“Yes.” He said, and he reached for her hand, leaning across the table. “My love, I want nothing more than to spend every quiet morning, afternoon, and evening with you. And those days will come, I promise. After the campaigns of the summer are over, we will be married, and we will have the entire winter to be together. And it will be peaceful then. Little happens in the winter.”
He went quiet for a moment, looking out over the darkening valley where the last of the farmers straggled in from the fields. “And someday, I promise, the war will be over and I will never leave you again.” After another silence he turned back to her and smiled. “And when that day comes, anything you wish to see, you will see – I will take you.”
Her eyes glistened in the twilight. “I want that day to come, Aram.”
“It will come.” He promised.
The next morning, she accompanied him to the gate along with Findaen and watched as he saddled Thaniel and tied a pack containing provisions to its horn. He was taking mostly dried meat and fruits, but she had also packed a few small loaves of bread that he could enjoy over the first three or four days before they had time to ruin. High overhead, Alvern bided his time, waiting. Durlrang and Shingka appeared out of the trees and came to within a few yards of the group. Aram addressed Durlrang’s daughter.
“Shingka – I am Aram.”
“I know you, my lord.” Her voice inside his mind was strong and clear and sharp, like ice in deep winter.
“Your father has told you what I need from you while we are gone?”
“The men at the gate will know of any danger upon the moment of its occurrence, master.”
He contemplated her while she gazed evenly back at him. The large wolf ’s coat was silver, bright in the morning sunlight, and her eyes were startling blue. Intelligence shone out from them. He nodded. “I am grateful, Shingka.”
“We will not fail you, master.”
Aram turned to Findaen. “Do you have any questions?”
Findaen shook his head. “No, my lord. We will train, we will watch, and we will wait.”
Aram’s gaze moved on and settled on Ka’en. His eyes softened and he spoke quietly. “Take care of her, Findaen.”
“I will.”
Despite the presence of the small assemblage and the men watching from the tower above the gate, Aram went to Ka’en and pulled her to him, holding her tightly, his face buried in her hair. “I must do this, my love. But I will return.” He whispered.
“I love you.” She said simply, and her quiet voice trembled.
He climbed into the saddle on Thaniel’s back; then he and the great horse and Durlrang turned and went west across the plain, past the old battlefield, across the small stream where he and Thaniel had been so badly injured, and around the strange circle of yellowed grass where Manon had deployed his fellring. Alvern sailed westward on the winds above them as Derosa fell away behind. When they came within sight of Broad River, Aram turned north into the green hills and made for the top of the great east-west ridge along which he’d made his escape from slavery nearly a decade earlier.
Aram traveled in his deerskin clothes, leaving all of his armor behind, the armor from the mountain as well as his black armor from Regamun Mediar. He brought the hood as a precaution, folded through his belt, in case they stumbled into peril and the need arose to unsheathe the sword of heaven. Thaniel also went without armor – Aram wanted to be able to move quickly and quietly, and he intended to avoid trouble if at all possible.
By nightfall they had passed to the west of the great black mountain. Looking northward, they could see across the river onto the broad slope that fell away from it toward the field from which he’d escaped nine years before. They camped in a wooded hollow by a spring. Alvern found the bare top of a dead snag on the ridge and Durlrang curled up below an overhanging rock. Thaniel grazed on the sparse grass until it was fully dark and then lowered his head. Aram slept in the trees.
By dawn the next morning, they were again on the move. Before midday they passed by the turn in the river where it angled to the north. Leaving the river, they entered the broad, rugged wilderness that occupied the region north of Burning Mountain. There, on a whim of nostalgia, Aram turned north again and came out onto the spine of the sharp ridge that looked down upon the field where he and Decius had slipped the bonds of slavery during a tremendous downpour all those years ago. Having been abandoned, the field had begun to revert to its natural grasses, although here and there, stalks of wheat tried to maintain a presence. Aram decided to take a look at the burned village and see whether Manon had put forth his hand to reclaim it.
Thaniel eased down the steep slope and crossed the river into the abandoned field. Where the road led through the gap in the ridge to the north, Aram dismounted. Followed by Thaniel and accompanied by Durlrang, he crept through the gap and into the edge of the round valley until he could see the burned village and the bridge beyond it at the mouth of the canyon. There was no one about, nor was there any evidence that the grim lord’s overseers had taken an interest in repairing the damaged structures. He listened for several long minutes, hearing only the quiet whispering of the breezes, and then sent a question skyward with his mind. Alvern answered immediately.
“There is no one visible near the village or on the road down the canyon, Lord Aram. The only activity in sight occurs in and around the villages in the long valley beyond the hills.”
“Lashers?”
“I see two or three at each of the villages in the valley. None anywhere else.”
Aram examined the charred remains of the village. Fire had destroyed nearly everything, leaving only a section of the stockade at the eastern side by the hills and parts of a few huts. Outside the stockade, next to the slope of the eastern hills, the original long stone building where Aram had spent his time while he was enslaved here, still stood.
