by Court Ellyn
The sun had set behind the bulk of the Bastion; the shadow was cool on his back. Shouts from the wall, the twang and thunk of siege engines spoiled what otherwise might have been a lovely evening. He felt the weight of eyes and noticed people on the street corners ogling him, leaning together and whispering. The attention made him ache for the quiet loneliness of Avidanyth’s bowers. Even Ruthan was staring at him. She rode beside him on her sorrel palfrey, studying him unabashedly. “Am I … am I like you?” she asked.
He blinked in surprise. “Did no one tell you you’re avedra? Not even Laral?”
She shook her head. “But I can’t do what you do, make fire, command wind, throw lightning.”
“If you had training, perhaps you could. Yet, I admit, I’ve never encountered an avedra who owned your particular talent.”
“Talent,” she scoffed. “It isn’t a talent. It’s a curse. It’s better not to know, better to be blind. When I saw my brother’s death … Leshan’s death … I decided I never wanted to See again. So I stopped looking into the darkness and learned to close the lid on the visions. That’s what it feels like, opening and closing a box. The vision that told me to shut the gate, before the ogres attacked? I didn’t mean to see that.”
“Many of us saw things at that time.”
“It was the Mother-Father?”
“Yes.”
She gulped, chewed her lip. “I would See again, if you asked me to.”
And why was Thorn so special in her regard? “To learn if the ogres wipe us from the face of Lethryn?”
She nodded. “And … and other things.”
When this dynasty of kings is at an end… For half a heartbeat, Thorn was tempted to accept her offer, but Ruthan was right. It was better to be blind. If he knew what the Mother-Father’s prediction meant, if he knew the manner of his death, he might never leave his rooms again. Humbling, to realize he was so great a coward. But who wasn’t in regards to their own end? Ignorance allows room for courage. “No, I don’t think so. Besides, if we learned the worst, we might as well stop fighting and use our blades on ourselves.”
“But if it were the other, would it not help?”
Thorn shrugged. “There’s much to be said for what rumors can do for morale. We could always let it leak that you’ve seen victory. Encourage the troops but spare you. I’ll mention it to Kelyn. Do you … do you want to be trained?” Was it too late to begin? She must be nearly thirty. And with everything else on his plate, Thorn barely had time for Carah.
“Would it stop people calling me crazy?”
Thorn chuckled. “My dear, I’ve heard that same accusation too often myself. Sometimes it’s actually true.”
~~~~
39
Five days after Tarsyn woke, he insisted he was ready to resume the search. Laral argued. “It’s too soon. You’ll relapse.”
“I’ll take a bottle of Gyerda’s tonic with me.” Tarsyn moved his fingers, flexed his wrist, to prove his arm was healing fine. “Besides, my gut tells me we gotta hurry.”
Laral felt the same. Five days of waiting had made him antsy. He couldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes at a time. He slept no more than four hours a night. The rest of the time he roamed the subterranean streets of Gretzeng or stood at the grand gate, watching the slopes of the far mountains and the flagged roads winding through the valley below. Which path would lead him to his family?
Tarsyn didn’t have to wheedle much to convince him.
At dawn, the party gathered at Gretzeng’s mighty gate. The stone doors, carved with a panorama of the city they sheltered, opened on cogs broader than houses and chains as fat as towers. No’ak summoned—in some cases, coerced—his kin. They gathered their donkeys. Their women packed enough food and supplies for an army.
Laral tried to stand out of the way. The dwarves bustled around his legs as if he were another ornament, like the mushroom-capped lampposts.
Kalla joined him. “I’m worried. Tarsyn shouldn’t be going.”
“We’ll keep an eye on him,” he assured her.
“I replenished our stock of medicines. The apothecary around the corner was kind and let me pay in silver.”
“Let you pay?”
“He wanted amethysts. I told him lowlanders don’t carry jewels. We’d be mugged by every highwayman in sight.”
No’ak arrived, dragging a heavy burlap sack along the street. The clanking and rattling hinted the sack carried metal objects. Weapons, maybe? Pieces of armor? He treated the contents roughly, however, as he slung the sack over a donkey’s haunches and tied it securely.
