Gordath Wood

by Patrice Sarath

  “Now what?” said Saraval, throwing up his hands.

  “To the death, General. Outside. Now.”

  “Talios, don’t be a fool,” Terrick snapped. “You can’t fight the general.”

  “Did you see what he had done to her? Go in there and look at her back.”

  Marthen forced back bile.

  “This is not the issue, my lords,” he said. “The issue is my petition. Again, I wish the Council to honor it as a marriage with all of the rights that entails.”

  “And you want to marry the girl,” Saraval said with the air of one trying to get things right.

  Marthen nodded.

  “Who, Kett? You just beat her senseless. Now you want to marry her?” Talios’s voice was full of disgust. He looked around at the lords. “Does she not deserve the Council’s protection?”

  The lords looked at one another. Marthen wanted to speak, but no words came. He thought his heart would burst from his chest.

  “It’s a puzzle,” Saraval said. “If she is noble, it is a crime that he must answer for. If she is common, it’s a crime between equals and must be dealt with in a common court. Regardless, we cannot make the decision by ourselves. She will have to go before the full Council to determine her position.”

  Marthen turned to Lord Terrick. “What of your son?” he said at last, speaking the words as if he had forgotten how. “Do you take his claim before the full Council as well?”

  “Leave my son out of this.” Terrick was rigid with fury.

  Saraval turned to him. “Terrick?”

  “My son—in the way of boys—thought he was in love. I ended it. There is no claim.”

  Saraval shook his head. “In the high god’s name, what a mess. All right. This is a distraction from our true purpose. General, we will consider your petition and the girl’s status. In the meantime, don’t touch her again until we decide. Does that serve your purpose for now, Talios?”

  “It’s enough for now,” Talios growled. He looked at Marthen and shook his head, the disgust still clear in his eyes. With another curse he threw back the flap so violently the whole tent shook and ducked out into the cold morning.

  Terrick sat down heavily. “Where were we?” he said.

  “Our next campaign,” Saraval said, clearing his throat. “General, if you please.”

  Marthen restrained himself from grabbing at his head to stop the pounding. He leaned over the map, pointing out their next move, willing his voice to obey him. “Attend, my lords. The scouts have word of Tharp’s depot. I expect them to return as soon as tomorrow with its location. If we can stop Tharp from resupplying, we can cut off this war.”

  He had almost lost, but he had not lost yet.

  Joe, Arrim, and Mrs. Hunt got out of the car, walking up to the boulder. The crossroads was deserted. There were the lonely half-buried rocks that had supported Balanced Rock, for millennia, Joe supposed. The rock had gouged a hole in the asphalt when it had come to rest. Joe laid a hand on it and jerked it back. The rock buzzed and whispered. It felt warm to the touch, despite the cold rain. He could almost make out the words it whispered at the edge of his hearing. The world faded, and he sank deep into the whispering, letting it take hold of him. It felt good to succumb, and his knees weakened.

  He was yanked back, hard, stumbling, and the world came back into clear bright focus.

  “What the hell?!”

  “A live morrim,” Arrim said, letting him go. “Very dangerous to a guardian.” He gave Joe a meaningful look. “Be careful. ”

  “Are we too late?” Mrs. Hunt said.

  “I don’t think so. The pinpricks they gave me in the house of healing are leaving me. I thought I never would feel the gordath again, but it’s starting to come back. I think we are in time.”

  “Regardless, you must try,” Mrs. Hunt said. “You are our only hope.”

  The day turned cold and frozen when they made their way over the cross-country course toward the woods. Joe shivered in his jacket. Mrs. Hunt was bundled in a shearling parka. Arrim wore an old duster someone had left in the tack room. They made an odd group as they went through the gate, closing it behind them, and walked up the long, sloping hill toward the trails. Behind them, the barns remained quiet and closed. Gina and the other girls who came to do the early morning feeding and mucking had been coming later than usual as the strange events occurred, and then left as soon as they could. No one wanted to be around Gordath Wood. Plenty of owners had taken their horses to other farms.

