Orion: The Council of Beasts

by Darius Hinks

  ‘An escape route?’ Finavar was appalled. ‘A way to flee?’

  Thuralin shook his head. ‘Do not be fooled, Finavar. Prince Haldus is a brave warrior. He is just unsure of the future. Like all of us. I have thought long over the things Laelia did not say. I believe Haldus is trying to keep us a last chance to flee, if all else fails.’

  Finavar clenched his jaw. ‘There will be no flight. Nobody would dare enter those trees. And even if they would, there will be no need for retreat.’ The more dire the situation sounded, the more sure he was of his purpose. ‘I will make sure of that.’

  Alhena grimaced. ‘Haldus could never have anticipated what has befallen us since he left. When he flew off with his hawks, there was no sign that the daemons could ever reach the falls. Lord Findol and the others were an immovable barrier.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Who could have imagined that something would dam the whole valley? Who would have thought that a single creature could drag itself from the hills and–’

  Screams broke out from behind them.

  They whirled around and saw that dozens more warriors were tumbling into the cave, half-drowned and covered in blood.

  ‘The water is rising!’ cried several voices.

  Panic spread across the cave and several of the warriors bolted past the wardancers, making for the arches of root.

  ‘They will soon be on us,’ whispered Sibaris. He looked at Finavar with a desperate plea in his eyes. ‘What shall we–?’

  Finavar held up a hand to silence the youth. He looked at Alhena. ‘You say that things were going our way until the river was dammed?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘So if we could remove the obstacle that is flooding the valley, we might stand a chance again?’

  Caorann looked intrigued. ‘We would stand a good chance. Before we were penned in, warriors from several more realms answered the prince’s call. As well as the Findol Host on the riverbank and the spellweavers guarding the waterfall, there are now armies from several corners of the forest. I saw riders from the Skymark Plains and even archers from the Night Glens – the Wraiths of Modryn, they call themselves. They certainly looked more than half-spirit to me. We have a greater army now than Haldus could have imagined. Even some of Orion’s pyre wardens are out there. If we weren’t all about to drown I would think the gods were on our side.’

  Finavar stepped aside as a group of ashen-faced refugees staggered past them, looking for a place to lie. ‘Then we just need to remove the blockage at the far end of the valley.’

  Caorann raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, just that. We just need to fight our way down three miles of riverbank, crowded with one-eyed daemons and quickly disappearing beneath floodwater. Then, once we arrive at our destination, we’ll just have the simple task of removing a monster the size of a mountain.’

  Finavar nodded eagerly and looked back at the tree roots behind them, ignoring the sarcasm in his friend’s voice ‘Thuralin, did you say the passages in Hallos go up as well as down?’

  ‘They go in every direction you could imagine, and several that you would not wish to imagine.’

  Finavar scratched thoughtfully at his scalp, looking back at the waterfall. ‘Then perhaps the riverbank is not our only option.’ He turned to Thuralin. ‘You said Laelia mentioned many of the treasures that are buried inside Hallos.’

  Thuralin nodded. ‘She did.’

  Finavar fell silent again. Then, after a few moments of thought, a faint smile played across his lips. He nodded and looked around at the frantic crowds. He frowned, unable to see what he sought. He raised his fingers to his mouth but, before he had chance to whistle, a pair of small dark shapes snaked across the cavern floor towards him.

  Caorann laughed in disbelief as he saw the two polecats.

  ‘They cannot be the same poor beasts!’

  Finavar smirked ruefully as he scooped the animals up and secreted them in his black cloak ‘I’m not sure they really are.’ He patted them gently beneath the cloth. ‘They are as much the same as I am though. And they have a nose for treasure.’

  He sat down and patted the ground beside him. ‘Thuralin, tell me about your conversation with Laelia.’

  Thuralin’s habitual frown grew even deeper, but he sat next to Finavar and the two wardancers spoke urgently and quietly while the others stood guard, watching the scene in the cave with growing concern.

  As Thuralin talked, Mauro and Mormo climbed from Finavar’s cloak of thorns and up onto his shoulders, seeming to listen to Thuralin’s words as attentively as Finavar, keeping their coal-black eyes fixed on the old warrior.

