KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Forty Three

Turning to his wife's attacker, his scythe caught in the middle of a gnarled old oak. He had to brace his foot against its thick trunk to yank the blade free. Staring at its perfect edge gleaming in the moon's light he thought, it has to cut straight. He looked back at the stands of uncut wheat.

I fear you will hurt yourself, she had said.

But look how straight my cuts are! It never goes but where I tell it.

It had to be straight if it is to cut straight, he thought.

Theris looked up to the distant mountains. The smith who had forged this blade lives there, he thought. He can straighten it.

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"Be our lord/husband/king/body!"

The voices returned every night, filling Karux's dreams with their insistent pleas. Even worse, he could feel the land groaning under the weight of the curse, his own protective schemas snapping like strings as the n'kroi overwhelmed and consumed the n'phesh. The elementals called to him, begging him to join with them, to allow himself to be consumed by them so they would not be consumed by the n'kroi.

Once again Karux stood on the dream road between two rows of wooden poles on which the heads of his friends and family sat impaled. Knowing the only way out of the dream was to go through, he started walking, eyes downcast, trying not to recognize the silhouettes of his father and his Uncle Naipho and Aunt Sairu. Some of the silhouettes were of people who had not yet died. He feared those the most.

Karux stopped walking, surprised to find Theris standing with his back toward him, holding a long thin sharp piece of metal. "Theris! What are you doing here? Where are you going?"

Theris gave a side-long glance over one shoulder, eyeing him with one red glowing eye. He wore ragged clothes that fluttered in the breeze like fur, and on his head, the skin of an antelope, its long curved horns still attached. He walked away towards a fork in the road, one path leading eastward to the sacred mountain, the other path leading westward to the Pardos, which ran red with blood.

"Wait! Stop!" Karux called out as Theris approached the fork, but before he turned either east or west, Karux woke gazing up at the inside of his tent.

The clatter and thud of wooden poles dragged Karux from his bedroll. He threw on his tunic, tied on his sandals and stepped outside yawning and scratching his beard. Scores of tents circled stands of trees and large open fields where groups of young men practiced with the three spears. Karux walked over to Somek drilling new recruits in thrusting with the short two-headed spears at weights suspended from tall racks. "Any more reavers come down from the north?"

Somek half-turned towards him, keeping one eye on his recruits. "Only a handful. Did you expect more?"

"After a fortnight of traveling all over the valley explaining how if they let the koria of the plains fall, they will have no chance against Nur, yes."

"Humph! The elders had the right of it. Having fought to reclaim a place for their flocks and families, they want to enjoy it."

"But Nur—!"

"—is a distant threat. In their minds they've sacrificed enough. They're not willing to sacrifice more until they're directly threatened."

"They are directly threatened," Karux grumbled. "I wish they would learn to trust me."

"You! Pick up that pole!" Somek shouted, storming over to a new recruit. The swinging bag had knocked his practice spear form his hands. "Tuck that under your arm and hold it tight like you're holding a girl!" Somek corrected the recruit's technique and had him make several lunges at the bag before returning, satisfied, to Karux's side. "At least they're sending us their younger brothers and those sons that have come of age."