's icy tone. "Perhaps you know where Ashmid is?"

"It's Master Ashmid to you. His dealings are with the Council, not with you."

"He's my master."

"And you were his faithful good lease." The mistress scoffed. "We all know that the scope of services is often expanded in that profitable arrangement. I wager you delivered a good bargain, Sariah, a very satisfying service in exchange for profit. I know. I remember."

Sariah cursed her blushing cheeks. After so many years of service, why was she still embarrassed by the Guild's common practices?

"A lease is a lease," the mistress said. "Ashmid was within his right to use you as he willed. You, on the other hand, are an arrogant brat spoiled by the promise of your gift, a promise that hasn't been realized, that may never be realized now that your master is gone."

Sariah's monumental headache did nothing to still her tongue. "Master Ashmid always said you were jealous of anyone whose gift was strong."

The slap to her cheek left Sariah bobbing in a stupor of newly stirred pain and raw anger.

"I hope you're crippled," Mistress Ilian hissed. "I hope you're gift-barren and done. I'll add reckless disrespect to your list of offenses. You better start groveling, Sariah. You may have hated your time as my lease, but you need me. You have no lease, no master, no coin to pay for your trespasses. What will you do now?"

Mistress Ilian had baited her and own. For once, the mistress was right. Sariah couldn't repay the Guild. She had no coin to ransom herself. She had no master, no one to bid on her behalf for the more lucrative wisings or to speak in her defense. She belonged to the Guild as the corn belonged in the husk, as surely as the captive carps swimming in the garden fountains belonged in those murky ponds.

The mistress grabbed her arm. "Come, the Council awaits."

Sariah's headache surged. The nausea returned in full. Her cheek throbbed. Her knees were sore and stiff, but she shook off Mistress Ilian's hand, pushed herself up from the bench, and stumbled to the basin. She had truly made a mess of things and her battered wits seemed to slow to guide her out of the maze. The Council was a frightening prospect, but the Council was the Guild, and by the stones, the Guild needed to know about this new forgotten tale.

She splashed her face with water from the pitcher and gulped down the rest greedily. She refused to let the mistress see the fear grappling her throat. Instead, she steadied herself on her feet, smoothed down the wrinkles on her sleeveless black robe, and straightened the stonewiser's brooch pinned between her breasts.

"Your hair." Mistress Ilian yanked a wayward strand. "You don't need an untidiness fine adding to your troubles."

A deeply ingrained reflex to obey sent her hand to tuck her long bangs behind her ear with practiced precision. How infuriating. The Guild laws addressed insignificant details such as her hair as equal to matters of great gravity. But although the practical part of her was eager to avoid more trouble, the defiant streak in her was not easily suppressed. She combed her fingers through the rest of her closely cropped hair with feigned, deliberate care, if only to spite the mistress.

"Hurry up. The Council won't sit all day."

So the Council was already seated. Damn. She followed Mistress Ilian out of the alcove, knowing that she faced the unenviable, unavoidable reality of the Guild's dangerous wrath. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1.In Stonewiser's fantasy world, the stones are the last reliable repository for memories, information and truth. Do you find any parallels and/or contradictions between the concept of the stones and the means and ways that we use today to disperse, gather and understand information?

2. What do you think would happen to our sense of self, to our culture, to our institutions, if we didn't have any reliable ways to trace our past? What would happen to our society if our history was erased, if we had to recreate an existential framework for ourselves, relying on fragments of uncorroborated knowledge?

3. When the story begins, Sariah is a slave of her own beliefs, a lease of the Guild. What are the key elements that drive Sariah away from slavery? What are the elements that help her to define her personal concept of freedom?

4. Sariah has often been described as the ultimate reluctant heroine. In Dora Machado's own words, the heroine of Stonewiser "is a flawed person, a bundle of contradictions, a tough cookie with lots of baggage, a troubled soul." With all those tags associated with her character, what is it that makes Sariah such a compelling heroine?

5. The New Blood's oath "From the rot we came and to the stone we shall return by way of hallowed land," is the central belief of a marginalized, persecuted and maligned people. How does the oath shape the thoughts and actions of the rebel leader Kael? How does the oath influence his decisions regarding Sariah? Do you think that the oath limits or frees his people to overcome poverty and oppression?

6. What does gThe Roth represent? Symbolically it could be interpreted as greed, power, materialism, or money, but it also could be interpreted literally. Do you believe that the human race is neglectful of our environment and ecological system? How much of gThe Roth is literal? How much of it is interpretive?

7.Being a stonewiser implies some very specific biological characteristics, dangerous and highly specialized training, a very complex set of skills and practices, and enormous responsibility. Do you see the original need for a Stonewisers' Guild? Where did the Guild go wrong? Can you think of some ways in which the Guild could transform from an instrument of oppression into an instrument of enlightenment?

8. Dora Machado grew up in a third world country. Which themes, subjects, scenes and/or characters do you think might best reflect her experiences and heritage?

If you'd like to know how Dora Machado has answered these and other questions, go to www.merpress.com and click on Interviews. Or if you'd like to ask Dora herself, send her an email at [email protected] .

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