by Стив Хиллард
Osley ended his recitation and they stayed silent. Ara was stunned by his quickening facility to translate. No one could make this up on the fly, she thought.
“Snap!” she said. “That reminds me. I’ve got something to show you.” She dug in her purse, sorting through the papers she’d stolen from the Tolkien archives box. She put the napkin with the strange subway instructions back in her purse, but handed him a small piece of browned hide, perhaps four inches by five inches. On it were proud runic flourishes.
“Where did you get this?”
“My trip to the library basement that you were so worried about. Now, what’ve we got?”
After a studied moment, he held the fragment up, as if for a throng to see. “What we have here, my dear, is of vital importance. Despite its battered appearance, this is no ledgerscrap. The High Elvish inscribed on it withholds its full meaning from me as yet, but I know the main word. Here.” He pointed at a flourish with long trailing legs. “This is the symbol for ‘Vow’, a word not to be taken lightly. It perhaps is related to the Vow of Protection in that archaic poem by Pazal, the king-turned-wraith. In any case, it may be of more importance than the rest of these scribbles. Where you found it is telling.” Again he waved the piece of hide. “This is, if I trust my first judgment, something held precious by the best authority on deeper Elvish translation, Professor Tolkien himself!”
Chapter 20
INKLINGS VI
Part of the recording of this session was corrupted by, of all things, a melted Cadbury bar. The transcript begins somewhere midway in the evening.
“… no great imagination to believe that there was once real magic in the world. What is certain is that it no longer exists, save perhaps in little glimmers of wonder. It was lost, shattered into fragments. And with that shattering the world changed. Heroes and their feats were fated to shrink to misunderstood words garbled into turns of phrase and dusty poems. Things of great moment became mere lists. Heraldic honor rolls became names without import, save to stir troublesome feelings of something sadly lost. We are left with vague recollections of more vibrant times when each day mattered. What say you to that, Tollers?”
“Quite so, Charles, but even if such was the fate of their feats and their names, their tales deserve better! My goal, at least, is to resurrect some of that moment before the Loss of Magic. Who knows, just as characters in a story sometimes know they are part of a tale, so all of us might someday be in a story. Even you, Jack!”
Laughter.
“Now the ale is full to your taps, that’s for sure.”
“And we would be idiots to believe our ramblings benefit anything other that the cleaning rag that will follow our empty glasses.”
“If any of our musings were remembered by the listening walls and this stout-hearted carving post of a table …”
“Better yet, recorded so your outlandish remarks could be tallied against you in the future, Ian!”
More laughter and indecipherable banters.
“Perhaps, but regarding one’s life as a story, whether ultimately preserved or in time utterly forgotten, is still not the worst of philosophies.”
“So, how are your actual writings coming, Tollers?”
“Not so well. I have aspired to write a ‘philosophical thriller.’ Something a bit deeper about the nature of reality, perhaps. Put all this myth and legend into a modern time, let the struggles happen in a contemporary world somehow connected to the old. Yes …”
“And, Tollers, just last week you said that in the fantasy world you visit in your tales …”
“I said, to be precise, ‘In that world you are not dreaming, you are in a dream of another’s weaving.’ The questioning of this story-cauldron is about perilous realms and their shadowy marches. To put a point on it, whether elves are true and exist independently of our tales.”
There is a moment of silence.
“Are you in jest, Tollers? You would have us believe that?”
“Your beliefs are your own, Ian, but I’ll wager a show of hands around the table will fall to the elves’ favor. Very well. Let’s see who agrees.”
Shuffling, mugs being put down, a rustle of clothes, mumbles of agreement.
“The bet also was for our bill, and so we’ll add another round to Ian’s burden before Miss Sarah sends us home!”
“Ha! Hear, hear!”
Laughter.
Chapter 21
OCTOBER 24. AFTERNOON
After more hours of brooding concentration and scribbling, Osley began to open up. “Ara definitely is on an epic journey, headed south. Here’s a typical passage that I can pretty much read on its face. Bear with me.”
