VIII.

It was a polished black opal, as big as his fist, beautiful by the fading daylight; it reflected them back as faceless shadows. They stared down at it as it lay in his hand. Pankelta made a small noise at the back of her throat. The stone was probably worth more then the entire hamlet. Coin closed his hands around the gem protectively, and met their speechless stares.

"I'm a fugitive from my own home," he said, strained "I fled into the wilderness to escape my pursuers. I wandered alone and lost for days. A clan war party came across me eventually. They were going to kill me out of spite and because I was a weakling outlander. I touched the first to taunt me and Fir's power burned his arm off. Then I healed it. They let me live and took me straight to Zia. She… She…" he choked abruptly, and couldn't continue.

"She what boy?" prompted Pankelta, a bit more gently. Hunnah felt a pang as she realised she had never told the headwoman Coin's name. Then she remembered the blank look on the boy's face as he cleaned his blade on the body of the man he'd just killed, and wondered if her sympathy was misplaced.

"She had me heal people," Coin said raggedly "Prisoners. Her other victims. So she could torture them again. And again. Only, after the first time they knew what would happen to them and she could play with them a little."

He seemed to stare past them, back at the horror. "She drove them mad. Bit by bit."

He met their eyes then, and they stared back at him, making him flinch violently. Neither was surprised by the atrocities he was describing, but they were shocked by what he'd seen and done. It was appalling, Hunnah thought. Even the old wizard had let his victims go the first time. Only a true monster would keep repairing the torn flesh for another turn. Did she realise how she flirted with her own annihilation? The priest was only a channel for their God's power to flow into the world, and that power was jealously guarded. Perhaps the Kauld ruler enjoyed the sense of danger usurping it gave her.

Coin broke her thoughts "I knew I had to leave. I took the gem as an offering. Its theft was a mighty gift for Fir. He understands His people do what they must. We would never survive otherwise,"

He faltered, uncertain. Even he is not quite convinced, thought Hunnah.

"He does, does he?" Pankelta asked softly.

Coin looked at her expression, and a muscle under his eye jumped, but he nodded stubbornly.

"To kill an unbeliever is not murder," he quoted "If it saves the lives of the faithful."

Hunnah sensed what was coming before Coin finished speaking. He couldn't know that twelve years ago Two Pines had paid fealty to Jothanial Kauld not Zhanna Monastery. The self-styled Grand Wizard had brought settlement after settlement under his grip, picking them off one at a time. Those that refused starved after their crops and homes were burned around them and their few animals stolen or butchered by Kauld raiders.

Then Kauld had overreached himself. He laid siege to Zhanna Monastery, and brought the wrath of the Order of the Mountain Path down on his hillmen. It was a past they both shared, but it had marked Pankelta more deeply. First she'd lost two sisters and their families to Kauld raiders, and then her husband had died outside the walls of the Monastery. She had never really forgiven.

Pankelta speared Coin with a look of withering contempt. Then she leaned forward deliberately and spat between his boots. Coin's face went white with anger, but he couldn't touch the old headwoman and they both knew it.

"You should have been ridden down at the Road," she said thickly "How a thing like you is allowed to carry on while good, honest people are cut down… It mocks the Gods," she muttered "Or they mock me. Get away from me. You can stay in the monk's quarters. If you are still here an hour after dawn tomorrow, I'll hang you from the watchtower to appease the Kauld witch. Would you like that?"

"No."

Coin's lips barely moved to form the word. Pankelta snorted and got up to walk back to the crowd of villagers around the cider barrel. She left her own drink untouched on the ground. As she turned her back though, Coin's hand rose to point at her and he snarled out a string of arcane words.

"No!" Hunnah's shout echoed Coin's last denial as she flung herself between Coin and her friend.

She flew through the air, her body braced for his spell blast. There was no pain. She thudded into the ground, rolled into a crouch and stared wildly around her. Coin was ignoring her, watching Pankelta. Her friend looked slowly around, twisting a back no longer crooked, to look behind her. She blinked back involuntary tears, and brought her hand up to wipe them away. Instead she stared, as if fascinated at the little lines and whorls in the skin of her fingers. Finally she looked up at Coin, bewildered.

