by Ember Lane
Lincoln wondered how he could tell her that his new place would be sacred. It felt like a secret that only Aezal should know, but that didn’t make any sense. He’d known Allaise longer, technically Ozmic and Grimble too. Something about Aezal elicited his trust more. It was almost like he understood that Aezal would be his companion for a long time.
“My village lies west of here, I can feel it,” he told Allaise. “You?”
She smiled, but it was full of reticence. “I…I don’t know. I doubt…I doubt I’ll go back to Brokenford. The ale kinda ruined my business.”
“Ruined it, how?”
“The tavern was noticed. A king’s man looked in and saw it was busy. He petitioned the king.”
“And then just took it?”
“Not yet, well maybe by now. A half-elf and a half-giant, or a friend of the king; who do you think will win out?”
Lincoln grunted.
“Good job you came,” Aezal said, finally rousing himself from the silence he’d dwelled in since Fawkes had captured him. “I’ll pay better attention to what’s going on. Getting bested by those frog spawn has hurt my pride.”
“How did they get you?”
“We think Morag drugged our last ale. You never touched your last one, you went out for some air.”
“Luck,” Crags said. “He got lucky, and then not so lucky. Looks like your luck’s not without end. What did you do to that man anyway?”
“Long story, Crags,” Lincoln muttered, not wanting to dwell on Fawkes.
“So, why don’t you come with us, Allaise?”
“And make a town out of logs? Remember, I’m a city girl now.”
“But there’ll be no half-elf, half-giant talk, and we’ll need you—you and Pete. Imagine it.”
“Or I could stay here,” Allaise said. “I could clean this place up, attract a couple of settlers. Send word back to the city.”
“Why?” Lincoln asked. “Why not come with us?”
Allaise held his gaze for a long time before she answered. “Because I believe in you, Lincoln Hart. I see something in you. So does Pete, and Aezal, and Ozmic, Grimble—hell, even the gnome. None of us, none of us are sure what, but we all know its there.”
Aezal was nodding, as was Pete and the dwarves. Crags had gone upstairs to snag the best bed. “But what?” Lincoln asked.
“Mandrake?” Allaise asked. “You doubt you're something special and yet the land has given you an alignment never spoken, rarely whispered. It has given you a guild that sleeps for now, but promises much. It is her guild.” Allaise’s eyes were wide, her voice, soft. “No, Lincoln, you need to become a man of secrets, even as you are keeping some from me now.”
“Concealment,” Aezal scoffed.
“If Fawkes noticed it, which I don’t doubt. He’ll use that knowledge to gain favor, and like as not with someone worse than the king.” Allaise had her hand on Lincoln’s leg, squeezing it reassuringly. “Someone needs to stay out, to be your eyes and ears. Someone needs to be your marketplace, to enable you to trade with the outside world while you grow.”
“Someone needs to vet the refugees as they come. Someone needs to take them to sanctuary,” Aezal added.
“And you’d do that for me?” Lincoln asked her.
“You say you’re venturing west. Say it’s a few days travel, what more fortunate place than this to feed it? Isn’t it like everything else that’s happened to you? Isn’t it just another of fate’s helping hand? I, we, me and Pete can be your link to the outside world, until such time as you’re found out or big enough not to care.”
Lincoln nodded. Her offer was too much, her words too kind, her soul true, and her loyalty without question. Having her here, so close, would be a boon indeed. He could trade with the outside world and not be seen. What Allaise was offering was beyond priceless to him.
“I’d rather have you with me,” he said, trying to turn down her offer, to protect her from the danger.
“And I’d rather be with you, but for now, this is as close as I can be.”
Lincoln got out the map, but Allaise put her hand over the rolled scroll. “No,” she said. “Don’t show me. Don’t show Pete. No one. If they come for me, I can’t tell them what I don’t know. Go find your village, your sanctuary, and when you need to, send word, and we will arrange a halfway point. Not one in a straight line, but a random point where goods can be dropped and collected. I only need one thing.”
“Name it,” Lincoln whispered.