Tarsyn followed, carrying a small silver box. Presumably Gyerda had filled it with bottles of her tonic. “Keep those bandages clean,” she warned him, waddling at his elbow. “There’s extra gauze in there if you need it.”
He stooped and kissed her between her coiled white braids. She waved him away, her craggy face flushing.
Drys’s voice rose over that of bickering dwarves and indignant donkeys. “What do you mean we can’t take the horses?” He held aloft the rains of his chestnut, as if he meant to play keep-away.
The dwarf named Bjorni, hairless as a babe and nowhere near as pretty, puffed up like a battling bullfrog. “Daft dinnobi! Horses can’t go where we’re going, I already tol’ ya!”
Kalla whispered to Laral, “I guess he ignored the fact that we hadn’t saddled our own. Or maybe he can’t abide being shorter than you.”
Laral chuckled into his glove.
As the sun broke over the eastern peaks, No’ak led the party from the gate. Ten dwarves, five donkeys, and four humans followed the flagged switchback down the mountainside. No’ak pointed toward the infant sun and a degree or two south. “See that mountain?”
Laral shielded his eyes from the glare and glimpsed the shoulder of a mountain peeking from behind a great snow-covered massif. “The one with the flat summit?”
“That’s Lord Daryon’s mountain.”
“The whole thing?” asked Tarsyn.
“The whole bloody thing, aye. Territorial bastard. His people call it Nilnur. We call it Luenhault. You say Gray Mountain. Should take us only a couple of days to reach it. If the lad holds up.”
“I’ll hold up,” Tarsyn vowed, sticking out his chin. The expression made him look more uncertain than stubborn.
“Is Daryon Elari, then?” Laral asked.
“No. A half-blood.”
“Avedra?”
“Aye, is that a problem?”
Laral chuckled. “My sister is avedra, and my son.” Then he remembered. “Was.”
“The son we’re tracking?”
“Not Andy. My youngest. Jaedren was taken, too.” Shame and sorrow fell like stones into the pit of his stomach.
No’ak let out a gruff sigh. “Aye, no wonder you’re so hell-bent on risking this journey.” He changed the subject. “Daryon, now, he’s the only avedra I ever knew. Or hope to know, if you’ll pardon me.”
“Why call him mad?” Laral thought of Ruthan, sweet dear girl, and the years she’d been packed away behind Tírandon’s walls because even their father considered her mad.
“He builds things, odd things,” No’ak replied. But if that defined madness, then who among dwarves was sane? “Dangerous things.” He cleared his throat. “And treats them like his family.”
By then the mountain slope leveled out and the highway led the party into the green expanse of Junction Valley. A stream trickled down the middle of it, and lush sedge and yellow flaxenmane grew in the sun while fern clung to the shadows among the spruce trees. A network of roads crisscrossed the valley, giving it its name.
“Guess I should warn you. We’re bound to run into Daryon’s band of elves, too. They’re a shade more pleasant than ogres. Less predictable, certes. Do you have much experience with ‘em?”
“Elarion? A bit.”
“You seem to know your courtesies.”
“Thorn Kingshield managed to recruit a company—”
“You know Thorn Kingshield?” The heavy folds around No’ak’s eyes stretched taut. Years of toil sloughed from his face until he looked like a boy at a storyteller’s knee. That Thorn’s reputation should strike this grizzled dwarf with awe proved deeply amusing.
“I was squire to his brother,” Laral admitted.
“Is he everything they say?”
“What do they say?”
For the next mile, No’ak regaled the party with one grand rumor after another. Among the Drakhan dwarves Thorn had grown into something of a god. To look at him was to risk being turned to ash. His black horse had lightning for a mane and trailed smoke like thunderclouds or especially annoying flatulence. Apparently, it was because of Thorn that the Zhiani barbarians (who carried living, breathing miniature dragons on their shoulders) had fled back to their desert. And surprisingly, it was Thorn, not Kelyn, not Laral’s brother Leshan, who had vanquished the Warlord who owned a face like a gargoyle, and not with anything as conventional as a sword, but by commanding armies of demons.
