The Six Sacred Stones jw-2

by Matthew Reilly

  “Me, too,” Lily said. “I’m good with languages. Yours is a very old one, you know.”

  “This I know.”

  Ono, it turned out, was a very curious young man who had many questions about the outside world.

  The concept of flight, for example, intrigued him. As a younger man he had helped disable a seaplane down at the carved forest. After the unfortunate people in the plane had been taken away and eventually killed and eaten, he had examined the plane for hours. But try as he might, he hadn’t been able to figure out how such a heavy object could fly like a bird.

  Likewise, he had a radio—Zoe’s radio, taken from their belongings—and he asked Lily how such a device could enable two people to speak over great distances.

  Lily did her best to answer his questions, and the more she talked with him, the more she found Ono to be not only curious but sweet and kind.

  “Can you tell me about your tribe?” she asked.

  He sighed. “Neetha have long history. Power in tribe rests on, how you say, balance between royal family and priests of Holy Stone.

  “My father chief because family strong for many years. Strong chief respected by Neetha. But I think my father brute. My brothers brutes, too. Large of body but small of mind. But here, strong get all they desire—healthy women, first food, so strong continue to rule. They beat the weak and take from them: animals, fruit, daughters.

  “But warrior-priests also have power because they guard maze. Inside their fortress, from very young age, them study and learn spells and also fighting arts so when come of age, emerge as killers.”

  Lily eyed the dark temple-fortress nearby. With its high battlements, tusks, and folding drawbridges, it looked fearsome.

  She asked, “Is their fortress the only way to get to the maze and the sacred island?”

  Ono nodded. “Yes. Over centuries, ruling clan and priest class find it…beneficial…to honor each other’s power. Royal family orders people to honor priesthood, while priests approve royal marriages and support ruling clan by punishing any person who attacks royal.”

  “What’s the punishment for attacking a royal?” Lily asked.

  “One is sentenced to the maze,” Ono said, looking out at the massive circular structure across the lake. “Animals lurk in it. Sometimes accused is hunted in there by priests; sometimes by dogs; other times, condemned man is left to roam maze until starve or take own life in despair. No man ever escape maze.”

  Ono looked off sadly into the distance.

  “Sweet Lily. I am not strong. I small, but have keen mind. But keen mind mean nothing here. Disputes settled on Fighting Stone.” He nodded at a large square stone platform that sat between Lily’s slab and the triangular island on the lake. “I could not hope to defeat my brothers in fight, so I reduced to shadow life. Life in my tribe is not happy life, Lily, even when you chief’s seventh son.”

  Ono bowed his head, and Lily looked kindly at him.

  But then abruptly something clinked somewhere and Ono stood.

  “Dawn comes. Village awakes. I must go. Thank you for talk, sweet Lily. I sorry for you, for day ahead of you.”

  Lily sat upright.

  “The day ahead of me? What do you mean?”

  But Ono had already dashed away, disappearing into the shadows.

  “What about the day ahead of me?” she said again.

  MORNING CAME.

  Shafts of sunshine lanced down through the tree canopy above the Neetha gorges as a large crowd gathered around the two prisoner platforms.

  The enormous warrior who had previously assessed Lily and Zoe now stood before the assembled crowd. Beside him stood the fat Neetha chief, looking proud and approving of what was to come.

  The big warrior addressed the crowd in a loud booming voice that Lily translated quietly:

  “Subjects of the High Chief Rano, our great and noble king, champion of the maze, conqueror of white men and owner of a white woman, listen to my words! As the firstborn son of our glorious chief, I, Warano, seeking to follow in my illustrious father’s footsteps, claim this white woman!”

  Lily’s eyes boggled.What?

  This ugly Neetha man was claiming Zoe.

  “Unless another among you dares challenge me for her, I will, now and at this moment, take her to my bed and consider her my wife!”

  The crowd remained silent.

  No one, it seemed, dared to challenge this mountain of a man.

  Lily spotted Ono in the back of the crowd, saw him bow his head sadly. She also spied Diane Cassidy, and saw her turn away in horror, covering her mouth.

  Then Lily turned to Zoe—only to see that Zoe’s face was as white as a sheet.

  Lily frowned, confused.

  She spun again and this time saw that all the Neetha women in the crowd were pointing ather, looking her up and down and nodding approvingly.

  And then it hit her.

  This man wasn’t claiming Zoe.

  He was claiming her.

  Lily’s blood froze.

  The crowd was still silent. The chief’s eldest son eyed her lustfully, his mouth opening slightly to reveal foul yellow teeth.

  His wife? But I’m only twelve!her mind screamed.

  “I will fight you for her,” a voice said evenly, in English, invading Lily’s thoughts.

  She turned.

  To see Solomon standing up on his platform, tall, thin, and gangly, yet firm and noble in his stance.

