“Oh … no, it’s not like that. It’s just that, well, we didn’t leave the north well. There were some lies spread about me. Going back might not be a good idea.”
“Now that’s a serious matter …” Thormar drew and released a small cloud that drifted towards the fire where the updraft whisked it up into the air. “I’ve always found it better to face lies than turn from them,” he said, gazing into the flames, “like keeping my enemy in front of me. I’ll tell you what, young Aedan, when you decide to head back home, if I can, I’ll make the journey with you. A good word from a retired commander will go a long way – no sheriff would question my word. And I’m more than happy to add my knuckles into the bargain if they are needed.”
“Thank you,” Aedan said. “That means a lot to me.” The man’s generosity warmed him as much as the fire. He only wished that his problems in the Mistyvales could be solved that simply. “But what will you do if you go back to Glenting?” he asked.
“Ah, now you inquire after something that touches near to my heart. How much do you know about the making of pipes?”
As darkness gathered around the camp, settling at a respectful distance from the fire, Thormar expounded on the different shapes of bowl, shank and stem, the characteristics of briar root, cherry wood, maple, and clay. His voice became wistful as he told of his plans to build a small workshop at the end of a quiet street where his cabin could overlook the river, and where he could smoke an evening pipe on the veranda while dangling a lazy hook in the water. Aedan found himself wanting to swallow the hook and clutch the dream for himself. He had not thought much of a peaceful life. Other purposes had driven him. But the commander’s plan sounded good, very good, except perhaps for the smoke.
Later that night after he had retired, he spent an hour trying not to smell or think of the meat-and-bean bread roll in his saddlebag. Then he finally surrendered, wolfed it down, and rolled into his blanket again with a broad smile and no remorse.
Before his thoughts grew sleepy, the vision of Thormar’s peaceful retirement glowed in his mind’s eye. Surely that was the end for which he too strove. Surely it was the only sense behind all the armies and weapons and spilled blood of the nation – not battle and victory, but the peace that lay on the far side, calling so patiently and so softly as to even be forgotten by those who won it. Before sleep took him, he promised himself he would not forget.
Aedan was beginning to feel slightly easier in the camp, but there was one change that was for the worse. The nearer they drew to the dreaded fortress, the longer the soldiers’ hushed evening discussions became – discussions that would fall silent at the approach of anyone outside their number. Aedan managed to catch the occasional drift of speech. They were telling stories of Kultûhm, rumours of ghosts, giants, ogres and goblins. It seemed that the fortress had a claim on every legendary horror.
But the stories that would have brought laughter back within the city walls were having a different effect here. Some of the tales he had read himself: “every man that entered was lost”, “sounds that cause the earth to shake and birds to fall from the sky”, “black vapour like a spray of night”. The last, he suspected to be from his own account, suitably embellished.
And it was not just the stories. The land, too, was growing stranger. Stands of giant trees began to reappear, more now than Aedan remembered. They loomed over the hills like ancient watchmen – many of them dead, but some very much alive. The feeling of being watched was heightened during the dim, mist-cloaked mornings which played all manner of tricks on the senses.
It was a little after first light when a trembling soldier reported seeing the shudder of distant leaves on a wooded hillside, as if some large beast was moving beneath the canopy, but Merter knew of no such beast inhabiting this area. He wanted to separate from the party and investigate, but Osric was not prepared to have anyone else lead their company through the drifting fog, so the sighting was left unexplained. But it was not forgotten.
Later, after the mist had cleared and the sun began to warm the ground, they headed towards what looked like a broad tree and turned out to be a colossal bush. Under the shade, they found, leering back at them with dark bulbous eyes, a statue that Merter assumed was some kind of boundary marker. It was a carving of the most monstrous locust, bigger than a man, made from such materials and finished with such precision that the creature looked real. Startlingly real. Normally the statues of kings or mythical guardians were used, but a locust of this size was no less impressive – or intimidating, seeing as locusts were considered portents of devastation.
