The Heaven Stone CH.1-?

                   PART ONE

Chapter One: The Fading Light of Innocence...

         'You've kept me waiting Delfo.'

         The words sliced through him with the bite of a knife. Delfo froze. His heart hammered in his chest. Had that been the Attendant speaking from the shadows? Had he seen something move between the trees? He pondered it. The voice had certainly sounded like the man. Delfo wondered if it was. It had to be the Attendant. Because if it wasn't then he was dead.

         He searched the shadows between the trees with his eyes quickly, hoping for a glimpse of the Attendant to the Lord of Lords. His breath rose before him in icy puffs of mist. Far in the distance the sun was only a faint glimmer on the icy horizon still. It was not yet dawn. He groaned in fustration and began to push his way through a screen of weeping tree branches, then followed the path up to the top of a hill.

         He glanced over his shoulder at the road and the warmth of the fires of the camp, now only visible as indistinct flecks of color between the trees and for a long moment Delfo stood like that, body poised to walk one way, his head pointed in the other direction. He sighed in resignation then and shifted his gaze back towards the path that lie ahead.

         His destiny lay in that direction.

         Squinting into the darker shadows surrounding the mossy trunks of the Black Wood, Delfo tried to make out the shape of the Attendant to the Lord of Lords. There was nothing out there though. Nothing that his human eyes could see anyway. Yet he felt like he was being watched and his skin crawled. He missed the reassuring weight of his armor. And now he felt naked without his sword.

         Delfo shivered inspite of himself. The path led down from the top of the hill and disappeared into a wall of thorny briars below. The way through was surrounded on either side by jumbles of large boulders, which he gaped at, noticing them for the first time and he winced. Before he could stop himself Delfo was imagining all sorts of nasty things happening to himself, either stumbling head first into the bush and being pierced through the eyes by wooden spikes the size of his hand or tripping on a root or slipping on the rainwashed path. That decided him. Delfo walked off the path a bit and then circled the bush. He gave it a wide berth.

         He was forced to climb more than a few of the large boulders and he earned quite a lot of cuts and bruises along the way. No root snagged his feet however. And no thorns got stuck in his eyeballs either. Once he nearly tripped on a fat stone but he caught himself quickly, yelling like a fool of course, but he flailed his arms, pinwheeling like a madman and managed to grab a handful of of leaves. When he finally caught his breath Delfo noticed it was a silverleaf, a sapling compared to some of the older behemoths near the edge of the Wood where he entered, but it was the sturdiest looking tree in the whole forest right then and he thanked it. Delfo thanked the tree profusely. He felt very silly doing it but his nerves were very nearly frayed and he no longer cared.

         He knew this was wrong. He rubbed his face with a sleeve and trembled. Delfo was sure they would probably hate him for it. None of them knows what that damn Stone is doing to us. I do though. I am the only one! God I wish I never laid eyes on the thing. Then I wouldn't be out in this cursed forest before dawn. He kicked at the stone and watched it roll then bounce off the path.

         He'd been scared enough when Lord Torment owed him a reckoning but the past was the past and he'd forced all of that behind him. Hadn't he? The only thing he wanted to do was find the Attendant, deliver his message and then run as far and as fast from this unpleasant experience as he could. Why not let someone else deal with the consequences.

         Delfo encountered the stalker as he came around the bend in the path. It had been crouching in the velvety darkness beneath a towering All Season Blue when he saw it. Several enormous roots stuck out of the ground to one side of the path, nearly right beside the stalker, arcing up and over Delfo's own head. The stalker must have sensed him approaching because it lifted its head and began hissing loudly warning Delfo to back off. He barely managed to choke off the scream in his throat but as it was even the soldier in him whimpered.

         It was a big one alright. It was all hair and teeth and spit. There was more to it obviously. The stalker resembled a deeper, blacker shadow than the fading ones provided. It had the body of a man but its arms were longer. Much longer. It moved only once. It had been shifting its weight for a more comfortable position when Delfo disturbed it. The stalker fixed him with an unblinking stare. He gulped. What was a stalker doing here? Now?? True, it was not like the beasts to avoid a place like this but just about everyone steered clear of the forest. Rumors suggested it was haunted. On his way here in fact he had heard talk of a whole patrol gone missing in the area. This was the first time Delfo had ever ventured beyond the treeline.

