Chapter I
THE entire village keened, the mourning cries coming not from the blackened houses or the trampled yards but seemingly from the village itself. It rose like a low, mournful wail and mingled with the smoke that wafted ghost¬like on the late afternoon breeze.
At first Jared thought it was the sighing of the wind, but the trees and grasses moved only slightly as he trudged beside his meador up the hill toward home. After plowing all day beyond the ridge, both the young man and the lumbering bovine moved slowly. The docile meador paid scant attention to the distant wail, and Jared was too spent by the long hours of work to go chasing off after wind tricks. He still had many more days of plowing to go before he could plant their spring garden.
Only nineteen, the boy had more in the way about him of a much older soul. The eldest of three, he had always been a serious, conscientious boy, more mindful of necessities than his younger brother and sister. Upon their father’s death some years back, he had willingly shrugged on the mantle of responsibility, caring for his family as he felt sure his father would have done. It was a harsh life, eking out a living at the edge of the unsettled wilderness, but like his father, Jared had found satisfaction in doing what needed to be done. After the garden was planted, he needed to fix that leak in the roof and maybe then shore up that earthen dam on the pond …
At the crest of the hill, his fatigue and mindless planning fell away from his shoulders like a forgotten cloak.
“Blood Star at noon!” he swore incredulously. What had happened? Had he stepped through a wizard warp into a mirror world of darkness? Could that really be Cairgn below, charred and blackened like a lightning struck tree? In all his nineteen years he had never seen such destruction. The village looked like a war zone. Throwing down his meador switch and leaving the slow draught animal to plod after him, he began to run down the hill.
It was worse up close. The stench of burning straw and wood mingled with the disagreeable odors of blood and fear. Each cottage he passed was no more than a smoldering mound of unrecognizable char amid cracked rectangles of stone. The whimpering was everywhere. It emanated from forms crouched painfully before their ruined homes, from lone figures that wandered mindlessly amid the destruction, and from the cloaked form of his mother in the shadow of her family hell.
Jared stepped up beside her, dazed.
“Mother?”
She turned a ravaged face to him, stained with tears and streaked with dirt. Her dark eyes were no more than empty shadows.
“What happened here?” Jared whispered.
A low moan prefaced her words. “Kingsmen, taking slaves for the mines.” She shook her head at the destruction around them, but then suddenly seemed to focus and realized this was her eldest child beside her and her despair transformed into the slimmest sense of gratitude. She laid a loving hand along her tall son’s angular cheek and peered gratefully into his clear gray eyes. “They missed you,” she said with a trace of quiet wonder. “Thank the stars they missed you.”
Jared glanced about anxiously, the full scope of the events still eluding him. “Where are Brye and Aradia?” he asked irritably. “Why aren’t they here with you?”
His mother’s face sagged at the mention of her younger children, as if she folded in on herself under the weight of her returning grief.
“Gone,” she whispered. Her chin quivered again.
“Gone? Gone where?” Jared shifted uneasily. “I don’t understand.”
“They took them. The soldiers.”
Jared felt a cold weight against his lungs, crushing the breath from his body, numbing him. “Took them?”
“To the mines,” his mother said.
“The mines.”
He’d heard of it, of course, heard of the cruel abduction of whole villages all for the pursuit of a mythical Blue Crystal that no one had ever seen, but that all happened very far away—not here. It was only rarely that a resident of Cairgn even saw a kingsman, much less felt the sting of a lance or suffered the foul stench of a drogue. To have the reality of the nightmare inflicted upon them so suddenly and terribly was almost beyond comprehension. Jared reeled from it.
“They can’t do that!” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “It’s not right. They can’t do it!”
“It was Told,” his mother reminded him miserably. “Until a new One uncovers the Blue Crystal and defeats Mal Zor, this is how it will be. It was Told.”
Angered by the frustration he felt, Jared clenched his work-worn hands into fists. He whirled and faced the northward road, the way toward far Healite.
“I’m going after them,” he resolved. “I’ll free them and bring them back.”
His mother let out a stricken sound. “No! It is impossible! You could never succeed.”
Jared’s look wavered slightly, then hardened. “Whether I succeed or not, I have to try. I can’t let them be taken and do nothing.” He scanned the broken woman before him. “Can you really accept so easily that they are gone?”
Jared immediately regretted his hasty words, seeing the unquenchable pain in his mother’s eyes. “No one ever returns when they are taken by kingsmen,” she said with a chilling finality. “There is nothing to be done on that accord. Jared, you are all I have left now. It is only a miracle that you were plowing beyond the ridge and not seen or they would have taken you, as well. You can’t leave me alone.”