He held up the page and read it to Cadence.
Ara struck due south and before she realized it, she was lost in Myrcwudu, the great remnant wellspring of mighty Mirkwood itself! A darker forest, perhaps, than what may lie even in the full depths of that haunted realm. All life that could flee, even the great spiders, had long ago abandoned this drear world. She stumbled forward in the pervading gloom that would not give back its pathways.
To either side were immense, desiccated tree trunks, like beings frozen in writhing torment. Their numbers faded into the mist. At her feet, the leaves rustled like a living membrane as they parted to create a track before her and forever close the one behind. She had no choice but to go on. Hafoc flitted from branch to branch, afraid to fly more than a few feet and nervous at resting on the old limbs that seemed to reach out with grasping fingers.
She trod warily, resigned to the single, winding track the forest offered. She sensed that time was forgotten here. In the far world outside this gloom, events would run their due course and leave her far behind. The waxing moon would grow and gloat over the trap set for the Bearer. He was already moving fast to his fate while she was caught in the black heart of the Forest of Doubt.
Here the unlucky traveler contended with the most terrible of foes. Not the dim murk that seemed to flow before her. Not the legendary troops of man-sized spiders that guarded the outer reaches. No, here she faced something darker and more subtle.
Hemmed in by fallen trunks that, to her, were as walls many times her height, shadowed by a murky gloom that only grew thicker, and watched by a presence implacable and unyielding, she quit the false trail. She crawled away and curled into a frightened ball. A veil fell across her eyes. A false veil, for it portrayed that her Amon was lost forever. She imagined his face, his eyes grey-hued like a morning mist with the sun shining through. Eyes she would never see again.
As the darker dark of evening came to Myrcwudu, a glistening fog seeped from the forest floor. It pooled in the dells and flowed among roots that spread like the gnarled fingers of dirtied and downfallen giants. Ara got up and stumbled, directionless, lost in a desolation of spirit that seemed to whisper, You are vile and pointless. An insect. Scurry now.
The terror of her insignificance built itself in her mind, like a cairn of rocks heaped up one by one. The very idea made her both fearful and infuriated. If it meant anything to be a Halfling from Frighten, it was to carry a wounded pride. She was wretched and thus she was dangerous. She tried to resist the fog, but it was unrelenting. She stopped, for no apparent reason, as a cockroach might, and waved the antennas of her soul in a desperate search for direction.
Myrcwudu’s answer was no answer.
She scurried forward. Deft footfalls paced on either side. Things unseen scuttled and rustled. Once, Ara heard, far ahead, a long, plaintive sound that was something between a whistle and a cry. But for the stillness, it might have been the saw of the wind through a knothole. She froze and waited, but its maker, if there was one, did not reveal itself.
The opalescent gloom thickened until she unconsciously put her hands in front of her, as if parting cobwebs. She had to find shelter. She peered and groped until she discovered a massive, upended tree. The base of the tree was covered with roots, like a snarl of dirty hair. She could just see within these a mo
uth-like entrance that beckoned her. She parted the roots and, heedless, put her head in the gaping mouth. She tumbled in. To her surprise, the interior was clean and dry. It felt safe. She summoned Hafoc to perch on a limb near the entrance and she squirmed inside. There she curled into the thin comfort of her cloak.
Huddled there, like some subterranean grub, Ara listened to the night sounds of Myrcwudu. It was an ominous, horrible orchestra. Whisperings of gibberish mixed with anguished cries, as of some passing column of sad and penitent beings. An owl screeched as it passed high overhead. A raucous warbling of some unknown bird cut through the ongoing creak and groan of the giant, ruined trees. In time, the haunted melody swirled into the eddies of her dreams.
As she slept, the sounds collected in a black sack in her mind. The sack bulged and swelled and refused to spill out its contents. Ara writhed in her sleep until she felt silent hands, perhaps her own, but leprous and scabbed, feel their desperate way across her cheeks and plunge hungrily into her mouth to grope for that foul bag.
