by Thomas Locke
7
They skirted the valley rim along a smuggler’s route. The silent journey took them most of the day. The trail became increasingly vague the farther they traveled. On the vale’s opposite side they entered another highland meadow covered with golden grass and trees burnished by the spring. They overnighted in a shallow bowl that was surrounded by a hedge. The barrier was important, for the sunset wind was fierce and carried a northern edge. They ate in silence and slept uneasily, surrounded by a legacy of ash and defeat.
In his dream that next dawn, the dragon landed atop a knob that overlooked their present camp. Hyam felt himself lifted and drawn to stand alongside the behemoth, which chattered at him in the low drumbeat. The dragon remained confused, concerned. Though Hyam understood nothing of the speech, he was certain the beast conveyed a desperate urgency.
That morning they continued along the border trail, which turned treacherous from disuse and the steep ridgeline. They traversed the next valley in the early afternoon. When they arrived at the far side, they found no route leading onward.
Meda asked, “There is no ridge trail?”
“There is no reason to maintain one,” the young Caleb replied. “Beyond this lies Ellismere, and then the desert wasteland.”
The lorekeeper added, “For a thousand years, the neighboring fiefs have never entered Ellismere. Not even when the droughts struck and they were desperate for fodder.”
“Why not?”
“Those who went spoke of strange mists that strode about Ellismere like armies. Our clansmen were certain they were doomed if they remained.”
They arrived at the ridgeline bordering Ellismere just as the sun was setting. They passed rocks gouged by claws broader than a man was tall. Hyam answered their unspoken questions with, “I do not think the dragon would have consumed your men.”
The vale was the largest Hyam had seen and contained a mound vastly larger than the one holding the Rothmore hall. They retreated to a defile rimmed by spear-shaped rocks, each three times the height of a man. The stones rose in jagged unison to stab at the moon and stars. The lorekeeper showed his years for the first time, gesturing for his grandson to come help him down from the saddle.
They ate a cold meal, listening to the wind rush between the granite staves. Directly across the valley, the rising moon illuminated the remnants of a once-mighty wall. At its center rose two knolls, and upon these pinnacles stood ruins of towers. The stones resembled a candle that had melted down and flowed to join the peak.
Meda watched Shona walk to the nearest stone and run a hand along its edge. Meda explained, “Such stone circles are called places of accord, bound by oaths so old they predate the Milantian invasion. All within these boundaries were safe. Anyone who disturbed the peace in such places was banished for life.”
“You heard correctly.” Caleb studied her intently. “Where did you see such places?”
“I served my first tour in the fiefs north of Emporis.” Meda continued to watch Shona. “I was seventeen.”
Teeth shone through the sage’s beard. “So you survived your time among the wild clans.”
“Barely. There were many nights when I kept breathing only because of such stone circles. I never again want to call any highland clan my foe.”
Caleb asked, “Why did you become a warrior?”
“I was the youngest of seven, with six brothers who relished any chance to pound on me. I learned to fight and discovered I loved it.” Meda stretched out on her bedroll. “I have seen much and lived well in the process.”
They bedded down as usual, with Shona nestled up close to Joelle’s other side. Hyam was drifting into sleep when he heard his wife whisper, “What will you do when you return to Falmouth?”
He heard Shona reply, “You mean, if I pass this test of the road?”
“You will pass. You are learning, you are one of us.”
“Bayard has said he will name me his squire. I shall serve him at table, and in formal events stand behind him as cupbearer. I will act as his secretary, and I shall learn what I can.”
“For how long?”
“A squire’s normal duty lasts for seven years.”
“A long time for a beautiful young lady to hold her tongue.”
“I have often thought the same thing. But Bayard is as good a teacher as Father. And I shall be rewarded. That is . . .”
“If you hold fast to your duties, yes?” Joelle gave that a moment, then said, “It is good to hold a clear vision of your future goals, is it not? This adds a vital clarity to the tasks at hand.”
