Game of Stone: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  “Yeah, exactly, man. It was like they were soulmates or some shit.”

  “Do you remember who bought them? You don’t keep records, do you?” Even as he asked the question, he knew it was a ludicrous one. He doubted this guy could add two and two reliably without getting his fingers involved, let alone keep detailed sales records.

  “Sorry, man. Cash only, y’know?” He gave a conspiratorial grin. “Ain’t no use for payin’ the Man, you dig?”

  “Of course. But you don’t remember anything at all about them? Think hard. Male or female? Young or old? Race?”

  The man’s face scrunched as he tried to remember, but after a few moments he shook his head. “Sorry, dude. My memory for faces ain’t so good, y’know? I see tons of people every day, and they all kinda just blend together after a while.”

  Stone sighed. The information wasn’t as good as he’d hoped, but assuming the man’s memory hadn’t failed him about how many figurines had been in the box, at least he’d gotten one valuable bit of data: there were four more of these things out in the wild somewhere.

  “All right,” he said. “Thank you. I appreciate your help.”

  He was about to end the conversation when Verity spoke up. “Hey—what did you do with the box?”

  “Oh, yeah.” The man got to his feet slowly, like a spider unfurling after a cold snap. “I still got it. Figured I could put my spare joints in it or somethin’. Like one o’ those things you put cigars in. Whatcha call it—a cuspidor?”

  Stone shot Verity an approving glance. “Is it here? Back at your table?”

  “Yeah, it’s in my backpack. My buddy Yarri’s watchin’ it for me. My backpack, I mean. She’s good people. She don’t even steal my joints when I gotta go take a leak.”

  “Will you sell the box to me? I’ll give you fifty dollars for it.”

  He seemed so obviously shocked by the offer that he didn’t even try to bargain. “Uh—fifty bucks? No shit?”

  “Fifty. And another twenty for talking to us. Do we have a deal?”

  He scrambled the rest of the way up. “Yeah, dude. Yeah! Let’s go!” Now that he had such a lucrative potential payoff in his sights, some of his languid mellowness seemed to have evaporated. He hurried down the alley back toward the Wharf, pausing occasionally to make sure Stone and Verity were still following.

  “Good catch,” Stone muttered under his breath to Verity as they walked.

  “Thanks. Maybe you can get something off it. I hope so.” She grinned. “I thought your head was gonna explode if you had to talk to him much longer.”

  “Let’s just hope someone else hasn’t made off with the bloody thing while we’ve been chatting.”

  Luck was with them for once, though. As they caught up with the man, they found him digging in a ratty daypack behind his tables. A motherly-looking black woman sat at the next stall, obviously keeping an eye on both of them. She eyed Stone and Verity with suspicion as they waited, but said nothing.

  “Here it is, dude!” The man pulled a wooden box from his pack and raised it like a prize.

  “Excellent.” Stone pulled four twenties from his wallet and handed them over. “Keep the change.”

  “Thanks, man! Have a good one!” Already, he seemed to have forgotten about his unpleasant experience.

  Stone led Verity off, well away from the man and his friend, before pausing to sit on a bench and examine the box.

  “It’s beautiful,” Verity said. “A little creepy, though. Not sure why I think so, though.”

  “It is,” Stone agreed. “I get the same impression.” The box was made of dark wood, about the size of a large cigar box. Carvings on its exterior depicted what looked like two sinuous dragons intertwined with each other, one lighter, one dark. Bordering the lid and around the edges of the box was some kind of strange script. He turned it over to look at the bottom, but it was featureless.

  “Is that writing? Can you read it?” Verity leaned in for a closer look.

  “I think it is, and no, I can’t. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” He shifted to magical sight for a better look, and was surprised to see faint vestiges of the same odd magic that had hung around Ralph’s figurine. Perhaps it remained there because the pieces had been inside long enough to impart their energy to it, or perhaps it was magical in and of itself. He’d have to do more examination to be sure, and this wasn’t the place to do it.

