by Sean Golden
Lirak felt chilled. Sighing with relief he realized he was close to his goal, and there was no longer a stalking menace to fear. He quickly moved to the edge of the wall and saw that there was a rocky ledge that led out from the waterfall to the north. Soon the waterfall was behind him. The sun was still high, but was moving steadily to the west. He figured he had half the afternoon left, and knew that he had a long walk north to reach the firestones. Each step was a struggle as his weakened body protested against the effort. It took every shred of determination he possessed to push onward, and sometimes he had to stop as his vision clouded and his head swam.
Yet on he walked. With each eagle’s cry, he mouthed thanks for his totem’s protection, and felt a small renewal of energy and purpose. He scanned the valley walls, looking for the crack that the elders had described for him. Finally, what seemed an eternity later, he found a great nearly vertical stone cliff face soaring high up the valley wall. The stone face extended for hundreds of strides to the north, and in that stone face was a huge crack, like a black shadow of night on the face of the rock. Lirak approached the crack warily, not knowing what to expect. Looking inside he saw that it
became a narrow cave that extended far back into the rock, and that it was too dark to see inside.
Looking around he found a branch about as long as his arm. He moved toward the river until he found a bed of the bulbous weeds, and wrapped large handfuls of their fluffy fibrous insides around the branch, tying them with a length of wet rawhide. He hoped this would serve as a torch long enough to find what he was looking for.
Returning to the narrow cave, he struggled to build a small fire and lit the torch. The effort left him exhausted and light-headed. Squeezing into the cave, his eyes slowly adjusted to the sputtering torchlight and its sharp, dancing shadows. Cruel edges of rock more than once gouged a bloody track on his shins and elbows. A few burnt-out torches littered the uneven floor. He coughed as the torch flickered and filled the cave with smoke, but the cave widened as he moved deeper and soon the smoke was no longer a problem. Finally, deep in the cave he saw a gleam of red with sparkles of yellow, and his heart jumped in his chest.
The cave continued as far as his light could reach, and all along both sides of the fissure, rivers of red and yellow stone shone in the light from his torch. There were firestones here enough for the entire world, he thought. The wall here was crumbled away, almost like the stone was a rotten fruit. Deep cracks in the wall were filled with loose gray rock thickly veined with red and yellow. Lirak moved forward and reached out with his left hand, running his fingers along the crumbling stone.
As his finger brushed one of the red veins in the rock, his hair stood up on his neck and goose bumps sprang forth on his arms. A surge of energy washed through him and his vision clouded. Suddenly he was aware that he seemed to be seeing two scenes at once. The cave and its crumbling rock were still there, but superimposed was a very faint pulsating multi-colored swirl of ribbons of colored light. The ribbons of light seemed to be emanating from the firestones, but they did not illuminate the cave. As he pulled his finger back, the images faded and there was nothing but the dark cave again. Pausing, Lirak felt a coldness spread inside his chest. His breath came in short gasps as he forced his hand forward and again brushed against the strange stones. Again he felt the surge and saw the swirling ribbons of color. Twice more he pulled back his hand before he became fully convinced of the reality of the vision. He shivered as a faint breeze blew across his sweat-beaded skin, realizing finally that the effect seemed to occur when he touched the red veins in the rock.
Jamming his torch into one of the wall’s many cracks, Lirak finally decided to ignore the vision and pulled chunks of the stones from the wall, like harvesting fruit from a tree. He tried to collect the stones with the most red and yellow veins, ignoring the strange sensation from touching the red veins in the rock. Soon he had the special leather sack filled with the heavy stones and could carry no more. He stopped short of putting the sack on his back and instead took the torch from the crack in the wall, and stepped back from the broken rock into the passageway. Sighing deeply he felt weak and faint from his wounds and loss of blood, but a sense of accomplishment made him smile in the dark.
Reaching down further into the cave with the torch Lirak wondered how far the cave went. Behind him he could see the faint remnants of sunlight not entirely blocked by the small twists and turns in the passageway. Ahead was nothing but blackness. His torch sputtered for a moment and he almost turned to leave. But something pulled at him, some deep curiosity that kept his feet rooted to the jagged floor.
