Thirty-Three
They argued the next morning, as they ate the cold remnants of the roasted rabbit and stashed their blankets under the horses’ saddles. “I say we find the source o’ the river first,” Amos insisted. “We know nothin’ about this Ezra.”
“We can’t refuse the aid o’ the gods!” Isolde argued. “Orin is badly injured, and Echo . . .” She flicked her hand toward the two. Orin was leaning against a tree while the others packed up. He was pale. The bandages had not fully staunched the bleeding in his leg. Echo was drinking from the river. The bandage over the gashes on her thigh was caked with dark blood, and she stumbled as she backed away from the riverbank. “Besides,” Isolde said, tying an empty water skin to Willa’s saddle, “we need water.”
Simeon wanted to side with Amos, to argue against any delay. But when he looked at Orin, he knew the man’s life was in danger. He was in desperate need of help, miraculous help. Simeon wondered suddenly if he would have to choose between Orin’s life and Phebe’s. It was a decision he couldn’t possibly make . . . not now, at least. So he put off his choice.
“Either way, we follow the river.”
Their journey grew more difficult as they traveled north. They were climbing ever higher into the mountains now, and the river fell away until it snaked along a deep gorge far below. They saw no more wolves and no more white trees, and they rode largely in silence. Something about that country made them reluctant to speak. Except for the distant noise of rushing water, the swishing of the horses’ tails, and the groaning of leather, it was oppressively still.
They began to notice great piles of stones scattered here and there on either side of the river. At first, the tumbled stones seemed a part of the changing terrain. But it soon became clear that these were ruins. There were remnants of towers and walls cut through with crumbling archways. On some of the arches, the travelers could make out the sign of the Clan of the Builder. The watchtowers. And as they struggled on, Simeon thought on the fate of the sons of Burke and wondered how closely those servants of the Shadow still kept watch on the abandoned towers.
“Abner never told me what power Ulff gave ta the stargazers.” Simeon whispered to Amos as they led Brand and Willa up a steep rise.
Amos was slow to answer. “He changed ’em . . . their eyes, their bodies.”
“Aye, but why do men fear them so?”
“I’ve never seen the stargazers, but the Shadow Lord’s curse was fittin’. He took those who sought ta draw out the secrets o’ the stars and doomed them ta draw out somethin’ else instead.”
“What?”
“The secrets of men.”
Simeon shuddered and was silent. They plodded along the river, until Orin fell from Brand’s saddle and lay in a heap on the ground. Simeon rushed to his side and placed an arm under the older man’s shoulder. Orin’s eyes were closed, his mouth tight and drawn.
“Orin! Orin, can ya speak?” Simeon watched as Orin tried to swallow. The loss of blood, the lack of water — he would not last long in this state.
“Sim,” Orin managed, opening his eyes a little. “Forgive me. I’ve failed ya yet again.” He tried to swallow.
Simeon lowered him to the ground and touched the bandage on his leg. He looked to Isolde.
“If Orin can stay in the saddle, will ya take him ta Ezra? Brand can carry ya both, and we’ll follow behind with Echo.”
She nodded and gave a longing look back at her mare.
“She’ll only slow ya down. Don’t worry, Isolde. She’ll be alright.” Amos and Simeon hoisted Orin on top of Brand and secured him to the saddle as best they could. Orin leaned against the horse’s snow-white mane and looked at Simeon.
“I don’t want ta leave ya here, my boy. This place . . .” His eyes closed. Simeon grasped his hand and fought to control his rising emotion as Isolde mounted the white stallion and rode ahead, fading into the mist and shadow of the mountains.
The silence around them was thickening. The air was heavy with . . . something. Expectation, perhaps, or foreboding. Their presence among the ancient watchtowers had not gone unnoticed.
In the darkest hour of the night, he came. His skin was deathly white, and the pale wings that rose above his shoulders made him look much taller than a normal man. The white feathers of his wings darkened as they descended, ending in a luminous blue. White straps studded with silver-blue stones hung over each shoulder, intersecting in the middle of his chest and wrapping into a belt. From the belt, white cloth draped to his knees. He was beautiful.