She awoke with a gasp. Her heart thudded. Her ears sensed something. A dim, gray light, precursor of a far away dawn, seeped though the entrance. Her small and delicate hands, this time unquestionably hers, pulled out her knife as she coiled in readiness.
Then she realized what had awoken her.
The silence.
No birds, no wind, no moans or whispers or creaks or groans. She sensed Hafoc was gone. Everything was waiting, and something had arrived. She held her breath and stretched her eyes wide, straining to hear or see. Or smell. She flared her nostrils. Floating in the air was the waft of some creature rustic and unwashed, fouled with the stench of raw meat. It was close.
Ara’s world closed down to that graylit entrance. She knew this was no dream. She watched in horror as, beyond all her imaginings, a ghastly arm — large and knobby and bristled with hair — finger-walked through the opening.
As she held her breath, a dark bulk followed the arm, filling the gray mouth with a deadly intruder. Her own movement surprised her. She uncoiled her body and, quick as an adder, drove the knife into the shadowy form. It screamed and fell back. The sound cut into the forest like the thudding bite of a sharp axe.
She crawled out, parting the roots and blinking in the luminous mist. Before her lay an orc-captain, his throat bleeding in spurts. He coughed but could not speak. His eyes locked on hers. Dismay, regret, sadness were all there. Whatever had brought him here — perhaps the same inexorable spell that had controlled her path— their fates had at this spot thrown the dice together. Her heart broke as she watched him fade, his orc-life ruined. Her sorrow sliced through the sack in her mind, and the loathsome spell of Myrcwudu gushed out.
Now she could focus her fury. She looked up and around, and thought, I am no insect, and I will not quail before you!
She struck out, heedless of direction, and wandered, whether for sleepless hours or days she knew not.
At last she came upon a clearing, shot through with lances of sunlight. These bright shafts highlighted the immensity of the trees. She stood in awe, her gaze climbing the trunks until her neck ached. At her feet, amidst a riot of auroch-sized roots, a puddle of water caught the light between floating leaves and twigs and created a vicious sparkle that assaulted her unadjusted eyes. She held her hands to her face and looked down between her fingers. She realized she had a bit of magic that might get her out of this place. She knelt and cleared the debris from the puddle. She felt in her cloak and found the small leather kit hidden in a pocket of its folds. This she opened and brought out a tiny, flat bit of wood, no bigger than her fingernail. She lifted from the leather fold a splinter of rock. It was dull gray and each end tapered to a point. One end had been marked with white chalk. She put the bit of wood in the pool and let it float freely. Then she placed the rock splinter on it. It turned and twirled, and came to rest with the white end fixed in one direction. The opposite end was south.
She restored her kit and set out, climbing over and scurrying beneath the deadfalls that lay like repeated hedgerows across her path. There were other puddles and these she used to float the bit of magic, the intelligent stone her father had given to her. Thus she renewed her direction and felt the fog of despair fall away. In time and events unknown to this scribe, but perhaps recorded by others, she escaped the drear boughs of Myrcwudu, and came again to travel the footpath of this tale.
There Osley faltered. “This place, Myrcwudu, was the black heart of it all. The pathless place. The trap that sets us to turn on ourselves and cycle away our days in false reckonings and petty errands. I’m worried, Cadence. I’m also famished. I feel like I’ve been stuck in there with her and can’t get out.”
Cadence smiled. “I’m not worried. She kept her head and she got out. So will we. Let’s start with that fuel.” She called room service and ordered breakfast and coffee. After eating, Osley gathered steam, feverishly jotting words. Pages of scratches later, he handed her three sheets and said. “Get this….”
Cadence read the first one:
Freed from the suffocating eaves of Myrcwudu, Ara was soon in sunlight, crossing a grassy plain leading to a series of hills. She felt exposed and watched, and so she moved as swiftly as possible.
