The Descent to Madness (31 page)

             
“…Stone?”

             
He span and, sure enough, in the cage behind him a familiar face, small and frightened behind the cold, black bars, looking for all the world like Lanah but five years younger.

             
“Raine!”

             
He ran to the cage, a smile of triumph threatening to break out across his face as she reached towards him, tears of relief stinging her eyes.

             
“Stone, how are you here? How did you find us?”

             
Others, too, that he recognised were in the cage, gazing out in confusion and wonder at his appearance, as though salvation had arrived.

             
“I’d always come for you, you know that.” She smiled at his words, before he frowned, noticing the absence of Rala, usually glued to her youngest daughter’s side.

             
“Raine, where’s your mother?”

             
Tears threatened to spill down the young girl’s eyes as she responded in a quiet, trembling voice.

             
“I don’t know… they came for her earlier. She was in another cage. They opened the door and took her away.”

             
Stone narrowed his eyes, a flicker of a snarl twitching his lip.

             
“We’ll find her, don’t worry.”

             
“Promise?” she sniffed.

             
“Promise.”

             
He looked about the cage, frowning, then glanced over at the others that hung, suspended about him.

             
“Where’s your sister, Raine? Where’s Lanah?”

             
She rubbed tears from her eyes, then opened her mouth as if to speak, before she started in shock at something behind him and cried out in a high pitched voice.

             
“Stone, look out!”

             
He span, and, it was only thanks to her warning that he managed to raise his hand in time to grasp at the projectile, but even so, it was in vain, the sleek, metal bolt sliding effortlessly through his fingers, despite squeezing with all his might, tearing the flesh of his palm before continuing on to impale his shoulder, exactly where Arnoon’s arrow had so many weeks before.

             
He shouted in pain, falling to one knee, looking up to spy his aggressors coming towards him, armed with a new sort of horizontal bow that he’d never seen before, compact, spring-loaded, firing sharp, metal bolts with incredible force over short distances. The name sprang to mind, unbidden; crossbows.

             
With a surge of strength, he rose once more to his feet, wrenching the intruding metal from his flesh with a gasp of pain, anger flaring even as his body flooded with pain-relieving endorphins and rushed to heal itself with preternatural speed.

             
His assailants slowed to a stop some yards away, several Clansmen, weapons trained unwaveringly yet confusion clear to see on their faces; why had he not stayed down?

             
The sound of heavy boots on stone floor echoed through the hall as a new figure strode, imperiously, towards them and the warriors parted like a curtain to allow him through.

             
Despite himself, Stone let out a gasp of astonishment and recognition; that scarred face, the long moustache, the cruel eyes.

             
Raga narrowed his eyes before laughing, unable to believe what he saw; the boy was bigger, heavier, clad in finer clothes, but no mistake, t’was the same green-eyed, long haired wretch that had come out of the night to attack their camp all those months ago. The craters on his pockmarked face twitched in remembrance. What luck, what coincidence, that the ancestors had seen fit to deliver his vengeance right into his lap!

             
Glee lit his face as he roared, spittle flying to land on the dusty sandstone floor.

             
“Seize him!”

             
The guards, as one, lowered their crossbows and charged him, drawing leather straps and knuckledusters in an attempt to bring him down alive.

Stone was having none of it.

He counter-charged, smashing into his foes in a storm of elbows, fists and kicking feet, his speed and might taking the confident barbarians by surprise, sending them flying one by one, bloodied and broken, writhing on the floor with broken hands, noses splattering blood, whilst all the while Raga looked on with a smirk, the knowledge of sure victory on his face.

The last barbarian guard was down and Stone stood panting, looking down on his victim with bloodied fists, before turning to look sidelong at his nemesis. He marched towards him, slowly, purposefully, feeling the thirst for vengeance surging through his veins, powering his heart into a thudding tattoo in his chest, feeling the need to wreak bloody and horrific violence on this cocksure slaver that stood in front of him.

He stopped two feet away, once smaller, slightly built compared to the Marzban, now looming taller, broader, the bulge of his muscles clearly visible beneath the luxuriant blood-spattered silk of his stolen robes.

“I will kill you. Right here. Right now. This is where you die, slaver.”

Lethal honesty dripped from each and every syllable, for he spoke facts, not threats. All the same, Raga didn’t look impressed, nor intimidated.

If anything, he looked amused.

“Ah. So the savage speaks, eh?”

“You think to mock me, Barbarian? Look about you, fool; your men lay broken. I have changed since we last met. You cannot hope to win.”

“Perhaps not, primitive. But I have changed too.” He smiled behind his hand as he smoothed down his flowing moustache. “This time, I was prepared.”

Stone managed a momentary frown before he was smashed aside with a force that put him in mind of the charging horned bear, flying through the air to the terrified screams of his villagers, metallic clangs reverberating through the chamber as he pinged from cage to cage before, finally, his flight was arrested in a great smashing impact that splintered the yellow stone of the far wall.

He landed, stunned, blinking away the stars from his vision. Through the blur of his own tears he could see the defeated guards hobbling their way towards him, Raga at their head, now joined by a new figure.

He rose, leaning against the wall for support, his every bone on fire, focusing on the new arrival, who, with Raga, had ventured closer, the other warriors hanging back, wary, wounded.