“Just a bit farther,” he told himself. And with that he moved deeper into the cave. As he moved the floor became smoother and he realized it had been covered with the jagged fragments of crystals pried from the wall. Deeper into the cave the walls were untouched and the floor uncluttered. Peering closely at the floor though, he felt he could make out faint marks of passage. Realizing that someone had passed through the cave in the recent past added to his curiosity and he increased his pace, ignoring his exhaustion and weakness as much as possible.
Sometime later he made out a green glow ahead. As he got closer he realized that the glow was daylight filtering through the limbs of a spruce tree. He dropped and stamped out the torch. After pushing a few branches aside, he stepped out of the crack and into a long, thin canyon with high sheer rock walls on east and west, and continuing on as far as he could see north and south. But it was the lazy line of smoke rising above the trees a short distance away that caught his eye.
“Somebody’s got a fire going,” he mused to himself. His head swam and he staggered a bit as his body used up its last bit of energy reserves. Lirak realized that he was dangerously sick and weak. A nearby fallen log served as a seat for him to rest, but the rest did little but stop the world from spinning.
In spite of his weakness and aching body, Lirak felt a familiar compulsion to investigate the smoke. Eventually he staggered to his feet and trudged west toward the center of the little canyon, following a convenient trail through the trees. He cautiously made his way from the thick growth of pine and fir trees at the base of the canyon wall into a cluster of the white-trunked trees so common in the valley of the Fire River. Each step was more difficult than the last, and Lirak felt almost as if he were in a dream. His head spinning, he frequently had to lean against a tree to rest and keep from falling. He realized he was breathing heavily, as if he had run a long time. But the compulsion to move seemed to gain strength as his body failed, and he drove himself on in spite of his growing fatigue and sickness.
Finally reaching the edge of the trees, through a haze of exhaustion and fever, Lirak found a large clearing with a little creek burbling from the north and disappearing into the south. Beside the creek there was a strange structure that Lirak realized was some sort of hut, but nothing like any hut he had ever seen. Made of rock fit together with cunning and skill, the structure was about twice as large as a typical Dwon hut and Lirak could see a stout wooden door set in the stone, with a wide wooden porch in front. The smoke was coming from a small stack of stones on the roof.
All around the hut were strange plants, neatly arranged in rows. As he surveyed this scene, a large black and yellow striped bee buzzed by his head, and then another. Turning he realized they were flying in and out of a rectangular object from which he caught the unmistakable scent of honey.
Suddenly the door to the hut opened and a man stepped out. Lirak’s strength was almost spent, and he reached his right arm out to lean against a tree, but misjudged the distance and staggered until he caught himself. The man at the door of the hut instantly turned and looked directly at him, causing Lirak’s heart to leap into his throat.
“Ho!” the man shouted, then he uttered sounds that made no sense to Lirak. Lirak’s strength was fading fast and he realized he was now almost hugging the tree to keep from falling. His mind was just clear enough to wonder why he felt no fear as his
legs finally gave way and he sank slowly down to sit on the trail with his back to the tree. A trickle of blood flowed from his shoulder wound; somehow he had knocked the makeshift bandage loose.
With something like detachment Lirak watched as the man advanced. His garments were not leather, but what they were made of was beyond Lirak’s experience. Several small pouches hung off a broad leather belt he had fastened over a brown tunic. Below the tunic he wore gray pants tucked into the top of knee-high leather boots. His face was broad and tanned, and there was a young/old quality to him that made it impossible to tell if he was a young man just entering maturity, or an older man whose face retained its youthfulness. A bushy black beard framed the pale face, from the midst of which protruded a broad and thick nose. On his head was a broad brimmed leather hat. The eyes under that brim were piercing and black, and at least for the moment seemed to be radiating compassion and concern as he approached Lirak.
“Easy there, I’m not going to hurt you.” Lirak was too sick and exhausted to even be surprised that the voice spoke in the language of the Dwon.
“That’s a nasty cut you have on your head son,” the man said. “And we better do something about that shoulder.”
