The atmosphere seemed to break, reckless air moved through the bottom of the ravine in an instant, violent wind, even as time faltered, failed, stopped. Overhead the roaring continued unabated and the starless darkness prevailed while the fabric of time, unmoving, captured, held immobile by a power beyond understanding, stretched, and threatened to snap.
Lost in a wasteland of pain, Aram had no doubt but that they were under some kind of attack. And though he did not understand the nature of the attack, he knew that it had to be resisted. He tried to reach back and draw the sword but the pain inside his head had grown to ferocious proportions and he found that he did not possess the will to remove his hands from his ears.
As if from a great distance, detached from the surrounding atmospheric chaos, he noticed something else – a smell.
Horrid, pungent, and pervasive, it overwhelmed and sickened him.
An old memory came to him, strangely clear and precise in the chaos. Once, when he was a boy, an ox had died unexpectedly and without explanation. To prevent the spread of disease, the elders of the village had burned the carcass. Impelled by youthful curiosity, Aram had approached the smoldering mess, the wind changed suddenly, and he found himself enveloped in thick, foul, choking smoke that smelled of death and ruin.
This was like that had been – sulphurous and rancid, like the burning of something dead.
And then, into the depths of his mind, there came a voice – thin, harsh, furiously angry, sounding as if it arose from the distant icy shores of eternal winter.
“Fools!” It said. “You are not released. Do you think I cannot see? Return to your labors at once.”
Crumpled helpless on the ground, it took Aram several moments to understand that the voice was not directed at him or his companions but at whatever it was that moved through and darkened the night sky above, rending reality with its passage.
Sometime later, he realized that he was lying flat on his back with his arms outstretched; that the atmosphere in the ravine had normalized, the roaring had passed off to the north, and the wind had died.
The smell, however, though dissipating, remained.
Durlrang lay next to him, quiet and still, no longer quivering. The wolf ’s nose was pressed into Aram’s side. Somewhere in the darkness off to the right, toward the stream, Thaniel snorted and pawed at the ground. Alvern flopped erratically off in the darkness the other way, beneath the trees.
His head ached and his ears felt as though they were filled with sand or dust; the noises made by his friends sounded hollow, echoed. After a moment, he sat up. Overhead, stars once again showed in the heavens.
Nauseated, feeling the need to vomit, he pulled off the hood, slipping it once more through the leather of his belt. After several moments, when deep, slow breaths of cool night air had settled his stomach, he turned to look down at Durlrang. The wolf raised his head in response, but the movement was wavering and uncertain. After one unsuccessful attempt, Aram found his voice, though it sounded strained and distant to his ears.
“Are you alright, Durlrang?”
“I – think that I will be, master. Were we attacked?”
“I don’t know. Can you walk?”
Durlrang got shakily to his feet. “I believe so, my lord.”
Aram stood also, holding tight to the trunk of a cedar while he found his balance. “Go into the trees,” he told the wolf, “and see if you can find Alvern. I’ll check on Thaniel.”
“I am up here, Lord Aram.” Alvern’s voice, tremulous and weak, came down out of the upper reaches of a nearby cedar. “I am well, though I do not remember the last several minutes.”
“Rest – the both of you.” Aram commanded and he turned toward the sounds of Thaniel’s distress, emanating from the darkness near the stream.
“Thaniel?”
The horse snorted, loudly, and Aram heard the approach of his hooves over the rocky ground. “I am alright, Lord Aram, though I can’t get this stench out of my nostrils. What was that thing?”
“Are you certain that you are well?”
Thaniel’s huge, dim bulk hove out of the night. He snorted again. “Yes, my lord. I went to a dark place for some time, but I am well now. Was that the creature we saw fly against the moon two weeks ago?”
“Two creatures, actually – I think.” Aram answered. “Yes, it must be them; I don’t think there is any other explanation.”
“Did they come for us?”
Aram looked around in the gloom. Though he could see very little, nothing of their camp seemed to be disturbed, and other than the distress caused by the passage of the mysterious creatures through the air above the ravine, neither him nor any of the company seemed to have suffered injury. And there was the voice and the words it had spoken – words of rebuke and sharp anger.
He shook his head in answer to Thaniel’s question. “I don’t think so. Unless they see exceptionally well at night, I doubt that they knew we were here. The voice that spoke to them seemed angry, as if it was displeased at where they’d gone.”
His companions’ response to this statement was a long, uncertain silence. Then, Alvern spoke. “The voice, my lord?”
“Yes. Did you not hear it?”
“I heard no voice, my lord, but then I left my body for several moments when the creatures passed overhead.”
Aram looked down. “Durlrang?”
“I also did not hear the voice, master, I am sorry.”
“Nor I,” agreed Thaniel, “but I was very distressed. My spirit went to a dark place. When the voice spoke, I would not have heard.”
Aram stood in the darkness, confused and astonished. Had he alone heard the voice? Or had he imagined it? In the terrible stress of the moment, had he also gone to a “dark place” where he’d dreamed the angry, peremptory commands issued to the unknown terrors that flew overhead through the depths of the night?
He looked around at the dim forms of his companions. “No one heard a voice speak to the creatures?”
