THE STONEMAN’S CURSE

THE STONEMAN’S CURSE, by Tom Jolly, pending artwork by Miguel Santos

 

Markus wasn’t sure if it was an imp or a gnome driving the gigantic worm down the road toward him, but neither the rider nor the worm seemed in a particular rush. As he neared them, the imp stopped, jumped out of a saddle with a shovel in his hand, and scooped up some rubble from the side of the road, tossing it into the worm’s open gullet. There was the sound of gravel tumbling and grinding, like grist in a mill. Markus waved at the small olive-green rider, who nodded politely to him.

Markus had never seen anything like the worm, but then, he’d never traveled through the Free Lands before, beyond Averath, and had heard that there were many strange things to see here.

“Hallo!” Markus called out. “I’ve never seen a beast that eats rocks. That must be cheaper than feeding a horse.”

The imp laughed. “It’s only cheap until you run out of loose rocks, and then it’s a chore.” The imp spoke with a high, coarse voice. He patted the pale yellow worm’s massive side as he spoke. “But everyone’s got to eat.”

“Are you headed toward Averath? I can tell you, the roads there are horrible, and your worm will have a rough time of it.”

The imp shook his head. “We’ll turn around where the lands meet. It’s our job to keep the roads in the Free Lands level and sound, you know. Not the Baron’s.” The imp walked around to the backside of the worm, tapped its side with a willow switch, and it excreted a slurry of acrid putty into a pothole in the road. “I take it you’re new in these lands?” the imp asked.

“Passing through. There was a young girl and a man made of stone traveling ahead of me. Perhaps you spied them on the road?”

“Perhaps,” said the imp. “You know, many people travel this road and some appreciate its quality more than others. As you can see, it’s very level.”

Markus grinned at the small vice implied, mentally inventorying the few valuables he carried besides his weapons; there was a red glowstone he used to light dark passages and a viewing orb that allowed him to see where spells were placed, both invaluable tools for a thief that he’d inherited from his father. There was also a sapphire ring of unknown value that he’d pinched from Baron Glask. The imp would be getting none of these. But he also carried a pouch with a few small coins in it.  Marcus pulled out a silver coin, tossing it toward the imp. “This might help pay for some of your hard work, then.”

The imp snatched it and the coin disappeared. “Oh, it will certainly help wet my lips at the end of the day, my friend. The taxes will pay for the road. Since you are new along these paths, let me give you some advice. Stay on the road if you can. These are the Free Lands, and several creatures share the shadows in the forest. Few of them are friendly to intruders in their home, and as I said before, everyone’s got to eat.”

The imp climbed back into the peculiar saddle on the worm. “Also, a girl and a Stoneman are ahead of you a good five miles. Traveling to Oakum, I imagine. Not particularly friendly. And I’d avoid Oakum if you can. It’s full of Stonemen, and they’ll eat most anything.”

 

#

 

Markus continued walking down the road, jogging on occasion, hoping to catch up to the mysterious girl. He and the Stoneman already had a little unpleasant history together; it had been guarding the Baron’s vault when he’d meant to steal some gold. He’d barely escaped, but as it turned out, so did the Stoneman, apparently a captive of the Baron itself. And then the girl turned up to lead it away from the Baron’s holdings. All very strange. Why hadn’t the beast attacked her, as it had attacked Markus? And if the creature was an enemy of the Baron’s, could it be used against him?

Now there was the news that Oakum was full of the monsters! If he could befriend the one, perhaps he could build an army of them and finish off Baron Glask for good.

Markus heard a rustling in the tall brush alongside the road and he drew his narrow sword, dropping behind the berm at the edge of the road. Two human men pressed through the brush, struggling with a four-wheeled cart. On the cart was one of the Stonemen, unmoving.

Markus sheathed his sword and stood up. “Hallo!” he called out. The men started a little bit, one looking into the forest as though he thought there might be some pursuit, while the other scanned the road, spying Markus. The stranger tentatively lifted a hand as Markus approached.

“A Stoneman?” Markus said curiously.

“Obviously,” said the stranger. And it was obvious. The skin was all gray, the face a featureless smooth mask except for two small round obsidian eyes set wide in the face, and the abdomen shaped by a quadrant of lips that could separate to show a shark’s mouth of teeth.

“It isn’t moving,” Markus said, eliciting rolled eyes from the man. “Don’t they always move when you look at them?”

This was the peculiar trait of the creatures and their weakness in battle; though the skins were like stone and could easily deflect a sword, and their claws could cleave through most armor with ease, they could only move when someone’s eyes rested upon them. Markus wondered how they survived at all. “The fresh ones move when you lay eyes on them,” the man said, as though explaining to a child, motioning to the Stoneman on his cart. “The ones that have been frozen too long, wandering away from Oakum, lost in the forest, stiffen up and can’t move at all after a few years. They become like statues.” He looked down at the creature with some pity in his eyes, picking at a bit of moss growing on its feet. “I often wonder if their minds are still working in there. It must be pure hell if they are.”

“Are you taking it back to Oakum?”

“Oh, ye gods no. That place isn’t safe. They’d sooner eat you than greet you,” he said. “I’m taking it to the Witch to add to her garden. She collects these things. The road to her demesne runs wide of Oakum. She pays a pretty penny for the frozen monsters. Even better if they’re caught in a funny pose.” He looked up in the sky, squinting. “Noontime already, we have to be going. No time for chit chat, and this cart won’t move itself.” He nodded to Markus, and the two men trundled the cart out onto the road.

Markus quickly outpaced them, and after a mile, they were lost to his vision, behind a curve or a hill, or both.

