by R. J. Grieve
Instinct rather than reason led her to the little stream where she had bathed. The brook sprouted over some fern-covered rocks into a fairly deep pool and it was here that she found Celedorn sitting beneath the fall, up to his chest in water, vigorously scrubbing his hair.
“Celedorn!” she gasped, speech almost beyond her.
“What?” He wiped the water out of his eyes and then saw her face clearly. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.
She pointed back down the slope, expecting at any moment the blackness to appear between the trees. “Quickly!”
He made to rise and she had only just the presence of mind to hastily turn her back. Swiftly he donned his breeches and boots. She turned to face him just as he was buckling on his scabbard and was rewarded by being grabbed peremptorily by the shoulders.
“What is it?” he demanded, shaking her. “Turog?”
“No! No, Celedorn, I don’t know what it is!” she sobbed.
He shook her again more forcefully. “You’re not making any sense. What has frightened you so much? Tell me!” he ordered savagely.
“It was watching me. I felt that old feeling of being watched and it was there amongst the trees. A......a blackness. But it had eyes like fire that stared right into me. Right into my soul. Eyes that burned like fire. Such......such evil. I couldn’t move. I ......”
“.......did it follow you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. The log burned me and I just simply ran. I didn’t look back.”
He drew his sword. “I had better go and find out what it is. Stay here!”
She caught his arm. “Don’t, Celedorn! I don’t think this thing can be fought with swords.”
He shook off her hand impatiently. “We’ll see,” he remarked grimly and began to descend the slope.
Having no intention of being left alone, she fearfully began to follow him. He moved with all his customary stealth. Not a twig cracked under his foot, not a leaf rustled. His sword was poised in his hand as if it belonged there and his muscles were tense. She was close enough behind him to see the drops of water still running down his back.
They came to the top of the slope surrounding the hollow. Between the trees they could see the fire still burning with cheerful incongruity. The log that had fallen out, smouldered a little distance from the rest. Oyster shells scattered the ground and the basket containing the oat cakes sat untouched.
Signalling to her to stay where she was, Celedorn descended the slope using the trees as cover. Cautiously he stepped into the open space by the fire. Nothing stirred. He looked up at Elorin questioningly and she silently pointed to the trees on the far side of the camp. Warily he approached them and then to her alarm, disappeared from sight between them. After what appeared to her to be an agony of anxious waiting, he reappeared and beckoned to her to come down.
“I can find nothing,” he said. “No footprints, no broken twigs or branches. Nothing to indicate that anyone has even been here. Are you sure you didn’t fall asleep and have a bad dream?”
“No!” she declared, revolted by the suggestion. “I wasn’t asleep. It was amongst those trees just where I showed you.”
“Well come and see for yourself. There is certainly nothing there now.”
She stared at the trees but didn’t move. “Come on,” he urged, taking her arm. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Reluctantly she allowed him to lead her to the trees.
“I can see there is nothing here now, but there was. There was.” She looked up at him imploringly. “I didn’t imagine it, Celedorn, you must believe me.”
Her eyes met his and held for a long moment.
He sighed. “Yes, I believe you. The day we left the Meadowlands, I too thought I saw something but I don’t know what it was. I, too, have had a sense of being followed but not, admittedly, since we came to the Wood of Uldor. The feeling left me then and has not returned.” A slight smile melted his serious expression. “It seems that you have finally met something that is blacker than I am.”
She shivered. “Don’t joke about it. I have never felt such evil. It was as if those eyes could read my very thoughts. If it hadn’t been for the log falling out of the fire and burning me......”
“.......you got burned? Where? Let me see.”
She showed him the charred patch on the knee of her breeches.
“This is quite a nasty burn. I’ll need to attend to this - but not here.” Turning from her, he kicked soil over the fire to put it out and picked up the basket. “We’ll go back to the brook and deal with your injury there, then we must decide what must be done next.”
When they reached the brook, he pressed her gently down on a stone and squatting in front of her, unceremoniously tore open the knee of her trousers. Then using the remnants of his shirt, which had been left behind at the stream, he bathed the burn with cold water and bound wet strips torn from his shirt around it. She winced with pain as he tightened the bandage and he looked up in time to catch the expression on her face.
“Burns are always painful but it will heal provided we keep it clean.”
“But now you have no shirt,” she protested. “You’ll be cold tonight.”
He grinned, unrepentant. “I have a tough hide. It will take more than a little cold air to finish me off.”
She ran her hand over the firm bandage round her knee. “Thank you. You do believe me, don’t you? You are not just humouring me?”
