Amantis left the clearing and headed straight for the mountain. He had a vague idea that if he could climb high enough to be seen from the camp, he’d show Karux and the rest of those goat-turds something. He only needed to be seen climbing the mountain and he could tell them pretty much anything he wanted about reaching the top and they’d have to believe him. He could even claim to be the Simarrah and they would have to admit they saw him going up.
He spent nearly an hour scrambling over the foothills before reaching the western face of the mountain. Standing before the broken rocks at its base, each stone larger than a house, Amantis tried to plot a path upwards. The whole western side of the mountain consisted of a straight vertical wall of rock broken into a series of rough ledges. He thought he could see part of a path fifty feet or so up, but no way to get to it.
With a sigh, he turned aside and followed the base of the mountain. Hoping to find a spring and then go looking for some food, he rounded a particularly large boulder and spied a cave that led into the mountain. It would make a good shelter, he thought. He crept inside, wondering how far back the cave went and caught a faint glimpse of light.
He closed his eyes and gave them time to adjust to the darkness. Something whispered like wind blowing through the back of the cave. The noise, sounded like muffled words and grew nearer as he approached though without getting louder. Amantis opened his eyes and a watery flicker of light reflected on the cave ceiling. The light came from a small black stone lying in a natural shelf of the cave wall. Though tiny pin pricks of light shone from it, the stone’s surface reflected no light. It appeared as a flat, irregularly shaped blackness, as if it were an infinite hole in space and the pin pricks of light were stars. Amantis picked up the strangely cold and heavy stone feeling as if he were holding the entire night sky in his hand. The star-like lights grew brighter as if nearing, and filled the cave with an icy blue gleam. The whispering words, now intelligible, sounded from within his own head.
Anything is possible to him who chooses to grasp that which he desires.
-=====|==
Macander’s muscles tensed as if his brother Theris had just punched him in the gut. He forced a gasping breath and scrambled over the rocks to Karux.
Blood matted Karux’s hair, covering his face and the rock on which he lay. His skin looked pale and felt cool when Macander prodded him, urging him to awake.
A strangled scream rose in Macander’s throat. He turned, emptied his meager breakfast on the ground, and with a last horrified glance at Karux, ran screaming for the men’s camp. He covered the ground between, the same ground he had taken more than half the day to cross, in what seemed only a couple of minutes.
“Help! Help! Karux is hurt!” He screamed as he approached the camp. The men sitting around the fire bolted upright as he neared. Feeling like a foolish child, the tears began to flow at the site of his father and uncle and the other men of the village. “Karux is hurt,” he bawled, “I think he might be d-d-dead.” His father and Uncle Arrain stood at his side instantly.
“Where is he?” Uncle Arrain's calm voice was rough with suppressed urgency.
“He’s—he’s—” Macander choked out before drowning in fresh sobbing and pointed toward the sacred mountain. “He’s that way.”
Arrain grabbed him by the shoulders. “Show us!”
Macander ran back the way he came, the men loping silently beside him as he stumbling through the tear blinded landscape to the rock on which Karux lay sprawled.
Arrain gathered his son in his arms with a choking sob, calling out to Karux. Naipho knelt next to him with one arm on Arrain, and the other hand pressed against Karux’s neck. After a moment he spoke quietly in Arrain’s ear, “I think I feel a pulse.”
Naipho took Karux’s body from his grief-stricken father and stretched it out on the stone and laid an ear to the boy’s chest. He listened for a long moment then looked up with a grave expression. “I think I hear a heartbeat, but it’s very weak.”
The two men stared at Karux’s unmoving form for a moment, and then Arrain scooped up the body and rose to his feet. “I’m taking him to his mother.”
Macander watched Arrain cradle Karux’s limp body and remembered Arrain’s wife was buried back in their village of Korion-Garanth. She had died years ago attempting to birth Karux’s sister. Karux, himself, was all that Arrain had left of his wife.
“Uh, it’s at least a three day journey to Korion-Garanth and it’s nearly nightfall now,” Naipho said.
Arrain turned away, one lifeless arm dangling behind him. “I’m taking him home.”
“He’s going to die before you get there. He won’t even last the night.”
Arrain stopped and glared back over his shoulder.
For one horrible moment Macander feared Arrain would say something so angry and hateful that his brother would never forgive him, but he just turned away.
“We’re going home.”
