Tears of Stone
By Kera -- Drow of the River [Author Info]
The old man struggled pitifully on his bed, one of my taloned hands holding him down, the other grabbing the golden dragon from around his neck and yanking it off. "I've waited a long time for this," I whispered harshly into Kenat's ear. The old man who had enslaved me for so long, bound me within the borders of his land with magickal cuffs, and scarred my black body without a pretense of reason, now could do nothing more than lay coughing on his bed. I tried to snap the dragon into the engravings on my left wristband like a puzzle piece. When that failed I tried the others until the piece snapped into place into the band on my right ankle, releasing all four of them simultaneously.
"This," the one-armed thief said between wheezes. "Is how you repay me? You worthless little--!" He coughed the last of his insult. Again he struggled, but his illness had sapped what strength was left in his nearly ancient body. He proved no match against me, now fully-grown and well-muscled from years of hard labor.
"Yes Kenat," I replied. "This is how I repay your beatings. This is how I repay your gorging yourself when I went hungry. This is how I repay having to sleep next to a cow in a building made for animals and share my bed with rats and insects." I slapped the bands onto his wrists and ankles.
"Ingrat," Kenat stayed on his bed even after I removed my hand. "I ... saved ... your ... LIFE!"
"Yes, you did," I acknowledged. I owed him that at least. "But then you took it away. You stole my freedom, forbid me to speak my native tongue." I jumped to the nearest rafter, then to the next until I was too high for Kenat to reach even if he were healthy. "My life was no longer mine, Kenat. It was yours." I hung the dragon from the rafter where the old thief could see it from his bed, then jumped down to the floor. After looking at him with a mixture of hate and triumph, I went outside and brought in a small bag of sprouts and other vegetables, dropping them next to the hearth. "That'll last you for a few weeks, or until death claims you." I pried the floorboards open and took Kenat's meager stash, some gold coins and rare jewels he would often bring out and gloat over, then claimed his good cloak and knife as my own. I walked to the door, but turned around just before I left the hovel. "If you meet any of our Unworthy on your Final Journey, tell them Kera sends greetings."
"Ke--ra?"
"The name my mother gave me, the name you never bothered to ask for." With those words I walked out of Kenat's home for good. Before I left, I set Chika the cow free, letting her wander where she would, and was just about to leave when the obnoxious and skinny rooster unwisely strutted from behind the stable. Smiling almost humorously, I removed Kenat's old dagger from my belt and stalked the bird, remembering how his harsh screeches had awakened me every morning. Oh, the days I've dreamed of doing this. After brushing a few broken feathers off my smiling lips, I later followed the river north to finally return home.
* * *
I traveled for several weeks, following the river by night and finding caves, hollow logs, and the occasional barn to sleep in during the day. I hunted my own food without having to worry about whether I had enough for two. I gathered herbs to heal wounds never properly tended while I was enslaved. Often I would just sit by the river, my eyes closed and up to my knees in the water, and just listen to the many sounds I missed, smelling the myriad of aromas that had been blocked by Kenat's fire and Chika's cow dung. I felt like I had drunk from cup of the God Tercanti and had eaten from the divine Jestahl's table. I followed the river, and was happier than I had ever been in my life, happier than I ever would be again.
Gradually the trees disappeared, giving way to fields, houses, barns, and stables. The river became darker, more polluted with manure and other waste. As I walked alongside it at night I noticed the fields seemingly went forever. The few trees I saw seemed malformed and short, as if they had to live on man's food and didn't like it. I had to take shelter in the rafters of sheds and stables where humans couldn't see me. The animals rarely minded. Food was scarcer, so I often relied on the "Rule of Three," allowing travelers to take three fruits or vegetables from any farm to survive. For nearly a moon I followed the river this way, eagerly wanting to see the mountains and the Immortal Forest again.
When I finally arrived, I swore what I saw wasn't real. Human fields had taken the land the trees had proudly stood on. The river had been forced to flow into little streams to water the wheat. Grunts, clucks, and other resigned sounds of barnyard animals replaced the free and fierce calls of our wild goats, foxes, wolves and native birds. The Cheppenall Mountains had died, transformed from living and green to gray and lifeless, no different from large piles of worthless rock. Over and over I shook my head in disbelief, but Imauli's moon shone full over the unspeakable atrocities the humans had done.
