The Stone Warrior Read online

  The Stone Warrior

  Book One of The Sacrosanct Records

  M N Jolley

  To my dad, who taught me to love stories

  And my mom, who taught me how to write them

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  “Sis, wake up. The field’s on fire!”

  Adelyn opened her eyes, vision bleary and dim in the low light. “Wh-what time is it?” She asked, rubbing one eye as she looked at her brother.

  “Don’t know. Get up, quick.” John said, unusually terse, his huge silhouette towering over her bed. “Someone’s lit the field ablaze.”

  Adelyn frowned, blinking a couple times as her sleepy brain pieced together what he was saying. Once it clicked into place, she sat up sharply, shock clearing away fatigue. “The horses—”

  “Are fine,” John finished. “Barn’s safe, for now. Hurry.”

  Adelyn slipped off her bed, following just after her brother, scrambling to the ledge of the loft and sliding down the ladder without even touching the rungs.

  She wore only a nightgown as they ran outside, but the harvest season had not yet set in, and the night air was still warm. Her bare feet crunched on sharp gravel, but she’d been playing in this yard for fifteen years, it couldn’t hurt her any more than soft grass.

  The field was doing an impression of an apocalypse. Smoke billowed up into the dark sky, black and choking, and the flames roared so hot and loud that Adelyn could feel and hear them all the way from the porch.

  “Who did this?” Adelyn asked, looking out in horror.

  “Don’t know,” John said, running his hands through his hair as he stared at the fire. “Gods be, we’re going to lose half the crops.”

  “Abandon the crops,” Adelyn said, already running as she spoke. “The horses. It’s coming toward the barn, we have to get them out. Where’s Papa?”

  “Mom and Dad rode into town to get help,” John said as he rushed to the barn behind her and helped to throw open the gates. Adelyn ran to the first stable door, mindful to keep her hands away from kicking hooves as she yanked it open and moved to the next, freeing one horse at a time. The great animals bolted for the exit as soon as they were free, and she didn’t try to stop them—they were smart beasts with a strong sense of self-preservation. They’d not run far, but they would stay away from the flames.

  That was one problem solved, but Adelyn didn’t have time to celebrate. “Water!” she called, grabbing a bucket from where it hung on a post. “Start the pump!”

  Her brother had already started the new machine, one that would bring up water so long as someone pumped the handle, and Adelyn thanked the Lords that they’d had it installed. If they’d had to draw water from a well the old fashioned way, they’d never stop the fire in time.

  She waited, dancing on her toes in anxiety as she watched the pump shudder, then begin pouring out clean water into the bucket. It took an eternity to fill, then she sprinted out the barn doors, rounded a corner, and tossed the water against the red wall of the barn.

  Saving the crops would be an impossibility. The fire was too great, spreading too fast. It would be all they could do to save the barn, which meant wetting it down and putting out any flames that got too close.

  She passed John running by with a second bucket, working the pump herself to refill her own. As she ran outside, though, she saw it wouldn’t be enough. The fire was too close already, and working bucket by bucket, the two of them would never be able to stop those flames.

  Hoofbeats pounded up the lane and she stopped, running up to meet her parents as they reared up on their mounts.

  Their father leaped down from his saddle. Adelyn expected him to help with the fire, but instead, he began walking toward the house.

  “What’s going on?” John called.

  “Bandits,” her father said, without looking over his shoulder. “Get a weapon.”

  John hesitated. “The fire!” he said, pointing back to the barn. “We have to put out—”

  “Damn the fire!” their father shouted, slamming the door on his way inside.

  Their mother explained, dismounting her own steed. “They took Molly and Brandon. We’re going after them.”

  Adelyn blanched. Molly and Brandon were just babes—barely old enough to walk. Her father’s anger made sense, and she felt her own rage build. “I’ll get our horses.”

  Still, there was the barn. They couldn’t just let it burn, could they?

  Her step hitched as she ran, and she doubled back, calling to her brother. “John, you get the horses!”

  “What are you doing?” Her brother asked.

  “I can put out the fire,” she said.

  He seemed confused, then shook his head as he understood her meaning. “No, Adelyn. You can’t—”

  “I can!” Adelyn yelled back. “There’s no time to argue! Get the horses.”

  Bounding inside the barn, she looked around for the tool she needed: a bucket of old paint, sealed with a tin lid.

  Snatching up the bucket, she sprinted outside while cracking open the lid. Having forgotten a brush, she dipped her hand into the red paint, swirling it for a second. She then turned her attention to the barn, but hesitated.

  Mama and Papa might have stopped her, but they were inside gathering arms, and John lacked the sand to stand up to his little sister. The three of them disapproved, but at the moment, she didn’t care.

