The Spider Stone

by Alex Archer

  The Spider Stone

  Rogue Angel

  Book III

  Alex Archer

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  First edition November 2006

  ISBN: 1-55254-709-4

  THE SPIDER STONE

  Copyright © 2006 by Worldwide Library.

  The Legend

  The English commander took Joan’s sword and raised it high.

  The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade.

  The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd.

  Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.

  Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn…

  CONTENT

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Mel Odom for his contribution to this work.

  Prologue

  West Africa

  1755

  Under the blazing sun, Yohance's legs felt like stone, not flesh and blood. They seemed heavier than he could ever remember them being. He lacked the strength after so many miles to move them easily. In truth, he didn't think he could go much farther before he collapsed.

  And what would happen then? The slavers who had destroyed his village and killed so many of his people were hard-eyed and merciless. If he fell, he knew they would kill him, too.

  The chains pulled at his manacled wrists, jerking him once more into faster motion. Scabs on his wrists tore open. Blood stained his wrists, hands and forearms. Several times over the past few days, he'd prayed that the gods would take him. Although he'd always feared death, he was no longer so certain that death was frightening. Some of the other prisoners said he should welcome it.

  "Come on, boy," the old man in front of Yohance snarled. He was abrupt and unkind. Judging from his behavior and the scars on his back, this wasn't the first time he'd been captured. A gray fringe surrounded his head and lined his seamed jaws. Several teeth were missing and the rest were yellowed wreckage in spotted gums. Like Yohance, the old man went naked. None of the prisoners were permitted clothing. "You've got to keep moving."

  Yohance stared at the man. He didn't know his name. The man wasn't from Yohance's tribe. Facial scars and tattooing marked him as a warrior among his own people. But the white marks against the deep ebony of his back offered mute testimony to his servitude.

  "Do you hear me, boy?" the old man demanded.

  Yohance nodded. He didn't try to answer. Thirst had swollen his tongue and thickened his saliva. Until these past few days, he hadn't known he could go so long without water and food.

  "If you fall behind, it's not just you that will be punished." The old man yanked on the heavy chains again. The sun had heated the iron links until they almost burned Yohance's flesh.

  Yohance wanted to move more quickly, but he couldn't. He was only eleven, the smallest of the men and boys he was chained to. When the slavers had taken him, there had been some debate about whether they should try to keep him or simply put him to death. In the end, his life had been saved by the flip of a coin.

  The old man quickly looked away. Hoofbeats drummed against the hard-packed earth behind Yohance.

  "Move faster, you heathen!" a harsh voice thundered.

  Even though he'd expected it, when the whip cracked harshly across Yohance's narrow shoulders, he was shocked. Pain burst across his sunburned flesh, and the sudden agony dropped him to his knees on the trail. Sand and rock chafed against his legs, but it was hardly noticeable with the new injury assaulting him.

  For a moment Yohance hoped that he would die. He remained on his knees and tucked his face against the ground. He didn't want to cry out. He bit his lip and his tears splashed against the dry ground.

  "Get up," the old man ahead of Yohance whispered, tugging with weak desperation on the chain that bound them. "Get up or he will kill you."

  Yohance knew that. The slavers relished seeing fear and weakness.

  "Don't you just lay there, boy!" the slaver roared. "If you don't get up I'll run you down!"

  The horse's hooves drummed against the ground again. Yohance felt the vibration echoing in his small, frail body. His hair hung loose in snarls, no longer bound by the ivory headband his mother had fashioned for him. If he'd been only a little older, if he'd participated in a hunting party, his hair would have been cut like a man's.

  But he was only a boy. Too weak and afraid to defend himself against the aggressors who had destroyed his village and killed those of his people they didn't succeed in enslaving. The harsh crack of the slavers' rifles still sounded in his ears and had chased happiness from his dreams for three nights as they'd traveled toward the slave market at Ile de Goree.

  For all his life, Yohance had heard about the slave market. The city was a rancid pool of despair and evil, filled with men who profited by selling other men. Some of those men were from Africa, but others were from England, Spain, France and beyond. All of those people trafficked in slaves, selling them or sending them to their colonies in the New World.

  Yohance couldn't imagine the places some of the elders had described in the stories he'd been taught to memorize. He had sat around the campfires with his mentor and listened, still and silent as stone, as the warriors had recounted their adventures among the slavers. In every case, those men had lost someone, family or friends they would probably never again see. Sadness had stained every word, and Yohance had memorized that, too. He bore it in his heart like a boulder.

  He had to do those things. He was a Keeper of the Ways of the People. Without Keepers to recount triumphs, as well as sorrows, his village would have lost its history. He and boys like him were chosen to devote their lives to remembering the history of his people. It was an honorable undertaking, an endeavor that Yohance had gladly promised his life to pursue.

