by Rob Scott
It was too late: throughout the following day, Garec continued trying out the word, as if he were going to perform for an audience. ‘Turkey, tur–key, turk–ey,’ he repeated over and over again, trying different inflections until Brynne was ready to throw him into the river herself. ‘What a strange language you speak. I’m amazed you can understand one another at all.’
‘Sometimes it’s hard,’ Mark said, ‘and other times, we drink.’
‘That always makes communication easier.’
‘No, only sometimes,’ Brynne chimed in.
‘Yes, but those are the best times,’ Garec stated firmly.
‘Listen!’ Steven interrupted.
‘That helps too,’ Garec agreed, ‘but so few of us are any good at it.’
‘No, no,’ Steven chided, ‘listen.’
As they ceased chattering, they could hear the sound of the river had changed. Ahead in the distance, they could hear a low, grating, hollow roar, as if warning travellers to come no further. The sound, although unfamiliar, was somehow unmistakable: they all understood in a moment that they were fast approaching a stretch of white water, maybe even just beyond the next bend.
Suddenly serious, Garec regained his wits and ordered, ‘Everyone tie down the packs. Use the centre loops.’ He moved to secure his bow and quivers.
‘I thought the centre loops were for us,’ Mark asked. ‘Where will we be?’
‘Here.’ Garec motioned towards the four outer loops, loose coils of rope forming handholds in each corner of the Capina Fair’s upper deck. ‘We’ll be here, holding fast—’ He paused, then continued, ‘Maybe even tied fast, while we pole ourselves away from rocks or dangerous shallows along the way.’
‘Out near the edge? Have you lost your mind?’ Brynne scolded. ‘We should stay here in the middle and hang on to these coils. We’ll be safer.’
‘I wish we could,’ Garec answered, ‘but listen, do you hear that? That roar?’ Again he paused. ‘That’s not just a few rapids; that’s powerfully rough water. There will be rocks large enough to ruin us, not just to capsize good old Capina, but to smash her to splinters.’
‘He’s right,’ Mark agreed tying down his pack, ‘and Steven, you shouldn’t pole with that staff. If it gets torn from your hands as we go we’re stuffed. We’d never find it again.’
Steven hesitated an instant before securing the length of hickory between two packs in the centre of the raft. This left him without a pole, but he gripped the fourth corner line anyway. ‘So I’m just along for the ride.’
‘Be grateful, lad: you’re at least forty-four inches tall, otherwise, my friend, you’d have to sit this one out.’ Garec and Brynne looked at Mark quizzically, but Steven laughed.
Steven felt the familiar pang of insecurity ripple through his stomach and fought the urge to hold the staff close through the coming ordeal.
As the Capina Fair rounded the next bend, Garec exhaled sharply, then stood upright and stared disbelievingly into the distance. ‘Great demonspawn,’ he cried, ‘it’s a rutting canyon!’
It was a canyon, a narrow gorge just a few raft-widths wide, carved deep into the bedrock over countless Ages. The deep water of the river was squeezed into the inadequate space with the force of a cavalry charge. Rocky bluffs loomed above and save for a few stunted pine trees, all they could see in either direction were the towering cliffs and the boisterously turbulent water. The bright hues of Falkan’s countryside faded quickly; their world became stark black granite and foaming white water.
The Capina Fair slammed into the first of thousands of rocky outcroppings awaiting them and they knew they had only one choice: navigate well, or drown.
Throughout the day their sturdy craft was battered and buffeted fiercely by the brute force of the rapids. Back and forth across they jounced, over rocks, down short waterfalls, and in and out of swirling eddies, with no rest for the drenched and weary travellers.
After a while Steven motioned to Brynne and she tossed him her pole. The constant thrusting and jabbing that was necessary to keep them from being run aground or, worse, broken apart on the rocks was exhausting. Brynne collapsed on their packs, looping her arms through the coils of rope that secured their belongings to the deck. With his first few thrusts Steven realised all they had was the illusion of control over the Capina Fair’s trajectory downstream. At any moment the river might decide it had had enough of being poked with sharp, pointed sticks and cast them effortlessly into the granite wall of the canyon.
