by Angus Watson
He turned to Sofi and Paloma.
“Thanks!” he said.
The women nodded.
They followed the blackened and burning trail of the firenado. They avoided burning trees and bushes, but had to cross smouldering, orange-hot soil a few times. Erik was glad of his boots, and marvelled that the Owsla walked uncomplainingly on bare feet.
They headed uphill. Ahead, the sky had settled into a sullen grey. Somewhere under that sky was the Warlock and Warrior tribe in the Valley of the Gods. Beyond them was The Meadows and the Warlock Queen.
Erik walked on with the Calnians and the Wootah, west and west some more.
Part Three
The Meadows
Chapter 1
Stone Trees
The clouds dispersed and the sun blazed, first twinkling off the snow then melting it aggressively. They walked through a forest of low pines, bright green against red cliffs. Water dripped like rain from branches, gurgled along innumerable rills and splashed down bouncing streams. A few sudden “whumps!” made Sassa Lipchewer jump, but it was just clumps of snow falling from trees.
She was walking on her own because Wulf had dropped back to tow the coffin. Other than Freydis and Ottar, Sassa was the only one who hadn’t taken a stint hauling the Warlock Queen’s dead son. She felt a bit bad about that, but only a bit. She didn’t like the box being near her growing baby. She was prepared to appear unhelpful for the sake of her child. Being as close to the casket as she was made her miserable.
Maybe it wasn’t the coffin that depressed her, Sassa thought. Maybe it was the massacre of Janny and his people. Maybe it was seeing her husband dying. Maybe it was the likelihood of seeing him die again.
How were they going to get through a sea of monsters to The Meadows? Did anybody have a plan? She knew Wulf didn’t, and she herself couldn’t begin to think of one.
That night they made shelters by the side of a lake, directed by Erik. They leant brush against what Sassa had thought were large tree trunks but were actually cold, hard stone in the shape of tree trunks and patterned on the outside just like bark.
The shelter construction was the same method Erik had used to get them out of the rain on the day he’d rescued them from the Lakchans. It was amazing, Sassa considered, to think that she hadn’t known him back then, and that Sitsi, Paloma, Chogolisa and her hero Sofi had all been terrifying monsters, trying to catch them and kill them.
The Owsla hadn’t changed, of course. They were still monsters. They’d shown that. They were like the lycanthropes of legend–normal people in the day, monsters at night. Except the Owsla didn’t need to wait until night.
She walked a little way along the lakeside with Thyri, Finn, Freydis and Ottar, looking for stone trees that were still standing. Freydis said Ottar wanted to see if they had stone leaves and stone fruit.
The following day was very strange. It wasn’t too hot, there were no tornadoes or earthquakes, nobody was killed by a bear or stung by a wasp man and they didn’t see any dead people or twisted beasts that looked like they’d escaped from the nightmares of a madman.
“This is boring!” announced Freydis after the lunch stop. Good, thought Sassa. She liked boring. And, besides, she thought the ever-changing landscape of blue bushes, green trees and assorted multicoloured rock formations was breathtakingly lovely and far from boring. It took her mind off the inevitable horrors ahead.
If by some freak chance they made it through, she had no desire to return to Hardwork. She wanted to walk even more of the land with the Wootah and Owsla, to see what other marvels they could find, even after what the Owsla had done to Janny and his gang. Even more so, in fact. She reaslied something surprising. Wulf had been horrified by the slayings, but Sassa had been impressed, even excited. She took a deep breath, looked left and right then admitted it to herself as she let the breath out of her nose–when the Owsla had killed the warriors and warlocks and tortured Janny before murdering him too, it had turned her on.
She’d never looked at another woman like that–she really was Wulf’s and Wulf’s only–but, by Fraya and Tor, the Owsla were smokingly attractive. Sofi and Paloma particularly. And Sitsi, all sweet and clever, had plugged that guy in the back of the head like he was nothing to her.
Remembering it made Sassa smile and sent a flush of heat through her. She realised she was looking forward to killing again herself.
