Steel and Stone: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  “This one doesn’t know his place,” Darien said. “We should teach him.”

  Enough of this. Stone didn’t have time to deal with some other dimension’s answer to a crowd of entitled rich kids out to cause a little trouble. Panting, he glared at the three of them and focused his will. He’d hit the blond one—he seemed to be the ringleader, and maybe taking him out would make the other two rethink their plans.

  Without giving them time to react, he pointed his hand and lashed out with magical energy, intending to send the beefy blond man sailing back across the street with a powerful concussion blast.

  At least that was what he planned to do.

  In reality, nothing happened.

  The three young men laughed as if they thought this was the funniest thing they’d seen all week. “Look at him!” Darien spluttered. “Is the dim pig trying to do magic?”

  “I think he is!” The third man bent, his hands on his knees, his back shaking with his guffaws.

  Stone struggled to his feet, heart pounding harder than ever.

  This was not good.

  This was not good at all.

  How could his magic not work? He hadn’t used Harrison’s source in the ritual, so he shouldn’t have burned himself out.

  “Well, well,” Kethias said. “Not only have we got a little lost dim pig without any identification, but we’ve got one who thinks he’s one of us.” He raised his hand and slammed Stone back into the wall. “What’s your name, pig?”

  Stone fought to free himself, but an unseen force had clamped around his neck, holding him against the unyielding surface. He closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate—perhaps the magic hadn’t worked before because he hadn’t focused hard enough. Maybe wherever he was now, people accessed magic differently. All he had to do was find it, and—

  The grip around his throat tightened, making it harder to breathe. “Your name, pig!” Kethias snapped again. “Don’t make me crush your windpipe—you know no one will give a damn about scum like you. Just another piece of trash for the street sweepers to pick up in the morning.”

  Stone glared at him, but he couldn’t break free of the grip. One look at Kethias’s eyes told him the kid would have no compunctions about killing him. Best to play along for now. “Alastair…Stone,” he got out through gritted teeth.

  The grip vanished, dropping Stone to the hard ground.

  Darien wasn’t laughing now. “Nice try, pig. What’s your real name?”

  Stone decided against trying to get up. He didn’t answer.

  Kethias raised his hand again, this time picking Stone up by the front of his shirt and holding him suspended in the air in front of him. “You are quite the piece of work, aren’t you? Now you’re even brazen enough to claim a Talented name. You do know that’s a crime, don’t you? Do you want to rethink your answer? You can be executed for impersonating the Talented.”

  Panting, heart pounding, Stone stared at him. “What…are you…talking about…?” he got out between breaths. Kethias’s magical grip wasn’t obstructing his airway this time, but the sensation of dangling several feet off the ground suspended by the front of his T-shirt was nonetheless disconcerting. What the hell did he mean, ‘impersonating the Talented’? Was Talented what they called mages? Was there already someone here named Alastair Stone?

  “Come on,” the third man said in disgust. “If we don’t get moving, we’ll be late for Nethria’s party. Stop playing with this piece of trash and let’s go.”

  For a moment, Stone thought they might tire of him and move on. But then Kethias flashed his wolfish smile. “Oh, I’ll stop soon. But first our dim friend needs to learn his place. Come on—help me, and we’ll finish faster.”

  He released his hold on Stone again, once more dropping him to the ground. Stone knew his only chance was to get away from these three before they killed him. Without magic that wouldn’t be easy, but he had to try.

  As soon as he hit the ground he launched himself forward, heading for an opening he’d spotted between two of the buildings. Perhaps he could lose himself in the darkness before they could catch him.

  For a moment, he thought he’d made it. Despite the pain in his legs, his back, his neck, he ran as fast as he could. The narrow, darker space between the buildings could be an alley, a small street—he didn’t know. All he knew was he had to get away. He reached the opening and forced a fresh burst of speed, not daring to cast a glance behind him.

  Something slammed into the back of his legs at knee level, pitching him forward, and he crashed face-first to the ground, stunned. Before he could get back up an unseen force once again lifted him and tossed him back into the middle of the street. This time he landed hard on his arm; white-hot pain bloomed as he both felt and heard something crack.

  The three laughing men moved in on him again.

  He flung himself onto his back, his gaze flicking between them. Despite their laughing faces, their eyes looked deadly serious now. Focused. Intense.

  No…no…It can’t end like this…Not so soon…

  A force like a fist made of rock slammed his shoulder.

  A flurry of invisible knives flayed at him, opening bloody slashes, slicing at his shirt, his jeans, his unprotected skin.

  Something that felt like white-hot fire erupted around him.

  He screamed, rolling, trying to leap up and run, but once again the magical grip slammed him back down.

  Their laughter rose louder. Never once did they touch him physically. Each time he caught a glance at one of them the expression was the same: they were enjoying this. This was the look of some slumming rich kid beating up homeless people for fun—and with no more regard for the humanity of their victim.

