“Well done, child, well done.”
Everyone in camp paused to admire Lala’s creation. The redbird fluttered its wings as though impatient to be off. Without further prompting, Lala tossed the bird into the air. It stretched its wings and circled above their heads once before veering north. It would fly the quickest route to seek the one who sang.
As the bird disappeared into the misty night, Gubba clapped and chortled, and Grandmother turned her attention to tending Lala’s cut hand.
Despite all the groundmites provided for Grandmother and her people, the endless walking was wearying. Grandmother wished she had wings so she could fly like Lala’s redbird. Alas, she was confined to the Earth with all the other ground-dwelling creatures, forced to labor to reach a destination when birds easily flew over all obstacles. At least the ruins that appeared more frequently alongside the road lent more interest to their surroundings and indicated they were nearing their destination.
Most of the ruins were entangled in vines and roots. Trees grew through roofs. Ferns and brush shrouded entrances and facades. The forest was nothing if not resilient, obscuring even the pedigree of the architecture—was it Eletian or of the empire? They did not stop to investigate the ruins, but Gubba jabbered on beside Grandmother, pointing out this and that as if they were on a pleasure outing to see the sights. Grandmother understood none of it.
Instead, she ignored Gubba and thought of the task that lay ahead, when they reached their destination. How was she supposed to awaken the Sleepers? As much as she prayed on it, the answer never came to her. It was, she guessed, a test placed before her by God. Truly, up till now she’d been more worried about just surviving long enough to reach the grove of the Sleepers. The groundmites, with their help, had lifted much of that worry from her, leaving her more time to concern herself with the how of the task before her.
She did not understand the Eletians, or how they Slept as they did. All she knew was that it was going to take some powerful art to rouse them. Would she have the ability?
She’d been so deep in her own thoughts, ignoring Gubba and watching the road just ahead of her feet, that she was startled when she bumped into Sarat, who had stopped in the road. In fact, everyone else had stopped to gaze ahead, and she gasped when she saw why.
The forest fell away, revealing a black lake, tendrils of fog coiling just above its flat, oily surface. She thrilled to see that a statue of Mornhavon the Great stood in the center of the lake looking defiant and courageous, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, and the other fisted as if to show whose realm this really was and by what means it was acquired. The details of his features were blurred and moss-draped. The lake level had risen at some point, and now lapped at his knees. To Grandmother he seemed to be rising from the water, not sinking. Around the edges of the lake were the roofs of drowned buildings, also attesting to the deepened water.
One of the great, black avians Grandmother had seen and heard signs of in the forest skimmed across the water, leaving ripples in its wake. The creature circled the statue, then landed on the head of Mornhavon. It loosed a screech that echoed right through her and swiveled its head around on its serpentine neck to gaze at its surroundings.
As magnificent as the statue was, it was the backdrop that she found truly arresting. Towers rose out of the forest into the sky, pale phantoms of what they must have once been, but still a powerful vision, their slender forms like graceful stems growing from the earth, their pinnacles lost to the ceiling of clouds that hung overhead. There was just enough grayness of day that the towers reflected on the lake.
“What is that place?” Min whispered in awe.
“Our destination,” Grandmother replied. “Castle Argenthyne.”
SPIRALS AND VOICES
Graelalea led the company mercilessly over rugged terrain until abruptly she stopped on the edge of a cliff where the forest opened up, revealing a lake below. To Karigan’s eyes it seemed shaped like a beech leaf or a spearhead. Clouds obscured the far shore.
“The Pool of Avrath,” Ealdaen said. “I thought never to gaze upon it again. But it is dark, defiled.”
“What do you see?” Yates whispered to Karigan.
“We’re looking down into a valley with a lake,” she replied.
“You must remember this for the journal.”
“I will.” To be honest, when they stopped for the night, she was so exhausted she knew she’d probably fall fast asleep before she could get to the journal.
“What’s that in the middle of the lake?” Ard asked.
Karigan could not make out the details for it was too distant, but some rock formation stood in the lake’s center. Its shape looked too regular to have been made by nature.
Ealdaen, whose Eletian sight was more keen, spoke angrily in his own tongue. All the Eletians looked incensed.
“What is it?” Karigan asked.
“It is the Evil One,” Lhean said. “A statue of Mornhavon.”
“He thought himself a god,” Ealdaen spat. “The god of all, and he would have known what it meant to our people to place a statue of himself in the pool.”
“What would it mean?” Yates asked, but the Eletians were already moving on, and Lynx took Yates’ arm to lead him away.
Karigan remembered sitting in the library of the Golden Guardian in Selium. Aaron Fiori had sung of Avrath, a Shining Land. He’d believed Avrath to be a spiritual place of the Eletians. Perhaps, if Avrath were like the heavens, the Eletians believed it was reflected in the pool. Whatever the significance of the lake, a statue of Mornhavon planted in its middle clearly wounded them.
