Warden's Path

by Heath Pfaff

  Chapter 11

  Journey

  11.1

  They changed our orders and Arthos didn’t seem pleased. I could tell something was wrong long before he decided to tell me, but I didn’t ask him about it. Instead I spent the morning talking to Dreea, and showing her what little I could of my ability to use the Will. I made a pair of stones float in the air and circle one another, a trick that while not that impressive, was very difficult for me to manage. It took an amount of control that was at the very reaches of my skill. Even as I managed this trick, I could feel excess Will burning off around me, thrashing around and flickering like a flame in the wind, though I was sure Dreea couldn’t tell how much I was struggling. To her it just looked like I was focusing on the stones circling, not fighting a torrent of my own power to make this meager thing happen. Arthos also didn’t seem to have much to say about my waste of excess energy, and I was beginning to suspect that no one could sense the movement of Will the same way I did. If they could, why did no one ever speak of it?

  Dreea had a toothy, wolfish grin on her face as she watched the stones. “Incredible!” She chirped excitedly. “Teach me?”

  Her question broke my concentration and the two stones fell from the sky. I gave her an apologetic shrug. “I wish I could, but it wasn’t easy to learn. Not everyone can do it, and it takes . . . difficult training to acquire the skills.” That old, cool anger settled in the pit of my stomach. None of it was aimed at poor Dreea. Anytime I thought back upon what had happened to me on my journey to become a Warden I was forced to remember those who had fallen along the way. That always resulted in heartache and anger. I wasn’t sure those feelings would ever diminish.

  Dreea looked a bit crestfallen, but only for a moment. She was still more than excited to be traveling with us. For her this was the pursuit of a dream, and she’d be blackened if she wasn’t going to enjoy the experience. She’d been hesitant to stay behind when we’d gone back into the city to finish our business there, afraid we’d just sneak out some other way and leave her behind, but since we’d returned she’d relaxed considerably. Much to my chagrin, Arthos had suggested we do exactly what she’d feared we would, take another way around the city, call the Kea to us with Will and abandon the willifen all together, but I’d spoken to him in clear and concise tones, and with great volume, until he’d shrugged it off and told me that he wasn’t serious.

  “This is your mistake to make.” He’d said, but I’d known that he had been quite serious about his suggestion. He didn't wish to travel with Dreea. I didn’t think he disliked her, exactly, more so that he considered her a distraction from my training, and hindrance to our task.

  Much to my pleasure, two further days on the road and I wasn’t seeing my choice as a mistake in any way. Dreea was smart, and she had an energy to her that I enjoyed having in our company. She had a spark of life to share that I’d been missing since I’d first made the terrible mistake that had led me down this path.

  She felt young and eager to face the world, though I knew she had to be older than I was. I still didn’t fully understand a willifen’s lifespan, but I intended to find out at some point. Young or old, her enthusiasm kept my spirits high and helped me to avoid the depression that had tried to drag me down since I’d lost Zarkov.

  “They want us to go to Night Watch.” Arthos said, finally breaking his silence after a long stretch of quiet. His tone was heavy, possibly worried though it was sometimes hard to tell with him. He often portrayed an open emotive state that seemed easy to read, but I was increasingly certain that Arthos hid his actual emotions quite well. He seemed to default to humor and that foolish grin of his, but I didn’t think his mirth was always honest. He used it to cover a dark hardness that I’d encountered in most of the Wardens I’d met.

  “Night Watch?” I asked, searching my memory for the place. I knew some of the locations beyond the walls of Black Mark, and this was one I recognized. “Didn’t we abandon Night Watch shortly after we began construction on the school at Black Mark?” I asked, thinking back to my long and boring lectures on the history of the Wardens of Will.

  Night Watch had been one of the very first Warden outposts. It was located high in the mountains overlooking a pass that lead back down to the site where Black Mark was built. It was one of two passable routes to the city, though it was by far the more treacherous of the two. Most didn't consider it passable anymore. The Wardens had abandoned Night Watch after the bridge that crossed to it, a bridge carved from mountain stone, collapsed into the pass, blocking it for all but the most persevering. It took climbing gear to get over the fallen rock, though it was said the Wardens built secret ways in and out of all of their citadels.

  With no good way to keep supplies running to the Watch, they’d closed the gates and abandoned it. It had been empty since, and that was hundreds of years ago. That was what we were taught in school, though I’d come to realize that not everything we were taught was exactly accurate.

  “We did.” He answered. “However, Night Watch houses a doorway, the kind that can be used to get from one place to another very quickly. They didn’t say as much, but I’m guessing we are either being recalled, or sent somewhere specific.”

  “If we were being recalled wouldn’t it have been faster for us to return to Black Mark directly?” I asked, though I wasn’t certain on that. I knew generally where things were located, but it seemed to me that Night Watch was still further away than if we set out directly for Black Mark. They were in different directions from our current location.

  “It would be, but that isn’t the only reason we’re being sent to the Watch. They are also sending us there because it is close to where the willifen traditionally make their homes. It’s further into the mountain range than the willifen go, but it’s not that far out of the way. They want us to investigate the black fluid, report on where we find it, and then return to Night Watch and wait for our next orders.”

