Voyage of the Fox Rider

by Dennis L McKiernan

  Jatu smiled. “I include Rux among their number.”

  Now Bokar grinned. “Aye.”

  A low whistle came from above, and on the verge stood Dask, signalling the all clear.

  Leaving a boatwatch behind, up through the crags the others wended, choosing the easiest path for Alamar, at times merely steadying the elder, at other times lifting him bodily up the jagged way. At last they reached the crest, and Alamar sat and rested while others scouted about, ranging out across the grass-topped headland and toward the nearby pine tree forest…yet no sign did they find of Jinnarin or Rux.

  As they gathered together once more near the place where Alamar rested, Bokar growled, “Captain, I like this not. Lady Jinnarin is missing. Mayhap the forest dwellers have captured her. I would set search parties out…and bring more from the ship to aid, if needed.”

  Aravan shook his head. “Nay, Bokar. Although we found no sign of Lady Jinnarin, we also found no evidence of the forest dwellers—nor of the Hidden Ones, for that matter. I ween that she and Rux are off on their own to find Tarquin.”

  Unconvinced, Bokar took a deep breath but said nothing, though Jatu nodded in agreement with Aravan’s words.

  Turning to Alamar, Aravan asked, “Deem thee ready for travel?”

  The eld Mage stood, a look of irritation on his face. “Hmph! Of course I am ready, Captain. Couldn’t be more ready if I was a thousand years younger. It’s not me who’s holding up the march. It’s that dratted Pysk gone missing, that’s who.”

  Shouldering a small knapsack of supplies, Aravan looked at Aylis, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, as if to ask her how could she possibly be the get of this blame-laying old grouch.

  “Come, Father,” said Aylis, offering Alamar her arm. “Let us find this Tarquin.”

  Sneering at her proffered aid, Alamar barked, “Ha! More like he will find us than the other way about.” And the eld Mage tramped off in the direction of the woods, while in his wake stepped Aylis and Aravan, seeress and Elf casting grins at one another as if sharing a secret.

  Toward the pine tree forest went the three, while Bokar stood behind and clenched his teeth, for only Aravan bore weaponry, and that nought but bow and quiver of arrows…and a long-knife in a scabbard strapped to his thigh, and Bokar’s opinion was that they were virtually defenseless without the Châkka at their sides. The Dwarf watched until they disappeared into the woodland and he could see them no more. And then he turned and began aiding Jatu and the remaining sailors and warriors as they set about establishing a campsite along the top of the cliff.

  When they came in among the trees, Alamar stopped and faced Aravan. “What now, Elf? Where do we go from here?”

  Aravan gestured forward. “Ahead, a short way, a league or less, we will find the clearing where we will wait. Tarquin will come to us there if he is of a mind to meet ye twain. If not, then on the morrow I will go to him alone.”

  “Well, if you know where he lives,” grumped Alamar, as they started forward again, “then I say we march straight to him. No need for this shilly-shallying about in the woods.”

  “Father”—Aylis’s words came sharply—“these are Hidden Ones. We need to respect their rights.”

  “Pah!” snorted Alamar “Foolishness! All foolishness!”

  Stopping now and again for Alamar to rest, at last they came through the thick pines to the grassy clearing sought by Aravan. Here the Elf dropped his knapsack and they sat and waited, while a soft breeze soughed in the crowns overhead and a stream could be heard burbling nearby.

  Aylis stood. “There is a rill somewhere close. I am going to taste of its water.” Hearing no objection, she walked through the tall yellow grass and across the glade toward the murmuring of the run. Aravan watched her go.

  As she strode away, Alamar shifted about and then shifted again, fingers probing the earth. “The ground is chill. Winter is near. I feel it in my bones.”

  Aravan nodded, his gaze yet following Aylis. “Aye, Alamar. At these latitudes, winter comes early.”

  “Drat that Pysk!” complained the elder. “Where is she? She should have found Tarquin by now.”

  Aravan stood, taking up his bow and shading his eyes, peering across the clearing. “That she will find him I do not dispute, for little passes in Fox Riders’ domains that goes unnoticed by them, and the Eroean has been at anchor now a goodly while. That we have been seen by them, I ween there is no doubt. All that is at question is whether they wish to be seen by us.”

  “Foolish Pysks, I say again,” grumped Alamar. “Why, there is every reason to trust us, and little reason to—”

  Aravan set an arrow to bowstring, his gaze intent.

