by Paul Cook
By the slanting amber light of an early autumn afternoon, he saw more dust, more riders filing down the gap. Wearily, he set out to greet them. Amero wondered how many visitors the valley could take before the villagers and the nomads found it too close for comfort.
Chapter 13
When he left Yala-tene, Pa’alu’s step was light. The news Karada might be close by put power and speed in his stride.
When he reached Cedarsplit Gap, he started the climb. Within a few score paces the ravine divided into northern and southern branches. Having spotted his old comrades atop the plateau south of the village, he assumed the southern course would take him to them.
As Pa’alu walked along the red rock ravine, his head filled with thoughts of Karada and the hope that he would find her well. Pakito also figured in his hopes. Surely nothing could ever harm his foolish giant of a brother. The feel of the sun on his face finally broke through Pa’alu’s busy thoughts.
When he’d left the village the sun had been at his back, very low in the eastern sky. Now it was in front of him and over halfway toward its zenith. How long had he been walking? When had the ravine doubled back? Most annoying of all, why had he met none of his fellow plainsman?
Pa’alu shook his head. Perhaps he should go back the way he had come -
Even as the thought formed in his head, he came around a curve in the ravine and found that the narrowing gorge opened into a bowl-shaped canyon perhaps twenty paces wide. Pa’alu squinted. The rock walls here were not the dark red of the ravine but were made up entirely of a light-colored stone. The creamy rock reflected the sun’s light dazzlingly.
The plainsman moved farther into the bowl-shaped canyon. Its floor was strewn with loose rocks that varied from fist-sized chunks to boulders twice as wide as he was tall. The canyon’s rim was completely bare of foliage. Two other passages led out of the deep bowl — one due east, directly ahead of him, the other to his left, on the north side.
By now it was obvious to Pa’alu he’d taken the wrong way. Grumbling at his foolishness and angry at the wasted time, he turned to retrace his steps back to Cedarsplit so he could take the northern fork in the ravine.
The opening that had been directly behind him was gone.
Pa’alu stopped, surprised. Deciding that he must have moved away from the opening while looking at his surroundings, he searched along the curving wall of the canyon to locate the passage.
He found nothing but solid rock.
Perplexed, Pa’alu continued on around the edge of the canyon intent on finding the northern path out. It, too, seemingly had disappeared. He went to the center of the canyon, climbed atop a medium-sized boulder, and scanned for the openings.
His annoyance became shock. There were no openings at all in the canyon’s walls. They had disappeared, and he was trapped in a steep-sided, rock-filled hole in the ground.
“This is madness!” he exclaimed to the high walls. His voice ricocheted around and came back to him, mockingly. “Madness… adness… ness.”
Pa’alu picked up a stone and threw it at the canyon wall. It had no more effect than his spoken protest, but the action made him feel a little bit better.
“That won’t get you out.”
He whirled to face the unexpected voice. A few paces away, seated atop a low table of fractured shale, was a strange, gaunt figure dressed in green. Pa’alu brought up his javelin, ready to attack or defend.
“Peace to you, friend,” said the stranger in a mild, calm voice. “I mean you no harm.”
He was sitting with one leg tucked under him, the other drawn up to his chest. His leg seemed strangely long, his bent knee reaching up as high as his head. The weird man’s arms were also outlandishly proportioned — the forearms too short, the fingers incredibly long. His clothes added to his freakish appearance; he wore a tight-fitting leather garment in various shades of green.
Pa’alu slid off his own rocky perch and watched the stranger warily. “Who are you?”
“A friend. A friend, Pa’alu.”
“You know my name.”
“I’ve heard it said.” The stranger unfolded his legs. His dangling feet touched the ground — some three paces below the rock ledge on which he sat.
“Who are you?” Pa’alu repeated, staring at those weirdly long legs. “How did you get to this place?”
“My name is… well, call me Greengall. I’ve been watching this path for a long time, waiting for the right fellow to come along. I think you’re that fellow.”
“Did you trap me in here?” asked Pa’alu, gripping his javelin tightly in both hands.
“Yes.”