  “I will resist your claim,” he said.

  The chief’s first son—Warano—turned slowly to face Solomon. Clearly, he had not expected any challengers. He assessed Solomon from head to toe before snorting derisively and shouting something loudly.

  Cassidy translated. “Warano says, ‘So be it. To the Fighting Stone!’”

  PLANKS were laid out and Warano and Solomon strode across them, out onto the Fighting Stone—the wide square platform at the edge of the central lake.

  This platform was lower than the prisoner slabs, barely a foot above the surface of the water. Several large crocodiles lay at its edges, ever watchful.

  The Neetha villagers swarmed to take their places on the steps flanking the Fighting Stone, to watch the bloodsport.

  Two swords were tossed onto the Fighting Stone.

  Lily watched in horror as Solomon picked up his blade—he held it all wrong, as though he had never swung a sword in anger in his life, which so far as Lily knew, was probably true.

  Warano, on the other hand, twirled his sword easily and fluidly in one hand: seasoned and experienced.

  Ono appeared beside Lily’s platform, spoke across the ten-foot gap. “This madness. Even if thin man beat Warano, he be sentenced to maze for killing royal son. Is your friend skilled fighter?”

  Lily’s eyes were filling with tears. “No.”

  “Then why does thin man challenge Warano for you?”

  Lily couldn’t answer. She just gazed out at Solomon, standing out on the Fighting Stone on her behalf.

  Zoe answered Ono’s question. “Where we come from, sometimes you stand up for your friends, even when you can’t win.”

  Ono frowned. “I see no sense in this.”

  At that moment, a great drum was struck and the obese chief of the Neetha assumed his place in a royal box overlooking the Fighting Stone and called, “Fight!”

  It would be the most horrific spectacle Lily had ever seen.

  Warano lunged at Solomon with a flurry of powerful blows, and Solomon—gentle Solomon, kind Solomon, who had bounced Lily on his knee as a baby—parried them as best he could, staggering back toward the edge of the Fighting Stone.

  But it was clear this was a total mismatch.

  Wide-eyed and venomous, with five crashing blows, Warano disarmed Solomon and then without so much as a blink, ran him through, the bloody blade of his sword protruding from Solomon’s back.

  Lily gasped.

  Solomon dropped to his knees, skewered by the sword, and he looked over at Lily, locking
eyes with her, uttering, “I am sorry, I tried,” a moment before Warano sliced his head from his body.

  Solomon’s corpse slumped to the ground, headless.

  The crowd roared.

  Tears flowed down Lily’s cheeks. Zoe clutched her to her chest, holding her tight. Wizard and Alby just stood on their slab, watching in abject horror.

  Warano raised his fists in triumph, his eyes insane, before casually using Solomon’s body to wipe the blood off his blade.

  Then he kicked the body off the Fighting Stone, leaving the crocs to fight over it.

  “Are there any other challengers!” he roared. “Does anyone dare oppose me now!”

  The crowd of natives cheered.

  Lily sobbed.

  But as she did so, in a distant corner of her mind, she heard a strange voice coming from Ono’s radio saying,“—picked up a residual heat signature about a half hour ago. Just found it. Looks like a downed Huey, UN markings. Near a strange-looking forest. Sending you my co-ordinates now, sir—”

  The cheering died down and suddenly there was silence around the Fighting Stone.

  Long silence.

  The only sound was the foul crunching of the crocs tearing Solomon’s body apart.

  “So there is no one then!” Warano shouted again, quickly translated by Cassidy. “Excellent! I shall take my new woman and enjoy her…!”

  But then someone spoke.

  “I challenge you.”

  This time it was Zoe.

  THE RESPONSE from the assembled Neetha said it all. They had never seen anything like this.

  A woman challenging a royal son.

  They murmured animatedly, aghast.

  “Unless the chief’s son is too cowardly to do battle with a woman,” Zoe said.

  Sensing the moment, Diane Cassidy immediately translated Zoe’s words for the others and the crowd went into total apoplexy.

  Zoe shouted to Warano, adding the sweetener. “If he defeats me, this Warano can have two white wives.”

  When Cassidy translated this, Warano’s eyes lit up like lightbulbs. To own a white woman might have been the ultimate status symbol, but to own two…

  “Bring her to me!” he called. “After I beat her, I shall keep her, but as a master keeps a dog.”

  Zoe was released from her platform, and she strode down the long plank that gave entry to the Fighting Stone.

  Once on the Stone, the plank was withdrawn, and she faced off against the giant Warano.

  Wearing only a singlet, cargo pants, and boots, she wasn’t exactly big. But her lean muscular shoulders, glistening with sweat, contained a wiry strength.

  Standing before the Neetha chief’s number one son, the top of her blond head came level with his shoulders. The great black warrior loomed over her.