  Alamar fell silent, and huffing, he stood and peered across the clearing, too. Aylis was not in sight. “Now where—?”

  At that moment Aylis reappeared, standing, wiping her mouth with the heel of her hand, the tall grass all about her.

  Aravan relaxed, replacing the arrow in its quiver.

  Alamar sat back down with a grunt.

  Mid morn, Aylis and Aravan heard a fox bark, and Aravan placed two fingers in his mouth and gave a sharp whistle, startling Alamar awake. “Eh, wha—?”

  “A fox, Father,” murmured Aylis.

  “Foxes don’t interrupt perfectly good meditation with shrieks that’d wake the dead,” grumbled Alamar.

  Aylis raised an eyebrow. “Meditation, Father? It sounded more like snoring to me.”

  Alamar bristled, readying a retort, but Aravan whistled again, then pointed, and a furrow came rippling through the tall grass. In moments, Rux and Jinnarin appeared, the Pysk grinning.

  “Tarquin said I would find you here,” she announced, leaping down from the fox, “and so I have.”

  Alamar glared at her. “Pysk, how many times do I have to tell you not to run off like that?”

  Jinnarin looked surprised. “Why, Alamar, you never told me to ‘not run off.’”

  “Don’t evade the issue,” Alamar snapped. “We were worried sick.” The elder looked to Aylis and Aravan for confirmation, but Aravan simply cocked an eyebrow, while Aylis said, “Father, you were asleep.”

  Jinnarin giggled. At a glower from the Mage she tried to look solemn but failed, breaking out in titters again. “Oh, Alamar, don’t be angry. You see, I found Tarquin, and he has a plan.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Dreamwalk

  Autumn, 1E9574

  [The Present]

  A plan?” The eld Mage raised an eyebrow. “And just what might this plan of his be?”

  “I don’t know, Alamar,” answered Jinnarin. “He just told me to fetch you three to him and then he would explain.”

  Aravan squatted down. “I take it then that thou recounted all to Tarquin.”

  Jinnarin nodded. “Yes. I told him about the plumes and Farrix missing and about my dream and about you and Alamar and Aylis and the Eroean and everything. And before you ask, Aravan, Tarquin told me that no one he knows has seen any plumes. Even so, he is sending word to other Hidden Ones to discover if any of them has. But whether or not the plumes have been seen, still Tarquin thinks he can aid.”

  Alamar fixed Aravan with a gimlet eye. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing for it but that we have to go see this Tarquin.”

  Shouldering his bow and picking up his knapsack, Aravan held out a hand to the Mage, helping him to his feet, the elder grunting and straightening slowly, complaining about his back. At a gesture from Jinnarin, Rux scrambled to his own feet and she leapt astride. Alamar glanced down at her. “And just how far is it to this Tarquin?”

  “No more than a league or so.”

  Alamar groaned.

  Shadows flitted among the trees as Jinnarin led the trio through the pine-scented forest, shades flickering at the corners of the eyes, but when Aravan and Aylis and Alamar looked, nothing was there…that is, nothing that they could see straight on.

  “Eh,” grumbled Alamar, “I’m of a mind to—”

  Aylis sh
ook her head, No. “Father, that we are being escorted, I have no doubt. To confirm it with a casting is a waste of power.”

  “But I would see, Daughter, just who and what accompanies us.”

  “Father, they would rather remain hidden from prying eyes such as ours.”

  “Pah!” snorted Alamar. “Again I say it is foolishness.”

  Aravan glanced at the elder. “Nay, Alamar, not foolishness. Thou knowest the Hidden Ones were sorely pressed in times past, especially the Fox Riders, particularly by the hand of Man, though at times others joined in as well.”

  Aylis sighed. “I wonder why.”

  Aravan shrugged. “As is oft the case, what Man cannot control, he deems evil. And in the past, among the things Mankind named evil were the Fox Riders, for they resisted unto death the controlling hand of Man. And so, Men hunted them, ahorse with hound, riding over the open wolds and through the forests, horns ablare, hounds baying, thinking it great sport to run the fox to earth. Now and again would they capture a Fox Rider and cage him or her, though more likely they killed those they caught, for after all, were they not evil? Even unto this day, in some lands fox hunting remains a grand sport, a blood sport, though Mankind has long forgotten how it got its start—the destruction of evil where no evil lay.”

