Authors: R.A. Salvatore
“Six generations,” Master Jojonah explained, after he had given Avelyn several quiet minutes in which to study the fabulous chart. “Or nearly,” he added when Avelyn turned to him. “A hundred and seventy-three years will pass between each of the offerings.”
“Offerings?”
“The stone showers,” Jojonah explained. “Consider yourself blessed, my novice friend, for you live in a time of the showers.”
Avelyn breathed hard and stared again at the chart, as if expecting little lines of falling stones to appear between the Halo and Corona.
“Have you ever witnessed one of the stones at work?” Jojonah asked suddenly, drawing Avelyn from his contemplations. The young man stared at him wide-eyed with hope and eagerness, his hands clenching and opening at his sides.
Jojonah pointed to a case near to the middle of the room, and motioned for Avelyn to approach it. As soon as his back was turned to the master, Avelyn heard a click from the wall and suspected that Jojonah had thrown some sort of lever, probably hidden within the tapestry of the star charts, to unlock the case. The master soon joined him at the case and slowly slid back the glass top.
There were several various stones within, all smooth and polished. Jojonah’s hand reached for one of two of the shiny gray stones. “The soul stones,” he explained. “Hematite, by name.” He held the stone tightly in his right hand, then reached back in with his left and took out a different gem, mostly clear, but with a slight shading of yellow-green. “Chrysoberyl,” he said. “A stone of protection, in this clear form. Always a wise choice when dealing with the dark hematite!”
Avelyn didn’t really understand, but he was too overwhelmed by all of this to think of interrupting with a question.
Jojonah dropped the chrysoberyl into the pocket of his thick robe and moved far from Avelyn, facing the younger man directly. “Count to ten,” he instructed, “that I might have time to cast the enchantment. Then place your hands behind your back and raise your fingers, however many you choose, in a slow and clear sequence of seven distinct numbers. Take care to remember your sequence!”
The master closed his eyes and began to softly chant. Avelyn hesitated for a moment, trying to digest the newest information. He collected himself quickly and did as instructed, alternating the number of raised fingers behind his back. Through it all, Master Jojonah continued his soft chant, his eyes never fluttering, all of his body seeming locked in place.
A moment later, the master opened his eyes. “Seven, three, six, five, five, two, and eight,” Jojonah said, seeming quite pleased with himself.
“You heard what was within my mind!” Avelyn gasped.
“No,” Jojonah quickly corrected. “I left my physical body and ventured behind you. I merely watched as you raised your fingers.”
Avelyn started to respond but held the thought private, though his labored breath and incredulous expression revealed volumes.
“Not so hard a task!” Master Jojonah said suddenly, exploding with delight. “The hematite is a powerful tool, among the most powerful stones of all. Using it to walk out of body barely touches at the edge of its true magic. Anyone trained in the stones could do it. Why even you . . .” Jojonah’s voice trailed off, a tease that anxious Avelyn could not ignore.
“Brother Avelyn,” the master said in all seriousness a moment later, “would you care to try?”
Before he could even begin to consider the offer, Avelyn nodded so forcefully that he was sure he must have looked incredibly simple. His feet, too, were moving before his conscious thought could stop them, as if he were being drawn to the stone.
Jojonah nearly laughed aloud at the spectacle, and held forth the hematite. Avelyn reached for it, but the master pulled it back.
“It is a powerful stone,” the master said somberly, “one that could put you somewhere you do not belong. Take care in your travels, my young friend, for you may soon be lost!”
Avelyn retracted his hand a few inches, wondering if he was being a bit foolish here. The temptation was too strong, though, and he reached out again, and this time, Jojonah let him take the hematite.
Its feel was impossibly smooth, almost liquid. It was heavier than Avelyn had expected, quite solid and dense. He ran his fingers over it repeatedly, felt something deeper within it, a place of mystery, of magic. He looked to Jojonah and saw that the master was clutching the chrysoberyl close to his heart.
“It will prevent our spirits from crossing,” Jojonah explained. “That would not be a wise choice.”
Avelyn nodded and backed off a few steps. Jojonah put his free hand behind his back. “All in your due time,” he said softly. “I will know when you are in the hold of the magic, and then I will begin.”
Avelyn hardly heard him. Already the young monk was falling into the depths of the stone. To his rubbing fingers, the hematite felt truly liquid then, and inviting. Avelyn stared at it for a long while, then closed his eyes, but saw it still. It was expanding before him, engulfing his hands, then his arms. Then he was falling, falling.
