Journey to Aviad
Copyright 2015 Allison D. Reid
Published by Allison D. Reid
Smashwords Edition
ISBN: 1-4563-2965-0
ISBN-13: 9781456329655
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, the please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1 – The Coin
Chapter 2 – A Chance Encounter
Chapter 3 – Vision of Darkness
Chapter 4 – The Storm Breaks
Chapter 5 – Vivid Dreams and Tree Sailing
Chapter 6 – A Robe for Gareth, and Alazoth's Hounds
Chapter 7 – The Scattering of the Circle
Chapter 8 – In the Arms of the Enemy
Chapter 9 – The Traitor's Wife
Chapter 10 – Escape From Tyroc
Chapter 11 – Respite Along the East Road
Chapter 12 – Emergence at Deep Lake
Chapter 13 – Living Fire
Chapter 14 – The Inn at Greywalle
Chapter 15 – The Offering
Chapter 16 – Endings and Beginnings
Afterword
Connect with the Author
Excerpt from Ancient Voices: Into the Depths
Other Works by the Author
Dedication
In memory of my beloved grandmother, Agatha Irene Gibson (1929-2010), who always encouraged both my imagination and my own personal journey to Aviad (although I came to know Him by another name in this world).
Prologue
The veil of night has not yet lifted. Even so, I find myself climbing the familiar stone steps that spiral up to my office. I have trod them so many times before that I do not need the light of my lantern to navigate their steep incline. This ancient staircase, cut by masons long dead, has been worn smooth by the feet of generations of my ancestors. No place in the world do I feel the pressing weight of time more strongly than here, where there is no other distraction for my mind, and no other task for my body but to climb, with the voices of all those who came before me echoing in the sound of my footfalls. Reaching the top of the staircase, I push open the heavy wooden door and light a lantern. While I may not need it to navigate the stair, my aging eyes will need light for the task I begin on this day—a task that I have left for far too long. With the world sleeping in the quiet before dawn, I smooth out a fresh piece of parchment and lift my pen in thought...
I have always been amazed by the way time unfolds itself; slow and subtle as the petals of the morning glory open to the first rays of sun. At first, you will see naught but a tightly closed bud, but allow yourself to be distracted by a passing breeze for only a moment, and you miss the flower’s brilliant heralding of the new dawn. I implore you, whoever you may be, to look around you. Open your eyes to every detail of the present as it lives, as it breathes. Do not be distracted by a fleeting wind and miss the coming of the dawn, for the events of today very soon become tomorrow’s folklore.
No doubt someday many will wonder if these lands that sustain us, the cities we inhabit, the shrines at which we worship, our language, our literature … our very lives … ever truly existed, just as we continually struggle to unearth the traces of our own history from the rubble of our past. Our collective memory diminishes with each passing generation, leaving us with only tomes and trinkets to remind us of who we once were, and to show us who we are yet destined to become. Our descendants will look through our libraries, the remnants of our dead, and our rubbish alike, trying to discover if the tales they’ve heard of us are truth, or merely the imaginative ravings of some drunken bard of days long gone. And most likely they will find part truth, part fiction, mesh it together and call it “history.” Our existence will be neatly summed up into a list of significant dates, and squabbles over land, and rulers whose power was as over-inflated as their egos. That is not history. It fills the minds of the intellectuals, no doubt, and allows them to feel rather smug in their knowledge, but such things do not feed the soul, they do not represent the truth as it was breathed and bled by those who lived its everyday reality. The beauty of the flower cannot exist without its roots, its stem, the rain, the soil, the sun, and any number of other things we do not see, though they are rarely given the same adoration as the colorful bloom.
Of course, I suppose the more frightening thought is that no one will wonder at all—that we will be here and gone in an instant, with none left to remember our families, sing songs of our exploits, or learn from our triumphs and failures. Perhaps that is why I find myself here in the silence before the sunrise, driven to commit all that I know to parchment, so that the truth is not buried with me, forever lost to the coming ages. No doubt the men of this age would shift uncomfortably in their seats and try to deny my writings as false, if they knew that a young girl of our own time grew up to hold the fate of the world in her hands. They have no idea how close they came to suffering the utter destruction of everything they hold dear.
But there is no point to telling a story’s end before its beginning, and even the greatest heroes known to legend have made their entrance into the world as children. While it is true that we make our own choices as we grow, before we have even drawn our first breath Aviad the Creator has called to us each by name, and continues to call to us on our journey through this life. So often it falls to those who truly listen for His voice to rise and fight for us all. So it is with young Elowyn, who came into the world of base birth and unknown lineage, like a single seed planted in the garden whose tender shoots sprouted unnoticed in a world unwary of its fate. This is where my tale truly begins.
May the Ancients look kindly upon one man’s humble retelling of her life, as it has been made known to me over the course of many years. For though Elowyn’s physical form must inevitably someday perish, I write this tome in the hope that the essence of her life, and the knowledge of her mark upon this world, will not.
