Jon Wilson - The Obsidian Man

by Jon Wilson

  “Be quiet!” Keone commanded them

  both.

  Holt lowered his eyelids, giving all his

  attention to his ears and nose. He would not

  see them first; it was night and they were

  jirran. But will I even hear them? I am just a

  boy from Darnouth who has never been

  trained to fight trolls. Why doesn’t he demand

  the stone?

  He felt Keone rising slowly, silently. He

  looked up, saw the stonediver attain his full

  height, and saw the bound wrists hovering.

  Keone was peering into the darkness to their

  west, his back to the tree. Holt did the same.

  Had the trolls somehow flanked them

  already?

  He heard the spear slicing the air, but

  did not see it until the sole of Keone’s boot

  had disrupted its path. In almost the same

  instant, the troll appeared, not calling out its

  fury as the monsters had done that day on

  the bridge at Darnouth but silently, fleetly—far

  more terrifyingly. The monster carried a

  small, stone-headed mallet in its left hand. The stonediver moved forward, kicking

  his right boot again. The troll stooped,

  continuing its charge, darted under the kick

  and turned with its weapon raised. But even

  before his right foot found the ground, Keone

  kicked backward with his left, catching the

  monster in the belly. The troll grunted, thrown

  back, and bounced off the fallen tree. Keone

  pivoted, bent at the waist, crouching. His

  shoulder found his opponent’s belly again. As

  the troll folded over him he rose, hoisting it

  into the air. The beast flipped in the air,

  managing to land on its feet and instantly turn to face its attacker. The mallet was still in its

  hand.

  In the silence, the impact of the troll’s

  feet with the ground was deafening. Holt

  might run for three days and not snap as

  many twigs. Surely more trolls would be

  drawn to the noise. He held the knife close to

  his chest. Somehow the imp had been

  wounded.But these are not kaol; these are

  jirran.

  Keone attacked, limited to kicks, leading

  again with a right. The monster thrust its left

  arm down, catching the stonediver’s bootheel

  with the head of its weapon. Even in the

  darkness, Holt could see the wicked glee on

  the creature’s alien features. It yanked the

  mallet up, pulling Keone off balance. The

  stonediver managed to leap at the last

  moment before toppling, rolling in the air. His

  left boot slammed against the monster’s

  head.

  The troll staggered back as Keone crashed to the ground. Another earsplitting cacophony of breaking undergrowth and crushed snow. Holt felt his arm moving, whipping the blade out, away from his chest. He saw it twist through the night, reflecting flashes of moonlight. The blade met the center of the monster’s chest, sinking nearly

  to its hilt in the furry pelt.

  Keone came up onto one knee. They

  watched the monster fall—to its knees, its

  hands, over onto its side, to its back. The

  stonediver moved quickly to retrieve the knife.

  He tossed it back to Holt, moving to claim the

  spear.

  Suddenly he spun and dived, his hands

  stretched out in front of him. Too late, Holt

  heard the second spear’s whistle. Almost in

  the same instant came Sihr’s pained cry. He

  turned, seeing with horror the long, thin shaft

  of wood lodged above the girl’s hip. She

  grasped it with both hands as she slid down

  into the snow, looking startled and amazed,

  but mostly as if she must hold it in place. Holt was lost, unable even to move

  toward her. He heard the troll’s advance and

  turned as Keone came up onto his feet. A

  sound rose from the stonediver’s throat as he

  dashed to meet the monster head on—an

  agonized, horrifying cry.Inhuman.No human

  could defy the pain that would elicit such a

  response. Leaping, Keone crashed his knees

  into the troll’s chest, dropping his arms on

  either side of its head. Overwhelmed, the

  monster fell backward. The man twisted

  around it, rolling it, bringing his wrists and the

  ties binding them up under its chin. He leapt

  again, pulling the creature’s head up and

  bringing his knees down into its back. The troll folded backward, grotesquely,

  and Keone instantly disentangled himself from

  its corpse. A figure rushed by Holt, toward

  the girl, and he straightened holding the knife

  out in front of his shoulder. He took a step

  forward before realizing it was Ardee. The ranger knelt facing Sihr, reaching out gingerly

  to explore the wound.

  “It hurts.” The girl’s face, like the

  woman’s, was drenched in sweat, but she

  managed to smile.

  Keone suddenly lurching toward them

  allowed Holt to rein in his shattered senses.

  He recognized the man’s expression all too

  clearly. He had seen the same look in

  Kawika’s eyes—in too many eyes recently.

