The Descent to Madness (The Graeme Stone Saga)

by Gareth K Pengelly

  He floated there, relaxed in the grip of the serpent, wondering if this was how drowning felt for everyone. Out of curiosity, he breathed out, amused by the fact that no bubbles now escaped from his mouth. He drew in another deep lungful of cold water. The blackness that threatened to creep in from the edge of his vision vanished. The numbness disappeared, the pain in his limbs returning with a vengeance, though the burning of lactic acid slowly faded with each new, tentative lungful.

  Floating there in the silence of the still water, snake still clamped to his forearm, Stone blinked, each fresh breath a miracle his brain refused to process.

  A burning, tingling sensation around the teeth stuck in the flesh of his arm spoke of infection beginning to spread even now. He looked down at the wide head and it stared back at him with black, glassy, reptilian eyes. He was unsure whether a cold-blooded animal could get a shiver up its lengthy spine, but something in those eyes registered confusion, apprehension on a basic level.

  Needle teeth snapped as he clenched his fist.

  ***

  Lanah lay on the bank, chest heaving, rivulets of water dripping from her smooth body onto the soft grass beneath. She shivered, despite the furs and leathers wrapped about her bare form and stared into the still water with wide, hazel eyes, unable to see beneath the surface for the glare of the noon-day sun overhead.

  She was wise, seventeen summers; she knew to look for beasts before bathing, but the serpent had been lying perpendicular to the shore, just floating gently beneath the surface with only its nose visible. She’d been blissfully unaware of its presence as she’d stripped off for her morning wash, far from the village, far from the prying eyes trying to get a glimpse of the forbidden fruit that is the chief’s daughter. She’d been wholly unprepared for the fright as the twenty foot snake had swam its way towards her, hence the scream – she was not usually a screaming kind of girl, not like the other girls of the village, all weak and swooning to make the boys feel macho. She was not a girl who needed rescuing.

  As befitted the daughter of the head of the village.

  Nevertheless, she knew where she’d be right now, had the mysterious man not leapt in front of her out of nowhere to tackle the beast and so, it was with genuine fear and concern that she watched the gently running water for any indication of his survival. The thrashing had died some moments previous, the bubbles long since stopped rising to the surface. She imagined the lifeless corpse of her rescuer, wrapped in the cold, remorseless coils of the predator and closed her eyes, supressing a shudder of horror.

  A sudden splash made her open her eyes again and her heart stopped in her chest.

  The man arose from the water at the centre of the river and strode for the shore, slowly and purposefully. He alighted on dry land and stood barefoot on the grass, regarding her with the expression of a man who had long since given up questioning the things life threw at him.

  In the river, some way off, the corpse of the snake rose to the surface and floated off, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle.

  She lay still on the ground, gazing up at her rescuer. His face was unshaven but youthful, his tangled brown hair reaching to his shoulders as dripping water ran down his chest. His lean, muscular body glistened in the sun and water steamed off him as it evaporated in the noon-day warmth. His clothes were nought but sodden rags that barely covered his modesty. He looked down to his left forearm, the skin and flesh torn from the altercation. The skin was already turning black from some horrendous infection. He gave a quick ‘hmm,’ as though not too worried about the matter, then returned his gaze to Lanah before speaking.

  “Stone,” he said, gesturing to himself with his uninjured right arm. “You are?”

  She caught the grasp of his meaning, even though she didn’t understand his words.

  “Lanah,” she answered, touching her chest with one slender hand.

  “Lanah…” he repeated to himself. He gave a brief nod and a smile before finally allowing himself the luxury of collapsing into unconsciousness.

  ***

  A tumbleweed rolled by. How stereotypical, Stone mused, as he watched it roll on to disappear over the dune.

  He closed his eyes, raising one hand against the glare of the fierce sunlight, and looked around. The desert stretched away under clear, blue, cloudless sky in all directions, as far as the eye could see. The sun beat down mercilessly on the lifeless dunes, the heat unbearable on the soles of his feet as he stood still, so he began to walk, keeping his steps quick to avoid touching the ground for any length of time.