Is that so wrong? she wondered.
Yes, answered a voice in her mind that sounded like Gunnhild, it’s about as wrong as it gets.
As the sun began to think about setting they wandered into a land of ridges, spikes and fins of rock that reminded Sassa of the Badlands. They found a good camping spot next to a low cliff. Sprouting from the cliff was a tower of red rock maybe twenty paces high, with a bulbous, white top.
Sassa looked at Wulf, then up at the tower, then back at him.
He raised his eyebrows at her, eyes twinkling and she had to run over and hug him.
They left early the following day. It was colder again. Snow that had fallen in the night had settled and was showing no signs of melting any time soon.
It started snowing lightly again as they climbed up into possibly the most bizarre landscape so far. Thousands of columns of rock were all around, ranging from the height of a human to twenty paces tall, some alone but mainly clustered in groups, ranging in colour from yellowy-white to deep red. Growing from the orange soil were tall trees but no grass or bushes.
A good path led up through this garden of weird rocks and tall trees, skirting around the clusters. Sassa and Wulf led the way with Sofi and Sitsi behind.
The easy trail passed through one short tunnel, then another.
“Someone made these tunnels,” said Sassa.
“They did,” confirmed Sitsi Kestrel. “We must be in Bella’s Wood. Bella was one of the first humans. She was being pursued by the Mud People, who were here before humans. She changed herself into a fox to escape. That didn’t work, so she turned her pursuers to stone.” Sitsi gestured to the rock towers all around.
“Did she build the path as well?” asked Wulf.
“No, no. Bella’s Wood is–or was–a popular pilgrimage site. So much so it seems that they’ve built this path and cut through the rock here to ease people’s trek around it.”
Sassa could see why visitors might flock to Bella’s wood. It was delightful. It renewed Sassa’s hope that they might all come out of this alive and bolstered her idea that she wanted to spend her life travelling the world.
The following two days’ walking was almost as wonderful. The snow melted but the weather stayed mild. Streams gurgled, birds sang, animals ran about and the sun shone off green trees.
Sassa relaxed so much that it was something of a surprise two days later when Sitsi yelled, “Hold!”
They stopped. They were crossing slickrock. Huge domes of swirling patterned rock and great, white, flat-topped peaks loomed ahead.
“We’re coming into the Valley of the Gods,” Sitsi told Sofi.
“Because of these amazing rocks?” Sassa asked.
“That, and the twenty-three warriors and warlocks watching us from that hill ahead.”
Chapter 2
The Valley of the Gods
They walked with leather-clad warlocks and feather-jacketed warriors across white, yellow and red slickrock. They looked a lot like Janny and his gang, but this lot were women as well as men. Finn wanted to talk to them, but they didn’t seem interested in him and he was no good at striking up conversations.
The path headed for a cliff and Finn the Deep thought it had to end, but it continued crazily along a ledge not much wider than his foot. It was very high; by some way the most precipitous ledge Finn had shuffled along so far.
It was horrible and he was terrified, but it was a refreshing sort of terror, like the cold in winter after walking out of an overheated home. Of all the fears he regularly experienced those days, Finn mused, fear of heights was his favourite. You knew where you w
ere with fear of heights. It was a simple case of thinking Oh Oaden this is high, I hate it and I wish it was over and being careful not to fall, and then it was over. It was a nice reliable terror with no surprises. Plus, it distracted him from his two other major fears, namely fear of embarrassment and fear of monsters. His swiftly developing fear of monsters was the worst. He had no idea what would attack them next. He was becoming used to embarrassment.
Ottar and Freydis were behind him, singing a weird duet in which Ottar made frog noises in the chorus. That helped his terror. If the children weren’t scared–his foot slipped. He gripped rock with his fingers and managed not to fall. He carried on feeling a bit sick and surprised he hadn’t shat himself. Actually, the children singing didn’t help much. They were idiots who should have been scared.