  He jumped into the stonediver’s path as Ardee

  turned to face them. Holt drew their attention

  from one another by raising his knife and

  severing the cords binding Keone’s wrists. “She’ll live,” Ardee told them, turning

  back to face the girl. She took hold of the

  spear with both hands, clutching it at the point

  where it penetrated the flesh. “Hold still.” Sihr shook her head. “No. No, I can’t.” The ranger lifted her left foot, placed it

  against the girl’s right shoulder, and pressed

  Sihr back against the fallen tree. Holt felt Keone press against him, trying to move through him rather than around, helpless to take even the single required step to the side. He put his back squarely to the man, knowing it was all charade, Keone could any moment pick him up and break him into pieces. The spear snapped with a heavy wet sound. Sihr choked on a cry, as if the pain was too much

  to vocalize.

  Ardee looked angrily back over her

  shoulder. “I must push it through. Are you

  completely helpless? Can’t you take her

  somewhere, distract her from the pain?” Keone’s weight flowed fluidly around

  Holt’s right side. The stonediver lowered

  himself to the ground and took his pupil’s

  shoulders in his hands. He bowed his head,

  touching it lightly to Sihr’s own, just above her

  ear.

  “I don’t think I will be a ranger,” she told

  him.

  He said nothing at first, his eyes shut tightly, his lips clenched. His head shook. The fingers of his left hand rose to gently brush

  her lips. “Come with me,” he whispered. Her eyelids fluttered. She gulped air,

  two big mouthfuls. “Anywhere.”

  Ardee gave them a moment, Holt

  watching with her as Sihr’s body began to

  lose its rigid contraction. Finally the ranger,

  too, took a breath, filling her lungs through her

  nose. She braced herself to work quickly and

  steadily. The muscles across her shoulders

 
writhed beneath her skin.

  Abruptly, she sat back on her haunches

  and Holt saw the red stained speartip in her

  hand. She tossed it away with an expression

  of disgust. Falling back further, she sat

  heavily in the snow. Holt knelt and began

  clearing a pit for the fire.

  “In the morning you must take her back

  to Fort Ridge,” Keone said. “Infection will set

  in otherwise.”

  “I alone?” Ardee’s voice sounded strained and breathless. She looked up, apparently somewhat surprised that he had risen so soon from his trance or whatever he

  had used to quiet his ward.

  “Take Holt.”

  She dismissed him with a brisk shake of

  her head. “Madness.”

  Holt began searching for small bits of

  timber. Ardee’s eyes were on him, but he

  could not return her gaze. He could not listen

  to their argument again. He had made up his

  mind.

  The ranger said, “I must go back out. I

  had no time to ensure all were dead. Holt?” He abandoned his work, rising. Ardee,

  too, got to her feet. She addressed the

  stonediver, “You can properly dress that

  puncture, I trust?” When the man nodded she

  explained, “Tomorrow we will all head back to

  Fort Ridge.”

  Keone’s arm was still across Sihr’s

  shoulder. He obviously wished to pull her

  close but feared aggravating the wound. “No.” Ardee’s breath whistled harshly between

  her lips. She made the same helpless gesture

  of exasperation Holt had seen her use on Sihr

  the first day he had woken to find them all

  together. “I’ll tie you and carry you.”

  “No. You’ll need to carry her. More than

  two days and the infection will be serious.

  Catching me every hour as I try yet again to

  escape will result in her death.”

  “And it will be on your hands!”

  “No.” Anger began to temper his voice.

  “It will be because you attempt to force me to

  do as you wish!”

  She took a step toward him. “Damn you!

  You want to die. Admit that much!”

  He jerked suddenly to his feet. His fists,

  flameless, clenched at his sides. When he

  stepped forward, Ardee took a reciprocal

  step back. “What if I do? What possible

  consequence can my death wage upon you?”

  He closed another step, but the ranger had remembered herself enough to stand her ground. “How dare you presume to dictate to

  me?”

  Holt, fearing another outbreak of

  violence, was far more surprised by Ardee

  throwing back her head and laughing. “You are truly beaten now,” she said, “if

  that is the best you can do. You, who has

  manipulated us all until we can not even guess

  at our own desires.” She shook her head

  again. “I will not be confused so easily.”

  Stepping away from Keone, she took hold of

  Holt’s shoulder. “And I will see you punished

  for risking the boy’s life.”

  The stonediver’s ire had not ebbed. “So

  you will let Kawika’s murderer escape to fulfill

  your own selfish desire for vengeance?” “You can not speak of selfishness,

  stonediver. It is all you monsters know.” “Monsters? Did you callhera monster?” Holt felt the hand leave his shoulder—

  felt the violent recoil of the ranger’s body as she thought to fly at Keone again. Somehow he caught her wrist. She strained only a moment before she, too, gave into playing at the charade a child might somehow control either of them. “She was a fool! I told her that. And day after day she spent more time away from me. More time diving down into

  the world’s dank cracks.”

  “And you left her…What? Half of each

  year?”

  Ardee jerked her wrist free, turning and

  stomping further away from Keone. “No. I will

  not discuss her with you!”