  After a few moments he looked up and saw, in the distance, what looked like an oasis, with trees and water. Instinct drew him to it. The distance seemed to fluctuate, at times close, then really far away, then suddenly he was there, the moist sand squidging between his toes. He gazed about the greenery; shrubs, patches of grass, reeds in the water and palm trees, laden with coconuts, lining the shore of a large, shimmering pond. He walked up to a coconut which had fallen to the ground, picked it up and bashed it on a rock to open it.

  The coconut cried out, aghast, turning to give him a disapproving look, then rolled off into the undergrowth. Stone blinked, mouth open, a gormless statue.

  A splashing drew his attention to the pond; a figure had just broken the surface, emerging from the waters and turning towards him. It was a beautiful young woman, with olive skin, brown eyes and long dark hair. She was naked, the water only up to her waist, revealing plainly the smooth curves of her slender frame, the fullness of her breasts. She smiled seductively and beckoned him to join her with a finger.

  Mesmerised, he waded slowly into the cool pond and she came forward to meet him, wrapping him in her long, slender arms. They embraced, they kissed, passionately like long lost lovers, his hands roaming over the softness of her skin, cupping her bosom, then lower, taking in the smoothness of her belly, lower, the curve of the small of her back, lower, the firm scales where her bottom should be…

  He opened his eyes with a jerk and backed away in sudden terror. Her eyes opened too, reptilian slits in the place of human eyes, and smiled a crocodilian smile of razor-teeth.

  “Where you going, lover boy?”

  He stumbled backwards from the pond as the woman rose up on a column of muscular snake-tail to stand ten feet clear of the water, laughing at him as she did, a serpentine hiss like a death rattle. He tripped, falling backwards onto the muddy shore, bumping his head on something firm yet giving behind him.

  He turned, looking up, expecting some dread, new horror.

  A tall, olive-skinned stranger with a stern, lined face, painted cheeks and feathered-headband loomed over him, half in shade from the scorching sun. He extended his powerful arm towards Stone, offering him a hand.

  “Come with me,” he commanded, his voice deep, powerful, resonant with knowledge and wisdom. “You’ve stayed here long enough.”

  ***

  Stone awoke with a scream, sitting bolt upright, covers thrown off the bed, revealing his naked form drenched in sweat. Cooling hands pressed down on him from all sides, damp cloths wiped away his sweat, soothing words that he couldn’t understand yet nevertheless sounded comforting were cooed at him. He slowly lowered himself back to the folded blanket beneath his head, blinking, trying to clear the blurriness from his vision. Covers were laid back over his form. He felt his face with his hands; he’d been shaved. He felt his left forearm, feeling a clean bandage about his wound.

  He looked about him, squinting in the light, as though he’d been living in a cave for a year and was venturing into the sunlight for the first time. Shapes began to coalesce, slowly, the hands and words beginning to gain owners. He was in a wooden hut, dimly lit by a lamp suspended from the ceiling. To his left, two women; one, young, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years of age, pretty and slim with long, dark hair and the dark, olivey skin of both the woman in the river and the man in his dream. She was busy wetting cloths in a small, wooden bucket before handing them over to the other who was
older, perhaps thirty-five, maybe forty, handsome with streaks of grey just beginning to show in her long hair. As she mopped his brow, Stone could easily tell that she was the mother of the younger one.

  He moved his head slightly, looking down past the foot of the bed to see a tall, muscled figure with a feathered head-dress, though this wasn’t the man of his dream. The face was less stern, more curious, with hints of both wariness and concern. He had an air of authority about him, his clothes fine, yet at the same time he had the strong limbs and lined face of a man who worked for a living.

  Finally, he realised that his right hand was being held and he turned his head to look in that direction. The young woman he’d found in the river was kneeling at the side of the low bed, her two slender hands delicately wrapped about his, her brown eyes wide open and full of relief at his awakening. Seeing her closer now, he could see the family resemblance, the oval face, the olive skin, the long, dark hair that she had tied back behind a leather headband; he was in the company of two daughters and their parents.