"Surely my clan would have never allowed this," I thought. "Unless ..." I pushed the unthinkable out my mind, not willing, not able, to believe. I crept through the fields to the river's entrance into the mountains. My strong body swam up the river in the way that my weak one could not more than 20 years ago when the swift current carried me down its serpentine path. Soon, I entered one of the main antechambers of my underground city and gasped at the lack of life.
Soot covered the walls and ceilings, and the ancient tapestries that told my clan's legends had been ripped off and burned, their ashes piled where they once hung. A silence I had never heard here hung like the thick fogs that cause ships to lose their way and wreck. I walked the tunnels that even to decades later seemed familiar, but found nothing of the life that I once knew. Stone and wooden furniture laid in pieces, lamps smashed, and our few treasures were either missing or destroyed. The stalagmites and stalactites that my clan always kept short had overgrown some passageways. More and more I realized the extant of what the humans murderers had done, but I did not fully know their cruelty until I made my way to the center of our labyrinth to the Council Chamber.
Unrecognizable rubble laid where the council table once proudly stood. Mingled with the rubble were the shattered engravings of our clan’s history. It took our best artisans years to carve the stone murals but only mere moments to turn them into smashed piles of rock. In the center of the room stood a hanging tree made from rotting wood -- all seven councilwomen hung from the branches by the ribbons that once held their precious gold medallions. For several moments I just stood there watching. Suddenly, I knew only darkness.
When I came to, I laid on the stone floor, watching the ceiling without seeing it. Slowly everything I saw, the destruction, the death, crept into my psyche. I cried and screamed with shut eyes, unwilling to behold the faded violence before me. I don't know how long I laid there. Time has very little meaning in the dark. Eventually I stood up, numb and spent, aware only of my duty to give the council the honored farewell they rightfully deserved.
One by one I lovingly cut each matron free, wrapping their bodies in what few scraps of cloth I could find and laying them gently on a high ledge outside. Tercanti must have shown His mercy, for their bodies were well preserved, dry as if they were buried in desert sands. I foraged throughout surrounding farms and manors for days in search of pyre wood, stealing firewood, hay and pieces of wood from abandoned buildings.
Finally, two weeks after I discovered the councilwomen's remains, I laid each matron atop her pyre, using only Imauli's full moon for light. All seven pyres stood at the base of the mountain, a half-mile from where the farm buildings began. I stood by the first one, a torch in my hand. Singing hymns of praise I lit each pyre, going from the lowest ranking member to the highest, then jumped to a low ledge to watch them burn and to sing the arrival of their souls to Tercanti's court. I did not move when the fires spread to the surrounding grass. Even as fields and houses began to burn and humans dressed in nightshirts tried to quench the flames, I did nothing but stand on the ledge singing praises to my once proud and glorious people.
* * *
I explored the caverns for a few days afterwards, searching for anything left of value. All I found were a few pieces of gold filigree jewelry embedded with onyx, the kind made for thieves and spies to wear. Fitting, I thought before I donned the necklace and slave bracelet. I left the mountains during the night while Imauli had cloaked herself in darkness. I never bothered to see how many farms and homes I had burned to the ground. As far as I was concerned, they got what they deserved.
I spent the day in a barn's hayloft, not all of it sleeping. Soon after dawn two youths walked in with milk pails in their hands. I listened to their talk while they worked.
"Did you hear about the great fire?" One of them, a blonde, asked.
"Who hasn't? Lot of people lost their houses and fields by those mountains," said the other, a brown haired lad who seemed slightly older than his apparent brother.
"What do you think started it?"
"Some say a spirit started that fire, sang it to life."
"A spirit? What kind of spirit?"
"They say it was black skinned with white hair, like a Drow."
"A Drow?" The blonde boy looked at his brother with his eyebrows raised. "A darkelf? Aren't any of them around here."
"No, but used to be. Lived in those mountains back when there was a forest around them. Then the surrounding towns banded together and stormed the place."
"How long ago was that?"
