by Colin Taber
Kurt dropped his reins and then jumped down from the coach, quickly turning and helping Baruna down, her cheeks wet with tears.
The rest of their people began to gather behind them, coming forward slowly and solemnly, step by step. Those on horses or riding in carts also stopped and dismounted.
Finally, Kurt and Baruna walked forward until they stopped before me. In silence they dropped to their knees, quickly joined by everyone behind them, and they in turn were joined by all those from the ruin.
I, alone, stood among thousands.
With tears beginning to wet his own eyes, eyes that I could see still sparkled with the blessing I had gifted to make sure he returned safe, he said, “We return by your grace, after you bestowed the power on us to make it back. We survived those who pursued us, have seen off bandits, and then found our loved ones, but most importantly... we returned to serve.”
His voice was clear across the crowd; not even the wind dared stir.
He continued, “Lady Juvela, we live in terrible times, and you said that the volunteers should not go. You were right!”
And the silence that followed, as they bowed their heads, was deafening.
That had been last night, at sunset.
Yes, I had blessed them and done what I could to see them safely home, but I still felt guilt for the many who hadn’t returned, those who had left widows and shattered families behind. Thinking of it, I found myself only singing Schoperde’s song stronger.
And that’s also what brought me to the tower, seeking a moment of respite. More than at any other time, people now treated me like a god.
Their reverence – which thankfully Baruna spared me, unless in public – now meant that there weren’t many people I could talk to candidly.
That fact often had me seek out the more private places, like the tower I now sat inside, taking in the view. The only alternative, if I did not want to walk down a corridor and have people bowing heads or whispering prayers as I passed, was to stay and feel imprisoned in my own room.
Despite all that, one thing I could count on was that Grenda and the Prince didn’t treat me with any reverence.
“Juvela?” Grenda’s voice called up the spiral, stone stairs.
I stopped my signing, wondering how long she might have been down there calling up to me. She was too old to chance such a long winding climb. I got up and called back down to her, “I’m coming down.”
“Good,” she replied simply, and then went on to mutter about stone stairs.
With a grin, I took the curving path down and soon came into the hall to find Grenda waiting there with the Prince.
She gave me a smile.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Yes, good morning,” she answered.
The Prince merely looked to me and offered, “Grae ru.”
“Did you want to see me?”
“Yes, the Prince wants to talk to you today.”
“About what?”
He answered this time, sparing Grenda. “Your hunger... I can feel it reawakening.”
He was right. The addiction had been stirring, despite the fact I’d again begun reducing the time I spent in the celestial so as to not awaken it. “Yes, but we knew it would.”
“Walk with me.” He turned and began striding out of the hall, then onto the terrace as he headed for the balustrade.
Grenda and I exchanged a glance and followed him.
We walked into the light of a mostly clear spring day. Heavy clouds spread in the distance to the northwest, promising rain and possibly an evening squall, but for now the day was very pleasant.
The Prince stopped at the ancient stone balustrade and stood quiet and still. Something was on his mind, something he found troubling. That worried me.
Grenda and I reached the balustrade and stopped, deciding to wait.
Finally, he turned to face me. “Juvela, we need to start talking about what is coming, for everything is now in motion. Ahead will be your greatest test.”
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. “How soon?”
“Soon.”
“Will I have to return to Ossard?”
“Yes, but you won’t be alone.”
“Good,” I whispered, a ripple of fear running through me.
“Not alone at all. The ogres will be with you and I will be at your side. You will also be surrounded by friends and allies, and together we will do everything we need so Life can win something from all this.”
I wondered... win? How could one win when fighting on the side of a dead god in a dying world?
Reluctantly, I asked, “To win would be a grand outcome considering all that stands before us, but what will be the cost?” My blood chilled as I spoke the words.
He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “The cost will be high... Terrible in fact, for all of us.”
“How high?”
He gazed not just into my eye, but my very soul, as he said, “Everything.”
I shivered to hear it, but I knew that would be the answer. I wasn’t here to stand victorious, but to enable the victory. I swallowed and asked, my voice breaking, “But we can win?”
“If we follow the path before us.”
Grenda cleared her throat. “Enough! That’s enough for now! She’s still recovering from all that has recently come and gone.”
I frowned. I knew a high price was part of my fate, and to hear it finally spoken was refreshing, despite the shadows of its road. “Grenda, I appreciate your concern, and maybe I’m not yet ready to hear all that is to come, but it would help to know more of the trials ahead. I need to ready myself.”
Grenda pursed her lips and gave a nod.
The Prince asked, “What would you know?”
“Is it just the one trial ahead, or does the road continue to hold many tests?”
“Juvela, you have to heal first, that is true. Soon, when you are ready, you will have to endure three more trials.”
“And the last of them will be Ossard?”
“Grae ru.”
“When I’m there, will I know that I’m at the end of my road?”
His gaze intensified as Grenda’s eyes began to fill with tears. In a voice that chilled me but also brought a measure of comfort, he said, “You will know it. There will be no doubt. You will be certain.”
