Strength of Stones Read Online Free PDF Page A

Thinner's attacker held a head, severed from the boy's body. It trailed green. Though decapitated, Thinner shouted invective in several languages, including Hebrew and Chaser English. The attackers abandoned their weapons before the oracular monster and ran pale and stumbling. The petrified man who held the head dropped it and fell over.
    Jeshua stood his ground, bloody club trembling in his loosening hand.
    "Hey," said the muffled voice in the grass. "Come here and help!"
    Jeshua spotted six points on his forehead and drew two meshed triangles between. He walked slowly through the grass.
    "El and hell," Thinner's head cried out. "I'm chewing grass. Pick me up."
    He found the boy's body first. He bent over and saw the red, bleeding skin on the chest, pulpy green below that, and the pale colloid ribs that supported. Deeper still, glassy machinery and pale blue fluids in filigree tubes surrounded glints of organic circuit and metal. The chaser nearby had fainted from shock.
    He found Thinner's head facedown, jaw working and hair standing on end. "Lift me out," the head said. "By the hair, if you're squeamish, but lift me out."
    Jeshua reached down and picked the head up by the hair. Thinner stared at him above green-leaking nose and frothing mouth. The eyes blinked. "Wipe my mouth with something." Jeshua picked up a clump of grass and did so, leaving bits of dirt behind, but getting most of the face clean. His stomach squirmed, but Thinner was obviously no mammal, nor a natural beast of any form, so he kept his reactions in check.
    "I wish you'd listen to me," the head said.
    "You're from the city," Jeshua said, twisting it this way and that.
    "Stop that -- I'm getting dizzy. Take me inside Mandala."
    "Will it let me in?"
    "Yes, dammit, I'll be your passkey."
    "If you're from the city, why would you want me or anyone else to go inside?"
    "Take me in, and you'll discover."
    Jeshua held the head at arm's length and inspected it with half-closed eyes. Then, slowly, he lowered it, looked at the tiled gardens within the perimeter, and took his first step. He stopped, shaking.
    "Hurry," the head said. "I'm dripping."
    At any moment Jeshua expected the outskirts to splinter and bristle, but no such thing happened. "Will I meet the girl?" he asked.
    "Walk, no questions."
    Eyes wide and stomach tense as rock, Jeshua entered the city of Mandala.
    "There, that was easier than you expected, wasn't it?" the head asked.
    Jeshua stood in a cyclopean green mall, light bright but filtered, like the bottom of a shallow sea, surrounded by the green of thick glass and botanic fluids. Tetrahedral pylons and slender arches rose all around and met high above in a circular design of orange and black, similar to the markings on Thinner's chest. The pylons supported four floors opening onto the court. The galleries were empty.
    "You can put me down here," Thinner said. "I'm broken. Something will come along to fix me. Wander for a while if you want. Nothing will hurt you. Perhaps you'll meet the girl."
    Jeshua looked around apprehensively. "Would do neither of us any good," he said. "I'm afraid."
    "Why, because you're not a whole man?"
    Jeshua dropped the head roughly on the hard floor, and it bounced, screeching.
    "How did you know?" he asked loudly, desperately. "Now you've made me confused," the head said. "What did I say?" It stopped talking, and its eyes closed. Jeshua touched it tentatively with his boot. It did nothing. He straightened up and looked for a place to run. The best way would be out. He was a sinner now, a sinner by anger and shame. The city would throw him out violently. Perhaps it would brand him, as Thinner had hinted earlier. Jeshua wanted the familiarity of the grasslands and tangible enemies like the city chasers.
    The sunlight through the entrance arch guided him. He ran for the glassy walkway and found it rising to keep him in. Furious with panic, he raised his club and struck at the spines. They sang with the blows but did not