 

#

 

An hour later, Markus paused for a brief snack on the side of the road, stretching his legs as he gnawed on a bit of sausage and cheese, relaxing on a small, rounded boulder that was marginally more comfortable than sitting in the grass. The sudden quiet, except for the chewing, brought the sound of multiple horses toward him, fading in and out as a breeze swirled around him. It was rarely a good thing to hear men on horses, he’d discovered over years of thievery, and he dashed into the very woods that the imp had warned him to stay out of. Of the two ambiguous threats, the woods seemed the safest, and he’d heard nothing in the forest tracking him as he walked along the road.

Hiding behind a thick shrub, he saw three men ride past, then one called out and they all slowed. That can’t be good, Markus thought. And they were wearing the Baron’s livery. The one at the rear held a small chain in his hand, and this he dangled in the air. Some small object moved at the end of the chain and the man turned his horse until it was facing Markus.

Barlak’s balls, Markus thought, backing further into the forest’s shadows, placing his feet carefully on the moist carpet of leaves. They’re tracking me somehow.

The one holding the chain walked his horse forward. Two of the men drew swords, the other a javelin. Markus thought hard. What could they be tracking? Him? As far as he knew, he’d left no hair or blood or skin behind. The Baron’s gold? Well, no; the little he’d escaped with, he’d turned in for notes that he could cash in at any other guild office. Then what?

He looked down at his clothing and sword. Old and worn, his forever. Then his hands, and saw the ring. The one damned thing he’d kept from the Baron’s hoard was the ring. Was it valuable? Unique? Apparently. Magical?

He kept moving back as the soldiers pressed forward, toying with the ring to see if there was some mechanism within it, trying to lift the big sapphire on the top, then twisting it. Please let it be a ring to make me invisible! he thought. Then he could skewer the three men at his leisure as they futilely searched for him.

Finally, the top of the ring clicked and slid sideways, and a tiny mouth appeared on the top and sang a high falsetto loud enough to shame the crickets,

 

There once was a man from Gamasket,

Who carried his balls in a basket…

 

Markus rolled his eyes and moaned. This is what the Baron prized: a ring of bawdy ballads! He’d been to a public house in Gamasket once and some drunken sod rolled out that lewd song one night, all twenty depraved verses. He tried to jerk the ring from his finger but it was not willing to depart his company so easily, so he turned and dashed deeper into the woods as the Baron’s men tried to force their horses to follow, and the ring continued to serenade him with the degenerate debauchery of the song.

The horses were having trouble moving through the dense forest, while Markus made good time crashing through the brush, though the ring made him an easy target. He heard the men dismount just as the ring finally slid from his finger. He tossed it away into the brush where it continued to sing. He kept running, and after five minutes, found that the trail behind him was silent. No doubt the obnoxious ring’s raucous song drowned out the noise of his bumbling escape.

He leaned over and panted heavily, but tried to do it in a paced and silent fashion. He stared back through the forest, hoping he could find the road again, then glanced to the left.

Fifty feet away, two Stonemen were staring at him. As soon as his eyes set upon them, they unfroze and started running for him. Not my day, Markus thought, and ran to save his life. One puzzle was solved, though. He wondered how a village of Stonemen could survive, and the solution was simple as traveling in pairs, where at least one was always looking at the other. It would be tricky; the observer would be frozen while the other had to stay within sight of the first, and they could take turns moving forward. In time, it might become second nature.

But right now, they were running after him. They had to be watching each other as they ran, which slowed them down a little, but they could still move faster than he could.

He tripped over a root that seemed to jump up out of the ground to snag him and rolled onto his back, only to see a woman leaning over him. Not exactly a woman, he thought, and I’m about to die, anyway.

“So sorry,” she said. She was mostly green and wore clothing that seemed to be made of bark. Her eyes were as green as the forest.

He scrambled back to his feet and tripped again, only to flush a deer out of the shrub in front of him that foolishly dashed back toward the rapidly advancing Stonemen. Distracted by the unexpected gift, the two Stonemen changed course and went after the deer, bringing it down twenty paces later, claws flashing in the dappled sunlight above. It died quickly. One of them tore an entire haunch from the deer, a feat of strength that no mere mortal could have managed. The toothy maws in their abdomens opened up and they began to feast.

“You seem lost,” said the green woman from behind him.

Markus drew his sword and spun around in a single smooth movement.

“And nervous,” the woman continued. At least, Markus thought it was a woman. But her legs seemed to fade into the roots below, or become part of them. He had heard of dryads before.

“You just tried to feed me to the Stonemen, if I’m not mistaken,” Markus said.

“Everything…” she started.

“…has got to eat,” Markus interrupted. “Yes, I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. I just wish I wasn’t on the menu so much.” He brushed himself off and glanced at the Stonemen as they feasted on the deer. Though they seemed to be indiscriminate eaters, he hoped they preferred venison to human flesh, and commented as much.

“They used to be men,” the dryad said. “Before the curse.”

“A curse?” he echoed.

“By the Witch Argul.”

“The same one that’s been collecting statues of these beasts?”

She nodded.

“Why were they cursed to begin with?”

“So many questions. You look tired. Perhaps you should rest here. We could talk later. You could relax against my tree, lean back, enjoy the quiet.”

He could hear the cracking of bones and the sounds of chewing coming from the Stonemen and wondered if they would be sated with their meal. But the dryad’s voice was a soft melody, and he did feel a little tired. He turned to her and saw that she was, in fact, quite beautiful, and then she moved toward him, shedding bark as she went until she looked very human, and she held her arms out, beckoning. At the same time, roots slithered up his legs, and then scraped painfully along his shins, and he shouted in pain. The dryad’s hands clenched as she approached, and the roots clenched at the same time, biting deeper into his legs, blood trickling down, and Markus started hacking at them with his sword.

 

 

The dryad hissed and backed away. The roots that weren’t cut lapped at the droplets of human blood that were scattered on the forest floor, then pulled back into the tree. It was then that Markus noted the bones scattered at the base.