Amos had been sleeping when the creature arrived. Simeon was on watch, if such it could be called. The blackness around him was so complete, he had to rely on his ears to tell him when danger might be approaching from somewhere outside the small circle of light cast by Phebe’s lantern. The two had camped in a ruin, under the shelter of an arch marked with the sign of the Star Clan. The sign reminded Simeon of Orin. It had given him comfort. He’d rested against the arch and looked up into the unbroken darkness, surprised to see a light moving from the east, falling in an arc. He had grabbed Amos’s leg, shaking him from slumber, and the two had leapt to their feet, braced against an assault.
But the racing light had slowed, great wings beating the air and bringing the enemy to a gentle landing. They had taken in its pale skin, its smooth head, its eyes. And they were caught in the snare, spellbound. Eyes that were first white and opaque darkened to a black as lightless as the night around them. Simeon and Amos saw innumerable bright points moving inside those black globes. The tiny lights circling each other in Phebe’s lantern were only a whisper of the depth and beauty of what they now beheld.
The stargazer took a step forward, spreading immense wings over and around his victims. Simeon hardly noticed when the fear within him emerged as cold sweat and clammy skin. But when his body withered, shrinking to the size of a small child, he began to sense that something was wrong. Instead of images of twinkling stars, he saw in the creature’s eyes a picture of Hadrian hovering over him. The wicked man filled the sky, and Simeon shrank still more. He was so powerless. What was happening to him? And where was Amos? Surely Amos could save them. He glanced toward his friend, hoping to find him poised for battle. He did not.
From Amos, the stargazer drew out legions of wicked secrets. There were too many. They emerged as parasites, squirming and wriggling from every pore of his skin until they covered Amos’s body, head to foot. They had long feasted on the decaying remains of his tortured mind, his wounded heart. Now they feasted on his flesh, and he screamed in agony. The sound chilled Simeon’s blood. If he had had any faith in his own ability, Simeon would have fought to free his friend. But he had none. He was a trembling child again, paralyzed by fear, utterly helpless. He looked back into the stargazer’s eyes to find an image of Phebe suspended high in a tree, far out of reach, crying for help. But he could do nothing. He was sure of it. He dropped to his knees, his heart hammering out his terror. He heard Amos scream again, and Simeon knew the stargazer was finishing his task. He cowered, covering his head with his hands, and waited for the end.
Then came a sound of consuming fire, burning through the forest with unspeakable speed and strength. He felt a rush of hot wind, heard the flapping of fiery wings. The roar of fire and wind rose to a fever pitch. Then all was still. Warm light broke into the clouded corners of his mind, and he saw the Neyla. Her face blazed with light; her voice echoed around him. You see yourself through the eyes of the Shadow, Simeon. Do not be fooled. The Bright have preserved you for this day.
In the midst of the battle, while Amos writhed on the ground beside him, Simeon willed himself to stand. He dropped his arms from his head, opened his eyes, and looked down at his body. It was no longer the body of a frightened boy. It belonged to a man. From his belt, he drew a dagger forged with his own hands. And he plunged it into the breast of the stargazer with a fierce cry.
The blade pierced the deathly white skin and stained it red. The creature threw back its head and screamed at the overhanging Shadow. It fell backward onto the rocky floor of the ruin. By the time it hit the ground, it was nothing more than a man, with dark skin and hair, and the sign of the Star Clan tattooed on his chest. One of the sons of Burke had gone back to the light at last.
Simeon knelt beside Amos. The loathsome parasites were thinning out, but very slowly, and Amos’s eyes met Simeon’s with a look of such despair, such shame. In that moment, Simeon was so overcome with pity that he forgave his friend for everything.
When the last of the parasites had disappeared beneath the surface of his skin, Amos surveyed the damage. His arms, legs, and chest were a solid mass of tiny wounds, and little flecks of blood oozed from the deeper ones. He raised a hand to his face and touched his cheek with a grimace. The skin was rutted and bleeding. His head fell back against the stony ground, and he looked up at Simeon with an odd smile.
“Sim, the warrior,” he said.