Allaise looked deeply into his eyes. “You’ll need to send me some ale from time to time—but not your best stuff, eh? I’ll settle for slops else it’ll give the game away. That’ll get me a loyal community, and when the time comes, we’ll all come.”
“Then it’s a deal,” Lincoln said, and lit his pipe.
“When did you get a pipe?”
“Between killing a troll and adopting a gnome,” Lincoln said simply, and Allaise laughed at that.
Ozmic and Grimble sloped off to snag a bed each, and Pete made his up out of the tavern’s benches. Aezal decided he should sleep in the barn and keep an eye on the back entrance, and so Lincoln and Allaise poured another drink and talked some more. They decided to give it a day before Lincoln would go. Lincoln insisted on sorting out the back of the tavern and planting what Allaise would need to make the visitor’s beer at least palatable. They looked over the tavern from head to foot, and made a plan for each and every part. And they found that the dwarves and Crags had left a room spare, and so they stayed the night together, and Lincoln hoped that Joan would forgive him.
In a day, he would find her legacy and begin building it. For now, the health and vitality, the love he felt for his new companions, for Allaise, was too precious to be denied that little bit of extra time.
11
Joan’s Creek
A welt of red rock, perhaps fifty feet high, spread from both sides of the fissure, arcing gently away. Lincoln looked down at the map.
“This looks like it,” he said as Aezal peered over his shoulder.
“Just get me out of this damned forest,” he replied through gritted teeth.
Both Ozmic and Grimble grunted their agreement. The last couple of days had tested them. Soon after leaving Thickwick, the forest had thickened and closed in, its shadows haunting their way. For six days they had picked their way over slow-flowing streams with moss-clad banks, along narrow clefts in pressing valleys. Twice, they’d had to turn back; their way barred by a sheer fall. They’d camped huddled together; their clothes sodden by the ground; a fire just a dream. The dwarves had grumbled; Crags had argued with everyone, and more than once, they’d all collapsed in exhaustion wondering if the trees would ever end. At times it seemed like they wouldn’t, and though the others had wavered, Lincoln had forged on, determined to find his sanctuary even after they’d let the horses go. The poor beasts were unable to pick out a safe way through the press of the trunks, the peril of loose scree, and unseen slopes that took your very feet away. Even after that, he’d never lost faith.
“We’ll have our work cutout finding a route back to Allaise’s,” Grimble pointed out as they looked up at the red cliffs. “Unless we came here an ass-backward way.”
Until then, Lincoln hadn’t thought about that, though Allaise had been on his mind. They had followed the map, and the map had tried to take them in a straight line. A better way could be found once they’d forged a home of sorts, though if the vale within the red ridge’s embrace was as thick with forest as this belt of land outside, then they were in for some hard toil.
“Tomorrow’s worries,” Lincoln pointed out, and he stepped toward the fissure.
If the map hadn’t led them here, Lincoln doubted that he’d have noticed it. The great evergreen trees surrounding the ridge clustered against the very rock itself. In fact, they’d only gotten brief glimpses of the crag as they’d approached, such were the thick ranks of trunks. It was like the trees were hiding the place, though Lincoln knew that
was impossible…maybe improbable…
The fissure before them was no more than a thin split in the rock, a crack that ran down its side, around three feet wide. Lincoln was reluctant to venture in, the shadows foreboding, but in he went, soon swallowed by the rock’s sheer sides. He steadied each of his steps, testing the rock, and his hands pressed against the towering walls. Cracks made for handholds, and he pulled himself up from one ledge to another. Behind him, he heard Crags calling for help, heard Aezal huff and puff; his frame too big to move easily in what was no more than a fracture in the land.
Sweat dripped into Lincoln’s eyes. His mouth gritted in determination. Lincoln clambered slowly upward. If this was truly the only way into the vale, he would be safe…but lonely. No, this path would have to be fashioned into a trail, but with guile, with the foresight that hidden was best. After a couple of hours, he guessed he was halfway up and picked out a narrow step, slumping onto it and pulling a water bottle out of his sack. Each of them found a spot, and though they were spread out over a twenty-foot-long line, they exchanged reassuring grunts.