Finally, mercifully, they reached a wide track that wound at a sensible angle down the side of a broad, magnificent valley.
Finn could see why they called it the Valley of the Gods. Lately, when he’d been unable to sleep at night, he’d tried to take his mind off monsters and embarrassment by amalgamating all the astonishing sights they’d seen and trying to design the perfect landscape, where he would live with Paloma and Thyri; along with Erik, Wulf and the others when he was feeling generous.
He’d made up some pretty smashing places, but nothing he’d thought of came close to the beauty of the Valley of the Gods.
Red cliff-sided mountains soared majestically from a wooded valley floor. Patches of snow nestled tastefully in niches around flat-topped, tree-fringed, white-rock summits. Eagles and condors glided on high. Fat songbirds chirruped with brazen happiness. Rodents hopped, stopped and twitched their noses at him. Bighorn sheep stood imperiously on outcrops as if they knew they looked good.
“It’s lovely here,” he said to a female warlock who’d fallen back to walk with them.
“Yes,” she said. She was about Erik’s age and she walked in a flat-footed clumping sort of way, as if she’d done an awful lot of walking and had had just about enough of it. “The Valley of the Gods. Or at least it was before the Warlock Queen killed them all.”
“If she killed all the gods, does that make her a god, too? God of gods perhaps?”
“I suppose. She’d be the most powerful god since the landmakers. Maybe more powerful.”
“Is she really that mighty?” Finn asked.
The warlock shook her head. “We thought this valley’s gods would protect us. But the Warlock Queen got us, even if she did strike indirectly.”
“Indirectly?”
“Four days ago there was a colossal storm to the north. A flash flood came roaring down the canyon shortly after sunrise. It was a big one. We reckon a landslide must have emptied a lake. Luckily, most people were up, we heard it coming and everyone got clear. It destroyed our village and most of our crops, though. Our new little town, which we’d put a lot of effort into over the last few moons, was buried under mud and rock.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Nobody died and we’re building a new place to live higher up the valley side. We live on and, hopefully, we will do so until the Warlock Queen is defeated. Which brings us to you. Maya–she’s our chief– sent us to meet you. A couple of the Warlocks said you were going to help against the Warlock Queen.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
“There aren’t very many of you.”
Finn looked at the Wootah and Calnians ahead and behind. It looked like Ottar had eaten something he shouldn’t have done because there were green smears either side of his mouth and Freydis was telling him off.
“I suppose there aren’t,” he said, “but we’re more effective than we look.”
“How did you come to be saving the world?”
Finn looked at her. She wasn’t mocking him. “I was minding my own business and it just kind of happened.”
“Tell me all.”
“How about I tell you some? It would take weeks to tell you all.”
“Go for it. I’m Ollia, by the way.”
“Finn the Deep.”
He told their tale as they walked down into the wonderful valley, leaving out irrelevant parts and incidents that showed him in a bad light.
The valley flattened out and they followed a narrow, uneven and muddy path above the flash flood’s devastation.
“It was all woodland and pasture before,” said Ollia. “Lovely and teeming with life.”
“Wow,” said Finn. It wasn’t lovely now.
A gigantic tongue of jagged boulders, smashed stone and red mud filled the valley floor. Finn saw a rattlesnake winding its way between boulders, but no other animals.
“The Virgin River’s still flowing below that lot,” said Ollia.
“It will carry it all away, too, given time,” said Erik, who’d joined them.
Finn realised he’d seen the place before, in a dream. Or had he? The moment he thought he had, he questioned himself.
The path turned back up the valley side after a while. After a short climb they arrived at the new home of the Warriors and Warlock tribe.
Sofi Tornado guessed the woman watching them climb the slope was the chief of the Warriors and Warlock tribe, and she was right. She was tall and looked strong. She was dressed in the warrior uniform of leather trousers, jerkin and cap.
“I’m Maya,” she said, recognising that Sofi was the leader without asking. “Follow me, please.” The chief seemed confident, calm and comfortable with her command. She was young, not much older than Finn the Deep, but her bearing and her expression said that she’d left her youth behind a long time ago. Sofi dared hope that they had found a useful ally.
