by Paul Cook
Elu, his four legs folded beneath him, watched the fire subside to a handful of glowing coals. He ate his fodder, and when he saw Mara nodding sleepily, he fetched a blanket from his panniers. He held it out to her, careful not to touch her.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the soft goathair wrap. She suddenly felt a bit ashamed. Elu really wasn’t so frightening. In his own rough way, he was actually quite gallant. He also seemed wide awake, so she asked, “Will you stand watch?”
Without a word, the centaur walked off into the darkness. For the brief moment before sleep claimed her, Mara saw him silhouetted against the stars, facing east.
It was still night when Mara woke. She couldn’t tell how much time had passed, and she looked around wildly, terrified at having fallen asleep in the open. Her companions were still dozing. A glance showed Elu still on watch in the star-dappled distance. The plain was strangely quiet and devoid of life. She heard none of the usual crickets or night birds.
Rolling over, Mara saw a blue light playing in the sky, not far away. She thought she heard a faint sizzling sound as forked streams of azure fire arced upwards. A hot wind played on her astonished face. Blue lightning from a cloudless sky?
“Wonderful.”
Mara flinched. Tiphan had awakened and was watching the spectacle. “This must be what I came to find,” he said in an awed but oddly serene voice. “I didn’t know exactly where to go, but I believed the way would be revealed. And so it has. Rouse Penzar, and follow me.”
So saying, he rose and walked away, leaving all his gear behind. He strode past Elu without even a glance.
Confused but excited, Mara shook Penzar awake, and they gathered up their baggage. Soon all three were trudging after their leader, now lost in the darkness.
Penzar was shaking his head. “This is not good. This is not good.”
“What are you muttering?” Mara asked.
“It’s not wise for the Tosen to go wandering off. We should stay together.”
Elu suddenly held out an arm, stopping them. He hefted his club and sidled off to the left, into the untrampled grass.
“What is it?” Mara whispered.
Penzar gripped his spear tightly. “I don’t know.”
Elu reappeared, silent as a ghost, and beckoned. Reluctantly they left Tiphan’s trail and followed the centaur. Twenty paces from their original path another track appeared. A single line of horses had passed this way on a converging course.
Elves. They looked anxiously ahead where Tiphan had disappeared. Elu beckoned, and reluctantly they followed the Silvanesti’s track, arms ready. Just then the blue aurora ended without warning, leaving the moonless night profoundly dark. Elu continued to lead the way, placing his heavy hooves with great care so as not to make too much noise.
The grass thinned, replaced by patches of open, sandy soil dotted with loose stones. While Mara looked for Tiphan, Penzar squatted in the dirt and counted the prints of more than a dozen different horses.
Elu stopped abruptly. Mara came up behind him, and she shuddered violently. The air had suddenly gone intensely cold. It was as though they’d crossed some potent, invisible barrier. Mara opened her mouth to exclaim, but Elu put a finger to his lips, signaling silence.
Penzar reached the threshold of cold air and uttered a low grunt of surprise. Mara gripped his arm and pointed ahead.
Against the background of stars they could see many lofty, upright shapes in silhouette. They had reached a field of standing stones.
“Tosen!”
Mara had spotted Tiphan twenty-five paces away. She hurried to him, followed closely by Elu and Penzar.
“We thought you’d been taken by elves!” Penzar exclaimed.
Tiphan was running a hand over one of the granite sentinels. “Elves? I’ve seen no elves.” He frowned and complained, “Odd. I get no sensation of power at all.”
Mara jumped a bit when he seized her wrist, saying, “Here, you try.”
Dutifully, she pressed her fingertips against the cool stone. She shrugged. “It feels like an ordinary rock,” she reported. Penzar tried, with no better results. Elu stood back, refusing to touch the monolith.
“I’m sure this is the place,” Tiphan insisted. “It matches the description in the manuscript, and I’m certain this is where the blue lightning came from.”
“Why is it so cold?” Mara asked, breath pluming from her mouth and nose.
“It’s like the boulders have sucked all the warmth out of the air,” Penzar said.