The more superstitious believed that boundary markers could be imbued with dark powers. Clearly the soldiers were of this persuasion. None felt like resting anymore, and they moved on.
Aedan could sense the radiating fear. He was sure the only thing that preserved order was the weight of Osric’s presence. The general’s eye was quick and his discipline firm. The awe in which the soldiers held him kept them in their place, especially after the way he had led them against the Fenn war scouts with losses of less than one for each of the enemy’s ten. And true to his values, he not only kept the company disciplined, but immaculately neat at all times. Camp hygiene was better than that of a moderately priced inn. Uniforms were cleaned, shoes polished, beards trimmed, and no man was permitted to smell worse than his horse. None dared test Osric in this, so the party looked almost parade-ready, both in appearance and discipline.
But it was not lost on Aedan that between Osric, Merter, Thormar and Tyne, one was always on watch and the others slept fully armed.
That evening, as Aedan was stretching out by the fire, Osric told him in Sulese to wait a while and then move to the other side of the fire, away from the soldiers. That was when Aedan began to notice the silent tension between soldiers and officers. The following night, he and Liru were told to sleep with their weapons in hand under their blankets. The knot in his stomach made it difficult to rest; stars were dimming by the time exhaustion overcame him.
There was little talk in the camp when day broke, and they travelled in silence. There would be one more camp before they reached the fortress. Aedan disrupted the stillness to ask, in Fenn, what Culver was planning to do when they arrived. Fergal gave a long answer in a language Aedan had never heard. When asked for a translation, he said that it meant “patience is acquired through exercise”.
By mid-morning, that dreaded round tower appeared over the distant hills, as dark and watchful as he remembered. Aedan was unable to eat anything more than a few raisins. It was afternoon when they crested the final ridge.
No one spoke.
Aedan remembered well the plain that now lay beneath them, and the rock-walled hill in the centre. On top of the rise, dominating it, Kultûhm waited, challenging them, daring them to approach. Aedan saw it as he had before – vast, lonely, and dreadful.
But if he was stilled by the sight, the others were turned to stone. There was something deeply unsettling about the fortress, in no way lessened by the intervening years. It was as though Kultûhm returned the stares of its watchers.
Osric finally broke the spell and led them down to the bank of a river. They made camp under the swaying locks of grey willows, but it was a restless camp that became increasingly uneasy as darkness settled. Heads were constantly turning in the direction of the fortress, often with sharp movements as if in response to something sensed or imagined.
A camp of frightened soldiers held far less comfort for Aedan than the surrounds. So, as he had often done over the past few days, he used a skin to collect the entrails of the deer Merter had killed, and carried them out into the night.
He could hear the soft tread of the paws that soon followed him, but made no effort to run. He skirted the hill and placed his burden on the ground, then retreated to a solitary rowan tree and pulled himself up onto a smooth-skinned branch.
He did not have long to wait. The old grey wolf looped past him and then around the meat. It circled twice
more, sniffed, and crept forward. Even when the meal was under its nose, it stood long and tested the air for danger. Aedan climbed down from the branch and seated himself against the trunk. The wolf looked at him, but over the past days it had grown accustomed to this curious bringer of gifts. The meat was fresh and soon overcame the animal’s fear.
As it ate, Aedan heard a soft tread nearby. He guessed it would be Tyne. Merter would have been quieter; everyone else in the camp would have been crunching leaves and branches from half a mile back. The wolf looked up and retreated a few yards as Tyne drifted in from the darkness and sat beside Aedan. After a while the wolf crept back to his meal.
“So this is where you go at night,” Tyne whispered.
“I remember him,” Aedan said. “The white patch over the side of his face made him stand out. This old wolf once led the pack, once terrified me. It was while we were fleeing his pack that we entered the fortress.”
They watched the old animal, hunched with age, devouring the meat with hungry gulps as his nervous eyes darted around him.