The thought of himself a slave, dragged to the mines to be brutally used until an early, desperate death, sent a chill through him. And even his quick vow to fight the kingsmen and free his family would more than likely bring a similar death rather than the justice he craved. He looked about at the ruin that was his village and thought more about facing the king’s animals that had brought about the destruction. These were battle-hardened men, mature men with powerful drogues and red-crystal lances and no sense of fairness. He was a simple farmer who had not yet gained his full growth, who had never raised a knife to more than jesskies, those marauding, ever-present rodents. Looking back at his mother, he realized she would never fault him for not taking up this challenge. If he stayed safe here in Cairgn, she would never think less of him for not going after his brother and sister. She would praise the stars that he was still beside her.
But how would he feel? Relieved that he was alive, knowing that his escape had been bought with the lives of his siblings? He couldn’t imagine sitting by the fire every night while the specters of Brye and Aradia crouched in the shadows behind him.
He shook his head, hoping to throw off the chill of that vision. “You are not alone, Mother,” he said with a quiet resolve. “You have the others left by the soldiers. You can comfort one another and begin rebuilding for the time I return with Brye and Aradia.”
His mother stared aghast at him. “You would leave me with no children at all? When I am already bereft of two of my children, you would take the last remaining one from me as well? Jared, have you no pity for your mother?”
His dark eyes softened and he hugged her gently to him. “I’m sorry, Mother, but pity is useless here. If I stayed, I could count myself only a shadow of a man. Don’t ask me to stay, Mother. How proud can you be of a man who ignores such tyranny?”
She was unconvinced. “Jared, you are only a boy!”
“Nineteen, Mother,” he reminded her grimly. “Old enough to know that I can’t close my eyes to this.” He looked over his mother’s shoulder at the broken denizens of Cairgn that straggled out of shadows to view the wreck of their village. Only older women, very young children and aged men. No one of fighting age who could help him. He’d have to go alone.
“Help me get some things together,” he said, setting her away from him. “See if anyone has been able to salvage anything in the way of weapons and stores. How much time do the soldiers have on me?”
“Jared, no,” his mother begged. Her hands clutched at the front of his shirt.
He covered her hands in a gentle yet firm grip. “How much time?” he asked again. His voice
was at once soft but unyielding. Stricken as his mother was, he could not allow her to rationalize away his decision.
“At least an hour,” she said. “Too long for you to catch them.”
“I’ll have to hurry then.” He freed her, intent on his plans. “I hope someone has at least a dagger for me.”
He began his scavenging, his mother crying forlornly after him.
He had very little in the way of daylight left to him by the time he was ready to set out. The westward hills were already darkened to indigo while the ones to the east were bathed in soft orange pastels. Straight ahead of him, the north road undulated up into the shadows of the mountains. A chill passed over him.
“Jared,” his mother said, touching his arm, “is there nothing I can say to stop you?”
He looked down at her, love and helplessness in his eyes. Beyond her, the rest of Cairgn’s unchosen stood watching, shifting nervously on uneasy legs. They were united in the depressing thought that this boy would go impa¬tiently to his own death. Already they grieved for him as they grieved for the others taken.
“No, Mother,” he said slowly. “There is nothing.”
“I have no children, then,” she murmured. And she turned away from him.
Jared watched her for a brief moment, sensing the defeat of these people, the hopelessness. Their certainty of his failure angered him even as it chilled him. He clung to the anger so as to repress the fear.
“Mother,” he called. “What would my father think of this? Would he think I am a fool?”
She turned back, her figure bent and aged years by the day’s events. Still her eyes were suddenly sharp and she studied her tall, straight backed son. When had he changed from that skinny boy into this strong, slender man with clear gray eyes? He had his father’s sandy brown hair and strong sense of fairness.
“He would think,” she said in a voice that suddenly rang with pride, “that no one had ever had a son so full of heart and courage. He would be proud.”
Jared listened to the benediction in silence and stood a little taller. This time his mother did not turn away from him. The eyes of the group were on him, wondering—perhaps hoping?
“May the stars keep you safe,” his mother pronounced. Supporting murmurs came from some of the others. Their eyes shone.
“Rebuild Cairgn,” he advised them. “When I return I’ll have all your sons and daughters with me.”
Touching the handle of the knife at his belt, he nodded farewell to them and started down the northward road.
As evening deepened, yellow crystals were unhooded in their brackets, and the great hall flickered alive. Castle slaves scurried about in their duties, heads bent, eyes down, and whispered away as quickly as possible. Mal Zor, the One, was in a foul mood and getting fouler by the minute.
