by C Lee Tocci
“The, um, smelly flying creature?” Gil-Salla’s words came slowly.
Todd was surprised to hear Lilibit answer.
“It was like a man, but bigger.” Her voice was small; her eyes locked onto the flame of the hearth. “It was dark grey and greenish and it had these cracks of glowing red all over its body. It had huge black wings and its face was like an animal, but meaner. Its eyes…”
Her voice cracked and she hiccupped a sob. She dragged her eyes from the flames and looked at Gil-Salla, blinking away dry tears.
“…its eyes were empty. And dead. And when it grabbed at my neck, there was this pain. Icy cold and black. Slicing me inside. Pulling me out of my body into some dark empty place. I tried to fight against it, to hold on and push back, but… I was slipping. I remember seeing Todd way above me on the cliff before everything went black.”
Lilibit fell silent, her eyes back on the flame, her body rippled for a moment in a shiver before coming to rest, so still that she could have been carved out of stone herself.
Slowly, Todd felt all the eyes turn toward him. “I had seen Lilibit on the ledge and I scaled the cliff trying to find a way to get over to her. I was on top of the ridge trying to find her when I heard her scream. When I looked down and saw that thing attacking, I just… jumped. My feet connected square on its head and I pushed it off the ledge. I almost went with it, but I managed to grab on to the edge and pull myself back up. I was still trying to see if Lilibit was okay when it came back. I fought with it and it fell off the ledge again and when it didn’t come back, I…”
“Wait!” interrupted Gil-Salla. “What do you mean, ‘you fought with it’? How did you fight with it?”
Todd hesitated. It was hard to explain because he wasn’t too clear of what actually had happened that night.
“Well, when the monster thing came back up to the ledge, it spewed flames at me. I don’t know why I did it, but when I hit my staff against the ground a couple of times, it started to shake in my hands and glow white. And then, when the …thing… spat fire at me the second time, I just pointed the staff at it. The white light sort of absorbed the flame. The staff was shaking so much I thought I was going to have to drop it, but I couldn’t let go. The thing couldn’t let go either; it kept twisting trying to break free. When the flow of flame finally broke, it came at me again. I caught it in the gut with the butt of the staff and another surge of light hit it right in the stomach. The explosion pushed it off the ledge and slammed me back against the cliff. I thought it might come back up and I waited for it, but it never did.”
Todd waited, hoping that this would be enough… he really didn’t know what more to say.
The look that Gil-Salla shot to Keotak-se was both amazed and amused, and perhaps something else as well. Gil-Salla nodded for him to continue.
Todd shrugged. “There isn’t much more to tell. Lilibit and I scaled the cliff. Keotak-se helped us at the top, and we finished hiking here to Kiva.”
It was quiet for more than a few moments. Even the whispers from outside were hushed. Todd wondered if Gil-Salla or Keotak-se would break the silence, but it was Lilibit who spoke first.
“What was it?” she whispered. They all knew what she was asking about.
The matter-of-fact tone of Gil-Salla’s voice could not mask the horror of her words. “It has been called by many names throughout the ages. Apollyon. Beelzebub. Cabaal. It is the Deceiver. The Seducer. The servant of the Decreator. Its sworn purpose is to serve its master in the quest to destroy all of Creation. In this age, it calls itself ‘Syxx.’”
Lilibit’s face was pale. “But why is it picking on me?”
Gil-Salla paused before she answered. “Its malice is aimed at all who would serve the Earth Stone. It will target anyone that it can identify as trying to get to Kiva to serve the Stone.”
Todd peered sharply at Gil-Salla. She returned his gaze blandly, but beneath the silence, the words were clear, Gil-Salla did not yet want Lilibit to know what they all suspected: that Lilibit was the Infant Stone Voice.
Todd nodded; Lilibit was still too fragile to handle the news that she might be the one everyone was waiting for. Gil-Salla smiled slightly at Todd before continuing.
