by BJ Hanlon
“So, I found some rocks, small ones,” he made a circle with his hands, “and set them in my fire. See I still had my sparkstone and it was the woods so there was a lot of fuel. After an hour I carefully picked them up and threw them in the water and wouldn’t you know it, the water boiled. Drinkable water.”
“Probably tasted like dirt and scum.” A patron said.
“Aye it did, but I survived and I lived to tell the tale.”
“It’s an old trick,” someone called out and people shot him an angry glare. But it seemed to break the trance of the girl and she quickly excused herself. Though the man was disappointed from missing out on the girl, many of the locals bought him rounds of ale.
Edin had always thought the tale was rubbish, especially the part about Vestor coming to the man with the vision. Now he couldn’t be certain, not with the seeing stones and the visions he’d had. There was much in this world he didn’t understand.
And what if it worked? There was a hole with water inside. He’d almost stepped in it at one point. He found a few rocks. Some a few inches long and wide, others smaller and set them next to it. The hole was only about six inches deep but almost a foot in diameter. More of a divot than a hole.
Edin brought a couple of sticks from the unending fire down and set it before him. Then he put the rocks on top.
He waited for nearly an hour, watching the stones. Staring at them and getting lost in thought. A part of him expected them to turn orange and glow like hot metal in Jassir’s forge. But they didn’t.
After enough time, he used his cloak to grab the stones and tossed them into the pool.
After the third, the water simmered and after the fifth, it was boiling. Edin added another to make sure and then added the mintweed leaves. There was so much water, he added all of them and hoped their potency wouldn’t be diluted.
He had to check his friend. Edin stood went inside by Berka while drinking the rest of the water in his skin.
Berka was still sleeping and it seemed breathing with difficulty. It was as if he’d stop at any moment. What would Edin do? What would he tell his family or El? Where were his father and mother? He hadn’t asked that. He hadn’t really cared since Vistach, the man who’d treated Edin like a second son, burned down the manor and killed his mother and Kes.
He and many more of the village. Many more old neighbors.
Berka coughed and a bubble began to form at his lips.
Edin finished the waterskin then went back outside and to the boiling mintweed tea. It smelled awful. Mintweed mixed with rocks and sediment. Edin waited for a while until it stopped boiling though it still steamed. He swallowed, took a deep breath and plunged the skin and his hands into the water. Edin clenched his jaw and rammed his eyes closed.
Then he pulled his hands out, nearly dropping the skin. He screamed and it echoed through the gorge. At that point he didn’t care. Not yet at least.
Edin quickly ran to Berka almost stumbling on the rocks due to the pain. Next to him he dropped and put the nozzle of the skin before his friend’s nose and let the odor waft into it. That was usually an aid.
Ten more minutes went by before he started to tilt the skin into Berka’s mouth.
At first, the ginger boy coughed it up. Then Edin learned to hold his jaw shut and he swallowed. Edin gave him three mouthfuls before he thought it was alright to leave for a few minutes.
Edin’s hand was bright red, nearly pink. He left the cave and ran to the small stream. He dropped to his knees and sunk his hands in the cold water. He held them there for a long time, until they tingled and became nearly numb. Then he sat back.
Overhead there was a dim orange light from the fading sun, but down here, it was dim to dark and he could barely see twenty yards. Shortly, it’d be darker. Edin didn’t want to spend a second night in nearly the same location but there was no way Berka was moving. A part of him wanted to go back up stream and see if he could find anything. Maybe Grent and Dephina, maybe that stone giant, though he had no idea what he’d do if he found it. How did one fight something like that? Could an ethereal blade and cut through it?
Now wasn’t the time to try.
Edin stayed quiet on the side of the gurgling stream until the only light was from the fire in the cavern. He returned, his stomach grumbling louder and sat down near the entrance. He didn’t know what was out there. Animals would probably be kept away from the cave due to the fire, the dematians wouldn’t care.
Inside, Berka was curled up and breathing a bit easier. Edin went to him and poured more of the tea down his throat. There was pain in his hand but he could deal with it.
After he was done, he sat back and his eyes wandered toward a back dark corner of the cave.
Edin wasn’t sure what was there, maybe something was hidden in the dark recesses, maybe it was another cave. What if there is a wolf or large man-eating cat that lived in it, or a giant serpent or spider. Edin shivered, he probably should’ve checked.
He picked up a thin torch from the fire and moved toward the darkness. As he got closer, he saw that there was a wall, but behind it, was a small nook. A closet or so he thought.
Then he looked in and saw he was wrong. It wasn’t just a small nook; it grew into a much larger room.
There were long slabs of rock about waist high. What could’ve been considered counters or beds. There were more drawings and lines on the walls. Impressions that could’ve been writing. Crosses, slashes, circles and dots.
Deeper in, he found a corridor. He followed it as it delved further into the mountain. It met at a set of stairs heading up. He looked back at the black corridor and then up the stone stairs.