  They walked in silence, their boots crunching over the frozen grass. As they followed the contour of the fields, they dipped down into a small decline surrounded by the outskirts of Gordath Wood. Joe was relieved to see there was no flickering darkness up ahead. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but both Arrim and Mrs. Hunt seemed to know, and he decided just to follow along and see what was what.

  He started to feel a twinge of nausea though, and his forehead sprang out with sweat despite the cold. Almost before he was aware of it, Arrim said, “We’re getting close.” His voice had become sharp, the sodden druggedness gone. He was no longer weepy and emotional; his eyes were clear and his expression intelligent. Mrs. Hunt nodded. Her face was pale, and the corners of her mouth were pulled down in pain.

  “Are you all right?” Joe asked her. She nodded, as if she didn’t trust herself to speak.

  “It’s the portal.” Arrim threw a glance at him. He looked fine. “How are you holding up?”

  “I think I’ll make it. Is this what happened to me the day I found you?”

  Arrim nodded. “When the gate pulls on a guardian, that is often the way it feels, for we are more attuned to its spell. But you withstand it well.” He smiled. “Perhaps you are the son of a guardian who fell into your world long ago. It is said that it’s a talent that is passed from father to son.”

  Joe grunted. “Not likely,” he said. “Daddy was no guardian.”

  Arrim grinned. “And maybe some sweet-talking guardian visited your mother on a long afternoon. We’ve been known to do that.”

  Joe shrugged deep inside his jacket. Nice to think he wasn’t his father’s son, and maybe it went a long way to explain his mother’s wistful sadness. “Yeah, well,” he said. “Maybe.”

  Arrim laughed appreciatively.

  Mrs. Hunt looked from one to the other but kept her own counsel.

  Arrim went on, “You should come through with me and stay. We could use you.”

  Joe stopped dead for a step, surprised at the powerful attraction of the idea.

  “I thought you were on the outs with that fellow, Lord Tharp,” he said. “Not sure that’s someone I want to work for.” Lords and ladies, he thought. Worse than working for Mrs. Hunt . . . The thought trailed off as he realized that she was a lady. If he wasn’t just being dragged into someone else’s craziness. “Guess I’d have to think about it,” he finished.

  “Guardians have protections. If Arrim took action against my husband to close the gordath, the Council can determine his fate.” Mrs. Hunt smiled. “I would step in to lend my support, but I may have little influence once I cross the gordath.”

  Arrim looked at her sidelong. “He loves you and misses you still.”

  “Perhaps.” Her tone was final; she made it clear the conversation was done.

  It took about an hour to get well into the Wood, taking a narrow, twisting trail Joe was not familiar with. Their path cut across several roads, but traffic was light; they saw only one or two cars. It was a weekday, yet it seemed no one was commuting that day. They skirted a little pond, still unfrozen and surrounded by willows, their bare branches trailing the ground, and entered a copse on the other side. Immediately the temperature dropped several degrees, and snow had spilled out along the ground, dusting the tops of the leaves and piling deeper among the rocks and broken-up ground beneath the trees.

  “What the hell—” Joe said. “It only snowed under the trees?”

  “Snow from the other side,” said Mr
s. Hunt. She pointed.

  Snow was falling up ahead, between the trees, but only in a narrow swath framed by three giant tree trunks. Joe’s mouth dropped. The rest of the woods were clear; the sky above was clear. But in between the three giant trees it was snowing hard, with flakes blowing out from a cold, sharp wind. And between the trees—he peered hard. It was as if he looked through a window of air. Forest yes, but a different forest, different trees, a different scene. My God, he thought. My God.

  His nausea reached a sharp pitch, and he swallowed hard against the urge to throw up. Arrim had a strange grin on his face. Joe suspected that he was loving it, and he wanted to hit the guy.

  “Let’s go,” Mrs. Hunt said, and they all three glanced at each other and went forward. Just before they stepped between the three giant trees, they grabbed hands like little kids, took one deep breath, and walked forward into the portal.