  A strange mix of excitement and fear flowed through me. I’d wanted to explore this mystery further, but now that I was faced with the opportunity, I found that I was also quite afraid to do so. The man who wants a moon will find himself crushed when he gets it. I’d always thought the saying was funny as a child, but this seemed like one of those situations Now that I was getting what I’d wanted, I wasn’t sure I was ready to deal with the consequences.

  Dreea growled. “Bad idea! We shouldn’t go to mountains. Should go further away.” She nodded to herself, raising her nose to the air before she turned and pointed in a direction that would lead us further from Black Mark and the mountains. I wasn’t sure what part of finding directions had to do with scent, but she was very good at knowing where she was going, and where she needed or wanted to go.

  “I agree entirely.” Arthos gave a small laugh. “However, we’re not being given much of a say in this. Being a Warden means that we follow the Will of the King, and these are the orders passed down to us. We don’t deny the Iron Will what it wants.”

  “Even if the Iron Will is wrong?” The question slipped past my lips without my brain really taking a moment to look that closely at it. I added what I hoped was a light and friendly smile to the end of it. I didn’t want to make Arthos angry, but I actually did want to know where he stood on the orders given to him. When was it right to do something besides what you were told?

  “Even if I believe the King is wrong, I still follow his orders. He knows more than I do, and I have to accept his judgement. Besides, the law of Will dictates that the strongest Will leads, and there is a good reason for that. Matching Wills with one stronger than you will only end in ruin. The King is in his place because his Will was indomitable. Anyone who has challenged him has been broken, and quickly. What he orders is law.” Arthos’ answer sounded more like an excuse than a justification. Bowing to the Will of the strongest might be something you had to do when it was being directly applied to you, a person could be bent to a strong Will, but it didn’t seem to me that refusing to
resist simply because you knew you would lose was the right mentality either. If something was wrong, and you knew it was wrong, you owed it to yourself and to others to try and resist, even if in doing so you were assured to lose. Resistance to corruption stood as a symbol to others, and eventually someone would rise who could stand and succeed.

  Another point that had always bothered me, was that if a Warden’s Will was their intent made manifest, then it seemed to me that they all hobbled themselves as soon as they gave in to the notion that anyone might have absolute control over them. Your Will wasn’t indomitable if there was even one person you accepted could always outdo you. Resistance was one of the fundamentals of Will. We’d been taught that even as we’d been taught to bend knee to the Iron Will.

  “I hope you will reconsider absolute obedience if our lives are on the line.” I noted a bit dryly, deciding that was as far as I was willing to push this discussion.

  “It has never come up before, and I doubt it will. There aren’t many situations that a skilled Warden can’t get themself out of. The most dangerous place for us is on the front line, and we’re not going anywhere near there. At least, not for this training. We’ll be fine. We just have to be cautious. We’ll gather the information we need, and then we’ll return to the city if that’s what they want. They’re happy with the progress you’re making in your training. It seems they’ve almost gotten over how angry they were about the water test at this point.” Arthos added the last bit with a hopeful tone that fell a bit flat on me.

  I was still angry about the water test, and that fire wasn’t going out any time soon. As long as Zark remained in my memories, I’d never forget my purpose, and I wouldn’t allow Zarkov to leave my memories. I owed him that much.

  “Then I guess we’d best head out. We have a long day ahead of us yet, and if it’s all to be in the saddle, then we might as well get to it.” I said, letting the topic drop. Fighting with Arthos over things wasn’t going to achieve anything towards the larger goal. I just had to keep moving forward for now. I had to learn and get stronger. I had to gain control of my Will, focus it, and turn it into the weapon of change that I wanted it to be. As I struggled with the finer points of control, I often found myself questioning whether or not I would ever reach such a point. That was a self-defeating line of thought I didn’t wish to follow, so I pushed it aside as soon as it tried to rise.

  We packed up our meager camp, mounted up and were on our way in minutes.

  Dreea rode with me for the most part. She spoke as we traveled, talking about her youth and growing up with her sister and Friend. It was an interesting story. She talked of how she could barely remember things from before she’d met him, and how as her sister and Friend’s relationship had changed, her sister had become more like her mother.

  She spoke of Friend’s passing with a sadness to her voice that reminded me that, despite the differences between us, Dreea was an intelligent and passionate woman with a deep range of thoughts and feelings. It was easy to think she wasn't smart because her speech was sometimes a bit broken, and always came out with a bit of a growl to it, but the truth was far from that. She was older than me, and wise because of her time experiencing the world. I sensed a loneliness in her, and a youthful exuberance still despite her age. I had no idea how long the willifen lived, but Dreea made me think it was longer than humans generally did, at least if they weren’t killed by some environmental factor. I wondered if even Dreea knew how many years remained to her, or if she even cared.