  Slapping on the paint, she drew a simple shape, like a triangle. The fire was so close now, glowing against the wall of the barn. There was no other way. She did this, or the barn burned.

  As she finished marking the triangle in paint, her father shouted behind her. “Adelyn! What in the blazes are you doing?”

  Too late. The fire was too close. Any longer, and she’d have to back away or be trapped. Time to act.

  Adelyn didn’t know why she was a sorceress. She was a farmer, not a hero, and the needs of her home were more important than any magical heroics.

  Still, she had been given this power, and abandon her if she wasn’t going to use it.

  Planting the palm of her hand against the wall of the barn, she poured energy into it, her strength sapping away as she readied the spell. She’d never done something so large, so grand, but the theory was the same. She remembered her practice in the wee hours of the night, where she wouldn’t wake her brother or arouse the suspicion of her parents, and readied the spell.

  Her father tried to approach, to intervene, but the fire had reached the barn and he couldn’t get close. Flames were licking up a few paces away from Adelyn, and she was growing faint from the energy poured into the runes. She couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Shtap!” Adelyn cast the spell.

  Force, raw and untempered, lashed out in all directions. The barn shoo
k, her father was tossed away, and the flames were thrown back by the great wave of power. Like breath putting out a candle, the gale force winds whipped over the fire, sucking away air and tearing up chunks of burned crops from the ground.

  The fire was not put out, not in the slightest, but it was rebuffed away from the barn, and having already consumed the crops nearest it, the fire could not spread back in.

  Panting for breath, Adelyn took her hand away from the barn. She had paint on her nightgown, and blackness was edging into her vision, making her feel dizzy and faint.

  She walked back toward her father and stumbled, slipping toward the ground. She felt arms catch her gently, and it took her a moment to realize that it was her father.

  “That was foolish, Adelyn,” he said, his tone reproachful.

  “Sorry, Papa,” she said, though she didn’t mean it. The magic had been necessary. “I… A weapon. Where’s Butler?”

  Her father looked at her, then shook his head. “You stay.”

  Adelyn pulled away from him, anger rising. “I’m old enough! I can help!”

  Her father shook his head, surveying the results of her spell “Maybe you could have helped, if you hadn’t gone and spent your strength on this… magic. You’re in no state to ride out and fight. Stay. Keep an eye on the barn. We’ll talk about this when I return.”

  Adelyn swallowed, but couldn’t argue further. When her father made up his mind, his word was final.

  John called, from the front of the house. “Papa, your sword?”

  He shook his head. “I’m taking a rifle. A cavalry saber won’t do me much good here. We’re aiming to put the bastards down and take the children back. Are you ready?”

  John nodded, pulling up his horse. Their mother had her own rifle, and a revolver stuck in her belt.

  Looking at his sister as he climbed into the saddle, John said, “Be safe, Sis. We’ll be back soon.”

  Together, her family rode off to fight the bandits, their path lit by firelight and dim stars.

  They never returned.

  Chapter 2

  Whether the magic makes the mischief, or the mischief brings the magic, the two go hand in hand. If you are given the powers Sacrosanct, do not thank the gods, but curse them instead, for in giving you that power they take away your life.

  - Speaker unknown

  Sharp steel bit into the polished holly board, knife hesitating every few inches as Adelyn stopped to check her notes. She had been working on this particular etching for half the week, and after insomnia kept her from getting any real rest, she’d decided to spend the night finishing the piece.

  It was a peaceful work, the only sound being the warm crackling of the fireplace and the whistling of the earliest birds as they began to stir. Adelyn sat cross-legged in the room’s center, holding the two foot oval of wood carefully in her lap, whittling out small sections of the board and sanding down the edges, creating a smooth trench.

  The design was of a map of the continent, though it was not a map that a cartographer would have taken any pride in. The wide, flat desert across the top lacked any distinguishing marks, a large recess covering the southern border filled in for the oceans with none of the coastal islands in place, the mountainous terrain on the far western edge had only a few small dragons etched in permanent flight. Big cities had been given slight indentations to represent their presence and great rivers were marked with narrow grooves, but towns and creeks were nowhere to be seen.

  The only part with detail was the Middle Western Plains, the region Adelyn called home. It still lacked labels or serious geographical notation, but there were dots representing smaller cities, a few major trade routes, and even a single tiny town of less than a hundred had its own slight divot carved into the wood. The only markings were in Sacrosanct, an old writing system composed of symbolic runes.

  The map would never serve for navigation, but that wasn’t the point.

  Setting down her knife and reaching for a scrap of sandpaper, Adelyn spotted the rays of sunlight beginning to peek through faded curtains and sighed. She didn’t have as much time as she wanted. She’d worked on the project for near the whole night, and would be too tired to use it come evening. Waiting to make the attempt would be a pointless waste of the day. Even still, she wished she could get a little rest before the day’s chores began.