“What is this place?” Edin whispered. Did the hermit live somewhere in here? Edin began climbing. He could see scorch marks on the ceiling and came to a landing that spread out to the left and right in a corridor. Straight ahead of him was an opening the size of his head. It was squared off and at a forty-five-degree angle. Through it, Edin could see a full moon. It was perfectly shaped in the square opening as if it were a painting by some artist who made ultra-real paintings.
Edin stared for a while. It was longer than his mind grasped, until slowly the moon began to drift out of the square. Then Edin followed it and the room to the right and reached more openings, there were small windows in the mountain face that looked like they could’ve been natural caves, more writing, and more platforms. Other corridors headed out in different directions. It was a maze in the cliff wall. But maze wasn’t right, it was a city.
With the fire and his walking, he grew extremely warm. He sweat profusely as he followed, corridor after corridor into and out of cave dwellings and continued up hoping to find a place where he could get a better view of the surroundings. The small holes, windows really, showed only glimpses of the landscape. He saw mountains rising to the west and north, his only real view.
Edin’s stomach growled and he grew tired, though he did not stop. He would not stop.
There were more and more glyphs, artwork, and writing as well as more shafts that pointed up at an angle out of the mountain. Below them were what looked like fire pits. Whoever built this place didn’t have an unending fire.
Once in a while, a gust of wind whipped through and bellied the flames from some unknown hole. An hour later, he looked out a small window, one a bit more southernly and saw three mountain peaks that reminded him of a trident. In between them, he spotted something flying. A single bird of some type, though it couldn’t have actually been between the trident prongs, if it had, the thing would be huge.
Edin continued up, his legs began to feel like gelatin from boiled pig and cow hide. Even that thought made his stomach hungry. Finally he stopped at a corridor that led directly to a thin opening that rose from floor to ceiling. To the left and right were giant oval rooms with domed ceilings.
Moving forward, he saw broken pottery, nearly petrified wood, and crumbled parchment. He’d seen that sort of thing almost the entirety of the trip u
p. He knew none of it could help him at this point.
He couldn’t even read Highborn, which was still used in certain circles, how could he read a different, possibly much older language.
He reached the opening. It was barely two feet wide, just wide enough for him to slip through without turning. Edin stepped out.
The cold wind hit him with a bite. He was on a terrace of stone. A great slab that could not have been placed there by anyone but a god.
The view was higher than the bridge, it had to have been. Below him, he could not see into the gorge, if the gorge was even directly below him. He’d traveled so far and made many turns. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he knew the way back down. The entire mountain seemed to have been one giant maze.
It was a town. Edin glanced above his head and saw he was barely halfway up the mountain. Edin spotted a constellation and remembered Arianne telling him about it. Gorto and the beast, the god fighting the giant serpent with his bare hands.
It was always to the north during the winter months. That gave him a sense of direction.
Other snowcapped mountains and trees, damp with moisture, were lit by the moon. They offered a sparkling silver twinkle.
He saw no trails or passes. Only crags, boulders and thick woods that covered the valleys and mountains. What path leads west?
The hermit didn’t want him going there, it was probably where he lived and didn’t want anyone. If he lived in the mountains there had to be food and shelter.
But there was no sign of him in these tunnels. Did he have another home? A more secret one?
The terrace was facing due west. Somewhere out there were the plains of Dunbilston and the elves. Edin looked north, he saw a broken landscape with hibernating trees and hidden streams flowing. He couldn’t see the ridge. Edin didn’t even know if it was to the north.
Back west, a mile or so away was a tall and rounded peak that had a large boulder jutting out of the side as if it were a humpback.
Below it was a small valley, but it was still above the gorge. Somehow, they’d have to climb to get out of it. Then they’d head toward that mountain. Once there, he had to find the next one and set the pace west until he was out of the uncompromising mountain range.
Edin sighed. Even if Berka were healthy, this wouldn’t be a fun journey.
Something about the vastness of the land, the huge mountains, the grand scale of things gave Edin a chill that he couldn’t quite attribute to the wind. Edin swallowed as he pondered what his job was.
Could he even do it? Could Edin stop the dematians and that thing.
It couldn’t be him, Edin thought. Hoped really.
As he thought about it again, still climbing the long tunnel, Edin felt that despair. Sweat broke out and he closed his eyes. Edin felt dizzy for a moment and reached out. A stone nub stabilized him.
He thought of his breathing and the feeling of the breeze in his hair and the hard stone beneath his feet. Edin lowered himself down.
He sat and remembered the stories and legends of the past. The heroes and heroic deeds of men. The journeys or the battles always seemed so quick and there was never any doubt as to who would win in the end. Whether it was Nilipsus the Dragon Slayer or Helicart the Titan, a man who fought off an entire invading horde of wild men.
There never seemed to be a moment in those stories when there was doubt, when there was little hope. Nilipsus seemed so self-assured; Helicart was the biggest and best fighter of his age, maybe of any age. Their stories never told of such fears and uncertainty. Maybe they didn’t have those... Maybe it was only the ones who’d failed that felt overwhelmed by the task at hand.