Pa’alu raised the weapon to his shoulder to cast. Greengall’s hairless brows knitted together in a fearsome frown at the javelin aimed unwaveringly at his chest.
“Don’t be stupid! If I can divert you to this place and close walls of stone, do you think I can be hurt by such a trivial weapon as that?”
Pa’alu lowered his weapon sullenly. “What do you want of me?”
“You came from the place called Arku-peli, did you not?”
“I did.”
Greengall smiled, and Pa’alu flinched. The smile had drawn the corners of the stranger’s mouth up until they were even with the outside corners of his jade-green eyes. The plainsman swallowed hard.
Seeming not to notice Pa’alu’s discomfort, Greengall said, “A pleasant habitation! Such a picturesque location, too. How many people live there, would you say?”
The back of Pa’alu’s neck prickled, as it did when he heard the night cry of a wolf. “I don’t know,” he replied slowly. “I’ve only been there a few days.”
“They say a dragon lives there, too.”
“That’s true.”
“His name is…?”
“Duranix,” replied Pa’alu.
Greengall clapped his hands together. “Duranix, that’s it.” His expression abruptly went from extravagantly merry to deadly serious. “Have you seen him?”
“I’ve seen him.”
“It must have been very frightening for you.”
“No, most of the time I spent with him, he was in human form.”
Greengall’s head tilted to one side. He sighed loudly. “He’s so good at that. Me, I look like an overgrown grasshopper.”
The comparison was apt, and it prompted Pa’alu to ask, “Are you a dragon, too?”
Greengall snapped to his feet, causing Pa’alu to back quickly, hand flexing around the shaft of his javelin.
“What did you say?” Greengall snarled. Unfolded, his legs were enormously long and tightly muscled. His green leather breeches fit him like a second skin. At full height he towered over Pa’alu, who was tall for a plainsman.
“What did you say?” Greengall repeated.
Pa’alu did not reply but hurled his javelin at Greengall’s narrow chest. It was a good cast, well aimed and propelled by all of the nomad’s considerable strength. Even so, Greengall’s long-fingered hand lashed out and grabbed the elegant elven spear in mid-flight. The green-clad stranger laughed, deep in the back of his throat.
“A poor decision,” he said lightly. Saliva dripped from the comer of his too-wide mouth. “Here I am, trying to be polite, and you throw a sharp stick at me! Poor, poor choice. After I’m done with you, you won’t be throwing anything, little friend.”
He advanced, covering the ground between them in two vast strides. Pa’alu snatched a bronze dagger from his belt and prepared to sell his life dearly. Before he could strike, however, Greengall caught him by the wrists. He stretched his hands apart, pulling Pa’alu’s arms out straight. With no effort, Greengall hauled the stout warrior’s arms over his head and lifted until he stood on tip-toe. Pa’alu’s knife hand went numb, and the dagger fell to the ground.
“Humans are so loosely made,” Greengall said matter-of-factly, pushing his caricature of a face close to Pa’alu’s. “I wonder how long you can live without your arms?”
His lips parted enough
to reveal his teeth. They were awful, serrated, and like nothing in any human mouth. Greengall lifted one long, narrow foot and rested it on Pa’alu’s feet, pinning him in place. Then he pulled on Pa’alu’s arms. With agonizing slowness, the creature increased the tension. The plainsman resisted as long as he could, then groaned in pain. His shoulders began to ache, then burned as though they were on fire. The remorseless Greengall pulled harder. Something in his shoulders gave. Pa’alu’s eyes filmed over with red agony.
The haze of pain was penetrated by an intense blue flash. The tension on his arms slackened, then ceased. The weight of the stranger’s foot on his feet disappeared. Pa’alu dropped heavily to the ground. His eyes were still clenched shut in pain, but he heard a loud, tortured hiss. Then an acrid odor filled the air, searing his throat. His arms flopping uselessly, Pa’alu rolled away, gasping for air.
When he opened his eyes, Pa’alu saw Greengall was backed up against the canyon wall. The chest of his taut leather shirt was scorched, and a sickly yellow fluid dripped from a wound there. Pa’alu followed the monster’s line of sight. He gasped when he realized who his rescuer was.
