Book of Heroes: George of Sedona I - 7. George of Sedona II: Forging the Sword Sky Stone

Sky Stone

Arthur woke to the soft beat of rain on the roof. That sounds like it will last all day, he thought. Good. We need a break, and I don’t believe anyone is following us. He closed his eyes, and went back to sleep.

“Hey, Rip Van Winkle.” George’s voice penetrated Arthur’s dream, blowing it away. “It’s raining.”

“I know, George,” Arthur mumbled. “I woke up earlier. Let’s stay here for the day, okay?”

George, who had sat up in the bed, dropped back down, and hugged Arthur. “That would be swell,” he said.

*****

They had finished a game of chess, and were setting up the board for another, when Arthur finally said what had been on his mind for several days. “George, in Ulan Woods, we shared with Adrian and Worthen; in Kirkwood, we shared—quite enthusiastically as I remember—with Jamey and Acie. In Dundee, we shared with Cameron and Adair, and then with the boys at the inn, and with Donovan’s apprentices. But with Brandy and Hayden and Jon, I felt—I don’t know—a little hesitation on your part.”

“You can say it,” George said. “I know what it was. It was jealousy. I’m sorry…I’m ashamed—” His voice trailed off.

Arthur’s eyes lit up. “Because I knew them before I met you! Right?”

George nodded.

Arthur reached across the table and took the boy’s hand. “George, please don’t be upset. Even though many of the rules are different from your world, we’re still human. And we’re still subject to the emotions we learned there. They’re part of us. I said I wouldn’t be jealous of your friends or sexual partners, but there have been times…well…I’ve been jealous, too, sometimes.”

“Huh?” George seemed genuinely surprised.

“Like when you and Jamie became such good friends, and so quickly. He was my friend first, you know. But then I realized I shouldn’t be jealous, but rather proud of you—because you’ve adapted so well, and because you’re so—genuine is the best word—so genuine that people easily can see who and what you are and really like what they see.

“More than once I have had second thoughts about the wisdom of bringing you to World,” Arthur continued. “Wait!” he said, holding up his hand. “Every time, though, you’ve shown me that it was the right decision. You’re everything I could ever want in a companion, George.

“That’s all.” Arthur concluded as he picked up a chess piece.

This time it was George’s turn to interrupt. “Tell me about your other companions. Please?”

“You know about Prince Aladil. You know about Hayden and Brandy—”

“Hayden and Brando don’t count,” George interrupted. You didn’t travel with them. You weren’t their liege. The prince doesn’t count…well, because he’s a prince.”

“In that case, George, you are the first and only companion I’ve had since I left the army on your home world,” Arthur said.

George sat, speechless.

Sunshine pouring through the louvers of the shutters woke them the next morning. Arthur woke George with a kiss. “Thank you for last night, George. You are very special, you know.” George hugged Arthur wordlessly. He was still trying to understand why Arthur had selected him to be his companion. Whatever the reason, I must not disappoint him, George thought.

The boys left the inn after breakfast. Yesterday’s rain had left the road treacherous in spots. Stone blocks had been undermined, and lay at crazed angles. Their progress was slow. “We’ll not make it to the next village, today,” Arthur said. “Let’s start looking for a dry spot to camp—well, at least a relatively dry spot.”

*****

Arthur held George tightly as the boy’s magic flowed into him. Afterwards, they lay together in the soft summer air, looking at the sky. A streak of light flashed overhead.

“Look…a shooting star!” George said.

They had camped in a meadow and could see the sky from horizon to horizon. Arthur looked up in time to see another ionized trail created when a meteorite burned itself out.

“Another, look…and another…they’re coming from the same place,” George said.

A succession of meteorites seemed to be coming from a point in the northeastern sky.

“A meteor shower,” Arthur said. “The remains of a comet, likely. I wonder if there’s any record of it anywhere.”

“It’s beautiful,” George said as he hugged Arthur.

“They look like they’re falling all around us,” the boy observed. “Is that real, or an illusion?”

Before Arthur could think about the question, a trail, brighter than the others, streaked into the ground not a furlong to the west. A loud whistle—thud announced that some part of the meteor had survived its fall, and was buried in the ground.

“Come on,” George urged Arthur. “We’ve got to find it.”