“Are we sure this leads somewhere?” Crags asked. He was sitting next to Grimble. For two races that were supposed to be sworn enemies, they were getting on fine now. Maybe the new guild topped all tribal animosity? Or it could be that Crags didn’t want to live in constant fear. One or the other, Lincoln thought.
“Sure,” Lincoln stated without reserve. “It’s just what’s on the other side that worries me.”
He looked up at the thin, scraggly streak that was his only glimpse of the sky above. It was gray, broody, like it wanted to rain, but was waiting for a better opportunity to truly drench them. Lincoln waited for his energy to replenish fully. Not for the first time, he wondered what he’d done to be blessed with such companions. Sitting back against the rocky ledge behind him, Lincoln closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It will all be all right, he thought. It will all be all right. It had to be all right. He forced himself up.
“Already?” Ozmic asked.
“Unless you want to head back and spend another night back in that forest, or worse, here,” Lincoln answered, nerves grabbing hold of his stomach, doubt cramping his muscles, eating away at the resolve he was holding in place.
He crawled, climbed, and edged up the narrow cleft. The gray sky getting ever closer, and finally, like the climb had suddenly given up testing them, it leveled. He crawled along a narrow ledge, wondering why nothing had changed, why the red rock still surrounded him, why the sky was just a slit of gray. He crawled, hand over exhausted hand, arm over spent arm until he saw the sky fall, until he saw it meet a column of green, not dank green—but a vivacious green. He saw a land that was alive. He saw her land.
“Joan’s Creek,” he muttered, and his eyes closed, relief flooding through him; his goal so close to his grasp.
When he woke, confusion filled his mind. The lush green had faded to gray. The gray of the sky had darkened to black. His back, side, shoulders, and neck all ached, and pain pulsed through him. Pushing himself up, he swiveled around, his back against cold rock.
“Did I sleep all afternoon?”
Aezal was sitting by him, a blanket tucked up under his chin. “It was only a couple of hours. We’d never have gotten down before nightfall, any how. We’ll just have to take it slow.”
“What?” Lincoln tensed. “You want to carry on down?”
“We’ll freeze up here,” Ozmic said. “Even if we could get a fire going, the wind’ll take it out. It’s been whistling through here like it was a gap in Balazar’s teeth.”
“You’ve got night vision, and we’ve got torches,” Grimble pointed out. “I’d rather scrape me knuckles than freeze to death. I’ll lead the way.”
For once, Lincoln was pleased he’d been stripped of his position as the group’s unelected leader. Unelected, as long as you didn’t count being made a guild leader by an old, dead king’s corpse. Grimble squeezed past him, pulled some torches from his sack and passed them around.
They started the long, slow climb down. If anything, it was twice as hard going down as climbing up, but bit by bit, they eroded the drop. Snag by snag, slip by slip, and scrape by scrape, they closed in on the bottom of the valley. Even as the amber of sunrise sprayed its light from behind and over the black of the land below them, they toiled on, heads down, muscles screaming in pain, and stomachs clenched in fear.
True ground, real, solid earth packed with the smell of decay and birth mixed together in a heady scent of emerging, struggling life welcomed them, as they sank to their knees on a patch of brilliant, green grass. The late-morning sun beat down on their backs, and they collapsed, and breathed in the vitality of this new land.
“We made it,” Lincoln cried, though more of a whimper of relief.
“I’m done,” said Crags.
“Eh?” Grimble looked around, confused. “I carried you for the last half.”
“Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is being carried by a dwarf?”
“Why you…” Grimble got up, his stance threatening, but his expression, playful.
“Why I what?” Crags asked, and skipped away from the group.
Aezal rolled over on to his back. “And blue sky,” he said. “We have a deep blue sky to welcome us to this new place—this sanctuary.”
“Did you see how big it is?” Ozmic asked. “As the sun was settling, I caught a glimpse. Whaddya think? eight, nine miles around? More?”
