The First Stone

by Mark Anthony

  “Because if the sorcerers get to Morindu before us, maybe there won’t be anything left for them to find.”

  Grace hugged her knees to her chest. Despite the heat, she felt chilled, as if with fever. “What will we find if we get there?”

  She glanced at Vani and Farr. However, before either could speak, the air rippled, unfolded, and Avhir was there.

  Vani leaped to her feet. “What is it?”

  “I cannot find Kylees,” Avhir said, his voice sharper than usual.

  “Where did you last see her?”

  “Just south of here, near the edge of the slipsand. She was attempting to see if a route could be found through the area, as the dervish suggested.” He shot Farr an accusatory look; Farr said nothing.

  “She has not returned here,” Vani said. “We must continue to look for her.”

  She started to move, but Travis gripped her arm, halting her. “Wait. Maybe there’s a better way.” He turned his gray eyes toward Grace. “Can you sense her nearby?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Grace shut her eyes and reached out with the Touch. It should have been simple; she had done it a thousand times. Instead, the threads of the Weirding tangled in her imagined hands. She tried to tease them apart, only they were so thin— like wisps of gossamer. If she pulled too hard they would tear. Carefully, she cast her net wider. . . .

  “I sensed something,” she gasped, eyes opening.

  Vani moved close. “Was it Kylees?”

  She held a hand to her forehead. What had she glimpsed? It was life, it had to be; the threads of the Weirding had coiled around it. Only something about it hadn’t seemed right.

  “I’m not sure. I think so, but—”

  “Where?” Avhir said. “Where did you sense her?”

  Grace pointed south and west. “That way.”

  Vani and Avhir were already moving. Grace, Travis, Larad, and Farr hurried after them, but they could not keep up with the assassins. The T’gol vanished over a low rise.

  “What was it, Grace?” Travis said, panting as they ran. “What did you see?”

  “Hurry,” was all she said.

  To their right, the sun sank toward the horizon, spilling bloodred light over the sand. Sweating, their breath ragged, the four reached the top of the rise. They saw a lone, dark figure below, standing on the edge of a vast plain of sand. Vani and Avhir bounded down the slope like black leopards. Grace and the others followed. As they drew near, Grace saw that the lone figure was indeed Kylees, and that Vani and Avhir had halted a half dozen paces from her.

  “Stop!” Vani said, holding out a hand. “There is a pocket of slipsand just ahead.”

  Grace stumbled to a halt alongside Travis, Larad, and Farr. Strangely, Kylees’s back was turned to them, her shoulders hunched. She was shaking. What was wrong?

  Avhir edged forward a step. “Kylees, what has happened?”

  She did not answer.

  “If you come directly toward me, you will avoid the slipsand.” Avhir held out a hand. “Come!”

  A spasm passed through Kylees’s body, then she turned around. The T’gol’s eyes were dull as stones, and her pretty face was puffy and bloated. Her right hand twitched at her side. Grace saw that the small cut on her hand was red and crusted, oozing fluid. Was Kylees sick, suffering from an infection? She could have blood poisoning.

  Vani moved forward, probing the sand carefully with her boots. “What has happened to you, Kylees? Tell us.”

  For a moment a light of recognition flickered in Kylees’s gold eyes. “Flee,” she croaked. Another spasm, more violent than the last, passed through her.

  Then her skin split open.

  It happened swiftly. Kylees’s skin slipped away from her body, falling to the sand along with her black leathers, as if both had been mere garments. Left in her place was a thing that was human in shape, but only vaguely. It had no nose, mouth, or hair; twin points of light burned where its eyes should have been. It was dark, its surface glossy and smooth, but not hard like onyx. Instead, its skin moved and rippled like dark water.

  Only it wasn’t water. As the thing moved, it left crimson footprints behind it on the sand, as well as a jumbled pile of bones.

  “A blood golem!” Vani hissed, leaping back, pulling Avhir with her. “Do not let it near you!”

  Grace stared, at once horrified and fascinated. Blood. The thing was made of blood. And not only Kylees’s.