  “Grand sport!” Jinnarin exploded. “Hunting for ‘sport’ is wicked, cruel, one of Mankind’s worst evils, for they do not even eat that which they kill. The killing alone is what drives them—the lust for death and proof of their prowess in trophy—and not the protection of their flocks nor hunger nor need for fur to clothe them. Cruelty alone is the sought-after end.”

  Aravan held up a hand as if to deflect blame. “Jinnarin, I did not say that I thought hunting was a great sport. I merely spoke to Aylis of the nature of Man and the need for the Feyani to hide.”

  Alamar glared at Aravan. “You tell us nothing new, Elf. We know what drove them to cover. And still I say that it is foolish for them to conceal themselves from me, from Aylis, for we are no threat to them.”

  “Ah, but Father, they know not that we are allies,” demurred Aylis.

  Alamar sighed and trudged on.

  Down into a forest vale they fared, a tumbling brook at the bottom, and alongside this watercourse they made their passage upstream, resting along the way. At last they came in among a jumble of moss-laden boulders cupped in an arc of a rocky bluff. Through a slot cut deep in the wall cascaded a fall of water. A pathway angled up beside the cataract, at the top of which stood a silver fox, a rider astride. Aravan raised a hand, palm outward, the rider doing likewise. “‘Tis Tarquin,” said the Elf.

  “King of the Fox Riders?” asked Aylis.

  “In as much as they have Kings,” responded Aravan.

  Jinnarin said, “If I understand the role of a King, Tarquin is not one of those. Instead, I would call him a trusted leader or a chieftain, for they more accurately describe his standing among the Hidden Ones. He led us when we took flight from Feyer.”

  As they made their way up the path, Alamar groused, “Climbing, always climbing. Why must we always go upward? Doesn’t anyone live on level ground?”

  “Look who’s talking,” called Jinnarin above the shssh of the cascade.

  “Eh? What do you mean. Pysk?”

  “You live on a hill, Alamar.”

  “That’s different!” shot back the Mage. “I need it to see the stars.”

  “Still in all, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, or so you once told me.”

  “Bah!” exclaimed the elder, then trudged uphill in silence.

  When they came to the top, Tarquin dismounted. “Welcome,” he called out above the waterfall, “I am Tarquin”—he made a sweeping bow, then gestured toward his fox—“and this is Ris.”

  “Well-met again,” answered Aravan. “May I present Lady Aylis and Mage Alamar.”

  As Tarquin bowed to daughter and sire, they saw before them a Pysk perhaps a half inch taller than Jinnarin. His hair was black and long, reaching down nearly to his hips and held back from his face by a headband of leather. His eyes were a brown so dark that they, too, seemed black. He was dressed in moleskin leathers, and his feet were shod in soft buskins. The leather belt at his waist carried his only ornamentation, incised as it was with tiny red runes.

  “This way,” he called out, leaping on the back of Ris and riding away, not looking hindward to see if they came after.

  Into the high-walled canyon they went, proceeding upstream ‘round twists and turns, the sound of the cascade behind fading in the distance. The walls of the chasm steadily drew away until they widened into a broad gorge. Here grew grass and trees—pine and larch and birch—the vale bottom rich with loam. Now they came to broad pools of water, lakelets and meres and such, and rushes grew in the shallows, the reeds now brown in the autumn and rattling in the breeze.

  Tarquin led them away from the stream and into a hollow carved in the vale side. And there they came unto his home—an undermound dwelling in a grove of silver birch, the burrow much too small for any to enter but Jinnarin. And there they met Tarquin’s consort, Falain, a ginger-haired, hazel-eyed, leather-clad Pysk, and her black fox, Nix.

  Aravan knelt and rummaged through his pack. “I will make us some tea, and then shall we speak upon the events that brought us here.”

  Alamar cleared his throat and scowled at Tarquin. “And I would hear of this plan of yours, Pysk.”

  “Dreamwalking?” Aylis’s eyes flew wide. “I have never heard of such. What is it? How is it done?”

  Tarquin shrugged and sipped his tea, then set the tiny cup aside. “Falain learned of it from Ontah.”

  “Ontah?”

  “One of the Humans,” said Falain, gesturing westerly. “A Healer.”

  Aylis looked at the Pysk. “A Human. One who lives nearby?”

