Sacred Stone (Oregon Files 2)

Eleven men accompanied him at the start, but some five months into the expedition, with spring coming, there were but five remaining. Two had slipped into crevasses in the ice, their screams still coming to Eric as he slept. One had slipped on ice and bashed his head on a rocky outcropping. He had twitched in tormented pain for days, unable to see or speak until he blissfully died one night. One had been taken by a large white ursine when he ventured away from a campfire one evening in search of a freshwater stream he swore he’d heard nearby.

Two had been taken by disease, suffering racking coughs and fevers that convinced the remaining survivors that evil forces were lurking nearby and stalking. As the expedition party thinned, the mood greatly changed. The elation and sense of wonder that compelled the men at the start had faded, replaced with a sense of doom and fatalism.

It was as if the expedition was cursed and the men were paying.

“Hoist the ball,” Eric ordered the youngest man in the expedition, the only one to have been born on island soil.

The teenager, Olaf the Fin, son of Olaf the Fisherman, was apprehensive. The strange gray orb rested on a rocky outcropping as if placed there by the hand of God. He had no way of knowing that the object had descended from the sky some forty-eight thousand years before. Olaf approached the orb cautiously. Everyone in the party knew of Eric’s penchant for violence; in fact, everyone on the icy island knew his legend. Eric was not asking—he was demanding—so Olaf did not attempt to disagree or argue. He merely swallowed hard and bent down.

Olaf’s hands touched the object and he found the surface cold and smooth. For the briefest of instants he felt his heart miss a beat—but he continued on. He attempted to lift the orb but found it too heavy for his expedition-weary arms.

“I’ll need help,” Olaf said.

“You,” Eric said, motioning to another man with his staff.

Gro the Slayer, a taller man with light yellow hair and pale blue eyes, took three steps forward and grabbed one side of the orb. Both men used their back muscles and lifted the orb to hip level, then stared at Eric.

“Make a sling from the tusked one’s skin,” Eric pronounced. “We will take it back to the cave and build a shrine.”

Without another word, Eric set off across the snow, leaving the others to tend to the discovery. Two hours later the orb was safely inside the cave. Eric immediately began planning an elaborate enclosure for the object he now believed had come directly from the gods in the heavens above.

ERIC LEFT OLAF and Gro to guard the heavenly body while he returned to the settlement on the coast for more men and material. Once there, he learned that a son had been born to his wife in his absence. He named him Leif in honor of the spring season, then left him with his mother to raise. With eighty more men and tools to excavate the cavern where the orb was hidden, he set off north toward the distant mountain. Summer was near and the sun was visible around the clock.

GRO THE SLAYER turned on his pelt bed then spat some loose fur from his mouth.

Rubbing his hand across the bearskin, he watched in surprise as the fur balled up in his palm. Then he stared at the orb in the dancing light of a torch placed in the wall.

“Olaf,” he said to the teenager sleeping a short distance away, “it is time to rise and face the day.”

Olaf rolled over and stared toward Gro. His eyes were red and bloodshot and his skin blotchy and flaking. He coughed lightly, sat upright and stared at Gro through the dim light. Gro’s hair had been shedding and his color was all wrong.

“Gro,” Olaf said, “your nose.”

Gro raised the back of his hand to his nose and saw the red of blood. More and more often he had found himself with a bloody nose. He reached down and tugged on a painful tooth. It came out in his fingers. He tossed it aside and rose to his feet.

“I’ll cook the berries,” he said.

Stirring the fire, he added a few sticks from their dwindling supply then retrieved a sealskin bag containing the red berries they boiled to make a bitter morning drink. Walking outside the cave, he filled a dented iron pot with water from the stream of a nearby melting glacier, then stared at the marks scratched on the wall outside the cave.

Two or three more marks and Eric the Red was due to return.

By the time Gro returned inside the cave, Olaf was standing, dressed in his lightweight leather pants with his shirt laid on a rock nearby. He was scratching his back with a stick, and the skin was flickering to the ground like the first light snow of a new winter season. Once the itching had subsided he slid his leather shirt over his head.

“Something is amiss,” Olaf said. “Both of us are becoming sicker as each day passes.”

“Maybe it is the foul air inside this cave,” Gro said quietly, placing the pot on the fire.

“I think it is that,” Olaf said, pointing to the orb. “I think it is possessed.”

“We could move outside the cave,” Gro said, “and erect a tent for living.”

“Eric ordered us to stay inside the cave. I fear if he returns and finds us outside we will feel his wrath.”

“I looked at the marks,” Gro said. “He is due to return in three sleeps—no more.”

“We could take turns watching for his return,” Olaf said quietly, “then hurry back inside before he catches us.”

Gro stirred the berries in the boiling water. “Sudden death or slow sickness—I think it best we avoid what we know will happen for what might or might not.”