The Lebrus Stone (46 page)

I felt sorry for bringing them into the unfolding nightmare. My stubbornness worked against me and everyone else.

She stepped into the clearing with her followers and members of the Dia'ac; each as leery as the other.

"Ni Ok," the red head said to me with a bow before turning to Gundulla.

The woman hugged me like her life depended on it. The red head remained still, resigned to paying attention to Gundulla's orders being thrown upon every member of her coven.

"Who are you?" she commanded, directing her attention to the red head.

He didn't respond.

"Answer me," she shrieked, sifting through the maze of daffodils wilting from her touch.

"Savril," he replied.

She froze mid step, "A guardian." The spur of shock confirmed he signified the kind of potential to finish what he had set out to accomplish. "So, they have finally sent one of you to take her."

I grew confident to be by Savril's side; for a moment I thought he noticed. But his gaze shifted before I could be certain.

Gundulla lost her torrid expression and clicked her fingers. "Bring me the Lebrus stone."

Clias stepped out from the crowd, holding the stone with both hands as he walked surreptitiously toward Gundulla. It appeared useless in his hands, just  a rock from a mountain, a carved, basic jewel from the Nile. But I knew it held more powers than it gave out in the wrong hands. It was to cause life or death, whether chosen or demanded.

Gundulla snatched it from Clias's hands as if he had stolen her quest for life. Her singeing glare was at no one but Savril, stood like some animated Hercules.

I had to swallow hard to fight the urge to defend him, including the man and woman claiming to be my parents.

Maybe they were, or maybe they were more imposters, disguised once again to fool me. I had no time to guess or choose what I had to believe in. I had no time to ask them anything to prove they were right.

Their eyes were tearful, begging for my acceptance before it was too late. But I had no emotions, no feeling to share.

"Enough of this," Gundulla said. Her once attractive face was now a repugnant squish of features that held no place on a woman old but young on the outside.

"Seize them," she ordered her coven.

The hungry moved quickly, but not as fast as Savril. I wished I could thank him for trying to help before I died with no dignity. I wanted to say I was sorry for disobeying him and bringing them all into this, sorry for taking so many risks.

Cray might be crippled, if not gone. No matter what he was, the things they could do to him seemed certain to destroy him one way or another.

The Sha'lacs crouched, ready to leap on Savril's next move.

I still had the long knife in my back pocket. If I was quick, I could try to outdo them, if not, give the rest of them a chance to make a run for the open road.

Savril cracked his knuckles, just as someone about to play a game of cards would, not someone preparing for battle. The others growled through their teeth. Some of them chanted and swayed on their feet, summoning something through the channeling of minds.

I tried not to listen and see what they envisaged. Instead I reached for my back pocket. But a pulse ran through my chest and pulverized right through my legs.

I collapsed.

My birthmark was slicing through me like the blunt end of a razor.

I wasn't breathing, yet I was alive. I couldn't see for a moment, only hear bodies falling to the soil around me, falling like humps of meat withering to a stench of rot I could taste but not spit out.

There was a sharp tug on my hair as my back scraped along chips of wood that struck my spine and dug under my skin. It didn't hurt, just numbed the area more than it had been before I collapsed.

My eyelids felt sticky, difficult to open and close. Various colors flashed by me in a flurry of hands and feet in the short seconds I could look around me. The stone was somewhere to my left, bright red and spinning around Gundulla like a capsule of lasers that kept her safe and untouchable.

I wanted to get up and dismantle her barrier when she laughed at me. I blinked at her in a daze.

It wasn't possible to fight anymore. My lack of breath proved my not so human side was still somehow weak; that I could live without air, yet still be of no use.

A sapient face came into my fleeting gaze amongst the jostling colors. The flow of red hair was so beautifying the sky turning crimson couldn't bleed with the same vibrancy.

He muttered something unintelligible in my ear, this inhuman person, with clear skin and moving vessels and with eyes a pool of clear, sea green like cleansing waters I wanted to disperse myself into.

But then he left me to scuffle amongst horrible grunts and snarls as saliva whipped my face and feet kicked and rolled me onto my front.

When Savril returned, he pulled at the back of my jeans, reaching for the knife. I tried my best to aid him with my thoughts, probably because I was beginning to realize he could hear them from some sixth Fallion-type sense. It was something that hit me like an idea, an inspiration to see things as he prompted.

The tugging stopped and he left me. This time he fought loud and onerously, thumping enemies to the ground so that they rattled and cracked.

He returned and laid his hands on my chest. I was gaining breath before I could think beyond the fear of taking it.

If I was to fully return, I had to do something. If I was to live, they had to pay. Gundulla had to face me. Alone or with her clan.

I rose and charged forward. The red headed boy yelled at me to stop, but I had to find Gundulla. I had to stop her from hurting everyone.

I hit something hard that sizzled the ends of my hair. For a few seconds, my arms and legs lost their momentum and I flew in midair. A heaviness pressed on my chest. The weight of it shifted me downwards into a spiral of sparks and leaves. My descent was softened by a body beneath me. Someone was struggling and scratching at my face. Gundulla. She no longer had the stone. It was beside her head. Its light was fading to a dot of yellow then back to a solid black.

I reached for it, but she managed to flip me onto my back and press her fingers into my eye sockets. She was strong, even without the stone, though I knew I was stronger. Mentally, I knew I could survive this. I pulled her hands away and glanced to my side, the stone was gone. Someone had taken it.

I punched Gundulla in the face. Her head flounced back, though she kept hold of my head. I straddled her and punched harder, over and over again.

