She had seen into the witchstone as it fed, seen the bright veins running through the rock, seen the pulsing core at its centre. Whatever the witchstones were, they were more than just inert matter. They were alive, like the trees were alive. They grew.
‘How do you know the witchstones are there if they haven’t been found?’ Yugi asked Saran.
‘At least one has been found, in Quraal, five hundred years ago or more,’ Saran said. ‘It is mentioned in texts I stole from the Librum of Aquirra’s own vaults, which I brought here at great peril to myself. These texts tell of an incident in a rural province wherein a small mining village began exhibiting sudden and violent behaviour. When soldiers were sent in to quell the disturbance, they were overwhelmed, with survivors reporting strange bouts of insanity and displays of unholy abilities by the villagers, such as being able to move objects without touching them and killing men from a distance without using weapons. The Theocrats sent in a much greater force to stamp out the heretics, and they triumphed with heavy losses. In the mine beneath the town, they found evidence of an altar upon which blood sacrifices had been made. The soldiers later said how they had been drawn to the altar by evil temptations and promises, but their faith was strong enough to resist, and with explosives they destroyed the altar and pounded it to dust, then sealed the mine.’ He tossed his black hair and looked around the room. ‘I am certain that what they found was a witchstone.’
‘So they can be destroyed?’ Zaelis asked.
‘If the account is to be believed, yes,’ Saran replied.
‘You said that at least one has been found,’ another member of the assembly asked. ‘Do you imply that there are others?’
‘Consider this,’ Saran said. ‘There are four witchstones that we know of in Saramyr, and all of them the Weavers have built monasteries on. Two in the Tchamil Mountains: one beneath Adderach and one beneath Igarach on the edge of the Tchom Rin desert. Another in the Lakmar Mountains on the isle of Fo. The last in the mountains near Lake Xemit. We know that the witchstones are there, thanks to the efforts of Kaiku and her father Ruito, because these are the epicentres of the surrounding corruption. That is four in Saramyr alone. Why should our continent be the only one to have them?’
‘Why shouldn’t it?’ asked Yugi. ‘Unless you know what they are and how they came to be there, then who knows how they are distributed over the lands?’
‘But I do know,’ Saran said. He turned his back on his audience a moment, walking over to the railing, looking down onto the shambolic rooftops of the Fold, the narrow streets through which children ran, the bridges and pulleys and stairways. ‘This may be hard for you to hear.’
Kaiku sat up straighter, a thin shiver passing through her. A subdued mutter ran around the room.
Saran turned and stood leaning on the railing. ‘I found records of a fire from the sky,’ he said, his handsome face grave. ‘Many thousands of years ago, in Quraal, back when our language was young. A cataclysm of flaming rocks, annihilating whole settlements, boiling lakes, smashing the earth. We believed it a punishment from our gods.’ He tilted his head slightly, the sunlight shifting to add new accents to his cheekbones. ‘I found pieces of the same story in Okhamba, where there is no written history, only their legends. Tales of destruction and burning. The same in Yttryx; more coherent documents this time, for theirs was the first alphabet. There is even talk of primitive paintings somewhere in the Newlands of Saramyr, where the Ugati made their own records of the catastrophe. Every ancient culture in the Near World has their version of the event, it seems, and they all correspond.’ His eyes darkened. ‘Then, following the advice of a man I met in Yttryx, I returned to Okhamba and went deep into it, to its centre, and there I found this.’
He walked quickly over to a table, where he picked up a roll of what looked like parchment. He knelt on the wicker matting in the centre of the room and smoothed it open. The assembly craned for a closer look.
‘Careful,’ he said. ‘This is over two thousand years old, and it was copied from a document even older than that.’
This drew a collective gasp from the audience. What had seemed to be