"So you can see what you're spitting at," he said.

IX.

She opened her eyes three hours before dawn. She'd allowed herself five hours sleep first. It had been a long walk today, and she had to keep herself fresh, because this was a delicate job. Besides, she needed Coin to have fallen asleep. They had been travelling for two nights and the need to see the stone again had tugged at her all the way, making her as morose and withdrawn as her companion. Something about it worried at her mind like a mental splinter.

The fast pace he'd kept up, despite her smaller legs, worked against him now; he was snoring deeply.

The monastery taught an initiate a lot about how the body and the mind could work together. 'The first step on the path to understanding creation is to understand yourself,' as the mantra went. Routine and habit unconsciously set an untrained person's sleeping patterns, including the time they came out of sleep. The monks trained themselves to sleep with no pattern. They learnt how to listen to their bodies' natural sense of time, and how to set their waking hour to a time of their own choosing.

He was sleeping with his head on his pack again. During their stay at the village, he'd never set it down once. Was it a spell of obsession on the gem? She rejected that thought almost immediately; who would be stupid enough to carve a spell like that on a stone like the gem?

She crept slowly towards him. It was difficult to see at first, but the sky was clear and the moon was waxing. She waited until her eyes had adjusted, then reached gently down and eased his head off the pack. She was not a trained rogue, but halflings are naturally dexterous, and monks are made strong and subtle.

Slowly, slowly, she moved the pack away. Finally, it was out from underneath his head. She lowered his head to the grass and slid backwards on the tips of her fingers and toes. Coin slept on, unaware. She let out the breath she'd been holding in, and fought the urge to suck in air. Instead, she breathed in quick, shallow sips until her heartbeat slowed.

Clutching the pack to her chest, she walked a dozen metres from the safety of the camp, ignoring the chill away from her warm blankets. Best get this over quickly and get back to sleep. Coin would probably notice his pack had been rifled through in the morning, but by then it would be done. There would be nothing he could do about it. He was probably just afraid they treated thieves as harshly as the coastal cities out here. She didn't care what he'd taken from her neighbours though. Likely they had stolen it first. All she needed was to know Coin's little trove would cause the Order no problems.

The pack opened easily under her hands. She flipped it open and peered down inside it. In the dark it was hard to make anything out. The inside of the bag held a collection of hard and soft shadows. She slid her hand in a stirred it around, not quite sure what she was going to do. Perhaps she could risk a little light?

Her fingers brushed something smooth and crystal-hard. Slowly, she reached down and fastened her fingers around it. Pulled it into the moonlight. It was the polished black opal, as big as her fist, beautiful by the moonlight as it reflected back the shapes of the stars.

The voice spoke inside her head, papery dry and thin, familiar. Impossible.

"Welcome Sidon Hunnah. It's been a long time for both of us since Shandon Hall, hasn't it?"

Hunnah jerked upright, the shock of the invasion sent adrenaline coursing through her body. Her stomach rolled, and the skin of her hands crawled where it held the gem. Inside her head a voice road with laughter.

"Perfect! Perfect!"

She cast it from her with a shriek.

Coin jolted up, disturbed by the cry. Distracted, it took him a split second to realise his pack was gone. Then he tossed aside his blanket and stalked towards Hunnah with an angry yell.

The monk's self-possession had slipped completely away from her as her mind revolted at what she had touched thoughts with. She turned towards the priest with a look of loathing as he neared her. Too slow, he realised and brought his hands up in a clumsy block, but she had already leapt up into the air. The kick scythed over his guard, and he felt a hammer-blow strike his head. The grass came rushing up to meet him. The last thing he felt was its cool brush against his face. Then his thoughts spiralled away, down into nothing.

Hunnah found she was crouched over the sprawled priest. Her foot throbbed, and she rubbed it absently. She was coming back to herself, but her mind felt muzzy, slow. She shouldn't have kicked the priest so hard. It had been a killing blow, pulled at the last moment by the ragged edges of her control. Stiffly, she reached over to him to check his breathing.

"What have you done?" she asked out loud, to break the silence of the night. But if she spoke to herself, the unconscious priest or the dead man in the gem, she couldn't say.