  Falain nodded.

  “A savage?” Alamar’s voice came sharply.

  Tarquin looked mildly surprised. “I would not call him a savage, Mage Alamar. He is a forest dweller.”

  “And a Friend,” added Falain.

  Aravan turned to Alamar. “Rumors notwithstanding, those who dwell in the forest are a gentle people.”

  Jinnarin looked to Tarquin, and he laughed and nodded in agreement, saying, “It is perhaps but rumor that keeps others away from this land, for who would dare walk in the domain of bloodthirsty savages.”

  “Aye,” added Aravan, “it is as Tarquin says. Oh, the forest dwellers paint themselves with fierce colors when trading with outsiders, but that is to maintain the savage facade. Unless riled, unless defending themselves or their domain, they are a most gentle folk, though that is a secret they would have us keep.”

  “Humph!” grunted Alamar, but he said no more.

  Aylis turned to Falain. “This dreamwalking, just what is it and how is it done?”

  Falain glanced at Tarquin, then said, “As to how it is done, we do not know. But as to what it is, it allows someone to enter another’s dream, to walk within it, to see things that the dreamer cannot see.”

  Aylis nodded, looking to Jinnarin then back at Falain. “And you think that Ontah can walk in Jinnarin’s dream and discover…whatever there is to discover?”

  Falain held up her hand in a gesture of demurral. “That I cannot say. All I can say is that Ontah knows the secret of dreamwalking.”

  Alamar growled. “I wouldn’t want someone prowling about in my dreams. Why does he do it, this dreamwalking? I mean, what is it good for?”

  Falain turned her palms up. “All that I do know is that he uses it at times to heal someone who suffers from nightmares, waking or sleeping.”

  “Oh,” said Alamar, enlightenment dawning, “someone who isn’t right in the head, eh?”

  Jinnarin bristled. “Alamar, I’ll have you know that my head is perfectly all right. If anyone around here has a noggin that needs fixing up then I’d say it’s—”

  “Look, Pysk,” began Alamar.

  �
�Stop it, you two!” flared Aylis. “You’re worse than a pair of bickering brats. Incessantly quibbling. Seeing insult where none is intended.

  “Remember, both of you, just why we are here. Farrix is missing. Jinnarin is having nightmares, a sending we believe. And someone is shielding knowledge from us.”

  Both Alamar and Jinnarin stared at the ground, refusing to meet anyone’s eye.

  “Where can we find this Ontah?” Aravan’s words came quietly.

  Tarquin stood. “We will lead you to him. It’s not far. Two leagues or so.”

  Alamar groaned. “Uphill, I’ll wager.”

  It was nearing sunset when they walked into the clearing where sat the lodge of Ontah, a one-room square house of logs, white clay filling the chinks, a smoke hole in the sod roof. On a bench out before the house sat a Man dressed in buckskins, and at his side perched Falain, with Nix on the ground below, for Falain had ridden ahead to tell the Healer of the impending visitors.

  Ontah’s hair was long and grey, his eyes brown, his skin a bronze hue. His silvery mane was bound in a ponytail, hanging down his straight back. He was thin and aged, his coppery skin raddled with delicate wrinkles, like antiquated parchment.

  Speaking in an unfamiliar tongue to the eld Man, Falain gestured at the four visitors. Jinnarin glanced at Aravan. “She introduces us to him,” murmured the Elf.

  “Oh,” said Jinnarin.

  “As I thought,” added Aylis.

  Ontah stood and gestured into his dwelling, speaking.

  Aravan replied in the same tongue, then turned aside to his companions, saying, “Now he invites us in.”

  They entered the dimly lit shelter. Mats of woven reeds lay on an earthen floor. In the center of the single room was a ring of firestones, from which rose a small, virtually smokeless blaze, wisps of vapor rising up through the hole in the roof. Ranged along the walls were shelves on which lay clutches of herbs and plants, piles of nuts and seeds, stone and fired-clay bowls, earthenware cups, wooden tools. Several woven baskets sat about, containing grain and tubers. In one corner was piled firewood, and in another lay blankets. From the rafters bracing the sod roof, there hung more clutches of herbs and plants as well as dried roots and other such. Too, there was smoked fish and a haunch of venison. An axe sat beside the door and a coil of rope hung from a dowel. A large clay vessel contained water, and a gourd dipper dangled by cord from a nearby peg.