“Sorry, my lord.”
Aram considered a moment longer and then nodded. “Probably, I imagined it. It was a terrifying moment.” He sighed and rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers. Then, for a minute or two, he gazed up at the night sky with an ear cocked to the north. The roaring had faded completely; the night was still and quiet, normal. Even the rancid odor had faded. Tentatively, a cricket chirped in the grass beneath the trees. Aram drew in a deep breath from the cool night. “Well, if we can, we should try to sleep or at least rest. We’re a long way from home with far to go.”
Aram moved his bedroll into the trees and tried to sleep but found himself listening into the night for the humming of giant insects and watching the dark sky for the return of terrifying shadows. Durlrang lay close to him, the great wolf’s nose pressed into Aram’s side. Alvern decided to forgo his high crag, opting instead to settle in an upper branch of one of the cedars and Thaniel moved into the copse as well, backing his great frame under their limited cover, and so they waited out the dawn. The unknown terrors, however, did not return; daybreak came peaceably.
In the morning they took stock of themselves. Aram found no injury to himself other than a fading headache, and his companions seemed to have recovered as well. No one wanted to linger in the ravine. They went southward through the hills and waited at the edge of the wide valley containing the dry lake while Alvern searched the countryside for signs of enemies and made sure that the approaching army was still far enough away to the east to allow them to pass across unnoticed. Far out in the center of the salt flats, Aram could see the glint of sunlight on water. Perhaps onetenth of the lake bed still held moisture. At the western limits of the valley, where they waited, the hills from the north curved southward around the edge of the level sand and ended where a dry wash emptied the lake of its excess volume in wetter times.
There was only about a mile of open ground at this point that separated them from the hills to the south. If Alvern reported that all was clea
r, they would cross it in but a few minutes. While they waited, Aram turned and gazed southwestward, across the wide green land of Elam. What kind of people, he wondered once again, willingly and without resistance gave up their children to secure their own peace and safety?
“It is clear for a few miles in all directions, my lord.” Alvern’s voice dropped from the clear sky. “The army to the east is still in camp. The approaches to Elam are not yet busy and the road is a good way off anyway. There are five wagons going toward the gap to the north, driven by men and accompanied by five lashers. They will not come close enough to see you before you get across. There is no one else to the east in the valley of the dry lake.”
“Thank you, Lord Alvern.” Aram looked down at the back of Thaniel’s head. “Let’s get across quickly.”
The great horse surged out of the shadow of the hills and thundered south across the salt flats, with Durlrang loping alongside. When they crossed the road used by the army they’d shadowed during the previous week Aram was surprised at its quality. Far to the east, on the southern slopes of Burning Mountain, it was nothing more than a dirt track but here, on the valley floor next to the hills, it was broad and paved, constructed like the roads of the ancients. In fact, as Aram looked east and west along it as Thaniel swept up and over its wide, smooth track, it appeared to be the work of the ancients indeed.
Ten minutes later, they were out of the valley and moving up a draw that trended to the southeast as it led into the southern hills. Once safely into the folds of the wooded hills they turned south, staying to the ridge top when there was sufficient cover. Aram wanted to see a portion of Elam before he turned eastward across the plains of Wallensia.
As they went south, the hills became increasingly timbered, much like the green hills near to Derosa. There were tall hardwoods, oak, beech, and hickory growing in abundance. The folds in the hills were gentle enough and though the woods grew thick, the trees were old and tall, the forest floor was fairly open and free of undergrowth; they made perhaps seventy miles that day. The hills grew higher but their slopes remained broad and gently sloped as they went into the south. Once, about midday, Aram sent a thought skyward.
“Can you see the ocean, Lord Alvern?”
“I can.”
“Could I see it as well, if I found a clear hill top from which to look to the south?”
“No, my lord. It is too far away. The land of Elam extends far to the south, out into the great ocean, much farther than does the land of Wallensia on the east, or Vergon on the west.”
Aram felt a pang of disappointment; seeing the waters of the sea, however distant, gave the land a boundary, helping him to organize the map of the world that he was building in his head. “Good enough, Lord Alvern, we will continue southward for the rest of the day. In the morning, we will turn east, toward Wallensia.”
“If you so desired, my lord,” the eagle answered, “and if you went carefully, you could move to the edge of the wooded hills and look upon the gates of Elam.”
“The gates of Elam?”
“Yes, my lord. They are the entrances to that great land and are quite impressive, even to me.”
Aram spoke to Thaniel and the great horse turned and went down the wooded slopes to the west. “I must see these gates that impress our ancient friend.” He said.
“I would like to see them as well.” Thaniel answered.
An hour later, they stood in a copse of tall hardwoods that crowned a small crest at the end of a long ridge that jutted out from the hills. To the south an even longer, higher ridge protruded out into the flat green land for the distance of a mile or more. From the west, an extension of the distant hills curved sharply eastward, toward this protrusion, closing to within perhaps two miles.
The gap between the two extrusions of higher ground was completely spanned by a substantial wall of stone, perhaps thirty-five feet high, buttressed every hundred yards or so by square towers with crenellated turrets. The wall was thick and solid except for a broad, grated and fortified culvert through which the river that drained the area to the north ran southward. There were two other, slightly smaller culverts to either side, closed now, evidently for use in flood time.
