Chapter Eight
“What is this place?” Soma asked his chieftain as they both surveyed the mad markings and repeated writings on the walls of the prison tower. “And just who do you think it was that was held here?”
“It is some kind of prison hold, alright. Cal told me about it,” Yasen answered. “And I doubt you would believe me if I told you who he said was once here.”
“I don’t know, North Wolf … the world has became a rather strange place as of late, and I just might believe you after all.” His eyes were a mix of both shock and wonder, all at the same time.
“Our groomsman says that it was Illium, or at least Illium’s men, if you believe that sort of thing,” Yasen told him, though his own wonder overshadowed the skeptical tone he tried to embody. “Though I am not as certain as to how he came up with that story.”
“Illium or not, what do you suppose this means?” Soma said, pointing to the strange word jaggedly carved into the stone wall.
“Shaimira,” Yasen answered. “That, brother, is where Cal was headed. That’s where he believed he would find what it is he was looking for.”
“And just what was that, do you suppose?” Soma asked.
“Something, I guess, we have all been looking for. Only he believed we were all a bunch of damned fools, looking for it in the wrong place,” Yasen said as he tried to wipe the weariness of uncertainty from his tired eyes. “He is looking for the light, Illium’s light.”
“Huh,” Soma grunted. “He is looking for it in the North, then?” His fingers traced the very same arrow that Cal had not so long ago found.
“Aye,” Yasen agreed. “And I think it’s time that we be quick on his heels.”
“Aye,” Soma said. “Seek the light, huh? Well, whoever it was that was held here … I hope they found what they were looking for.”
“Me too, brother, because if they did … maybe they will have room there for us, too.”
“Maybe so,” said Soma.
Together, the two woodcutters made their way down the treacherously aged stairs, all the way to the moss covered floor of this long forgotten tower. They walked silently through the heavy canopy of the Greywood, their torch light dancing in the cold easterly wind, as they made their way back to the timberline of their once great efforts.
“What do you suppose it is?” Soma said, breaking the long silence. “The thing … the … that storm we saw?”
“I do not know, brother, but whatever it was, I don’t think its intentions were peaceful.”
“Aye,” he said. “Neither do I-" Soma's words caught in his mouth as he saw the eyes of the fire knight catch his own gaze. “Damn it all!” he growled.
“Pyrrhus!” Yasen spat. “What in the damnable dark does he want out here? Doesn’t he have his captain to welcome back?”
Pyrrhus spotted the two woodcutters inside the mouth of the forest and spurred his mount, riding hard after them. “Yasen!” he shouted into the trees. “Yasen! I have been looking all over for you and your woodcutters. The governor has requested your attendance.”
Yasen read the fear and the dishonesty in the voice of his rival. “My attendance, is it? Who then, do you suppose, will be cutting down these trees for our countrymen if I am off, heeding to Seig’s every whim? Huh? No Pyrrhus, I have a job to do, and I intend to stay and finish it; that is, of course, unless you would rather take my place.”
“Shut your mouth, woodcutter!” Pyrrhus demanded. “I’ve neither the time nor the patience for your insolence. Where are your men?”
“My men are my concern, knight, not yours!” Yasen argued. “And for whatever errand I have set them upon, they are mine to command.”
Pyrrhus looked back over his shoulder towards the raven-infested beach. “Whatever errand you have given them, you had better pray that it is far enough away from this place,” he whispered.
“Are you threatening me, Pyrrhus?” Yasen said as he stepped closer to the agitated knight.
“Consider it a warning,” he growled exhaustedly.
“A warning?” Soma chimed in. “A warning of what?”
Pyrrhus looked back again, more nervously now, and then to his own hand that held the reins of his mount. “The governor has requested your attendance.” He swallowed dryly as he spoke. “And I cannot return without you coming back with me. Whatever errand you have your men attending to, that is not of my concern. But you will come with me.”
Yasen studied this shortsighted bull of a man. There was no love shared between them, and yet something different was in the words he spoke, something almost brotherly.
