Mattock dreamed he was a mountain.
Hot sweat dripped through the molten earth, staining the cracked leather beneath; a dark, unlighted sea. Flames from his heart gushed outward, pumping molten veins beating across the restless peak. He shuddered and turned, startling a restless family of deer on his hip, who ran fearfully down his side.
Angry red condors circled his hair, now sprinkled with snow.
Within the crystal chamber of his brain, a black fog silently rose to obscure and fade the sharp outlines around it.
His fist lashed out in anguish, smashing a nearby village to smithereens and scattering it's screaming inhabitants down his belly. His hot breath woke a family of bears who began to sing a slow, deep, bear-dirge.
More and more bears appeared, to join the singing, as the world became a single, brightly lit cave.
Some of the bears held silver picks, wore blue-grey overalls.
A few of the bears had the faces of men, and one of those bears had the face of his father.
The Fatherbear had suddenly always led the singing, as the world narrowed to a pool of water at the back of the cave. There was never a cave, and the singing bearfather was a singing pool of sparkling sunlit water in the shape of his father's face.
His mother's face.
As the mother pool sang to him, the words of the song, the words that weren't words, became images of fire, and the images of fire became a dream.
Mattock dreamt of a night before the Tree.
That night, Tolbrek had took him to the old quarry and shown him the great bones that lay scattered across the blue granite pit. They took with them a single candle that had a clever little clay hood over the flame, to protect it from the mild wind. There was a narrow moon in the clear, starry sky, and both men could find their way easily across the worn, but still functional, path.
The big, scarred man, life survivor, ex-gladiator, spoke quietly, spoke nearly to himself: "Et wuz aye bat-tul. Thar foy'nol bat-tul whan thar Bones all but took'ted us all. Whan Attol say'vad us all frum thar Mar'nork 'ave Bones."
It was dimly moonlit within the crumbling, moss-eaten pit. They stood at the top of the path, carved into the stone, but seeming to end in open space. Below them in the quarry glimmered massive, indistinct shapes that nonetheless awoke a quiet dread from within Mattock.
The deep baritone was hushed.
A sad whisper close to Mattock's ear: "All show yoo Attol, and Attol's Bayne," A hand touched Mattock's arm gently. The brief touch seemed strangely sympathetic.
"All show yoo na'ow whut thar win'tar brangs ta' usss..."
Motioning for Mattock to wait, Tolbrek took the hooded candle, placing it between his thick teeth, and then skuttled swiftly and surely across a narrow, nearly invisible rock ledge. He seemed to feel his way across with his gigantic hands, like a squat, grey spider.
An ancient lantern of blackened bronze, fully the height of a man, that had been bolted into the quarry face centuries ago, was found. Was quickly and expertly lit with the candle. Four more were lit across the broad semi-circle, as Tolbrek made his way to the quarry floor. Mattock could see that the beeswax candles inside of each light were atleast as thick around as his own thigh.
The old lights shone brightly despite their age--the backs of them had once been silvered--and that's all he could see for a moment, as he stood blinking. Once his vision began to expand again, what he saw nearly toppled him from the rock.
It was a bone, but it couldn't possibly have been. From the socket--a shoulder socket. In the bright light, in the clear mountain air...that long white boulder looked a little like a shoulder...To where it connected. To where it looked like it might have once connected to that, that other. To that other bone. That bone over there...with that tendon that just laid there like the pale smug grandfather of all snakes...
Mattock turned away and stared back down the darkened path for a long time. He shuddered sharply, and then stared for a moment at his own wrist. Flexed the fingers very. Very. Slowly. And then he shuddered again.
Turned stiffly back to the quarry floor.
It was an arm. It ended at a hand. From which fingers grew, where fingers those fingers fingers ought not to ever grow, EVER.
Clutched in that hand...those fingerbones...held there like a plump plucked mushroom or a robin's egg, held like a little articulated doll, was the entire complete skeleton of a fully grown man, who in turn was holding a rusted battleaxe in his own boney grip.
This then was Attol, still held in the clutches of Attol's Bane.
"Oh, carp."
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Topic: The Birth of an Artifact (Read 19941 times)