Sianim 02 - Wolfsbane

me.”
    “Ah?”
    Aralorn nodded, touching a stone half again as tall as she was and twice as wide. “This stone is the first. The identity stone—for me that has always been granite.”
    “Granite for compromise,” rumbled Wolf, “or blending.”
    “Right,” she smiled. “Blending—that’s me. You’ll have to touch it, too.”
    Wolf pawed it gently, drawing back quickly as if he had touched a candle flame. “That’s not magic,” he said, startled.
    “No,” agreed Aralorn, waiting.
    “It’s alive.”
    “That’s the secret of the maze,” she agreed.
    She drew a simple rune on the granite boulder with a light touch of her finger. As with the sandstone, a directional arrow appeared, outlined in shimmering bits of mica. It pointed across the mountain.
    As they started on the indicated route, Wolf was silent. Aralorn left him to his thoughts and concentrated on staying aware of their surroundings. The stones could be difficult to find. She was so busy peering under bushes that she almost missed the waist-high rock standing directly in her path, as out of place in its environment as a wolf in a fold.
    “Obsidian,” observed Aralorn soberly, touching the black, glasslike surface. The second stone would be Wolf’s. The maze’s choice surprised her at first; she’d half expected hematite, for war and anger. But the stones of the maze had read deeper than that, identifying Wolf’s nature as clearly as they had seen hers. He wore the mask of anger on his face, but his heart was enclosed in sorrow.
    “This one’s yours,” she told him, in case he’d missed its significance. “Obsidian for sorrow. The rest we find will be something about both of us.”
    “Sorrow?” commented Wolf.
    “Yes,” said Aralorn. “Like the maze as a whole, the first stones can tell you more than that. They’ll show you a bit about yourself and the pattern you’re living now—if you interpret what they’re saying correctly. I’ve always mostly ignored what the maze had to say about me, but you can try it if you’d like. Touch the stone for a minute or two, and it will tell you something.”
    He hesitated, then took a step sideways and leaned against it, saying as he did so, “I’m not certain this is wise. I’ve never been fond of prophecy.”
    “Mmm. Remember, it’s not a prediction of things to come: It’s an assessment of who you are now. And they’re not infallible.”
    After a bit, he stepped away. He didn’t say anything, so she didn’t ask him what he’d seen. She drew the rune she’d used before, and the arrow appeared on the top of the stone, sending them at a shallow angle downward.
    “The next stones are less personal and intended to help predict the near future—some of the time. The language of stones is pretty limited. Mostly it will just present attributes we have or will need.”
    “Not very helpful,” said Wolf, and Aralorn grinned at him.
    “Not that I’ve ever noticed.”
    During the next several hours, they wandered from stone to stone, finding serpentine for wit, quartz for luck, and malachite for lust (she snickered a bit at that one). They ate the salted meat and cheese Aralorn had brought with them. As the sun reached its zenith, they started down the path the malachite had chosen for them. The stone they found was amethyst, protection against evil. When they came to a second, then yet a third amethyst, Aralorn grew concerned.
    “I wonder if the stones will let us through,” she said, crouching in the snow beside the melon-sized crystal. “They might not if they think that harm will enter with us.”
    “Do you want me to wait here?” Wolf asked softly. “You might find this easier on your own.”
    Realizing he’d taken the message incorrectly, she raised her eyebrow. “Amethyst may be protection from evil, but the stones have already appraised you and have named you sorrowful. If they had judged you as harshly as you judge yourself, we would never have come this far.”
    “Then you took quite a chance not coming here alone.”
    She braced both hands on her hips. “I took no chances.”
    “Stubborn as a pack mule,” he said.
    Since she’d heard a number of people claim that, she couldn’t disagree.
    She drew another rune and saw that their path led upward, as it had for the past few stones.
    “I hope this ends soon,” she grumbled. “I really don’t want to spend the night outside. It’s cold, it’s getting late, and we still have to make the trip