“I suppose . . .”
“Your duties are tied to your present and your future. Both are vital. Lives depend upon your doing well.” Joelle settled further into her bedroll. “Good night.”
Hyam rolled over, slept, and did not dream. Until the dawn came.
The hour before sunrise, the dragon swooped down and pulled him away. Once more Hyam sensed the anxious impatience that fueled the beast’s repeated appearance.
They came to rest upon the knoll beyond one ruined tower. The empty vale was huge enough to swallow Falmouth, a vast swath void of all movement. The dragon chattered in its deep-throated manner. Only this time there was not the customary fierceness. The urgency carried a gentle note, pleading and apologetic. As though whatever awaited them was important enough for it to treat Hyam as a partner in its mysterious quest. Asking for help. Imploring.
The dragon curved its great neck so as to inspect Hyam first with one gold-green eye, then the other. It emitted another war drum of sound and pointed a talon toward the distant floor. As if to emphasize the point, the dragon extended those great wings and swooped down, down, until it came to rest upon the large mound at the valley’s center. The wings extended to full span, and the neck stretched up to where the body became a spear pointed straight at Hyam. And the beast bellowed. A huge roar of need and fire and resolve.
Hyam woke to the first faint wash of morning. He rose and walked to where Meda stood on watch, gazing out over the Ellismere vale. She greeted him with, “The dragon?”
“Yes.”
“You all right?”
“Yes.” He started to explain that the dreams were not unsettling. But just then his attention was snagged by a strangeness. “Meda . . .”
“I see it.”
Tendrils of night mist emerged from caves farther along the ridge. Only, this vapor defied the wind. Instead, it drifted toward where Hyam and Meda stood. The cloud grew in length but remained poised atop the ridgeline. Dama padded over and stood beside him. There was no growl, nor sense of worry from the beast.
Meda drew her sword, the blade snickering against the scabbard. Hyam started to point out that steel would have little effect on smoke. But he found himself gripping his own scabbard and simply asked, “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
“Never.”
The haze extended a thousand paces and more along the ridge. Then the fog divided in two and began encircling their camp.
Hyam yelled, “Hold fast!”
The cry was enough to waken the camp. Behind him he heard soft cries of sleepy alarm. But at least the haze had halted.
“I am Hyam, conqueror of the Emporis mage.” He had no idea whether he should speak, or whom he addressed. But the mist hovered halfway around the stones. His wife was with him. And his friends. If a sword would not work, he had nothing save his voice to protect them. “If you want me, I am here.”
Joelle protested, “Hyam, no, you—”
“Stand back!” For at that moment, a clump of the fog separated from the rest. It moved forward a half-dozen paces. Behind it, the vapor split, then split again, until they faced hundreds of spectral shapes. Then hundreds more.
The first blade of sunlight rose above the eastern ridge. Hyam half expected the specters to dissipate. Instead, they coalesced further, as though they needed density to withstand the force of daylight. The first figure of mist took one step between the stones and halted
.
Hyam forced himself to walk to the lone shape and demand, “Why are you here?”
Behind him, the elder lorekeeper said, “My great-grandfather told me tales of these tower guardians.”
Meda asked, “They were clan warriors?”
“Some were. Others were soldiers of the realm. Assigned duty as the first line of defense.”
“I have read of them,” Shona said. “In some of my father’s oldest scrolls.”
“The first king of your line, daughter of Oberon, charged them with a vital duty. Before the Elven kingdom north of Emporis was destroyed, desert merchants brought word to the realm of dangers rising from the yellow realm. The first Oberon king sent forces to join with the clans. Together they manned the wall you see upon the opposite ridge, a line of defense against whatever the desert spawned. But the realm’s first guardians grew bored and sullen and many deserted. They despised these lonely reaches. The night the Milantian horde invaded Ellismere, the winter wind was so fierce it could freeze armor to the skin. The soldiers who remained on duty were all clustered in the tower, gathered about the fire. They failed the clans and the realm.”
