KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Twenty Seven

First one bwcca appeared, walking on two legs in a crouch.  Then two more joined it, pausing out in the field to sniff the air and peer around into the surrounding darkness.  Four more joined them as they crept along the field and finally five more made it an even dozen.  The creatures, about the size of small children, cautiously approached the house and took turns sipping at the milk and eating the bread.  They sat for a moment in the deeper shadows of the back porch before taking up the sickles and haying forks in their small hands.

They worked slowly but steadily only pausing erratically to listen to the night or sniff the air.  When the moons rose, Karux was able to get a better look at them.  They had short thin arms and legs and round little bodies all covered in fur.  The fine pale tan fur on their abdomens turned a darker mottled gray brown on their backs.  The back fur also grew coarse like spines, forming a rough mane on their backs and around their necks.  Large round felt-like ears with just the suggestion of pointedness poked out of the fur high on the sides of their heads.  They had large round black eyes that sat further apart than on a human's.  They each also had a long thin straight nose, squished down on their faces ending in a small mouth and almost no chin, as if the whole lower part of their face had been pulled down and stretched.

Karux shifted his awareness to the world of schemas, half afraid of seeing the too familiar spinning maelstrom, like some great mouth trying to suck everything into the Void.  Instead he saw the ordinary ribbons of coiled spiral patterns such as he saw with other living things.  He expanded his awareness outward, detecting an owl, some mice and a cat prowling between the fields.  He thought if he compared the patterns of the animals, the bwcca and the people lying beside him, he might be able to tell if the bwcca were intelligent or not.  But, though the bwcca's patterns were more complex than the animals, he couldn't tell if that were not simply because they were bigger.

After watching the bwcca working in the fields, the spies went back to the widow Caera's house to sleep until sunup.  She would have been happy to let them stay longer, but Jomel was disappointed that the brownies, as the widow Caera liked to call them, didn't appear to be inhabited by n'phesh or have any special connection to them.  On the way back to Har-Tor, Jomel asked Sporo if he intended to make use of the bwcca.  He allowed as it wouldn't hurt to try and walked back home humming the tune widow Caera had sung.

 -=====|==

Amantis thought he detected the first effects of the poison just as the guests were leaving.  The final toasts had been made and the chatting guests were starting to leave when Corago pressed a hand to his belly, a pained expression on his face.  He staggered, sat back down on his couch, and let out a slight groan.  Ponta rushed to his side and the nearest of his friends stayed to help him to his bed.  A minute later, another friend came rushing out and left the house running for a healer.

Careful to show normal concern, Amantis visited Corago who lay in his bedroom in a thick atmosphere of tension, surrounded by family and a few of his closest friends.  He wondered briefly how he'd feel speaking to the dying man whom he had just killed and was surprised to find that his biggest concern was that Corago might recover.

"What are you doing here?  Don't you know it's your birthday?" Amantis said attempting to interject some humor.

"Oh!" Corago groaned, as a new spasm of pain stabbed through him.  "You'd think I'd learn not to eat this much!"

"Try to relax," Amantis said.  "They've sent for a yotare."

"It's a waste of time.  I'll be better by morning."

It was a long slow painful death.  Sometime before dawn Corago breathed his last.  Ponta collapsed, sobbing, on his shoulder.  The healer assured them all that Corago's death was caused by the rich meal.  This seemed to heap an extra layer of guilt on those guests who still remained, but Amantis relaxed and had to remind himself to not smile.  He found himself saying inane and trite clichés about Corago's pain having now ended, how he was now in a better place and generally spoke on the subject of the brevity of life and the frail nature of man.  He wasn't entirely sure what all he said as he tried not to babble gleefully, but he was later grateful that everyone's grief was so great that no one really paid much attention to his words.