“What will I find when I return to the stronghold?” Yasen asked. “What was that storm upon the beach, Pyrrhus?”
Pyrrhus looked down, his mind a mess of self-interest and fear as he tried to sort between the gale for the right words. “That is why you have been summoned,” he said as he met Yasen’s gaze.
“Soma,” Yasen said after he mulled the words over. “Find the others, and make sure that they find what we were looking for.”
“If you are going to see the governor, then I will ride with you,” Soma argued.
“No!” Pyrrhus shouted almost before Soma could finish his thought. “It was Yasen that was summoned, not you.”
The North Wolf watched his foe, sensing the unspoken plea that was hidden, folded into the words of his demand.
“Soma,” Yasen ordered him. “You tell the men to seek the light. Tell them to turn their axes northward and seek the light.”
Soma searched the face of his chieftain and saw plainly the meaning of his words. “But Yasen-”
“I am not going to keep the governor waiting any longer now, not while his dog is still hungrily begging for table scraps.” He turned towards the still-mounted knight, mistrust plainly written upon his face. “I’ll see what our fearless leader would have of me.”
“We will find it, Yasen.” Soma promised him quietly. “We will find this Shaimira, I swear it.”
Yasen winced at the mention of the word, hoping against all luck that Pyrrhus had not heard it spoken. “You tell the men to get to work. Just because I am called back for a conference does not mean their blades can stop their biting.” He spoke almost too sternly as he squeezed the shoulder of his brother, trying to cover the mention of Shaimira with his heavy-handed authority.
“Aye, alright then,” Soma said warily, understanding the folly of his words. “We will get to work, alright. Axes pointed northward.”
Yasen watched as his friend threw his leg over his white-coated Percheron, crossing his arm over his chest as he spurred the onyx colored beast towards his brothers.
“Come on then, Yasen,” Pyrrhus ordered weakly, anxiety stealing the wind from his once fiery bellows. “I do not want to keep her-” Yasen’s eyes caught his own at the slip of the word, “Him … waiting. Now is not the time for that kind of treason.”
Yasen climbed atop his own mount, fingering the hunting knife he kept sewn into the lining of his fur-clad boots. His mind, wary and mistrusting, could not help but think of his auburn-haired bar maiden, who sewed for him the very patch that he wore so proudly on his scarred face and useless eye. As he started towards the ominous stronghold off in the too-near horizon, he prayed for her protection, and that he may yet see her again.
Yasen looked back over his shoulder towards the abandoned braziers on the tree line, knowing full well that he had not a friend left in the colony at the shore. He swallowed back his nerves before he spoke. “Tell me what this is about, Pyrrhus. What was so important to our governor that he would take me from my task and my men?”
Pyrrhus rode in thoughtful silence, the clomping of his horse's hooves filling in the tension of the question. “It is not my place to say, woodcutter.” He released his exhausted breath, then turned his head to look at the target of his errand, and Yasen could see fear etched plainly upon his wiry face.
“Alright then, knight of Haven … take me to him.” Yasen said.
Chapter Nine
After packing up their small encampment, Cal and Astyræ mounted their two horses in search of the ancient path of the White Stag. Northward they rode, eager to find just where these mysterious holy markings might lead them.
It wasn’t long, less than a league from where Cal had first spotted the glowing white markings at the base of the large pine, until they saw the next marker of their journey. Though to both Deryn and Astyræ they were nothing but the scratches and scars of a rutting beast of the forest, Cal’s new eyes could see the magic amidst the ordinary.
“There!” Cal shouted to his friends. “I see another one! Right there at the base of that great cedar!”
“Are you sure?” she asked him timidly. “I can’t see anything at all … every tree is beginning to look the same to me, Cal.”
“Yes, my lady,” Cal assured them. “I can see the markings clear enough; they glow for me … for us. Come on!” Cal clicked his tongue inside his cheek and in an instant the mighty silver courser sprung to life.