It was Vedvedsica, the elf priest. His severed hand had somehow grown back, for he was pointing two hands at the bizarre green-clad monster who cringed against the shadowed rock wall.
Greengall’s inhumanly wide mouth howled obscenities at the elf, who stood on a boulder ten paces away. A cloud of greenish gas blasted from Greengall’s mouth and swirled around Vedvedsica like a gale of vile smoke. The tiniest wisps of the gas strayed over to Pa’alu, causing him to cough and gag, yet Vedvedsica stood unmoved by the full blast of it.
“You should not have come out,” Vedvedsica told Greengall loudly. “Your powers are weakened when you leave your swamp. If Duranix or his kin catches you here, your life will be forfeit.”
“So why do you do their dirty work, elf?” Greengall snarled. “Have you come to worship little Duranix as the stupid humans do?”
“Duranix and I have business to settle that doesn’t concern you,” replied the priest. He pressed his hands together and blue light began to emanate from them.
Realizing another attack was imminent, Greengall screamed horribly and launched himself upward. He vanished in a blur of motion, leaving behind a whirlwind that sucked all the greenish vapors out of the bowl-shaped canyon and into the sky.
Pa’alu got up slowly, still unable to use his arms, which hung limply at his sides. To Vedvedsica he croaked, “I thank you, but why did you rescue me?”
“Troublesome as Duranix is,” said the priest, casting a distasteful glance skyward, “things would be infinitely worse if that creature usurped his place.”
“But I — ” He swallowed with shame to say it. “I cut off your hand!”
Vedvedsica shrugged. “An annoyance and a setback, but I have no time to waste on matters of petty revenge. How badly are you hurt?”
Pa’alu tried to move his arms. His hands tingled, his shoulders burned, and he couldn’t make the limbs work. Vedvedsica stepped down from his boulder. His hand dipped into a hidden pocket in his robe and came out with a large green leaf, rolled into a tube. He took Pa’alu’s hand. The plainsman turned white with agony at the forced movement, but he couldn’t pull away. Vedvedsica shook out of the leafy tube a small round berry, the size and color of a black cherry.
“Swallow it,” ordered Vedvedsica. With much effort, the plainsman got the berry to his lips. Within seconds a warm sensation spread through his injured limbs. The terrible pain ebbed, then vanished altogether. He fell to his knees before the priest.
“I am yours to command,” he said humbly. “That monster would have killed me for sure if you hadn’t come. How can I repay this debt to you?”
The elf tucked his hands into his sleeves and assumed a thoughtful expression. “If you truly mean to repay me, there is something you can do for me,” he said.
“You have only to name it, great one.”
Vedvedsica lowered his eyes. “What if I asked you to kill someone?”
The answer hung in Pa’alu’s throat for a moment. “Then they would die,” he said haltingly.
“Don’t be such a fool,” the elf said. “Don’t give away your conscience so readily. The world is full of beings who are stronger, smarter, or more ruthless than you — your will is the only thing these powerful ones cannot take away from you, as long as you don’t let them!” Pa’alu looked confused, so Vedvedsica continued, “What I want is simple, plainsman. No one need die for my wishes, least of all you. I want the yellow stone Duranix took from me. You know the one, don’t you?”
“Y-yes,” Pa’alu said tentatively.
“Get the stone from him and bring it here, to this place.” Vedvedsica pressed his thumb into the ledge on which Greengall had been sitting. His finger made a deep hole, as if the hard stone was merely wet clay.
“Leave the yellow nugget in this hole. I will find it.”
He turned to go. Pa’alu, feeling fully recovered from his one-sided fight with Greengall, followed after the priest, saying forlornly, “How can I get out of here? The passages in and out are gone!”
“That was simply one of the monster’s illusions,” Vedvedsica said, waving a dismissive hand. “Look again.”
Sure enough. The three paths were right where Pa’alu had expected them to be. He blinked a few times, but the clefts in the canyon wall remained.
Vedvedsica was already picking his way over the sloping ground to the east. Pa’alu called after him. “What is this yellow stone? Why is it so important?”