The man was, perhaps, in his forties, though the loss of all his hair made it tough to discern his true age, and he was wrapped in a robe of blackest night, with a staff to hand wrought in the shape of a snarling snake’s head that matched the sunken, venom-filled eyes of its owner.

The most startling thing of all, though, was the colour of his skin, the unmistakable contours of his once-noble chin and cheekbones.

This man was a Plainsman.

He had the whiff of spirit-craft about him, the same familiar odour he’d smelt when Wrynn and Lanah had worked their magicks, but this smelt gone off, sour, as though corrupted, like milk left out too long in the sun.

Stone growled, his spit flecked with blood, unsurprising after the blow he’d taken.

“Traitor…”

The other shaman smiled, humourlessly.

“Do not believe everything that old fool Wrynn taught you, young one. It is not treachery, but logic that brought me here, where the shaman is not bound by rules, free to pursue other… ahem…
avenues
of knowledge.” His eyes twinkled, darkly, with forbidden mysteries. “There are powers in this world beyond that of the mere elements, my friend. Powers that demand our obedience.”

A cold shiver went down Stone’s spine at the words, remembering the revelations about himself as spoken by the Avatars. Instantly he pushed the feeling from his mind; he was no pawn, no weapon to do someone else’s bidding. He was himself, master of his own destiny.

“No power that demands obedience is ever worthy of it!” he roared, feeling the familiar warmth of fire flaring with relish along the channels of his soul, ready to be unleashed in a devouring blast of heat. “Respect is earned through strength of character and brave deeds.”

The dark shaman laughed, heartily, his voice the dry, rasping of saw on wood.

“Pretty words, stripling, but naïve. When you have enough power, respect comes to you whether people believe you’ve earned it or not.”

“Then respect this!”

He threw his hands forwards, feeling the roaring fire clamouring to be released, granting its wish, a superheated plume of rippling air emerging in a cone from his palms, ready to scorch and blacken, burn to a crisp.

The barbarians stumbled backwards, screaming, protected from the brunt of the wash by sheer distance, but Raga and the shaman stood, unflinching, the sorcerer’s staff raised in front of the two like a warding shield, the furnace air parting visibly in front of them, blackening the stone of the ground on either side.

Screaming, Stone unleashed the full fury of his rage, till he finally succumbed to exhaustion, hands dropping to his sides, fire spent, the spirits already clawing for a piece of his soul. His eyes widened in disbelief as his two foes simply stood before him, unharmed, smiling, the barbarians rising all about, moaning, skin red from flash burns.

Raga spoke, even as he turned to walk away, his unwavering confidence infuriating.

“Take him to a holding cell for now. Later, I will wish to learn all about him. For now I have an auction to watch, shekels to earn. Starting,” he pointed to Raine, swinging, tears streaming, in her dangling prison, “with that cage there.”

“No!” screamed Stone, charging forwards to tackle Raga.

Once more, bolts of black lightning shot out from the sorcerer’s staff, sending Stone skidding across the floor, body writhing as it contended with unnatural, insidious energies trying to burn him from the inside-out.

His vision blacked out. A dry, crackly voice chuckled evilly in the darkness.

“I shall enjoy ripping the memories from your mind, shaman.”

***

His head pounded as though he’d been out in the burning sun for days and his tongue felt like a strip of leather in his mouth. His eyes were heavy, like they had lead weights attached to the lids, but he forced them open anyway. He looked about the small room he found himself in, blinking away the bright light, till it receded to nothing more than a dull glow from a solitary oil lamp that swung, gently, from the ceiling.

             
He was naked, stripped of his stolen clothes and his hands and feet were bound, manacled, chains tying him upright against the cold, stone wall. His arms were stretched painfully above him, the wound on his shoulder from the crossbow bolt already healing, even contorted in this awkward position, a long trail of dried blood encrusted against his flank.

             
Tentatively, he tested the chains, straining with all his might, but they wouldn’t give. He sniffed, before closing his eyes, imploring the strength of earth to fill his limbs, to give him the strength he needed to wrench the chains from the walls.

             
He frowned in confusion, for no matter how hard he willed it, the power of the earth couldn’t reach him. It was a different feeling from when he’d been in the lair of the elements; there, the power had been denied by its source, as they’d sought to test him. Here, it felt more like the power of the elements was being
denied
access to him. It felt suffocating, as though he were a candle, trapped under a jar, slowly being starved of air.

             
He gazed about, eyes finally taking in the detailing on the walls, carved inscriptions and symbols that he didn’t recognise, that seemed to swirl and change, hurting his head if he looked on them too long. Yes, there was the source of the interference; the symbols were acting as some kind of barrier, preventing the power of the elements from reaching inside this room.

             
He shuddered as he remembered the boundless might of the Avatars, wondering what kind of force  could possibly deny them, but his train of thought was interrupted as the wooden door across from him burst open, a pair of Clansmen marching in, eyes on him, wary, hands on the hilts of their scimitars, before being followed by the sorcerer and – to Stone’s  confusion – a young girl.

             
“Leave us,” the sorcerer commanded the guards as the young child made her way over to a chair in the corner and sat down, eager, as though ready to watch a re-enactment or listen to a campfire story. 

             
The door closed with a slam of finality, sending the lamp rocking in the draught, the shadows careening from one side of the room to the other as the sorcerer turned his attentions to Stone.

             
“You intrigue me, shaman.”