The Stone King
By J. A. Partridge
Chapter One
Thirteen years before the founding of the first kingdom
Ten-year-old Garanth held his sister Eiraena's hand and followed their father down the dusty trail, listening to the insects chirp his name.
"Ga-ranth. Ga-ranth. Ga-ranth."
"Help us. Help us. Help us."
Eiraena stumbled, jerking Garanth to a halt. Though she had spent the morning staring off into the dried grass and shrub-covered foothills of the Pelahi Mountains, the sixteen-year-old girl looked around in sudden alarm, as if seeing the landscape for the first time. Throughout the four years of wandering from village to village, Garanth's father, Karux, had always told him to stay close to her and that she was in charge of him. Except that, for the last couple of years, he'd begun to suspect the reverse was true. Most people called her simple-minded. When Garanth asked his father why she was different, a strange look of awe and doubt had crossed Karux's face. "Eiraena sees the world that really is. She sees this world as little more than light and shadows."
Garanth tugged on Eiraena's hand.
"Help us. Help us. Help us."
Karux had continued on down the path. Despite leaning on a staff and limping on a bad leg he had managed to leave them behind. Garanth pulled on Eiraena's hand, trying to hurry her. Hot, tired and thirsty, he called out, if only to slow his father down. "Adra! How much further to the next korion?"
Karux stopped and looked back as Garanth had hoped. "Just beyond those trees, past that far hill...."
Garanth pulled harder on Eiraena's hand as she stumbled along.
"...and don't call me Adra."
"But Uncle Mac calls you my foster father."
"That just means I have to take care of you. That doesn't mean we're related. And don't call Macander 'Uncle'. You have no relations and he's no longer anyone's uncle," Karux added in a bitter note.
"But Madra said—"
"Let's not talk about her," Karux snapped.
They didn't have to. Garanth could tell from the far-away look in Karux's eyes that he was remembering the same thing: the day they first met.
Garanth's mother lay naked in her bed. Blood had soaked her sheets and pooled on the floor. A strange man knelt beside her, his face a study in grief carved in pale stone—exactly as it was now.
"Come here, Garanth."
He had walked over to touch his mother's hair, the only part of her not covered in blood.
"Garanth, honey, this is your new Adra."
Garanth looked up at Karux. In the four years since that day, Karux seemed to have aged twenty. His young beard had filled in and settled into the folds of a permanent scowl. The sun had tanned and lined his skin and his endless searching from korion to korion had thinned his flesh, wrapping it tightly over the bones of his face. His eyes, however, remained sharp and snapped to a fierce focus at a point behind Garanth.
Garanth looked back. A line of beetles stretched hundreds of yards northward, following with slow determination.
"Let's get moving," Karux said.
Approaching the village, Garanth noticed many women and children working in the fields or tending the fishing nets along the riverbank. Their fields spread out for a mile or two along the river, their rows radiating out from a tight circle of stone and timber buildings. A few men worked alongside them, but not many. If their hands tightened on their hoes or their fishing knives at the sight of the three travelers, they did not pause in their labors, but merely kept a wary eye on them.
A handful of elders, too old to work the fields or the river—though they didn't appear much older than some who were doing so—sat in the shade of an old oak near the village's entrance, drinking, smoking and talking. The youngest of their number looked up and gave Karux a gap-toothed smile as the three neared.
"Welcome, strangers, to Korion Iscuron. If you be of good will, tell us your names, from where you come and to where you're going and how we may help you on your way."
Garanth's father halted and leaned on his staff. "My name is Karux. I come from Har-Tor."
The elders glanced at the clear stone, which hung from Karux' neck on a braid of human hair. Surprise and awe rippled through their expressions, but for the most part, their faces compressed into narrow lines of suspicion and disapproval.
"Greetings, Oracle," said the first speaker. "What word do you have for us? I hope it is a good one."
Karux shrugged. "The words I have are the words that are. Whether they are good or not is, in large part, up to you."
The speaker rose, a strained smile on his face. "And what would you ask of us?"
"I seek aid in lifting the curse from the land."
Another elder rose quickly, his tone polite though indignation trembled through his small tense frame. "Our men left with The Hunter during your conflict with the oracle of the south. Very few came back."
"It is not your men I wish to see. It is your children."
"Our children?"
"You would take our children, arm them and make them fight for you?" an elder in the back of the group cried out before his outrage choked him to silence.
"No. At least," Karux paused thoughtfully, "the fight is not with weapons made by man, but with the mind."
"What are you talking about?" The eldest of the elders demanded. "Speak more clearly."
"Before I killed him, the oracle of the south gave the spirits of the land over to the n'kroi."
The elders shuddered and made warding gestures at the mention of the spirits of the Void.
"The elementals are being consumed. The land is dying." Karux looked past the elders at the villagers going about their business. "I am seeking out the brightest and most clever children in the land in the hope that I might be able to teach a few my..., er, craft."
The elders glanced at Garanth who blushed. His father had tried to teach him the craft, but he had never managed the trick of perception that would allow him to see the world's true shape. He glanced down at Eiraena crouching in the dust, running it through her hand. She rocking back and forth, muttering strange guttural nonsense. He knew the elders would never believe him if he were to tell them that she had taught Karux the secrets of karis.
"And what craft is that?" the leader of the elders asked suspiciously.
"The names and shapes of the elements. I would teach them to your children so that they may help defend the land and stop the blight."
"You speak of the poles with the carvings, which you put in the fields?" the gap-toothed elder asked.
"That is a part of it, yes."
The eldest gave a low and knowing chuckle. "Perhaps you should see how well your craft works before you seek to teach it to others."