She was quickly being left behind again, and not wishing to end up alone with Ard, she made her weary body take a step forward. Then she paused. The fog on the far shore thinned just enough to reveal tall spires rising among the trees. They gleamed dully. Before the clouds layered over them again, they flashed in crystalline brilliance as perhaps they had long, long ago beneath a silver moon. Then the light died, and the towers disappeared in the fog.
Karigan blinked, gooseflesh rising along her arms. Her imagination again? The poison? As she set off after the others, she was certain of one thing: Castle Argenthyne, the legend, lay on the other side of the lake.
Their trail descended in a series of switchbacks, which meant Karigan was never really far from the others even if she lagged behind. Ard had insinuated himself into the middle of the line, making conversation with Solan. There was no sign of the strange behavior he’d exhibited in the boulder field, and she shrugged. She should be more surprised that Blackveil wasn’t making them all behave in strange ways.
It was dark by the time they reached level ground, the wings of oversized bats flapping through the air above their heads.
“We shall camp here for the night,” Graelalea said. “Tomorrow we shall not stop until we reach the grove.”
Karigan sensed the elevated energy in Graelalea, her agitation as camp was set up. Karigan suspected the Eletian wouldn’t have stopped until she reached the grove if it had been just her, but she’d taken into consideration the condition of her companions. It would not do to face whatever awaited them at the grove when totally exhausted.
“What happens when we reach the grove?” Grant demanded. He did not help to set up camp, but just stood in the middle of everything rubbing his arm.
“We shall see what we find,” Graelalea replied.
Karigan knew she ought to be more worried about what the next day would bring, but she was too tired; almost too tired to eat her portion of gruel that Lynx spooned out. And when she finished, she crawled into her tent and fell instantly asleep.
The next morning the path became more level and they crossed the remains of broken roads; the ominous shapes of ruined structures protruded from moss and tangled vegetation. They were nearing the city of Argenthyne and its castle. The fog shifted above the treetops just enough to offer tantalizing views of the castle towers.
The towers remained dull, tarn
ished, as Karigan had first seen them the previous night. They were not made of silver moonbeams as in the songs and stories, unless silver moonbeams could die. Still, the towers were graceful and without the fog, Karigan imagined, they must have soared into the sky. Delicate arched bridges connected the towers at different levels, reminding her of interlacing tree limbs in a forest.
Argenthyne did not, in its current state, resemble what Karigan had always imagined, but she couldn’t believe she was here, walking into legend. What would her mother think? Perhaps that such a thing was not so far-fetched. After all, she’d possessed a moonstone.
She knew they’d entered the city proper when more ruins appeared around them. It smelled different, too. Not just of the decayed forest, but also of the mustiness of structures long emptied of life. Paving stones had ruptured with the growth of gnarled, sickly trees. Stairs rose to nothingness. A fountain stood in the center of a square fouled by black sludge, and above everything the leaden towers loomed.
Karigan had seen this before as a vision shown to her by Prince Jametari in the waters preserved from Indura Luin, the Mirror of the Moon. The vision had also revealed the contrast of Argenthyne in its glory before Mornhavon’s invasion, before the decay of Blackveil.
Sibilant murmurs made her shiver as though the Eletians who once lived here were just on the other side of a thin veil, as if her own time brushed against that past piece of time. Or maybe it was ghosts. Ghosts, she could handle.
“This place is haunted,” Grant muttered, echoing her thoughts.
“No,” Ealdaen said. “Eletians leave no shades behind. It is only your kind that is too restless in death.”
If that was so, Karigan thought, then she must just be sensing air currents weaving through the towers, the moans of broken buildings. Whatever it was, Argenthyne still had a voice.
Could a whole city be a ghost? They certainly walked its corpse.
They stopped by the fountain. A beautiful figure held a cracked bowl above her head. Or, she’d once been beautiful, but the light stone she’d been carved from was stained, black tears seeming to stream down her face.
“So where is this grove of yours?” Ard asked.
“The east leaf,” Graelalea replied.
“The what?”
“The city,” Graelalea said, “is laid out in a triad of leaves, or sections. The Pool of Avrath makes up the south leaf. We now stand in the north leaf.”
The castle, Karigan thought, must rise up in the middle of the leaves like a blossom, the nexus of it all.
“I have walked these streets many times,” Ealdaen said, gazing at the ruins all around them. “I know every one of them, from the Great Stem to the narrowest winding. This was my home.”
Silence fell upon them, though the city still sighed hollowly.
“Then you shall lead us,” Graelalea told Ealdaen.
He nodded and they fell in line behind him, staying alert for danger hidden among the ruins. Claws scrabbled on stone and a rat much larger than any wharf rat Karigan had ever seen bounded across the road ahead of them, vanishing into rubble.
It was difficult for Karigan to imagine the city alive with Eletians despite the vision she’d once seen in the Mirror of the Moon. It was hard to believe there had once been so many Eletians walking the lands. Somehow Mornhavon, with his tremendous powers, had overcome them.