Should Laral tell No’ak that he happened to be at Brengarra that day? That Thorn slept under a tree while Leshan and Kelyn battled Goryth amid the Thunderwater? Kalla seemed to know his mind and pressed a finger to her mouth. “Just don’t tell Thorn,” he whispered into her ear. “His head is half too big already.”
At a crossroads, Bjorni called a halt. He and his kin consulted in grunts and gravelly whispers. “No, Daryon first,” No’ak insisted, and that seemed to settle the argument.
Once the dwarves got the donkeys moving again, No’ak pointed down the road that branched north. “The bogginai led your people that way. More or less, the road leads straight to Sky Rock Mount. Those mines once belonged to us, back in my grandpap’s day.”
“Which mountain is Sky Rock?” asked Tarsyn, a desperate note in his voice.
“Can’t see it from here. It’s two or three days’ walk, past Jasper Ridge, past Broehault.”
Laral’s feet followed the eastern road, but his heart raced up the northern. With a deep ache he watched those stone flags recede. So close. Foolishly he found himself searching for Wren, for Lesha, for Andy among the spruce trees. Black fog swam before his eyes; the road swayed. He reached for the nearest shoulder. Tarsyn steadied him. Laral apologized. “Can’t seem to catch my breath. Altitude, I guess.”
“I understand,” said Tarsyn. “I almost told No’ak to go to hell and took the other road.”
After that, the pace that the dwarves set seemed maddeningly slow. The donkeys moved at one speed, and they would not be rushed. Neither would the dwarves’ short legs. On the other hand, they did not pause to rest or eat. They cut the distance with the determination of a chisel boring through stone. By noon the party had reached the far side of Junction Valley and started up the lower slopes of the snow-covered massif that had birthed the sun that morning. No’ak called it Skynhault. Silver Mountain. “Years ago, we used the old mines to go straight through to Daryon, but bogginai collapsed the shafts ten-twelve years ago. So we built a road that winds up the mountain’s south flank. Good view. You’ll like it.”
“Do ogres live on this mountain?” Kalla asked, searching the bluffs overhead. Promises of a fine view were of secondary importance.
“Not anymore. Not that we know of. Between us and Daryon, they learned to avoid the place.”
“Then why not reopen the mines?” Drys asked. “Going through must be easier than going around.”
No’ak hmm’d and hawed for a while. “Well, the silver was dug out before the war started, and, well, the mountain is reputed to have a few … unusual inhabitants.”
“What does that mean?” Kalla demanded. Her words came in labored puffs. The road climbed at a steep angle through the spruce trees.
“Well now, let’s see.” If No’ak were standing still, he’d be squirming like a worm on a hook. Maybe Kalla was right to be worried. No’ak grunted and scratched his chin deep inside his beard. At last, he said, “Daryon’s folk call the mountain Noth’yr, Giant’s Spirit. One thing about Elarion is that they’re usually sensible folk. Not too superstitious. But some things they claim in their songs make me question their good sense. They say the giants were born of a great black silence and that the Mother-Father cursed them, turning every last one to stone. Their bones became the mighty fastnesses that are the Drakhans. Daryon’s people say that Noth’yr is all that remains of a wicked giantess who had a heart colder than a glacier. But if my people put stock in such a tale, we’d have to believe that giants got silver for blood. Skynhault was a rich mountain once.”
“So it isn’t haunted,” Kalla said.
No’ak cleared his throat in reply. As long as Laral’s legs were, he struggled to keep up. The dwarf wanted to escape the conversation, no doubt about it. “Well, caverns and shafts are always making some sort of noise, as if the mountain were breathing or gurgling or even humming.”
“No’ak, really!” Kalla’s freckled cheeks were flushed red, from exertion or anger Laral couldn’t tell. “Shall I ask Bjorni, or maybe Vosti?” Most of No’ak’s cousins and two of the donkeys had climbed ahead of them, but Kalla’s challenge traveled clearly in the crisp, still air.
“Aye, No’ak,” Bjorni called over his shoulder, “tell the lass. She’ll never sleep again.”
Laughter from the others bounced down the mountain at them.