Markus held his sword out, pointing at her chest. She scowled, then pouted, and said “Drat.”

“Drat? You tried to eat me,” Markus commented indignantly.

“If you had been under my spell, you wouldn’t have cared. Probably even enjoyed it, up to a point. But those noisy slobbering cretins,” she motioned toward the loudly feasting Stonemen, “have ruined everything.”

“Mmm,” Markus said. “Since your day is ruined anyway, why don’t you just point the way out of the forest, and I’ll be on my way.”

She crossed her arms and glared at him.

“I see. Still hungry, are you?” He glanced over at the Stonemen, then began to walk a long circle around the feasting pair, finally finding a point equidistant from the two that would serve his purposes. “Hey!” he shouted at the two of them. They both tore their gaze from their feast to look up at him, and then Markus closed his eyes.

The forest became silent. The Stonemen, now frozen since no one at all was observing either one of them, had finally stopped eating. Markus, eyes still squeezed tightly shut, cautiously approached the pair, feeling around with bare hands until he found the deer carcass. One of the hind legs was mostly intact, and, eyes closed, he pulled out his sword and hacked away at the haunch until it was released from the body.

Turning away from the gruesome scene, he marched back up to the dryad’s location and dropped the haunch on the bone-strewn forest floor next to the dryad’s tree, then opened his eyes.

The roots from the tree slithered forward and claimed the meal, pulling it into the base of the tree, shredding it like pulled pork on the rough bark as it went.

“I fail to see how I might have enjoyed that,” Markus said.

“Sometimes I play with my food,” the dryad responded.

“Are you more amenable to showing me a way out of the forest now?”

“Are you going to leave the poor Stonemen frozen in that tableau forever?” she asked.

“If I revive them now, they will certainly kill me.”

“Then offer them something more valuable than your life,” the dryad said.

Markus thought about the stupid singing ring, wondering if the thing had finished all the verses of the song yet, and thought of the promissory notes that he carried and the likelihood that they would have any value to a stone monster. Well, who knew what Oakum was like? Perhaps they had moneychangers and moneylenders and moneyholders, just like a regular town. Of course, if the town had been cursed, it had been a regular town at one point.

“Tell me a little story, dryad.”

“My name is Urusial, meat.”

“I am Markus, and it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance, Urusial, although other circumstances might have made the meeting more sociable, say, if your stomach were already full and your attraction to me were less culinary.”

Urusial laughed. “What story would you like to hear, Markus?” she asked.

“Tell me how the town of Oakum became cursed, because it might be at the end of my road, and knowing this story could keep me alive a little longer once I arrive there.”

“Oh, that is not a long story, Markus. The Witch Argul, nearly one hundred years ago, had acquired a necromantic tome that she had sought for a long, long time. She lived in a fairly humble cottage then and rarely gave anyone any trouble, nor did the townspeople of Oakum mind so much, as they visited her on occasion to purchase philters and potions to take care of their passions and boils as needed. The book of spells, however, allowed her to raise the dead as servants. They built stone walls and iron gates for her, a castle of sorts, and they continued to serve her and protect her.

“It did not take long for the townspeople to discover that the workers she employed, whose mortal souls she had enslaved, were their deceased friends and relatives, bound by necromantic spells so that they might never find peace or rest, perpetually enslaved by the powers of the spell. The villagers of Oakum tried to destroy her, killing her servants a second time, but her book of spells served her yet again and she cursed the entire village to become the Stonemen. They can only move when another looks upon them, so to hunt, they must travel in pairs or groups. If they don’t eat or rarely move, they become rigid, like statues, and can never move again.”

Markus looked up at the towering oak that seemed to be at unity with the dryad. “You know an awful lot for a tree that can’t move.”

She shrugged, and Markus shivered at the lithe action. “I’ve been here for over two hundred years, and a lot of humans have passed this way.” She sighed and let her smooth shoulders fall forward. “And it gets so lonely.”

“Stop it, you’ve tried that once already.” He nearly turned toward the Stonemen just so he wasn’t looking at her, then remembered that that was not a smart thing to do. Instead, he closed his eyes, turned, and approached the two Stonemen.

“Listen here, you two,” he began, “I understand that you see no more than a quick meal in me, but I can be a big help to you, and you to me. You can hunt at your leisure without fear of freezing up, and I’ll keep an eye on you. You can bring home plentiful game to your comrades in Oakum. I’ll even help you carry the meat. In exchange, I seek safe passage through Oakum, for there’s a girl there I need to talk to.”

He turned his back to them and called out to the dryad. “There’s no easy way to test this, is there?”

“You sounded very convincing!” Urusial called out.

He sighed and approached the dryad. “I am not convinced they understand speech anymore or have considered my arguments. I…”

Markus stopped when he heard the less-than-stealthy approach of three men crashing through the underbrush toward him. Drawn swords and a poised javelin caught the narrow shafts of light piercing the veil of leaves above him. Shouting at the dryad to talk to her had not been a wise choice.

He ran, ducking and twisting for that fraction of a second that the one man might let his javelin fly, and felt it whisper past his ear to bounce off a Stoneman’s chest a few feet later. He leaped between the two Stonemen who turned their tiny black eyes toward him, then back to the approaching men, and then there was only the sound of screeching metal against stone and loud screaming for a few minutes while Markus hid behind a tree.

Once the sounds died down, Markus peered around the side of the tree and looked. The two Stonemen looked back, gore dripping from their skins. One nodded to him.