  After nearly an hour had passed, Finavar laughed and grabbed Thuralin’s arm. ‘That’s it!’

  Thuralin shook his head, confused, as the others crowded round. ‘What do you mean? That’s what?’

  ‘This stone… what did you call it?’

  ‘It’s called the Cythral Star. Or at least that’s the name Laelia gave it – but I have no idea if it actually exists and, even if it does, I don’t see what use it would be to–’

  ‘It’s just the thing!’ Finavar’s eyes were gleaming. ‘Trust me!’ He clasped his head in his hands, seeming almost as manic as Alhena. ‘And Laelia doesn’t have a dishonest bone in her body. She might have sought to distract you with these tales, but she wouldn’t have lied to you.’ He lifted the two polecats from his shoulders and placed them on a patch of ground that was still above water. ‘You heard the description. Can you find this thing?’

  They looked back at Finavar with unnatural intelligence and, as they turned and snaked off through the water, the wardancers noticed a faint, emerald sheen that rippled across their fur.

  Finavar leapt to his feet and watched them go with an incredulous grin. ‘We can win this battle,’ he said. ‘And then I can stop this war. Trust me.’

  Then he turned on his heel and dashed after the polecats, making for the arches of root at the back of the cave.

  The others look at each other in shock and confusion, unsure what to do. Then Caorann laughed. ‘He hasn’t changed as much as he thinks.’

  Sibaris looked confused, but Alhena nodded and hurried after Finavar. ‘Good.’

  Chapter Seven

  There was light inside the tree. It pulsed like water through the bark, lighting up the faces of the wardancers as they climbed. The first passageway was a wide, straight ascent that Thuralin referred to as the Torpen Stair. He seemed to know lots about it – recounting grim poems and legends of those who had died attempting to climb them. But they survived the ascent unhindered and after a while, they left the broad, slumping steps behind and entered a labyrinth of narrow, uneven tunnels whose names were unknown even to Thuralin. They were gloomy, wooden arteries that wended through the roots of the tree, a bewildering jumble of lefts and rights. There was no hope of navigation. All they could do was follow Finavar and his guides.

  At first they encountered some of their kinsmen. Terrified wretches cowering in corners and slumped across the ground – wounded warriors whose fear was so great it had driven them into the forbidden darkness. They looked up warily at Finavar’s approach, then scampered away into the shadows, muttering apologies and prayers. There was a strange, oppressive atmosphere in the tree that seemed to stifle their words. After a while they saw no more refugees. Despite all the horror of the battle, no one else was willing to go this far into Hallos’s mysterious depths.

  At one point they reached an opening in the tree trunk, looking down across the valley, a natural window in the wall of the tree. They stopped for a while to stare at the grim scene below. The asrai, led by Lord Findol, had gathered at the foot of the falls, surrounded by rising waters and mounting numbers of foes. His soldiers had been forced into tightly packed ranks, with no room to move – a most un-asrai way to fight, but the riders from the south of the forest were still managing to harry the enemy’s flanks – thundering through the water with their javelins levelled and skewering as many daemons as they could.

  S
creams and war cries sliced through the din of the water crashing into the lake. Finavar grimaced at the scene but he also saw that, in the space of half an hour, they had already climbed high above the battle. The air was hazed with spray, but Finavar could see the grotesque shape of his target in the distance – the vast, slug-like lump of the daemon that had dammed the river. He could just about make out the thing’s enormous maw, spewing, chewing and drooling as it devoured its own troops. Finavar’s mind balked at the thought of facing it, but he kept his expression neutral and his voice level as he said: ‘Higher. We must climb higher.’

  The living tunnels led them away from the opening, deep into the heart of the great tree. The air grew warm, earthy and heady and Finavar realised that the low rushing sound he could hear was not the falls, but the timeless pulse of Hallos’s sap, flowing all around them through the glittering tunnel walls.