Still they fought on.
After a brief rest, Brynne spelled Garec, then Garec relieved Mark, and they fell into a pattern. Despite the incessant pounding, the Capina Fair held together well. Steven and Garec grinned at each other briefly, proud of what they’d built.
Despite the rests, it was enormously hard work. Their vigilance began to fail, and they took several blows that nearly shook them from their precarious perches on the Capina Fair’s upper deck. Garec found himself doing less poling and more gripping of lifelines. Several times, lacking the strength to push them away from an underwater boulder, he simply cried out to prepare the others for impact.
By nightfall, they knew they would not survive much longer. Mark, shattered, lay with his back propped against their packs as he tied strips torn from his tunic over the huge blisters that had welled up on both palms. Brynne secured a line about her waist, but she knew if she fell overboard she would not have the strength to pull herself back up; she would most likely be dragged beneath the surface and torn apart on the rocks.
With every twist in the canyon, the group held their collective breath, some in the hope that they would spot the end of the rocky bluffs, the others in fear that a large waterfall lay in wait just out of sight. But each turn brought an audible groan from the disheartened company as nothing changed: time and again their anticipation was for naught. The river careened fiercely onwards through the curving canyon, winding its way inexorably towards the Ravenian Sea, all the while draining their spirits and slowly dismantling their craft.
Darkness came early. Deeper sections of the river that had given a scant few moments’ rest were now giving way to large flat rocks that lay just beneath the surface. Anticipating a gentle touchdown from a short waterfall into the soft well of a deep hollow, Steven’s teeth rattled as the Capina Fair came down hard on a flat boulder he had missed. Rocks and water blurred together and for a moment Steven half expected an all-black world to shroud them, just as the all-white world had blanketed him and Lahp high among the glaciers in the Blackstone Mountains. Pushing hard, he shoved them back into moving water, then suddenly angry, called to Garec.
The bowman turned. His eyes were sunk deep; in the twilight he looked like a lifeless skull; Steven jumped when the skull spoke. ‘What is it?’
‘Take this,’ he said, passing him the pole and moving carefully across to the pile of sodden packs and the hickory staff.
‘What are you going to do?’ Brynne called over the water’s roar.
‘There’s no place to go ashore, and if we’re going to survive, we must have light.’ His fingers, stiff and blistered, were clumsy as he untied the ropes holding the staff safe.
Mark nodded in understanding.
Holding the staff close to his face, Steven drew a deep breath and summoned the magic. No, he thought, it’s different this time, a release not a summons … like that morning in the Blackstones with the pine tree – that was a release, too.
As it had before, the staff’s power flowed through him easily; Steven felt the familiar sensation of time stretching to accommodate him – he wondered once again if time really was slowing, or if he just imagined it. Suddenly, the river seemed manageable, and Steven cursed his wretched insecurity: he should have drawn on the staff’s power much earlier. A little uncertain what he should do next, he placed the end of the staff into the riverbed and envisioned the water slowing, levelling, gently moving downstream at a leisurely, navigable pace. At first nothing happened; Steven could st
ill feel the raft being buffeted violently – then, things calmed. The river still raged, both behind and before them, but the Capina Fair seemed to settle, floating as if adrift on a small pond.
‘Good,’ Steven said, and raised the opposite end of the staff above his head. ‘Now some light.’
He focused his concentration, visualising a torch he had seen hanging in a wall sconce in Estrad. Gilmour had stolen that torch, used it to light their way – and to light his pipe, of course. Almost immediately a small yellow flame burst in the air above the raft. Bigger, Steven commanded in his mind, and as if it had heard him speak out loud, the light grew until the walls of the canyon came into view.
With their path lighted and the Capina Fair floating in a gentle current, Mark commented, ‘That’s better. We could go on like this all night.’
‘Yes, but we really ought to find some place to go ashore,’ Garec said. ‘We need repairs, and if we don’t dry out and warm up, the cold will kill us before the river ever does.’
