KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Nine

A few days later they set off again, this time for the farm lands of the south.  Amantis watched another bittersweet parting between the two lovers, but noticed Karux seemed less attentive as Charissa clung to him before letting him go.  He couldn't remember hearing Karux's howling last night, perhaps the new medicine worked, though Karux seemed more of a sleep walker than usual.

They took their goats south, grazing the stubble of the newly harvested fields and leaving valuable manure behind as fertilizer.  The farmers often brought them food and gave them places to camp to encourage their repeated visits each year.  As they neared N'shia-Potoma, Amantis noticed some of the farm boys giving him and the other wolf-hunters dirty looks.  He'd laugh at them, which didn't exactly endear him to the locals, so he made sure he always had at least a couple of wolf-hunters armed with staves around him at all times.

Being so close to N'shia-Potoma, it was a simple matter to pick up the bronze spearheads.  They kept the spear points hidden from the adults for fear they would disapprove, while quietly preparing their staves to become spears.  They all knew they'd get the chance to use them when winter and the drwg came.

As autumn faded into fall, Amantis watched the skies with growing unease.  He hadn't actually received a vision of the future when he looked into the black depths of his seer stone.  The moving lights had simply told him what to say.  He had been confident the wolves, driven over the mountains by a long hard winter, would attack their animals, but as the weather remained unseasonably warm and dry, he began to worry.  When they had finally turned their herds back toward the hills and the first frost appeared in the morning as a faint dusting on the ground outside their tents, he breathed a sigh of relief.

He learned from Arrain that Karux still suffered from his nightly terrors, but the medicine Mahd Mela had given him blunted the visions, so he mostly just tossed and groaned all night.  His appearance hadn't improved any, but at least everyone else could sleep.

By the time they began the trip back to the village, even the goats seemed to be in a hurry to get home.  They made the journey quickly and soon the young children who always served as sentinels, watching for their older brothers and their fathers return, set up the cry that they were back.  The whole village of Korion-Garanth came out to greet them.  Wives and daughters took their missed loved ones into their arms and smothering them in kisses.

Amantis stood alone, making sure the last of the goats were properly secured.  No one came to welcome him.  He stood watching Charissa run up and wrap herself around Karux and his stomach clenched in an angry knot.

Somehow, he would find a way to change this.

-=====|==

A cold dry wind pushed weakly, yet persistently, against Karux's back, urging him down the wide road gouged through the dead gray landscape.  On either side of the road, rough wooden poles shoved into the ground marked a boundary he dare not look at much less cross.  He kept his eyes on the formless gray clouds, ignoring the shadowy silhouettes and profiles of friends and loved ones that fell across him as he passed each pole.  He had walked down this road many dreams before and knew with terrifying intimacy what grisly trophies they bore aloft.

A strange pyramidal shape rose on the horizon, a structure of fired clay bricks in a mocking imitation of the sacred mountain itself.

Karux refused to look at the decaying ghost village surrounding it, or the horrifying rotting debris that lay scattered through its streets.  This time he turned his eyes to the richly robed figure standing on top of the brick mountain and began to climb with grim determination.