There was nothing to see or to be learned. Aram climbed up on Thaniel’s back and they went down the road through the canyon and after a while looked out into the long valley.
“Do you intend to go down the road?” Thaniel asked.
“No.” Aram answered. “Not even with Alvern watching from above. It would not be wise. I want to see, but I don’t want to be seen. I do, however, desire to go west to the great plains before we turn southward toward Elam and the western fringes of Wallensia. Come, we’ll go back and continue westward through the hills.”
They went back up the canyon and turned right after crossing the bridge and went toward the west through the rolling hills. All that day they followed the sun as it crossed the sky and fell toward the far rim of the world, over ridges, through hollows, and across small streams, occasionally angling to the north to look down into the long valley. Brush grew among these hills in occasionally thick patches, but there were few trees, just scattered copses of scrub cedar and juniper. That night they slept in a small bowl in the hills by a spring that fed a small stream flowing out toward the long valley. There was brush for a fire had he desired it, but the night air was warm and Aram decided to forego the pleasure of an open flame. It wasn’t necessary and it might be seen.
The next day, and the next, they moved quickly and by early afternoon on the fifth day since leaving Derosa they stood at last on the top of a small hill where the rumpled landscape smoothed out and the great plains stretched away to the west. Before them a single dirt track led out into the vast level expanse. A few miles away there was a cluster of buildings surrounded by fields; it wasn’t the village of Aram’s youth – that particular village lay several hundred miles further west, near the marsh – but it was similar.
They eased northward to where the dirt track left the plains and zigzagged up a steep dike into the long valley. The river fell down over this dike as it exited the long valley in a series of short, sharp waterfalls. Gazing upon this scene, Aram was suddenly assaulted by the memory of being locked inside the stinking slave transport wagon as the oxen strained to pull it up the rough, uneven trac
k, doing damage to his wounded body.
They turned south and west. The verge of the hills curved gently away to the southwest here; the area of rumpled ground jutted out into the vastness of the plains for perhaps a hundred miles or more. The corrugations in the hills would make it easier for them to travel unseen by anyone out on the plains that might be looking, and there were small streams and rivulets for drinking. There were also scattered clumps of brush and occasional trees that harbored small animals – food for Alvern and Durlrang.
Two days later they stood at the westernmost reach of the hills with the flat ground of the great western plains stretching away from them to the south, west, and north. From this point, at the very tip of the incursion of the hills into that flat region, the rumpled folds of high ground curved back to the southeast, and far away in that direction, Aram could see the telltale line of green trees that signified the course of a river – undoubtedly the same river that flowed along the southern edge of the field three hundred miles behind them where he had last worked as a slave.
The sun was falling toward the flat horizon. Aram strained his eyes to peer into the west, looking for the dark line of green that he had gazed toward with such longing so many times in his youth, but he knew it was foolishness; the great western marsh was still four hundred miles or so further away to the west, sliding over the distant curve of the world. He hadn’t given the matter much thought in the last few years but he now found that he was overjoyed that his escape attempt into the marsh had been prevented. Despite his reluctance to give credence to things like prophecy and ancient riddles, he had to admit to himself now that all that had happened to him, in hindsight, had the distinct feel and appearance of destiny.
They moved back up the bottom of a long hollow that ran pretty much east and west into the hills with a small stream at its center and found a grassy ravine extending to the north with a small patch of scrubby junipers clustered at its head. Alvern sent word that he was going further back to the east where there was an outcropping of rock on top of one of the higher hills where he would spend the night.
Aram dismounted, letting Thaniel graze on the grass near the stream in the main hollow and laid his bedroll out in the stand of junipers. Durlrang loped off to the east to find a rabbit or a squirrel for supper. As the sun disappeared over the edge of the world and twilight deepened, Aram lay down on his bedroll, listening to the birds twittering in the branches above as they settled for the night, and then gazed up into the vault of the heavens as blue faded to black, faint stars appeared, and a huge full moon rose above the hills to the east. His last thoughts, as always, were of Ka’en.
Thaniel’s wide nose nudged him awake sometime deep in the night.
“My lord,” the horse whispered quietly but urgently, “wake up – there is something that you must see.”
Aram sat up groggily and peered at the utterly black mass of the horse looming over him in the darkness of night. The moon, evidently, had declined to the west beyond the ridge above the cedar grove. “What is it, Thaniel?”
“I don’t know; come and see. Durlrang noticed it an hour ago and woke me half an hour ago.”
Aram got up and stumbled through the darkness as Thaniel made for the top of the small ridge to the west. The dim shape of Durlrang sat on top of the ridge, his body outlined by a strange yellow glow. The source of this seemingly bizarre light was immediately apparent when Aram topped the ridge and looked west. The enormous golden orb of the full moon hung in the sky just above the flat black line of the western horizon.
Aram glanced at Durlrang. “What did you see?”
“I don’t know, my lord. Something moved against the moon.”
“Moved? Against the moon? Walking or flying?”
The wolf swiveled his head and looked at Aram, his eyes glowing in the reflected light of the yellow moon. “I believe that it flew, master.”