A vision took me for a moment, one of a city aflame and the streets full of dead. Then, a great celestial-woven gate yawned open, from whence the death-addicted gods looked down upon me. Yet, despite all the chaos, I was surrounded by the allies of Life: I could feel Marco, the Prince, Anton, Sef and Dorloth. And a mighty horn called out a song that sung of the end of everything – and of the beginning.
I whispered, “It will be the new war declared.”
The Prince looked on with hope in his eyes. “Grae ru.”
-
While I recovered, my time was split between little Maria and my parents, and also Baruna and Kurt. The time with my family was a salve, moments of play and memories also mixed with instants when we talked of Pedro. I tried to get used to the notion that he was gone, and that I had had a hand in his death. But more than anything, as I danced around my guilt, I worked to soften the loss on Maria.
There were painful wells full of tears and innocent questions as to when he might be coming home, alongside glimpses that she understood. But these were often balanced by denials of the half accepted truth. My parents helped greatly in this, my father, in particular, who found himself in demand by my daughter, and my mother, who seemed to reawaken to life, sensing that her granddaughter needed care.
For every moment I spent with my family, I spent another overseeing the running of the ruins with Baruna and Kurt. I also regularly met with Grenda and the Prince.
And every day I thought of Sef and Anton and their hard journey, sending what blessings I could. Some of my aid came to them as healing, warmth, or simple good luck. None of that was easy, as the more I tried to give, the more my deep hunger sti
rred.
My dark appetite was strengthening, restless now, though at this time the Prince managed to soothe its rage. So recently sated, I rarely suffered cramps or worse unless I tried to use the celestial in a taxing way.
Of course, there was another matter that weighed on me – the death of Pedro, though I never forgot his volunteers who’d died with him.
Oh, my poor Pedro...
I was proud of him, of the way he had rallied his volunteers at the end, when they had been entrapped within the doomed city. Like many, he had tasted fear, but he had overcome his doubts and stood tall, not giving into panic or hopelessness – and even when he had asked for my blessing, he asked not for himself but for his people.
My Pedro...
Sometimes, when I was alone, I swear I could hear his voice call my name. His haunting sounded out in the same way it had when he had begun to slump down the wall on Ossard’s streets, an arrow in his side. Only a moment later he’d been silenced by a stone from a cultist sling.
And that was the last time he had been conscious.
A heartbeat later, after losing control of my dark hunger as I tried to bless him and his volunteers, he was dead.
When we’d first met on my Mint Lady Outing at my coming of age, I had been enchanted, if but only for part of a night. I then spent the next season terrified of him, until through fate’s unexpected twists I found myself married to him.
Our relationship had always been difficult and built of contrasts, something that only softened when Maria came into our lives. For those first few years, as she grew, our cold relations had at first thawed and then become cordial. Years later, when Maria was threatened by the plague of kidnappings that revealed the truth of their scale, the cordiality had begun to find some warmth. We weren’t in love then, and perhaps we never truly fell for each other, not like a husband and wife should, but we did grow much closer.
In the end, we found the only kind of love the world would let us have.
Yet, Pedro wasn’t the only thing on my mind, for my body also carried another gift of our marriage – my unborn son.
Every time I thought of my boy, a boy destined to arrive into a world of turmoil, I couldn’t help but put a hand to my belly that had not even begun to show. Would I be able to birth him before all this came to an end, to perhaps see him spared?
I hoped so.
I did not want to still be carrying him when I returned to Ossard, for what was likely to be my last days.
If there was any wish I could have granted, it would be to have him and Maria spared the coming chaos.
All of this weighed on me, dragging at my soul, and that was without me dwelling on other terrible things I’d done or presided over, whether the death of Angela beside me on the ridge as I’d also eaten of her soul, or the deaths of so many of Pedro’s volunteer, with them convinced I was going to bless and save them.
To see the faith shown in me around Marco’s Ruin, strengthened with the return of Kurt and the survivors, was a contrast to my own guilt, but I tried to put that behind me. I had to, despite how much it hurt. I needed to focus on what I could do to keep things going, whether in maintaining our community intact in the ruin, or aiding Sef and Anton in their journey, or even preparing myself for the approach of my final road to Ossard.
At the same time, as I laboured under the weight of such guilt and the knowledge that my hunger stirred, I was strangely soothed as I again began to pay regular visits to the canyons behind the ruin and the rosetree heartwood. There, for whatever reason, I could sit with my back against the spectacular heart tree, the mother of the rosetrees now towering in health and flush with spring blooms.
In that peaceful place I could freely touch the celestial and be spared my hunger’s straining aches. Free of worry and wear, I found I could see the countless souls around me, the thousands who called Marco’s Ruin home. All of those life lights carried the truth of their loyalties hidden deep within them, the green sparks that spoke of their allegiance to Life.
They were like seeds.
Chapter 8
-
A New World
-
The Varm Carga, the island of Kalraith.