Markus approached the scene of the slaughter, rubbing his chin. Finally he said, “I won’t be helping you carry that meat, but I will help with the deer. We’ll have their three horses to help carry anything else you kill, so there’s that.” He rummaged through the dead soldiers’ bloody pockets for any money they carried and found a pendant shaped like a little arrow that they’d used to track the ring, and the ring itself, returned to its mute condition. Well, he thought, I can probably sell it as a novelty, along with the two swords and the javelin, but probably not in Oakum. The light leather armor they’d worn was shredded to ribbons and infused with a bit more blood and flesh than he cared to clean out, and would bring in no money at all.

Good to his word, he followed the Stonemen as they accumulated an afternoon’s haul of pheasant, quail, and another deer, collected together with the first deer. Markus begged them to leave the soldiers behind, and they did.

Urusial bid him farewell. “You should come back to visit, though.”

She oozed sensuality, and Markus shuddered to think how she learned that. He thought about spiders that ate their mates after coupling and said, “I’ll think about that.” And he knew he would. Thinking was safer than doing.

The two Stonemen and Markus carried the day’s hunt back to the road, where they found the horses nibbling on grass just inside the forest’s edge, beyond the view of passersby, but close enough to the sunlight to allow grass to grow. They had serviceable packs and tack, and Markus knew they would fetch a decent price once he found a town where they wouldn’t be considered part of the food supply. They shied at the presence of the gore-covered Stonemen, but let the bundled meat be wrapped in cloth and placed in packs across their backs. Markus rode one of them, two trailed behind, and the two Stonemen under Markus’ watchful eye led the front of their company at a brisk walk, headed toward Oakum.

 

#

 

Markus rode into Oakum on his new horse, led by the two Stonemen. They carried their haul of meat to one building, where the two started to unload it. Dozens of other Stonemen walked the streets on a variety of errands, moving in a strange and jerky way, stopping and starting as they passed out of one Stoneman’s view and fell into another’s. Only a few sported any clothing at all. Many of them eyed Markus curiously, or speculatively, but a quick twitch of a hand from his two Stoneman would send them on their way. It was only a matter of minutes before he spied the only girl in town, walking alongside the Stoneman he was already familiar with; the one who had almost killed him in the Baron’s dungeon.

The thing saw him and lurched his way, though Markus was unsure whether it wanted to finish the task at which it failed inside the Baron’s vault as Markus tried to empty it of its treasure, or thank him for releasing him from its captivity in the vault at Baron Glask’s hands.

The other two Stonemen stepped in its way, and it stopped. It raised a hand toward Markus, then dropped it. The girl said, “Gerald wishes to thank you for his release from Glask, and apologizes for trying to eat you. He was terribly hungry at the time.”

Markus wondered how the girl got all that out of a lifted hand but was willing to accept it. “Apology accepted. But I am curious. How is it you befriended one of the Stonemen? When we escaped Glask, it—he—was killing everything in sight.”

“He is my grandfather. I took a job in the kitchen with Baron Glask hoping I might rescue him someday. He knows me, but that brings me to the question, why did you follow me here?”

“You are friends with the Stoneman. The Stoneman, I think, is no friend with Baron Glask, and I thought I could convince you to talk to the rest of the Stonemen on my behalf, so that together, we could attack the Baron and replace him with a friendlier despot.”

“Rather bold plans,” she said. “You dislike Glask fervently.”

Markus nodded. “He killed my brother Quinn in a gruesome and painful fashion. I owe him an equal disservice.”

“Stealing treasure from his vault wasn’t enough for you?”

“It was a tiny fraction of the vast amounts of gold stored in his vaults, stolen from the peasants, and there are many debts to be paid.”

“And tell me, “she said, “why should the Stonemen perform this noble act for you?”

Markus knew that this question might arise, and he’d hoped that their mutual dislike of the Baron might be enough to carry the deal. He said, “Perhaps, together, we could eliminate the curse on this town. That would certainly be a fair trade, don’t you think?”

The girl observed him for a minute while he fidgeted nervously with the horse’s reins, finally looking away. “You have some plan to remove the curse?” she asked.

“If the Witch Argul created the curse, she must have the means to reverse it. Common lore. All I have to do is steal that thing, and then, after the battle with the Baron, you could remove the curse.”

“You are a thief,” she stated.

“A fairly good one, if you’d care to ask your grandfather Gerald, there.”

The Stoneman waggled a hand. So-so.

Markus slid off his horse, landing lightly in the dusty street. “My name is Markus, by the way.”

“I am Bren,” she said. “Your plan is agreeable, but I am hungry and thirsty. We can take a meal at the tavern and discuss this further.”

“The town has a tavern?”

“The Stonemen still need to eat and drink, and some traders pass through who are friendly to them. So, there is a tavern. It was here before the curse was laid.”

As they walked, with Gerald leading the way, Markus considered what he’d heard thus far, and asked, “So you were born after the curse upon Oakum?”

“Yes,” she said, “My parents were in another town that day, and so avoided its effects.”

“Ah.” He tried to do the math for the timelines in his head, making rough estimates. It did not seem to arrive at the girl’s age. “You must be much older than you appear.”

“I am fifty-two.”

Markus raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“I am also a witch, like Witch Argul.”

He tried to raise his eyebrows higher but found that they were already as high up his forehead as they might travel.

Bren sighed. “We’re related. She is my great-great-great…well, you get the idea. She’s ancient. Many in the town are related. She’s been living in the area for well over a hundred years, with many lovers, and like me, she ages as slowly as she wants.”

“You would think everyone would want to be a witch,” Markus quipped.

“There are disadvantages,” she said, without elucidating.

They entered the tavern and ordered a meal consisting of some spicy sliced sausage, an odious goat cheese, and strong garlic bread. Bren mentioned the beer was tolerable, and they started with that, nibbling cautiously on the fare.

“What do you know of the curse?” Markus asked, once they’d wetted their throats.

“It’s written in her spell book. She’s invested much of her power in the spell book, so if you can steal that, then it will weaken her considerably. I know the room in which she stores it.”