“All right, all right.” No’ak’s hobnailed boots clomped a little heavier. “But remember it weren’t my idea. Now, my pap were a sober man, serious and soft-spoken. When he spoke, you listened, and no dwarf doubted his word. All the kin from Gretzeng worked the silver here in Skynhault, and nearly everyone among them had tales about this sound or that shadow. But one day when I was barely taller than my mam’s knee, Pap came home early. He came home alone. He swore he’d rather shovel donkey shite for a living that go back to Skynhault. Was he ill? No. Was it a cave-in? No. What was it then? No amount of bullying from my mam convinced him to tell her what scared him so, nor did she convince him to return to the mine like a decent dwarf. She said she was ashamed of his cowardly soul and went to work the mine in his stead. Pap stayed home and raised us, my four brothers, my three sisters, and me. If Mam ever saw what he’d seen down in the shafts, she swallowed it with a dose of pride and said nary a word.
“Then came my turn. We were all to go, my brothers and sisters and me, it’s just the way things were, and since I was oldest, I went first. My elders decided to break me in good. They took me to a cavern that was anything but natural. It was older than old and like nothing dwarvish. Nor ogrish, nor elvish, for that matter. In the light of my lamp I saw designs and shadowy figures in black paint that had faded little over the eons. They were terrifying, obscene. Even the letters made me think of blades and fangs and spilled blood.”
No’ak went quiet, remembering perhaps.
“But you saw no ghosts, no giant’s spirit?” asked Kalla.
He deftly evaded the question. “I once asked Daryon if he knew about the cavern. He said ‘Yes,’ and that was all. When I pressed him for his knowledge, his silence was as blunt as a fist. But then, sometimes Daryon likes to pretend he knows more than he does.”
“But,” puffed Tarsyn, “according to elves the mountain is the giant, right?”
“You’re not dim, lad,” said No’ak. “I don’t know about you, but I’m quite certain I got no letters and pictures scribbled on my innards.”
“Then who painted them?” Kalla persisted.
“Good question, sister.”
They climbed in silence after that. The valley fell away, the trees thinned, the sun grew old. Its heat fell across Laral’s shoulders like a yoke. Drifts of sun-bright snow gathered at the edges of the road; melt dampened the flagstones. Toes dug in, slipped. It took most of Laral’s willpower to put one foot ahead of the other and pull himself a few inches higher, higher, higher. When his legs insisted he stop for rest, he turned to measure his progress and found Tarsyn bringing up the rea
r, his fist clenched around a donkey’s tufted tail. “Feeling all right?” he asked when the two of them caught up.
Tarsyn managed a nod and a show of teeth. “Almost—almost had a tumble,” he panted. “Donkey caught me.”
“Are you faint? Would you rather ride?”
“Don’t think she’d like me nearly as much if I tried.”
Late in the afternoon, the flagstone road curved north, presumably toward one of the abandoned mines, but the party turned south onto an earthen trail. Narrow and uneven, hastily made and poorly maintained, the trail clung to the mountain’s face. Laral hugged the inner edge. One slip and he’d tumble into a ravine. The wind didn’t help; it hurtled up the south face and threatened to buffet him off the mountainside. The view was stunning, however, as No’ak promised. Sight of the world stretching away forever would’ve taken Laral’s breath away, if he’d had any to spare. The peaks to the south seemed to be bowing at Skynhault’s feet, showing the crowns of their bald heads. At their knees, like an offering, glimmered a grand lake, yellow with silt and mirror-still. “The Venna Koss,” No’ak called it, the Misty Lake. “Her mam is the Mist River. Treacherous river, that. Friend to neither dwarf nor man.” A white blade of water knifed through the clefts far below. According to Drys, the Mist flowed into the Ristbrooke, and it was the Ristbrooke that teamed with the Bryna to form the Brenlach and flowed on, wide and gentle, to the sea. This snowmelt then, these mountains, were the source of the waters, and Laral had wed his Wren upon the bridge that spanned their current. Perhaps it was merely the altitude making his head swim, but he felt that he had clapped eyes on the fingers of the Goddess mapping out all things.
Without warning, the donkeys picked up their pace, breaking almost into a trot. Tarsyn released his come-along or the donkey would have dragged him on his belly. Laral reached for his sword and looked for ogres, but the dwarves were chatting with renewed vigor. “We made good time,” No’ak called. “A full hour before nightfall. Cave’s just around the bend.”