Joelle said what Hyam had been thinking. “If they faced an army of mages, there was little they could have done.”
“They broke their oath,” the elder Caleb insisted. “The legends claim that in death they fashioned a new vow. To return to their station whenever a threat arose.”
Hyam turned back to the waiting mist. “Hear me! We are no threat! We have been called here—”
He stopped because the spectral haze directly in front of him condensed further, fashioning a warrior of white. Moonlight glinted off helmet and breastplate and spear and shield.
All around them the mist reformed, until they faced a forest of phantom soldiers holding unsheathed blades.
The ghostly troop moved in unison, forming a two-sided phalanx. They rimmed the path leading from the circle of stones down, down, to the vale of Ellismere.
As one, they saluted the empty trail between their ranks.
The lone warrior beckoned to Hyam. Come.
Joelle demanded, “Why should we go anywhere with such as these?”
“I was thinking the very same thing,” Meda said.
Hyam stepped closer, to where he could make out misshapen teeth in a mouth that had not existed for a thousand years. “I know you not. Nor do we see a reason to accompany you.”
In response, the sentinel rose from the earth. He hovered just above Hyam’s head, up where his wraithlike form became silhouetted by the sun. Gone was the warrior of old. In its place appeared a great conjured beast, whose outstretched wings bore diamond patterns along their leading edges. Talons raked the space between it and Hyam, and a sweeping tail lashed out, mist-like against the stones.
Then the sentinel returned to earth and resumed his warrior guise. He motioned once more. Come.
“I will go,” Hyam declared.
Joelle responded, “Then we all journey with you.”
8
The spectral troops stood ranked to either side of the narrow path. Those flanking the drop-off hovered in midair, while those on the opposite side melted slightly into the cliff face. They were certainly not pleasant to look at, with their sightless eyes and grim demeanors. And yet Hyam felt somehow comforted by their presence. There was a binding together of his dreams and the quest, a sense of arriving at answers to questions he had carried since long before the scrolls appeared. Such as, whether some objective might be great enough to carry him beyond the loss of magic. As he descended into this dread vale, flanked by an honor guard of ghosts, Hyam welcomed the mysteries.
Midway down the ridge, they paused on a broad plateau watered by an underground spring. The waterfall across the valley sounded much louder here, the noise resonating off the wall behind them. Hyam settled next to Joelle, the smooth rock cool against his back.
Meda hunkered down on Hyam’s other side and passed over sacks of dried fruit, nuts, and a skin of tea. “A soldier’s breakfast. Alembord, Shona, Calebs, join us.” She studied the valley floor with the tight gaze of an officer gauging enemy terrain and asked Hyam, “That mound is our destination?”
Dama huffed down by Hyam’s feet, snuffed the handful of fruit, and turned away. Hyam replied, “That is where the dragon directed me.”
“Then I’d say you, Joelle, and I should reconnoiter the terrain. Alembord should stay on guard here with Shona and the highlanders.”
“Agreed,” Hyam replied.
Alembord said, “My lady, I should—”
“Follow orders,” Meda replied.
The younger Caleb complained, “I did not come all this way to be left out of a battle!”
“No,” his grandfather said. “You came to do as you are told!”
Neither young man liked it, but when it was clear they were not protesting further, Meda said, “Let’s head out.”
Joelle tightened the shoulder scabbard holding the Milantian blade. “Dama, come.”
As they arrived at the valley base, the contingent of silent warriors split into fighting groups and spread out across the floor. Their silent alertness only added to the tension.
The route they followed was a wretched thing, a mere hint of what once had been a mighty road. The vale was a pale and dusty plain in the early light. Anywhere else, Hyam would have counted it the start of a fine day. The air was crisp but not uncomfortably cold. But down here it merely illuminated the absence of hope and life both. To either side of the road, the grass was stunted and colored a sickly orange. Not a tree interrupted the vast empty plain, not a shrub, not a gopher. Only the gigantic mound that was their destination, lumpish and scarred.