“Wait—you’ve been to her estate?”

“Of course. I’m a relative. I’ve met with her a few times.”

“And she didn’t turn you to stone?”

Bren lifted her beer and stared at the foam. “She only did that to the townsfolk who gathered together to destroy her that time. Like my grandfather. But she bears me no ill will.” She sipped her beer and added, “This time, it would just be you, if you get caught.”

Bren discussed the details of Witch Argul’s estate. The outer perimeter was constantly observed by her corps of undead standing guard, including two the size of ogres, and Bren was not certain where they had come from. The main building was only a single story, and though there were windows, the windows were placed high in the walls, presumably to keep out the likes of Marcus. She believed that there were no windows to the room containing the spell book, though she hadn’t actually been inside. There was only one door to access it from the main hall, and while there were several windows and doors that could get you inside the hall, all of them were magically or mechanically trapped. Adjacent to the room containing the book was a sitting room with a small library, open to the hallway, with a row of small, high windows.

When she had visited in the past, the undead servants always escorted her to the front door, and she was always greeted by a large, undead human, armed well and likely skilled with the tools he carried. This one still had his tongue, which enabled him to talk, a rare item among the undead, and he would escort Bren to see Granny Argul, as she preferred to be called.

“If you can get her spell book back to me, I can reverse the effect of the curse,” Bren said. “It’s a simple matter. One merely reads the spell backward, and its effects are reversed. Assuming you have some magical talent, of course. The magical language does not describe things so much as it embodies results.”

Markus blinked slowly. “I will leave that part to you.”

When they were finished with their plans, Markus wrapped the rest of the meal in a cloth and tucked it into his pack, then took a room at the tavern. He needed to plan.

 

#

 

It was past midnight when Markus arrived near the Witch’s estate. From his pack he retrieved a spyglass to observe the perimeter surrounding the building and noted a number of undead humans standing still as, well, death. They were difficult to see just for that reason. Human guards would have shifted foot to foot, smoked a pipe, called to one another, and so on. The dead just waited.

Markus wrapped the singing ring in a scrap of cloth to dampen the sound it was about to make, along with a stone to give it some heft.

Pulling a sling from his pack, he placed the muffled singing ring into it, reached into the rag to turn it on, then slung the ring and rock as far as he could from his position, hoping it would get caught in the branches of a tree.

The undead turned their heads toward the soft, bawdy singing and trundled off in that direction.

Markus filled the defensive gap thus created by running to a low wall, then leaped over the top, where he landed facing the gray countenance of a Stoneman, reaching for him. He leaped backward to avoid its grasp, then realized that this was just one of the many permanently frozen Stonemen, that is to say, statues, decorating Witch Argul’s garden.

The motionless monsters presenting no threat, he quickly padded toward the house’s wall and used a rope and grapnel to scale it, then took up a precarious position partway up the wall on the ledge next to a closed window. It was dark inside, but according to the conversation with Bren, it was only a sitting room.

Markus pulled out his viewing orb and held it to his eye, looking for any evidence of magical runes or auras. Bren had warned him that there would be traps on just about everything. And good to her word, the latch for the window glowed green through the orb.

But Markus knew his craft well. There were a few ways through a window; one could break the glass, lift the latch (and trigger the spell). Very noisy. Or, cut the glass carefully, lift the latch, and trigger the spell. Or open the window without opening the window at all, thus bypassing the spell. Remove the entire frame? Time consuming, since the frame was often installed with iron nails or oak dowels, and cutting through either would be difficult and loud. Or, remove all the panes of the window by removing the glazing, pulling the panes, and breaking the grilles. It was relatively quiet work, especially with the crickets and lewd songs filling the air. He hoped the singing would last long enough to be in and out with the book.

It took four minutes to remove the panes, and he dropped inside on his rope, nimbly landing on the floor, feather silent. Inside, the sound of the ring’s lecherous lyrics was barely a whisper.

After a quick listen and fast peek, he crept into the shadows of the main hall and slinked toward the room that Bren thought contained the book of spells.

Verifying with his orb that there was no magic cast upon the door, Markus tried the knob and found that it turned freely. He stood to the side, just in case some weapon or other surprise awaited him within, but in his experience, few doors on the inside of a house were ever locked or trapped, especially if they were used regularly.

The door swung open and he stepped into darkness. He pulled another cheap magical bauble out of his pack, whispered a word to it, and a soft red glow bathed the room. He looked immediately for a bookcase, or perhaps a pedestal with a single tome resting on it, but there was neither. Instead, there several sturdy lecterns each supporting a large, flat section of rock.

He frowned and hoped that what he suspected was not true. Stepping cautiously toward one of the tablets, he could see writing on it. He couldn’t read a word of it, and he was familiar with bits of several languages. He walked to the next, and the next, and each was covered with broadly stroked characters that made his mind hurt when he examined them. Magical glyphs.

He backed up and counted them. There were twelve pages. Each page made of stone. This was the damned spell book that Bren spoke of, apparently having never seen it herself. How was he to haul away this quarry’s worth of stone?

Experimentally, he tried to lift a single page, but even one was too heavy. And there was certainly no way he was going to get any page of the book back up to the window access he’d used to get inside. Besides, there were twelve of them and he had no idea as to which page contained the Stoneman’s curse.

He chewed on a lip, realizing that the mission was doomed. It couldn’t get any worse.

“Are you lost, thief?” said a sharp voice from behind him. He spun and drew a knife in one swift motion, but received a puff of some powder as he turned, and found himself too weak to move. He could barely stand. Was he stone? He turned his numb gaze downward. No, still flesh.

