A soft rap on the door forced her to sit up, dry her eyes, and gather her wits. She opened it to find Wyman and Glak standing there.
“I wanted to check on Elowyn,” Wyman said. “And Glak has something to give her, if she is well enough for company.”
Morganne flung open the door, waving her hand toward the hearth with exasperation, forgetting that neither of them could read. “I’m afraid she’s gone.”
“Gone?” Glak asked. “Gone where?”
“I don’t know.” Morganne sank down into the chair and stared at the empty chest. “She took everything she had with her.”
“Do you think she would have gone back...to where you came from?” Wyman asked, now thoroughly alarmed at the thought of Elowyn traveling the southern road by herself.
“No, but before we came to Minhaven, she often wandered the woods alone, sometimes for days. It was her way of dealing with things. She has been broken of that habit since we got here, yet I fear that she is trying to seek solace from her grief out in the wilds once again. This is no safe place for wandering. What shall I do? What if those men find her?”
“We will find her first,” Glak said bluntly. “Some of my men are already out there, patrolling, and searching. Perhaps they have already seen her. Now that the burial is over, the rest of us will join.”
“Be warned that she is resourceful and wood-wise. I saw that first-hand on our journey here—we would not have made it this far without her. If she does not want to be found, she may be just as elusive as the men you are hunting.”
“Let us hope for her sake that she is not,” Glak said tersely. “The changing weather may yet be her greatest enemy.”
“The tavern is already closed for the day. I’ll join you,” Wyman said.
“Good,” Glak replied. “Bane will ride with us also—he knows the mountain paths well, and he can track.”
“Bane?” Morganne asked in surprise.
“Yes. After all my years of pleading, he has finally decided to join the Kinship.”
“Don’t worry,” Wyman told Morganne as they quickly departed. “Elowyn can’t have gotten that far yet, and there are still many hours of daylight. Just wait here in case she returns.”
But Elowyn did not return. Afternoon turned to dusk, and dusk to nightfall. Wyman came back weary and disheartened, and Glak not at all. She was assured the search would resume again in the gray hour before sunrise. Morganne and Adelin went to bed alone, with Elowyn’s customary place before the fire conspicuously empty. Morganne had been used to her wanderings before, but it was different now. Another anxious day came and went, another night she and Adelin slept alone. It was not until nearly dusk the next day that Glak finally came to confirm that she had not yet been found.
Every time they thought they had located her trail, it went cold again. But they did find something they did not expect. One of the attackers had been badly wounded and separated from his accomplices. He'd crawled into a shallow cave for shelter, where he died soon after. Bane recognized him as someone he had once known long ago from his former life...someone who had worked as a tool and spy for the Sovereign.
“His name was Rennick,” Bane had told them. “And he was no common thief. You can be sure that someone paid him to do this...and paid him well. Find out who he was working for, and we will know our new enemy.”
Bane’s discovery confirmed Glak’s growing fear; that the thievery was only a pretense—a way of inflicting pain, and of weakening Minhaven’s position. These men were nothing like the thieves they had fought before, who avoided direct violence unless they were cornered. They had been cowards, focused on getting what spoils they could as easily as they could. They were just as likely to turn on each other if there was something to gain by doing so. But these men always came as a unified force, dressed alike, stripped of all identifying marks or seals. They fought as well-trained men at arms who had no compulsions about killing anyone in their way. The last time they had attacked, Glak had found some of their spoils shoved over the edge of a ravine. He had not understood why until now.
“I won’t give up until I find her,” Glak promised a distraught Morganne. “But I would not worry about the thieves. I suspect that they are already well away from here, no doubt reporting back to the one who sent them.”
But as determined as Glak was to find Elowyn, she was equally determined to remain hidden away in the depths of the forest. She would not be drug home by the guard like some sort of escaped prisoner. Their searches had come close at times, forcing her to slink into the shadows; still, silent, and keeping her breaths shallow until they had safely passed by. She began to press further into the forest, beyond the point where there were still traces of man’s presence, and into the true wilderness where no one had any cause to go. She needed to bury herself in places that bore no memory of Cailean, or of Minhaven at all. She hoped to find peace in complete solitude, yet she soon realized that no matter how far she went, she could not quiet her mind, and her heart still ached without mercy.
She pulled out the strange coin she had brought with her all the way from Tyroc, fingering its smooth metal, and staring at the strange markings on its surface. They had become so familiar to her that she ceased to wonder what they meant. She had kept the coin all this time as a way to honor the fallen men of the Circle, and Einar who was still out there somewhere trying to fulfil Nevon’s quest. But now this object that had once brought her comfort was just another reminder of all that had been lost. Lost to the same kind of evil and injustice that had taken Cailean’s life.
Morganne had told her not to leave it at the shrine in Evensong, convinced that she was supposed to hold onto it for some other purpose. Elowyn could no longer imagine what that purpose might be. It had been nothing more than an odd little object she carried about with her everywhere, rubbing its cool metal against her fingertips now and then out of habit. Perhaps it was time to let it go, and with it all of the pain she had continued to carry. She couldn’t go back to Tyroc and leave it where she had found it, but she thought the best place to part with it here would be the waterfall and stream that had come to take the place of the one she had once loved.
