by Helen Gosney
“And neither she will... thou must wait and see.’
The trail came back to the river at the point where it plunged over a sheer drop. The water plummeted down in a lovely rainbow-lit curtain to a deep pool some four or five manheights below. Close to, its roar was very loud and the air was damp with spray, and the friends could see that there was a line of big stepping-stones a couple of paces back from the edge.
“Moss, you surely don’t expect us to cross over here?” Rose exclaimed, looking in horror at the wet slippery stones, so close to the brink of the falls, “Even if I was braver than I am... which I’m not...! The horses won’t go over there...”
Moss smiled at her and his bright blue eyes were suddenly alight with laughter.
“No, no... I would not expect it of the poor creatures,” he said, though he knew that Rowan would be able to get them across anywhere if it was necessary, “Nor of thee...” he added kindly as he pointed upstream, “I promised thy feet would not get wet, did I not?”
Here above the falls the river was much wider, and it was overhung with ferns and trailing willows. The swift water was so clear they could see a large fish resting on the pebbly bottom, dozing in a patch of sunshine. A little further along Rowan waved cheerfully at them from where he sat on Mica’s back in midstream, Max beside them, and the water was barely up to the horses’ knees.
The trail on the other side of the river was steeper and more tortuous and in places it seemed to disappear entirely, but Moss didn’t hesitate and eventually they reached the valley’s rim.
“Would you like us to go on now, while you stay for a last look?” Rowan asked quietly. It must be hard for the troll to leave such a beautiful place, even after the devastation of his bridge. Rowan wondered what might have happened if they hadn’t chanced to come along when they did. No, better not to think about that.
“I thank thee, but... no... No, I will look along the valley like this...” Moss said, doing so, “And then... now... we will go...”
They came upon the road again in the next valley. The hillside between was steep and rocky and it took some time to traverse it; it was mid-afternoon when they found themselves looking at the broken cobbled pavement once more.
“I think we should make a camp somewhere soon, it’s been a hard day for the horses,” Rowan said, looking around.
“...And us!” Cris added with a heartfelt groan. They’d led the horses over the steep terrain all day. Travelling and training with Rowan had certainly made him the fittest he’d ever been in his life, even his tumbling and somersaults had improved a lot with regular practice, but still, it had been a long day.
Rowan laughed.
“Aye, and us! How about that clearing up ahead there? Where that flock of black birds is feeding? They’re strange looking things…” he looked puzzled.
“Aren’t they though? I wonder what sort they are? They’re not big enough to be crows, yet they’re too big to be fanbirds,” Rose said idly.
“There are no fanbirds here, so close to the mountains,” Moss replied, looking intently at the fluttering creatures ahead, “There is something familiar about them... but... no...” he shook his head.
“Bloody Hells!” Rowan swore softly as the great flock suddenly flew up from the ground as they approached and swooped towards them, flying erratically.
In a moment they were surrounded by huge butterflies, each twice as large as a man’s hand, their wings a deep velvety black with an iridescent blue sheen. Hundreds of the creatures fluttered around them, some alighting on their heads and hands and shoulders, some swooping in vague circles, and some landing on the road at their feet.
“How lovely... have you ever seen these before, Moss?” Rose asked in amazement. The beautiful creatures were even bigger than the Spirit Moths of Sian, and Spirit Moths were never seen in such numbers as these.
“No... never... the Gods only know where they have come from,” Moss replied, hardly able to believe his eyes were not playing tricks on him.
“Over there, look...” Rowan said slowly.
They turned to where he was pointing. All the trees on the western side of the clearing were hung with big shiny silvery-black pendulous things that looked like some kind of strange fruit. Moss walked over and examined them carefully.
“I think they must be a sort of chrysalis... a pupa,” Moss said with growing excitement, “See, some are split open... how wonderful.”
They made camp a little past the main group of butterflies; they didn’t want to step on the lovely creatures if they could help it. The next morning all of the butterflies were gone as if they’d never existed.
“Did we only dream them?” Cris wondered aloud, looking at the flower-studded grass of the clearing.
“No... no, we did not dream them... look at the trees...” Moss said softly.
As the early morning sun struck the glistening pupae, some seemed to move sluggishly and then they slowly split open down one side.
A bedraggled, rather bewildered looking butterfly emerged from each one, shook itself as best it could, and then quietly hung upside down from a branch in the sun as the blood began to course through its enormous blue-black wings.
A short time later the butterflies flapped determinedly upwards, fluttering and gliding and swooping in great spirals, finally settling to the ground in a velvety black cloud to gorge on the sweet nectar of the flowers and await the emergence of more of their kind.
“How wonderful...” someone murmured softly.
**********
28. “We never saw or heard anything in there, but…”
As day followed day in their journey they moved deeper into the Forbidden Mountains. The road could barely be called a track, even by the most charitable, with here and there a few cobblestones half hidden in gravel and loose rocks, and far more often than not the waystations were mere heaps of rubble.