  Twenty-one

  Down a short flight of stairs beneath the grand chamber of Red Gold Bridge were three dark cells. Crae knew them rather well; he had thrown many an unruly merchant or smallholder in them to calm them down before they went to commoner court. Now his boots sank into the mangy straw as he paced in the little space. The windows were just above ground level, and he watched as a few boots went by his range of vision; some horses, rough wagons. There was not much traffic. Too cold, for one, and he suspected that many people had fled the stronghold as war and the gordath pressed in. As if to confirm his suspicions, the mountain shook overhead, then subsided.

  Come on, he thought. He got up and paced, fretting. His hand kept going to his side, but of course his sword was no longer there, or his crossbows and bolts; he felt the loss of those even more keenly. Damn Hare. Meddling Brytherner.

  And then, finding out that Lynn had known Bahard. Ballllard . He tried to say it the way she did, but it sounded foreign and strange. It had been only slightly comforting to know that they didn’t like one another, once it was clear that they used to be together, perhaps in marriage.

  He breathed out a short oath and turned away from the window. Almost immediately he turned back. What was taking so long?

  Outside his window, the scarce traffic speeded up. He heard shouting, other cries. At his cell door, the long bolt scraped back, and it opened.

  “What took you?” Crae said.

  “What? No thanks?” Stavin jerked his head back at the opening. “All right then. Let’s go.”

  Crae hastened out after him. “Thanks,” he said.

  “It’s nothing,” Stavin said, handing over his crossbow, bolts, and sword. “Your man Tal said something about a letter.”

  He had written it when he had resigned his commission. As your last order, Tal, if I am ever taken prisoner in Red Gold Bridge, bring my plight to Lord Stavin’s attention.

  Tal had always been faithful.

  Overhead the sounds of panic rose.

  “What did you do?” Crae asked.

  “Just a rumor. If this damned mountain cooperates, it will take that much longer before things settle down. I’ll get the horses. She’s in the old rose room.”

  Her old prison.

  “Meet you at the stables,” Crae said.

  “Meet you at the stables.”

  Climbing up the stairs to the rose room, Lynn was reminded of her first days at Red Gold Bridge. Then, hobbling up the worn, ivy-covered stairs to the little room, she had been almost too tired to be afraid. Now her stomach twisted in a knot of apprehension. She followed the soldier up the icy staircase that wrapped around the outside of the tower. Snow piled up in the corner of each step where the wind had swept it. The ivy was brown and withered, draping skeletally over the stone.

  Lynn shivered, wrapping her arms around her. This high up, the cold pierced right through her. She looked back out over the walls facing the wintry forest, mostly barren under the pale winter sun. The trees quivered constantly, and the knot in her stomach tightened. She paid for her inattention; her boots slipped out from underneath her, and she stumbled to one knee. She scrambled up again as the soldier turned around impatiently.

  Lynn didn’t know what was worse: to be at the bottom of Red Gold Bridge with the entire mountain poised to come down on top of them or to be locked in the rose room at the top. She looked back again.

  “Come on,” the soldier said. He held out his hand. She didn’t think she recognized him as one of Crae’s men—now Tal’s—but it had been so long ago since Crae had found her on the outskirts of the forest.

  “I’m coming,” she said. She gathered herself up and followed him around the last turn. She took a chance and called out after him, “You know it’s bad, don’t you?”

  He stopped at the top of the stairs, one hand on the rough wooden door, its new hinges gleaming.

  “I can’t talk to you,” he said.

  “Do you know how he is doing it? How he’s keeping the gordath open?”

  The soldier pushed the door open, gesturing her inside. She walked into the dim room, as cold as the outside. The fireplace was dark and bare, no neat pile of wood waiting to be lit. The bed was as she remembered it, a pile of heavy blankets and furs on top of the slatted mattress. Cold gray light from the door and the narrow window barely lit the chamber. A sifting of snow lay on top of the windowsill.

  Home sweet home, she thought. She swung around.

  “Have you been out there? Do you know what’s going on?”

  Instead of answering, he backed out. She called out to the closing door, “We came back to stop it. You should help us.”