  According to the tales, rich men lived in wondrous cities where fire and water obeyed their every whim. In Yohance's village, women and small children tended the cook fires all day and carried buckets of water in from the stream. But, even with all those miracles at their disposal, the rich men desired slaves to work their fields.

  For years, Yohance's village had remained safe. Then, before he had been born, his people had fought slavers again and again, and had finally gone into hiding, leaving their ancestral homes to climb higher in the mountainous terrain and escape the attacks. The move ha
d brought new hardships to the Hausa people, and many times they had gone without good food. They had given up everything to avoid the slavers.

  Still, the slavers had come. Three days earlier the raiders had found Yohance's village. His father believed the slavers had followed a hunting party back to them. The hunters had been trained to move carefully and to leave no trail, but they had been fortunate and had brought in enough antelope meat to feed the village for days. It had been a day of celebration. They had prepared for a feast.

  The raiders had attacked in the night, rushing from the darkness and taking charge with their rough voices and fire-spitting rifles and pistols. Abed with their stomachs full for the first time in weeks, Yohance's people had been caught off guard. The raiders had taken the village without mercy, killing all who tried to oppose them and many of those who attempted to flee.

  The next morning, after the slavers had gorged themselves on what food that the village had managed to put back and sated their evil lusts on the women, all the survivors had been placed in manacles and chained together for the long trek west to the coast.

  For three days, the captives had walked from when the sun rose until it set in the evening. At that time, Yohance fell wherever he was permitted. The hated chains never came off. Mornings found his wounds thickly clustered with fat black flies. On each of those mornings, one or more prisoners had died in their sleep.

  Such a death, Yohance had come to think by the second day, was a gentle thing.

  Hafiz, Yohance's mentor and teacher in the ways of the Keeper, had died violently. As village elder, the raiders had executed him to take the courage from the village. The brutal tactic had worked. Everyone knew about the slavers. They knew if they didn't escape, if they weren't killed because they were too old or wouldn't stop fighting, they would be sent to live in far-off lands. Perhaps there they could hope to escape. Or perhaps the gods would provide a good life somewhere else.

  "Get up!" the slaver snarled again. He jerked his horse to a stop only a few feet away from where Yohance lay. Two thick clods, torn from the earth by the horse's hooves, thudded against Yohance. "Do you hear me, boy?"

  Yohance didn't look up. He couldn't. Looking into the eyes of the raiders was like looking into the eyes of demons.

  Hafiz had told him that many of the Hausa's names came from the Arabian warriors. Their cultures had met before, in battle and tender embraces. The Hausa shared some of the blood of those fierce desert warriors. Yohance prayed for strength.

  Another man rode up beside the first. They spoke in their language instead of that of the Hausa. Yohance didn't know what they said.

  Part of him just wanted to stay there and die. He felt certain that would be easier. He didn't want to be torn from his home or his family. But it was already too late for that. His father was dead, one of the men who had fought, and his mother and two sisters were in chains as he was, all of them cruelly used by the raiders.

  Without warning, Yohance vomited, giving in to the fear that was his constant companion. He retched and coughed. So little food and water were in his stomach. Yellow bile spilled on the ground. He felt the stone come up, and he was more fearful of that than anything else.

  Hafiz had given him the stone to take care of. It represented Anansi's promise. Long ago, the trickster god had promised that Yohance's village would always stand, that his people wouldn't be scattered forever as so many peoples were.

  As long as the stone existed, so too would his people.

  Before the raiders had seized them, Hafiz had taken the stone from its altar and given it to Yohance. The slavers had taken the gold coins, ivory pieces and few jewels that had been on the altar, never realizing that the stone had been there, as well.

  Yohance bent forward. He curled one hand around the stone before it could be seen. It was round and worn smooth from all the years that had passed since it had been created. The craftsman who had made the stone had carved Anansi's shape, a spider resting on its six hind legs with the front two lifted to attack or to defend – or, as Hafiz had said, merely to seek out the world.

  Both spider and man, Anansi was the messenger to the gods. He was neither good nor evil. Instead, he was selfish and curious, like many people. Yohance had been taught to embrace Anansi's ways, to interact with the gods on behalf of his people, and to keep the records of their lives and triumphs.

  "If you die and the stone is lost," Hafiz had told Yohance as the slavers' rifles blasted around them that night, "the home of our people will forever die with you. As long as this stone exists and our people have possession of it, Anansi's promise will exist."