  As they climbed, Finavar listened with half an ear as Thuralin spoke of the other treasures Laelia had mentioned. The old warrior told him of charmed blades, spectral harps and arrowheads dipped in the blood of gods, but Finavar shook his head at each one, sure that his original choice was right. ‘It has to be the stone,’ he kept muttering to himself as they climbed. ‘It has to be.’

  The air grew thicker and warmer as they neared the core of the tree and they found themselves crawling through a passageway no wider than their shoulders. The walls of the tunnel were tacky with sap but the light grew brighter as they went, until it felt as though they were being birthed into a dazzling, emerald dawn.

  Finavar was the first to emerge from the tunnel and found he was on a slender walkway, miles-long and overhanging a bottomless abyss. He staggered to a halt, thrown for a moment by the precariousness of his position. He felt like he was crossing a great void, suspended on a thread of gossamer. He quickly recovered his composure and crouched to examine the narrow bridge. It was made of pale, living wood that had been carved to resemble interlinked arms, draped in jewels and diaphanous robes, gripping each other tightly with bejewelled fingers. The limbs were so lifelike that Finavar could almost imagine they were real. He noticed that the designs on the robes and jewels were foreign in style. All the motifs were based on proud eagles and celestial bodies, quite unlike the leaves and coiled branches employed in asrai designs.

  He looked back to check that the others had followed him.

  ‘It must be the work of our ancestors,’ whispered Sibaris, clearly awed.

  Finavar shrugged. There was a casual arrogance to the carvings that annoyed him. He sensed that the bridge’s architects gave little thought to the pain their tools had caused the tree. He also doubted they would have approved of the bedraggled, semi-clad bards who were treading across their delicate handiwork.

  He strode on down the bridge. It soared high above the darkness and, as he climbed, Finavar noticed hundreds more narrow paths spread out beneath him, stretching web-like across the shadows. It was a vast network of walkways, each leading to a different region of the tree.

  ‘They must have dwelled here for an age,’ he muttered.

  They followed the walkways for what seemed like days, becoming hopelessly lost amongst the delicate, sculpted arches and loops. As they walked, Thuralin continued to list the various artefacts mentioned by Laelia, pointing out the vaulted halls of bark that might have contained them, but Finavar shook his head and hurried after his guides.

  After crawling down a narrow passageway, Mormo and Mauro led Finavar out of an oval doorway so that he was looking down through the ceiling of a circular chamber, hundreds of feet in diameter and surrounding a tall, slender sapling, six or seven feet tall. The light glittered across the little tree and Finavar saw it was made entirely of silver.

  Finavar faltered, amazed by the beauty of the tree. Then he remembered the urgency of their situation and began climbing down the wall. The light was brightest at the centre of the chamber and he had to shield his eyes as he went. The climb was easier than he at first expected, though, due to the raised, intricate carvings that decorated the wall. There were thousands of them, evenly spaced a few feet from each other, across the whole dome, and they made perfect foot and hand holds. It was only as he reached the bottom of the wall that Finavar realised what the shapes were. They were part of a vast frieze, illustrating the journeys of their forefathers. He saw scenes of the ocean, bearing tall, swan-prowed ships and battlefields crowded with vast hosts of strangely clad warriors unlike any Finavar had seen before. Some carried great banners and pennants and others were riding chariots, led by proud-faced lions.

  He frowned and stepped closer to one of the figures to examine it. The carving was clearly intended to resemble an elven warrior, but this was no asrai. Its limbs were long and elegant and its almond-shaped eyes were similar to Finavar’s but there was something alien and magisterial about the face that unnerved him.

  Finavar turned away to look at the rest of the chamber. Its floor consisted of more slender branches, each stretching out over another abyss. The branches were less than a foot wide and the gaps between them were easily large enough to fall through, so Finavar stepped with caution as he left the wall and made for the centre of the chamber.

  The others climbed down the sculpted walls at a slower pace, making sure not to leave Thuralin behind, but after half an hour or so, they were all stood on the cage-like floor of the chamber, looking up in awe at the vast work of art that surrounded them. Sage-green light washed over the carvings, creating an effect that was both bewildering and threatening.

  Finavar turned to Thuralin and spoke in hushed tones. ‘Did Laelia describe this place?’

