The new city forming at the base of Har-Tor had grown. Two house-lined streets arced across the lower gate behind a wall of stone the dwerka had constructed simply to have a place to put the excavated rock as much as for the new city's defense. They had also carved new towers and buildings directly out of the sides of the mountain though, by long dwerkan custom, only the upper gate led to the city within.
Karux found the bald elder, Jomel, just inside the city wall speaking to the leader of a wagon train bearing lumber. Karux caught his attention as he directed the drivers where to take their loads and he ran over to give Karux a bear-hug.
"Karux! It is good to see you again. How go things in the south?"
"Not well."
Jomel noticed the battered Kaelis listing on the back of his donkey. "What's happened?"
Karux held up Kaelis' beast helm. "We've solved the mystery of the beastmen."
"So they are real?"
"Yes. However they are but the tip of a long spear pointed at our throat. A spear that reaches all the way back to Nur." Karux handed him the beast helm and Jomel turned it over in his hands frowning. "I must speak with the elders. We have to call up the spears."
"I will speak to Gerron," Jomel said. "We'll hold a council of elders. But first let me see you to some rooms where you can rest and refresh yourselves." With a gesture, he led the way up the road to the high gate and city in the mountain.
-=====|==
Jomel returned to wake him before the evening meal. It seemed the elders had heard rumors of the beastmen attacking other villages and were eager to see his captive.
"This is all new?" Karux asked Jomel as they walked down a corridor decorated in carved relief of geometric shapes made from wheat and barley in which images of cows, pigs, sheep and shepherds were cleverly hidden.
"Yes. They decorate their own keuthmone with larger-than-life sized carvings of their heroes and great leaders. They didn't know our histories so they improvised."
Jomel led them to a strange room with nine doors which all let out to the same encircling corridor. "Dwerkan cities are governed by a council of nine guild-masters and so they've provided the elders of Har-Tor a similar council chamber."
Entering the room, the scale of the small dwerka's construction again impressed Karux. They had hewn the room from the rock in the shape of a stoma, a perfect sphere. A series of tiers had been carved into the lower half of the sphere while in the middle of the room, rising to a point just short of the equator, stood a stone dais, surrounded by a series of steps. A circle of nine enormous chairs remained on the top of the dais, still attached to the rock from which they had been carved.
Jomel led the way up the dais' stairs and sat in a chair next to Gerron. Karux followed, standing in the center of the stone circle despite only six of the chairs being occupied. Phylax dragged a ragged Kaelis up the steps on a leash like a reluctant goat. They had placed the beastman's helm on his head but it fell as Phylax jerked him over the last step and Kaelis landed on his hands and knees before the elders. The helm rolled up against Kapalos' foot. He bent and picked it up. "So this is a beastman?"
Karux heard the scorn in his voice and feared he may have miscalculated. "This is but one of scores of men who attack in the night slaying men, women and children, stealing animals and food and burning koria all along the border of the blighted lands."
Kaelis rose and stood swaying as the elders examined him critically.
Sidaro folded his arms, examining him. "He doesn't look that tough to me."
"More than tough enough to slaughter unarmed farmers."
"I thought you were recruiting in the south?" Kapalos asked.
"We are. But there are not enough men to guard each korion. We need more men."
"That won't be easy," Hasamo's deep voice rumbled. "The northmen have all returned to Pelavale to rebuild herds and families. We train many young men here when they are old enough to hold a spear, but they are also needed to plow and plant and harvest. They are willing to defend their homes if attacked, but not many will make that sacrifice for strange and distant koria."
Kaelis threw back his head, laughter ricocheting from the stone walls of the chamber. "Gather all the men from here to the frozen north; it will do you no good! The oracle of the Most High has amassed the men from a hundred koria. Those too old or too young to fight push plows and harvest crops for the oracle. Even the women make spears for his vast soreavs. When that host comes north, you'll wish you were back in your mountains having your little tussle with the angorym!"
As Kaelis laughed, the elders gave Karux worried and questioning looks.
Karux nodded.