He shook his head, still smiling. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not much given to humouring people. No, I believe you saw something. I just wish I knew what. The Turog I know and can deal with, but this......?” his voice trailed off. “Kerrea said that the thing following you might be a creature of the darkness and shadows. She thought it might not like the strong light of the open plain and in your dream you said that it waited for darkness before crossing the plain, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it was only a dream.”
“Perhaps, but it’s all we have to go on at the moment.” He stood up. “We are most at risk tonight. Somehow I don’t think that we will find anywhere safe in these woods.” He turned and looked down to the estuary. “I think the best place would be one of the sandbanks in the middle of the river. We will be surrounded by water, which means that we cannot be taken unawares - as so easily could happen amongst the trees. If these clouds clear and there is a moon tonight, the estuary will be lit up like a mirror. Nothing could approach us undetected.”
“What if it abandons stealth and comes after us?”
“Then we will see it coming and must put to the test the question of whether it can be fought with the sword or not.”
Slowly, with Elorin limping a little, they descended the wooded slope to the river. The sun, now sinking fast towards the western horizon, slid from behind a heavy black bar of cloud and cast a metallic, coppery light over the estuary. The gulls had gone from the sandbar and the waves broke on it languidly, sending long ripples across the still lagoon, making the bronze image of the sky quiver. Down at sea-level the forest of reeds on the far shore looked tall and black. The occasional piping trill of a moorhen echoed across the glassy water. The air hung motionless, silent except for the distant whisper of the waves.
“I was down here earlier, gathering oysters,” Celedorn said softly. “The water is quite shallow but it is tidal at this point and I don’t want that burn of yours to come into contact with salt while it is still raw.” He pointed to a little islet in the middle of the estuary. “There, the sandbank with the old willow growing on it. Nothing can approach it without being seen, yet the willow will afford us some cover from curious eyes.” He turned to her and handed her the basket. “Come, I’ll have to carry you.”
She began to protest, not at all sure that she wanted to be carried by him, but he cut her short.
“Don’t argue,” he snapped irascibly.
He lifted her easily in his arms and began to wade into the water. She put her arm around his shoulde
rs, still a little uneasy by the close proximity to him. Even the flattering light of the setting sun could not soften the cruel scars now so close to her face. They cut through the ragged black beard as clearly as a channel of the river through dense reeds.
She was startled out of her reverie by finding herself addressed.
“If they bother you, don’t look at them,” Celedorn said acidly.
She suddenly realised that she had been staring, and flushed with embarrassment that she had been caught in an act of such insensitivity.
“They don’t bother me,” she quickly lied. “I was just thinking that I’d be glad to see the back of that dreadful beard of yours.”
He glanced at her briefly, without halting his slow passage across the lagoon. His look gave nothing away and she was unsure whether he had been deceived or not.
When they reached the tiny island, the sun had gone and a lavender-grey twilight had settled like a soft blanket over the scene. The willow was old and gnarled, eking out a frugal existence on the unpromising ridge of earth that capped the sand.
“It must be just out of reach of high tide,” Celedorn remarked. “Unfortunately its branches are too thin to give us protection if it rains.”
Elorin looked up at the sky. “I don’t think it’s going to rain. Look, the sky is clearing.”
A huge lake of deep blue, studded with stars, had appeared between shores of grey cloud. Dew softly began to settle, making the air a little chill.
“If it continues to clear, we should have a moon tonight,” Celedorn observed approvingly.
“Come and have something to eat,” Elorin invited, seating herself under the willow tree. “All I have to offer is the last of the oatcakes you have become so fond of.”
He gave a soft chuckle and sat down beside her. “Keep your voice low,” he advised. “Sound travels a great distance over water at night.” He broke the oatcake she had given him. “If we ever get away from this God-forsaken coast, I promise you, I will never touch another oatcake as long as I live.”
She smiled slightly and gently rubbed her throbbing knee. “There’s a dew falling,” she observed, “and you have no shirt. You’ll be chilled to the bone.”
“I’ll be all right. I don’t intend to go to sleep tonight, so I’ll move around from time to time to keep warm.”
After a pause she said: “What do you think it was that I saw?”
“I don’t know. The Forsaken Lands are reputed to be full of strange and mysterious things that one would not encounter in more civilised regions. The place is shrouded in the mists of legend, but there are few solid facts to go on.”
“Do you remember in the Chronicles of the Old Kingdom the story of Ilsa and Ferendo?”
“The two lovers who made the pact with the necromancer to help them escape?”
“Yes. They escaped the wrath of Ilsa’s father by hiding in the Great Forest but they became lost in the forest and encountered a demon of darkness. Do you remember?”