On Elowyn’s first night in unfamiliar territory she was awakened by something bright shining in her face. She opened her eyes to find that she was surrounded by wisps. Their blue-white brilliance pained her eyes as she squinted at them. All around she could see them, glinting and pulsing through the foliage like fireflies on a hot summer night. She couldn’t imagine what they might want of her, and they didn’t make a sound. Eventually she went back to sleep, convinced that she would wake up to find it had only been a dream after all.
But it wasn’t a dream. From then on, wherever she went, they followed her. First just a few, then more, and even more. Whatever she did, wherever she went, they followed her in silent droves until her nerve finally broke.
“What do you want?” she finally asked in a cracked voice that had not been used since the day she had left Minhaven. How strange and small it sounded calling out into the vast expanse enveloping her. There was no answer. Not that she could have understood the wisps had they spoken, but something about their stubborn silence left an uneasy feeling in her stomach.
Perhaps she was pushing the boundaries of safety too far, too quickly. But she was so distressed, and angry, that she didn’t care. She was not ready to go back, not yet. If she tried to camp closer to the village, Glak’s patrols were sure to find her. Evading them had not been easy. On one occasion, had they but looked up, they might have seen her small face peering down at them from the fanned out branches of a tree. She had tried to reclaim her old habit of tree sailing, only to find that she was starting to get too heavy to do it safely, and it had not brought her any of the comfort she had expected.
Maybe the wisps were waiting for her to spill out her heart to them, as she sometimes did when she was burdened by something she could share with no one else. What had become of Cailean and his father was too pai
nful to talk about just yet, even to the wisps. She needed time to heal, or so she told herself. What she really wanted to do was forget, to go numb, like a limb dangled for too long in a cold winter lake.
“I just want to be left alone,” Elowyn croaked in a raspy voice.
She pressed on faster, and deeper into the mountains. If the wisps could understand her, they showed no sign of it, following her all the more persistently. No matter what direction she looked in, she could see them hovering a short distance away, peeking in and out of the shadows. What did it mean? They had never behaved in such a way before, nor had she seen so many of them at one time. She began to grow anxious, suddenly remembering her dream. She knew the wisps were viewed by the monks as sacred, even as servants of Aviad. But what did anyone really know about them? Sightings were supposed to be exceedingly rare, and yet they always seemed to be around when she was out alone. She was afraid to tell anyone lest they think she was out of her mind, as surely that scholar from the tavern would have.
Elowyn quickened her pace again, eventually breaking out into a run. They kept up with her effortlessly. Distracted by her frustration with the wisps, Elowyn failed to notice something that normally would have caused her to stop and proceed with more caution. The ground on which she was running had gradually changed from a rough forest floor to a beaten path with other beaten paths branching off from it in different directions. They were not so obvious as the walkways in Minhaven, but for this remote place, even a barely noticeable path was a sign that she was not quite as alone as she thought.
The behavior of the wisps suddenly changed again. They all seemed to circle around in front of her and stopped, blocking her from going any further. They finally found their voices. She tried to push past them and instantly felt a searing pain in her right arm. One of them had stung her. She finally stopped, donning a wounded expression as she rubbed away the pain.
“What was that for?”
Again, she tried to push forward on the path, and again, one of them stung her. Much harder this time. They were not going to let her pass.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Elowyn strained to master her voice while her eyes filled with indignant tears. “Why won’t you just leave me alone?”
She darted toward a different path, one that led upward, higher and toward the rugged sides of the mountains. This time the wisps did not stop her, but continued to follow closely behind. The path became steep and rugged, much like the one she and Cailean had taken together. In places she had to carefully navigate around, or over, large rocks that had fallen. Her breathing deepened, and her muscles protested, but she welcomed the exertion. It gave her mind and body a new focus that helped her to forget why she was out there in the first place.
It was getting late in the day; the shadows were growing longer and the sky would soon begin to go dim. She would need to find a place to stop for the night. Ahead she could see the trees beginning to part, revealing a patch of open sky. She hoped that there might be a clearing off the path where she could make camp. But when she finally reached that place, all thoughts of making camp were utterly forgotten.
The path had led her to the top of a cliff overlooking a valley, surrounded on all sides by mountain. But it was not an empty valley. In the center of it was a ruin, or rather what once had been a ruin. All around it swarmed hundreds of dark creatures, working with primitive chisels and mallets, ropes and pulleys. They were rebuilding the structure at the direction of a cloaked human figure standing in the center. Elowyn was too far away to see who it might be. The ruin was little more than a flat, round platform encircled by columns that curved inward. There was no roof. Either it had collapsed and been pulled apart over time, or there never had been one at all.
