Beyond the Draak’s Teeth

by Marcia J. Bennett

  “How hot are the waters?” Bhaldavin asked.

  Diak smiled. “Hot enough to boil a draak alive if he chanced to fall in, so I advise everyone to watch where you step.”

  The valley floor was strewn with large boulders, and winding in and out among the rocks was a shallow river that bubbled and steamed.

  “Do we cross or go around?” Hallon wanted to know.

  “Safer to go around, I think,” Diak answered.

  Gringers led out. By late morning they were three-quarters of the way around the main springs. They stopped and ate their midday meal near a large upthrusting cone of rock, one of many they had seen in the valley.

  “The water shoots out and leaves a residue each time,” Diak explained. He started to say something else, but a strange rumbling in the ground interrupted him.

  “Grab your packs!” Gringers yelled.

  There was mass confusion for a moment, then everyone was up and running. Diak stumbled and fell to his knees, but he was down only a second or two before Hallon came along and lifted him to his feet.

  Bhaldavin felt the tremor in the ground; it was followed by a whooshing sound of water and steam. He glanced back over his shoulder and almost lost his footing. He caught his balance and slowed, coming to a stop by the others who had turned to watch.

  Gallons and gallons of water shot high into the air, forming a mistlike fog that dropped softly over the valley and wet the small band of travelers.

  Gringers looked at Theon and laughed. “Interesting.”

  “To you, maybe,” Theon said, “but I’m not ready for another bath. Let’s get out of here.”

  Night found the travelers high above the hot springs, tucked away in the shelter of a small stand of gian pine; a bright fire chased back the evening shadows. Armloads of branches were gathered and piled near the fire.

  “We’ll use that tonight and gather fresh in the morning,” Diak said. “We’re nearing the timberline, and from this point on, if we want a fire, we’ll have to carry our wood with us and we’ll have to use it sparingly.”

  Hallon added a few branches to the fire. “Are there many draak this high up in the mountains?”

  “They don’t care much for cold weather, and they really aren’t built for mountain climbing,” Diak answered. “Still, we’ll keep watches just the same.”

  The next morning Gringers led his small band up the narrow river valley that overlooked the hot springs. The climbing wasn’t too difficult at first, then the valley floor sloped upward sharply, and Gringers was forced to stop every few hours to let Diak rest. Hallon finally took Diak’s pack; the wood both men carried was distributed among the others.

  Everyone was exhausted by the end of the day, and the chilly wet air that swept down from the peaks seemed twice as cold after the suns went down. Rather than expend their wood for a fire, Gringers ordered everyone to undress and put on the spidermoss vests and pants they had carried with them. The pants and vests would act as insulation under their regular clothes, the gossamerlike fabric holding in warmth while allowing the body to breathe normally.

  “Here, Lil-el,” Gringers said, tossing a tightly wrapped bundle to her, “you wear mine. The cold doesn’t bother me much, and I—”

  “Thank you, Gringers,” she said, tossing it back. “But I have my own.”

  “You do?”

  She smiled. “Don’t look so startled.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  “The same place you got yours,” she answered impudently.

  Gringers’s eyebrows raised in mock disbelief. “You— a thief?”

  Lil-el stood up, her chin raised in pretended disdain. “I do not think of it as theft. I prefer to look upon it as a, reward for long years of service. Now if you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I’d like a little privacy.”

  Gringers smiled as he watched Lil-el out of sight. As he began to undress, his glanced touched Bhaldavin. “She’s one in a thousand, Bhaldavin. I’ve never seen her equal.”

  Bhaldavin saw something in Gringers’s face that made him uncomfortable. “Gringers.” He hesitated; then because he had to know, he asked, “Do you love her?”

  Gringers’s eyes were hooded as he bent to untie his boots. He didn’t respond for a moment; then he looked up. “Yes, Bhaldavin,” he said softly. “I love her. I have loved her since we were children. I will always love her, but perhaps not in the same way you do. Does that make sense to you?”

