Keily and Sharon ran hard, and though their bodies were exhausted they were not yet ready to surrender their lives to the hands of the invading Raven Army. Keily risked a glance backwards, pausing for a brief moment to see the night sky behind them waking to life in an ominous glow as the fire began to consume the borough. A dozen black shadows appeared in her line of sight, and her breath caught in her chest as she heard the sound of loosed arrows once again.
"Sharon!" Keily shouted to the little girl who had run on ahead of her towards the chapel doors. "Sharon!"
Keily ran even harder, her will pushed her weary body as the rush of wind raced over her curly-haired head. The large wooden door that stood mere paces before the little girl was, in an ill-fated instant, riddled with the deafening thud of sure-fired arrows, fired from the Raven archers that pursued them. For the briefest of moments Keily hoped that maybe, just maybe, Sharon had escaped unharmed, for in the darkness she could not see if the arrows had indeed pierced the child. But Keily's relief was short lived. Sharon spun around, and the light of the siege fires illuminated the sickening sight. The little girl dropped as if the floor had been swept out from underneath her feet, and Keily's heart fell in sync with the small, lifeless body hitting the ground.
"No!" Keily shouted in horror. "Sharon! Sharon, no!" She fell to the ground beside the girl, too brokenhearted to go on.
Unexpectedly and without warning, the large chapel doors burst open and a score of arrows issued out of the once hallowed structure, flying straight over the head the tear-struck barmaid. Keily's eyes went wide as her mind registered just what had happened, and with what little awareness she still held, she flattened her body in an effort to avoid the clash of vengeance above her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
"HURRY NOW!" ELMER BECKONED. "THEY could be here any moment, and I for one would like to forgo any sort of introduction."
"I never in all my days knew a nag to run that fast," Portus said as he helped Margarid, Kahri, and the few others out from the brewer's cart.
"Madness is a mighty powerful motivator," Elmer said with a worried smile. "Come on now, hurry my friends! It is a miracle that my kind still has any privilege or power at all in these dark and deadly days, let alone the kind of clout that can still open portcullises."
"I think a maddened mule was the least of the guardsmen's worries," Kahri offered.
"Perhaps they thought you still had some magic in those grey-barked hands of yours," Margarid said as she watched Kahri and the others duck their heads and enter through the iron willow gate. "You do still have magic, don't you Arborist?" she asked nervously.
Elmer looked over her shoulder and saw, off in the distance, two pairs of sickly green orbs hurtling across the darkened sky towards them. The soul chilling sound of leathery-scaled wings pounding the cool air nearly robbed him of his voice.
"I don't know what kind of magic I still have," Elmer told the auburn-haired woman. "Certainly not the kind that staves off the winged beasts of darkness. But perhaps, I mean quite possibly, what I do have is enough to ..." he touched her soft face with his coarse, grey-bark fingers, "Enough to do something."
Margarid forced a smile. "Me too, Arborist," she said as she ducked her head beneath the iron branches and began her descent down the winding iron staircase.
The leaf-green, jeweled handle glowed underneath the grip of the youngest Arborist of Haven. As he pulled the iron door shut, he whispered ancient words of deep magic for the protection over this small remnant of those who wished to endure.
There were very few eyes privileged enough to behold the glowing hall of the Arborists, to take in the vibrant wonder of so much mystery held within these hallowed walls. Margarid, Portus, Kahri, and the rest were wide-eyed in stunned disbelief. The rooted columns of the great tree still glowed with life, and the very air around them hummed and prickled with a mystical charge to it.
"I never in all my days thought I would live to see what grows beneath the great tree," Portus said, a bit overwhelmed.
"I didn't even know enough to wish for such fantasies," Kahri said, her big, grey eyes watering at the fantastical display.
"Come now," Elmer urged them down the steps.
"These columns ... they … they glow?" Portus said as he reached a hand out to touch the illuminated roots.
"Do not touch anything!" Elmer nearly screamed. Their surprise at such an outburst caught them all a bit off guard. Portus sheepishly withdrew his hand like a wounded child whose bare knuckles had just felt the backhand of his mother's wooden spoon. "Do not be mistaken, my new friends," Elmer lectured the small group. "Amber or not, silver or not," he raised his leafy green beard towards the black granite ceiling, "there is an untamed fire that still courses through these rooted columns, one that is still planted in the bowels of Mount Aureole—and it still demands our reverence."