The Witch Argul stood in front of him. Markus wondered how she entered the room without him knowing about it, or even knew he was there, but then, magic was good for obscuring things like that. He looked closely at her. For someone who was over a hundred years old, Markus thought she looked surprisingly unwrinkled. Attractive, even. “Looking to steal my book, were you?” the Witch said. “Not what you expected? You are not the first to try, and soon you’ll be joining the other watchers in my garden.”

She walked over to the ninth tablet, pointed at Markus, and began reading the spell carved upon it. He felt his veins go to sand, his skin itching and hardening to plaster, then hard stone. It was like something was crawling over every inch of his body and lighting it on fire, and if he had enough strength to do so, he would have screamed out loud. Instead, he produced a pathetic gurgling sound that even he was embarrassed to make. He felt his lips squeeze shut and disappear, and his eyes shrink and spread further apart, while the rest of his face became a featureless smooth slab. His stomach split into something new, teeth growing through flesh, new lips opening and closing in his chest. His clothes and backpack remained, untouched by the spell, though his knife slipped from his clawed and awkward grip, clattering on the stone floor.

When the witch was done reading the spell, she came over and tapped on his forehead, then walked around him. He tried to track her movement with his beady black eyes, but they were frozen in place like the rest of him. Her eyes were shut, preventing him from moving at all.

“Well, you seem ready enough. I’ll have some servants along soon to take you into the lower rooms for seasoning. The lack of food and movement will soon leave you unable to move at all, though your mind will still function, trapped inside your motionless body. Then you can join the others in my garden, watching the grass grow.” She smiled mirthlessly. “You should know better than to try to steal anything from a witch.”

She turned and left the room.

 

#

 

The room was quiet. After nearly an hour, Markus wondered if she would send undead servants to do the task of moving him, and if their dead gaze would release him from the spell that kept him from moving. Probably not. But, it did make him wonder what sort of eyes were required to allow a Stoneman movement. The dryad had not released the Stonemen, but she was essentially a voluptuous talking plant. Could a deer release him?

Markus heard a tiny squeak and then he took a small step forward, off-balance. Could it be? He stood still, not wishing to scare off whatever it was that had given him a moment of free movement, and felt something scurry up the leg of his pants. It climbed into his backpack, where the cheese and garlic bread and sausage called out liked a lunch bell to every rodent in smelling distance.

As soon as the mouse, or perhaps a rat, was out of sight within his pack, he was frozen again, but the mouse was soon joined by another scurrying across the floor, and he once again acquired the freedom of movement, allowing him to swing the pack from his shoulder to his chest and look inside the backpack.

It was a rat, and it looked back at him, surprised and indignant that he had interrupted its repast, and baring its sharp teeth at Markus.

Markus shied away, then remembered he was a Stoneman. Swords couldn’t hurt him. Teeth, well, there was one way to find out. And he could move very fast.

He snatched the rat up in a clawed fist and created a tight cage with his claws against his palm. The rat went crazy with fear and gnashed at him, but with no effect. Stone beat bone.

Markus laughed, or tried to. Some hideous sound came from the mouth in his abdomen, and he swore not to laugh ever again. At least the rat would be looking at him constantly, caged inside his partially closed fist, although there was the chance that it just might keel over from fear, its heart burst from pounding so hard. Rats were hardy bastards, though, Markus thought. He’d seen them take on dogs and win.

He looked around the room and considered his next action. With one fist curled around the rat, he had one arm left to carry one of the tablets. Two seemed too much, but he could rob the Witch Argul of their efficacy. And like the tablets, he was stone!

He went to the first one in the row and smashed it with his free fist, pulverizing the remnants with a stone heel, then continued to the next. He heard a blood-chilling scream echo through the building, but pressed on, skipping the ninth tablet containing the Stoneman’s spell, and moved past it to destroy the rest.

Carrying his caged rat in one curled and clawed fist, he went to the ninth lectern and lifted the stone tablet with ease.

 

#

 

Markus burst out of the room into the hallway and ran toward the front door, grateful and surprised that the Witch Argul hadn’t come out again. Had the destruction of the other tablets hurt her? It was possible.

Barring the front door was the large undead servant of whom Bren had warned him. The servant, armed with a sword and knife, seemed dumbfounded by Markus’ sudden appearance, and just stared at him as Markus paused. But I’m a Stoneman now, Markus thought. His weapons can’t hurt me. He shoved the servant aside, pulled the door open, and dashed outside.

With the tablet tucked under one arm and crazed rat in hand, he ran across the garden and out the gate, expecting to do battle with dozens of undead, or hopefully just outrun them, but of the ones he saw, they were all lying on the ground, unmoving. Dead again. Had the witch lost control of them? It was curious.

He ran to where filthy ditties filled the air from the tiny mouth of the singing ring. The ground was littered with the dead undead, unmoving. He put down the tablet, retrieved the singing ring, then awkwardly tried to shift the gem to stop the singing, using the sharp tips of the claws on his free hand while holding down the ring with a clawed foot.

It was impossible. After two minutes, he gave up. He left the ring behind on the ground, now crooning about sex-starved sailors at sea in anapestic tetrameter.

He picked up the tablet again and continued running back toward the tavern. At least, with the one spell tablet that he carried, he could make good his promise to the other Stonemen, and when they’d destroyed the Baron Glask, and Bren read the spell backward, then they could all return to normalcy.

The rat’s overstressed heart gave out when he was still a mile from Oakum, running, and his suddenly stiff stone figure tumbled to the ground, luckily protecting the stone tablet he carried. The witch will be right behind me, he thought, but all around him the forest was silent. Eventually, some unseen animal saw him, and he dropped the dead rat. He struggled up and forward twenty feet before the startled animal took to its heels, eyes away, but at least he was standing. Other random night creatures: an owl, a wild dog, a hawk, a raccoon, chanced by and gave him ten or fifteen feet of movement before he scared them away too, but by then he’d left the road and entered the forest, not wishing to be discovered by anyone who might pry the tablet from him or steal the remaining contents of his backpack.