  Our path to the Watch took us well north of the area known as the Revenant Swamp, which was fine by my way of thinking. The idea of crossing through the place wasn’t one I’d cherished. It wasn’t that I found it any more frightening than the place we were going, but I had no desire to spend a few days soaking in the bog water. Wet travel was uncomfortable. It wore on your body in ways you didn’t suspect if you weren’t used to it, and it left you cold all the way through, and pulled any good nature from your mood that might try to hold out. A dry route was always better.

  The road we ended up on was one that had, at one time, been smoothly finished for ease of travel, but through years and years of abandonment it had become little more than sporadic patches of stone that looked as though they’d once been carefully shaped. This area was so quiet that it was hard to imagine it had been filled with a crew of men working to make a carefully crafted road across the country. The undertaking must have been a major one, and yet in the end it had all been for naught. What would those men think of the final result of all their effort?

  Those dreary thoughts fled as the mountains began to rise up around us, seeming to spring like magic from the countryside until we were well into them, and the road, what little of it there was, became far more coarse and hard to follow. Finally, after weeks of travel, we were well into the mountain range and we had to continue on by foot. The kea were able to follow us well enough, but riding them along the rugged terrain had become difficult. Staying in a saddle as they bobbed and scrambled over obstacles was a harrowing experience.

  Dreea wasn’t having any trouble at all. She took to the rough, rocky outcroppings as though born for it, and perhaps she was. Her people did live in the area by choice. Arthos and I had a bit rougher go of things, but we were well trained for difficult terrain ourselves, so though we weren't born to scale mountains, we didn't let the challenge slow us.

  Finally, just after midday on a particularly cold morning, Arthos stopped us and pointed up into the mountains. At first I couldn’t see what he was indicating, but finally my eye caught sight of the Night Watch.

  The Watch was built of the same kind of stone that occurred naturally in the mountain, and so without any lights burning it was very difficult to make it out atop the cliff face upon which it sat. It loomed over the narrowed pass like a jagged outcropping of angry rock, the only thing setting it apart from its surroundings being the relatively regular shape of manmade walls, windows, and other building features. The human shaped edges couldn’t occur in nature with such regular symmetry.

  I could see the place where the bridge had once been, though it was yet distant from where we stood. The pass ahead looked as though it came to an abrupt end just below where the bridge had crossed to Night Watch’s gate, the road blocked by a massive pile of stone. It would have been difficult for us to ascend the mess that remained.

  “We’ll be going up this way.” Arthos said, and he gestured towards what looked like a small crevice that dipped into the mountainside not far ahead of us. He looked back at the kea. “They’ll have to stay down here. I’m afraid there isn't enough of a passage for them to follow us any further.”

  I turned to Zara and rubbed the side of her head, feeling a mix of anxiety and doubt at the thought of leaving her behind. “We’re going on ahead. Stay here. Wait for us, but be safe.” I said, and she pushed her nose against the side of my neck and huffed. I felt a swelling of warmth for my steady stead, and I smiled at her. I didn’t like leaving her behind, but it was probably for the best. We didn't know what we were getting into. She might be the luckier of the two of us.

  We hadn’t seen a single glimpse of the black liquid on our trip, though we’d made a point of stopping and looking around at various points. I had felt that dull sense of unease I sometimes did when around the pools once, as we’d camped near a lake, but a good deal of searching had turned up nothing at all. I was beginning to wonder if I was just suffering from paranoia. It was not, however, paranoia that had driven the willifen from their homes in the mountains, down into unfamiliar and inhospitable lands. They were strong and proud, not so easily scared away.

  We crept through the small crevice in the stone, the gap tight enough that I had to breathe in to push my body through, and still the rock scraped at my breast as I forced myself between the jagged edges. Dreea had similar trouble scrambling through, but once we came out on the other side I was surprised to see that there was something like a regular path leading upward. It loo
ked crafted by hand, though it wasn’t wide, and it was far from convenient in its design.

  We climbed the steep path far up into the mountains until we reached a cave that Arthos led us into without hesitation. Just as the darkness began to deepen to the point that we couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of us anymore, we hit a solid rock face.

  “This is the first door.” He said, and then he turned to me. “Open it. If you focus your Will into a thin stream and push at the left side of the rock,” He drew his dagger and tapped a place on the surface. “It’ll trigger the catch pins.”

  I gave him a skeptical look. “What if I break it?” My power could be destructive if I slipped.

  “This was built by Will users, and it’s designed to be used even in emergencies. The pins will only react to a certain amount of Will pushed at them. Any more will just fizzle away, like the excess you use when you’re focusing on a small task.” He explained, still waiting for me.

  I took a breath and nodded, reaching inside to grab at my Will. I didn’t have trouble finding it. It was always there for me, a roaring howl of energy looking to be spent. I focused my intent and let go. There was a deep, loud click like two massive rocks knocking together, and then the stone wall in front of us shifted and began to roll to the side. I hadn’t been able to tell by examining the wall itself, but the rock face was actually a giant wheel of rock, the curved edges buried in the stone walls and floor. The opening was about two feet wide, and left a nice hole in the path in front of us as it moved away.