The boys put on their boots. Arthur grabbed his sword and scrambled to catch up with George who was already running across the meadow toward the impact site.

Arthur caught up with George in time to warn him. “Don’t touch it yet,” he said. “It will freeze your hand.”

“I wasn’t going to … huh … cold?” George said. “It was burning up…”

“Yes, but it was cold in outer space much longer than it was heated by the atmosphere.” He picked up a stone, and cast a mage light spell on it. By the nearly white glow, he showed George the frost that had formed on the lump of material at the bottom of a shallow crater. “In the few seconds it was passing through the atmosphere, only the outer quarter-inch or so was heated.” Arthur drew energy from the surrounding air and infused the meteor with heat. “It’s safe to touch, now.

George dug with his hands around the stone, and then lifted it from the hole.

“It’s quite big—close to a cubic foot, and it’s solid iron,” Arthur announced. “About 16 pounds of it. You know,” he mused, “you could trade some of it for enough mithral to add to the remaining to make a sword. What do you think about that?”

*****

The troll did not know the source of the hunger that drove him from his den deep in the Gray Mountains. It was not his stomach; the troll had bitten the throat of a young mountain goat and drunk its blood before gnawing through its belly to devour the liver. It wasn’t sex. This troll, like one-in-four of its race, was born without genitals. The urethra—the tube from its bladder—ended in a hole. Without the muscles associated with sexual organs, the tube was always open, so that urine dripped and dribbled from the hole.

Although it lacked even the low mental acuity of most of its race, the troll knew that it was in danger. Elves hated trolls, and these mountains belonged to the elves. They would hunt it. Still, the hunger drove it forward, even in the daylight when it was most exposed. After three days of scrabbling across the rocks, the troll reached a slope high above a road that passed through a narrow defile in the mountains. The hunger abated, but reappeared when it tried to move farther, or to move back. The hunger wanted the troll to be at this spot. The troll hunkered down and gnawed at the leg of the mountain goat, spitting our clots of skin and hair after sucking the meat and fat.

A day passed, then another. Nothing remained of the mountain goat except the now-desiccated clots of skin and hair, and splinters of bone from which the troll had sucked the marrow. The troll had not drunk water in three days, and its pee-hole had dried up. When it tried to move, the hunger forced it back to this spot. Dimly, it prepared to die.

The troll woke the morning of the third day to the sound of horses’ hooves echoing through the defile. The hunger intensified. This was what the troll was waiting for; this was why it was here. Cautiously, it peered around the boulder behind which it had slept. Coming from the north: two riders. Elves, the troll thought. Kill them…how? Whether the answer came from its own mind or from the hunger, the troll did not know. Nor was it curious. Standing, but still hidden by the boulder, the troll leaned against the rock, feeling it yield. Back and forth, the troll pushed and relaxed, feeling the stone begin to move. A sudden pang of the hunger struck and the troll heaved as hard as it could. The boulder tipped out of equilibrium and began a slow, stately roll down the hill.

The boulder bounced on the slope. The sound of the boulder striking the mountainside traveled marginally faster than the rock. Arthur and George looked up to see the entire side of the mountain falling on them. Arthur had no time to prepare or cast a spell. He warped the great magic, hurling power at the boulder and at the scree that it had loosened, blasting the rocks into dust that rose over the mountains in a cloud that glittered in the light of the morning sun.

George had been petrified with fear. Now he was petrified awe. “Wow,” he whispered, “Did you do that?”

“Actually,” Arthur said, breathing heavily. “Yes, actually. Direct application of magic…didn’t have time to cast a spell…just blasted it. It’s easier to destroy than it is to create…that’s why it’s easier to be Evil than Good. That was very noisy…I’ve probably attracted a lot of attention… every magic-user in a hundred miles would have heard that.”

Arthur was partly right. A few magic-users heard the sound created when he’d disintegrated the avalanche, but the Gray Mountains were ancient, and contained many loci of power. The magical field ebbed and flowed in strange and beautiful patterns. The noise Arthur created was distorted; no one who heard it was sure from where it had come. No one, that is, except the one person who was listening for it: the Black Elf.

West by south-west, he thought. The Gray Mountains. The road there leads to Berkshire. I have him, now. The elf mounted his horse. His quarry had a long lead, but there was only one way he could go, and the elf had infinite patience.