Once, he tried to adjust his shirt on his new frame and discovered why Stonemen were generally naked. His claws shredded the fabric as he touched it.

Daylight came. Markus was still moving toward the tavern in small increments. With each small movement, he gained a further appreciation of why the Stonemen lived together in a group, and never left Oakum alone. It occurred to him that perhaps a human and a Stoneman together would make a better pair; one as a set of eyes to keep the Stoneman moving, and the Stoneman offering protection for the soft, easily-damaged human. But if one such pair met another such a pair and they fought, the two humans would invariably die first. So, maybe not a great idea.

He had a lot of time to think while standing still waiting for the next pair of eyes to free him for a few seconds.

Though he was in the forest, he was close enough to the road to see anyone traveling down its length. He half expected to see the Witch Argul riding or flying down the road toward town seeking vengeance, or for Bren to come looking for him and the so-called ‘spell book,’ but there was no one.

The rest of the day and another night passed, Markus making little headway through the forest. At last two Stonemen out on a hunting jaunt appeared nearby and spied him, freeing him from his paralysis. He quietly joined them, though they were curious about his excessive clothing and the slab of stone he carried. But not so curious as to turn down an extra pair of eyes while they hunted.

The three of them returned to Oakum after killing a wild boar that was too ignorant to do anything but attack them, unaware of the futility and hazard of such an effort. They left Markus at the edge of town, and under the intermittent inquisitive gazes from other Stonemen in the street, he lurched his way back to the tavern.

In the tavern, the owner noted Markus’s clothing and surmised what had happened without a word from Markus, fortunate since Markus had no idea how to communicate with this new body. The human tavern keeper sent a Stoneman to fetch Bren.

Bren arrived breathlessly, followed by Gerald, her Stoneman grandfather. Before she said anything else, not even a greeting or lament for Markus’s current condition, she said, “The book! Do you have her spell book?”

Markus held out the stone slab gingerly.

Bren glared at it, then ran her fingers over the rocky surface. “This is it? It’s made of stone?” She quickly scanned the magical glyphs on its surface. “There’s only one spell here. The Stoneman spell.”

Markus nodded.

“You could only carry one?”

He nodded again.

“Were there others?” she asked, somewhat fretfully.

He nodded yet again.

“Are they still held within her estate?”

Markus waggled a hand. Sort of. He mimed smashing the remaining rock tablet while everyone cringed.

“Augh!” she groaned. “All that power! I would have killed for those pages!” She threw a hand over her mouth, wide-eyed, as the others in the room stared at her. “Figure of speech!” she said apologetically.

Markus placed the tablet on a sturdy table and motioned to Bren, then ran a sharp finger backward along the glyphs, and pointed to himself.

“You want me to change you back so you can lead your forces of Stonemen against your Baron Glask?”

He tipped his head and swept a hand to the side. Just so.

“Let’s get to it, then,” she said. She pointed a finger at Markus and started to read from the tablet. Markus could immediately feel the change, like the pins-and-needles of a hand fallen asleep, but amplified to include every part of his body at once. He tried to howl, but his gut-mouth had already sealed shut and his face-mouth hadn’t quite returned yet, so the sound produced was more of an agonized hum. He fell to the ground and writhed, but after a minute, he reached up weak arms to feel himself, and felt flesh.

“I am whole!” His shirt was shredded from his claws, but his pants and pack were still secure. Even his sword still hung at his side.

Bren smiled. “So it would appear.”

Markus stood up and brushed himself off.

Across the room, Gerald pointed to himself and spread his hands. What about me?

Bren smiled wryly, watching Markus. “Do you see the problem with your plan now, Markus? Nobody in the village is going to tolerate another minute under this curse now that you’ve delivered the spell to me. It’s a shame about the other spells, but at least you have weakened Witch Argul considerably. She would have drawn considerable power from the tablets.”

Markus’s face clouded with anger. “You promised!”

“I could not promise for the entire village, Markus.”

Markus pulled his sword out and shook it threateningly, though he realized that using it on Bren would defeat his purpose and wasn’t something he really wanted to do anyway. He repeated, “You promised!”

Bren’s eyes widened when she saw the threat, though, and she shouted, “Gerald!”

Gerald set his eyes on Markus and Markus realized his eye-closing trick would do very little good with others in the room, and he was doomed.

At that very moment, the door to the tavern slammed open, hinges wailing in agony, and the Witch Argul entered. Where before she had seemed young and comely, Markus noted that she had aged considerably since their last encounter, becoming old and cronely. Had the power from the other tablets maintained her youth? It would explain the unearthly scream he’d heard when he smashed them.

Her gaze swept the room. “You! And you! And my last spell tablet!”

Witch Argul, holding a small wand in her hand, pulled her arm back to cast something at Bren, but Gerald, still stone, lunged forward to block the unknown attack. As her wand came forward, so did crackling bolts of lightning that tore through Gerald’s outstretched arm, and the arm splintered, cracked, and flew apart, shards of stone lacerating Bren and Markus. Gerald fell onto his back, making a hideous screeching, gurgling sound from the obscene gut-mouth.

Bren said a word and swept a hand sideways in front of herself and a shield of green light appeared. Holding this before her, she backed up toward the additional protection of the old oak bar.

Markus, sword in hand already, threw it at the witch while the crackling lightning left Gerald and was redirected toward him. The lightning caught the sword midflight and reversed its path, but Markus was already diving under a table, pushing at its lip to knock it over and create a barrier. The top tilted slowly, and he realized he’d taken shelter under the one table supporting the stone tablet. His sword flew through the air back to him and slashed his leg, clattering to the floor next to him, but he pushed even harder and finally the table tilted. The slab of stone bearing the Stoneman’s spell slid edge-first toward the floor, then took the full brunt of the bolts of electricity leaping from Witch Argul’s wand.