Much of the central hill had wasted away, leaving only rock and a tangled petrified forest. The uncovered limbs were massive, thick as tree trunks, and grey as old bones. The spectral forces formed a ring around the hill and did not approach.
Joelle asked, “What do we do now?”
Hyam recalled the dragon’s vantage point and replied, “Climb up.”
The top of the mound was flat as a plowed field and unevenly furrowed. Joelle and Hyam picked their way carefully, for the drops between some roots were wide enough to swallow them whole. Dama, however, loped with carefree ease.
Joelle stopped near the center, her eyes widening. Hyam asked, “What is it?”
“The power you showed me, deep in the earth. You remember?”
“By the Emporis tower. Of course. You feel it now?”
“I’m not . . . I think so. Yes. Faint. Like a taste on the wind.” She smiled. “It’s nice.”
“I’m sure.” He lingered there longer than he should have, held by the thought that hers could well have been the first smile in the Ellismere vale for centuries.
Which meant he was caught utterly off guard when the call sounded from the distant ledge.
The younger Caleb proved to have a remarkable set of lungs. Hyam, Meda, and Joelle turned together and saw the sunlight glint off the sword Alembord waved over his head. Then Dama howled, drawing them back around.
A shadow appeared where the waterfall began its long descent, one that reared and wrenched itself from the rocks. The behemoth glared into the vale, taking aim straight at where they stood. Then it lifted its head to the sunrise and bellowed. The blast filled the vale with the stench of death.
Joelle asked, “Is that your dragon?”
“No. Definitely not.” Hyam was already moving. “Call Dama to you.”
As the monster tumbled over the ledge, Hyam began casting the Milantian shield spell. The beast had a snake’s ability to roll and writhe, and fell to the valley floor as fast as an eagle on the attack.
Hyam used his blade to scour a hasty circle, racing about the mound’s perimeter. Twice he almost tumbled into the shadowy depths. Dama punctuated his footsteps with snarls. The monster landed on the valley floor with enough force to shake the entire mound.
Hyam fell flat, caught him
self, and scrambled up, all the while puffing out the chant, hoping with adrenaline desperation that the shield spell had not been interrupted.
The behemoth extended six legs like fluid barrels and pummeled the earth as it raced toward them. Howling. Screeching. Raging with a ravenous fury.
The spectral warriors formed a broad phalanx of smoke and translucent swords. They clambered onto its mighty back and stabbed with their weapons. But the magic that had formed the beast offered protection from such an attack. It rolled upon the earth, cast them aside, screamed its bloodlust, and headed for the mound.
But the warriors’ attack granted Hyam the time necessary to complete his unsteady course. His blade scoured the last roots and rocks. He leapt over the final gap, trailing over shadowy air. Their lives depended upon the shield.
He completed the final flourish just as the beast scaled the mount.
The monster slammed into the shield, then tumbled back to the base. The impact caused the entire root system to vibrate like a tuning of the harmonies of doom. Hyam was knocked flat again. He was separated from Joelle by less than five paces, but it might as well have been a thousand. He wrapped his arms and legs around a root and clung to the sunlight.
Somehow Meda managed to hold to her feet. Both Joelle and Dama, however, were flipped off their perches. Dama disappeared into the cavernous root system. Joelle clutched to a handhold and shrieked, “Hyam!”
He clawed his way across the distance as the monster thundered back up the terraced rise, bellowing with the lust for fresh blood. “Take my hand!”
She grabbed and clambered her way back up top just as the fiend hammered the shield once more. Meda stepped back and almost fell into another gap, but managed to right herself. The beast slammed into the invisible wall a third time, but this time they were ready.
From somewhere beneath Hyam’s feet, the wolfhound howled. In the far distance, Alembord and Shona and the younger Caleb drew blades and raced down to offer what aid they could. Their approach only added to Hyam’s need for haste, for he knew with utter certainty they sped toward their doom.