-=====|==
Theris swung the massive scythe, enjoying the pull of muscles across his back and shoulders as he cut down huge swaths of wheat with each swing. The men of the village were on the far side of the field singing a harvest song as they mowed wheat with smaller bronze sickles. At midday, their wives came out to the fields bearing baskets of food and jars of beer.
Theris put down his scythe and wiped the sweat from his brow, turning toward the smiling Asophra as she gave him a kiss. He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close.
"Ew! You're all sweaty," she said.
He stole another kiss. "Not as sweaty as I'm going to be."
"Here," she handed him the jar of beer. "This should cool you down."
Theris took several swallows and sighed his pleasure. "It will merely bank the coals so they may burn all the brighter this evening." He smiled suggestively.
"Come. Let us retire to the shade," she said formally as if unmoved by his hinting.
"A most excellent suggestion." Theris picked up his scythe and followed her to a tree at the edge of the field under which she spread a blanket and began laying out food.
"You know, you don't really have to out-mow the entire korion."
Theris laughed. "They issued the challenge. Besides, it's hardly a fair contest." He propped the scythe up against the tree. "With this thing, I can do the work of a half-dozen men with each sweep."
Asophra looked nervously up over her shoulder at the thing behind her.
The adamantine blade was smoky gray and partially translucent as if the strange metal might contain hidden depths. Compared to the bronze sickles the other farmers wielded, his scythe seemed absurdly long and thin, yet he knew the elemental blade would never bend or break or even dull.
Asophra shuddered as she looked at it. "Still, I wish they hadn't given it to you. It looks dangerous. It looks like it would cut through anything. Please be careful. I fear you will hurt yourself."
Theris laughed. "Yes, I suppose this dwerkan blade could cut through just about anything. But look how straight my cuts are! It never goes but where I tell it."
After their meal Asophra returned to the village and the men returned to their mowing, their chants echoing across the fields as the sun slid into late afternoon. The sky had threatened rain so the mowers were determined to bring in all the grain they could before the last of the light failed them.
Theris paused to drink some tepid water from a drinking gourd and to catch his breath before the final push, when a casual glance over his shoulder revealed a giant column of thick black smoke rising from the village.
Dropping his scythe, he turned and shouted "fire!" to the mowers on the far side of the field. By the time he turned back, two more columns of smoke coiled upwards and, as he watched in stunned horror, a fourth billowed into the sky.
Theris ran. As the village pounded into view, he saw a dozen houses engulfed in flames and still bodies lying in the street. Even the animals had not been spared for as he stopped before his house he saw a dog lying in the street with a gaping wound under the ribcage. It lay in a pool of blood, a second wound near the neck as if the animal had been impaled like a scare-crow on the end of a spear.
The door to his house lay smashed on the floor and Theris could see from the street the over-turned and broken furniture. He started to go inside, but as he watched the breeze play fitfully with the window curtains, he knew he would not find his family within.
A large spray of red stained the doorpost as if someone had smashed an over-ripe melon against it, small bits of red flesh still clinging to the rough wood. At its base lay one of Thysia's dolls, wrapped in one of baby Dorea's blankets.
Theris staggered backwards, suddenly dizzy as if the ground had slipped out from under his feet.
That wasn't a doll lying at the base of the doorpost.
He blinked again at the dead thing at his feet. He couldn't understand how it was possible, but the body in the road was his son, Garick.
-=====|==
Charissa sat on the sill of her room's window feeling the warm sun at her back and listening to the cries of the people below demanding Amantis feed them, protect them and take care of them. Having been cut off from all outside contact except for Garanth and her new maid, Lalein, Charissa longed to look outside to learn what was happening.
In the six months from that terrible day when Amantis dragged her down into the cellar to be attacked, she had made the mistake of looking out the window only twice. When she had first awakened after the attack, she had turned to the window with vague thoughts of escape or suicide. The sight of the message Amantis had left on a post in the courtyard below had left her senseless on the floor. The second time, a month ago, a casual careless glimpse at the top of the post rising just above her windowsill struck her like the hammer fall of fate.