The tablet cracked.

The Witch screeched, the lightning suddenly disappeared, and she fell on her back, writhing in pain.

Well, Markus thought, that explains why she didn’t chase after me right away. The destruction of the other eleven slabs must have nearly killed her.

Markus stood, then fell over again once he the pain from his wound reached his brain. He clamped his hand over the bleeding wound, gritting his teeth. Glancing toward the bar where Bren had taken shelter, he met her gaze. Her eyes were wide with fear. Markus jerked his head toward Witch Argul and tossed his bloodied sword across the floor. “Finish the job!” he rasped.

She hesitated only a moment, looking cautiously over the bar to verify that the Witch Argul was still incapacitated, then grabbed the sword, dashed out, and skewered her unceremoniously until she stopped moving.

Across the room, Gerald had become an old man missing half his arm, howling in pain and spraying blood as though trying to put out a fire with it. Outside the tavern, Markus could hear the happy shouts and cries of a freed population turned human once again.

The tavern keeper rushed to Gerald’s aid, using a dirty bar towel as a makeshift tourniquet to keep him from bleeding to death.

A shadow fell across Markus as he sat on the floor and he looked up to see Bren staring at him, head tilted slightly as though pondering some philosophically deep question, holding Markus’s bloody dripping sword in her hand. Witch Argul’s wand was tucked into her waistband. He squinted one eye at her and kept both hands on his leg wound. “Well?” he said.

“You’ll need that looked at, I suppose. One of the Stonemen used to be the town’s doctor. I hope he remembers enough to help you.”

In short order, she bound his wound so they could search the streets for the doctor, but it became unnecessary as most of the townspeople came crowding into the tavern to celebrate their sudden freedom and to spit on Witch Argul’s corpse. The old doctor was part of the crowd. Between Bren and the doctor, both Gerald and Markus were supported and led to the building that used to serve as the doctor’s workplace.

Once they were there and the doctor was busy patching them up, Bren said, “Well, there is a witch’s estate that needs filling. I suppose I should get out there and take it over while it’s still vacant.”

Markus grunted. “I doubt there’ll be much left to take,” he said. “The garden was full of frozen Stonemen who probably came to life once the tablet was destroyed, just as all the undead fell when the spell tablet that created them was smashed. If I were to guess, I would say the converted Stonemen, released from their garden prison, are raiding her house even as we speak, if they are still sane at all.”

Bren pursed her lips thoughtfully, then nodded. “That seems very likely, since you mention it. It could be afire by now.” She walked outside, stared into the sky for a moment, then returned, shaking her head sadly. “I can see smoke rising from her estate. It is too late.”

“Perhaps she hid some magical baubles underground, in a basement.”

Bren shrugged. “Perhaps. But I’d still have to wait for the flames to die.”

“If you find a ring that’s singing bawdy ballads, that belongs to me,” Markus said.

“I’ll remember that.” She sighed. “All these years, I’d hoped to replace the old witch and inherit all her power. But the old hag just never died. Now, her estate is gone and her entire spell book is destroyed. I have nothing.”

“Nothing? You’re fifty-two, but look like a young woman. You possess her little lightning stick. And I saw you cast a shield spell. You must have some power,” Markus said. “As for me, I truly have nothing that I sought at the beginning of this adventure. I lost the army of Stonemen I meant to bring against the Baron.”

“I’m sure the townspeople will reward you handsomely for the release from their curse. You lived up to your side of the promise, after all.”

“Well,” he said. “It will take more than mere money to ruin Baron Glask.”

 

#

 

Bren was correct. The townspeople were very generous, and besides acquiring a good amount of gold, he also acquired an account with Oakum’s moneyholder, two stalwart fighters to accompany him wherever he chose to go (as long as they were paid), and a promise that he would always be welcome at Witch Bren’s table. He was even able to retrieve the singing ring from the destroyed estate. And he still had the three horses taken from the Baron’s men, so he and his two men could ride from the town in comfort.

Before he left, Bren asked him, “What will you do from here?”

He shrugged. “I’m not completely certain. Lady Hamblin despises Glask, but I fear that if I approach her with any suggestions, all she will see is a man with too much money, or a thief. Either situation would not bode well for me. I know that she used to hire some of the Stonemen to guard her border from Glask, and I expect that they’ve all left her service by now, having returned to human form. If she discovered that I was responsible for this, she might want my head. Perhaps raising an army of Stonemen or undead is not the best way to seek revenge.”

“You could just put the whole revenge idea aside and live a rich and rewarding life,” Bren said. “Oakum is not a bad place to live.”

“The Baron killed my brother. It would be dishonorable if I found no way to balance the scales. I will visit Lady Hamblin’s domain without presenting myself to her. She might be having more trouble with Glask than usual since her Stonemen have left her service. Perhaps there is some other way I can be a thorn, or sword, in Baron Glask’s side without dealing directly with the Lady.”

“Well, then, good luck, Sir Thief. Remember you are always welcome here.”

He nodded once, turned his horse, and headed down the dirt road, followed by his guard.

________________________________________

Tom Jolly is a retired astronautical/electrical engineer who spends his time writing SF and fantasy, designing board games, and creating obnoxious puzzles. His stories have appeared in Analog SF, Daily Science Fiction, MYTHIC, Translunar Travelers Lounge, and a few anthologies, including As Told by Things, and Tales from the Pirate’s Cove. His fantasy and SF novels, “An Unusual Practice,” “A Game of Broken Minds,” and “Touched,” are available on Amazon. He lives near Port Orchard, Washington with his wife Penny. You can follow him at Twitter (@tomjolly19) or Facebook (@TJWriter), and find more of his stories on his website, or his Amazon author page.