Muttering, Tiphan wandered into the field. There was no pattern to it. The stones seemed randomly dispersed. Nonetheless, they obviously were not a natural formation.
Tiphan caressed several of the monoliths in turn, feeling nothing. Their initial fear overcome, Penzar and Mara did likewise. Only Elu refused to enter the forest of standing stones. He backed up and stood on the edge of the field, his face a mask of concern.
“Come here!” Tiphan shouted. “Bring tools!”
Mara and Penzar converged on their leader. Penzar had a mallet with a heavy diorite head and a deer-antler pick. At Tiphan’s direction, he struck the corner of one monolith with the mallet. It rang with a surprisingly clear tone, but nothing resulted.
“Again,” said Tiphan. “Harder.”
Penzar swung with both hands, and this time a sharp triangular shard flew off. Mara retrieved the chip and Tiphan put it in a small pigskin bag he wore around his neck. After similarly collecting six good-sized slivers, Tiphan moved on.
Behind the stone they’d chipped was an especially tall block. Tiphan directed his helpers to sample it as well. As Penzar raised the mallet to strike, however, something gleamed on the ground at his feet. He lowered the stone hammer and bent down to examine the bright object.
“Tosen, look!” he said excitedly. “Bronze!”
Tiphan and Mara crowded close. It was a broad metal chisel, plainly of Silvanesti make. The cutting edge was dusted with granite.
“Why would they leave a fine tool like this behind?” Mara wondered.
“They probably mislaid it in the dark,” Tiphan replied.
“Maybe there’s more lying around!” Penzar shuffled his feet in the grass. Bronze was rare and valuable. If the elves had been careless once, they might have been careless twice.
Mara got out her flint. The ground was littered with tufts of dry grass, so she piled up a goodly heap and lit it. A small smoky flame licked up, throwing their shadows high on the tall stones.
“Any more bronze?” asked Penzar, studying the ground by the new light.
Suddenly, Mara gasped, and Tiphan uttered a cry of alarm. Penzar looked up to see what startled them.
“By my ancestors!”
Protruding from the monolith before him were several slender pairs of hands, a knee, and some toes. Higher up, a number of faces appeared, half-embedded in solid rock. Their mouths gaped open as though screaming, but they were filled with cold granite.
Mara stumbled back, covering her face with her hands. Recovering from his initial revulsion, Tiphan stepped closer, peering at the lifeless faces.
“Elves,” he reported. “Probably the same ones who rode here ahead of us.”
“But why are they like this?” Mara asked, her face white.
Tiphan frowned. “They must have committed some offense against the spirits dwelling within.”
“Let’s leave, Tosen,” Penzar pleaded.
“Not yet. I want samples of that rock, too. Mara, make a torch and check the rest of the field. See if more Silvanesti were captured by the spirit-stones.”
Mara hesitated only briefly. She’d been a Sensarku since she was eight years old. The long habit of obedience to her Tosen’s will kept her from fleeing in terror. She used the turned shaft of an elven javelin to make a torch. To the javelin’s bronze head she tied a bundle of dry grass, then held the grass to her dying fire. It blazed up, and she found more lost equipment: sandals, waterskins, knives. Tiphan directed Penzar to use t
he elven chisel to cut out a stone sample near the embedded bodies. She saw his hands were shaking, but he obeyed the Tosen.
All the nearby boulders held captive bodies. The largest stone held no less than five elves. The ground was covered with lost tools and trinkets — buckles, helmets, knives, scabbards, finger rings, even a sword or two. Looking over the debris, cold sweat broke out on Mara’s chilly brow. Belt buckles and finger rings? Had the Silvanesti taken these off before the stones swallowed them? It seemed unlikely, so why hadn’t these trinkets been consumed as well?
Trinkets. Weapons. Bronze. Copper. Gold. All their metal was at her feet, not in the stones.
She whirled, dropping the torch. “Penzar, stop! Don’t use the chisel!”
Even as she spoke, the ringing of metal on stone reached her ears. Instantly, the deep chill of the field was displaced by a wave of hot wind emanating from the struck monolith. A flash followed, so bright she was blinded even with her eyes clenched shut. Dropping to her knees, she crawled toward where she’d last seen Tiphan and Penzar.