Elmer lowered his gaze and fixed his eyes on those of his newly captivated audience. "And I do not wholly trust that it has faded beyond the point of peril. It has claimed the lives of holier men than the lot of you, and I do not wish to have your blood on my hands when Engelmann returns."
"Engelmann?" Margarid said as if waking from a dream. "Where is he, where is Engelmann?"
Just then an enormous shockwave shook the chamber. The ground beneath their boots quaked in the aftermath of some sort of cataclysmic collision. Dust and pebbles, rocks and debris began to rain down from the heights of the Arborist's great hall, filling the glowing air with irreverence. Shelves of books and scrolls toppled over all around them, and both Kahri and Margarid grabbed fearfully onto the tall tanner.
"I didn't mean anything by it, I swear." Portus whispered his repentant prayer while he kissed his flint.
The quaking stopped, and the dust-laden air became thick with the kind of fear that is only found in the frightful curiosities of the unknown.
"What was that?" a voice trembled out.
"Hurry, brother!" Elmer whispered to himself, his leaf-green eyes surveying the vaulted canopy of holy granite. "We haven't much time!" Just then, the glowing columns that made up the very structure of this ancient hall began to creak and groan, responding as if some great weight was stretching them beyond the core of their strength.
"What is happening?" Kahri asked. Her hands were held over her mouth in utter shock. "No!"
ROAAAR! The muffled sounds of the twin dragons shook the hall once again with a terrifying reverberation.
Elmer looked up towards the cavernous ceiling of the great hall. Though he could not hear the vile words that were being spoken, he knew their origin without question. His mind went reeling at the dark endings that may be waiting for him and this small remnant of the hopeful.
"Arborist?" Margarid asked. "Arborist!" But Elmer's gaze was fixed above, and his thoughts were too preoccupied with the coming doom to hear the nervous questioning of the frightened few. "Arborist, answer me, please!" she pleaded in between the muffled mockeries of the enemy. Her eyes stung as they filled with tears. Even here in Haven's most hallowed of places, hope itself was suffocating under the ever-present wings of this heavy darkness. "Elmer!" she screamed at last, daring to shake him by his wispy shoulders beneath his brown cloak.
The Arborist blinked his eyes. The bluest of tears rolled down his grey-barked skin as the thick fog of reverie thinned out before him. "I saw it." Elmer spoke as if waking from a dream. "I saw my own doom on the wind of their words. I saw the desecration of our holy mountain, of the gardens that my kind has tended with great pride, and the great tree..." He paused, swallowing hard against the blue tears that gathered and fell from his leafy beard. "This tree, this star at the center of the world, the very one we have served for generations … there will be nothing left of it … nothing."
"Then why have you led us here?" Margarid said, her frustration and fear now boiling over. "Did you bring us to this chamber to die?"
BOOM! The sound of falling stone reverberated through the hall as a massive boulder exploded
into a hundred glittering pieces upon the granite floor. The glowing, rooted columns that supported the ceiling over this great hall began to writhe and moan, moving and stretching against their very will almost as if they were weeping while their brilliance intermittently flickered in distress.
"Why, Elmer?" she yelled as her small fist pounded the trunk-like chest of the holy man. "Why did you—"
"Because Engelmann told me to," he said, interrupting her. "He told me to gather the remnant and bring them here."
"Well, where is he then?" Portus demanded.
"What did he tell you? What was his plan, Elmer?" Margarid demanded.
Elmer looked longingly, rather desperately, towards the staircase, willing Engelmann to glide down the iron steps and help everything make sense. Though Elmer had magic woven throughout the rings of his body, he did not yet possess the confidence or insight that his elder brother so effortlessly displayed. The leafy beard of the Arborist began to turn color as he stared helplessly at the staircase. Almost imperceptibly at first, but then faster and to a greater degree, the youthful leaves that had crowned his innocent face began to die as the terrified group looked on. Then they began to float lifelessly down to the floor in a brown flight as the moment overtook him.