  Its volume is too large to be made up of the blood of only a single person, she thought, her scientific curiosity operating despite her terror. It has to contain the blood of several people.

  “Do not come closer!” Avhir shouted, brandishing his scimitar, but the blood golem continued to advance, moving with a silky fluidity that was familiar to Grace. So this was the shadow that had followed her on her journey south. She had thought they had left it behind when they crossed the sea, but she had been wrong. Only how had it followed them?

  The cut on Kylees’s hand, her doctor’s voice spoke in her mind. There was a sailor on the ship who also had a cut. The blood golem must enter its victims through an open wound and travel inside them.

  These rational thoughts vanished, replaced by primal fear, as the blood golem lashed out with an arm. Vani sprang back, but the golem’s arm extended, stretching into a long pseudopod. It snaked through the air, reaching for the T’gol.

  Avhir swung his scimitar, cutting the pseudopod in two. One end snapped back toward the blood golem, causing the surface of its body to ripple. The other end rained to the sand, wetting it with crimson.

  So the thing could be harmed. They could destroy it—as long as it was not able to draw more blood into itself. They couldn’t let it touch them. Even as Grace realized that, the blood golem’s arm re-formed and lashed out toward her. At the same moment its other arm shot toward Travis.

  Avhir spun, slashing through one of the tentacles with his scimitar. However, the other snapped out of reach, then struck like a whip, coiling around him. Avhir cried out, falling to his knees, but the sound was muffled as the pseudopod forced itself into his mouth, his nose. The T’gol went rigid, back arching, the scimitar slipping from his hands.

  Vani materialized out of thin air, kicking at the tentacle with a boot. The pseudopod burst apart in a spray of scarlet. Avhir gripped his scimitar and lurched back to his feet.

  “Keep striking at it!” he called out, his face stained with red. “If it loses enough blood, it will not be able to hold its form.”

  He was right. Each time the golem shot out another pseudopod, he and Vani hacked at it, and more blood soaked into the sand. The thing began to move more slowly, and its surface rippled constantly.

  “We must help them,” Farr said, drawing a dagger from his serafi.

  However, there was no need. Vani and Avhir had continued to kick and hack at the blood golem, and now blood oozed from it, drunk greedily by the sand. Pseudopods reached out from its body but were just as quickly reabsorbed. Vani aimed a kick at the center of its form, while Avhir slashed with his scimitar, separating its head from its body.

  Like a water balloon pricked with a pin, the blood golem burst apart in a crimson spray, covering the two T’gol. The dark fluid pooled on the ground for a moment, then the sand gobbled it.

  30.

  “I don’t like this,” Farr said, kneeling beside the crimson stain on the sand. “That was too easy.”

  “Not for Kylees,” Vani said, using a cloth to wipe blood from her face, her hands, her leathers. It was black and smelled foul.

  Larad moved closer to Grace. “Surely this was what was following us on our journey south, Your Majesty.”

  Grace only nodded; she could find no words.

  Travis circled around the remains of the golem, careful not to get too close. “How was this thing created?”

  Farr stood; his fingers were wet and dark. “Only the Scirathi have such skill. A blood golem is created using the blood of a sorcerer. One must give his life
in order for the golem to come into being. His blood is animated by sorcery while it still flows in his veins, and the golem bursts forth. From then on, the golem must periodically take more blood into itself in order to maintain its form and strength.”

  “You know much about the forbidden craft of the Scirathi,” Avhir said, wiping blood from his face.

  Farr did not look at the T’gol.

  At last Grace found her voice. “How was it able to follow me all the way here? And why?”

  “Why it was following you, I’m not certain,” Farr said, regarding Grace. “As for how, there is only one way a blood golem could track you all this way. A drop of your blood must have been incorporated into its being. Once that was done, it could follow you by the scent of your blood.”

  Bile rose in Grace’s throat; she forced herself to swallow. “That doesn’t make sense. How could one of the Scirathi have gotten a drop of my—oh!”