  The father said something to the older daughter, in a language that he couldn’t understand. She replied in the same. The mother said something too. Stone frowned as he tried to make sense of the strange syllables, their sounds feeling both familiar and foreign at the same time.

  The father walked closer to the bed, looking at Stone, and spoke directly to him now, quietly, slowly, enquiring something, but what, Stone did not know. He spoke again, his deep voice and rich accent blurring the words into one sentence that Stone’s conscious mind could make neither head nor tails of. His subconscious, however…

  The family began to talk to each other, having given up trying to get information out of him for now. The youngest daughter chatted excitedly, almost to herself, as her parents conversed in hushed tones.

  Only the eldest daughter sat and watched, puzzled, as Stone followed the conversation, his lips moving silently as though in a trance, his subconscious mind working furiously, his mind rearranging neuro-linguistic patterns in ways he couldn’t begin to guess at. Hearing the garbled phrases, then chopping them into sentences, dividing those sentences into clauses, clauses that must have nouns, verbs, objects, subjects. Borrowing rules from languages he’d heard before, making them fit where they could, making up new ones where they didn’t using inferences based on elevated pitch and tone at the beginning and end of sentences, suggestions from body language, eye movement, subtle, subconscious cues that marked turn-taking, gender, interrogatives, declaratives…

  “…rassa neg zhoutan, baaclerh, douzhune pa what to do, he’ll be here soon, I sent Arnoon to fetch him as soon as he woke, just as he asked,” said the father, speaking to his wife. “There’s not much else we can do, you can see that he’s from a strange land, maybe the mountains, maybe from the south, the Barbarian Steppes. Either way, he doesn’t speak our tongue. As such, only Wrynn can help him.”

  Stone cleared his throat.

  “Actually…” he began, his voice hoarse and rasping from lack of use. “I wouldn’t mind a drink of water…”

  The family turned their heads, slowly and as one, to look at him, mouths held slightly open in barely disguised surprise. The eldest daughter was the first to regain her composure.

  “You speak our tongue?” she asked, eyes wide with curiosity, a slight smile playing on the corners of her lips. “You speak the language of the Plains People?”

  “I… it would appear so, yeah.”

  Her father moved closer again, a smile on his face.

  “I’m pleased you are awake, stranger. I am Farr, Chief of this village. These,” he gestured about him, “are my daughters, Lanah and Raine and my wife, Rala. Lanah tells me you are called [Stone]? I have not heard this word before. You come from a far off land?”

  Stone winced slightly in linguistic shock; he had actually heard the parentheses, indicating that the man was talking about stone the English word, even though to Stone himself the concept now sounded exactly the same in both tongues. This would take some getting used to. He was aware that he wasn’t replying.

  “Yes,” he responded, hesitantly. “[Stone] is my name. It means, err, ‘stone’ in your tongue. And yes, I suppose I do come from far away.”

  “Stone,” the man rolled the word around his mouth, as though trying it on for size. “Yes, it speaks of strength, fortitude. An unusual name.”

  “But fitting in this instance…”

  The second voice, quiet but deep and powerful, like the rumbling of distant thunder, came from the door of the hut. It was familiar and, as the owner walked into the glow of the candle, Stone raised an eyebrow.

  “You were in my dreams…”

  The daughters and wife rose, respectfully at the entrance of the new arrival. The Chief placed his hands on the newcomer’s shoulders in greeting.

  “Well met, old friend.” He turned back to Stone. “Stone, this is Wrynn.”

  The older man nodded to Stone, face serious but eyes twinkling with hidden knowledge, greying hair held back behind a feathered headpiece.

  “I saw you,” Stone repeated. “In my dreams. How is that possible?”

  The two tribesman shared a quick glance before Farr continued.

  “Wrynn is the shaman of our people. He has many skills in the arts of healing, some of which he used to help you.”

  The shaman spoke. “You were lost in the depths of a high fever. I had to go in, find you, bring you back.”

  His response raised more questions than it answered, but Stone was content for now. Things would be revealed in due time.

  “So I owe you my life?”

  The shaman smiled, the rest of the gathering burst into laughter.