He resisted, and the hematite receded dramatically, almost forcing him from the trance. But Avelyn caught his fears in time and started the journey once more.
His hands were gone, then his arms. Then all was gray, then black.
Avelyn stepped out of his body. He looked back and saw himself standing there, holding the stone. He turned back to Jojonah, saw most distinctly the chrysoberyl, fiercely glowing and encasing all of the master in a thin white bubble, a ward that Avelyn knew his spirit could not pass.
He started toward Jojonah, giving the man a wide berth. He felt incredibly light, felt as if by will alone he could rise from the ground and fly.
Behind the master, Avelyn watched the sequence of fingers: one, three, two, one, five.
“Go higher,” he heard Master Jojonah prompt.
Avelyn was surprised that he could even hear the voice in this state. He understood the command and willed himself off the ground, drifting effortlessly toward the ceiling.
“There is no physical barrier that can stop you,” Jojonah remarked. “No barriers at all. Have you seen the roof? There is something on the roof that you should know.”
Despite the thrill, Avelyn flinched as he drifted through the room’s ceiling. He marveled at the loose structure of the wood, at the density of the higher rooms tile floor.
There were several monks, men a few years Avelyn’s senior, in the chamber above. Avelyn felt himself grinning, felt his physical form in the lower room grinning, as he passed, the men totally oblivious of him.
Then the grin was gone. Something tugged hard at the young monk, some dark temptation that he should enter one of these men, that he could push out the host spirit and possess the body!
He was beyond them before that dangerous notion fully registered, drifting higher, through the next ceiling into an empty room, then through that ceiling and the next and the next and the next, this last one much thicker. Then he was outside, though he felt none of the physical sensations, the warmth of the sun or the chill of the ocean breeze. He saw that he was rising above one of the highest spots of St.-Mere-Abelle, coming right out of the roof. Still he went higher, and Avelyn feared that he would never stop the ascent, that he would drift through the clouds, out to the Halo, the stars. Perhaps he would shine in the heavens above, a fifth light on the girdle of Progos-Behemoth!
He dismissed that ridiculous notion and turned his spirit about, looking at the roof of the abbey. From up here, St.-Mere-Abelle appeared as a thick and stretched snake, winding its way along the top of the sea cliff. Avelyn saw a commotion in the courtyard, far to the side, as a group of young monks labored at the well and with the abbey’s horses and mules.
“Come back,” bade a distant voice, Master Jojonah’s voice, reaching Avelyn through his physical form. The disconnection was not complete, the young monk realized, and he shuddered to think of what a complete break from his own physical form might mean.
Shocked back to his senses, Avelyn turned his attention to the high roof directly below him. He had seen this roof before, from one of the higher points of the abbey, but looking on it from this vantage point revealed a most clever design, an image that could not be seen from a lower angle. Carved into the roof were four arms, two sets, hands lifted high, palms open and holding stones.
The journey back was quicker, until Avelyn got into the room directly above the Ring Stone chamber. This time the temptation of the other bodies pulled at him even harder. He felt himself being drawn in. He pictured the hematite as another living being, commanding him, whispering promises of power into his spiritual ear.
Avelyn felt something touch his hand—not his spiritual hand, but the physical one, the one clutching the stone. He sensed the chrysoberyl again, that magical barrier, and then his spirit was pulled to the floor, through the floor, careening back to his waiting body.
Avelyn nearly jumped when he opened his physical eyes again, seeing Master Jojonah so very close.
“One, three, two, one, five,” the young monk said abruptly, trying to satisfy whatever curiosity held the older man.
Jojonah waved his hand and shook his head, uninterested. “What did you see?” he asked.
Avelyn noted that Jojonah held both stones again, though he didn’t remember giving the hematite back to the man.
“What did you see?” Jojonah pressed, moving even closer.
“Arms,” Avelyn blurted. “Two sets, palms open . . .” Before he could finish, Jojonah fell away, gasping, laughing, crying all at once. Avelyn had never seen such a display, couldn’t begin to decipher it.
“How?” Avelyn asked with enough force to bring Jojonah back to his senses. “The stones,” Avelyn clarified when he had the man’s attention. “How could this be?”
Jojonah launched into a rushed explanation, more the regurgitation of a prepared speech than anything spontaneous. He talked of the humours of the body joining together with the alien humours of the stones to create the seemingly magical reaction. He even compared what had happened to Avelyn with the tablets given to a monk with a stomachache to induce a belch or a fart.