  He opened the lid, which swung up on strong metal hinges. Inside, he found a black-velvet lining with seven indentations, each about the size of one of the figurines. The one in the center was about half again as large as the other six. “Well, our friend doesn’t seem to have been lying about how many of these things there were,” he said. “One left in the chest, one with Ralph, and one with Mr. Pisani. That leaves four unaccounted for.” He stared into the box.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Well…” he said without looking up, “our friend said the ones he saw in the box were pristine: eyes intact, no cracks. But all those found so far have been cracked and spent. I think I was right—these things seek out certain people for whatever reason and compel them to perform antisocial acts. Murder, theft—”

  “What about that one in the middle? It’s bigger. Does that make it more important? More dangerous?”

  He snapped the box shut and leaped to his feet. “Good questions. Come on. Let’s go home. I need to spend some time studying this thing.”

  16

  Sunday afternoon, Stone once again almost decided to call Gerry Hook and tell him something had come up and he wouldn’t be able to show up for the practice after all.

  He’d spent the rest of Saturday, late into the early hours of Sunday, performing every magical test he could think of on the mysterious wooden box.

  He hadn’t learned a damned thing.

  The magic hovering around it was so faint he couldn’t trace it, and it didn’t resemble anything he’d ever encountered before. The only thing he was sure of was it was the same magic that had faintly surrounded the figurine found on Ralph Gallegos’s body, and the chest in the storage locker. But that wasn’t much of a revelation—it would have been more of one if they hadn’t been the same.

  He’d even performed a ritual to try using the magic from the box to trace back to one or more of the remaining figurines, but got nothing. The fragile tendrils collapsed on themselves almost as fast as they came into being. He couldn’t risk a stronger ritual, because he didn’t want to take a chance on destroying the box, the only tangible clue he had.

  He also didn’t call Leo Blum, not yet, because he didn’t want to risk the detective deciding the box was evidence and trying to confiscate it. This whole thing had moved far beyond anything a mundane police department could handle on their own. Blum knew it, but the others might not be so understanding.

  He did drive by Stefan Kolinsky’s shop after he dropped Verity off at her place, though, hoping his friend would be around. To his disappointment, he found the shop closed and locked, with a small sign behind the wards stating that he was away for the weekend and would return on Monday.

  After the ritual failed, he spent the rest of the day poring through books, trying to find some reference to the odd script carved into the box’s sides and top, but once again he came up empty. The script bore no resemblance to any language, magical or mundane, he’d ever even seen, let alone understood. Reluctantly, exhausted from his research, he made the decision to put the box away until Monday when he could show it to Kolinsky. If he couldn’t come up with anything either, the next stop was Eddie. Until then, he put the box in his double-warded cabinet and tried his best to forget about it for a while so he could get some rest.

  He slept late on Sunday morning, awakened by his mobile buzzing on the nightstand. He fumbled for it. “Mmm?”

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” said a cheerful, mocking voice. “Did I wake you up?”

  He rolled over and glanced at the clock. Nearly noon. “…What?”r />
  “Good thing I called, it sounds like. Look at you—one day in the band and you’re already acting like a full-blown diva.”

  Ah. Gerry Hook. Stone grunted, still not awake.

  “Just reminding you about practice today. Wakey wakey!”

  Before Stone could tell him he’d changed his mind, he added, “See you there!” and hung up.

  He settled back into the pillows with a loud sigh, then reluctantly began the process of pummeling his brain to consciousness.

  The others were already setting up in the practice room when he arrived. “Hey, Stone!” Hook called from behind his drum kit, where he was adjusting a high-hat. “Dragged yourself out of bed, I see.”

  “Barely,” Stone muttered.

  “Hot date?”

  “Research.” He raised his guitar case to forestall further speculation. “So what am I doing here?”