  “No,” insisted Farr, shaking his head. “It is we who owe you.” He put his arm around the shoulders of his eldest daughter, pulling her close. “Without your heroics we would have lost my daughter that day.”

  “That day?” Stone frowned. “How long was I asleep?”

  Wrynn drew closer, but it was Lanah who answered.

  “Six days, the fever had you in its grasp. We thought at times you wouldn’t make it. No-one survives a bite from the Nagah…”

  “But you did… How did you, I wonder?” enquired the Shaman, his eyes inquisitive, searching. “How did you beat the Nagah?”

  All eyes were on him and Stone didn’t know how to answer.

  “Just lucky, I guess…”

  “Luck!” Lanah exclaimed with a laugh. “You should have seen him, Wrynn! He arrived like a bolt of lightning and wrestled the serpent in the water. He snapped its neck like a dry twig. I’ve never seen the like…”

  Though they’d heard the tale more than once over the last few days, her mother and sister still gasped in disbelief and her father shook his head in amazement.

  Only Wrynn showed no emotion.

  “Stone,” Chief Farr addressed him, his tone jovial. “We owe you much. As soon as you feel up to it, we shall hold a feast to show our gratitude. You will find the Plains People a generous and welcoming folk. You are free to remain here as long as you wish.”

  “Thank you. I’m humbled by your generosity. I’ll do whatever I can to help while I’m here.”

  “For now, just rest, that’s all we ask. Come, Rala, Raine, let’s leave our healers to tend to him in peace.”

  With that, Farr, his wife and his youngest daughter all left, leaving only Lanah and the Shaman in the dim hut with Stone. Lanah moved around to his left side and began to unwrap the linen bandage from his arm, shaking her head as the skin was revealed.

  “There, Wrynn, see? Completely gone.”

  Stone looked down, even as the Shaman came over, seeing that his forearm was completely smooth, unblemished, not a scar remaining from the vicious snake-bite of six days ago. Wrynn looked up, one eyebrow raised in amusement.

  “Lucky, eh?”

  “I…”

  Lanah shushed him,, with a disarming smile.

  “Don’t worry,” she reassured him. �
��We are the Plains People and the art of the Shaman is an established and well-respected tradition here. We know that other peoples fear and shun those with the gift, but you won’t find that here.” Another warm, kind smile.

  Stone sat upright in the bed, his strength returning with his wakefulness, and turned to sit on the edge, the fur blanket hiding his modesty.

  “The… gift? What’s this gift you speak of?”

  Frowns. “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t remember much of… anything, really.”

  Lanah looked to the shaman and Stone followed her gaze as the older man began to explain.

  “The world is full of spirits, Stone. Even your namesake, the stones in the ground, have their own spirit, their own essence. And it’s with this essence that those with the gift can commune, can parlay to enact their wishes on the world.” He could see that Stone was lost. “Do you have any special… ‘talents’ that you can’t explain. That seem natural to you, but seem to set you apart from everyone else?”

  “I…” he hesitated, looking from one to the other. Wrynn’s face, inscrutable, impassive, deeply lined with age and stern wisdom; Lanah’s, young, open, friendly, beautiful. He made up his mind.

  “Yes. I have.” Wrynn cocked his head, Lanah’s eyes widened. He gulped but carried on.

  “I can move fast. Very fast, but only in bursts.”

  Wrynn nodded and smiled for the first time. “Yes, the Falcon-Sight. A wondrous gift indeed! What most hunters would give for that!”

  Stone gave a quick laugh to himself, out of relief at sharing his secret, or the fact that his secret had a name. Falcon Sight. How cool did that sound?

  “Anything else?”

  “Erm, yeah.” Excited now, he thought back to his fight at the slaver camp, what must be three or four weeks back now. He remembered the strength that had flowed into him from the ground itself, the very memory bringing back the taste of tin and copper to his tongue. “Once I… I’m struggling to explain it. I was in trouble. Just as things were getting really bad, I could feel the earth beneath me; not just feel, but taste, smell, sense, know. The metals, the minerals. And as I did, it was as though my strength doubled, as though they were lending me their properties, as if my muscles were stone, my ligaments tin and copper… it… it was incredible.”