A sharp chill went through Aram as he heard this. What flew at night that was so unusual or substantial that it drew the attention of a wolf ?
He sat down next to Durlrang on the grass of the ridge top and Thaniel moved up on his left. Together, silently, they gazed into the west. Aram watched the vast round body of the great orb as it sank slowly toward the horizon until his eyes watered.
Then, just when it seemed that he could no longer stand to focus his aching gaze on the glowing disc, a dark shape slid across its face from south to north, something very oddly shaped, long and sinuous.
He sat up straight; an icy shiver climbed his spine.
“What was that?”
“Whatever it is, master,” Durlrang answered, “I have no experience of it.”
“Nor I.” Agreed Thaniel.
“Was it close to us – or far away and very large?” Aram asked of his companions, and was surprised to find that the broad muscle across his stomach had cramped tight in anticipation of the answer and in response to an urgent, inexplicable raw fear.
“Very far away, I think.” Thaniel answered. “And very large. If it is a creature, it is the largest creature I have ever seen.”
Aram looked back into the west just as the distant black shape once again crossed over the face of the moon.
It moved from north to south this time, from right to left; and it moved quickly. Aram had a glimpse of a long, sinuous, serpentine shape, seemingly wrapped in a thin and tenuous but billowing shadow. The moon was very near the horizon and it suddenly occurred to Aram that he might be viewing one of the terrible creatures that were said to inhabit the western marsh. But the village of his youth had been much nearer the marsh and he had never seen anything like this creature during those twenty-three years. Of course, back then, he’d seldom been awake during the wee hours of the night.
He glanced at his companions, sitting to either side. “Can you tell what it is? Can either of you discern its shape?”
There was silence for a moment, and then Durlrang stirred. “It appears to be a very large serpent – or lizard – but one, strangely, that flies.”
Aram looked the other way. “Thaniel?”
The horse shifted uneasily. “It could be a large flock of night birds, tightly packed, hunting perhaps – or being hunted.”
Aram thought about it for a moment. “It looked too solid.”
“This thing is very far away, my lord.”
“Over the marsh?”
“I have never seen this marsh of which you speak, my lord. I have no idea how far away it is.”
Aram gazed back into the west and stiffened. “What is happening to the moon?”
The bottom third portion of the body of the great orb, though still above the horizon, had taken on a deeper hue than the rest of it, turning deeply orange-red.
“Mist or fog, rising from the earth.” Thaniel said.
“Yes.” Durlrang agreed.
They watched for another hour as the moon sank over the horizon, or rather as the horizon seemed to rise up and swallow the moon; but there was just one more passage of the unknown object, this time from left to right, south to north. It didn’t return again. The moon went and the night darkened to the west even as the first pale light of the new day seeped into the eastern sky. Aram walked back down to his bedroll among the junipers, his mind filled with mystery and doubt because of that which they’d seen; try as he might, he could resolve neither. In the brightening twilight he ate a cold breakfast and waited for the day.
At dawn, they went back down the hollow and stood at its mouth gazing out over the great plains. All of them were unsettled by what they’d seen in the night. When he was informed, Alvern admitted that, though he’d flown to the west over the great marsh in years past, he had never witnessed anything that flew that was as large as what they described.
That day they angled back to the southeast along the fringe of the hills until they came to another broad, grassy valley through which meandered a substantial river – the same river, Aram was certain, that had at least some of its origins in the river that f
lowed through his valley far to the east and tumbled along the southern border of the field from which he’d escaped. Though there were more hills to the south beyond this river, jutting westward into the plains, the valley was quite broad and would take some time to cross. For safety’s sake, they waited while Alvern inspected the countryside from his high vantage point. When he proclaimed the valley to be clear of enemies, they went down across the grassy vale and crossed the river, splashing through the rapids at the bottom of a long pool.
Once across the valley and into the relative safety of the jumbled hills, they again turned westward, along the edge of the plains. Aram intended to see as much of the country as could be safely done, and if possible, find villages of people that could be freed; their numbers someday added to the strength of Derosa.
As the hills to the south of the river trended westward, they grew slightly rougher though not much higher, and they were rockier than those to the north, less sandy. And there were more trees here, still scrub cedar and juniper, but thicker.
Once again they stayed on the fringe of the hills, with Alvern watching from overhead. The line of hills across the river to the north faded into the flat soil of the plains and fell behind them but to the south, where they rode, the rough high ground continued on into the west, trending southwestward as it went. By noon, however, they could see before them that the hills began to turn, angling toward the north slightly, extending out into the plains, while to the south there were taller peaks – not mountains exactly, but higher, sharper-pointed hills.
That night they camped in a long ravine that ran southward into the hills. They went into a side hollow beyond a turn where they were hidden from a direct view of the flat land. As the sun set in the west, the full moon rose again above the eastern horizon. Durlrang headed up the ravine to find supper, and Aram reminded him to wake him when the moon crossed the sky and sat near the western horizon before morning.
Kelven's Riddle Book Two Page 40