"Elmer, please!" Margarid pleaded. "You may have seen your doom, but you have not seen ours. Please do not curse us to the same fate!"
Elmer reached to his chin to find his once-green beard half-barren, bereft of leaves and crumbling. It was in that moment that he saw his grey, bark-covered finger, almost as if it were the first time. His attention caught upon it for just a moment, and then light flickered once again in the eyes of the youngest Arborist of Haven.
"North," he whispered, as if the very word were foreign upon his lips. Then he spoke the same word again and again with an excited swell of volume to each utterance. "North, north, north!"
"Has he gone mad?" Kahri asked as she hid behind Portus.
Elmer wheeled himself around in a flurry of falling leaves as his eyes searched the glittering walls in the deep recesses of the hall. "Come now, come quickly, my friends, for my doom will not be your doom. I think I understand now what I must do."
"Please, Elmer, please, tell me what it is that you must do?" Margarid pleaded, her voice unsure in the midst of all this madness.
The young Arborist took her by the shoulders. The blue tears fell slowly in dew droplets down his grey cheeks. "I must desecrate this mountain while I still have the magic enough to do so. That is, if HE wills it," Elmer told her as the light behind his eyes burned with a fierce certainty.
Margarid looked back to her scared and confused friends, and then again to the Arborist who held her shoulder. "I ... I do not understand? You would aid in the destruction of this place?"
"My child," Elmer said with a sagely tone he had not exhibited before. "You do not need to understand ... you simply need to go north." Elmer exhaled an oddly confident breath, and in doing so sent another browned leaf towards the granite floor. "Come now, we must hurry."
With that, the Arborist took off past the rows of shelves and tables. He weaved in and out of the creaking, weeping, rooted columns. Waving his grey, spindly finger out in front of him, he laughed with a madness of final purpose. "North! The remnant shall go north!"
The ground continued to shake beneath their feet, and without warning a scream awoke from within what seemed like the columns themselves. So terrifying, so soul chilling, and so terribly heartbreaking was this sound that the hairs upon every neck stood erect and the tears in every eye fell in an uncontrollable sorrow. The very roots of the great tree were weeping and screaming in an audible lament of their final death.
The light began to pulse in the room, rising and falling from a brilliant, electrified bright to an utter black, then back again.
Portus grabbed the hands of his friends, his mouth parched with fear. "What do we do now?" he asked. The dying illumination in the hall around him throbbed unevenly, like the last few breaths in the failing lungs of a hunted stag.
"North! You will go north!" came the insistent sound of the Arborist's voice.
Margarid looked up at the tall tanner. Their faces were both grimaced in pain as the roots still screamed in agony, yet somehow they understood each other's thoughts. Portus nodded his agreement and signaled for the remnant to follow the maddened Arborist to whatever doom or refuge awaited them.
"Over here, and hurry!" Elmer shouted in between the screams of the dying roots.
Margarid and the others did their best to find their way amidst the eerie, throbbing light, deeper and deeper into the recesses of the once-hallowed hall. After a long, tense moment of searching, they came upon the Arborist. He stood still, tracing his spindly, barked finger along some unseen pattern within the glittering rock of Mount Aureole.
"What are you doing, Elmer?" Margarid asked with a panicked exasperation. "This is the end of the hall! There are no more doorways or iron staircases. Why did you lead us to this ... this lifeless end?" Before the death of the tree, no citizen of Haven would have dared to question the mystical wisdom of the Arborists with such disregard, but here upon the panic-soaked floor of her desperation, the auburn-haired young woman did not give much thought to decorum.
"I—if the THREE who is SEVEN indeed wills it—am leading you north, my dear." Elmer mumbled, quite unoffended, eyes still fixed on the rock wall before him.
"But how? There is no way out," Portus reasoned.
Elmer held his finger out before him, staring at it intently and mumbling the fluid words of some unheard tongue. Finally, the tip of his grey finger glowed a fiery, amber hue akin to the long dead flames of the once great tree.