As he listened, Avelyn felt the mystery melting around him. For the first time since they had entered the room, there was no reverence in Master Jojonah’s voice, just the dry lecturing tone of an instructor. Avelyn didn’t buy into it, any of it. He could not explain what had just happened to him, but he knew instinctively that this talk of “alien humours” belittled the experience. There was indeed a mystery here that no tumble of fancy words could lay bare; there was something here of a higher order: Master Jojonah had called the stone showers “offerings,” and to Avelyn, that description seemed exactly wrong. “Graces” was a more appropriate term, the young monk decided there and then. He glanced around the room again, from stone to stone, his reverence of these gifts from God tenfold what it had been when first he had entered the chamber.
“You should be among those select few who make the journey,” Master Jojonah declared, and the weight of the statement drew Avelyn back to him.
“To Pimaninicuit,” Jojonah explained, his grin widening as Avelyn’s brown eyes widened. “You are young and strong and full of God’s voice.”
Tears collected in Avelyn’s eyes and began to stream down his face at the mere thought that he might be among the chosen few to get so very close to the greatest gift of God.
Jojonah dismissed him then and he left the room as if in a trance, overwhelmed indeed.
When he was gone, Master Jojonah replaced the stones, closed the case, then went to the wall and moved the hidden switch to lock it fast. All the while, the master considered the weight of what he had witnessed. A first-year novice should not have been able to activate the magic of the stone, despite what he had told Avelyn about hematite. Even if a novice had managed to fall into the magic, the control should have been above him, a quick and random out of body experience, culminating with a gasping, disbelieving, thoroughly overwhelmed young man.
For Avelyn to control the magic enough to get behind Jojonah’s back and see the finger sequence was incredible. For the young man to use the stones and drift out of the room, out of the abbey, and see the design on the roof was truly amazing. Jojonah would not have believed it possible. The master paused and lamented his own weakness. He had been in St.-Mere-Abelle for more than three decades, and had only been able to use the hematite that way for the last three years!
Jojonah pushed his own self-pity away and smiled about Avelyn. The young monk was a good choice, a God-given choice indeed, to go to Pimaninicuit.
>
CHAPTER 6
>
Carrion Birds
She came back to consciousness never expecting to see the wide sky again. She opened her blue eyes even as she moved her hands in frantic waves, trying to rid the small hole of the thick odor of charred wood.
A slanting ray cut in through the smoke, a single shaft of light that beckoned the girl back to the land of the living. She followed it as if in a dream, gingerly reaching up to touch the piece of lumber that had fallen to partially block the hole.
The wood was warm. Jilseponie understood then that she had been unconscious for a long time. She found she could put her arm against the beam firmly as long as she kept her sleeve between tender flesh and the wood.
The girl pushed hard, but the beam would not give. Stubborn as ever, summoning her rage to bolster her muscles, Pony set her legs under her as firmly as she could and pushed again, with all her might, groaning with the strain.
The sound of her own voice stopped her cold. What if the goblins were still out there? She settled back and sat very still, listening intently, not even daring to breathe.
She heard the cawing of the birds—carrion birds, she knew. But nothing else came to her—not the whimper of a survivor, not the whining, grating voice of a goblin, not the guttural grunts of the fomorian giants.
Just the birds, feeding on the bodies of her fallen friends.
That horrid thought set Pony into violent motion. She set her legs again and pushed with every ounce of strength she had, groaning but too angry to consider the implications of her noise should the goblins still be around.
The beam lifted an inch and shifted to the side, but Pony could not maintain its weight and it came down heavily, with a decidedly final thud. Pony knew that she could not move it again from this new angle, and so she didn’t even try. Now she squirmed and squeezed. She got her arm through, then her head and one shoulder, and held there for a moment, trying to catch her breath, so relieved to have her face, at least, out in the open sunlight once again.
That relief lasted only until the girl glanced around. This was Dundalis—she knew that logically—but it was no place Pony had ever seen before. All that remained of Elbryan’s house was a few beams and the stone foundation; all that remained of Dundalis was a few beams and a few stones.
And bodies. Pony only saw a couple from this angle, a goblin and an older woman, but the stench of death hung as thickly in the air as the smoke from the fires. A substantial voice within Pony’s head told her to crawl back into the hole, to curl up and cry, perhaps even to die, for death—be it heaven, be it empty blackness—had to be preferable to this.