Hafoc had recovered well. First a few feet, then a dozen yards, then a stone’s throw it flew. At the beginning it followed in the direction she was heading, but now it seemed to provide guidance when she was uncertain of the path. It would wheel upward, surveying the land and then alight within her sight.
Watching it float almost motionless on an updraft and then drop out of sight, she guessed that a precipice lay ahead. She passed dual ranks of stones propped and unturned by long ago labors. They were like guiding fingers forming a massive V across the plain. Suddenly, where the V closed to a narrow opening, the ground dropped away in a breathtaking sheer of several hundred feet, ending in a boulder-strewn streambed. The boulders were covered with a latticework of what looked like thousands of giant bones.
So steep and abrupt was the cliff that it took her an hour to pick her way to the bottom. There she stood, ant-like, surveying the confused wilderness of giant, white bone. The skeletons were all of the same kind, all immense beyond her experience, diminishing even the great-horned bison of the North. There were tusks exceeding a dozen arm-spans of men in length, and rib cages through which teams of horses could pass three abreast.
A jagged lens of ice protruded from a seep at the shaded foot of the cliff. From it protruded a mass of wrinkled hide with long tufts of orange-red hair.
A clearing among smaller bone fragments and flint shards told her of an ancient butchery preserved as the stream wandered off to the other side of the canyon. Sitting atop a pile of boulders like a lost and imperial edifice, presided a huge skull. Its long curving tusks would easily encompass a village feasting table fully laden and seated.
After a while, the smell from the ice lens and the lingering sense of disaster left her uneasy. The hawk departed straight south and she followed.
“Don’t stop reading, cause I’m on a roll now. Look at this!” He thrust several more pages at her.
Ara traveled swiftly now, beneath a growing hunter’s moon. It was in the desolate foothills, on a path lost to the memory of even the Woodsmen, that she found the lost wives.
She had traversed Knarch, the Long Downs, and passed into a land of scrub and sinkholes etched unto the back of a great limestone karsk. There she arrived at the first full knees of the Goat Mountains. Above the tree line was a defile no wider than a halfling’s shoulders. Through this she squeezed and squirmed, sometimes looking up to a thin slice of skylight blue. At length, she entered a great rift valley. Oriented to the south, it opened up into a bowl of light, sheltered from the storms and north winds, and fed by cascading streams plummeting from surrounding cliffs. At its far end, it narrowed again but remained open, leading to a plain obscured from her sight by copses of trees.
As the sun warmed the air, the sea-hawk
circled above her and rested on a cliff. Ara fell asleep without realizing it.
Awakening with a start, she was encircled by them. They were tree-like, but of varieties more supple and wan than their stiff and thick-barked mates, the Treoherd.
“Who are you, intruder?” She heard this not with her ears, but from a sensation that traveled up her arm where a tendril grasped it. The tendril led to a branch that was part of one of the tree-like beings.
“I know you!” said Ara. “I have heard tales of how they were separated from you, from themselves really. They have been searching for you for centuries too many to count.”
The creatures stood still for the longest time. Ara began to feel foolish, she had been talking to the air. Then the tendril coiled one more loop and the meaning rushed into her.
“Yes. We came here long ago, beyond and before the time of the many races of mortals that walk on two feet and learned to burn and hack. Before animals began their endless procession across the face of the world, we were there. In those elder days, our kind, plants that grow on dry land, migrated by their generations to fill all these places-above-water. This is our earliest memory. It was our purpose it seemed, for we were never told another. At least, it was the purpose we became the most comfortable with. We furthered this march of green inland from shores so ancient that even we could no longer recognize them. “But that is not how we ended here, in this valley of imprisonment.”
“Why don’t you leave? Nothing kept me from getting here.”
“Be cautious with your bravery, small one. There are grim perils here.” The warning passed through Ara with a shudder and she understood the depth of terror that kept the lost wives of the Treoherd within the valley.