“The Valley of Kiva is protected from the Enemy. I would not have any of you leave the valley without our permission. Ulex, we invite you to stay and train with the Neophytes of the Stone.” Marla gave a trill of delight and spun around to translate excitedly to Ulex. “We understand that if your vision is too sensitive to attend all of the daytime instruction, we can hold some of the training within the caverns of Nadri. As for the rest, Marla, if you and your clanmates share with Ulex those missed lessons. I expect, in due time, Ulex will prove worthy of the Stone.”
Her voice was cool with dismissal. They rose and nodded their goodnights to the two elders before exiting the hall.
Outside on the Crescent Courtyard, it seemed that all the neophytes and virtually every inhabitant of the Valley gathered, gaping. The Clan of the Raven stood motionless for a moment as a muffled gasp exploded from the crowd. Blushing was not something that Netherockians did, but it was apparent from the dismay on his face that if Marla had not been holding tightly to his hand, Ulex would have quickly burrowed himself beneath the ground.
Marla stepped forward, dragging Ulex with her. “This is Ulex,” she announced. “The Stone has found him worthy of the call. He is pledged to the Clan of Raven.” The crowd stared at her, speechless. She bit her lip, struggling to find something more to say. “Good night,” she stated at last.
The crowd parted as she dragged Ulex across the courtyard and into the Raven’s hogan. The rest of the clan followed in their wake. Lilibit paused at the door, her fists pushed into her hips.
“Yeah. What she said!” She then pushed aside the blanket and entered the hogan.
They sat around the hearth for a while, speaking of nothing. Ulex dug himself a burrow against the wall directly under Marla’s den. When Marla peeked out of the hatch, and Ulex looked up, they made eye contact. They did this for a few moments until Jeff noticed and started making smooching noises. With a huff, Marla retreated into her room.
Lilibit chuckled as she climbed the rope up to her den. Todd’s first thought was to stop her, not wanting her to wake the whole valley with her nightmares, but he held his tongue. He spread out his blanket on the ground beneath her hatch and laid down, sleeping lightly, waiting for her night terrors to attack.
And yet, that night, Lilibit slept as a stone until daylight.
Chapter Twelve
The Scheme of the Trickster
As usual, Lilibit was up with the sunrise. Jeff watched from his hatch as she swung like a monkey down the rope from her den. On the floor below, Todd slept fitfully and Lilibit “accidentally” knocked him with her bare feet. Three or four times.
“Oops! Sorry!” she giggled with a complete lack of sincerity.
Todd groaned and pulled his blanket up over his head. He didn’t sound like he’d had a good night’s sleep.
Lilibit pattered out the door, off for a little exploring before breakfast as she did nearly every morning. Jeff climbed quietly out of his den and followed.
He caught a glimpse of her before she disappeared behind Gil-Salla’s hall. He trotted quickly to catch up.
The morning was still too young for shadows. The pond rippled dimly in the grey dawn. Water cascaded down from the peak of Mount Idiwan’a and crashed with a mutter against the crown of Otwega, the mammoth crystal stone that sat at the base of the falls. Otwega had ruled this pool for eons, guiding each drop of water: if it should drip to the right, it would end up in the noisy Wishkaboo River, which ran along the base of Mount Theeta, before eventually feeding the turbid seas to the east. If it dropped to the left, it ended up in the Mizi River, which dribbled its way quietly along the western border of Kiva, before disappearing beneath Mount Paptchu, only to re-emerge a hundred miles away as it slowly rolled to the great ocean to the west.
Later in the day, the sun would strike the facets of Otwega and the cove would glitter with flecks of sunlight. At this hour, however, the great stone was barely visible in the soft gloom. Jeff caught himself nodding respectfully to the crystal, but stopped himself with a mental slap. It was silly to bow to a rock, wasn’t it? He buried that thought and looked around for Lilibit.
By the time he reached the pool, Lilibit had already stripped off her outer layer of clothes and was splashing around in the water. She disappeared for what seemed like minutes, then surfaced with a gasp and a splash, grasping a stone in her hand. The stone glinted wetly as she floated on her back, examining it closely. Her eyes lost focus as she placed it on her cheek, and then, with a merry gurgle, she paddled to the shore with her new prize. She stopped, a little surprised at seeing Jeff on the pebbly beach.