They set out early the next morning, with Simeon leading the horses and Amos riding Willa. They descended a steep slope that brought them back to the banks of the river. This time Amos didn’t touch the water, though the horses drank their fill.
As the day warmed to gray, they struggled to keep the river in sight. It dropped below them again, cutting a deep gash in the forest. Now the mountain slopes crashed into the water at a perilous angle, and men and horses were forced to climb rise after rise. Each was higher than the last, some jutting from the ground to immense heights, reaching up until their peaks were obscured by mist and Shadow.
The journey was a torment for Amos, but not because of his parching thirst and his stinging skin. He was haunted by the memory of a night long ago, when he had watched from the shadows as a man was lifted to a pile of stones and given back to the light. He had seen the fire move across the man’s tunic, his boots, his hair. He had watched the golden-tongued monster devour the body until flames poured out of the darkening skull. He had felt the fear as never before.
Above him, the branches had creaked. Behind him, a cat had hissed. On that night, he had known that the world was overrun with evil things, driven forward by the malice of the Shadow Lord. And he had known that he was among them, a pawn in the hand of darkness.
He would do anything, now, to have his father’s guard on his arm, to feel his quiver hanging over his shoulder, to grip his old bow. He looked down at the ruin of his body. What had he become? What had he done to himself? To Phebe? To Simeon? To so many nameless innocents? And how could it ever be undone?
Thirty-Four
As the light of that day waned, they came to the end of their northward journey along the river. Here was the diverging of Meander and Lost. Ahead, a narrow stone bridge crossed a deep rift in the mountains, a rift cut by the Meander as it made its journey west. To their right, the Lost broke from its brother and cut its way south toward the moors.
Simeon led the horses across the bridge, hopeful that the crumbling rocks would hold the weight of both horses and men. Beneath him, only mist was visible, though he could hear the hollow echo of rocks tumbling into the water at the base of the canyon. Beyond the bridge, an overgrown path wound into the forest, leading them to an archway in an ancient stone wall. Vines wound over its surface, forcing their way through the cracks in the stones, and the roots of a time-worn tree curled down from the top of the wall. Simeon led the horses under the archway, walking into the ruins of what was once a great castle or fortress. This first room was open to the sky, and differed very little from the forest outside. But farther in, Simeon could see a room with a stone roof. Inside, a fire crackled.
“You are welcome here, Warriors of Light.” The sound of the voice was followed closely by the man himself. He was radiant, ageless, and he smiled as he took Simeon’s hand in both of his.
“Call me Ezra. I’m so glad you’ve come.” His eyes took in everything, from the weariness in Simeon’s face to the wounds on Echo’s thigh. And he looked long at Amos. “Please,” he said, “come in and rest. There’s water in the basin, bread on the table by the fire. Isolde can take the horses.”
“Simeon!” Isolde rushed from the interior of the ruin and wrapped him in a hasty embrace. “What’s happened?” she asked, when she caught sight of Amos.
“An attack. Will ya help me?” Together, they eased Amos from Willa’s saddle and helped him to a cot in a side room. Isolde leaned over Amos, searching for some place to rest her hand, to reassure him, to comfort him. But there seemed nothing she could do that would not cause him more pain. She laid a hand on Simeon’s shoulder instead.
“Orin’s sleepin’ in another room. I’ll go and tend the horses.”
In that place, among the sundry corridors with their fading engravings, there was a quiet, a peace. Though the rooms were lit with the usual fires and lanterns and candles, there was an otherworldly brightness in them. Outside, the wind howled through the gaps in the mountains. Wolves and worse stalked their prey. And the Shadow covered all. Inside, the travelers found refuge.
Amos’s skin, bathed many times in water from a deep well, was nearly healed at the end of one day. When another had passed, Orin’s color had returned, though he was still very weak and walked with effort. By the end of the third day, when Echo’s leg was sound and their supplies had been replenished, Simeon was growing restless. He was gathering their few belongings and making whispered plans with the others when Ezra approached him. The extraordinary man had hardly spoken since their arrival, choosing instead to focus all his efforts on healing the wounded. So Simeon was surprised when he asked them to stay.
“You’ve been most kind, Ezra, but we have ta get movin’.”