  Bhaldavin thought about it for a few seconds, then nodded, remembering Lil-el’s own words about the bond she shared with Gringers. He felt a flicker of jealousy, which he quickly buried.

  Finished dressing, Gringers offered to assist Bhaldavin in pulling on the spidermoss vest. Bhaldavin had done fairly well learning how to dress himself with only one hand, but the tight-fitting vest eluded him, and, in disgust, he finally allowed Gringers to help him with it.

  Following supper, Diak brought out the magic box, and for the first time, Lil-el experienced its magic. The pictures within the imager were unlike anything she had ever seen before, but once she got past the feeling of disorientation when the scenes changed and the queasiness in her stomach settled down, she lost all fear of the magical device and became immersed in the glimpses of Barl-gan and the Ral-jennob. She found them very much like the men and women she had known all her life, yet there was an alienness about them that showed in their dress, their tools, their very speech. She recognized the trader tongue, though at times the accents were so strange to her ears that she missed what was being said; then too, there were some words she simply didn’t recognize at all.

  Diak tried to explain some of those words after he turned off the imager, but even he didn’t understand all the words.

  “Is that all there is?” Lil-el asked, as Diak prepared to put the box away.

  “No. There is more,” Diak said, “but it is best if taken in small doses. Each night, if we stop soon enough, we’ll use the life recorder to learn more about Barl-gan. I think it would be wise for us all to refresh our memories and try to imprint some of the scenes we’ll be seeing on our minds so as to be able to recognize landmarks if and when we see them.”

  “A good idea,” Gringers agreed.

  Bhaldavin’s glance fell on the fire stone as Diak took it from the box. Desire filled him, and he held out his hand. “May I hold the crystal a moment?”

  Gringers leaned forward and grabbed Bhaldavin’s wrist. “No. Not after what happened to you the last time.”

  “That won’t happen again.”

  “How can we be sure?”

  Bhaldavin looked at Gringers and realized that no amount of pleading would get him what he wanted. Gringers simply couldn’t take the chance of having one of them fall ill at that time. He glanced at Diak as Gringers released him.

  “The crystal will be mine when we reach Barl-gan?”

  Diak looked at Gringers and nodded. “That is our agreement.”

  After the crystal was put away safely, the talk centered on what lay ahead of them. Diak checked back through several pages of Freeman’s log, but there was little mention of the trek over the mountains except for a description of the river of ice that should point the way to the summit.

  They decided that they would give themselves seven days in which to find the ice river. If by the end of that time they had not found the river, they would consider returning to the Moss Forests. Seevan and the rafters would probably be gone by then, of course, but they had Lil-el’s boat and the two they had hidden, and with the few supplies they had, they could return to Lake Arden without too much trouble.

  Bhaldavin saw the grim set to Gringers’s lips as Diak spoke about going back. He had a feeling that whether it was seven days or seventy, Gringers would not go back without a fight.

  The next morning they filled the empty places in their packs with small chunks of wood, then lashed bundles of lighter branches to the tops of their packs. Blankets were rolled and tied into a sling that could be worn over
one shoulder along with their bows.

  The day was overcast as they started out, but by midday Ra-shun had burned through the cloud cover, and the rest of that day, she and her sister watched over their slow progress upward.

  Night followed day. Bundled in their hooded coats and spidermoss mittens, the small band huddled together for warmth as they slept, hoarding their supply of firewood for the colder nights ahead.

  Four days of steady climbing made it abundantly clear that Diak was weakening. The stops for rest came more often, and the old man couldn’t seem to catch his breath. All of them were feeling the effects of the altitude somewhat, but for Diak it was much worse. As they climbed higher and higher, his vision began to blur and eating made him queasy.

  Late in the morning of their sixth day of climbing, they finally came upon the glacier mentioned in Freeman’s diary. The edge of ice rose straight up and stretched across the valley they’d been following. There were large boulders and mounds of smaller rock at the base of the cliff.