“You would think,” Aedan said, “that I’d feel good about this – I’ve grown while he, my old enemy, has shrunk. Yet all I feel is a terrible ache. I pity him, that he has been called by age to surrender his strength.”
“Old words for one so young.”
“From a song. I always hated that song, hated all sad songs. I thought they made happy people miserable. Now I think I understand them better. Bards write them because they can’t hold them back. Sadness has got to flow out or it gets stuck and turns bitter.”
Tyne sighed. “I believe you are right,” she said quietly.
Aedan looked at her. “Why did you and Osric not marry? I see it in the way you smile when you bring him his food, in the way he steps beside you at the first hint of danger.”
Tyne shuffled. “And I thought you a child,” she said. Then she was quiet for a long time.
Aedan waited. Talking with Fergal had taught him to do that.
“Perhaps,” she said, “it’s like with your bards. There is deep sadness that we both carry. Love opens the gate to the deepest hurt.”
“That sounds wrong to me,” Aedan grumbled, partly to himself.
“Maybe when you’ve known a little more of what it is to lose those you love, you’ll think better of me, better of Osric.”
Aedan decided to let her assumption be. He wondered what the loss had been with Tyne. He stared out into the moonlight a long time before he remembered a northern fable. “Have you heard the story of the two lands?” he asked.
“No. But I’d like to.”
“It’s a rillom, but I’m not going to get the flow or the rhyming parts right. As well as I can remember, the tale goes like this. There were once two lands where great battles were fought. After they had ended, both lands had corpses scattered all over. When the clouds approached, the first land said, ‘Leave me. If you pour water onto me, you will spread the poison of these corpses all over and disturb the little peace I have left,’ and it drove the clouds off. The other land took a deep breath and let the waters wash over it, gradually draining the filth away. After twenty years, the first land had become a desert and the skeletons were the only things to be seen. The second land was renewed. Not even the bones could be found.”
“So the rain is love?”
“I think that’s what it means.”
Tyne was silent, then she shifted her feet as if to rise.
“Don’t go,” Aedan said. “I won’t talk about that anymore.” He heard her pause then settle slowly back, and realised that he had unwittingly cracked a very hard shell. He did not want to chase her away. She reminded him strangely of his mother. Under the war-like ways she was just as soft, just as loving, and just as much in need of love.
As was he.
The moon hung over the mountains and silhouetted the lone grey wolf with silver fire. The white patch on its head was smeared a little towards the bottom, tribute to a good meal.
As a breeze trickled over the grass and pressed through the leaves, an owl hooted above them, a soft and hollow tone over the thin rustling. Beyond the wolf, the ground flowed away into hills upon hills, rising slowly in breathless awe of the shadowy mountains. Aedan’s blood thrilled at the lonely beauty, the haunting perfection. It was a sight he hoped he would be able to recall for the rest of his days.
When the wolf had finished his meal and loped out into the night, they began to make their way back to camp.
A distant yell of terror froze them to the ground, but when they realised that it had come from the camp they sprang up and ran as fast as the darkness would allow. Aedan knew Tyne was trying to draw ahead but he wouldn’t let her. The orange light of the fire grew until they rushed into the open circle, blades flashing.
Everyone was staring at the fortress and one of the soldiers was pointing with a hand that shook like an unfastened sail in a heavy wind.
“What is it?” Tyne asked.
The soldier answered without turning to her. “It moved!” he said, his voice thin. “The fortress is moving! I saw one of the towers change shape.”
“Could it not have fallen? The fortress is very old.”
“No sound,” he said. “And it moved slow and careful like. The way a person moves his arm. The way living things move.”
The campsite was silent for a long time. Osric reminded the sentries to watch all quarters, no matter how compelling the stir.
“Too many stories?” Tyne asked.
Osric drew her back to the fire, away from the soldiers before replying. “I don’t want to say it to them, but something has moved up there more than once this evening. Merter saw it too.”