         He pitied the patrol. He wondered if a stalker hadn't gotten them.


         This one had either been resting under the tree for quite some time or it had been waiting for him. He ferverently hoped it was the former and not the later. Delfo hadn't even considered the possibility of a stalker's presence at the meet. It could be serving as someone's watch dog. The Attendant? What am I going to do now? Delfo wondered dismally, I can't just run away from it, though God knows I truly want to....the stalker is much too fast. It will only catch me and then i'm dead too. What if it's in league with the Attendant?. If that is the case the Lord of Lords is not someone you can just run away from. Oh, I wish I never saw that damn Stone!. It was hard enough having to live a lie every day. Not wanting to admit one had found the world's trouble in a pretty rock was terribly hard. He wanted to tell someone. He wanted to relieve himself of the burden. Delfo wondered if he was becoming a traitor now as well? In a sense he was already one he supposed miserably, going off like this to spill the family secret. He cuffed a tear from the corner of one eye away suddenly angry with himself. He knew that somewhere deep down inside there was a small part of his soul that was screaming in misery. He felt there was no other option.

         'H-Hello? Sar? I-is anyone be-besides the stalker out h-here? A-Anyone at a-a-ll?' Delfo stampered, kneading the hat that he held in his grubby hands. Beads of sweat were popping out on his brow, trickling down the folds of skin near his eyes. He blinked quickly two times, and then a third time harder. He was sure that the stalker could smell his fear. It could probably smell his fear from a hundred miles away. His was a palpable sort of fear. Also stalkers had noses better than any hound's. That was common knowledge.

         'It wasn't as though I could help it Sar' Delfo tried to explain, offering weakly. 'I tried t-to come as q-quick as I-I c-c-could Sar! It weren't n-no fault o-of m-m-mine honest!'. He plucked at the neck hole of his tunic uneasily.

         'Tell me, why should I believe you Delfo?'.

         The hairs on the back of Delfo's neck rose. Something brushed past him, not quite touching him, it was more like a soft, feather light breeze. Delfo shifted his weight onto the other leg. He knew at once that the Attendant to the Lord of Lords was here. The Attendant had spoken to Delfo in fact. He'd been informed, rather coldly, of his lateness. Now his loyalty was being questioned as well. Delfo sighed inwardly. The Stone was definately cursed. It needed to become somebody else's problem now. Anyone else would do. 'Please Sar!' He called out again, 'The B-Barons of Easa Ghaud seek yyour council Sar! A stone's been found. It's a terrible blue stone and it is giving the people visions. It must be taken somewhere else! Please Sar, show yourself so that we can talk more plainly. I beg you Sar!!'. He was aware that at the end there he had sounded very whiny. For a moment nothing happened. He thought he was alone.

         But then his wish was granted.....

         The Attendant to the Lord of Lords coalesced from the shadows and Delfo almost fell backwards over a thick mossy trunk of the fallen silverleaf. Instead he scrambled across the tree's thick girth and kept his eyes on the amorpheous shape of the Attendant, waiting for the slightest hostile motion to send him flying into the surrounding brush. Delfo was very surprised then when he blinked and the Attendant was in his face. The Attendant was looming over him again and Delfo saw that he a tall and bony man who was all but concealled within the dirtiest cloak Delfo had ever seen. The hood was pulled down low over the Attendant's rictus. Faint impressions of color left in the cloak reminded Delfo strongly of blackest midnight. There were tiny silver crows sewn into it also but the thread was so worn with age that they were nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the cloak.

         The Attendant grabbed Delfo roughly and wordlessly by the arms and tossed him through the air to the waiting stalker. The stalker threw him to the forest floor quickly enough, as if he were some contagion it feared to contract and soon after Delfo's hands were bound stiffly behind his back with rope. His bonds had no give however. He could not move his hands at all.