“I’m fine,” Lirak said, but not very convincingly.
The figure reached out and placed a hand on Lirak’s forehead. “You’re sick and in need of healing. You probably won’t make it back home with those wounds. What did you run into?”
Lirak decided that simply telling the truth was the best thing to do.
“It was a great cat. She attacked me early this morning, I stabbed her twice and she tracked me and attacked me twice more. I shot her with an arrow. She is dead.”
There was a long pause as the man seemed to be appraising Lirak suspiciously. “That’s quite a story young man. You can’t have seen more than seventeen summers. That’s a story many a great fighter would proudly tell. But it looks like you didn’t get off easy yourself,” he paused. “Luckily I can try to tend to your wounds, at least enough so that you have a chance of getting back home.”
Sighing heavily Lirak evaluated his situation. Wounded, weak from loss of blood and possibly dealing with a festering shoulder, he admitted to himself that he could use some help.
“How do I know I can trust you?” he asked.
“Heh” the voice laughed, “good question. One I could just as easily ask you.”
With that the man reached down and lifted Lirak by his good arm, and the two of them stood up. “Come with me” he said, and turned toward the hut. “My name is Dedrik,” he said, as they walked the short distance, with Lirak leaning heavily on the large man.
“I am Lirak,” Lirak responded.
As they walked, Lirak noticed that Dedrik was examining him closely, with a look of mild surprise on his face.
“Forgive me my young friend, but you don’t much look like the Dwon I have seen,” Dedrik finally said as they stepped onto the platform in front of the strange hut.
Lirak bristled. “I favor my mother.”
“Indeed,” Dedrik said with raised eyebrows. “Well, here we are.” Dedrik waved his hand as he opened the door and led Lirak in.
Inside the hut Lirak found himself in a small enclosed area with a fire burning in a stone fireplace. A table sat in the middle of the area, along with a few chairs. Opposite the fireplace was a series of wooden shelves which held a wide variety of objects ranging from seemingly ordinary rocks to elaborate glass containers filled with liquids. Lirak could not begin to guess the purpose of most of them. On the northern wall there was another door that concealed the remainder of the hut from his view.
“OK, let’s take a look at you,” Dedrik said. “Sit here” he indicated the chair closest to the shelves. The chair had a soft cushion on it that Lirak appreciated greatly. Untying Lirak’s makeshift bandage, Dedrik carefully lifted it off his shoulder, which had once again stopped bleeding. “Hmm…. Not quite as bad as I thought. You might well have survived this after all.” He looked at Lirak closely. “Maybe I underestimated you.” He prodded the area with his fingers, which caused a milky fluid to ooze from the punctures, and sharp pains made Lirak flinch. “Still, you would have had a bad couple of days fighting the infection off.” He then moved his attention to the scratches on Lirak’s head. “These should be dealt with. They’ll heal OK but they’ll leave nasty scars. Let me stitch them up and you won’t have too bad of a scar, in fact you might end up looking downright dashing. The ladies love that sort of thing.”
With that Dedrik moved to the shelves and pulled down a few items. “Have you ever had a wound stitched?”
“No, but I have seen our healer stitch wounds,” Lirak said.
“Good, that’s what I’m about to do to your head wounds. In the meantime, you’ll need to drink this; it’s a healing elixir that will keep you from getting sicker from the cat’s bite.” Dedrik poured a small amount of reddish liquid into a cup and handed it to Lirak.
“Go on, drink it, I’ve got no reason I know of to kill you,” Dedrik said. “And besides, if I did, I wouldn’t have to resort to poison.”
Lirak sniffed the cup and let a small bit of the liquid touch his tongue. It was bitter and left an unpleasant aftertaste. “Ugh,” he said.
“Go on, drink it, it isn’t supposed to taste good, it’s supposed to help you heal.”
Lirak gulped it down, hoping that he had not just been poisoned. He didn’t notice any immediate effects for good or ill. He noticed that Dedrik had placed a shiny pot on a flat surface behind him and was surprised to see flame reach up through the flat surface and lick at the bottom of the shiny pot.