  And where is that promise now? Yohance thought bitterly. He had no doubt that Hafiz's body had by now been eaten by hyenas or leopards. Yohance knew that his father's body would be gone, as well. What the predators didn't take would be claimed by the ants and other insects. Spiders even made homes in large bodies to build web traps for bugs that feasted on rotting flesh.

  Despite his anger, frustration and fear, Yohance struggled to get to his feet. His hand was grimed with a coating of bile and sand. He held the stone tightly.

  One of the men spoke.

  As Yohance stood, he lifted his head and gazed at them. One of the burnoose-clad men shoved away the rifle of another. Both men wore beards and carried curved knives and swords in their belts.

  "You will walk?" the new arrival asked. He was older than the first.

  "I will," Yohance whispered. It was the best his dry throat could manage.

  "Only a little farther," the man said. "Then you will rest for a time. There will be water."

  Yohance said nothing. Even the promise of water couldn't lift his spirits. Holding the hard stone in his fist, he willed himself to be as hard and emotionless. He had to have water. Without something to drink, he wouldn't be able to swallow the stone again.

  Hafiz had told Yohance that was the best way to hide the stone. Once the raiders had taken his clothes, Yohance had seen the wisdom of his teacher's words. Hafiz had told Yohance that he had carried the stone in a similar manner on two earlier occasions.

  Whips cracking in the air, the two slavers got the procession under way again. Slowly, with flagging strength, the line of human beings staggered into motion.

  Yohance knew he wasn't the only one who was tired. A few of the stronger prisoners helped weaker ones. But they wouldn't be able to help them on the ship's journey to the New World. Disease and the stench of death filled the holds of those vessels. Yohance had been told that those who died were simply thrown overboard for the ever-present sharks to feed on.

  The party crested a hill and peered down at the small watering hole against the side of a hill. Stones lined the hole's lip. Yohance's heart fell when he saw how little water the hole contained. The slavers would drink first, then their fine horses. Yohance doubted there would be any left for the prisoners.

  Surprisingly, the slavers dismounted and brought out buckets and rope. As Yohance watched in amazement, the men brought up bucket after bucket of water.

  "It is a wadi," the old man chained next to him said. "The Arabs build these along their trade routes. Water is often scarce. They dig deep holes, line them with rock, and the land guides the rain into them. When the water is deep enough, it will stay within the rocks rather than soak into the ground."

  Yohance could only nod. Though he hadn't been out of his village before, he'd heard of such things. He waited his turn in line, then – when he wasn't being watched – he slaked his thirst from a hand-carved gourd and once more swallowed Anansi's Promise. Since they were given little food, he knew that the stone would stay within him for a time.

  Harsh cracks suddenly rolled over the area. Several of the slavers fell from their mounts. They bled from catastrophic wounds and the dry earth sucked the liquid greedily down.

  The prisoners dived to the ground even as other slavers toppled from their horses or dropped where they stood. In seconds, the surviving slavers took to the hills, their rob
es flowing in the wind as they rode for their lives.

  A hush fell over the prisoners as they watched armed men walk down from the hills. All of them were black, wearing native garments and jewelry, but carrying rifles made by white men. A few also carried swords, spears and bows.

  "We are saved," a man cried as he pushed himself to his feet. "They have come to free us."

  The armed man closest to the speaker drew back his rifle and hit the man in the face with the brass-covered buttstock. Unconscious, the prisoner fell in a heap.

  "You are not free!" a scarred warrior declared. "I have stolen you! Now you belong to me!"

  "They are slavers," the old man whispered. "Just like the others."

  The other prisoners drew quietly to one another and awaited their new fates.

  "You will still go to Ile de Goree," the scarred warrior said in his thunderous voice. "You will still be sold to the New World of the white men. But if you listen and obey, you will live to do it." He glared contemptuously at everyone in the group. "Otherwise I will kill you and leave your bodies un-mourned for the carrion feeders to take away in pieces."

  A few of the women started crying.

  Yohance sat back and prayed. He felt the weight of the stone in his stomach. Though he was still, he didn't feel rested, or even that he was gaining back any of his lost strength. He hoped only that even in foreign lands Anansi's Promise would find a way back to his home to protect his people.

  But he had to wonder if the trickster's power could survive a trip to the white man's New World.

  Chapter 1

  A mob surrounded the old warehouse in downtown Kirktown, Georgia. Many of the people carried signs and shouted angrily. Police cars and uniformed officers enforced the demarcation between the crowd and the warehouse. A news helicopter hovered overhead.

  Seated in the back seat of the cab, Annja Creed stared through the morass of angry civilization. The car slowed, then finally came to a standstill as angry protesters slapped the vehicle and cursed. The action warred with the overall appearance of the city. Kirktown looked like the ideal tourist stop for anyone wanting a taste of genteel Southern manners.