"Not all impasses are impassable," he said quietly, as if trying to reassure his own wavering resolve. "Not all ends have resigned themselves to death. Though our holiest moments may very well be our un-godliest hour, a fragile faith might move mountains yet."
"I ... I don't under-" Margarid's words were interrupted as she watched the youngest Arborist of Haven take his glowing finger and touch it to the secret pattern written in the granite walls of Mount Aureole.
Like fire to hot pitch, the shape of the northward arrow grew in fiery definition, glowing with the same amber magic that shone from the Arborist's finger.
"What does it mean, Elmer?" Portus asked.
"North, I think," Margarid answered.
"If HE wills it," Elmer said solemnly.
The ground beneath them began to rumble, and the breath of life seemed all but removed from the lungs of the rooted columns. Elmer knew, with as much certainty as one could have about anything in this darkened world, that his time here upon Aiénor was nearly over.
"Will you ask Him? Please?" Margarid begged.
Elmer nodded his answer and closed his leaf green eyes. His lips began to move in a blazing succession of brilliantly unrecognizable words, while blue tears formed cylindrical droplets in the barked corners of his eyes.
The tall, wispy Arborist swayed to and fro, as if he were being moved by an unfelt wind. Then, in a breath-ceasing moment, his grey eyelids burst open in a tumult of blue flames. The very sight of such magic caused the remnant to startle in fear, and Elmer himself seemed rather astonished at his own display. He looked at each of his hands, and then again at his frightened friends gathered there in the darkening recesses of this once great hall.
"Please!" Elmer whispered desperately before he placed his finger upon the glowing amber arrow. He took a deep breath, eyes still burning blue, and with his other hand he clasped the dying roots of the burning tree. As soon as his left hand made contact with the hallowed column, a torrent of amber light shot through the elm-like figure of the keeper of the tree and bore its way deep into the glittering rock of the mountain. The very earth that hung heavy above their heads roared and rumbled in violent protest, and Elmer arched his back in excruciating pain as the holy fire of the tree channeled its way through his body. He opened his mouth to scream in ang
uish, and as he did a dozen tendrils of amber magic shot forth from his lips and grasped in greedy fury for the granite ceiling of the hall.
The gathered remnant held onto each other in frightened horror as they watched their friend bear the wrath of hopeless prayers answered. Black rocks began to fall from the high ceilings and crash around the Arborist in bullying explosions, but though this searing pain ripped through his body, he did not relinquish his grasp nor waver in his cause. Portus, Kahri, and the rest watched through tear-blurred vision, unable to remove their stunned gazes from the unfolding horrors before them. It was Margarid and Margarid alone who looked back towards the iron staircase, there across the failing glory of the great hall.
"Hurry Michael … please hurry, my love," she beckoned.
Without warning, the quaking ground stopped its shaking, and the whole of the hall fell instantly black. The smell of burning timber filled the chamber with a fireless smoke, and all who were gathered there beneath the hallowed hill held their breath in fearful anticipation.
The room, black as the darkened sky of Aiénor, began to slowly find illumination. The dying light held within the rooted columns seemed to swell again with life, and slowly but deliberately the room began to burn brighter and brighter.
"Elmer!" Margarid shouted into the deafening silence. "Elmer, are you alright?"
The head of the Arborist hung low. A hundred dead leaves piled around his leather-thonged feet, and as the light in the columns grew brighter, Elmer was able to lift his gaze to meet the eyes of his friends once more. The Arborist opened his mouth to speak, his eyes still aglow in the blue magic, but the voice that came forth was not the voice of their friend. The words that issued forth were deep, and resonant, both beautiful and terrible, though not of the tongue of men. The friends stood in mesmerized stillness as they listened to the cadence of magic and mystery.
Then, almost as if possessed by another spirit, the tone and timbre changed drastically, mirroring the sound of the winged serpents. "Do not dismay in the death of foolish tales, for the Raven Queen has brought your rebirth upon the wings of darkness." The two voices spoke in sickly harmony through the very lips of their Arborist friend, whose eyes were now aglow with a more sinister green. "Fill your sight with the gift of her un-light, and fear no more the limitation of human vision."
The Ravenous Siege (Epic of Haven Trilogy Book 2) Page 23