“One thing at a time,” Edin whispered to himself. “Just one thing at a time.” He repeated as he laid back on the tall stone slab and closed his eyes. In the morning, he’d get a better view, hopefully. But for now, he needed those doubts silenced. Though he was almost certain that the one leading them was Yio Volor, God of the Underworld.
10
A Fearful, Uneasy Feeling
They were still rising. All of them. An army of beasts and demons, monsters from ages past following their leader. There was no sleep for them, there was no tiredness. They were following the long tunnel to the place where they could break through. But they couldn’t break through; not yet.
They needed something. That, Edin knew.
Despite this, they were moving at a heck of a speed, the giant spider chattered, its hooked feet clicking on the ground. There were giants stomping, flying beasts screeching and cawing, large serpents slithering as they followed their master up the long road from the underworld. How long would it take them?
They cannot open the door without me, he thought. But it didn’t sound like his thought. So much so that his sleepy mind asked “Who said that? Who are you?”
There was no answer.
“Then I’ll just stay away.”
“A good plan, it will not work,” his voice said.
The sun light didn’t wake him. It was the crowing of some bird, the sound piercing his head like that of a whistle during a hangover. Edin leapt from his spot and stood.
He was still basked in the shadow of the mountain that was aimed toward the humpbacked peak he’d seen the night before. To the left and right, a bright yellow sunlight glowed on the trees and broken landscape below.
The weight of an upcoming difficult task fell over him.
Seeing the mountains during the day didn’t make them look any smaller. And he was certain he couldn’t see the end of the mountain range.
He peered off both ways to see if he could find Jont’s pass. He wasn’t sure if he was south or north of it. Heck he could be west of it too.
To the northern side, he saw a long line of stone pillars that looked like a hundred different sized quarterstaffs lined up next to each other.
On it, he saw movement. Edin closed his eyes as he watched the thing, two arms and two legs, climb up one of the handles until it reached the apex, then it looked back and forth and leapt down to the next one, almost fifty feet below.
There was no sound. Not like there should’ve been. The drop was completely silent. He thought for a moment that it was that stone giant. Edin watched the thing continue to the next pillar, the thing climbed it, reached the top and jumped down on the other side to a lower one then strode across.
Edin was fascinated and watched until it reached the edge of the line of pillars then it turned and leapt off what Edin considered the backside. He knew that wasn’t Jont’s pass.
Soon, Edin descended. It took a long time to figure out the way he’d come up. Heck he could barely remember some of the shafts he’d followed or why he’d turned left instead of right or gone straight instead of back.
It took more than an hour to find his way back to the base of the cliff city. A defensible place where man could hide. Probably did hide in eons past.
Once down, he saw Berka still next to the fire and the waterskin was a few feet away. He was snoring though it wasn’t a sick snore. It was one that said he was getting some much-needed rest.
It was too bad he didn’t have time for another day off.
Edin bent over and shook Berka. “You awake?”
“Now I am,” Berka muttered after a moment. He looked up, his eyes were red and there were a pair of small rocks stuck to his forehead. His face looked like a map of a canyon with lines from the rock pillow.
“We lost a day; we have to get moving.”
Berka groaned and rolled over, his stomach growled but he said nothing.
“We’ve got no food and there’s a stone giant a half mile north of here.”
Berka rolled over and raised an eyebrow. After staring at Edin for a moment he nodded and got up.
They crossed the creek. It had risen since the last time he went through. It was a foot and a half deep now. That was a lot for one night, Edin thought. Somewhere snow must be melting quickly.
The rock walls on both sides were nearly shear with lit
tle in the way of a hand hold and a couple hundred feet tall, not something he’d want to risk.
Though he could buffet a fall, he still didn’t want to climb.
The trek was hard over the rocky uneven valley floor. After a half mile of going, mostly southwest through the gorge, the land on the sides of the stream began to disappear as the walls of the ravine crowded in on them. Plants were gone now too and every few steps were in the water. It didn’t take long for his left foot to feel waterlogged. Above them, the sun couldn’t penetrate down below and it was cold.
“See these lines on the walls,” Berka called out from behind. Edin turned back and saw. Brownish lines, a few of them every two or so feet. He knew what they were but hadn’t said anything.
“Water lines.”
“There are times when this river is much deeper than now.”
“Times like spring, after the snowmelt.”
Edin said nothing and began forward. He stepped on a stone that tilted under his weight. He stumbled but caught himself by grabbing a root growing from the side of the wall.
His foot splashed into the water and he felt the chill to the knee. “It’s rising.”
“You don’t think I know that?” Berka said.
They started to pick up the pace. The ravine that had been about fifty feet across near the cave was now barely ten and there was no dry land. They kept going and the walls pushed in on them even more until they were barely three feet apart. “How much further does this canyon go?” Berka huffed. The water was mid-thigh now and they were splashing their way through.
“I left the map in my other pants.” Edin said.
The light barely made its way down here, but he could see ten feet in front of him, maybe more. Though that was when the ravine didn’t turn which was almost never.
Something began to sound from behind them. Something rather loud, like the ride of a cavalry. In front of them the water didn’t only flow; it began to tremble.