Elowyn squinted hard at the dark creatures, crouching down behind the brush to make sure they could not see her. There was something familiar about their shape, and the way they moved. Those who were not working carried spears and round bronze shields. Very like the shields Glak had brought back from his first encounter with the beasts.
Elowyn backed away from the edge in a sickened panic. She needed to get away before they saw her, and yet something compelled her to watch just a moment longer. A great cheer of victory rose up from the valley as a single stone was set into place. The ruin was whole once again. The cloaked figure stepped off of the platform and withdrew a sword that flashed red with the reflection of the setting sun. With one deft stroke, he sliced through the neck of one of the beasts, which collapsed dead at his feet. The others stood by, not reacting or retaliating, but waiting. The body was lifted onto the platform, and the man snatched up the head of the beast, tossing it after.
Rays of purplish-black light shot up from the platform, through the body of the slain beast, lifting it into the air. There was a sudden dark flash and the beast was whole again. He raised his fists in the air, shouting something Elowyn could not understand. The mark on his forehead began to glow with a strange light, and another cheer rose up from the valley; a cheer that made Elowyn’s blood run cold.
Suddenly the air became thick and suffocating. Elowyn’s head throbbed, and she felt nauseated. All the beasts had gone quiet. They were bowing down to the figure on the platform, who had lifted his hands to the sky and was chanting in a guttural language that echoed off the sides of the mountains. Her limbs felt so heavy she could barely move, or breathe, or even look upward at the fading sky. She did not understand what was happening, but the presence of evil had grown so oppressive she dropped onto her knees and hung her head, hardly able to bear it.
Elowyn felt a very light pinch on her arm. A wisp had stung her again, but only hard enough to get her attention. It seemed unaffected by whatever had come over her. The wisp darted frantically around the pouch at her hip, which she now realized felt strangely hot. She struggled to loosen the leather cords, barely able to control her fingers. When she finally opened the neck, it was just enough to see that the coin inside her pouch was glowing with a searing brightness. Though too painful to look at for long, somehow it broke the hold that the darkness held over her. She could move and breathe again. The wisps near her were all moving about in an excited flurry, trying to press her back onto the path, away from the cliff’s edge.
Elowyn backed away quietly, then began running for her life down the path, with the wisps circled around her in a protective net that she was grateful for. She could only hope that the beasts, and that horrible cloaked figure, did not know she was there. The further she got from the cliff edge back down into the thicker woodlands, the darker it became. What was she to do? Surely she could not sleep in that place, not with the beasts so close by. And yet she could not navigate the woods in the dark. She paused for a moment to catch her breath. She opened her pouch again, but there was no light this time. She took the coin out and held it in her hand, wondering if she had imagined the light. But even though it looked just as it always had, the coin was still warm to the touch.
Elowyn looked up at the wisps all around her and breathed a tearful, “Thank you.” She now understood why they had blocked her path. It would have led her straight into the valley—straight into the beasts and the dark master that was controlling them. She shuddered to think of what they would have done to her...what they might still do to her if she did not get away from there, quickly. And even worse, what they might do to all of Minhaven with an army whose dead could be raised to life again.
Elowyn remembered how the wisps from her dream had illuminated bits of parchment on the ground for her to follow. She remembered, too, how they had once guided her and Morganne through the night into the safety of Greywalle. She hoped that their light could guide her once again.
“If you can understand me at all, please get me safely away through this darkness,” Elowyn pleaded. “Guide my steps home, and keep me awake no matter how tired I get. I must warn Glak!” The wisps seemed to understand. A group of them hovered low to the ground, in a new direction, away from the path she was on. Th
ey nudged her forward, keeping just enough ahead that she could continue walking at a brisk pace, while the rest continued to circle around her. She trusted that they knew a more direct way back to Minhaven than the path she had been on.
The danger she was in brought a new energy to her steps as she carefully made her way through the forest. For the moment her sorrows were forgotten, her mourning set aside for a greater purpose. The deep blue of the evening sky soon turned to a coal black, splashed with starlight. The moon had not yet risen above the tree tops, but she caught occasional glimpses of it peeking at her through the trees like an old friend. Its glow soothed her weary spirits as she pushed her body forward against fatigue.
By the time it had risen high into the night sky, she was starting to feel defeated. Her limbs ached and her eyes were trying to close on their own. More than once she had stumbled over her own feet and barely caught herself from falling. She leaned against a boulder for a few moments to rest, take a drink of water, and nibble at some food from her bag. She had not eaten since earlier that day. The wisps allowed this for a short while, but flew about her in an agitated way, not wanting her to give up and go to sleep. When they felt she had rested long enough, they urged her forward, lighting up the path they wanted her to follow.
Elowyn trudged on. She had forgotten how miserable their march to Greywalle had been, but this brought back the memory in full. She had been in better shape then, used to being out in the open every day. She suddenly had a greater sympathy for Morganne, who had endured that night carrying not only herself, but Adelin. It was no wonder that she had collapsed on their arrival.
Ancient Voices: Into the Depths Page 26