Into the Stone Land
Into the Stone Land
A Magic Lands Novel
Robert Stanek
This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, places and events portrayed in this book either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual locale, person or event is entirely coincidental.
Into the Stone Land
A Magic Lands Novel
Copyright © 2011 by Robert Stanek.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. Originally published and printed in the United States of America.
Cover design & illustration by Robert Stanek
ISBN 978-157545-939-4
RP BOOKS WASHINGTON REAGENT PRESS
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www.reagentpress.com
Learn more about the author
www.robertstanek.com
Enter the world of Ruin Mist
www.ruinmistmovie.com
Enter the magic lands
www.themagiclands.com
Meet the wizards of Skyhall
www.wizardsofskyhall.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 10: THE WIZARD'S GUARD
CHAPTER 11: UNNATURAL YEARNING
CHAPTER 17: WRINKLE IN THE MIX
Tall fought to catch his breath and still his racing heart, but the baritone moan of a watching bull came again to his ear. The large beast with its thick scaly hide, powerful jaws and long tail was close, much closer than Tall was comfortable with. Worse still was that the beast feasted on wetland horse fleshâa prize the bull would defend from all comers.
Tall took quick study of his surroundings as he cursed himself for taking the fast path through the bull's residence. He had seen the tracks and trails, had known the bull was near, but had not known how near. It was too late to backtrack now, too late to try to work his way around the bull and its feast.
His ears were full of the echoes of voices, mostly that of his mother and father, but also of the village elders. He heard the village smoot's warning in his ears, “Old Bull and Mother Slither wait for you out there in the great beyond. Too quick, too fast, too soon. These are not good things. Leave this village a hasty boy if you must, but return a man unharmed by moving slowly, methodically, warily.”
Sweat dripping into his eyes burned. Tall wiped it away with the back of his left hand. His right hand gripped his staff as he pushed it into the wet mud and leaned his weight into it. He knew every inch of the straight length of arbor. It was both an aid and a defensive weapon, and its length of six feet two inches matched his height exactly.
His staff was an integral part of his journey, as was the container secured to the bottom of his pack. He and the other 12-winter boys had worked for many moons on their staffs. It was only as spring approached that they began work on the containers that would hold the earliest beginnings of their life companions.
As his father was a crafter, Tall was accustomed to working with wood. He could craft almost anything of wood and so the task of crafting the container was an easy one. He had hollowed out a log, sealed one end with webbing, and made the wooden cap for the other end in half a moon.
Most of the other boys weren't as fortunate. Their fathers were gatherers or growers mostly, and they were still hollowing out their logs when he finished. Not one to gloat, he set to helping each in turn. Ray was the last he helped, but only because Ray refused help the first time he offered.
Thoughts of Ray sent his mind spinning. He missed Ray. With Isaac gone to Second Village to win a bride, Keene exiled, and Ephramme busy learning the speaker's trade, the hope of Ray's return to the village was all Tall clung to some days. That and hope of winning Ellie's attentions, even if the girl with the bright eyes and long curly hair had no idea he was even alive.
A life with Ellie was secondary to his pursuit; he must prove himself before he could think of such things. He must reach the place lost and deep. He must perform the appropriate rites. He must choose a life companion. Most chose a slither or a bull.
His father's companion was a slither. Slithers were a practical choice for crafters because they could aid in the gathering of goods the crafter wanted to work, and also could wrap and twine to hold goods the crafter worked in place. Much as he liked slithers, he also fancied bulls. Almost every grower and gatherer in the village had a bull. A bull's powerful jaws and sharp claws aided a grower's every chore from planting to crop protection to harvesting and in the great beyond bulls kept gatherers alive.
In the distance, the red-orange ball of the sun was beginning its descent, but Tall only vaguely perceived this as he began plotting his escape. The charge would come soon. If he pushed with all his might against his staff and used the leverage to jump away at just the right moment, he might live. He had done so many times before, but never with a full pack.