  Satisfied that the final groove was properly smoothed and sanded, Adelyn yawned, blew away the sawdust, and inspected her handiwork. She first checked against a real map, ensuring every detail was in place, then checked her book to ensure that all the runes were correct.

  Sighing, Adelyn glanced up at the ceiling and shut her eyes in a brief prayer. There was nothing left to prepare, it was time to see if her plans would work this time.

  Adelyn grimaced and retrieved her knife with her left hand, a sharp, heavy tool that’d been a gift from her father, wiping the blade off on a pant leg to clean off the dust. It was awkward to keep the tool in her off hand, but she needed her right hand free.

  Thinking on the instructions written in her little book, she closed her eyes and focused hard on what she wanted, preparing her mind.

  My family. I want to find my family. I want, to find, my family. I want...

  The words echoed in her head, forming a sort of silent chant that she repeated until all the other distractions had been cleared from her mind. The long night spent carving had helped with this, ensuring that her thoughts were not clouded by a long day of work.

  Grinding her teeth together, Adelyn tightened her left hand around the knife one more time, bracing herself. She hated this part. Raising it to her right hand, she put the knife blade against the palm where a thin scab was already present and pressed down, wincing as the steel cut into her skin and drew out a trickle of blood.

  Before she could lose focus she turned her palm down and pressed it to the center of the map, willing the energy contained in her blood be transferred into the wood. Opening her eyes, she watched as the blood from her cut began leaking out, following the grooves carved into the wood, spreading to fill them in all directions. It wouldn’t fill every groove, but that was fine, she only needed it to fill one.

  Her thoughts ready, she whispered the words she had readied, speaking in broken Sacrosanct. “Vota, iscov kin.”

  For a second, nothing happened, and Adelyn worried that the magic had failed. Before she could give up and pull her hand away, though, the blood seeping across the board began to glow. She smiled, but remained apprehensive. If all went according to plan, the blood would trickle across the map to a point, then burn a scorch mark where it ended. It would be a simple matter to check against an actual map, then, and she’d know where to go.

  Rather than seeking out a single spot, the blood began spreading in every direction, moving faster, glowing hot and bright. Adelyn had to pull her hand away from the warmth. The acrid smell of rust and wood smoke began to fill the room as the blood became white hot. Bits of wood ignited where the glow had spread, as though it were lava.

  Eyes widening, Adelyn dropped her knife and pushed the board off her lap, hopping to her feet and gingerly seizing the edges of the map. Hurrying to the fireplace, she tossed it in, so it could safely burn without harm to the rest of her home.

  Taking a step backward, Adelyn squinted at the board for several moments longer, hoping that perhaps the spell would work anyhow and she could still catch a glimpse of a mark burned into the map, but there was no such luck. The whole board was spewing smoke up the chimney, and scorch marks covered most of the wood.

  Sighing, Adelyn drew a white cloth from her pant pocket and wrapped it around her bloody palm as a bandage, looking up to the ceiling in frustration. She groaned, shaking her head and returning to where she had attempted the spell so that she could retrieve a scrap of notes and her book of magic.

  That morning was her seventh attempt and her seventh failure in as many weeks at a spell that would locate her family. Each try had been by the book, followin
g every rule and suggestion written in her magical manual, but it had all failed. The first two tries had not done a thing, and the third had only sparked before dying. Since then she had used blood rather than plain energy to cast, and since then she’d been getting a reaction, but those reactions had been the type that elicited only smoke and burned fingertips.

  Adelyn scaled up to the loft that held her bed, ladder shaking as she climbed. Once up, she dropped her notes, flipped open the book, and started looking for what she’d done wrong.

  Her patience wore thin after half a page. “Useless piece of—” Adelyn shouted and threw the book against the wall, watching it fall down the gap between the wall and the floor, to the room beneath her loft, out of her reach.

  It’s just as helpful there as it is in my hands, Adelyn glowered, deciding not to retrieve the little book from the bedroom below. She knew that the book wasn’t a fraud, but that didn’t keep her from growing bitter toward the author. Finding the book in a merchant’s cart had been a small miracle, but a part of Adelyn wished she’d never read the damned thing. Ignorance might have been preferable to known impotence.

  Defeated, she crumpled onto the straw mat that served as her bed, her head hitting a ratty old pillow. Frustration combined with exhaustion swept over Adelyn and hit her with the powerful desire to sleep for a month, which she pushed away. She’d had sleepless nights and worked through them before, she could do it again.

  Coffee? No, that had run out a month ago, and there wasn’t the money to buy more. Her mother had always kept well-stocked cupboards, but even those cupboards couldn’t stay full for two months without replenishment.