  So much had happened the night of the feast, and it was such a small thing. She had completely forgotten it. However, now the memory came back to her with perfect clarity. Quickly, in trembling words, she described the old servingwoman she had collided with in a corridor of Gravenfist Keep—how the other had dropped a ball of yarn, and how Grace had bent to pick it up, and was pricked by a needle. Grace never saw the other’s face. All she had seen was a hand, reaching out to accept the ball of yarn. At the time she had thought it wrinkled with age. However, the light was dim. The hand could just have easily been covered with scars.

  Larad stroked the dark stubble on his chin. “That explains how the Scirathi gained a drop of your blood, Your Majesty. Yet it still does not tell us why the Scirathi wished to follow you.”

  “It was me.”

  They turned to look at Travis. His gray eyes were haunted.

  “They knew you would come in search of me, Grace.” He reached out and took her hands; his own hands were so hot she could hardly bear their touch, but she didn’t pull back. “The Scirathi were hunting me on Earth. They want me for something. Or maybe they just want me dead. Either way, the Scirathi were using you to find me.”

  Grace shook her head. She wanted to weep, but her eyes could produce no tears.

  “He’s right,” Farr said, wiping his hands on his black robe. “It is the only answer that makes sense.”

  Travis let go of her hands. “You’ve got to go, Grace. All of you. You have to get out of—”

  A scream rose on the air, coming from the other side of the low ridge. It was a terrible sound, shrill and wet: a sound of animal pain. More screams joined it, then all were cut short.

  Grace turned around, heart thudding. “What was that?”

  “It was the camels,” Avhir said, unsheathing his scimitar again.

  Larad caught the sleeve of Grace’s serafi. “Master Wilder is right, Your Majesty. We must go.”

  “It is too late,” Vani said. “They are here.”

  A half dozen figures appeared at the top of the ridge, their black robes stark against the coppery sky. Sorcerers.

  Vani and Avhir stalked forward, hands and weapons ready, as the Scirathi descended the slope. Grace, Travis, and Larad pressed close to one another, but Farr stood a short distance away. A dagger appeared in his right hand, poised over his arm, ready to draw blood.

  “Why are they coming so slowly?” Larad said, his words hoarse. “Would they not rather make quick work of us?”

  The sorcerers seemed almost to shuffle down the slope, making no effort to guard themselves. Grace shut her eyes, spinning out a thread. The Weirding was growing weaker, but maybe she could still use the Touch to probe them, to learn something of what they intended to do. She cast her strand out across the desert. . . .

  Her eyes flew open. “They’re not alive!”

  There was no time for the T’gol to respond to her words; the sorcerers had shambled within striking range, tattered robes fluttering, stretching withered arms toward the assassins. Their gold masks gleamed in the light of the setting sun, expressionless, serene. Avhir struck first, his scimitar glittering as it hewed off the hand of one of the sorcerers.

  Sand poured from the stump of the sorcerer’s wrist instead of blood.

  For a moment the T’gol stopped, staring, but the sorcerers continued to close in. Vani launched a kick. There was a crunching sound of bones shattering, and one of the Scirathi flew back a dozen feet. The sorcerer fell to the ground—then got up and began to shuffle forward again. At the same moment Avhir slit the throat of another Scirathi. As with the first, no blood spilled from the wound. Instead, copper-colored sand rained to the ground.

  “Stop!” Farr called out. “You must not wound them!”

  Grace wondered what he meant. The Scirathi were corpses— animated husks, nothing more. Wounding them would not kill them because they were already dead, but surely it could not cause harm either.

  She was wrong. Avhir either did not hear or did not heed Farr’s words. He made a flicking motion with his wrists, and the scimitar flashed, lopping off the head of one of the Scirathi. The sorcerer’s body toppled, and ruddy sand poured from the stump of the neck, falling onto the desert floor.

  The ground began to churn. Red sand swirled with gold. Then, like a waterspout on the sea, a pillar rose up from the ground, building upon itself until it was as tall as Avhir. The sand coalesced, forming a solid shape with thick arms, column-like legs, and a featureless head set upon bulky shoulders.

  Avhir swore in the tongue of the Mournish, then swung his scimitar again. The blade passed through the sand creature’s body, but without apparent effect. Sand gave way around the blade, then coalesced again. The thing struck out with a heavy arm. Avhir grunted, flying through the air, then hit the ground and rolled a dozen feet.