After a brief consultation with Merter, Osric decided to douse the fire.
Culver seemed unperturbed by the commotion. He had returned to a scroll covered with strange, thickly packed symbols, the moonlight being strong enough for him to read. Aedan was impressed. The man certainly had unshakable self-command. It seemed nothing could touch him, not even fear. Fergal, however, stood beside them.
“What do you think,” Tyne asked him.
“I think it very uncharacteristic behaviour for stone,” he said. “But beyond that I am as bewildered as you.”
“Culver too?”
“Him too.”
“Let us not contribute to their fears,” Osric said. “Appetite or not, we must demonstrate confidence or every man here will have deserted by morning.”
He cut a slice of venison and the others followed his example, though they ate with their stomachs in their throats and their eyes continually wandering to the dark mass on the hill.
After they had eaten, Culver handed a scroll to Fergal who left the camp and climbed the side of a grassy rise. When he reached a flat rock, he sat and began to study the parchment, glancing up repeatedly at the dark structures ahead of him. After a while Aedan found the camp stifling again. He followed his tutor and stood nearby. The symbols on the scroll conveyed nothing to him. But when he lifted his eyes to the hulking shapes on the plain below, and beyond them to the deep silence within moon-frosted walls and shadowed spires, he understood a message more chilling than sleet.
“Are those the instructions for getting in?” he asked.
Fergal released a deep breath. “Riddles, I’m afraid, not instructions. Misinterpreted to our doom.”
That was enough to put an end to Aedan’s interruptions. He peered out into the night, watching to see the movement the others had reported earlier, and hoping not to. The uneventful monotony finally lulled him, and he decided to head back to the camp and his blanket.
Osric’s fears were confirmed. It was starlight when he roused the camp. Six of the soldiers were gone with a portion of the food stores. Osric had seen them slip away, but had decided against challenging them. “Mortal fear,” he explained, “can make a certain kind of soldier more a liability than an aid. I do not want to have to worry about daggers in our backs while facing Kultûhm. The imme
diate problem, though, is that we may now be in danger of wolves, not so Merter?”
“Possible. It’s a big pack. Ten of us might seem more inviting than sixteen. The deserters run a greater risk. Perhaps they will draw the pack off, but I think not. The last time I saw the wolves, they were moving north. On their return they will reach us first.”
“We must hurry,” said Osric. “By first light we need to be across the plain. Tie up anything that jingles or gleams. Quickly now.”
The moon had set. It was by starlight that Merter picked the way over the dew-laden grass. To the left, the dark presence of the fortress could be felt more clearly than it could be seen, causing heads to turn in that direction repeatedly. Fortunately the ground was level with few obstructions or surprises. The remains of siege engines, army wagons and their fallen horses had long since disintegrated. Gentle mounds were all that remained from the disastrous final siege of Kultûhm. The fortress had never been conquered. It stood empty because it had been abandoned.
The statues that had looked enormous from a distance now defied belief. Features were not clear in the darkness, but the huge portions of sky where stars were blotted out left no doubt as to the size of these stone monoliths. It said something that the besieging army had not pulled any of them down.
Despite the measures taken to move silently, each fall of hooves or creak of saddles was like the clanging of a bell in that undisturbed and silent place. To Aedan, their passing there seemed like a coarse violation of some deep rest. And he was quite sure he did not want to wake whatever it was that rested.
They kept to the outer ring of the plain, counting off the statues as they passed them. When they reached the fifth, they stopped. Culver and Fergal approached the base – a massive stone platform with a broad stairway that reached from end to end. They spoke in low tones before calling for the others.
Culver stood wrapped in thought as Fergal explained. “There are two smaller statues on either side of the giant’s right foot,” he said. “The one that lies must have its right arm rotated until it points to the sky, the one that tells the truth must have its left rotated until it points to the fortress.”
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 57