KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Forty Two

The new city forming at the base of Har-Tor had grown.  Two house-lined streets arced across the lower gate behind a wall of stone the dwerka had constructed simply to have a place to put the excavated rock as much as for the new city's defense.  They had also carved new towers and buildings directly out of the sides of the mountain though, by long dwerkan custom, only the upper gate led to the city within.

Karux found the bald elder, Jomel, just inside the city wall speaking to the leader of a wagon train bearing lumber.  Karux caught his attention as he directed the drivers where to take their loads and he ran over to give Karux a bear-hug.

"Karux!  It is good to see you again.  How go things in the south?"

"Not well."

Jomel noticed the battered Kaelis listing on the back of his donkey.  "What's happened?"

Karux held up Kaelis' beast helm.  "We've solved the mystery of the beastmen."

"So they are real?"

"Yes.  However they are but the tip of a long spear pointed at our throat.  A spear that reaches all the way back to Nur."  Karux handed him the beast helm and Jomel turned it over in his hands frowning.  "I must speak with the elders.  We have to call up the spears."

"I will speak to Gerron," Jomel said.  "We'll hold a council of elders.  But first let me see you to some rooms where you can rest and refresh yourselves."  With a gesture, he led the way up the road to the high gate and city in the mountain.

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Jomel returned to wake him before the evening meal.  It seemed the elders had heard rumors of the beastmen attacking other villages and were eager to see his captive.

"This is all new?" Karux asked Jomel as they walked down a corridor decorated in carved relief of geometric shapes made from wheat and barley in which images of cows, pigs, sheep and shepherds were cleverly hidden.

"Yes.  They decorate their own keuthmone with larger-than-life sized carvings of their heroes and great leaders.  They didn't know our histories so they improvised."

Jomel led them to a strange room with nine doors which all let out to the same encircling corridor.  "Dwerkan cities are governed by a council of nine guild-masters and so they've provided the elders of Har-Tor a similar council chamber."

Entering the room, the scale of the small dwerka's construction again impressed Karux.  They had hewn the room from the rock in the shape of a stoma, a perfect sphere.  A series of tiers had been carved into the lower half of the sphere while in the middle of the room, rising to a point just short of the equator, stood a stone dais, surrounded by a series of steps.  A circle of nine enormous chairs remained on the top of the dais, still attached to the rock from which they had been carved.

Jomel led the way up the dais' stairs and sat in a chair next to Gerron.  Karux followed, standing in the center of the stone circle despite only six of the chairs being occupied.  Phylax dragged a ragged Kaelis up the steps on a leash like a reluctant goat.  They had placed the beastman's helm on his head but it fell as Phylax jerked him over the last step and Kaelis landed on his hands and knees before the elders.  The helm rolled up against Kapalos' foot.  He bent and picked it up.  "So this is a beastman?"

Karux heard the scorn in his voice and feared he may have miscalculated.  "This is but one of scores of men who attack in the night slaying men, women and children, stealing animals and food and burning koria all along the border of the blighted lands."

Kaelis rose and stood swaying as the elders examined him critically.

Sidaro folded his arms, examining him.  "He doesn't look that tough to me."