“I remember the description of the demon.....‘as dark as the abyss with eyes that burned the soul within the body’. You are not suggesting the description fits the thing you saw today, are you?” He raised his brows disbelievingly. “The Chronicles are legends, tales that have become distorted with the passage of time, until they bear little resemblance to the truth. There are no such things as demons,” he declared, then added ruefully, “except perhaps the ones we invent ourselves.”
“Then you don’t believe me!”
“I believe that you saw something - but a demon? No, that’s ridiculous. It was perhaps a Great-turog.”
“But the Turog have yellow eyes and this thing had no body just......”
“Very well then,” he said irritably. “It was something that we have not encountered before but that doesn’t make it a demon. Let’s try to keep a sense of proportion.”
“If you had seen it,” she replied acerbically, carefully controlling a surge of anger, “you would not talk so blandly about keeping a sense of proportion.”
“And if you would stop letting your imagination run away with you, we would do much better.”
“Imagination! Why you......”
“Keep your voice down,” he hissed. “Have you no sense!”
Battle was now fairly joined and a low-voiced but acrimonious argument followed, which ended by Celedorn starting to his feet in annoyance and striding the few yards to the end of the islet.
He heard her grumbling to herself beneath the willow tree. “I knew that being pleasant for two consecutive days would be too much of a strain for him.”
Suddenly he saw the funny side and grinned to himself, his earlier irritation evaporating. However, he had no intention of letting her know this, and as punishment, he did not return to the willow tree but remained standing on the shore staring across the water.
Elorin was not the only thing causing him irritation that night. The moon, too, was being aggravating, refusing to shine steadily but instead playing a frustrating game of hide and seek amongst the fast-moving clouds. At one moment it plunged the world into darkness, the next, it burst forth, scattering dazzling silver light across the glassy waters of the delta. Celedorn stood for a long time, listening intently, smelling the cool night air and watching the beautiful, but unpredictable, play of the moonlight on the mirrored estuary. As all had gone quiet under the willow tree, he assumed that Elorin was asleep. The occasional fluting call of a nightbird floated across the water to him over the soft whisper of the sea on the sandbar.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement on the shore. As he turned his head to look more closely, the moon played him false and ducked behind a cloud, plunging everything into darkness. It took his eyes several tense seconds to re-adjust and he stood still as stone, straining his sight against the darkness. He could make out the faint gleam of the brindled sky reflected in the water. Dimly, across the still surface, something seemed to be moving. Something darker than the darkness: blacker than the night. He could distinguish no definite shape but he knew it was what he had seen before on the Meadowlands - a small, dark cloud moving across the surface of the water. It was coming directly towards the islet.
“It knows we are here,” Celedorn thought grimly and in one smooth movement drew his sword. He almost jumped when something touched his arm. It was Elorin.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered. “That old feeling of being watched has come upon me again.”
“Your instincts are correct. Whatever you saw, is approaching us now. It is crossing the water towards us.”
He felt her stiffen in alarm. “Where is it?”
He nodded towards the dim waters of the delta.
“What are we going to do?” She asked, fear seeping into her voice. “We cannot run.”
“Just stand back. Don’t get in my way,” he ordered curtly.
Obediently, she retreated a pace or two, still staring wildly into the darkness.
The blackness was closer now, much larger than it had first appeared to be. Celedorn thought that very faintly he could distinguish two lights, like fireflies, glowing in the midst of the darkness. As it approached, the cloud seemed to swell upwards until it towered higher than a tree. Eyes, like burning coals, fixed themselves on Celedorn standing far beneath it on the shore, sword in hand. The cold knife of fear sliced into him. He did not flinch but planted his feet firmly apart and gripped his sword with both hands, waiting for the attack that was sure to come.
Elorin’s words came back to him unbidden - This cannot be fought with swords - and he knew in his heart that she was right.
Still the burning eyes sent their skewering gaze blazing down upon him. Up and up grew the towering pillar of blackness against the cloudy sky.
He heard Elorin give a sob of fright behind him. Then, in an instant, when he felt that the cloud must fall upon him like a black avalanche, the moon burst from behind the clouds and abruptly flung its radiant, silver light across the water. A
roaring howl of pain broke from the depths of the darkness. The great pillar of blackness twisted and writhed in torment, dwindling in size as it did so. The burning eyes disappeared as if black eyelids had closed upon them. With another thunderous roar of agony, it fled back across the silver water to the darkness of the forest. The terrible cry echoed round the marshes, rebounding from the clouds and the surface of the river. Flocks of birds sheltering amongst the reeds, exploded from cover screeching with alarm.
For a full minute, Celedorn was unable to move and stood like a carven image, sword still poised, head still tilted back towards the sky. With an effort he broke the spell, and sheathing his sword, turned to find Elorin trembling on her knees behind him.