“Where?” Ezra asked, as though he knew nothing of their quest.
“The Hall o’ Shadows. Have ya forgotten?”
With maddening calm, he asked, “What will you do when you reach the hall?”
“I hoped you’d tell me that, Ezra!”
The others came at the sound of Simeon’s voice, and Ezra beamed at each of them in turn. “Time is short, Simeon, and I would not keep you from your love. Tomorrow you leave, with gifts to help you on your journey. But first, a story.”
“A story?” Simeon asked. “Now?”
“Your journey has been dark and weighted with Shadow, but surely you could not so soon forget the power of story.”
Amos pulled up a chair, remembering with great pain and regret his father’s fireside stories. Isolde took a seat on the hearth, her heart aching for one of Rosalyn’s tales. Orin sat on the floor and stretched his wounded leg. Simeon was left standing, gaping at his friends. And it was not until Ezra began to speak that he sank into a chair and allowed himself to drift on the current of Ezra’s words.
In the beginning, there was Ram. He was alone and apart from everything, and he was great and joyful and immensely strong and good. To begin, he created the sun, round and red and gold, and he loved its brightness and its warmth. But the sun shone down on an empty world, and Ram was grieved. He looked at the void and longed to fill it with color and life.
So Ram created other creators to help him fill the emptiness. Three sons and three daughters burst into being from the soil of Ram’s thought. Leander, Rurik, and Vali were fierce, daring, brave. Petra, Callista, and Riannon were strong, beautiful, wildly free. These sons and daughters of Ram, like their father, were not bound by flesh. They could see into one another and discern one another’s minds. And whenever one of the immortals (for so they came to be called) saw in another immortal an image that matched something in his own mind, that image came to life.
Leander and Riannon shared many visions of wild creatures, and it was not long before the world was filled with soaring birds and creeping beasts. Vali and Petra shaped the mountains, great windswept peaks tipped with snow, and Riannon and Callista formed the flow
ers, soft purple heather and delicate wild roses.
In this way, Shiloh was filled with life, and the immortals, at times, even created other immortals to share in their work. At the birth of Linden, trees spread over the land, gathering into forests and hedging the meadows, their great branches stretching toward the sky. Some of the trees were touched by Ram, and they took on a spark of the life of the immortals. At Maya’s birth, rivers cut through earth and stone, laughing and rollicking their way across the land. Ram was so delighted that he filled the waters with nymphs, shimmering creatures whose eyes sparkled in the light of the sun.
But Rurik, as yet, had taken no part in creation. He went to his brothers, Leander and Vali, searching their minds for some vision that matched his own. It was not to be found. He went to his sisters, but neither Petra nor Callista shared any thought with him. Rurik was angry at this, for his brothers and sisters shared in their father’s work and their father’s glory, but he did not. He wished, in fact, that he might create alone, bringing into existence the thoughts of his own mind as only Ram could. It was not until Rurik went to Riannon that he discovered some trace of himself, for Riannon was the wildest of Ram’s children and she, too, longed to be free of the immortals’ one restraint. In her heart, as in her brother’s, a dark sliver of rebellion resided. Riannon was neither cruel nor wicked, but, like the wind, she could not be contained, and she hardly knew what she did when she stood face to face with her brother and brought into being the Shadow.
The speaker’s voice mingled with the crackling of the fire on the hearth, weaving from nothing a vast world of beauty and terror.
There was a hush in the Mount of the Immortals when the Shadow came, and all creation held its breath as what began as a point of darkness between Rurik and Riannon spread black fingers over the whole of Shiloh. Leander raged as every beast fled in fear from the Shadow. Vali turned his face from the darkened peaks of the mountains. Petra screamed as the Shadow blanketed the surface of the waters, and Callista wept when darkness drained the color from every leaf and wildflower. But it was Ram whose grief was greatest. The Shadow made a mockery of the sun, his first creation, and it made a mockery of all the glorious creative work of his children. Still, when they turned to their father and cried out with one voice for him to destroy the darkness, Ram did not. Rurik and Riannon were the work of his own hands, the vision of his own mind, and he would no more destroy their creation than he would destroy them.
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