  “When the ice melts, it must go underground,” Diak observed. He was leaning on Hallon’s arm, breathing heavily.

  Gringers’s eyes glittered with excitement. “Well, we’ve found what we were looking for—now all we have to do is follow the glacier to the summit. The ice is too sheer to climb. We’ll have to try the edge of the valley.” He pointed to the right. “That side looks easiest to climb.”

  They reached the side of the valley a short time later and had their midday meal before tackling the rocky slopes. Gringers was the first up. When he reached a level place, he threw down one end of a rope and hauled the packs up one by one. Then the others climbed up. Hallon and Diak went first, the younger man helping the older over the rough spots; then came Lil-el and Bhaldavin. Theon brought up the rear.

  Bhaldavin pulled himself up and over the last ledge of rock and caught his breath as he looked out past Gringers’s legs. He got to his feet, awed by the width and depth of the glacier as he traced its winding length up out of sight.

  “We follow that?”

  “It’s a natural roadway, Bhaldavin,” Gringers responded. “Take a look at the rocky peaks to either side and tell me you’d rather climb them.”

  Bhaldavin looked at the snow-capped peaks that towered over them and shook his head. “No, thank you,” he said and pointed to the ice. “That way looks easier.”

  Gringers looked down at the old man. “Diak, how do you feel?”

  “Stop worrying about me,” Diak grumbled.

  “It’ll be an upward climb all the way, but the grade doesn’t look as steep as what we’ve climbed so far. You let me know when you’re tired and we’ll stop, all right?”

  Diak nodded and bent to pick up the small bundle that held the diary and the imager. Hallon interceded. “I’ll take it, Diak, until you get your strength back.”

  Diak looked about ready to protest, then clamped his mouth closed. He knew he was slowing everyone down, but there was nothing he could do about it. He could not go back, and they wouldn’t leave him.

  “I should’ve done this years ago, when I was younger,” he muttered. “I never should’ve waited.”

  Gringers dropped a hand to his shoulder. “We’ll make it, Diak. We can’t be many days from the summit.”

  “You hope,” Theon said, pulling his pack into place. “We have food enough for two weeks if we’re careful, but not enough wood for a daily fire. If it gets much colder up there, we’re going to be in trouble.”

  Gringers gave Theon a look that told him to be quiet and went to help Lil-el and Bhaldavin with their packs. A short time later they stepped out onto the ice and started upward once more.

  The valley glacier wound in and out among the towering crags, and as the small band pressed forward, they quickly learned that the road they walked was not without its dangers. Not only was there danger from falling rocks, but there were crevasses in the ice. One particularly large crevasse forced them into a detour to the other side of the valley. Linked by rope, they trudged on, stopping at intervals to rest, sleep, or eat.

  On their fourth day on the ice, the sky grew dark, and by late afternoon it began to snow. The wonder of seeing the delicate white flakes of crystalized water fall from the sky was soon lost to the bite of the cold damp wind and the loss of visibility.

  Gringers cut toward the valley wall to the right, seeking shelter. An hour later he found a partially enclosed spot under a large slab of rock leaning against the cliff side. They used the rock and their packs as a windbreak and huddled over a small fire. Lil-el stewed dried strips of nida together with a handful of sliced dried nabob roots. They washed the stew down with scalding rayil tea, then melted down some snow to fill their water flasks, which they carried inside their coats.

  They posted no guard that night, and all slept fitfully, Diak’s rasping cough disturbing their slumber.

  The following morning they were confronted by a blanket of white that reached to their calves and doubled the danger of falling into unseen crevices. Gringers swore softly to himself as he led out. The others wisely kept silent.

  Chapter 18

  COLD. ICE.

  Bhaldavin shivered uncontrollably. He had never been so cold before. He couldn’t feel his toes any longer, and the stump of his arm ached relentlessly.