  “You won’t discuss her with anyone. But

  you’ll use her memory to justify your hatred of

  me.” The stonediver waved angrily at her

  back. “All I sense from you—” He abruptly

  turned and offered Holt an identical gesture.

  “—either of you—is your burning disbelief.

  How could Kawika have loved this man? And

  you look at me as if I might answer you. I

  have no answer. In fact, no one can answer, because Wika’s dead. The question I can answer, the more important question because it concerns the living, is how did I love him. Not in what way, but how much. I am the one who shared his bed for six years—no, three years, because like you he lived half of each year out here. I ate the food from his hand and fed him with my own. What am I to do now? How am I expected to survive his

  death?”

  Ardee appeared unmoved. “More

  selfishness! You, you, you! Bad enough in

  itself, but you drag all of us into your

  schemes. You nearly got your ward killed!” “Do you think I would have come here if

  there were any other way? I could go to

  Belfayne; I could petition the parliament. But

  they would greet me with hands raised in

  helplessness, and then laugh at my back as I

  sailed home. No, if I am to survive it will be

  because I have come here and done this thing

  myself.”

  “But you will die!” The ranger came

  toward him again, her own hands raised, not

  in helplessness but in supplication, as if all

  she wished was for him to understand these

  three words. “You—will—die!” Her hands, her

  head, dropped suddenly. Holt wondered if

  she, too, had only just become aware of her

  meaning. Her voice was lower, more

  contained, nearly back to normal, when she

  continued. “And then Kawika’s death will have

  been worse than a waste.”

  Keone’s eyes met hers—held them.

  “Wika’s death is already worse than a waste.” Holt felt himself moving suddenly,

  purposefully toward them. He claimed the

  middle ground, instinctively sliding his

  shoulders back, raising his chin. He searched

  within his chest for his father’s voice. It had

  dwelt there once, and surprised him by being

  readily operable. He aimed it toward the

  ranger. “You will take Sihr back to Fort

  Ridge. He and I will find the demon and kill it.” Watching Ardee’s expression crumble

  under the shock of his command nearly

  robbed Holt of his resolve. She shook her

  head, momentarily too bewildered to speak.

  Her feet shuffled uncertainly, nudging a dry

  leaf—a cacophonous heralding of her

  disorientation.

  “He is using you,” she said.

  His voice was a whip, slicing the air and

  driving her back. It was no longer his father’s,

  but he had heard the tone somewhere. “No.

  He did use me. Now I’ll use him. It’s inside

  me. Maybe it always will be, but I know I

  won’t survive if it escapes. I’ll take him to it

  and he’ll kill it for me.”

  The helplessness in her face should

  have warned him. It was not an emotion she

  had built up an affinity for or ability to su
stain.

  Like the hardness before it, it crumbled and

  was itself replaced by a new resolve, a

  bitterness that was no longer directed at the

  stonediver alone. “How will he kill it?” But Holt was ready. The stone was

  ready. He had it in his palm even as the

  words wounded him, seeking to strike him

  down. He showed it to her, lifting his palm flat

  with the white-flaked stone bathing in the

  moonlight.

  She gave it only the briefest of

  appraisals, as if she had known of its

  existence all along but the idea abruptly

  proved more than she could bear. Her eyes

  did not return to his face, however; they

  sought out the girl on the ground against the

  side of the dead tree. She moved back to

  Sihr’s side, snatching up her own pack. A

  bandage was produced—a piece of cloth that

  could be torn for winding. Maintaining her

  silence, she went about securing Sihr for the

  journey.

  Holt turned to Keone. The stonediver’s

  back was also to the tree. His head was

  bowed slightly, his eyes closed. Holt went to

  him, pushing the stone into his curled, bloodstained fingers. But the eyes above did not open. Keone showed no sign—offered no

  acknowledgement of the exchange.

  It is as if he fears I will be swayed

  again,Holt thought.It is as if he can read my

  mind. Of course, he can; and he is no doubt

  right about this as well.

  Ardee rose, pulling Sihr up into her

  arms. She did not look at either Holt or

  Keone; she simply adjusted her belongings

  and her burden and moved quietly off on her

  journey back toward the fort.

  Holt’s knees began to tremble and he

  put them to the ground beside the firepit,

  mindlessly gathering his twigs once more. “We must not sleep here,” Keone said

  from somewhere miles distant through the

  suddenly dark and mist-shrouded world. “The

  bodies will attract hungry things. Things with

  which we will not want to keep company.” And suddenly, as if Keone had read his

  mind and seen the future and somehow forced upon him some dark destiny, Holt was up and running. He sped westward, fast and silent, straining his keen ears to the soundless noise of her footfalls somewhere up ahead, confident only in the knowledge that they did not exist and yet he would hear them. Running, running until he was in her arms and Sihr was lying still asleep, in some deep unnatural sleep, like so many things were unnatural now except this woman’s arms that offered him a warmth that would never burn him but would warm him long after they were