  He tried magic again as the invisible force pulled him out of his fetal ball and something hit him hard in the stomach, but nothing happened. It wasn’t as if the magic was there and he couldn’t control it, but rather more that he had no sense of it at all. This is how mundanes must feel… he thought. Except they don’t know what they’re missing…

  His entire body was slicked with blood now, his consciousness fading, a different kind of fog settling over his mind.

  This is it, then…

  This how it ends.

  A little voice, the one that always seemed to have something snarky but ultimately true to say, spoke in the back of his mind: You should have stuck with Jason. Always trying to do things the hard way so you don’t have to depend on anyone…

  Look at where it got you.

  Grayness crept up on him, growing darker…

  “You there!” a sharp voice called. Or maybe it was just in Stone’s head.

  “It’s the guard!” one of his attackers snapped. Stone couldn’t tell which one anymore; their voices all blended together.

  The rest of the conversation floated by, shifting between real and unreal, like a film running underwater. He picked up snippets of it as he passed in and out of consciousness.

  —What are you doing? Who is this? —

  —Dim trash—

  —in the street—

  —teaching him his place—

  —no papers—

  —Off with you—

  Grumbles, followed by footsteps receding.

  Now it was just the deeper, older voices…the guard?

  —Damn, now we have to—

  —get it over with—

  —take him back tonight—

  —Probably die anyway—

  —not our problem—

  He woke several times, only for a few seconds, each time to disorienting images he could barely make sense of.

  Something picking him up.

  Something carrying him, or perhaps bearing him along on some kind of stretcher.

  Lying in what might be the back of a moving vehicle. The floor was hard and cold, and he both felt and smelled the sharp coppery tang of his own blood along with the fainter odor of harsh disinfectant.

  Carried again, with no apparent regard
for how much pain each jostling step shot through him. He felt cold, then hot. Shock?

  In a room. Cream-colored walls. More people—men, women—dressed in shades of blue. Long coats, sigils. Expressions of distaste and disgust. At me? Isn’t anyone going to help? Am I dying?

  Do they care?

  Glowing column. Unearthly glow.

  Beautiful…beautiful…

  Sort of like the portal back home.

  Sense of wild disorientation.

  Dark street.

  Rain.

  Smells of oil, of wet pavement, of rubber, of far-off burning wood.

  Murmuring voices.

  —leave him here? Shouldn’t we—

  —late already. Just—

  —cares about dim trash? Should have—

  Something dragged him by what was left of his shirt and dumped him to the ground. Rain pattered down, quickly soaking him. The shivering brought a bit more awareness; he cracked his eyes open long enough to see two broad-shouldered, long-coated figures striding off. They didn’t look back at him.

  Then a quick flash of the same otherworldly light he thought he’d seen before, and they were gone.

  He was alone.

  5

  He must have passed out again. When he awoke he was still shivering; the rain still fell, soaking him to the skin and pattering down on the rough, cracked surface where he lay. Sidewalk? Road?

  I’ve got to find shelter. And someone to help.

  Shelter first. His brain moved sluggishly, barely able to hold a thought for more than a few seconds at a time, but his survival instincts told him trusting people on this world was something he’d need to be careful with. If he was going to survive this, he’d need to get someplace warm and dry. That was priority one.

  He tried to push himself up on his arms, and twin sharp pains sent him slumping back down with a splash. They broke my arm. And maybe my shoulder too. Quick images of the rocklike magical fist pummeling him replayed in his mind.

  He raised his head, blinking rain and blood out of his eyes, and tried to get a look around.

  It was still dark; in fact, it seemed to be darker here than it had wherever he’d been before. Instead of pale streets and cream-colored buildings, the structures around him here appeared to be made of brick, blasted and abandoned. No lights shone in their windows, and the only two streetlamps he could see, one on his own side of the street and the other across from him, burned with faint flickers that barely reached far enough to illuminate the sidewalks.

  Using his good arm, he tried to push himself up to a sitting position, and bit back a scream as more pain shot through his torso. Broken ribs…possibly internal injuries too. He slumped back to the ground, shivering harder and tasting blood. He couldn’t get a proper breath.

  It occurred to him that he might die here. In fact, that seemed the most likely outcome. If he didn’t succumb to his injuries, the cold and rain would be just as deadly unless he could find warmth and shelter. And even then, without his magic he couldn’t even begin to heal himself.

  Desperate, he tried to concentrate, to focus—was there any chance his magic might have returned? Even though he hadn’t used Harrison’s power source as part of his ritual, maybe something about the nature of this place had the same temporary burnout effect. If he could get even a fraction of it to work, he might be able to heal the worst of the injuries and buy himself more time. If not, he didn’t like his odds for lasting the night.

  He closed his eyes, took a couple of hitching breaths, and tried to block out the pain long enough to focus his mental energy. On the positive side, it wasn’t as hard as it might have been; on the negative side, he knew that was because he was settling deeper into shock. The pain might be fading, but his life force was fading along with it.

  Nausea flared, along with the disorienting gray fog he recognized as the first sign he was about to pass out again. No. Can’t do that. If I do I’m dead…

  Deliberately, he moved his broken arm, then gritted his teeth against the white-hot lance of pain shooting through him. The pain did its job, though: the gray fog receded, creeping away like a reluctant scavenger. It still regarded him watchfully from the edges of his consciousness, though; it would be back, and soon. He knew he couldn’t hold it off for long.