Two hundred yards out from the end of the ridge that extended from the hills around Aram and his companions there was an immense pair of gates, only slightly less than half as high as the wall in which they were suspended. Apparently constructed of a burnished metal, bronze in color, these gates stood open, exposing a glimpse of the broad green land behind them. There were high towers to either side of the gates, almost twice as high as the wall itself and heavily fortified, composed of gleaming white stone. Many guards walked the ramparts and above each tower, high in the air, flew large standards – a vertical, looping line of royal blue that snaked downward across the center of the flag against a golden background.
Alvern had spoken truly. The gates of Elam were an impressive sight, worthy of awe, conceived and built no doubt by men of intelligence and wisdom. Beyond those gates lay a rich and powerful land.
Except for a column of ten or twelve of Manon’s slave wagons trundling northward along the road a mile or so north of their position, very little traffic moved on the thoroughfare or passed through the gates. And yet the gates were flung wide. Aram bent his mind skyward.
“Are these gates always left open?”
“In times past they were not.” Alvern said. “But these days, I understand that they are seldom, if ever, closed. It must be that the grim lord determines the disposition of the gates of Elam more so than does the prince of this land.”
“Who is the prince of this land?”
“I’m sorry, my lord, but I know not.”
Aram turned away. “Thaniel, Durlrang, and I will go back into the hills and continue southward, Lord Alvern, until nightfall.”
“I will watch your path, my lord.” The eagle answered. “Tonight, I will rest at the river, and be in the skies above your camp at dawn.”
By the end of the day, the hills began to trend more southeastward and the wide, richly green land of Elam filled all the world across the southern and western horizons. As the sun lowered toward the west, Aram dismounted in a small open area of grass, created sometime in the past when a huge beech had gone down in a storm. Looking out over Elam, he saw many tendrils of smoke that indicated the presence of a large city rising skyward to the southwest.
“What is that city that I see, Lord Alvern?”
“It is the great city of Calom Malpas.”
“Are there many people there?”
“Yes.” The eagle answered. “Very many.”
Aram looked at Thaniel. “We will have to pay them a visit one day.”
The horse looked at him for a moment and then gazed to the southwest. “It will probably be a waste of time, my lord.”
“Why?”
“I heard the words of Lord Alvern. They give their children willingly to Manon. Such people will not aid our cause.”
Aram looked at the horse for a moment, and then nodded and said nothing.
At dawn the next morning, Aram gazed one more time over the broad green vastness of Elam and then they went eastward through the hills toward Wallensia. Before noon, they found the ruins of an ancient road, similar in construction to those that crossed Aram’s own valley far to the northeast, running east and west between Elam and Wallensia. But the forest had taken much of it back, huge trees thrust up through the pavement in many places, and it did not facilitate their journey greatly. The region of forested hills that lay between Elam and the southern plains of Wallensia was broad. By the end of the day, they had not yet come out of the rumpled forestland to where they could see the flat lands that led northeast toward home.
They camped in a stand of tall, thick-trunked beeches above a substantial stream that flowed through a rocky defile. The ancient road had turned away in the afternoon and they had abandoned it to go more directly to the east.
The next day, at midm
orning, they once again encountered the road where it swung back north and upon its broad pavement they descended from the hills onto flatter ground, and came quite suddenly into the impressive ruins of an ancient city. The forest had encroached into the edges of the city but toward its central regions it was intact, the stonework of its walls and towers still sound, relatively unbroken by the ravages of time. Thaniel’s hooves thudded dully on the pavement, the sound of his tread echoing along the empty avenues and abandoned streets.
“What is this place?” Aram asked.
“I do not know, Lord Aram.” Thaniel answered. “I am as unfamiliar with this part of the world as you. You must ask Lord Alvern.”
Aram looked skyward. “We have discovered a city.”
“It is the city of Panax. It has not been inhabited since ancient times – since before the age of Joktan. The people of Wallensia always thought it to be inhabited by spirits, so they avoided its environs. No one has dwelled there for centuries.”
Aram gazed about him at the finely built structures, still intact, sturdy, and except for scattered brush and a few trees that had encroached inward from the surrounding forest to take root along the edges of streets and in the corners of walkways; the city seemed untroubled by time’s passage. It was as if the city had been abandoned just within the last few decades. There were words and phrases inscribed into many of the imposing facades, similar in its flow and its pattern to the writing Aram had seen in his own city.
“I see no signs of war.”
“No.” The eagle answered. “Though it was abandoned at the time of the great civil war of your people, my lord, war never came there. It was abandoned for other reasons.”
“Other reasons? What reasons, Lord Alvern?”
The eagle was silent for a moment. “It is rumored that a great evil occurred there, my lord. I know little of the matter. In those days I dwelled in the mountains to the west of Seneca and never came into these skies. There were others of my kind that lived here and might have known the substance of the matter, but they were killed in the slaughter at Manon’s tower. I have only ever heard the rumor of the occurrence of a great evil.”
Kelven's Riddle Book Two Page 43