  Days and nights of nothing but freezing temperatures had taken their toll. Everyone was exhausted, and tempers were short, and to add to their misery, there was very little food left and only a few pieces of wood.

  He looked out into the growing darkness. The small ice cave where he, Lil-el, Theon, and Diak sheltered was narrow and confining, but it was better than being out in the strong icy winds that swept down from the summit.

  Lil-el moved against him. “Asleep?”

  “No,” he answered. “Afraid to. Theon? Are you awake?”

  There was no answer.

  Bhaldavin kicked the small man with a foot. “Theon!”

  “What?” came a surly growl.

  “Stay awake! Gringers said that—”

  “I know what he said: Sleep and you won’t wake up. Damn it! I just wish he’d hurry up and get back here. How long have they been gone?”

  “Seven or eight hours, I would guess. It’s hard to tell with the suns down.”

  “We should’ve stayed together,” Theon complained. “If not for the old man, we could’ve.”

  “How is he?” Lil-el asked.

  Diak moaned aloud as Theon checked him over. “He’s alive, but his breathing is ragged. If we don’t get down off these heights soon, he isn’t going to make it.”

  Diak wasn’t the only one affected by the terrible heights they had climbed. All of them were having trouble breathing now, and any great expenditure of energy left them weak and trembling.

  Hallon and Gringers seemed to be the least affected by the altitude, but even they had found the constant cold debilitating. Their pinched faces and grim looks as they had set out early that afternoon had mirrored their inner struggle and determination to keep going.

  Bhaldavin closed his eyes, remembering the sight that had met them that afternoon as they reached the summit. The mint-green sky had been clear; the cliffs of ice to either side of the valley on the other side of the summit had run down in step formation, and beyond… beyond that the valley had literally dropped off into the sky.

  Everyone had been shocked by the length and depth of the escarpment that fell thousands of feet straight down into cloud-covered valleys below.

  Gringers had stood for a long time just staring out into space, a strange, bemused expression on his face. Then he turned and looked at his companions. “The First Men climbed up. We can climb down. There has to be a way!”

  Lil-el’s voice brought Bhaldavin out of his thoughts. “Do you think we should start a fire to help them find the way back?”

  “We haven’t enough wood to keep it going for very long,” Bhaldavin said. “I think we should save it until it’s darker.”

 
“I agree,” Theon said, “though I’d like nothing better than a hot, toasty fire right now. We’ll give them a couple more hours, then start a small fire. We’ll use half of what we’ve got and save the rest for tomorrow.”

  “Anyone hungry?” Lil-el asked. “There’s enough for everyone to have a strip of dried nida.”

  “Damn near broke a tooth chewing that last piece you gave me,” Theon muttered. “I’ll save mine and heat it in the fire later, if you don’t mind.”

  “Bhaldavin, you?”

  “Not hungry.” The thought of food suddenly nauseated him.

  “Are you all right?” Lil-el asked him.

  He heard the worry in her voice and tried to reassure her. “I’m fine. Just too cold to eat.”

  “Me too,” she said and snuggled closer. She was quiet for a little while, then asked, “Do you think they’ll find a way down?”

  “Lost your faith in Gringers?” he teased, trying to lighten her mood.

  “No. If there’s a way down, he’ll find it. I just wish he had more to go on. Freeman’s diary said nothing about what we’d find on this side of the mountains.”

  “If Freeman wrote his diary when Diak said he did, then the man did not actually cross these mountains. He only wrote down something that he’d heard from someone else, probably a story that had been passed down from generation to generation.”

  “The diary doesn’t matter now,” Theon said. “We have Diak’s box to help us now. Once we get down off this mountain, we can use the pictures it carries as our guide. All we have to do is match the landmarks we see in the box with where we are.”

  “Landmarks change, friend Theon,” Lil-el said softly, “especially after two thousand years. It’s even possible the Barl-gan the box remembers may no longer exist. ”

  “Don’t say that,” Theon said darkly. “Don’t even think it. It has to be there. It has to!”