  He had to get out of the rain. He couldn’t even crawl, not with his broken arm and shoulder. His legs seemed better, relatively speaking: the slashing invisible knives had opened bloody cuts on them as they had on the rest of his body, but at least they didn’t seem broken. If he could just find something to brace against so he could get up without using his bad arm, he might be able to—

  He looked around, still blinking away the rain. Beneath him was something hard, uneven, and rough—cracked asphalt, perhaps. Had they dumped him in the street? All the more reason to move—if they had vehicles here and any came by, they’d hit him before they even spotted him.

  And that assumed the drivers even cared whether they hit him.

  He saw nothing he could use to pull himself up. On the far side of the street he spotted the dark forms of what might be parked vehicles, but they might as well have been on the other side of the world for all the help they’d provide.

  You’ve got to get out of the street.

  He listened a moment, trying to pick out the sounds of engines, but he heard nothing. No engines, no music, no conversations. This place seemed utterly deserted. Had the mysterious “guard” from the other place simply dropped him off in some abandoned wasteland, where they wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of his death?

  Off to his left, a faint sound rose from the silence.

  He tensed. Had that been a growl?

  Remaining still and silent except for his harsh, ragged breathing, he listened again.

  Definitely a growl. And it was getting closer.

  Another joined it, from a different direction.

  Dogs? Wolves?

  Something worse?

  I’ve got to get out of here.

  If he could make it to the other side of the street, he might be able to drag himself into one of the parked vehicles. If they were abandoned, they might be unlocked. At least he’d be out of the rain, and it might afford some protection from the predators, especially if he could get there before they caught his scent. The rain might work in his favor, washing away the strongest of the blood-scent that would draw them toward him faster.

  If he couldn’t get up, then he’d have to find a way to crawl. He hitched a few more breaths, drove off the gray fog once more—he didn’t know how many more times he’d be able to do that—and, using his unbroken arm and his legs, began to scrabble at the cracked road surface in an attempt to push himself toward the vehicles.

  It was slow going, punctuated by many brief rest stops. His entire body was a solid wall of pain now; he couldn’t even differentiate it any longer. His whole world became a series of inch-by-inch bits of forward progress, each one gained at the cost of increasing agony. The cracked, oil-soaked asphalt tore at his unprotected skin, the rain stung his bleeding cuts, and every time he moved he felt his broken ribs shift. His harsh, shallow breaths rattled in his throat.

  More than once Stone was tempted to simply stop, to let himself slump onto the pavement and succumb to the gray fog, to cease caring whether someone ran him over or some hunting predator ripped him to pieces. At least then the pain would end, and it would be over.

  He’d rolled the dice and lost the bet—Harrison wasn’t here. This probably wasn’t even the correct dimension. He’d made a mistake somewhere in the formula, and now he was desperately injured and stranded in a place where his magic didn’t work and he had no hope of getting home.

  He almost stopped. As his limbs grew colder and the gray fog crept in again, he almost convinced himself that giving in was his best option. It would be so easy to just—

  No.

  There was that voice again—the one that talked to him sometimes, when he was about to make a bad
decision. Now, in addition to hearing it in his mind, he almost saw its source: a tall, thin figure standing over him. His own figure, whole and uninjured, its expression stern, implacable.

  You’re not giving up, it said. It’s your own bloody fault you’re in this situation, and you’re not checking out now.

  I…can’t… he protested. He tried to say it aloud, but nothing came out. Blood bubbled at his lips.

  The figure crouched next to him, the hem of its long black coat pooling around it, its black boots planted only inches from his head. How was the bottom of its coat not soaking up any water from the sodden street? That’s because he’s not really there, you prat. You’re hallucinating.

  Does it matter? the figure asked. You can keep going, and you will. Get moving, damn you, before I kick your arse.

  Stone glared at it. Bugger off. Let me die in peace. But once again he felt the gray fog receding and clarity—such as it was, anyway—returning. Damn you. He spat blood, gritted his teeth, and gripped at the asphalt with bleeding fingers.

  Another inch forward. Two. Three.

  The growling he’d heard before sounded again. Closer this time. Behind him.

  He scrabbled at the cracking surface with his feet, trying to propel himself faster. The uneven asphalt tore at his chest and abdomen through the shredded remains of his T-shirt. He glanced up; a faint tinge of light shone through the choking clouds above him. Was dawn coming? The dark forms of the vehicles still seemed miles away—how far had he managed to crawl? Had all that effort only gained him a foot or two of progress?

  The growls—at least two of them—were closer now, almost as if they’d grown braver with the coming dawn. Stone paused a moment and raised his head, trying to spot their sources.

  When he did see one of them, he froze.

  The creature, whatever it was, stood perhaps twenty feet from him, on the same side of the street as the vehicle he was trying to reach. Between the rain, the scant light, and the fog in his brain, he couldn’t make out details—but he didn’t need details. What he could see was quite enough to send a cold shaft of dread through his body.