His thoughts turned. Did he dare slip the pack off and risk losing it? If he lost the pack, he could survive in the deep, but he'd have to gather everything for his quest again. The required leaves: the gritty and the stinging. The required roots: the dark and the light. He had even found the bitter-sweet, and it was the gathering of this final item that had brought him close to the bull's house.
Ephramme and Keene had told him this would happen. They had taken their quests during previous moons and had both stumbled unwittingly into slither nests. Ephramme's honesty for telling the smoot he had crushed eggs earned him a public humiliation, but he took it in kind and became a man. Keene's dishonesty, though, set him back and aided his failure. The smoot cast Keene out into the wilds. Though the village arbor wept for him, the smoot did not change his mind.
To be certain, Tall did not want to share Keene's fate, and so his thoughts spun while his ears took in every sound around him. Not far off, he heard swarms of fist-sized buzzers. No doubt the winged bloodsuckers were trying to locate Tall, but Tall was rock still as he waited and had just used the gritty to mask his scent. The gritty bush was a small, woody plant with coarse, thick leaves that contained a heavy, pungent oil. When Tall rubbed the leaves together, the oil foamed and the foam put a masking coat over anything it was rubbed on, from clothes to skin and hair.
Tall hated the always-hungry buzzers almost as much as Ray hated black suckers. Black suckers lived in the deep mud at the edges of the wet, and any slip into the wet was sure to come with a few. Detaching suckers was tricky because they not only attached themselves with their rows of tiny teethâ they also burrowed into flesh. The stinging herb was one of the few things that could get a burrowed sucker to detach itself. When suckers came out of the mud at night to feed, the stinging also was one of the few things that could keep them away.
Though he dared not move to look, Tall's sharp senses told him buzzers were gathering at the edges of a deep pool, near the scatter brush that blocked his field of vision. His senses also told him the bull was on the move. He steeled himself, resolved to wait. If he was patient enough, the bull would return to his feast and he could resume his journey.
Before long, however, he saw the tell-tale signs of movement in the weed-grass. It was the bull and all the gritty in the great beyond couldn't block his man scent from a bull that close to him. The time to make a decision was at hand: attack the bull as the bull attacked him or drop the pack and run.
A childhood rhyme came to his mind. “Scatter bush and weed-grass blowing in the wind. Scatter bush and weed-grass shaking in the rain. Scatter bush and weed-grass sticking through it all. The tall, the thick, the wide, the deep, in and around, out and in, out and around, scatter bush and weed-grass never did fall.” There were more lines, but these were unimportant now. The lesson in the rhyme was two-fold. It spoke of the timelessness of bush and grass and of what he must do to survive the wilds.
He must keep calm. He must become like the scatter bush and weed-grass. He must weather rain and wind. He must endure whatever the Great Father of the Heavens sent his way.
As the bull came out of the grass, its great jaws flapping and its razor sharp claws raking, Tall took his long, wooden staff in both hands, raised it over his head, and called out on the winds, “Beware, Great Bull. This path is my own and I'll not have you in the way on my journey.”
His voice came out as a shrill scream and he followed it with his staff, giving the bull's head a series of sharp blows before stepping back and screaming, “Be gone! My path is before me and I must go on my way!” His voice cresting, he struck out again, rapping both sides of the bull's head with his staff.
The bull for its part, opened its jaws wide and began to hiss. It was a warning. Tall knew at once that the new kill was only a part of the bull's concern. Somewhere near was a newly hatched brood, and if so, a queen lurked somewhere out there as well.
A breath caught in his throat. Bulls and queens only gathered to brood in one place. He twisted sideways, dodging past the scatter brush that blocked his view and chasing away hungry buzzers with his staff.
His eyes became wide, wild discs as he caught sight of the three great arbors that marked the place lost and deep. He was just at the very edge. If he had skipped past the bull's house, gone a few over, and then a few down, he would have stumbled straight into the immense hollow loch. It was right there, waiting for him, as it had waited for so many others.