  He drew the door behind him, and the locks fell into place. Now the only light came from the window. If she closed the shutters to shut out the cold, she would be in darkness. Lynn sighed and sat down on the bed, wrapping herself in the extra blankets. She would shut the window when it was too dark to see anyway. It was no worse than sleeping outside, as she had been these several days.

  She shut her eyes, but it did nothing to quiet her mind. Ballard. Bahard. She had always known Mark was a jerk, even when they were briefly together. Always boasting about his business deals, alluding to the shady ones slyly and bragging about the next big score.

  Stay with me, and I’ll take care of you, babe.

  She shuddered. Babe. That had been the last straw.

  She felt the mountain shake again and threw off the covers.

  “I’m not staying here,” she said out loud to the twilit chamber, her voice quavering in time to the vibrating mountain. She stumbled over to the dead fireplace, but they had learned their lesson—no pokers. Lynn scrabbled around for the small grate. She pulled it out and hefted it one-handed, and swung it at the door.

  At the same time, the door opened. Lynn almost hurtled the grate into Crae’s chest. He caught it and let it drop to the floor.

  “You have a way with doors,” he said.

  “Only this one,” she said. She grinned. “I was coming to rescue you, you know.”

  “I see that. Let’s go.”

  She followed him down the stairs on the outside of the tower. The uneven shaking settled down again, but the wind had become razor-sharp with cold. Lynn inched down the stairs, one hand on the rough tower bricks.

  “Is this safe?” she called out.

  “No,” he said.

  She took a deep breath and placed each foot with care, trying to hurry. Her boot slipped, and she sat down hard on a step, jarring herself. “Damn.” The mountain shook violently, and she slipped down three more steps. “Crae,” she said through gritted teeth. He stopped, back against the tower, and hauled her to her feet. “It’s doing it on purpose,” she said, meaning the mountain.

  “I know. Here.” He unslung a crossbow and the quiver of bolts and handed them to her. She put them over her shoulder, her heart sinking.

  “What for?”

  “In case we have to fight our way out of here. Stavin is setting up a diversion, but I doubt it will hold for long. Do you remember how to shoot?”

  She didn’t think
she would ever forget. “Yeah. Sure. What’ll you use?”

  “I have my sword.”

  All of his weapons had been taken from him when they were captured by Hare.

  “Thank you, Stavin,” she muttered.

  Crae gave a muffled laugh. “I’ll tell him you said so.” When the quaking subsided, they continued down the stairs.

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, he unsheathed his sword. The mountain had settled, sullenly, Lynn thought. Its presence hulked overhead. She gripped the crossbow and the quiver.

  “Listen,” she whispered. “I was coming to rescue you, but I can’t stay. I’ve got to go back. I’m sorry, but I have to do what I can from my side.”

  “I know. We’ve got to go to the stable first, though.” She didn’t know what her expression held, but Crae gave a slight smile. “You can’t go back without your horse, can you?”

  The stables were an oasis of warmth; Lynn blew on her fingers and felt her muscles loosen when they slipped inside through a small side gate.

  “Psst.” Stavin came out of the gloom leading three saddled horses, including Dungiven. The big horse nickered when he saw Lynn.

  “Good,” Crae breathed. He clasped Stavin’s hand, then gestured at Lynn. “Up. Up.”

  She slung her weapons out of the way and swung into the saddle. “Here we go again,” she said. She glanced at Stavin. “We did the same thing in your barn.”

  He looked at her dubiously. “I am sure Jessamy will write to me about that, too,” he said. He mounted.

  “You shouldn’t come,” Crae said. Stavin waved a hand.

  “Better if I do. If we’re stopped, I’ve captured you. Or I’m a hostage. No.” He forestalled Crae’s protest. “Let’s go, my friend.”

  They didn’t burst out but rode single file out through the small gate, ducking under the low lintel, their stirrups scraping the doorframe. After that, Crae led them at a quick trot out of the courtyard toward the stronghold wall, where another door awaited them. Stavin slipped to the ground and unlocked it with a huge key. Again they slipped through, bending over their saddles through the tunnel of stone.