KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Two

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.”