The strange elf paused, stroking the sparse hair on his pointed chin. “It’s part of a larger answer,” he said. The plainsman obviously didn’t understand, so Vedvedsica offered this explanation. “When hunting, if you find large footprints, you know you’re on the trail of big game, don’t you?”
Pa’alu nodded.
“Well, consider the yellow stone the ‘footprint’ of something much larger, so large your human mind can’t conceive it. It has touched a great font of power — perhaps the source of all power in the world.” His eyes grew distant, looking at some vista only he could see. “When I have it,” he mused aloud, “I’ll know for sure.”
His golden, almost feline eyes focused on Pa’alu once more, impaling him with a glance. “Get the stone, human. Get it soon, and your debt,” he said the word almost with amusement, “will be paid.”
Karada’s straggling band found the first signs of habitation when they reached the river of the falls. Ail along both banks were stumps of trees, cut down with stone axes. Wandering plainsmen never cut down whole trees; they used only dead or windfall limbs.
Karada squatted by the stump of an oak. She scooped up a handful of wood chips and sniffed them.
“Sap’s still fresh,” she remarked. She dumped the chips, dusting her hand on the leg of her chaps. “Can’t have been cut more than three or four days ago.”
“There are drag marks, here,” Pakito said. The dark loam was deeply indented where the felled tree had been dragged to the river and rolled in.
“I don’t understand. The stream flows away from the mountains. How could they float logs against the current?” asked Samtu.
“They must haul them from the riverbank,” Karada replied. “It would be easier than dragging them all the way back to the mountains.”
Eighty-eight survivors of Karada’s once mighty band stood quietly behind their chief, waiting for her word to move on. Their numbers had diminished in the last days of their journey. Each night a few slipped away, no longer believing Karada was leading them to safety. Autumn was in the air — mornings broke crisp and cool — and the plainsmen’s instincts were to head north, following the game herds as they migrated before winter set in. Karada’s trek east into the inhospitable mountains seemed like folly.
Karada paid no attention to the lessening muster. Their strength as a people lay in their unity. Leaving the band was a step backward for the deserters, a retur
n to the hard, desperate days of lonesome hunting and gathering. If there were those in the band too weak to trust her, then she didn’t want them around anyway.
“Hatu,” she said, rising to her feet, “how far to the lake?”
He surveyed the gray peaks with his good eye. “Half a day,” he said. “Certainly by nightfall.” He pointed to a trio of nearby mountains. “The river passes through them on the north side of the low ridge. The lake of the falls is on the other side.”
“Good. Let’s get moving.”
Hatu had not been to the lake in ten years, and his memory played him false. By the time the sun had begun to dip below the western horizon, Karada’s band was barely in the shadow of the first major peak in the mountain range. They paused on the riverbank and ate cold rations from their vanishing supplies, not bothering to build campfires or forage for fresh food. This was usually the time of day the nomads made camp for the night, but Karada insisted they push onward.
She formed a mounted patrol of six, including herself, and rode ahead into the darkening valley. The rest were left under the leadership of Targun and Samtu, to follow at the best possible speed.
The sound of their horses’ hooves rattled loudly off the walls of the narrow valley. Signs of human life continued: tracks in the mud on the riverbank, signs that outcroppings of rock had been hammered away to make wider trails. By the side of one trail Karada and her scouts found a pile of stinking garbage — fruit and vegetable peelings, offal, and the like. It was becoming more and more obvious they were approaching a sizable settlement.
The valley walls closed in, and the river made a sharp bend to the right. The low thrumming sound they’d been hearing became a steady booming noise, heralding the great waterfall. The night was very dark, with only occasional glimpses of the stars through scudding clouds. Karada ordered her companions to halt at the river’s bend and stay out of sight. She rode forward slowly alone.
Even by filtered starlight the waterfall was a stunning vista. The river poured down the mountainside, fed by a thousand clear springs and the snows of a long winter. It gathered force and hurled itself over the cliff, losing a third of its volume to mist. What remained churned up a bright, clear lake, which narrowed once more into the river they’d been following.