"Don't know," said the boy. Well over twenty years young one, I thought. "I do know Pa was there, but he never talks about it."
"If Pa never talks about it, then how come you know he was there?" Good question.
"Ma told me. Said he talks about it in his sleep." The boys then started talking about other things, but I didn't listen. I bedded down for the day and made plans for that night.
* * *
My body flew like a shadow among other shadows, unseen as I stalked from one building to the next. When I approached the boys’ modest cottage I stopped, then crept along the wall before finding a window into the master bedroom. I tore swiftly through the cloth I called "poor man's glass" and leapt silently through the window into the room. The master and his wife slept soundly in their bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. I rubbed a narcotic herb onto a rag and held it up against the wife's nose, assuring she wouldn't awaken. Then I straddled the man and slapped his face until he woke up.
"Wha-- Who are you?" The man's eyes suddenly took up half of his face, and his gaping mouth claimed the other half. I pulled his body up by his nightshirt until his nose touched mine.
"You were there when they killed my clan," I hissed into his face. "Tell me who planned it and why before I kill you like the murderer you are!"
"I-- I don't know who. I swear!" The farmer tired to struggle, but even though he was large and well-muscled he couldn't move under my weight.
"Don't lie to me. You had to have seen those in charge, fool!"
"Why should I tell you? Maybe we just got tired of having you vermin live beside us." I sneered at the human's attempts to be brave. Nice try, scum.
"We vermin gave you farmers a lot of gold from our traded goods. You're not stupid enough to willingly destroy your of prosperity for no reason." I slowly trailed a talon down his neck, applying just enough pressure for him to feel the sharpness without drawing blood.
"It ... I didn't see all of them, just two people."
"Who?!" I slammed his head against the pillow, my bared fangs making it clear exactly what I wanted to do with him.
"They ... they were from the Baym family, rich merchants from the town of the same name. They told us that you were going to kill us, that you would steal our babies to sacrifice to your gods and give our daughters to your warriors." I growled like an angry beast.
"And you believed them? After centuries of living in peace?!" I slammed the farmer's head against the wall, bashing it again and again until blood stained the cracked wood and then dropped his lifeless torso back onto his pillow. I left the house as I entered and traveled east to Baym.
* * *
I arrived in that small city just as dawn announced Imauli's imminent death. I hid in an alley watching the streets come alive with merchants boasting about the quality of their wares and pedestrians either walking past or pausing to look and buy. Their unwashed smell constantly made me wrinkle my nose.
Are their senses so dull that they can't smell themselves? I couldn't help but wonder.
I pulled the cowl of my cloak further down to protect my skin from the sun and looked for any sign of my enemy. At noon, when I was about to retire to some cool dark place for the day, I noticed the crowds making way for a carriage drawn by four horses, their rich and beautiful mahogany coats marred only by the hunter green leather straps they wore. The coach was also green, with gold trim reflecting the sunlight as if that orb’s beams belonged to it. The carriage stopped in front of a cloth dealer's stall and out stepped a young man with blond curly hair pulled back in a ponytail. He strutted in blue and silver livery.
Esh, I thought disgustingly. Too much frosting, and I'll bet not enough cake.
The pompous man looked at the dealer's wares. The stall owner trembled slightly. After several tense moments of silence, the blonde pointed to several rolls of fabric, all of them expensive silk and velvet in various shades of blue. Without a word the dealer cut a generous amount of each, wrapped them in neat squares and gave them to the rich man, who gave him only a few silvers in return.
Rich and cheap, what a combination! I mused.
"Pleasure doing business with ya Master Baym," the dealer smiled falsely. My head went up. That's a merchant? I thought incredulously. He acts like a squire or a lord.
The young man didn't bother to reply, but returned to his carriage, which sped off down the street. I climbed the high city wall and watched where it went, memorizing its route to a house outside of town. Satisfied, I crawled back into the dark alley and fled to a safe place to spend the rest of the day.
I hope you have room at your table for a guest, Baym, I snarled to myself.
* * *
I arrived at their house at moonrise when Imauli's power was at Her greatest. The house was nestled among its well-kept lawn and shrubs and resembled a manor with its stone walls and roads paved with white rock.