  Hook came around from the drums and motioned the other two band members over. He indicated a balding guy in a blue button-down shirt. “This is Jake Cohen, our bass player. He’s from the Genetics department.”

  Cohen made an amused salute.

  “And this,” Hook said, nodding toward a black-haired woman in jeans and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, “is Radha Unger, from Electrical Engineering.”

  “Hey,” she said. “Good to meet you. Gerry’s told us a lot about you.” Though her appearance clearly marked her Indian ancestry, her accent was pure laid-back California.

  “That can’t be good,” Stone said.

  “Glad to have you on board,” Cohen said, slinging the strap of a bright-red Rickenbacker bass over his head.

  “I’m not on board yet. You haven’t even heard me play.”

  “Well, let’s fix that,” Hook said. “C’mon. Plug in. We’re just about ready to go here.” He offered Stone a printed sheet. “This is the set list for the next gig. It’s in two weeks, a party at the Bull Moose in Mountain View, so I hope you know most of them already.”

  Stone glanced over the songs. They were all classic-rock covers from the Sixties through the Eighties, mostly leaning toward more energetic numbers with a couple of slower ballads thrown in. He did in fact know most of them, and the ones he didn’t know wouldn’t be hard to pick up. Hook hadn’t been kidding—this wasn’t virtuoso-level stuff here.

  He pulled the old Strat out of its bag and plugged into the amp. As he took a moment to get it in tune, he still couldn’t decide whether he was actually looking forward to this or if he hoped they’d listen to him play, then gently inform him he was rubbish at this whole guitar-playing thing and perhaps he should stick to teaching goths about haunted houses.

  He needn’t have worried. The group worked their way through covers of the Rolling Stones’s “Sympathy for the Devil,” AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall,” and Heart’s “Barracuda,” finishing up with Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” It took him about half a song to get into the groove, but after that he had no trouble keeping up with the others. Radha Unger, it turned out, had a low, bluesy voice with a hint of a growl, perfect for these kinds of tunes. Before they finished, Stone found himself not only connecting with the music, but actually playing a little off Radha, getting into the spirit of the songs. She responded with enthusiasm, grinning as the two of them stood back to back while she belted out the end of “Barracuda.”

  When the last chords of “Reaper” died out, her big grin was back. “I don’t know about you guys,” she said, puffing, “but he’s got my vote.”

  “Mine too,” Cohen said.

  Hook hit his cymbal for emphasis. “Looks like it’s unanimous. How about it, Stone? You in?”

  Stone remembered he’d intended to tell them he couldn’t do it after all—but as he swiped sweat off his forehead and played a few more random riffs, he realized it had been a very long time since he’d felt this relaxed, this at ease with himself. He hadn’t thought about sinister figurines or stealing power—or…hell, even magic—for the duration of the jam. Despite the airless warmth of the practice room and the soreness in fingers he’d need to toughen up, he felt good. The last time he’d felt this comfortable was the night he and Verity had come back from England, and—

  “I’m in,” he said quickly, before he could change his mind.

  “Excellent,” Hook said, clapping him on the back. “Welcome to The Cardinal Sin. And, oh, did we tell you? We always go out for beers after practice—and the new guy buys.”

  17

  On Monday Stone had some free time after lunch, so he dropped by Kolinsky’s shop. In his briefcase, he carried not only the tome he’d brought back from England, but also the box from the skinny vendor in San Francisco. To his relief, the sign was down and the door opened readily this time.

  “So,” he said when he found Kolinsky in his usual spot at his desk, “did you find out anything for me about the figurines or Everett?”

  “I did. That was why I was away this weekend—I needed to consult with some information I didn’t have available here.” He settled his hands on his desk and fixed an intent gaze on Stone. “But first, I believe we need to settle up at least some of our agreements. It is not wise for either of us to allow our balance to tilt too far to one side.”

  “Fair enough.” Stone pulled the book from his bag, holding it so Kolinsky couldn’t see the box remaining inside. “I popped over to Caventhorne this weekend to check on things, and I found this. I think you’ll find it to be a good start on my end of the bargain.”