She spent a long while halfway in and halfway out, teetering on the edge of hysteria, of hopelessness. She made up her mind simply to crawl back in, but something, some inner resolve the young woman did not yet understand, would not let her.
Again came the wriggling, the tearing of clothes and scraping of skin, the frantic pull and twist that, at last, freed her from the hole. And then came the next long pause, lying on the ground on her back, her thoughts swirling down a multitude of paths, every one of which seemed to lead to no place but despair.
With great effort, Pony pulled herself up from the ground and walked from between the piles of rubble that had been the houses of Olwan Wyndon and Shane McMichael. The main road remained, crushed stones and packed dirt carefully edged for drainage, and that alone confirmed to Pony that she was indeed in Dundalis, in the remains of what had been her home. Not a single structure stood. Not a single person or even a horse remained alive. Nor were there any living goblins or giants, Pony realized with small relief. Only the vultures, dozens and dozens, some circling overhead, most on the ground feasting, tearing at skin that had been warm to Pony’s touch just the day before, pecking at eyes that had locked with her own, shared gaze and shared thought.
Pony turned with a start, visualizing the fight on the road, the last she had seen of her father. There were the bodies; she saw Olwan, crumpled and broken in the same spot where she had seen him fall. And then she could look no more, fearing that she would find Thomas Ault, her father dear, among the dead. Of course he was dead, Pony told herself, and so was her mother, and so was Elbryan, and so was everyone.
The girl, feeling so helpless and so little, nearly fell to the ground, but again that stubborn instinct kept her uptight. She noted the great numbers of dead goblins, even a couple of giants. One group in particular, a pile of many monstrous corpses together in the road, posed a curious riddle. They had fallen as if they had formed a defensive ring, yet there were no human bodies near them. Just the goblins and a lone giant, slumped together, soaked in blood from the many small wounds on each corpse. Pony thought she should go closer to investigate, but she hadn’t the stomach.
She stood and stared, and a numbness came over her, stealing her emotions. The riddle was lost, for Pony was too exhausted to pause and ponder it, to pause and think of anything—too defeated and bedraggled to do anything except stagger out of the village, moving south along the road, then turning west at the first fork, moving toward the dying sun.
Subconscious instinct alone guided her. Weedy Meadow was the closest village, but Pony really didn’t think that the place would be any different. Surely all the world had fallen to ruin; surely all the people were dead, were being pecked and torn by vultures.
Sometime later, as dusk descended, Pony’s senses warned her that she was not alone. To the right, she saw a slight shiver of one small bush. It could have been a ground squirrel, the girl reasoned, but she knew in her heart that it was not.
To the left came a titter, a tiny voice whispering softly.
Pony kept moving straight ahead. She cursed herself for not having had the wisdom to collect a weapon before leaving Dundalis. It wouldn’t matter, she quickly reminded herself, and perhaps this way, defenseless, the end would come more quickly.
So she went on, stubbornly, looking straight ahead, ignoring any signals that she might not be alone, that goblins might be behind every tree, watching her, laughing at her, taking good measure of her, perhaps even arguing among themselves over which one would be given the pleasure of the kill—and the pleasures that might come before the kill.
That thought nearly dropped Pony to the ground, reminded her of Elbryan, of the moments before the disaster, of the kiss . . .
Then she cried. She walked straight ahead, kept her shoulders squared.
But she could not deny the tears, and the guilt and the pain. She slept fitfully at the base of a tree, in open view right beside the road, shivering from the cold, from the nightmares that she feared would haunt her forever.
Those dreams were mercifully gone when she awoke, and no images could she conjure of the village, of her family and her friends. All that the girl knew was that she was out on the road somehow, somewhere.
She knew that she was in pain, physical and emotional, but the reason for the latter escaped her conscious memory. She didn’t even know her own name.
The giant was there, facedown in the blood and dirt, in the same place Elbryan had last seen it, just a few feet from where he had fainted. At that horrible moment, the monster had been lifting its club to squash Elbryan; now it was dead.
And so were a dozen other goblins, scattered all about the area. Elbryan sat up and rubbed his face, noting the cut and dried blood on one of his hands. His thoughts careened suddenly back to Pony and the kiss at the twin pines atop the ridge. Then they came full force back to the present, through those minutes of horror—the goblins in the woods; poor Carley; the smoke from Dundalis; Jilseponie running, running for the town, screaming every step. It had all been so unreal, had all happened much too quickly. In the span of a few unbelievable minutes, Elbryan’s entire world had been thrown down.