Flanked by the tall narrow Windows of Color, Mal Zor brooded in his chair. The huge, heavy throne was carved of a single ironwood tree and inset with panels of both metal and crystal, yet still it was dwarfed by the thirty foot windows and eclipsed by the colors used in the pictures. Down either side of the great hall, the stories of the progression of the One were told in meticu¬lously crafted colored glass. Each panel recounted a pivotal event in the history of the old ones, each chapter painted in vivid, crystalline colors that were second only to crystals themselves. The hall, its windows and the huge, elephantine throne were enough to reduce most men to awestruck silence.
Mal Zor, however, was unmoved.
“Damn your magic!” he cursed a gray robed man who stood before him, head inclined in a cursory bow.
“I am sorry, my lord,” the unruffled man said gravely. “It is my wish only to warn you. If you would rather, I could keep my impulses to myself from now on.”
Mal Zor fumed. “That’s not what I wish and you know it.” He wrapped a large, muscled hand around his beard and tugged on it impatiently. The beard was thick and wiry, black with twin streaks of white that grew from the downward slanted corners of his mouth. Mal Zor’s hair was similarly streaked, the white only serving to intensify the predominant black, and the two together an unwelcome reminder to him of time lost. His black eyes sparked at the wizard before him.
“What sort of power? The Blue Crystal?”
The wizard, his head still slightly bowed, hesitated. “I ... do not think so. If it is, it is very far away. I think, rather, it is some lesser power. But I feel it seeking, advancing.”
Mal Zor glanced around him at the windows and swore beneath his breath. The images of the old ones had no mes¬sages for him.
“What if I commanded you to Tell for me?” he demanded.
The wizard tilted his head agreeably at the suggestion. “I would comply, of course,” he said in a measured voice.
Mal Zor waited.
So did the wizard.
In a burst of restlessness, Mal Zor lurched from his throne and paced past the other man. His outfit, both the black garments and the leather accoutrements, showed signs of wear. The kingship was not getting any richer.
“Well?” he roared, “aren’t you going to tell me the dangers? Aren’t you going to tell me how, if the Telling were disagreeable to me, it would come to pass nonetheless? It’s your job to advise me, isn’t it?”
“Yes, my lord,” the wizard conceded. “But I knew you were familiar with the drawbacks of a Telling, as you yourself have just recounted to me. It is my job, as you say, to advise but not to harangue, my lord.”
Mal Zor regained his seat at the throne. “You know I am tempted,” he said. “The mines appear no closer to their aim than when we started. I have been patient enough in the last twenty odd years. By the Blood Star, it would almost be worth the risk just to know there’s an end to it!”
The wizard remained silent, knowing as he did that his king often thought out loud. Unless he was called on for an answer, he gave none.
Mal Zor knew the wizard opposed his line of thought. And because the wizard had magic and he himself had none, he relented.
“All right,” he sighed. “Tell me about this small power.”
The wizard lifted his head. “It is very weak or very far away, but it is against the kingship, my lord. I do not feel that it is a threat at this time but if unchecked, it could be later. I thought it best for you to know immediately. Sometimes it is better to take care of these things while they are small nettles. That way, they are never allowed to grow into dangerous saber thorns.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Mal Zor said, already distracted by other thoughts. “Assemble a guard to go take care of it. You can tell them the direction, can’t you?”
“Yes, my lord. It’s southward.”
“All right.” Mal Zor rose again, preparing to leave the hall. “See to it.”
The wizard inclined his head in assent.
Mal Zor studied the gray bearded man, a picture of stalwart allegiance. He knew better, though.
“You think your king is easy enough to dissuade, Garth,” he said evenly. “But be advised, a Telling is not far from my mind. I may still demand it.”
“As you wish, my lord.” Garth raised his glittering eyes to meet his king’s directly. “As you command, I shall do.”
“Yes, and be the first to throw me over if that is the way of the Telling.”
“My lord,” the wizard said in mock surprise, “it would not serve me to throw you over.” His chin tilted upward, on an equal level with the darker man. “We need each other, my lord. To serve you is to serve myself. The powers we both seek can be used best if yoked to the same cart, and that cart, my lord, will carry us to a height that beings have never before attained.”
Mal Zor frowned in thought. “If only that were a Telling,” he said, “and not the dream of two aging men.”
Turning on his heel, he strode from the great hall.
###
Back to Table of Contents
Ghost Stories
Stone’s Ghost