The Coin
A lone man slipped cautiously through the quiet of the forest just before dawn. The sky was draped with a thick gray mantle of clouds, covering any waning moonlight that might have guided him along the treacherous path before him. The man lowered his face as he raised his hood against a sudden, heavy burst of rain. Only the most urgent of tasks could have brought him to the very edge of the Deep Woods at this early hour. But he was a man of honor, and he had made a solemn vow that would not be broken. His nerves and muscles were stretched taut as he made his way slowly forward. He prayed for an end to the rain, so that the sight of the sun’s first gentle rays might break through the clouds and ease his troubled mind. The rain diminished, but the darkness persisted.
A twig snapped somewhere in the underbrush behind him. The man lowered his hood and instinctively turned to peer back down the path. Cursing the darkness under his breath, he listened intently for a moment. Unable to see, and hearing nothing more, he continued on, walking at a faster pace than before. Another twig snapped, from somewhere to the right this time. He withdrew an arrow from his quiver and held it ready in his hand. His senses were all on edge now as he broke into a run, only to hear more sounds of movement from somewhere ahead of him. He was being surrounded, by what he could only guess. He veered to the left, off the footpath, running erratically in the direction of a small stream he had crossed earlier.
Any hope to shake his pursuers was futile; the noose they had drawn around him had already tightened. The man was quickly surrounded by a pack of wild beasts, larger than wolves, with red glowing eyes and fiery breath. Leading them was an enormously tall figure with an antlered helm who carried a staff taller than himself.
The man raised his bow and released as many arrows as he could into their midst, unsure if such beasts could even be harmed by them. He screamed as they set upon him, their teeth and claws tearing through his leather armor and into his flesh. But there was more at stake than his life. That was the difficult message he had received in prayer the night before. Perhaps his demise was fated, yet there still might be hope if he could only get to the stream. In spite of the agonizing pain, he rammed his way through the beasts, pulling a small cloth-wrapped object from beneath his shirt. The rain stopped and the clouds thinned. His prayer had been answered after all. The sun had not yet risen, but the moon still shone bright enough to reflect off the surface of the stream. He could see it now, bubbling and flashing not much farther ahead of him.
The man dashed toward the stream with the last of his strength. He dropped his bow, and frantically unwrapped the object. He flung it into the rushing water just as the beasts brought him to the ground with such force that his helm flew off. For a brief instant the moonlight caught the object’s silvery surface, flashing so brightly that he was blinded by it. His last moment of awareness was filled with hope as the creatures around him shrieked in painful fear of its brilliance.
***
Elowyn awoke to the warm sensation of the sun gently caressing her face. She smiled in recognition of its touch, slowly allowing each of her senses to greet the morning. There had been a brief, but heavy rain shower just before dawn. The smell of damp earth was nearly overpowering … a rich, musty smell that made her nose tingle, her lungs draw in deeply, and her spirit come completely alive. Her wool cloak clung heavily around her small frame, but beneath it her dress was still warm and dry.
Slowly she opened her eyes to see long fingers of light sifting through the brilliant green of newly opened spring leaves. To her utter delight, she found that the entire forest was covered with droplets of water, shimmering and sparkling as though someone had strewn it with thousands of the most rare and beautiful gems. Then she realized that of course someone had—they belonged to Aviad, the Ancient One as so many called him, the Creator of all things. She beamed joyfully at the glistening drops, and whispered to herself, “Aviad’s diamonds”.
Pleased by this revelation, Elowyn stretched her stiff muscles, and slid effortlessly down the trunk of the tree she had been sleeping in. It had taken her a long while to learn how to sleep sitting up, with her back against the trunk and her legs straddled over a large limb. She’d had to start with very small trees with limbs that were close to the ground so that when she fell in the night she wouldn’t get hurt. She rarely fell anymore and it was so much safer to sleep off the ground, away from the damp and the beasts of the night. Certainly it was much more pleasant than sleeping at home, squeezed with her mother and two sisters into a stuffy cottage that smelled too much of tallow.
Elowyn crossed a small clearing and made her way through a copse of young trees. She loved the way they stood so thin, and straight, all clustered together as if they were whispering secrets to each other. As a slight breeze rustled their leaves, she could almost believe they were giggling. There was an older tree with a thick, knotted trunk right above them, sheltering the young ones under a canopy of branches.
“If that tree were a person, she would be round and jolly, with long braided hair. I’ll bet she’s their mother,” she said wistfully, wishing she had such a mother herself. The young trees seemed to giggle again as she brushed past them with a smile.
Elowyn climbed up a small ridge and slid down the rocky bank on the other side to reach the large stream that wound its way through the woods. It bubbled up from a spring in the ground some distance away, its bed wide, shallow, and filled with many colorful stones. At this time of year the water ran cold and clean—perfect for drinking, and sometimes bathing if the air was warm enough. She splashed her face, enjoying the shivering chill that ran through her body, then paused to take a long, satisfying drink. Elowyn settled herself on a sun-drenched boulder and nibbled on a bit of bread from her pouch. Captivated by the simple beauty of her surroundings, she gave a contented sigh as she watched the light dance off the water, casting its quivering reflection on the leaves above her. Nothing could possibly make this morning any more glorious.
