The Descent to Madness (10 page)

He opened his eyes with a jerk and backed away in sudden terror. Her eyes opened too, reptilian slits in the place of human eyes, and smiled a crocodilian smile of razor-teeth.

“Where you going, lover boy?”

He stumbled backwards from the pond as the woman rose up on a column of muscular snake-tail to stand ten feet clear of the water, laughing at him as she did, a serpentine hiss like a death rattle. He tripped, falling backwards onto the muddy shore, bumping his head on something firm yet giving behind him.

He turned, looking up, expecting some dread, new horror. 

A tall, olive-skinned stranger with a stern, lined face, painted cheeks and feathered-headband loomed over him, half in shade from the scorching sun. He extended his powerful arm towards Stone, offering him a hand.

“Come with me,” he commanded, his voice deep, powerful, resonant with knowledge and wisdom. “You’ve stayed here long enough.”

***

Stone awoke with a scream, sitting bolt upright, covers thrown off the bed, revealing his naked form drenched in sweat. Cooling hands pressed down on him from all sides, damp cloths wiped away his sweat, soothing words that he couldn’t understand yet nevertheless sounded comforting were cooed at him. He slowly lowered himself back to the folded blanket beneath his head, blinking, trying to clear the blurriness from his vision. Covers were laid back over his form. He felt his face with his hands; he’d been shaved. He felt his left forearm, feeling a clean bandage about his wound.

He looked about him, squinting in the light, as though he’d been living in a cave for a year and was venturing into the sunlight for the first time. Shapes began to coalesce, slowly, the hands and words beginning to gain owners. He was in a wooden hut, dimly lit by a lamp suspended from the ceiling. To his left, two women; one, young, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years of age, pretty and slim with long, dark hair and the dark, olivey skin of both the woman in the river and the man in his dream. She was busy wetting cloths in a small, wooden bucket before handing them over to the other who was older, perhaps thirty-five, maybe forty, handsome with streaks of grey just beginning to show in her long hair. As she mopped his brow, Stone could easily tell that she was the mother of the younger one.

He moved his head slightly, looking down past the foot of the bed to see a tall, muscled figure with a feathered head-dress, though this wasn’t the man of his dream. The face was less stern, more curious, with hints of both wariness and concern. He had an air of authority about him, his clothes fine, yet at the same time he had the strong limbs and lined face of a man who worked for a living.

Finally, he realised that his right hand was being held and he turned his head to look in that direction. The young woman he’d found in the river was kneeling at the side of the low bed, her two slender hands delicately wrapped about his, her brown eyes wide open and full of relief at his awakening. Seeing her closer now, he could see the family resemblance, the oval face, the olive skin, the long, dark hair that she had tied back behind a leather headband; he was in the company of two daughters and their parents.

The father said something to the older daughter, in a language that he couldn’t understand. She replied in the same. The mother said something too. Stone frowned as he tried to make sense of the strange syllables, their sounds feeling both familiar and foreign at the same time.

The father walked closer to the bed, looking at Stone, and spoke directly to him now, quietly, slowly, enquiring something, but what, Stone did not know. He spoke again, his deep voice and rich accent blurring the words into one sentence that Stone’s conscious mind could make neither head nor tails of. His subconscious, however…

The family began to talk to each other, having given up trying to get information out of him for now. The youngest daughter chatted excitedly, almost to herself, as her parents conversed in hushed tones.

Only the eldest daughter sat and watched, puzzled, as Stone followed the conversation, his lips moving silently as though in a trance, his subconscious mind working furiously, his mind rearranging neuro-linguistic patterns in ways he couldn’t begin to guess at. Hearing the garbled phrases, then chopping them into sentences, dividing those sentences into clauses, clauses that must have nouns, verbs, objects, subjects. Borrowing rules from languages he’d heard before, making them fit where they could, making up new ones where they didn’t using inferences based on elevated pitch and tone at the beginning and end of sentences, suggestions from body language, eye movement, subtle, subconscious cues that marked turn-taking, gender, interrogatives, declaratives…

“…
rassa neg zhoutan, baaclerh, douzhune pa what to do, he’ll be here soon, I sent Arnoon to fetch him as soon as he woke, just as he asked,” said the father, speaking to his wife. “There’s not much else we can do, you can see that he’s from a strange land, maybe the mountains, maybe from the south, the Barbarian Steppes. Either way, he doesn’t speak our tongue. As such, only Wrynn can help him.”

Stone cleared his throat.

“Actually…” he began, his voice hoarse and rasping from lack of use. “I wouldn’t mind a drink of water…”

The family turned their heads, slowly and as one, to look at him, mouths held slightly open in barely disguised surprise. The eldest daughter was the first to regain her composure.

“You speak our tongue?” she asked, eyes wide with curiosity, a slight smile playing on the corners of her lips. “You speak the language of the Plains People?”

“I… it would appear so, yeah.”

Her father moved closer again, a smile on his face.

“I’m pleased you are awake, stranger. I am Farr, Chief of this village. These,” he gestured about him, “are my daughters, Lanah and Raine and my wife, Rala. Lanah tells me you are called [Stone]? I have not heard this word before. You come from a far off land?”

Stone winced slightly in linguistic shock; he had actually
heard
the parentheses, indicating that the man was talking about stone the English word, even though to Stone himself the concept now sounded exactly the same in both tongues. This would take some getting used to. He was aware that he wasn’t replying.

“Yes,” he responded, hesitantly. “[Stone] is my name. It means, err, ‘stone’ in your tongue. And yes, I suppose I do come from far away.”

“Stone,” the man rolled the word around his mouth, as though trying it on for size. “Yes, it speaks of strength, fortitude. An unusual name.”