“Hi Jeff!” she greeted cheerfully.
“Hey Lilibit,” Jeff answered. He stepped into the water but was stopped by the biting cold of the pool. “How can you stand that water? It’s freezing!”
“It’s not bad. It feels pretty good actually, nice and cool.” Lilibit dropped her new stone on the pile of clothes that was on the sand and dived back into the water.
“Lilibit!” Jeff called when she had surfaced again. She paddled over and sat on the shallow bottom, the water licking her chin. Jeff spoke softly so his voice wouldn’t carry past the water. “Do you know when you made that necklace for Marla?” Do you think you could make a ring for Dave?”
Dave was the stone that Lilibit had given to Jeff. To say that Jeff had been disappointed with Dave at first would be an understatement. Dave was a tiny splinter of white quartz-like mineral that could easily be swept aside as little more than a fleck of dirt. Dave’s size, however, was deceptive. With Dave in his hand, Jeff had been able to surf the Internet on a level that he’d never imagined. It was if the entire Internet was a landscape that stretched as far as his mind could reach. With little more than a passing thought, Jeff had been able to sail over and through that virtual e-world, leaping over firewalls as if they were no more than curbstones. With Dave in his hand, the entire Internet was at his feet.
Fat lot of good it did him, being stuck in possibly the only corner of the planet that had no Internet access.
Lilibit strode out of the pool and shook herself, water spraying everywhere.
“Hey, watch it!” exclaimed Jeff, skipping backwards.
Lilibit chuckled as she plopped down in front of him. “A ring?” Lilibit started to stretch her hand towards the pool.
“Wait! Can you make it out of gold instead of silver?”
“Gold?”
Jeff reached under his shirt and pulled out the gold chain that he wore around his neck. “Yeah, like this…. gold.”
Lilibit fingered the chain with curiosity. “Sure,” she shrugged.
She knelt by the pool and stuck her hand into the water. She crouched motionlessly, her eyes focused on something far away. The ground trembled gently and when she pulled her hand from the water, her fingers clenched a small golden lump. She rocked back, her butt resting on her heels, and began to work the nugget with her fingers. She giggled.
“What’s so funny?” asked Jeff.
“Are you sure you want gold? It’s so silly!”
“Silly?”
“Yeah, it’s like a baby, it talks foolishly. Its voice doesn’t say anything important.”
“Well,” said Jeff with a little smirk. “I think Dave will like silly gold. I know I do.”
“Okay.” Lilibit worked the gold into three long strands, then braided them smoothly, the way she did Nita’s hair. When she had completed the section, she framed it with two thin cords of gold on either side, and then grabbed Jeff’s hand.
“Which finger?” she asked.
Jeff pointed to the ring finger on his right hand and Lilibit wrapped the braid around it. She broke off the excess and let it to fall to the ground. Jeff stared at the discarded gold braid, so carelessly dropped.
“Give me Dave,” ordered Lilibit as she pulled the ring from Jeff’s finger. From out of his pocket, Jeff pulled out the scrap of fabric that he kept his stone wrapped in. Reluctantly, he placed the tiny stone into Lilibit’s palm. Lilibit raised the chip to her cheek and listened to it for a moment with a secret smile before working it into the ring.
“Dave really likes you.” Lilibit’s eyes narrowed with mischief. “You’re going to get into a lot of trouble together!”
Jeff paused for a moment before grinning back. “Yeah, I know.”
Lilibit gurgled before handing Jeff back the ring. “I placed Dave on the inside surface where he can rest against your skin and no one can tell that your ring is hiding a stone. I asked the gold to hold onto it, but gold is kind of silly so I think I’m going to have to remind it occasionally because it may forget.”
Jeff slipped the ring onto his finger, delighted by the contact with his stone. He wasn’t worried about the stone slipping away, if it so much as crept free of the ring by a hair, he’d sense it immediately.
“Thanks.” Jeff grinned. “Thanks a lot!”
Lilibit smiled back in response and dived back into the pool.
“Wait a second!” called Jeff.
Lilibit paused. “What?” she asked with a wariness tinged with laughter.
Jeff stifled a smirk: Lilibit knew him well enough that she could tell when he was up to something.
