Red's CD Project Story 2: Part 8 – The Rock Garden of Manta

Note: A few things to note. One there is a part below this one on the board, if you missed it. All parts are connected on the side link under Red CD Project 2. Second, this part pushed the tale over 10,000 words, I believe making about the third longest thing I've ever wrote. In comparison the first CD Project ended up at about 14,359 words. So I am well ahead of pace. If I keep at this pace, we're looking at about 60,000 - 70,000 word document. That would be average novel length.

Disc 1
Track 8: Intimate Secretary – The Raconteurs

“The other foot looks like it won’t drop”

They rode in silence almost nonstop for two days. They only stopped for a few short hours of sleep and a quick meal each night, but were up early letting Old Moon and New Moon guide their way. By the third day, Nestor was slumping badly in his saddle. His skin was pale and he mumbled nonsense in a language that Oan did not recognize. By midday the man could ride no farther.

They had entered the Rock Garden of Manta early that morning. It was an ancient wonder of the kingdom of Rion. Boulders ranging in size from waist level of the average man to the height of ten men standing one on top of the other were scattered about in no order that Oan could understand. He had traveled through before and knew that it’d take at least five days to make it from the southern entrance to the garden to where it ended in the north. It was nearly the same distance east to west as it was south to north. Weaving around the boulders made it a slow trek.

The history of the garden was lost in time. No elder’s ears had heard that story for their lips to pass it on. All that was left to recount the time of the garden’s history was the fading murals elaborately painted across each boulder. The murals depicted everything from great battles to picturesque landscapes with bubbling brooks where deer drank peacefully. There were more boulders there that could ever be studied and one elder claimed that over time the murals changed their scenes. The witch had said that they were reflections of life and like any reflection the image varied. Oan did not always understand the witch. The woman dealt in secrets and those in that trade depend heavily on lies. He was not sure how much of what she told him when he was a child was true.

Oan guided Nestor’s steed over to a large boulder that blocked the cold wind from the north. While winter was alive in the mountains, it was only late fall in the valley of the garden. However, there were few trees in the Garden of Manta to block the wind. He had heard the slow moving waters of a creek bouncing off the hollow boulders earlier that day. He thought they were very close. He would fish once he got the old man settled behind the boulder. There was little else to hunt in the garden only the small burrowing Tanta that were difficult to catch and not very tasty.

Nestor’s one good eye was all but closed and Oan had to lift him down from the saddle. The man had a fever and Oan did not know if it was from the icy waters of the Belnor or from the poison from Salama’s whip emerging from forced slumber. He dropped the man gently against the boulder and wrapped him in a fur they had brought from the camp. He forced Nestor to drink water from a skin, but little of the liquid made it into his mouth. Nestor mumbled some more gibberish about the Sorna and the demon it had born.

Oan frowned studying his companion. He could not afford to be slowed by the man, but Oan was sure that he could not leave him behind. Nestor’s role in the battle against Salama was not over. Oan did not need the witch or that strange little man that gave Oan the ancient sword Kekur to tell him that. Oan was thinking about all this when he noticed the mural on the boulder he had propped Nestor against. The face of the boulder was flat, but the mural was three-dimensional depicting a large field filled with nothing but white-petaled roses. Way in the distance was a great mountain peak covered in snow and he thought he could make out three small figures atop it. Above the peak was a clear sky painted a soft purple instead of blue. Oan shuddered remembering the swordbearer’s dream.

He left Nestor sleeping against the boulder to search out the creek. Halfway there, he found the splintered, charred remains of a short tree that had been struck by lightning. There was enough good wood left to carry back and start a fire. He made three trips giving them an ample amount to make it through the night.

The creek ended up being slightly farther away than he expected. It was no more than two arm lengths wide with a steady current and clean, clear waters. He could make out several plump fish skipping along with the current. Most of them blue Anni with large gills. Manni were good fish to eat when cooked over a fire. He also saw two orange Dangs. Those he avoided with his spear. They were nasty fish with a slow poison that eventually led to terrible skin blisters and long nights squatting in the weeds.