Her jaw cracked and her teeth shattered easily under my knuckles, yet she cackled and spat blood in my face.

The scent made me dizzy and disoriented. The smell of it was all around me from the few members of her coven lay wounded on the ground, dislocated.

"Thirsty?" She grinned, her smile all the more gory on her fleshy face. "In need of your feed like the good little fiend that you are?"

People were no longer fighting. The few from the Dia'ac members drooled. Their clothes were torn and their eyes glazed white like zombies, their scaly skin swarmed with flies.

I vomited. The stench of blood, rot, and grime was too much to inhale all at once.

"Cray would be so proud," Gundulla said, standing and brushing down her clothes and rearranged her hair. "Zeron has spared a thought for your neediness."

Clias yanked me up by the hair, forcing me to face the healed Gundulla. Her hair glossed over with newer shine. Her red lips smiled jauntily, unwrinkled against her porcelain smooth skin.

To the eye she was beautiful, there was no doubt. But beyond that and the villainous greed to have it all, she was the epitome of all things grotesque.

"Bring the others," she barked. "Bring them here."

Two men I didn't recognize stepped forward, clutching the man and the woman. My so-called parents. Presumably, they counted for something. If they weren't my parents, they were someone else's.

They were unharmed, but distraught; their sullen eyes pleaded for my help. It seemed they had faith me. I winced from the shooting pains to my head.

Clias didn't let go of my hair or my arms, he seemed to be enjoying every minute of making me speechless and unsteady on my feet.

"How good of you to arrive." Gundulla hardly glanced at the man and woman as they were brought closer. Her lips twitched into a smile.

"You can't do this," the man yelled. "I won't let you."

The woman sobbed uncontrollably, but the man didn't stop confronting Gundulla. His eyes stretched wide, and his lips curled back from his teeth. Gundulla stood remarkably unaffected by the threats he threw in her face.

"Of course not." Gundulla smiled. "You are only at my mercy, my beck and call and in my hands to snap in two." She laughed raucously and clapped her hands. "My, you are a pitiful excuse for a man. And your wife…" She peered at the woman briefly with a wave of her hand. "She is nothing but a defect."

The man lunged for her but was held back. The woman managed to break free and run to him, clutching at his neck. He held her and whispered something in her ear.

Gundulla noticed, and snatched the woman by the arm and flung her to the ground.

"Silence, both of you." Her voice echoed. "You wretched, insignificant, little people will no longer keep me from my mission. You've had your play. For a time, it even misled me. Now I have your spawn of a child. Your partial Fallion, which I despise. I always receive what I must. Now you'll see. You will see how I succeed."

So, they were my parents. Clias gripped my hair tighter as I struggled to get free. The pain grew so fierce it gripped me all the way down to my throat, restricting my voice as I tried to reach for them.

"Let her go," the man roared. My father. The person I now clung onto from a distance with a newer hope, the person I believed was capable of saving us. The strength in his voice eased my fears.

Gundulla laughed.

He tried to lunge for her again. "Let her go or I'll —"

"Or you will what?" Clias snapped.

"I'll send you back to where you belong," my father snarled at him.

"Go ahead." Clias sneered.

"Clias would like nothing more than to return to Shimmarian, but properly," Gundulla said. "After all, it is one of the reasons he has played along so well."

She smiled at him, appreciatively. For the first time, her eyes glinted with a genuine like for someone she admired other than herself.

"And you," my father's voice growled at Gundulla. "You will be as dead as you should be right now. Your kind never succeeds. Your kind sooner or later burn in hell."

"Oh, well, let's see, shall we?" she said. "Let's see what kind of evil you have created. Gal! Gal! Do bring that atrocity."

Gal appeared through the trees, carrying something; two other men helped him from the bottom end. The flame red hair gave away the identity. Savril's whole body had been coiled with chains and a bluish bind.

The sight struck me cold. I sensed his shame and anger. I could even feel my birthmark move beneath my skin, ringing out a sound that only I could hear escape from me to him.

He was important to me. Though I didn't know him, I was obliged to help. I had a feeling he was to be someone I could depend on, whether via physical contact or some type of mystical mind.

I heard and felt him flutter inside of me.

When they brought him to the center to kneel at Gundulla's feet, his shame coated me like frostbite. So powerful was his one degrading emotion, I couldn't think or feel anything of my own. He kept his head bowed and his eyes closed. Though I knew he could see everything without the need for opening them.

My father began to struggle harder. My mother wept like she was in mourning. I knew then this boy was just as important to them, as much as I was or could have been. I wondered how they came to know him. Why he, out of all the Fallions, wanted to save me, and if he had taken my place with my parents somehow.

I ached for them, longed to have them hold me. I screamed internally for Savril. They were probably going to ridiculed and taunt him, then thrown away like he was worthless. Yet he was worth more than that. More than every life that stood around hungrily licking their lips, cracking knuckles, and stomping feet.

I knew now he was a miracle. A being beyond this life on Earth; he had to be. I imagined him existing within a stream of light that we wouldn't have been able to see even when we looked for it all our lives. But they all knew that. It was why they waited to hurt him with baited breath.

I closed my eyes and ground my teeth. The sound of him was still penetrating my chest, kneading its way through me; soft then too adamant.

"Let's see," Gundulla said. "Let's quench your dear child's thirst."

My father shouted something, but his voice was obstructed by perhaps someone's hand. My mother screamed and wailed, her hands bashed at something metal.

I clenched my eyes shut tighter. I tried not to breathe. Every time I did, I tasted something unexplainable leak something dire like mercury down my throat, sprouting roots somewhere in my stomach to make it clench and flip.