Other boys appeared, responding to Macander’s earlier cries for help. They called to each other, the speaking ban forgotten as they ran up to the knot of grim-faced men, only to fall silent at the sight of the blood splattered rock. Everyone watched Arrain carry Karux to the distant hills, not speaking until he had disappeared into the brush.
“What happened?” Theris whispered, looking at his father and the other men with wide frightened eyes.
“Karux fell,” Naipho said and walked away.
Theris looked at the blood covered rock, then up the wall of stone behind him. “From the sacred mountain?”
The men left for camp. Most of the boys disappeared back into the wilds.
Theris followed Macander. “But how is that even possible?”
“I don’t know.” Macander stopped at the fallen antelope and grabbed its horns. “Help me drag this back to camp.”
Theris looked back and forth between Macander and the antelope in astonishment.
-=====|==
When Amantis returned to the village with the men and their sons, it buzzed with the news of how Arrain had walked all day and night back to the korion with Karux’s body in his arms. Though he found the idea of Karux impending death mildly interesting, the single-minded focus on Karux’s health and Arrain’s grief irritated him. Learning Karux had not in fact actually died, he felt somehow cheated which only increased his ill temper. Had their positions been reversed and he was the one lying broken in bed, possibly dying, he had no illusions the event would not have largely passed unnoticed.
Amantis prowled around the circle of crude stone huts comprising his adopted tribe’s village. No, he thought. Not adopted. He had no intention of staying there one day longer than he absolutely had to. He only needed a way of escape, some resource he could use to provide for himself in the cities of the plain. Amantis squeezed the stone hidden in a hastily fashioned pouch of rabbit skin hanging from his belt. As he walked, he eyed his neighbors’ animal paddocks and tools, the sum total of what passed for wealth in their backwards korion.
He had no memory of the city from which he’d come. He’d been too young when his father had tossed him out like a deformed animal that needed to be culled from the herd. But he was certain their buildings were bigger, their clothes were better and everyone was wealthier and smarter than in this simple herders’ village.
“Hey, Manless! What have you got in the skin?”
Amantis braced himself for Pronos’ attack of humor. Pronos and his brother Somek were older and loved to amuse themselves at the expense of anyone younger or weaker than themselves. He gripped the bag more firmly. “A stone,” he said.
“A stone? Decided you’re tired of sucking at slinging? Give it up. You’ll never be any good.”
“No,” Amantis replied derisively. “You know I do not play your stupid goat-turd games. Besides, it’s not that kind of stone. It’s a seer stone.”
“A seer stone? What’s that mean? Does it have eyes?”
“No. It helps you see things–visions–things you can’t see with your eyes.”
“Hey! Somek!” Pronos called. His brother paused in his throwing pebbles at the neighbor’s chickens. “Manless here says he’s got some sort of eyeball stone.”
“Eyeball stone? What’s it do?”
“He says you can see things with it.”
“Hit him in the head with it and he’ll see stars. Ha ha!”
“Show it to us,” Pronos insisted. “Let’s see it.”
“Yeah, hand it here.” Somek stepped up uncomfortably close and towered over Amantis.
Amantis took a step back, preparing to run. “I can’t. The stone can’t see the light.”
“I thought you said it was a seeing stone,” Pronos sneered.
“The light will hurt it. You can only look at it in the dark.”
“You won’t see much then,” Somek laughed.
“If it can only be in the dark, how did you even find it?” Pronos ask skeptically.
“It whispered to me.”
“Whispered?”
“Yes, I found it in a cave at the base of the sacred mountain.”
Pronos and Somek took an involuntary step back and exchanged puzzled looks. “You found this on the sacred mountain?”
“In it, yes.”
They frowned at him for a long moment; then Somek burst out laughing. “I think Manless is spewing crap at us again.” He punched Pronos on the shoulder. “I can’t believe you fell for it.”
“Aw, I didn’t believe him.” Pronos rubbed at his arm. “Everyone knows he’s full of crap anyway.”
Rage flared up in Amantis. He hated not being believed, especially on those occasions when he had no intention of manipulating anyone. He was simply telling them what had happened.
“I’ll prove it to you,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Come back tonight, after sundown. Ask any question you like, any secret you’d like exposed, any lost thing you’d like found, and it will give the answer.”
“Yeah, maybe you can use it to find your missing manhood,” Somek laughed as they walked away.
“Any question!” he shouted after them across the commons. “I can reveal anyone’s secret!” A dozen people going about their business paused to look at Amantis. Pronos and Somek just laughed. “Come back tonight!” Amantis shouted, his voice breaking in frustration.