  Kolinsky took the book, handling it with the care of someone who valued such things highly. He laid it on his desk, examined the cover, then glanced back at Stone. “This was in William Desmond’s collection?”

  “Yes. In one of the more heavily warded sections.”

  “I was not aware that Desmond had any interest in black magic.”

  “Desmond was interested in knowledge. He didn’t care what kind—if it was something he didn’t know, he wanted to know it. Where do you think I got that particular trait?”

  “Oh, I suspect you were born with it. But that is beside the point.” He turned his attention back to the book, paging slowly and carefully through its thin, heavily illustrated pages. “This is a beautiful specimen. Extremely well preserved for its age.” He spent a few more moments flipping through, then set it aside. “Thank you, Alastair. This will do nicely to bring our arrangement closer to even.”

  “There are more where that came from, depending on how much you can help me. So, what did you find out?”

  Kolinsky leaned back in his chair. “First of all, you were correct about Henry Everett. He was an elderly and reclusive white-magic practitioner, focused almost exclusively on research. Despite his age he was mostly in excellent health, but he died suddenly a few months ago.”

  Stone frowned. “Anything dodgy about that?”

  “Not that I could determine. He fell in his bathroom, striking his head on the sink. The autopsy suggests he had a mild stroke, which caused him to lose his balance. According to my research, he had no enemies.”

  “So that might have been why he didn’t make better arrangements for that chest. Though I have to wonder why he put it in a storage locker instead of keeping it at his home.”

  “He was not a wealthy man. His home was a small apartment in San Francisco, and apparently he was a bit of a hoarder. It’s possible he didn’t have room for it.”

  “Okay…did you find out where he got it in the first place?”

  “Unfortunately, no. None of the sources I consulted mentioned it at all.”

  Stone sighed. “So it sounds like Everett is a dead end, then. He certainly doesn’t sound like the sort of person who would inflict those figurines on anyone—if he even knew what he had.”

  “It’s possible he did not. If he thought them valuable in some way, that might be why he erected the circle around the chest, to keep thieves away.”

  “Possibly.” Stone got up and began pacing.
“Let’s look at this from a different angle, then. Did you find out anything about the figurines themselves, and why Frank and Ralph were able to get through the circle despite its protective magic?”

  Kolinsky opened his desk drawer and removed a sheaf of papers. “You have stumbled onto something quite fascinating, Alastair, I must say.”

  “Oh?” Stone stopped his pacing and returned to the desk.

  “Yes. I was not able to find a great deal of information, but what I have found is illuminating. You are correct that the figurines are very old. Ancient, in fact. Thousands of years.”

  “Indeed? Did you find out anything about why they were made in the first place?”

  “Yes, I think so.” He shuffled through the papers and removed one, spreading it on the table in front of Stone.

  It was a copy of a page from what was obviously a very old book. Stone couldn’t read the language it was written in, but there was no mistaking the illustrations: one was a crude drawing of something that looked very much like one of the dark figurines, while the other, smaller, showed seven of them together.

  Stone tensed. “What’s the purpose, then?”

  “They were used for a game.”

  That hadn’t been what he’d expected. If anything, he’d thought they would turn out to be some kind of weapons. “A game? What kind of game? Played by whom?”

  “Dragons.”

  Stone stared at him. “Dragons? Come on, Stefan, don’t have me on. This is serious. People are dying.”

  “I am serious.” Kolinsky’s black eyes glittered. “Of course, when you speak of information this old, you must take everything you read with a proverbial grain of salt. People, especially mages, used quite a lot more metaphorical language in those days, to avoid being discovered. Magic was much more powerful thousands of years ago, but it was also far more dangerous for the wrong people to learn of its existence. If I am reading this correctly, ‘dragons’ in this context refers to extremely powerful mages—the sort who did not concern themselves with petty things like mundane laws or rules.”