“Will they all be like this, Deryn?” Astyræ asked as she watched the groomsman fly across the forestland. “Will they all be so easy for him to find?”
“I cannot say for certain, my lady,” Deryn answered her, trouble clearly coloring the lines of his tiny, furrowed brow. “He has been given a gift of sight, and I do not believe that this gift will be wasted.” Deryn paused as he chose his words amidst his ponderings. “He will be able to see the markings of the Stag, however plain or hidden they might be. Only…”
“Go on, then,” she urged as she watched him labor over his words.
“Only … he will still need to look for them. It will be nearly impossible to see anything, magic or otherwise, if he forgets or fails to look for them in the first place.”
“Well then,” she said with a kind smile, “if we are going to remind him … we will most certainly need to keep up with him.”
By the time his friends reached him, Cal was kneeling at the base of an enormous cedar tree. He ran his fingers over the scarred bark. Each line seemed to have been made a dozen lifetimes ago.
“Thank you,” he whispered to the cold, dark air about him. “Thank you for this, for making a way for us.”
“Does it say anything?” Astyræ shouted to him as she reined her chestnut mount to a halt. “Does it give you any direction?”
He looked at the markings, examining, searching for a sign or any possible clue. “No,” Cal told her with a sigh. “It doesn’t say anything at all, but neither did the last one.”
“How do you suppose we will find the next one, then?” she asked, nervous at the possibility of missing it altogether.
“I suppose I will just … see it.” Cal said, a bit unsure himself.
“Cal,” Deryn said as his charge mounted the back of the silver coated Farran. “Your sight is a gift from the mighty cervidae; but … please … in your seeing, do not become blind.”
“What do you mean?” Cal said, rather confused.
“What I mean is,” Deryn said as he flitted up to meet the gaze of his friend, “these lands have for too long been under the tyranny of the Sorceress and she will care not for ancient paths, nor for groomsmen who can see them.”
“He is right, you know,” Astyræ agreed.
“Just keep an eye out for other things too, the dangerous and the devilish things, lest we fall prey to them,” the Sprite said.
“Alright then, my Sprite guardian,” Cal said with a disarming smile. “I will be mindful enough. Now come on you two; our destiny might just lay at the end of the Stag’s path. I have waited and wanted my whole life to find this new light … and do not wish to wait a moment longer than I must to finally find it!”
“I know, Calarmindon Bright Fame,” Deryn said in a fatherly tone of voice. “Just mind that you are seeking in a strange and hostile land.”
“I will,” Cal assured him. “Are you ready yet?”
“Yes, groomsman,” Astyræ said playfully. “We are ready.”
Her smile caught his attention, and her beauty momentarily overshadowed the brilliance of their shared quest. He could not help but to smile in response.
“What?” she asked him. “What is it, groomsman? What are you smiling about?”
He swallowed his nerves back and shook his head in jovial astonishment. “I have never noticed before just how … how bright these wilderlands can be when you … when you smile like that.”
Her grin grew all the more sincere at his compliment. She stared at her hands as she felt the warmth begin to color her cheeks. “And I have never known a groomsman to be so … I don’t know.” She huffed out a breath of frustration at the words she couldn’t seem to grasp in the unexpected moment. “Thank you, Cal,” she said timidly, her eyes raising to meet his.
An unspoken energy passed between the two of them. “Aye,” he said, finally.
Deryn looked back and forth at the two of them, shaking his small, silver-haired head at just how quickly the moment had shifted. “Come on, then. I fear we still have quite a long road ahead of us.”
“Aye,” Astyræ said in reply, her violet gaze sparkling in the torch light.
Cal nodded and lightly spurred Farran with the heels of his boots. And with that, the three of them set off, riding North in search of the next marking.
Days passed as they followed the hidden trail, led only by Cal’s gift of vision. Seeking the light was foremost in the groomsman’s mind, though the smile of the lady Astyræ did its best to rival it.
“Cal!” she shouted from behind “Cal!”