-=====|==
Singing. A woman singing a gentle lullaby. Was it his mother? Warm darkness, a cool moist cloth on the forehead and pain, distant angry pain gnawing sleepily at knees, elbows, ribs and back, threatening to wake at any moment to tear his body apart. A pressure on his head like a heavy rock pressing down. Only the gentle touch of a soft hand against his face brought any relief.
Karux opened his eyes. The light brought more pain as it stabbed into his brain. Blinking the world into focus, he forgot his pain as Charissa, the most beautiful girl in the world, smiled sweetly down at him.
He had known her all his life, but it in recent months things had become awkward between them as it became obvious that they were no longer quite children. The other boys may have preferred larger, plumper girls, but Karux saw a certain grace in her slight build that other girls seemed to lack. He had been outraged to learn that Charissa’s great aunt had once suggested that the girl’s slight build, her light auburn curls and lightly tanned skin meant that Charissa would grow to be a sickly child and that she should have been exposed to the elements, or at least forbidden to marry and have children. Karux felt her appearance made her stand out from the nearly uniform brown skin and straight black hair of the rest of their tribe, like a flower among a bunch of brown weeds. He especially appreciated her bright hazel eyes flashing over the freckled ridge of her perpetually sun burned nose and cheeks. He would have loved to tell her these things as he stared breathlessly into her eyes, but somehow the words would never come out and his own cheeks burned red with embarrassment.
“Theris!” she bellowed, making his ears ring. “He’s awake! Go tell Arrain!”
Karux’s voice croaked, “Where am I?” He saw a roof over his head. “Did I miss the festival?”
“Oh, Karux!” Charissa threw herself across him, hugging him and sobbing into his chest. The joy and novelty of the experience fought with the protests from his ribs. “We thought you were dead! You’ve been asleep for days and you wouldn’t wake up.”
“There, there,” he tried to comfort her, patting her awkwardly with one free hand as she lay across him sobbing, pinning his elbows against his sides. “I’m well enough now. I’ll soon mend.”
She sobbed against him for a while; the smell of her hair warmed and comforted him like fresh bread. Karux ignored his complaining ribs, holding his breath in an agony of pleasure. She finally rose, brushing back her long hair and wiping at her tears.
He longed to do that, if only to touch her face tenderly, but feared he would look silly, like a child pretending to be a man, unaware of how foolish he looked.
“I can’t tell you how worried we were,” she sniffed and took his hand, then paused to stare at his clenched fist.
“Do you have something in your hand?”
Karux raised his right hand and willed it to open, yet it remained tightly clenched, enclosing some small hard object. How was it possible, he wondered, that his hand wouldn’t obey him? He grabbed his resistant fingers with his left hand and pulled, his growing fear helping him to push past the pain. Slowly the fingers relented and a glittering stone fell out onto the blanket. As clear as water, with smooth straight edges, the stone caught a stray beam of light and Karux’s world went white.
He remembered a vast cave of light so intense the shadows seemed to have been blasted from the rocks themselves. He remembered a presence, an awareness that examined him inside and out as a man in the river markets might inspect a garment he considered buying. He remembered an encircling, swirling cloud of countless millions of bright and glittering creatures of wind and flame and mist. And he remembered the future unrolled before him like a tapestry as he was shown horrible things. He saw—
Bazma, fully grown, lying in Macander’s arms. “Don’t let me be buried in a foreign land,” he gasped, bright blood oozing between Macander’s fingers from a hole under his ribs.
They were both dressed in strange clothes, carrying spears and a large disc like the lid to a wicker basket wrapped in hardened leather.
“We’re the only ones left who remember the hills of the Pelahi,” Bazma said.
“There’s always Karux,” Macander replied.
Bazma’s laugh turned into a horrible eruption of gurgling coughs and bright blood spilled from his mouth. “Karux has been to the top of the mountain. He sees nothing else, not even the ground he stands on.”
“True.”
And he saw—
A field plowed as if for the spring planting, but sown with the dismembered bodies of men while man-shaped beasts with horns and claws lapped the blood flowing between the rows.
And—
Charissa, lying naked in a fancy bed, her belly ripped open, her blood soaking the sheets and pooling on the floor. “I had always hoped my child would have been yours, Karux.” She sucked in a great shuddering gulp of air. “Promise me you will kill it.”
A despairing scream rose up somewhere in the distance and everything went black.