Sef crawled out from their overhang camp and cautiously looked around. The morning was bright but chilly for the most part, even entertaining shafts of sunlight that drifted over the snow-dusted landscape. Patchy clouds haunted the sky above, but the big Flet noted it was much heavier to the north and east.
He looked up the vale, checking the path they wanted to take. The higher parts of the slopes lay carpeted with the white of snow, although it wasn’t thick enough to hide the larger rocks and the more rugged outcrops that showed through. Lower down near the stream, the snow laid perhaps only a few fingers deep. In many places alongside the stream, gravel and rocks showed through, but he knew the further on they went, the more the snow was likely to deepen. It would be hard to avoid leaving tracks in such a landscape.
The stream ran bubbling and singing, even sparkling as its running waters caught the sun. Sef let his gaze run along its length from where they’d followed it yesterday, and then up the vale. Now, with good visibility, unlike yesterday when the snow had begun to fall, he noted, to his surprise, that its flow emerged from a small cave.
A very round cave.
Even at a glance, he could tell that the tunnel wasn’t natural.
He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun as he looked closer at where the stream emerged. It looked like it ran from a small opening dark and tight beneath a strange ridge that ran level to cross the valley floor.
If the cave looked oddly too perfect to be natural, so did the ridge above.
This was all very strange indeed.
With a quick glance back at the overhang that sheltered Anton and Matraia, he then turned and started heading for these odd features as his eyes checked the skies above and the surrounding ridge tops.
The vale seemed quite uniform in its mottled white and dark grey covering, though when he looked down at his own boots and leggings, now wrapped in white and greys he’d been able to gather from his pack, he was relieved to see he somewhat blended in. The look wasn’t perfect, but it should hide him from most distant observers.
Well, he thought to himself, there was nothing for it but to get underway.
It took Sef a while to cover the ground to the cave. The distance was further than it’d looked, and he found the going strangely harder alone, perhaps because he no longer had the distraction of conversation. He followed the stream, making his way along its banks, treading on gravel, rocks or where the snow was thinnest as he tried to avoid leaving tracks.
He soon noticed that while the emergence of grey rocks or the occasional stumped ruin of dead trees or hardy shrubs broke up the thin snow cover, a fat line of uninterrupted white ran along the slope a little way up the other side of the vale .
Sef stopped and examined the strange formation, running his eyes over it from where he stood. His gaze followed its length as it curved gently up the vale, maintaining a sweeping level.
He realised then that he was looking up at the embankment of road. A very well made road. With a sense of giddiness rising, he knew this was nothing of Fletland, but something from Dominion antiquity.
Sef couldn’t believe how big and robust it was. He had seen well-built roads within Ossard’s walls and around some important bridges up the Cassaro valley, like at Goldston, and even in Fletland in a handful of places, but never out in the middle of the wilds. What manner of people could call upon the labour to build such a thing?
But he knew the answer – a people who took slaves.
The road ran straight along the valley side, following the general flow of the vale with lazy curves and bends part way up the slope. It looked wide enough to carry half a dozen coaches abreast, and it had been all but invisible yesterday, looking as scorched and wasted as the rest of the land they’d passed through as the light had faded. It was only the snowfal
l that revealed it by making plain its even surface and the supporting embankment, one rarely marked by the random patterns of boulders and stumps that the snow had exposed elsewhere.
Sef shook his head in wonder, but started off again towards the cave, walking parallel to the line of the road on the other side of the stream. Soon, as he drew closer to his destination, he realised that the low hill or ridge that lay across the valley floor ahead, marked by the cave, was in fact the road as it crossed to his side of the stream.
His steps quickened.
-
Sef slowed as he finally neared the cave. The opening was as tall as him, with an arched top, the bend almost perfectly curved but for time’s wear. From its arch the sides dropped down and began to curve back, but the bottom part had also been well worn through the years. All of it, despite its age and weathering, was too perfect not to have been made by the hands of man.
Shaking his head again in wonder, he moved along the side of the stream and cautiously climbed the snow-covered embankment to get up and on to this mysterious road. All the while, he peered not just ahead, but skyward, wary of any that might be watching.
After a careful climb, he cleared the slope and stood, looking beyond the sprawling width of the road to a lake of dark water that snaked back to fill the dead vale. The road acted as a dam, intentionally or not, and wound its way back in a gentle curve to follow the valley and the waters of the lake.
Sef turned to look back down the valley, noticing how much height they had already gained. The view revealed the white ribbon of the road as it snaked away, much clearer when viewed from above, and then farther off, glimpses of the foothills where the snow ended.
Turning back to face the way they needed to travel, he stood where the mountains truly started, rising sheer and painted in snow’s white just ahead.
He wondered; if they had come so far and climbed so high, where were the towers of the Sentinels?
He scanned the horizon to the east, beyond the nearest ridge tops.
One loomed there, a tower rising to stand tall, but quite far off. Turning westward, he started as he saw one towering not so far away at all, on what must be a neighbouring vale’s ridgeline. He could even make out a figure on the battlements.