  The old warrior shrugged. ‘I barely listened to her tales of treasure.’ He glanced at the centre of the chamber and scowled. ‘I knew that such trinkets and baubles were not the real reason Haldus set watch over this site. And I wonder that you have dragged us here now, while so many are drowning beneath the waters of the Limneonas.’ He glanced at Finavar. ‘What do you hope to achieve?’

  The others had been stepping carefully around the chamber, examining the carvings, but at the sound of Thuralin’s raised voice they approached.

  ‘Do you trust me?’ asked Finavar, looking suddenly serious.

  They all nodded apart from Thuralin, who hesitated. After a few seconds he nodded too, but he looked past Finavar as he did so, staring at the sapling at the centre of the chamber. It was an odd sight – a tree within a tree, surrounded by ancient, sightless faces. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking, Finavar.’

  ‘I will, soon,’ replied Finavar and strode down a branch towards the little tree.

  The others followed and as they moved away from the walls, the carved frieze vanished into the shadows and they began to relax a little.

  As they approached the tree, they saw a flash of light in its branches. It was an emerald as large as a fist. It was swaying slightly in its perch and as it moved, they saw green light flickering in its faceted depths.

  Finavar stepped closer and reached out to take it.

  ‘Finavar!’ Alhena looked warily at the surrounding shadows. ‘Treasures are rarely left unguarded.’

  Finavar hesitated, his hand hovering just above the stone. Then he shrugged and grabbed it, plucking it from the metal branches like a fruit.

  They all froze, waiting to hear a clarion call or to see the branches fall from beneath their feet.

  Nothing happened.

  After a few seconds had passed, the wardancers huddled closer to peer at the emerald. It was clearly no natural stone. Something was moving in its depths – something coiled and serpentine that rolled like smoke.

  ‘What is it, father?’ asked Alhena, turning to Thuralin. She was so entranced by the thing that some of the hardness dropped from her face, replaced by a child-like awe that reminded Finavar of how young she was. She was no older than Sibaris, though there seemed to be an age of experience between them.

  Thuralin leant over the gem and his twisted face looked all the more sinis
ter in the green light. ‘Laelia called it the Cythral Star.’ Even he seemed a little dazzled by the stone. His single eye widened as he studied the shapes moving at its heart. ‘She said it was a seed from the first ages of the world. She said that, if it were touched by sunlight, it would burst into life – sprouting a whole new swathe of forest. She claimed that these seeds were sown by Asuryan at the dawn of the world and that the forest was born from many such stones.’

  He moved back from the gem and regained his usual gruff tones. ‘I’ve heard countless other tales describing the birth of the forest though – all of them different.’ He stared at Finavar. ‘And, even if this thing could sprout a whole new stretch of forest, I fail to see how that would help us.’

  ‘What is your plan, Fin?’ asked Caorann, with the green light flashing in his eyes.

  Finavar smiled. ‘I suppose I will have to tell you at some point if you’re going to follow me.’ He lifted the emerald higher and peered at the shapes moving through it. He was just about to continue speaking when a noise caused them all to whirl around. It was a long, grinding screech that seemed to crawl up Finavar’s spine. It was followed by several other, similar sounds and Finavar wondered if it was an animal of some kind.

  He stared into the darkness.

  The slender branch paths led away from the sapling in eight directions, forming an uneven star-shape around them, and, on several of them, the shadows had started to move.

  The wardancers moved as one, dropping into a crouch and drawing their swords.

  They were silent and motionless, apart from Sibaris, who shifted his weight from foot to foot and whispered, ‘What is that?’

  No one replied, but he did not have to wait long for his answer. The shadows rippled again, spawning slender, slow-moving figures.

  Finavar muttered a curse. The figures from the frieze had sprung to life and were approaching them from several directions at once. Their carved, wooden faces were as expressionless as ever, but they had raised two-handed swords and were moving with solemn, chilling purpose. They were clad in pauldrons and hauberks constructed of oval, metal plates. Their dead, wooden eyes looked out from beneath tall helmets, designed to resemble dragons.