She studied Ealdaen as he strode ahead, shoulders set, the spines on his pauldrons catching the light. He looked from side to side, facial muscles taut. Did he remember those last moments in Argenthyne as he fled Mornhavon’s armies and weapons? Of course he must. What was it like for him to see his city in ruin after so many centuries? The same way she’d feel if this were Corsa or Sacor City. Devastated. Devastated not so much by the ruins left behind, but by the loss of the civilization they represented.
When they began this journey, she’d been very unsure of Ealdaen. He’d tried to kill her once, after all, and she remained wary of him even though the bonds of the group working for mutual survival had outweighed personal motives. So far. Seeing the effect of the city on him, and having seen his reaction to the remains of Telavalieth, she no longer viewed him as quite so cold and immovable.
The cluster of towers that was the castle remained to their right, its heights fading in and out with the fog. The voice of the city came again to Karigan as she trudged along, this time as a mournful song.
Karigan soon understood what Ealdaen had meant when he said he knew every “narrow winding.” There was not a single street she could discern that traveled in a straight line. The streets here put the Winding Way in her own Sacor City to shame.
They walked endless looping curves, but just when she thought they must complete a circle, they’d come to an intersection and start going around in a completely different direction. Were the Eletian road builders insane? Well, they were Eletians, and despite having journeyed so far and long with a few of them, Karigan could not say their ways were any less mysterious to her than when they’d begun. It was maddening that they must travel in such a roundabout manner when they’d reach their destination much more quickly if the streets were straight. It reminded her of one of those frustrating dreams where, try as she might, she could not get someplace she needed to be or complete a task.
There was no way to cut through the ruins that she could see that would shorten their way—at least none that looked safe—nor did the Eletians seem the least inclined to seek such a way. They appeared intent only on staying their course, circular as it was.
“The nythlings don’t like the spiral streets,” Grant muttered to himself. “No, they do not.”
Besides Grant, no one showed signs of being perturbed, so Karigan shrugged and decided the Eletians knew what was best and that she’d do well not to worry about it.
She still thought the road builders must have been insane. Or maybe drunk. Did Eletians get drunk?
Such speculation amused her, held errant masked dancers at bay. It took her mind off the pain that stabbed her leg with each step and the murk that seeped low over the city—dead neighborhood after dead neighborhood.
She could not block out the city’s voice. Sometimes it was a stream sluggishly murmuring unseen among the ruins, accompanied by a rhythmic dripping tapping out a secret message. Sounds like distant weeping chilled her, and sometimes she thought air currents chimed through the towers. It sucked her in till she could almost hear her name expelled on a deep exhalation.
She wondered if Yates, who must depend on his hearing more than ever, heard the city as she did. She thought about asking him, but she feared breaking the silence of the company might shatter something fragile, bring the sky down on them, or awaken a sleeping god.
Ealdaen halted and Karigan, so caught up in spirals and voices, looked up startled. They’d come to a wall that rose precipitously above them and above it yet soared one of the towers of Castle Argenthyne.
Predictably the wall was not straight or squared, but bent in a curve. They followed a street that flowed along its contours, the castle remaining at their right shoulders. On the other side of the street, the dank ruins and rubble abruptly ended, and the forest of Blackveil reared over them. It was clear to Karigan they’d departed the north leaf and were now heading for the east leaf, where the grove of the Sleepers awaited them.
ENMORIAL
When they arrived at the east leaf, there was no mistaking the grove. The conifers rose like towers themselves, their boles as wide as cottages, their limbs alone larger than most trees Karigan had ever seen. Roots snaked out of the ground like bridges. The members of the company, with the castle to their backs, craned their necks looking up toward the canopy, but like the towers, the treetops vanished into the mist.
“Could make a few houses out of these,” Ard murmured.
Even as Karigan felt a thrill at seeing these living giants where Eletians rested, she could also see how Blackveil had left its mark here, for the trunks showed extensive rot. Blackened beardy
lichens trailed from branches. Some of the trees had fallen and become massive corpses decaying into the earth. The canopy of the grove trapped darkness below, the air stagnant.
Graelalea started to draw out her moonstone, but Lynx touched her wrist. “Careful,” he said.
“What is it?”
His brow was furrowed like he had a headache. “We are not alone here. I sense . . . the forest is aware of others.”
“Can you make out who or what?”
He shook his head. “All I can tell is that they are mainly at the other end of the grove. But there are disturbances not too far off.”
“Very well, be on guard,” she said. Hands went to weapons in readiness, and Karigan wondered, as her companions must as well, who else in the name of the hells was in the forest with them. “I must see the grove in the light,” Graelalea said. “Danger or no.”
The light of her moonstone blinded Karigan at first, and seared into the darkness of the grove, plunging into relief the rot that caused the great trees to shed bark, sap oozing from the wounds like blood. The trees were so knotted and burled in places that Karigan fancied she could see faces peering back at her, just like the vision she’d seen in the looking mask at the king’s masquerade ball, which now seemed so long ago. Layers of cobwebs draped between the trees and wafted in air currents. Many glittering multifaceted eyes watched the companions from the shadows.
The light shining on the faces of the Eletians revealed awe and consternation. On Ealdaen’s face Karigan saw only grief.
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