  He kicked Solomon’s sword across to her, saying something derisive in his own language.

  “Is that so?” Zoe picked up the sword. “But I don’t think you’ve ever met a woman like me before, asshole. Let’s dance.”

  With a roar, Warano lunged forward, swinging his sword in a crushing downward motion that Zoe parried away with some difficulty before sidestepping out of the way.

  Warano stumbled and turned, snorting like a bull.

  He engaged Zoe again, raining a flurry of blows down on her, only for Zoe to desperately deflect each one, her sword vibrating terribly with each thunderous hit.

  Warano was obviously stronger, and he seemed to gain confidence with every volley of blows he unleashed. Zoe was doing all she could to defend herself, so much so that she hadn’t even been able to attack once. This, it seemed to the assembled Neetha, would be easy.

  But as they continued to fight—as Zoe continued to parry all of Warano’s lunging blows—it soon became apparent that it wasn’t going to be so easy at all.

  Five minutes became ten, then twenty.

  As she watched the fight tensely, Lily could see Zoe just weathering the storm, blocking blows and then retreating and waiting for the next flurry.

  And gradually, Warano’s attacks became slower, more labored.

  He was sweating profusely, tiring.

  And Lily began to recall a movie she’d watched with Zoe once—a documentary about a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Africa. Foreman had been bigger, stronger, and younger than Ali—but Ali had just weathered his punches for eight whole rounds, letting Foreman grow tired in the process, and then Ali had pounced—

  Zoe pounced.

  As Warano lunged wearily in another attack, quick as a flash, Zoe dodged out of the way and plunged her short-bladed sword into his fleshy throat, right through his Adam’s apple, all the way up to the hilt.

  The big man froze where he stood.

  The entire crowd gasped.

  The chief leaped to his feet.

  The warlock turned to his priests and nodded. Some priests dashed away.

  Warano wobbled unsteadily on the Fighting Stone—alive but incapable of movement, speechless on account of the sword lodged in his throat, his bulging eyes staring incredulously at her, at this woman—this woman! —who had somehow bested him.

  Zoe just stood in front of the paralyzed giant, looking him right in the eye.

  Then, slowly, she took his sword from his useless right hand and held it in front of his horrified eyes.

  She addressed the crowd: “That sword in his throat is for all the little girls this man has ‘married’ over the years.”

  Diane Cassidy translated in a quiet voice.

  The crowd watched in stunned silence.

  “And this is for the friend of mine he killed today,” Zoe said, grabbing the grip of the sword lodged in Warano’s throat and gruesomely pushing on it, driving him back toward the edge of the Fighting Stone, where he fell, landing on the very edge.

  Zoe then kicked his useless legs out over the rim, allowing Warano to watch in paralyzed terror as the nearest crocodile saw them. With a fearsome lunge, the croc launched itself out of the mud and brought its jaws down on Warano’s feet with a crunching sideways bite.

  A second croc joined in, and before he was dragged into the muddy pool, Warano got to watch as the two crocodiles ripped two of his limbs from his body, literally eating him alive.

  His blood washed across the Fighting Stone before the crocs took him under and the muddy waters were still once again.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Alby gasped, breaking the stunned silence that followed.

  The chief stood in his box, speechless with rage. His firstborn was dead, killed by this woman.

  But the warlock beside him still had his wits about him. He called out in his native tongue, shouting in a shrill voice.

  Diane Cassidy translated: “A member of the royal clan has been slain! All know the punishment for such an outrage! The murderer must face the maze.”

  ZOE’S CHALLENGE: THE MAZE

  PLANKS were thrown down onto the Fighting Stone and Zoe was suddenly surrounded by warrior-monks. She dropped her sword and was immediately shoved at spear point off the Stone toward the temple-fortress, the only point of entry to the giant maze on the other side of the lake.

  The warlock stood beside Zoe at the gate to the temple-fortress.

  “This woman has taken royal blood!” he called. “Her sentence shall be as follows: she will be condemned to the maze, where she will be hunted by dogs. Should the gods in their eternal wisdom allow her to emerge from the other side alive and unscathed, then it is not for us to deny the great gods their will.”

  “Such an old conceit,” Wizard spat. “Since she can’t escape the maze, the gods will be assumed to have sanctioned her death. It’s like dunking a woman accused of witchcraft in a river and saying if she drowns, she’s not a witch. It’s a no-win situation for her and an all-win situation for the priest who claims a connection with the divine.”

  Standing at a discreet distance, Diane Cassidy said formally to Zoe, “The maze has two entrances, one to the north, another to the south
. It also has many dead ends. Both entrances have separate routes that lead to the center. You will be thrown in at the northern end—a few minutes later, four warrior-monks with hyenas will enter behind you. To live, you must navigate your way to the center of the maze and from there, successfully negotiate the southern half to the south entrance. That is the only way to survi—”