The groomsman reined in his iron-grey horse, wheeling Farran around to see just what was the matter.
“My lady?” he asked.
“Can’t we stop? Can’t we rest now?” she pleaded. “I want to find Shaimira too, but we have been riding for days and it still seems no closer than when we first began. Perhaps it is time that we rest.”
“I see it ahead,” he told her. I can see the next marking like a beacon in the night, as bright as the Maris Tower in the Bay of Eurwen.”
“But if we ever want to reach it with enough strength to seek the next one … we still must rest.”
“She is right, Cal,” Deryn said in agreement. “The seeking heart, so driven as it may be … still needs rest.”
Cal looked about, frustration and resignation mingling in the forefront of his thoughts. He searched in the violet glow that colored his vision for some place to make their camp and shelter them from the wilderness. The terrain of the journey had changed over the last few leagues, from the thick undergrowth of the mighty Greywood forest to the sandy, rock-strewn floor of these northern marches.
He exhaled his acquiescence. “Alright then, my friends, I could do with something to warm my belly, and perhaps a place to rest my eyes for a bit.”
“I could use a place to rest my backside, if I am honest,” she said with a laugh in her words. “I haven’t ridden this much since, well … since before I had reason enough to find myself locked in the heights of Enguerrand.”
“And just how long ago was that my lady?” Cal said, returning her laughter with his own playful question.
“Long enough, groomsman,” she told him with a look in her eyes that suggested this story was indeed done with its telling.
“Alright then, there is a cleft up there a bit,” he said, pointing slightly westward. “We can tie the horses off, and perhaps make our shelter up there upon the ridge if that suits you two.”
“At least this way we will have stone to our backs, and whoever might wish us harm will have to make their way uphill to get to us,” she agreed.
Deryn flitted about, surveying the wild lands about them, listening and straining his ears for any sign of danger.
“Deryn?” Cal asked. “What do you think, my Sprite guardian?”
Deryn looked deep into the forest, and though he could neither see nor hear anything or anyone, a wariness colored his thoughts. “Yes, let us make our
camp in the cleft of the rock, but do not trust this place, my friends.”
“Do not trust it?” Astyræ asked him. “You don’t suppose there is another wizard or beast out here too, do you?”
“My lady, the things that make their home in the dark reaches of this world are beyond my supposition. There is not one place, while darkness abounds, that will ever feel truly safe.” Deryn said, his azure eyes still scanning the thickly shrouded tree line about them.
“What are you saying, Sprite?” she said, a nervous grit now coloring her voice. “Speak plainly.”
“I am saying that though we need our rest and our recovery, be ever mindful that it is we who are the strangers, the trespassers in these shadow lands.”
Chapter Ten
“Shhh! Shut it now … I hear someone coming!” Oren said to his woodcutting brother.
“You couldn’t hear a tree fall if it was your own thick head that it crashed into!” Alon retorted. “I still don’t know why it was you they set to keep watch—”
Alon’s words caught in his mouth as he too heard the pounding of hooves upon the forest floor. “I hear something … quiet now … shh!”
“I told you!” Oren said as he slammed his elbow into his brother’s side. “Someone is coming.”
Soma rode hard, looking intently for his brothers, peering into the thick, black haze that covered every league, limb, and leaf in these parts of the Greywood. “Goran!” he shouted in a whisper.
“It’s Soma!” Alon said excitedly.
“Aye, it’s Soma alright, but it’s only Soma.” Oren said. “Not Yasen.”
“Are you sure?” Alon asked.
“Aye. Just one horse … just one rider,” Oren told his brother.
“Soma!” Alon called out as he sparked his flint into the darkness about him. “Over here! Over here, brother.”
“Thank the THREE who is SEVEN that I found you!” Soma said as he leapt from his panting steed. “Where are the others?”
“Where is Yasen?” Oren asked pointedly.
“That’s what I need to speak with you all about,” Soma countered.
The Coming Dawn: Epic of Haven Trilogy Book 3 Page 6