“Heating up some water to clean your wounds,” Dedrik said in a matter-of-fact tone. His black piercing eyes seemed to be delving deep into Lirak’s past as he scrutinized Lirak’s clothing and goods. “Mind if I look at your knife?”
Lirak winced as he remembered the broken blade. But he merely nodded and Dedrik reached forward and pulled his broken obsidian knife from the sheath.
“Tsk, what a shame,” Dedrik said. “This is excellent work, truly exquisite. Did you make it?”
Lirak nodded, his head was swimming again, but for some reason he found the sensation almost pleasant and the pain in his shoulder, leg and head seemed to be coming from a long distance away.
“Broken in your cat fight?” Dedrik asked, as he replaced the broken blade in its sheath.
Lirak nodded again, but said nothing. The two sat in silence for a few moments before Dedrik stood and retrieved the shiny pot. He poured a bit of the red liquid in the pot and swished it around with a swatch of material, and then he slowly and carefully cleaned all of Lirak’s wounds, whistling a strangely familiar tune while doing so. Lirak was surprised to discover the process was only mildly painful. Then Dedrik held forth a small curved needle, smaller than any Lirak had seen before, and it reflected the light in the room brightly. Whatever it was, it wasn’t bone like the needles Lirak was used to.
“Now this is going to hurt a bit, and you need to hold completely still,” Dedrik said. With that he leaned forward and his big burly hands deftly began sewing the wound’s ragged edges together. Lirak felt several sharp pains, and felt a strange tugging sensation from the top of his head. Dedrik worked quickly, his fingers carefully parting Lirak’s hair, and the needle dipped, tugged and pulled. It took a short time, and with a final tug, Dedrik leaned forward and with a small shiny knife, he cut the thread. Then he poured a small amount of the same liquid Lirak had drunk onto his finger and he rubbed it into the wounds on Lirak’s head.
“There you go, good as new,” he chuckled.
“Are you a healer?” Lirak asked.
“Not like you mean,” Dedrik said. “I know the means of making simple elixirs and potions, and which herbs are helpful, much like your own healers, but there are far greater healers I’ve known.”
“Why do you live here?” Lirak asked. “And what kind of hut is this?”
“It’s
my summer home!” Dedrik laughed. “I suppose it looks very strange to you. To answer your first question,” Dedrik said, “I like it here. It’s quiet. There are no wars or politics. I can think here. And of course, every once in a while someone like you will show up,” Dedrik paused. “But usually they don’t look like you, even when they pass the test.”
“What ‘test’ are you talking about?” Lirak asked.
“Do you think you’re the first Dwon to come here to gather firestones?” asked Dedrik.
Lirak felt a sudden chill.
“I said nothing about firestones,” he said.
“There’s no other reason for you to be here Lirak. And even most Dwon would not have come all the way through that cave. Something inside just pushed you to come here, didn’t it?” Dedrik glanced at Lirak, his black eyes sparkling.
”Yes, I came for the firestones,” Lirak grudgingly admitted, seeing no reason to deny it. “Our village needs them, we won’t survive long without them.”
“Yes you would,” Dedrik said. “Many people get by just fine without firestones. These are handy to be sure, but you shouldn’t depend on them too much. The thing is, your journey wasn’t really about firestones, that was just an excuse. It’s more about the prophecy.”
“What ‘prophecy’?” Lirak asked, confused.
Dedrik leaned back in his chair, his eyes seemed to recede into the shadows of his heavy brows. He took a deep breath and then looked out the window with a heavy sigh.
“Lirak, I almost envy your innocence. But that’s about to change. But not now, not today, you are too sick and too tired.”
Lirak noticed that it was true, his limbs were heavy, and his eyelids were drooping. He realized he was fighting to stay awake.
“Here, follow me, we’ll get you to sleep and we can have a nice long chat tomorrow,” Dedrik said. With that he took Lirak’s arm and half guided, half hauled him through the northern door, down a short hallway into a much smaller room with a small cot in it. Lirak lay down and found himself falling into a deep sleep.