Merchant? I think not. No merchant is this rich. Getting past the sleepy pair of guards was child's play for a cautious dark elf. A quick climb up a tree near the wall and I was over the mass of stone and lime without a sound. Two dogs caught my scent and began to growl and bark, but a few scraps of purloined meat laced with opium remedied their anger rather quickly.
Sleep well, doggies. I smiled at drugged but unharmed canines and continued to the house, entering through a side window that led to the kitchen. As I expected, most of the servants were in their beds sleeping, save for a dull young girl washing the dishes. I slipped past her and into the hall, following the drab stone until I reached the stairs.
Climbing the stairs was like entering a portal into another world. Fine wood paneling stretched from the thick Persian rugs on the floor to the mirrors on the ceiling.
Ayish! The Bayms certainly know how to live.
I shook my head around in wonder. Never had I seen such decadent luxury. Paintings adorned the walls, some of them as tall as the walls were high. The candle holders mounted on the walls were finely wrought in gold; their candles sheathed with real glass. How in the world can one merchant family be this rich?!? I could only shake my head as I crept along, discretely looking through every door I found. The first four were sleeping quarters, the beds cradling small children surrounded with toys and stuffed animals. The fifth opened to what must have been a hunter's lounge. Peeping through the door I saw stuffed trophies of nearly every predator I knew perpetually pouncing, stalking, and attacking. There were no living bodies. I walked inside, the well-greased door hinges didn't even whisper. The sight of my fellow creatures forced into this mockery of life nearly caused me to cry out in pain. Each trophy had a weapon displayed above or beneath it, probably the weapon used to kill it. I suddenly felt that each stuffed corpse seemed to plead to me to avenge it, an urge I found harder and harder to resist.
When my eyes laid on a glass case above the fireplace, I could resist no longer. Inside the brass and glass were two gauntlets made of silver. Their backs were engraved with the copper etchings of an ancient tongue -- my ancient tongue. All at once my anger and grief spewed from my lips like lava from a violent volcano, forming a screech no human had ever heard. When it died I heard male voices and at least two sets of feet running down the hall. I bashed the case with my fists, grabbing the gauntlets and arming my bloody hands with them.
As I turned towards the door, two men in silk nightshirts burst into the room bearing drawn sabers. One of them was the young man I saw earlier that day. The other was an older man, his silver hair and tanned wrinkled skin showing him to no younger than sixty, albeit spirited for an old man. I stared at them, my chest heaving, my new weapons ready and eager to kill. The younger man started to charge me, but the elder stopped him. We both looked at him in disbelief.
"But Father," the blonde protested. "That's a--"
"I know what that is," the elder cut his off son somberly. "And she's not to be messed with." He then turned to me. "If you want them," the elder gestured towards the gauntlets. "Take them. We won't stop you."
"Father! Those were grandfather's favorite trophies!"
"Trophies?!" I growled. "These are sacred weapons. They belong to my clan, and you stole them from us!"
"Aye," the elder replied, his expression not changing at all. "We did that." My anger was rivaled by curiosity. Who was this man?
"Who are you?" I asked. The elder laid down his weapon and motioned to his son to do the same. He refused.
"My name is Jacob. My family was one of the two who attacked your people." The elder's voice was flat, as if he had lost all emotion or the means to express it. "The Kalstones provided the money, we supplied knowledge of the land and of the mountains." Numbly, I listened to him speak to me as an equal, telling me about how his family and the Kalstones planned the attack, rallied the commonors with fear and lies, and then plundered my home, burning what they did not take. All the while his face remained as stone, unsettling, yet oddly familiar.
"You," I finally realized. "You made bows and arrows for us! Traded them for our metals and precious stones!" Only Jacob's darkening eyes showed any indication he heard me. "The children called you 'Stone face' because you never changed your expression."
"Was that what you called me? Yes, I was the one."
"But why?" My words could barely escape my mouth. "We made you rich, made you friend. Why did you betray us?"
"Because you're demons!" The young man spouted. "We dammed ourselves trading with you!" Jacob hushed him with his eyes, now flashing like lightening.
