KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Forty Eight

Charissa sat in her windowsill, wrapped in a shawl as she waited for the reluctant autumn light to warm. Her days had all dragged on into the same dull gray blur of fear and hopelessness occasionally punctuated by terror at the reminder of the thing she carried.

The door of her room opened and closed. "I've got it," Lalein said in a hoarse whisper.

"Got what?" Charissa looked up at the maid trembling in the middle of the room. In the clenched fist at her side, she held a small black leather bag.

In a strangled cry, she said, "It!"

Charissa seemed to wake up. "Bring it here," she beckoned.

Lalein scurried over and handed her the bag. "He hasn't spoken to it for days—ever since he sent Ctonos away. He sometimes forgets it and leaves it lying about."

"That's good." Charissa fumbled at the knot, wrenched the pouch open and poured the stone into her hand. It rolled in her palm as cold as ice and as heavy as a stone five or ten times its size. She held it up to the light and examined it. As clear as water, it grew shadowed toward the middle where a blackness lurked like the depths of a well, or the pupil of an eye.

Sunlight flashed off its glossy surface. A frost-like whiteness feathered across it like a cataract blinding an eye.

"Oo!" Lalein breathed. "It's so pretty."

"As are many deadly things."

"Will you do it now?"

"Do what?"

"Take away its power to harm the oracle."

Charissa dropped it in Lalein's palm and hid her malicious glee behind a restrained smile. "It's already done."

"Really?"

Charissa stifled a giggle. "He's perfectly safe. Take it back now."

"I hope he doesn't learn we took it."

"Get it back quietly and he never will. The longer he goes before he checks it, the better for us. Just avoid it and avoid him from now on."

Lalein hurried out of the room. A soft breeze wafted through the window carrying with it the sweet smell of autumn. Charissa savored the simple joy then the thing in her womb wrenched around mercilessly.

"I suppose it was too much to hope for that to kill you," she muttered. "There seems a limit to my good fortune."

-=====|==

The gray man thrust and cut and jabbed with the precise unhurried movements of an insect while Theris answered each move with the murderous fury of a madman. Karux shifted into the world of schemas hoping to find some way to strengthen Theris and give him the time to use his sword to hack the gray man apart, but one glimpse of the gray man and his tangled knot of twisted schemas and the swirling black Void to which they were connected, knocked him off his feet with the shock. He landed on his back, trying to blink his way back to the land of light and shadows. He had stared straight into the Void. It had been like looking at one of those accursed stones. Laughter echoed in his head as he rose to his feet. He had to do something. They had no chance of stopping him.

The laughter abruptly stopped. The gray man staggered backwards and looked about him as if confused.

Theris stopped to catch his breath. For a brief moment the battle paused as friend and foe watched to see what would happen next.

The gray man turned and ran away.

A cry of dismay rose up from the attackers who turned and fled after him.