‘We ought to rest, too,’ Steven added. ‘I could sleep until noon.’ He used the English word.
‘When?’ Brynne looked at him through sodden hair, a tangled frame about her beautiful face.
‘Noon,’ Steven smiled. ‘It means midday with some conviction.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It means lunch,’ Mark added dryly.
‘That I understand,’ Garec said, ‘and if noon means sleeping until midday, with or without conviction, and then eating lunch, you have my complete support.’
‘How can we get ashore, though?’ Brynne asked. ‘We haven’t seen anyplace suitable since we entered this canyon.’
‘We’ll just have to keep going until we find somewhere we can tie up for the night,’ Mark suggested. ‘At least now the going will be easier.’
The raft, as if floating just above the surface of their tiny circle of water, floated surely over rocks, down abrupt cascades and across whirling eddies. They poled to avoid outcroppings of lethally sharp rocks and to maintain their position midstream, but those tasks were no more demanding than paddling across a windless lake. Steven’s flame provided light for their passage as Steven himself continued to imagine a cushioned path for them all the way through the canyon.
The magic did nothing for their fatigue, though, and the travellers continued scanning the canyon walls, looking for someplace to put ashore for a few avens’ rest. They took turns napping in pairs, but the evening chill coupled with their waterlogged clothing made proper sleep nearly impossible. Mark and Brynne huddled close together, their teeth chattering audibly. Mark brushed Brynne’s hair back from her face and cupped her cheeks in his hands while he told her silly jokes and anecdotes to help them both forget their aches.
At one point, Brynne interrupted him. ‘I don’t want you to go back home,’ she whispered.
Mark leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips. This wasn’t the place or the time he’d have chosen for this discussion.
Brynne pulled him closer and kissed him back, hard and long. He shuddered with need as her tongue moved in his mouth; just the taste of her aroused him like no woman ever had.
He pulled back slightly, and looked deep into her eyes. He put a finger on her mouth and whispered, ‘You must know how I feel. But right now, it’s academic, isn’t it? Who knows if we’ll ever find a far portal, let alone be able to use it. I do wish I could somehow let my family know where I am – no, not where I am; they’d think I was completely wacko and have me locked up, or medicated to within an inch of my life! But I want them to at least know that I’m all right, that I’m not murdered, or kidnapped or locked up. They must think we’re both dead by now – people would have come to our house days and days ago: the police, Hannah, my students, the principal at my school, friends, Steven’s boss from the bank …
‘I know people have probably been in and out of the house looking for clues to what happened to us, so I can’t imagine the far portal is still open. If they found it, they’d have detected its power, even if they didn’t know what the hell it was.’
‘You felt it?’
‘It changed the air in the room. It almost shimmered.’ He wagged his fingers to demonstrate for her. ‘If somehow the portal closed, though, they’d think it was just an ugly old rug, or maybe a tapestry.’
‘Steven is convinced that Hannah is in Eldarn.’
‘I know.’ Mark looked down at the log deck, and then back at her. ‘Hannah would have been one of the first to come looking for us. They had plans for the following day, so it may well be true.’
‘There might be others here as well?’
‘I suppose,’ he allowed, ‘although I hope that before too long someone realised that thing was dangerous and closed it up.’
‘If it’s closed, you might end up falling anywhere in your land.’ She tried to remember Gilmour’s explanation of the far portals. ‘So would Nerak.’
‘That’s right – listen to me go on, will you? The truth is I have no idea what happened after we got transported to Eldarn.’ He ran two fingers along her face and across her chin.
She reached up to take his hand. ‘Regardless, I don’t want you to go back.’
Mark looked up and saw Steven illuminated in the stafflight. With his hair cropped close and his shaven face, he looked like an accountant on a weekend rafting trip, the one in the play no one gives a second thought to. ‘A red top in Star Trek,’ he muttered to himself, ‘cannon fodder.’ Then to Brynne, ‘I don’t think he is going back,’ Mark whispered, their faces nearly touching in the darkness. ‘He’ll stay here until this is done, and then …’ His voice trailed off.