“But fitting in this instance…”

The second voice, quiet but deep and powerful, like the rumbling of distant thunder, came from the door of the hut. It was familiar and, as the owner walked into the glow of the candle, Stone raised an eyebrow.

“You were in my dreams…”

The daughters and wife rose, respectfully at the entrance of the new arrival. The Chief placed his hands on the newcomer’s shoulders in greeting.

“Well met, old friend.” He turned back to Stone. “Stone, this is Wrynn.”

The older man nodded to Stone, face serious but eyes twinkling with hidden knowledge, greying hair held back behind a feathered headpiece.

“I saw you,” Stone repeated. “In my dreams. How is that possible?”

The two tribesman shared a quick glance before Farr continued.

“Wrynn is the shaman of our people. He has many skills in the arts of healing, some of which he used to help you.”

The shaman spoke. “You were lost in the depths of a high fever. I had to go in, find you, bring you back.”

His response raised more questions than it answered, but Stone was content for now. Things would be revealed in due time.

“So I owe you my life?”

The shaman smiled, the rest of the gathering burst into laughter.

“No,” insisted Farr, shaking his head. “It is
we
who owe
you
.” He put his arm around the shoulders of his eldest daughter, pulling her close. “Without your heroics we would have lost my daughter that day.”

“
That
day?” Stone frowned. “How long was I asleep?”

Wrynn drew closer, but it was Lanah who answered.

“Six days, the fever had you in its grasp. We thought at times you wouldn’t make it. No-one survives a bite from the Nagah…”

“But you did
… How did you, I wonder?” enquired the Shaman, his eyes inquisitive, searching. “How did you beat the Nagah?”

All eyes were on him and Stone didn’t know how to answer.

“Just lucky, I guess…”

“Luck!” Lanah exclaimed with a laugh. “You should have seen him, Wrynn! He arrived like a bolt of lightning and wrestled the serpent in the water. He snapped its neck like a dry twig. I’ve never seen the like…”

Though they’d heard the tale more than once over the last few days, her mother and sister still gasped in disbelief and her father shook his head in amazement.

Only Wrynn showed no emotion.

“Stone,” Chief Farr addressed him, his tone jovial. “We owe you much. As soon as you feel up to it, we shall hold a feast to show our gratitude. You will find the Plains People a generous and welcoming folk. You are free to remain here as long as you wish.”

“Thank you. I’m humbled by your generosity. I’ll do whatever I can to help while I’m here.”

“For now, just rest, that’s all we ask. Come, Rala, Raine, let’s leave our healers to tend to him in peace.”

With that, Farr, his wife and his youngest daughter all left, leaving only Lanah and the Shaman in the dim hut with Stone. Lanah moved around to his left side and began to unwrap the linen bandage from his arm, shaking her head as the skin was revealed.

“There, Wrynn, see? Completely gone.”

Stone looked down, even as the Shaman came over, seeing that his forearm was completely smooth, unblemished, not a scar remaining from the vicious snake-bite of six days ago. Wrynn looked up, one eyebrow raised in amusement.

“Lucky, eh?”

“I…”

Lanah shushed him,, with a disarming smile.

“Don’t worry,” she reassured him. “We are the Plains People and the art of the Shaman is an established and well-respected tradition here. We know that other peoples fear and shun those with the gift, but you won’t find that here.” Another warm, kind smile.

Stone sat upright in the bed, his strength returning with his wakefulness, and turned to sit on the edge, the fur blanket hiding his modesty.

“The… gift? What’s this gift you speak of?”

Frowns. “You don’t know?”

“I don’t remember much
of… anything, really.”

Lanah looked to the shaman and Stone followed her gaze as the older man began to explain.

“The world is full of spirits, Stone. Even your namesake, the stones in the ground, have their own spirit, their own essence. And it’s with this essence that those with the gift can commune, can parlay to enact their wishes on the world.” He could see that Stone was lost. “Do you have any special… ‘talents’ that you can’t explain. That seem natural to you, but seem to set you apart from everyone else?”

“I…” he hesitated, looking from one to the other. Wrynn’s face, inscrutable, impassive, deeply lined with age and stern wisdom; Lanah’s, young, open, friendly, beautiful. He made up his mind.

“Yes. I have.” Wrynn cocked his head, Lanah’s eyes widened. He gulped but carried on.

“I can move fast. V
ery
fast, but only in bursts.”

Wrynn nodded and smiled for the first time. “Yes, the Falcon-Sight. A wondrous gift indeed! What most hunters would give for that!”

Stone gave a quick laugh to himself, out of relief at sharing his secret, or the fact that his secret had a name.
Falcon Sight
. How cool did that sound?

“Anything else?”

“Erm, yeah.” Excited now, he thought back to his fight at the slaver camp, what must be three or four weeks back now. He remembered the strength that had flowed into him from the ground itself, the very memory bringing back the taste of tin and copper to his tongue. “Once I… I’m struggling to explain it. I was in trouble. Just as things were getting really bad, I could feel the earth beneath me; not just feel, but taste, smell, sense,
know
. The metals, the minerals. And as I did, it was as though my strength doubled, as though they were lending me their properties, as if my muscles were stone, my ligaments tin and copper… it… it was incredible.” 

It was their turn to be excited now. Wrynn’s eyes widened with intrigue, as Lanah let out a gasp.

“The Earth-Tap…”

Wrynn nodded sagely. “Yes, the Earth-Tap. Your teacher must have been learned indeed to teach you such a mighty invocation at such a young age. You cannot remember his name, or where he lived?”

Stone shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I remember only the last few weeks, living in the woods like an animal. Aside from you, the only people I’ve met have been hostile, transporting captives through the mountains to be sold as slaves. They attacked me. To be fair, I did try to steal their dinner…”

Wrynn spat his distaste on the dusty ground of the hut.