Shrill screams assaulted her ears as she crept forward. The flare in her eyes was fading, and as she regained some of her eyesight she beheld an awful vision: Penzar, arms buried up to the elbows in the gray granite boulder. The stone had softened, resembling gray dough as it flowed thickly toward Penzar’s torso. Mara yelled and grabbed Penzar around the waist.
“Help me, Tosen! Help me!” she screamed over Penzar’s horrible cries.
Tiphan stood several steps away, staring open-mouthed. The massive boulder continued to pull the boy in, and Penzar’s shirt ripped apart as he was dragged from her grip. His frantic pleas for help changed as he saw the gray ooze inching closer to Mara.
“Get away!” he gasped.
Powerful arms hurled Mara aside. She fell back, tears of terror streaming down her face, and saw Elu step past her and grab hold of Penzar’s legs. The centaur’s hard muscles strained, but the boy was already lost. Thick tentacles of liquid stone entwined around his neck, pulling his head in, filling his ears, nose, and mouth. His cries ended in a ghastly thick gurgle. With a final sound like rushing wind, the stone block enclosed him completely.
Wavering tendrils reached out, blindly seeking more prey. Elu darted quickly out of reach. Mara continued to shout Penzar’s name.
“It’s too late!” Tiphan shouted. “He’s gone!”
As the words were said, Penzar’s hands and the left side of his face appeared on the monolith, as though he was bobbing to the surface of a pool of granite. His eye sockets and open mouth were gray with solidified stone.
“It was the metal,” Mara sobbed. “It’s all around us! Penzar and the elves were swallowed by the stones because they touched them with metal!” She turned her face into Tiphan’s shoulder, weeping helplessly.
“The stone mallet did not arouse them,” Tiphan said slowly, recognizing the truth of her words. “So the lightning we saw must have occurred when the boulders came alive and engulfed the elves.” He nodded his head slowly, wonderingly. “Such amazing power!”
Mara raised her tear-stained face and regarded him with outrage. He neither comforted her nor lamented the loss of Penzar, who’d been a loyal acolyte for years. Worse, Tiphan stared at the dreadful stones with a look of near ecstasy.
Pushing herself away, Mara took Elu’s proffered hand, and the centaur led her slowly away.
Tiphan grabbed the diorite hammer and began to peck at the hulking monolith, just an arm’s length from where Penzar’s lifeless hand protruded, fingers curled in supplication.
“Come back!” he called over his shoulder absently. “I want samples from all these stones.”
Mara neither answered nor returned, and Tiphan soon forgot her as he concentrated on reaping his harvest.
Chapter 8
Zannian clapped his hands to announce his arrival. From within the great tent, a voice said, “Enter.” He parted the flaps and passed into the wide, circular room.
The ground was covered with rotting peat, and gray moss hung from the tent roof. A pair of yevi, wearing heavy leather collars studded with obsidian spikes, stood up when the young warrior entered. They growled deep in their throats until a languid voice commanded them to be still.
Reclining on a heap of moldy leaves and peat was a bizarre figure, humanlike, yet weirdly inhuman. The creature’s head, arms, back, and legs were vivid green. Its belly was white like a frog’s. Each hand was tipped with five overly long, yellow-nailed fingers, each foot with a like number of slender, prehensile toes. Its human-shaped head had two forward-facing eyes, a long nose, and a sharp, jutting chin. A shaggy green mane covered the creature’s scalp and reached to its shoulders. Its eyes shone like polished emeralds.
“Master,” said Zannian, bowing low. “There’s been a sign in the sky.”
“Yes, I felt it. A flash of considerable power. Did you locate it?”
“Yes, Master. It came from the east, six days’ ride from here. It must be the dragon in Arku-peli.”
“Of course.” The green creature probed through the loose mass of rotting leaves on which he lay and found a glossy black roach. He held it between two fingers, watching for a few seconds as it kicked vainly, then popped it in his mouth. Yellow fangs flashed briefly as he chewed.
“Shall we set out for Arku-peli at once?” the young warrior asked.