Sphal's head had decayed in the intervening five months. His eyeless sockets and pleading grimace gleamed bone-white beneath the sun-tanned strips of dried flesh. His soft hair, curiously unchanged, fluttered in the weak and fitful breeze as if trying to catch her attention and the attention of the guards below to warn them to not defy Amantis.
Lalein bustled through the door with a basket of folded sheets. "Laundry day! I need your small clothes and any dresses you want washed."
Lalein was a chunky young girl somewhere around fourteen years old, exactly the sort the young boys Charissa had known would have desired. She wondered idly whether Amantis was already sleeping with her and decided she didn't care.
Lalein set the clean clothes on a chair and began gathering up the dirty linen.
"Hello, Lalein."
Lalein looked up at Charissa and screwed up her round face. "I really wish you wouldn't sit there with that ghastly thing behind you."
"I suppose you would close the shutters and spend your days in a lightless box? I'm sure I'd please Amantis if I did that."
"Well—"
"But I've had my fill of darkness and have come to long for the light."
"I don't know that anything will please your husband right now."
"Oh?"
"I probably shouldn't say this...," Lalein picked up one of the dirty bed sheets and began nervously folding them. "But your husband has grown quite irritable and distracted. He demands things, then when they are brought to him, berates the person for bothering him and doesn't seem to remember his previous demands. He whispers to that black pouch of his and mutters to himself. He speaks frequently of his children in the cellar, forbids anyone from entering it, and drags all the best food down there. He's led live goats through the house and down in to the cellar! Can you believe that? And then he returns without them. Who knows what he does with them down there." She paused, lowering the sheet to her lap. "I hope they don't ask me to clean that up. It must be a frightful mess down there by now."
A guilty memory flitted through Charissa's memory. Amantis touched her hand, warning her that Karux's stone was destroying his mind and promising to help.
"It's driven him mad," she muttered.
"Pardon?"
Charissa eyed Lalein, evaluating how much she could trust her. "The stone, which he keeps in that pouch, has driven him mad."
"Think you so?"
"I know it is so. We had a friend once, who had a similar stone. He thought it showed him visions of the future, but it drove him mad. Amantis thought he was strong enough to use his stone and now his mind is broken."
Lalein's wide eyes shimmered with unshed tears. "Oh! But that's terrible."
Charissa tried to hide her scorn as she looked at the girl. "You've said they send you all over the house doing errands. Do you often see Amantis?"
Lalein shrugged. "I suppose. I try to stay out of his way, though."
"Does he always have the pouch on him?"
"Yes, always. Except... on those mornings he goes out into the city, he likes to bathe before dinner." She turned away blushing. "He says it relaxes him.
"Does he remove the pouch then?"
Lalein nodded, still averting her eyes, though she wore a nervous smile. "He makes me draw his water. He likes to undress while I'm in the room."
Good Lord! Charissa thought. The foolish girl is actually flattered by his attention. "Could someone take the pouch unnoticed while he is bathing?"
"I suppose."
"Could you do it?"
Lalein jerked her head up. "Oh! But I'd be too afraid to do that!" She cast a nervous glance at the window and Sphal's head on his pole beyond.
"That—," Charissa indicated Sphal's head with a nod of her own, "was caused by his stone. If it is not stopped, it will have all our heads on posts."
Lalein bit her lower lip. "Yes, but, I don't know if I could do that."
Charissa took a deep breath, hoping Lalein was as naïve as she had been six years ago. "If you care about him, you must." She could almost hear Amantis' voice echoing up from the past as she repeated his lies. "If we don't, the stone will destroy his mind."
"Can you stop it?"
"I know how, but you will need to take it without his noticing, and bring it to me."
Lalein fidgeted with one frayed edge of the dirty linen lying neatly folded in her lap. After a long thoughtful moment, she nodded.
Charissa smiled. Movement in her swollen belly brought back a touch of her earlier nausea. It moved again and she broke out in a cold sweat.
The thing inside her had quickened.