         Delfo spat out some leaves forced into his mouth during the scuffle when he was allowed to sit up. Then he glanced stricken at the stalker. Now he could see it a little more clearly. He saw that it wasn't really black at all. The stalker's skin had a slightly greyish pall to it, a fine dusting that made it seem to be almost shadowy. 'Why are you doing this? There is no need to bind me. Please! release me, I am in league with you, there is no need for these bonds.' Delfo begged, talking to both the Attendant and the stalker. The Attendant dismissed him with a disgusted wave of his hand. 'I want you to understand something Delfo.' the Attendant to the Lord of Lords said to him, his tone suggested something fairly ominous was bound to happen in the near future. 'I want to make it perfectly clear to you that if you lie to me or if you falsify something '-'Anything!' the stalker barked, interuptting him. The Attendant nodded before continuing,-', right anything, if you betray me in any way Delfo my dear.....it will cost you everything. Your life. Your entire bloodline. Your left overs will be cast out to the wolves to savage and your souls will rot! Delfo its really much too terrible to contemplate.' Delfo could not even nod. He managed a strangled gasp.'A fool man would die' the stalker rasped, floating right before Delfo as it hung suspended upside down from branches. 'you have the look of a sensible one though, however pathetic you are, so cooperate with us or die'. The Attendant placed a cold and clammy, skeletal hand on Delfo's head. Then he said, 'The choice is yours Delfo.' In the farthest reaches of his mind Delfo reckoned that if the people had had a name for this kind of spiritual hell, he would have LIKED to know. He supposed ignorance was bliss. That was a load of rot. His fear had risen steadily since he had become aware of both the Attendant to the Lord of Lords and the stalker when he startled it on the path and now his fears threatened to engulf him. Ice lanced through him at the words 'Your entire bloodline' and all the color drained from his face.

         The Attendant blinked, raising an eyebrow. One thin iron band rose up on scraps of wrinkled flesh. The Attendant noticed the effects the stalker was having on Delfo and rounded on it instantly, stepping between both of their lines of sight. 'Relax your aura at once!' the Attendant to the Lord of Lords commanded it, chiding the stalker as one would a beastly child.' At once! You will surely scare him to death the way things are now! Whild, obey me. ' But the stalker refused to move.'It is right for the man to fear!' The stalker rasped defiantly, 'it is the price he pays for playing your Master's game!'. The attendant narrowed his oddly silver eyes at the stalker. Whatever it saw there made the stalker blanch in fear and forced it to give ground albeit grudgingly.

         Delfo immediately felt a lessening of the weight of his fear. It faded with every step the stalker moved back and after about twelve or thirteen steps, it settled down against a different tree. Still facing Delfo. He met the other's blazing stare.

         Delfo realized he had been ignored completely.

         He knew then that he was in way way over his head.

         The Words of the Dark rose. "Pick him up Whild, we will take him to the Shadowspire". The stalker wrenched its painful unblinking stare from Delfo and inclined its head towards the Words. "Take him to Shadowspire Lord?" the stalker rasped questioningly. "Yes, Shadowspire" the Words snapped, "Now pick him up and let us be gone. I wish to have this over with before the fools realize he is missing!" Delfo blanched. "W-what are y-y-you going to d-do!!" he stammered, color rising once more to his cheeks. The Words sneered at him. " I have a use for your body Delfo, though I will let you continue to occupy it." The Words laughed darkly. His silver eyes glittered. " B-but why?" Delfo was afraid to know but he had to ask. The stalker joined its master in another bout of sadistic laughter. Then the stalker bent and scooped Delfo up, slung him over his shoulder like a sack of grain. The Words loomed before Delfo's face. " I do this because I can Delfo." The Words said, " I do this to you because my own Master gives me the freedom to do so." Then the world turned black.

         Delfo awoke some time later to find he lay in a bed. He was in a circular room made out of black stones, with a high ceiling and a crystal chandalier hanging down on him from above. There were tapestries hanging from the walls. They depicted various scenes of war. On one, a rich purple tapestry with silver stitchwork, a horseman mounted atop a flame snorting nightmare brandished a sword that hewed and skewered a field of screaming people. Delfo followed the passages of the imagined people's souls upward as they escaped through mouths frozen in silent 'O's of terror. In another, a black winged devil stooped low in a garden of blood red roses while innocents hung from skeleton trees in the background.. It was warm inside this room and well lit but there was no way to tell where he was. All he remembered was the name of the place the Words of the Dark had taken him too. Shadowspire.