“About that,” Aezal muttered. “We surely can’t be alone.”
“Stone dwarves, bound to be some of them. Maybe even tree elves—I saw some forests,” Ozmic declared.
Lincoln let them chatter on. They’d spilled out of the bottom of the ravine and ventured no farther than that, yet even here, on the doorstep to this magical vale, he could feel its vibrancy. The land immediately beyond them was grass, long grass and broad-leafed trees that rustled in the breeze swirling around them. Lincoln grinned as he saw Crags’ head being chased by Grimble. Then Crags vanished completely, and Grimble looked like he stumbled, and then he vanished too, with a splash.
“Water!” Grimble shouted, and Lincoln half crawled, half stumbled toward his cries, his own thirst released.
Once they’d all drank, they sat in a circle, each waiting for another to speak, each savoring the peace of the place. Lincoln flattened the grass between them and spread the map out. Ozmic reached into the little brook beside them and fished out four stones, securing the corners of the map against the gentle breeze.
Now that they were in the vale, the map had become more detailed. It showed the looming mountain that they could see to the north and the ridges that encircled them, and now, not only the river that spilled from the mountain, the lake in the vale’s center, but also forests, bunches of hillocks marked as grassy lands, rock faces, caves, and hollows.
“The banks of the lake,” Lincoln said, pointing down. “That is where we should build Joan’s Creek.”
“No,” said Aezal. “Where the lake spills out. There,” and Aezal stabbed his own finger down. “We need to be able to link both sides of the vale. That is where we should build it.”
Lincoln looked around at each of them. They seemed to be in agreement with Aezal.
“Agreed,” he said. “Do we set a fire now and cook up some food?”
They all looked at him like he was daft. “We’re two hours or less from our destination, and you want to cook?” Crags said, and Lincoln realized he was scared.
What if I mess it up? he thought, but Aezal now stood over him, his hand outstretched, and Lincoln reached out and took it. Pulling Lincoln up, Aezal hugged him. “We made it, brother. We made it.” And like that, Lincoln’s doubts vanished.
After the deep of the forest and the press of the ridge’s cleft, the freedom of the vale lifted all their moods. Tall grass, scattered copses, and rolling hills led slowly down to glimpses of the lake. Strips of dark green told of the beginnings of woods, though they looked
more welcoming than the thick forest of the outside.
All the while, the mountain looked over them like a mother to a child. It was vast; a great mass of black crags and sheer, gray sides. Its top white and capped with snow. Lincoln couldn’t help but wonder if its latent power fueled the energy he now felt surging through his body.
The sun was high when they crested the final ridge that led down to the great lake in the vale’s center. As one, they sat on the grass and looked over its rippling water. Birds circled overhead, gliding, some diving into the water, some settling on top and paddling away.
“This place is teeming with life,” Aezal said.
“And it must stay that way,” Lincoln muttered. “We must grow our own food, rear our own. We mustn’t disturb this balance.” He reached into his sack and pulled out his city token. “This, Aezal, this must not break this place.” Lincoln marched down to the lake’s bank and along it to where Aezal had indicated the city should be.
“Here?” he asked.
Aezal looked along the bank and pointed to where the outflowing river was narrowest.
“There,” Aezal said.
The five of them strolled there, and Lincoln stood while they crowded around him.
“Here?” he asked again.
“Here!” they all cried, and Lincoln flipped the token in the air.
“Here,” he said.
12
Bethe
The token spun in the air, but it didn’t drop. It grew steadily bigger as it hung there and began to spray a copper-colored light around. It grew and grew, and the group began to edge out to give it room as it expanded. It began to meld with the shimmering, coppery light until it gradually dissipated and vanished. Lincoln felt a warm radiance begin to glow in his stomach; that addictive pulse of euphoria that signaled his leveling up. A beam of light shot from his body. No longer radiant white, but now the same, coppery color as the token had illuminated. It spread like a fan, then rose and surrounded him in a ball of earthy light. Lincoln felt his tears running down his face as he looked up into the pale, blue sky and searched out Joan’s joy.