KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Thirty Two

Spring came slowly.  The days grew warmer, but the nights were still cold, dusting the ground with frost as the plants struggled to send up new shoots through the hard soil.  Carak had circled the untilled fields where no winter crop had patiently waited for the spring.  He had found no animals to hunt and it would be a fortnight or two before any food could be planted and much longer before anything was ready to harvest—assuming they could find the seed to plant.

Carak sat on a bench under the old trees the elders once sat under.  Most of them had not survived the winter.  Only old frog-faced Batra had made it until spring and he was too sick to rise from bed.  Even sweet Haydonae whom he once considered marrying had died of cold and hunger sometime during the long night, never living to see if the sun would return to start the New Year.  He guessed that for her it hadn't.  As Carak watched the sun rise, the cursed stone emerged from the shadows, rust-brown in dried blood.

The stone's thirst seemed to grow with each use.  It required more and more blood from more and more people until everyone who could stand on their own feet were required to cut themselves and spill their blood upon the stone.  Even then the amount of milk the stone gave grew less and less until each ever-increasing sacrifice of blood would barely provide for the surviving villagers' needs.

Filled with hate, Carak glared at the stone that had once seemed to promise them salvation from all their needs.  He was pretty certain he knew what the stone wanted.  He just didn't know if they could last until spring without giving in to it.  One way or another he was determined to preserve the people he had left.

As Carak sat in dazed thoughts of "what if", he heard the distinct rattle of bronze plates, bowls and knives clanking together as someone approached the korion.  "Temnein!  Wexia!"  The two men came out of their houses.  "Come here.  The rest of you stay inside and close your doors."

Odo, wearing his conical straw hat with the wide-brim, could just be seen plodding up the rise to their village.

"Did you bring the knife?"  Carak muttered.

"Yes," Temnein replied.

"Are you hungry, Wexia?" Carak asked.

The once beefy man shrugged broad and boney shoulders.  "It's gone past hunger to something else," he said.  "I don't know what it is anymore."

The three stood motionlessly and watched Odo walk into the village, push back his hat and wiped his sweating brow. 

"Greetings!" Odo said.  "How are you?"

"We're surviving," Carak said.

"I see your stone has stopped giving milk."  Odo looked up at the sun and wiped his forehead.  "It's a shame as it's a warm day and I was going to ask for some refreshment."

Carak gestured at the stone with an open hand, inviting Odo to approach it.  "We know how to make it give up its milk."

"Oh?  I should like to see this," Odo said as he stepped closer to peer at the stone.

Carak signaled the other two with a cold silent glance.  They moved to either side of the old man.

"Why is it brown?"

With well-practiced ease they grabbed Odo's wrists, jerking him forward and draping his arms over the stone, pinning him down with their hunger.

"Hey!  What are you doing?" Odo cried.

Carak held out his hand and Temnein handed him the obsidian blade.  He'd had to bleed reluctant donors before, but he had always cut them on the arms.  Moving quickly so he didn't have to think, he grabbed Odo's bearded chin and pulled his head back.