"Why? What do you mean?"
"Only that you should make certain it is worth teaching, before you presume to teach it."
"Show me."
* * *
Half an hour later, they stood in the middle of the village's southernmost fields. Around them, the first green shoots of the season rose up. Yet a few yards away, a clear line of stunted brown growth extended to the southern horizon.
"A couple of years ago, the blight was only at the edge of the fields," the gap-toothed elder said. "Now it is halfway to our houses and it is accelerating. As it is, we're forced to eat mostly fish and mudkips. In another year or two, we'll have to leave the korion."
Karux strode out into the brittle remains of the field. A weathered wooden pole leaned precariously in the dry sandy soil. Symbols carved into the splintered wood covered the thick pole. He bent and ran a hand over the cracked and weathered surface. "It's been altered."
"We've not touched it," the elder assured him. "Only the sun and wind and rain have touched it."
"No." Karux agreed. "No hands have changed it. The blight itself has changed the pattern."
The elder bent and peered at the carvings, but Garanth knew his father was not referring to those. He was referring to the shapes in the real world that Garanth's own limited perceptions saw as mere weathered wood. Admittedly, the wood looked ancient, not like a post that had been planted in a field only four years ago, but Garanth could make nothing else out of it. He glanced at Eiraena who peered at the post with her nose almost touching it, then veered away, running and giggling as if she were following some winding thread southward across the field.
"No Eiraena!" Karux called out. "That will not help us."
To Garanth's surprise, she stopped and stood staring into the distance, southward.
Karux faced the elder. "I can replace the poles, which may slow the blight down, but if this is going to be undone, I'll need help."
The elder shrugged, then nodded. "Perhaps we best get back."
* * *
They stayed that night in one of the elder's houses while the beetles cried out Garanth's name and pleaded for his help. The next morning the elders brought forward those children they thought the cleverest and most thoughtful. Karux spent time talking to them and drawing lines in the dust, which he asked them to repeat. Only one seemed to show any ability to do it well.
"This is Netac," the chief elder said as he pushed a tall skinny child forward. Netac was probably about fourteen years old. He was at least four years older than Garanth. Like all the rest of the people, he had a deep brown tan and straight black hair, though his hair tended to stand out in spiky clumps like a hedgehog. As the elder explained how Netac was the youngest son of his second child and how he was a good and obedient boy even if he asked too many questions, Netac watched them with quiet dark eyes that darted to and from Karux' stone.
Karux gave Netac a knowing smile. "Let's talk. Shall we?" He led Netac to the nearby shade of the house in which they had stayed and sat in the dust. Netac followed and knelt attentively. Garanth couldn't hear much that followed but he knew from previous such conversations the type of questions Karux would ask, questions like, "Have you ever heard a sound that you knew did not occur outside your head?" and, "Have you ever stared at nothing until you saw something?" He would ask them if they ever wondered about the true nature of things and go on to discuss light and shadow and how shadows were imperfect representations of a larger and more real reality. Eventually they got on to drawing the lines in the sand and, though he hesitated at first, Netac quickly reproduced them with precision.
"Ga-ranth. Ga-ranth. Ga-ranth."
As they talked the beetles grew louder, crying for help from all around the circle of houses. Eiraena leaned against the house, dragging a long thin stick across the white plastered stones and listening to the sounds it made.
"So...," the elder began, breaking the awkward silence. "Have you been with the oracle long?"
"Since my madra died," Garanth replied.
The elder didn't ask for clarification. He rocked back and forth on his heels, watching Karux and his grandson talking. "What kind of a man would you say he is?"
Garanth looked at the man he called his father and realized he'd never considered that question. He'd seen plenty of fathers that were both more and less loving than Karux and more and less strict. Karux kept them fed and clothed, but that was about it. He tolerated them, allowing Garanth and Eiraena to follow him around as he searched for potential students, but if they were to decide to leave, would Karux even try to stop them?
"Save us! Save us! Save us!"
Garanth realized the elder was awaiting his reply. "He's...very busy."
The elder nodded thoughtfully. "Busy is good. A man should be productive."
After another long moment, Karux rose and strode towards the elder. "I think he'll do."
"Do what?"
"I think he can learn the craft. Who knows, he might even replace me as oracle someday."
The elder frowned. "Do you intend to take him with you?"
"To Har-Tor. Yes," Karux said.
"I don't know if his parents will agree to that."
"Tell me what they want. I'm sure we can pay."
The elder straightened. "You can't just trade a boy like a goat, you know! A son is both a comfort and a support in a man's old age."
"You told me his father had five sons and three daughters."
"Yes, yes." The elder waved away his objections. "But he is their youngest."
"Well, tell them their youngest may be the one to lift this curse and save this korion if they let him learn how."
"Very well," the elder grumbled.
"You know, in the cities, parents eagerly pay craftsmen to teach their sons a craft."
The elder scowled back. "That's not how we do things here."
"Go talk to them. I wish to leave for Har-Tor by noon."
"GARANTH!" The insects' chirping swelled in a crescendo of millions of chitinous exoskeletons rubbing against each other. A dark green-black wave of jeweled wing casings poured from the nearby brush and piled up into a knee-high mound. The flood of beetles grew into a mound the height of a small child. A bulge like a head and shoulders formed at the top, and something like a hand formed and reached out toward them. "SAVE US!"
A rock flew into their midst, and the pile exploded into a thundering buzzing cloud.
Karux straightened, dusting off his hands. He glared at Garanth and Netac. "Do not listen to them. We will help if we can, but if you let them, they will consume you with their need."
With a horrified look, the elder ran off to talk to Netac's parents.