“You know, if I had some more of this gold, I could sneak into town and use it to buy you some books.”
That caught her attention and she waded quickly back to shore.
“Gil-Salla says we’re not to leave Kiva without her permission.”
“She didn’t actually tell us not to. She said that she wouldn’t want us to. Not the same thing.”
Jeff watched as Lilibit’s mind worked through the possibilities. Like him, he knew that she didn’t consider rules to be stone-fast boundaries of behavior. Merely acknowledgements that punishment would follow if they were caught stepping over them.
Jeff would never encourage Lilibit to leave Kiva herself. He suspected that, despite what Gil-Salla said last night, whatever enemy lurked beyond the Sienna Sentries, its malice was mostly focused on Lilibit, not the rest of them. But Jeff thought that he could easily sneak into town and back again without being noticed.
“How much would you need?” Lilibit whispered, her eyes gleaming.
With his hands, Jeff indicated a lump the size of a large grapefruit. Lilibit nodded gleefully and dipped both her hands into the pool. The earth hummed longer this time, and when she straightened up, Jeff saw her struggling with a roughly oval lump of gold that was a little larger than a football. His eye widened in delight.
“Whoa! That’s a big nugget!”
Lilibit dropped the stone with a thud at his feet and placed her hands on her hips. “I want a lot of books!”
Jeff was up to something. Todd knew the signs.
For Jeff, “roughing it” was going to the mall without someone else’s credit card. So when he asked if he and Donny could go on a survival retreat into the Mort-Gre’el Forest, Todd knew enough to be suspicious. He also knew enough not to waste his breath with questions since whatever answers he got from Jeff would be as imaginative as they were fictitious.
Todd stood silently next to Marla as they watched the two boys hike off into the woods after breakfast. Donny’s gait was unusually awkward as his backpack hung fat and low off his shoulders. Todd scowled when Jeff turned and waved good-bye with a smirk and a wink.
“We’ll find out soon enough.” Marla answered Todd’s unasked question. “He’s more of a cat than a raven. He’ll always land on his feet.”
Todd hmphed gruffly. It wasn’t Jeff he was worried about. It was the rest of the human race that needed to be warned that Jeffrey Terrance was on the loose.
Chapter Thirteen
The Assayer of Lies
The door whined open and then slammed shut, jarrin
g the layers of dust that lay like a gritty film over the worn oak workbenches and counters. Elias Winderham glanced up briefly from his shiny brass scales when the two young visitors entered his office, but he did not smile. Elias saved his smiles for people who were important. Which meant, since he was stuck in this sludge puddle of a hole they called Alamos Tierra, he never smiled at all.
Ignoring the two intruders, he bent back to his work. The papers on his desk were meaningless. As meaningless as his job. As meaningless as his life had become.
Once upon a time, Elias Winderham had a life. He may not have been the most brilliant student in school, yet he still graduated with a degree in mineral sciences. Maybe that hadn’t sounded exciting to his classmates, but they all thought differently when he managed to land a job with the Mineral Exploitation Division of a company called Endrune. Maybe he had been a very small chip in that enormous and powerful machine, but being part of that conglomerate was the only identity Elias had ever had. “I work for Endrune,” was all he had to say and he did not bother to hide his smugness when his friends would ooh with awe and the eyes of the scoffers would widen with reluctant respect. Yes, once upon a time, Elias Winderham had a life.
One small mistake and it was all taken away. Mention one stupid little squirrel monkey to some backstabbing undercover treehugger and everything hits the fan.
The pretentious snot from Human Resources was sweetly patronizing about his “outplacement.”
“Not everyone is cut out for a career here at Endrune,” she’d smarmed, but they’d both known the truth. He had broken one of the unwritten rules and he must be punished.
If Endrune would never be a benevolent employer, at least it knew how to cover its own butt. H.R. had been ever so gracious, finding him this position, halfway to no where, on the brink of oblivion.
Which is how Elias Winderham found himself exiled in the backwater town of Alamos Tierra, holding the office of County Assayer in a county that had neither mining activity nor any other need for a County Assayer.