“There’s no hurry. I have injected a drop of poison, and it will take some time to work its way to our enemies’ heart. Until then we may bide our time. You know my messenger, don’t you? The black-haired rodent you craved?”
“I know, Master.”
Zannian suppressed his impatience, trying to see the wisdom of the dragon’s way. Sthenn — or Greengall, as he preferred to he known when in this form — delighted in formulating schemes of elaborate cunning. Yet Zannian had no doubt his master would do just as he intended — destroy the bronze dragon Duranix and make Zannian chief of all the plains.
“My mother has the Jade Men drawn up,” he replied. “Will you come see them?”
“If I must. How is your mother?”
Coming from the green monster before him, this question struck Zannian as oddly funny. He laughed briefly, then stifled his mirth when his master’s face curled into a frown. A long green leg uncoiled, striking Zannian in the chest. He flew across the tent, hit the oxhide wall, and slid to the ground.
“Do not open your foolish mouth at me!” Greengall snapped. “I hate it when rodents bray.” He rolled to his feet. In this form he was imposingly tall, but very thin. His reedy physique was as deceptive as the rest of his appearance. All the power and strength of a green dragon resided in him, no matter how awkward his outward shape.
Zannian slowly got to his feet. His chest ached from the blow, but no bones were broken. Greengall’s buffet had been a measured one.
“My mother awaits your attention with the Jade Men, Master,” he said hoarsely. He lowered his eyes as the shambling green scarecrow stalked past him.
Attended by his yevi escort, Greengall strolled from his tent. Outside, the squalid camp stirred. They were a long way from Almurk and the Edge of the World. A day after the two women slaves had escaped, the green dragon announced it was time to begin the advance on their enemies. The entire band, one thousand strong, had mounted their horses and ridden out of their dank hideaway, following an unmarked trail set out for them by their monstrous master. They did not go alone. In the midst of the mass of horsemen trudged a mob of slaves and stolen animals, both groups whipped forward with equal brutality.
On the open plain, the raiders swept all before them, capturing small bands of plainsmen and their herds. Those they did not capture or kill fled, and before long the great plain was barren of animals and men.
Zannian led his men to the ford of the Great Plains River, and there they stopped. Like most of the dragon’s machinations, the halt was unexplained. For three days they remained in camp, sending out only small raiding parties. Now, on their fourth
night, Sthenn ventured forth as Greengall to inspect his savage host.
Oxen stirred fearfully when they caught Greengall’s reptilian smell. Raiders stopped whatever they were doing and bowed as he passed. Slaves scrambled out of the way, anxious to avoid his notice. The trees around the camp were already hung with the bodies of captives and raiders alike who’d displeased the master. The presence of so many corpses lent a pervasive air of death to the camp. Only Greengall and his yevi didn’t seem to find it oppressive.
The disguised dragon paid little heed to the raiders or slaves, giving the corrals and tents only a cursory glance. Zannian led the way through a gap in the tents. They entered a gully running from the nearby hills to the river and ascended the slope toward a ravine. Three blazing torches, each surmounted by a polished white human skull, marked the entrance to the ravine. Greengall smiled when he saw the death’s heads and fondled them in passing.
The ravine itself was well lit by two-score blazing torches arranged in a box of fire, twenty paces to each side. Inside the square was a block of warriors standing shoulder to shoulder. Each was outfitted with a dark green leather breastplate and hood, a brace of spears, and a green-painted wooden shield. They stood absolutely still, even when Greengall came into view.
Sitting in a crude litter at the head of this silent company was Zannian’s mother, Nacris. Two of the hooded warriors stood on each side of her as bearers.
“Greetings, Master,” she said, her voice as rough as her appearance. Greengall barely gave her a nod.
“Is everything ready?” Zannian asked.
“Ready for anything,” she replied. Her flint-colored eyes glanced quickly over the rows of silent warriors.
Greengall stood by Nacris, elongated hands clasped behind his back. Zannian stood on his master’s other side, a half step back.
“Begin,” said Greengall.
“Jade Men! Salute!”
Nacris’s voice carried crisply across the gully. The block of warriors shifted in unison, moving their feet a space apart, spears held before their masked faces.