He speared four Anni in short time, cleaned them and brought them back to the fire. Nestor was sweating and moaning. Oan left again to scavenge anything of value including a few green berries growing on a vine that tangled around one very large boulder that only had the large face of wolf with glowing yellow eyes painted upon it. He also found some Knash Root along the bank of the creek that could be ground down and added with one of the few potions he had brought with him that might break Nestor’s fever. Otherwise, there was little else than sparse nearly brown grass, a few small twisted fir trees and thousands of boulders in the garden.

He mixed the potion with the ground down Knash Root when he returned to Nestor and forced the man to swallow some with a couple of the green berries. By then, it was getting close to dusk and Oan started cooking the fish, two at time at the end of his spear. He sprinkled salt and pepper upon them and ate. The smell aroused Nestor enough for him to sit up and take stock of their location as the sun settled low on the horizon painting the sky a hundred shades of pink, orange and purple. Oan, who still wore no more than a short pair of pants, did not shiver once as the air turned cold from the loss of warmth from the sun. Cold did not bother him. Hot did not bother him either. His body temperature was always precisely the same. That was the gift from the witch, or a small part of a larger gift or as Oan thought of it, curse that the woman had gave him after pulling him from the Belnor when he was a boy.

Some color had returned to Nestor’s skin, his eye sagged a bit and a drooping frown hung on his lips. For the first time, Oan wondered if the man was going to survive this latest illness.

“Where are we?” Nestor’s words came out slurred. “Is it the underworld?”

“Nay, we are in the Rock Garden of Manta,” Oan said while picking his teeth with a thin fish bone.

“Ahhh.” Nestor swatted at something invisible in front of his face. It was a long time before he spoke again. Instead his eye darted about like he had again forgot where he was and whom he was with.

“Don’t leave men here boy, it’s a dying place, I can feel it,” Nestor mumbled before falling back into a restless slumber.

Oan watched Old Moon and New Moon move slowly across the sky for a very long time. He held the old sword Kekur for a time, but it felt wrong and altogether too heavy for his hands. The spear seemed more natural to hands and cleaner to use in battle. At some point though, he knew he’d have to learn to wield the weapon. The swordbearer had claimed he’d carry three swords, but he could barely stand holding one. Oan was lost his thoughts for a long time before noticing that Nestor was awake and studying him closely.

“Feeling better,” Oan asked?

“A mite perhaps,” Nestor’s voice had regained some clarity. “How long have I been out?”

“Since midday for the most part.”

“I’ve had nightmares, boy, terrible ones. I see my wife’s face, her body being torn and twisted. I dream of the demon’s ashen grin as he fouled woman after woman.”

Oan did not have an answer or have any way to soothe the man. If it had been him, he would have found a way to end such nightmares before they started. The shame and pain would be too much to handle. Nestor continued.

“Then right before I awoke, I had a vision, my boy. I was wielding that old sword of Tarek Grandar’s. Not the one you’ve been grasping, but Lunar, the sword forged from the face of Old Moon. I dreamed I had the power to strike the demon down. …”

Oan had stopped listening to Nestor. He was watching the painting on the boulder splashed in the firelight. Like a spell, the Nestor’s voice hummed in Oan’s ears as the great field of whites rose splashed upon the ancient rock face turned a blood red, the green stems wilted black. The mountain peak in the far back was leveled with a river of fire pouring out. Everywhere there was shadow where the orange of glow of fire didn’t reach and below was shining the scared face of the man that seemed more an illusion than a man made of flesh. Oan’s eyes grew heavy, his heartbeat slowed. Before he drifted away in the world of dreams, the entire field and mountain were covered in flames, but between the flames he saw nasty little things crawling about sucking the last bits of life from the roses. Nestor’s voice continued to sound for a long time.

Oan woke once that night to find Nestor had crawled around the fire to where Kekur was laid upon the ground. The man was on his knees almost in worship of the sword, his fingers running up and down the blade and resting once in the grooves of the hilt. Oan watched him, but did not stir. Trust was not something given away freely, and not something he’d giving easily to one-eyed man with a heart full of vengence.