‘And then we’ll decide what happens with us.’ Brynne was back to her opening thought. The tough, knife-wielding partisan grinned, and shot him a sexy come-hither look. She ran her hand down his sodden thigh suggestively.
‘What? Here?’ Mark was a little taken aback.
She nodded.
‘Are you crazy?’ he whispered, ‘it’s forty degrees, and I know that doesn’t mean anything to you in Ronan, but where I’m from that means it’s a damn sight too cold to get naked outside on a damp raft in the middle of a bloody freezing river.’
‘We really should get out of these wet clothes,’ she said slyly, starting to peel her top off. ‘There are a few dry blankets in these packs; we can roll one out and use some to cover us.’
Mark protested, ‘But the guys are right here.’
‘Then we’ll have to be quiet. Maybe we can huddle down here between these satchels.’ She reached under his sweater, and he jumped at her frigid touch. ‘Sorry,’ she said insincerely, and blew into her fingers before returning them to his chest.
‘You aren’t going to be denied, are you?’
‘Not tonight, Mark, no.’ She giggled.
Mark had resigned himself to a torrid session of covert sex with one of the sexiest women he’d ever met when Garec shouted, ‘Look! What’s over there?’
‘Rutters,’ Brynne spat, then adjusted her tunic. Mark felt the tiny circles of cold on the flat of his stomach warm slightly as her fingertips drew away.
‘Where?’ Steven asked, trying to follow the line of Garec’s extended finger towards the canyon wall.
‘It looks like a cave,’ Brynne said, ‘a big one, a cavern maybe.’
Mark stood beside her and peered across the water. The river crashed violently against an enormous opening that jutted upwards through the granite like a jagged flaw in the cliff. There was nothing at all comforting or inviting about the cavern’s mouth. As they drew closer, he could see that the gaping crack reached nearly halfway up the canyon wall to the precipice above.
‘It’s huge,’ Steven said.
‘Yes, but we’ve no idea how far in it goes, or if there’s a decent place for us to make camp once we get inside,’ Garec said negatively.
‘True,’ Steven agreed, ‘but if we don’t take a look, we’ll never know, will we?’
Ga
rec nodded grimly, giving in, and the two of them steered the raft towards the entrance.
As they passed from the river into the cavern, the four travellers were struck by the sudden silence. The deafening roar of the rapids had provided a steady backdrop of noise all day, and the echoes rang in their ears as they passed beneath the natural archway. As the cacophony faded, they were overwhelmed by the heavy quiet. They’d been shouting at each other all day; now the travellers spoke in hushed whispers, as if they had broken into a vast stone tomb and feared waking its residents. Steven’s flame pierced the darkness, illuminating a thin passageway ahead.
Mark stared up towards the cavern’s ceiling, invisible beyond the stafflight, and said sarcastically, ‘Oh, yes, this is much better.’
Steven chuckled. ‘We do need a bit more light don’t we?’ He raised the staff, closed his eyes and motioned; the flame doubled then tripled in size and intensity until the cavern was dimly lit from end to end. He opened his eyes and grinned.
‘Your wish is my command, amigo,’ he said, clapping Mark on the shoulder. Around the Capina Fair, the walls of the canyon dropped straight down into the water. It looked horribly forbidding: as if no place were safe for travellers, but especially not this place. Far above, a crooked stone ceiling loomed over them impassively. Following the river’s current to the far end of the cave, Steven could see that the ceiling dropped down towards the water’s surface. There was a low, narrow passageway, through which the water disappeared into the dark reaches of the canyon wall. They would have to duck, or maybe even kneel if Capina was going to take them further into the cavern.
‘Well, there doesn’t seem to be anyplace to put ashore in here, so let’s go back outside,’ Mark suggested.
Brynne shook her head. ‘No. Let’s push ahead. The current isn’t bad, and we can always pole our way out if we need to.’
Mark felt the blood drain from his face; he was glad it was too dark for Brynne to see how frightened he was. He hated enclosed spaces. ‘It probably just narrows down to nothing back there. It’ll be a complete waste of time.’