“I’ll come with you, Sofi,” said Wulf.
“If you like.” Now that they were closer to The Meadows, Sofi was less keen to indulge Wulf with a share of the command. It was possible the best course of action might result in some of their own people’s deaths. She wasn’t sure he had the mettle to give those orders.
While the others went with the warlock who’d been talking to Finn, Wulf and Sofi followed Maya through the tent and lean-to camp. Perhaps one in five people wore the Warrior or Warlock tribe’s garb. Many of the others were injured, and there were several large groups of children being looked after by just a few adults. Sofi didn’t want to ask Maya where the parents were.
“Who are the people who don’t look like warriors or warlocks?” she asked instead.
“We’re a mix of many tribes now,” Maya answered. “Anyone is welcome so long as they don’t bring disease or a bad attitude.”
The chief led Sofi and Wulf into a large leather tent.
It was surprisingly homely. Two flamboyantly decorated and skilfully made water jugs sat on a table with four plain, earthenware cups, and there was a low bed on each side, each covered with subtly patterned rugs. A large flap above the table was open to flood the room with air and light and give a view across the Valley of the Gods to the red, white and green mountains on the far side.
Maya gestured for them to sit on one of the beds and poured water for them.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
Sofi and Wulf did.
The chief listened and nodded, interrupting sometimes for clarification. Sofi had no qualms telling Maya about her vision quest and the coffin. She trusted the woman.
Maya confirmed that two warriors matching the description of the men Sofi had seen in her vision quest had disappeared when the paradise of The Meadows had died and the disasters had started.
Sofi didn’t tell Maya about Janny and his people and neither did Wulf. It seemed he agreed with Sofi that there was no point burdening Maya with everything.
“So,” said Maya when Sofi’s tale was done, “it was our fault. We knew it was the Warlock Queen causing all this horror, but we didn’t know why. It is unfortunate that it was caused by one of us, but that doubles my resolve to help you end it. What can we do?”
“We have to get the coffin and Ottar the Mo
aner to The Pyramid,” said Sofi.
“Why?” asked Maya.
“We suspect,” said Wulf, looking at Sofi as if for confirmation, “that the Warlock Queen intends to kill Ottar and give his body to her own child.”
Sofi nodded sadly.
“I see.” Maya shook her head. “Do you have any idea how you’ll crack her?”
“Not a one unfortunately. I heard that you’d tried before?” said Wulf.
“Our last attempt was ten days ago. There was a cold spell and I hoped the monsters would be docile. Fifty of us set off down the Virgin River. We got to the point where the Virgin River flows into the Red River. The first canoe hit the Red River and dissolved. Its crew screamed, then they were gone. The next three boats back-paddled, but too late. The current was strong and they went down, too. Three boats, including mine, reached the bank. Thirty warlocks and warriors were reduced to a bloody foam floating off down the Red River in a heartbeat. With our numbers so badly reduced, we didn’t press on. Four more were killed by monsters on the way home, another five badly injured.
“It is not something I look forward to attempting again, but we caused this and will do all we can to help you.”
“Thank you,” said Wulf. “How far from The Meadows does the Virgin River meet the Red River?” asked Wulf.
“One day’s easy walk. In normal circumstances.”
“So I guess we start with a boat ride and stop before the Red River.”
Maya, Sofi and Wulf debated, came up with a plan and agreed to leave as soon as everything was ready.
Chapter 3
Virgin River
The sun sank behind the red and white mountains as Sitsi Kestrel walked with Keef the Berserker out of the Valley of the Gods. Marred as it was by the giant flash flood’s debris, Sitsi was sad to be leaving such a beautiful place.
Ahead of the Wootah and Calnians, some holding burning torches, were several dozen warriors and warlocks. Sofi had told her the plan. She couldn’t see how it could possibly work, but all the same it was good to have help.