  The thing started to shamble forward, toward Grace, Travis, and Larad, but Vani interposed herself. She leaped into the air, hanging there so long she seemed to defy gravity, launching a flurry of punches and kicks at the sand creature. The thing stumbled back as its head exploded in a spray of grit—

  —then started forward again as more sand rose up from the ground, becoming part of its form. A new, bulbous head thrust up from between its shoulders.

  Another creature was already forming from the patch of sand where the headless Scirathi had died, and red powder continued to pour from the neck of the sorcerer that was wounded. Its body slumped to the ground, an empty shell, and the desert sand roiled beneath it as yet another sand creature started to coalesce.

  “How do we fight these things?” Vani called out to Farr, leaping aside as the first sand creature struck at her.

  “You can’t,” Farr shouted back. “You cannot wound them, or strike off a limb. They have only to draw more sand into themselves.”

  “What about the slipsand?” Avhir called, springing back to his feet. “Might we lure them into it?”

  “Sand is sand. It cannot harm them—not when they are made of it. Whatever you do, do not slay another sorcerer!”

  That was easier said than done. The four remaining sorcerers threw themselves at the T’gol, withered limbs flailing. Avhir cast aside his scimitar, and Vani ceased striking at them. However, the shriveled bodies of the sorcerers were fragile. Vani tried only to brush one aside and its skin tore beneath her hands like old parchment as red-brown dust spilled out. The dust fell to the ground, and the desert sand began to swirl.

  There were three of the sand creatures now, and unlike the sorcerers they seemed uninterested in the T’gol, only striking if the assassins got in their way. Instead, they kept moving toward Grace, Travis, and Larad. The three backed away, trying to keep the T’gol between them and the sand creatures.

  “Grace, can you do anything?” Travis said, gripping her arm.

  She fought for breath. “They’re not alive—the sorcerers or the sand creatures. No threads spin around them. Even if there wasn’t something the matter with the Weirding, I would have no power over them.”

  “What about conjuring a win
d? You’ve done that before.”

  “I can’t,” she said, hating how worthless the words were, but the Weirding was too weak, and there was so little life here in the desert.

  Travis nodded, his eyes sad but not accusing; he didn’t blame her. He glanced at Larad. “Do you know the rune for sand?”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, there aren’t many deserts in the north,” the Runelord said, his words sardonic as ever despite the fear in his eyes. “I do not know the rune for sand, but the rune for dirt is Khath.”

  “Speak it with me,” Travis said.

  Together the two Runelords chanted the rune. Grace felt magic shimmer on the air, but it abruptly faded. Larad pulled something from his robe: a small iron box. He opened it, and three orbs shimmered in his hand, one white, one gray-green, and the other blazing crimson. The Imsari—Larad had brought them with him.

  Travis and Larad chanted the rune again, and the Stones flared. However, it was no use. Either it was the wrong rune they spoke, or rune magic had no power over these things born of blood sorcery. The sand creatures kept coming.

  Avhir tried to dodge one of the sorcerers, but as he sprang aside it dived at him, and his boot caught its jaw. The sorcerer’s mandible flew away from its skull, and red powder poured from its gaping mouth. The others had also managed to harm themselves by flailing at the T’gol. Their wounds were small, but dust flowed from them. Now there were five of the sand creatures, and in several spots the sand was pushing itself up into pillars, forming more.

  “What do these fiends want?” Larad said, staggering back. He thrust the box with the Imsari back inside his robe.

  The sand creatures kept advancing. Vani and Avhir combined their attacks on one of the creatures. They rained blows and kicks upon it, pummeling the creature down into the sand. Grace felt a spark of hope, but it was extinguished as the ground churned, and the sand creature began to re-form. Grace, Travis, and Larad were forced to back up another step.

  Grace’s foot sank deep into the sand. A hundred invisible hands seemed to pull at her, dragging her foot down. There was a moaning sound deep in the ground. She would have gone under in a second if Travis and Larad hadn’t grabbed her arms, pulling her back.