A quick flash of light suddenly caught Elowyn’s eye—something silvery in the stream was glinting out at her. Almost indistinguishable from the sun’s rays dancing merrily on the water’s surface, the object had nearly escaped her attention. But Elowyn was an observant child by nature, and always seemed to find things out in the woods that other people had lost or discarded. She waded into the stream and lifted the object out of the water. It was a silver disc of some sort, with well-worn markings she did not recognize. Perhaps it was a Pilgrim’s medallion or an unusually large coin, though it wasn’t like any coin she had ever seen before, even during Faire time when the rare and exotic became commonplace. She shrugged. Tyroc was a large port city, a center of trade. It was not unusual to meet foreign visitors who wore strange clothes, uttered seemingly indecipherable languages and carried mysterious looking coins with them. She could only imagine who might have dropped this.
Placing the disc safely within the pouch at her waist, Elowyn looked about with a more scrutinizing eye. One lesson she had learned rather well—when there was one lost item, there might be others, especially if a group of travelers had recently camped nearby. It did not take long for her to discover a warrior’s helm peeking out from the dense undergrowth along the stream’s edge. Knowing how valuable such an object was, her eyes lit up with excitement. But the stab of joy that coursed through her was brief. Such an item was not likely to have been left behind either willingly or by accident. Elowyn looked about and listened intently. The only sounds she could hear were the birds calling out overhead and the gentle gurgle of the stream. No one was nearby. She was sure of that.
The helm couldn’t have been lying there for long, for it was in perfect condition, still buffed and shined with only a few scuffmarks. It had a family crest imprinted in a subtle location along the side, which meant there was no chance she would be able to sell it. She grimaced at the thought of being hailed a thief by the local merchants. They already thought her to be odd and seemed uneasy when she was around. She could sometimes hear them whispering about her as she passed their stalls. She had caught words like “wild,” and “strange,” and “unkempt,” and “How will her mother ever find someone to marry her?” Elowyn did not care about any of those things, and so she stuck out her chin defiantly, pretending not to hear them.
Inching forward on her hands and knees, Elowyn cautiously probed the long grasses with her fingers to see if anything else had been left behind. The undergrowth slowly revealed several well-made, expensive-looking arrows; one sunk deep into the base of a tree, two more angled into the earth, and one lying broken where someone had stepped on it. She then came to a place where the ground was stained with something dark that she could not at first identify. She rubbed some of the damp soil between two fingers, catching her breath and backing away as her fingers turned dark red with blood. Whether it had come from human or beast she could not tell. Trembling and feeling queasy, Elowyn wondered if it was wise to continue looking—she had no wish to come across anything dead. But in the end, her desire to know what happened overruled her fears. She stopped searching for objects in the brush and stood up to survey the entire area.
As she looked around, it was soon obvious that a great struggle had taken place, and she had happened upon the scene of some unknown warrior’s defeat. The whole area was covered with footprints, the foliage trampled, and the limbs of young trees broken. As she followed the footprints, tracing her way b
ack in time to the very point where all the trouble began, she could see where the man with the helm had been walking, alone, at a normal pace. Then his steps began to grow farther apart, as if he were still walking, but much more rapidly. Then she found the point at which he broke into a full running stride, careening wildly through the brush, until his footprints suddenly became muddled with many others. But these were not the distinct prints left by men’s boots. They were those of beasts—strange beasts different than any she had ever encountered before.
Whatever these creatures were, they left tracks almost like those of wolves, or wild pack dogs, and yet they indicated an animal far larger than any ordinary wolf. Besides, it was not the custom of wolves to run in such large groups and attack well-armed men.
There were also strange black scars on several of the trees, as though they had been singed by fire. More blood had seeped into the soft earth along the edge of the path, which was still damp from the morning’s rain shower. In the midst of the beasts’ tracks, there was another set of footprints. She could tell by the depth of the prints and the length of the stride that whoever had left them was tall, and carried some sort of staff or walking cane, but she could tell nothing beyond that.
At some point, the pursued man must have broken away, limping terribly and taking erratic shots with his bow. He made a painful dash in the direction of the stream, only to be brought down close to the water’s edge. His bow still lay there where he’d dropped it, nearly buried in the tall grass. No archer, no matter how skilled, would have been able to fight off such a direct ambush. The strangest part of all, the part that made the hair on the back of her neck stand straight up, was that there was no body. If a wild pack of animals had truly attacked the bowman, they would have devoured him on the spot, leaving behind what remains of his corpse could not be eaten … his bones, scraps of torn clothing, armor. Instead, she found a trail where his body had been dragged along, seemingly whole, in the direction of the Shadow Wood—the true wilderness wasteland, where few dared to travel unless heavily armed and in large groups. Many such groups came to this place, because just to the east was the narrowest ford in the river which marked the border between Tyroc and the Shadow Wood. Strange tales were told about that wood—the kinds of tales that even the most careless parents strive to protect their children from.
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