"Your lives made us rich," Jacob admitted. "But the Kalstones convinced my father, then head of our family, that your deaths would make us richer."
I bent my head in thought. The house, the clothes -- all their wealth came from my people. It took me a long time to acknowledge the truth.
"The Immortal Forest. Its lumber was worth a lot of money." I observed. Jacob nodded in agreement.
"And the precious metal and stones in the mountains. We split the profits, harvested everything, then sold the ground as farmland."
"Why did you agree to this? You must've been at least forty."
"Forty-seven, but my father's word was law--"
"I don't believe you!" I snarled. "You were your own man, not your father's! Even we know that sacred truth!" Jacob opened his mouth as if to speak, then bowed his head in silence.
"I can give you no reasons, only excuses."
My fists clenched so tightly that blood dripped from the cuts my talons made in my palms. Molten lava and not blood coursed through my body. I wanted to kill him. I could kill him, but there was one more thing I had to know.
"Why are you telling me this? You come in here with your sword drawn and your history lesson. You see me invade your home and say you won't stop me. And now you give me reason to kill you by telling me what you've done. Why?"
The young man looked at his father like he wanted to know as much as I did. "Father? You always said we dammed ourselves for trading with them, for letting them live."
"Did you ever hear me say that when your grandfather wasn't in the room?" Jacob demanded. "I vomited what I let my father pour down my throat, and now Hell awaits me for it. But not because I traded with the Drow, but because I killed them."
The son shook his head in disbelief. "Do you know what happened in those caves? Farmers and townsmen were killing every dark elf they saw, not caring if it was warrior or child. We went through their flesh like butchers and their treasures like barbarians."
"Like--? Father! She's the barbarian!" The son lifted his sword in both hands and lunged at me.
"Daniel, no!" Jacob tried to hold back his son, his face animated for the first time in an expression of fear. Daniel charged. I dodged him, once, twice. For a third time he prepared to charge. I made ready to move aside when I heard a small voice.
"Father?" A small child, a girl, had padded into the doorway. For a moment our eyes met, and I didn't move. When Daniel leaped upon me I couldn't get away, only knock his sword aside and watch him run into my gauntlet. The young man gasped, looking down at his chest in shock before death closed his eyes. I lowered his body to the floor and pulled my weapon from his chest.
"You had best call a healer," I said, my numbness showing in the coldness in my voice. Jacob kneeled at his son's side and felt for his heart.
"A healer won't help him now," he whispered. The child ran into the room and laid herself over her brother's body.
"Danny!" she sobbed, bloodying her nightgown. I could only stand and watch.
"It's best you leave," Jacob said without looking at me. "They'll come after you once they know." I nodded and escaped through a window. Behind me I left two empty husks that were once men.
* * *
Imauli had shrouded herself in Tercanti's blanket, making His stars the only light on the dirt road before me. Their subtle glow was more than enough for this creature of the night. This time there was no river for me to follow, no animal sounds to cheer my heart. There was only dry dirt and dead grass, deformed trees and stinking air. I walked the road south from Baym, not sure where I was heading and not really caring. Like Jacob, I too had become an empty husk, able only to cry tears of stone. So it was ever since I left the town a moon ago.
I came across a black stone pillar covered in ancient writings. It was only half my size, the top half smashed to bits and lying around the base. Gently, I fingered the engraved markings worn down by time.
"Across the river we met, and here we joined ..." I read. "We of many houses became one in Mukanda." Mukanda? I thought incredulously. For the first time in a moon my mind awakened. Where my clan first formed! I could not believe what I was reading. This must be ... Kaatundar's stone! I remembered my grandmother telling me stories of this sacred pillar, made to record my clan's beginning. But that would mean that Mukanda is only a day's travel away, across the Tambier river. I stood up and looked southwest, searching for a path. There was none, just like grandmother said. I lovingly fingered the pillar, and after a thought took one of its pieces from the ground and stuffed it in with Kenat's treasures. I will make an amulet from it. Feeling refreshed for the first time since I escaped Kenat's house, I began walking southwest to Mukanda, a smile on my face and an ancient song on my lips
And so the Journey goes on,
As it has always been,
For as long as there is life,
The story will never end.
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