The young man knew all that, as he sat in the dirt, staring curiously at the somehow dead giant. He knew nothing would ever be as it had been.
He struggled to his feet and approached the fomorian tentatively, though he realized from the amount of blood and from the absolute stillness of the creature that it was certainly dead. He moved to the head and knelt, studying the many wounds.
Puncture wounds, as from arrows, only much smaller. Elbryan recalled the humming sound; he conjured an image of buzzing bees. He found the nerve to inspect more closely, even to put his thumb on the edge of one prominent wound and push the skin back.
“No bolt,” he remarked aloud, trying to make sense of it all. Again he thought of bees—giant bees, perhaps, that stung and stung and flew away. He sat back again and began a quick count, then shook his head helplessly when he realized the giant had at least twenty such wounds on its exposed face alone and no doubt countless others all over its fifteen-foot frame.
The young man simply had no answers now. He had thought himself dead, and yet he was not. He had thought Dundalis doomed . . .
Elbryan scrambled to his feet, did a quick check of the dead goblins in the area. He was somewhat surprised, and a bit humbled, to find that even the two he had struggled against, even the one he had thought slain by his own sword, also showed many mysterious puncture wounds.
“Bees, bees, bees,” Elbryan chanted, a litany of hope, as he dashed from the area, down the slope toward Dundalis. The words, the hopes, fell away in a stifled gasp as soon as the village, the charred rubble that had been the village, came into view.
He knew that they were dead, all dead. Even from this distance, fifty yards from the northernmost point of the village, Elbryan felt in his heart that no one could have survived such a disaster. His face ashen, his heart pounding—but offering no energy to arms that hung slack at his side or to legs that seemed suddenly as if they each weighed a hundred pounds—the young man, feeling very much a little lost boy, walked home.
He recognized every body that had not been caught by flames—the parents of his friends; the younger men, just a few years older than he; and the younger boys and girls who had been taken from patrol by their parents. On the charred threshold of one ruin, he saw a tiny corpse, a blackened ball. Carralee Ault, Pony’s cousin, Elbryan realized, for she was the only baby in town. Carralee’s mother lay facedown in the road, just a few feet from the threshold where lay the baby. She had been trying to get back to Carralee, Elbryan understood, and they had cut her down as she had watched the house, her house, burn down about her baby.
Elbryan forced himself to stay away from such vivid empathy, realizing that he could easily lose himself in utter despair. The task became all the harder as he approached one large group of slain goblins and giants on the road, as he walked past the area of heaviest fighting, as he walked past the body of Olwan, his father.
Elbryan could see his father had died bravely, and understanding his father’s stern and forceful way, he was not surprised. Olwan had died fighting.
But that mattered not at all to Elbryan.
The boy staggered on toward the ruin of his own house. He snorted, a crying chuckle, as he saw that the foundation, of which his father was so proud, was intact, though the walls and ceiling had collapsed. Elbryan picked his way into the still-smoldering ruin. One of the back corners had somehow escaped the flames, and when the roof had fallen in, it had angled down, leaving a clear space.
He pushed aside a timber—gingerly, when he heard the remaining roof groan in protest—and went down to his knees, peering in. He could make out two forms, lying against the very back corner.
“Please, please,” Elbryan whispered, picking a careful path to that spot.
The goblin, the closest form, was dead, its head bashed. Unreasonable hope pushing him on, Elbryan scrambled over the thing to the next body, sitting in the very corner.
It was his mother, dead as well—of smoke, Elbryan soon realized, for she had not a wound on her. In her hand she clutched her heavy wooden spoon. Often had she waved that thing at the children, Elbryan and his friends, when they were bothering her, threatening to warm their bottoms.
She had never used it, Elbryan only then remembered. Not until this day, he silently added, looking at the slain goblin.
All the images of her in life—waving that spoon, shaking her head at her impetuous son, teasing Olwan, and sharing a wink with Jilseponie as if they knew a secret about Elbryan—came flooding back to the boy in an overwhelming jumble. He moved in further and sat beside his mother, shifting her stiffening form that he might hug her one final time.
And he cried. He cried for his mother and father, for his friends and their parents, for all of Dundalis. He cried for Pony, not knowing that if he had rushed into town as soon as he had awakened, he would have spotted the battered girl stumbling down the south road.
And Elbryan cried for himself, his future bleak and uncertain.
He was in that corner of his house, that tiny link to what had been, cradling his mother, when the sun went down, and there he remained all through the cold night.