“Do you suppose the rhyme meant the mountains themselves are the stairway of the gods... or do you think we’ll find... well, stairs?” Cris said thoughtfully as he watched Moss pulling on a pair of deerskin moccasins he’d made. The troll had easily kept up with the horses, padding along on his big callused bare feet over the roughest of ground; now he was covering his feet for warmth, not protection, as it was much colder the higher they climbed.
Rowan shrugged and considered the idea as he had many times before, but once again came up with no answer.
“I don’t know... it could mean either, I suppose,” he said.
“But ‘the road will take us there’...” Rose broke in quickly.
“Aye... well, I certainly hope it will. Wasn’t there a bit about being ‘strong in faith’ too?” Rowan said with a grin.
“Ah, yes, so there was,” she agreed solemnly. Faith had nothing to do with it as far as her brother was concerned: more like sheer bloody-mindedness, she thought. All the same, the trek had done him good and had harmed nobody. Whether they found Plausant Bron or the Gods or nothing at all, it simply didn’t matter as far as Rose was concerned.
A little later that day the track led through a long narrow ravine which old avalanches had made narrower still; even had the road been at its best they would probably have had to go in single file. As it was now the walls were steep and high, blocking out the sunlight, and the ravine twisted and turned erratically.
Rowan took the lead as always, followed by Cris, then Rose, with Moss and Max bringing up the rear. As he strode through the natural archway at the far end of the ravine Mica stopped so abruptly that Bess, who was perhaps a little too close behind him, walked into his dappled rump and shied backwards.
“What ARE you doing up there, Rowan?” Rose shouted, annoyed that the chain reaction of horses suddenly half-rearing when her mind had been elsewhere had almost seen her fall from Soot. Luckily Moss had been able to help her as she struggled for balance, but the stallion was irritated too and he gave a slightly less than half-strength buck to show his displeasure. Rose quickly grabbed a handful of
his thick mane and cursed fluently.
“Rowan? Are you all right? What’s happened?” Cris called, trying to see past Bess’s tossing head. He could see little bar her flying dark mane and an oddly still Mica.
There was a worrying silence for a few moments.
“Sorry...” Rowan’s soft voice finally came back to them.
“SORRY! What in the Nether Hells are you DOING up there, you bloody idiot!” Rose’s near-fall and Rowan’s long silence had made her unusually snappish, and the odd note in his voice worried her more than she liked. The ravine was so narrow it would be difficult to turn around, and she didn’t see how she could get past Bess and Cris to knock some sense into her brother’s head, as he so obviously needed.
“Rose... Cris, Moss... we’ve found it... we’ve found the Stairway of the Gods!” Rowan’s voice echoed slightly as he urged Mica forward again.
“What ...?” Cris gasped as Bess stepped forward and he could see what had caused Rowan to stop so suddenly. Only Rose’s frustrated and very impressive swearing from behind him prevented him from doing the same thing, and he moved Bess over beside Mica to make some room for the others. They came through the archway and stared before them, and even Rose was silent.
They were standing on a big semi-circular balcony, high above a wide valley that opened before them. On all sides were massive snow-covered mountains, their icy peaks far above them. A steep trail began at the left of where they stood and it snaked down the mountainside to end below them on the valley floor, where it became wider, a road… No, it couldn’t be paved, surely? The road ran straight down the centre of the valley past several clusters of buildings that looked very small from their present height, but which almost certainly were not... and it ended at a sheer wall at the far end of the valley. High above the road’s end - impossible to tell how high, from their vantage point - a great stairway climbed up the mountainside and disappeared into the clouds.
When they’d recovered their wits they led their horses down to the valley. The trail was in surprisingly good condition, and though it was steep, the gradient was less dangerous than it had appeared from above. As they reached the valley floor the trail became a wide road paved with well-set stones, sloping slightly from the centre to allow water to drain into the culverts at each side, easily wide enough for them to travel side by side.
No-one said anything until they stopped outside the first cluster of buildings. There, on one side of the road was a large flattish area with three small buildings on the left, a walled corral on the right, and the familiar stable across the end. All of them seemed to be in surprisingly good condition, with walls and roofs intact.
“A waystation... here...” said Cris rather shakily. He looked around with shocked, wary eyes.
“It makes sense, I suppose,” Rose’s reply was very subdued. She looked much the same as Cris, ready to turn and leave at the slightest sound.
“Aye, it does. Someone’s provided them all along the road, why not here too? Isn’t this where their damned road has brought us?” Rowan’s voice was as soft as ever, but something about it caught Cris and Rose’s attention, and they pulled themselves together again.
Moss was looking about him in fascination.
“There are four... five... six of them, I think,” he said, “See how they are on alternate sides of the road... shall we go down to the end of the valley now, or wouldst thou prefer to rest here for a while?”
Rowan grinned at him suddenly.
“What a bloody daft question, Moss! Hop on behind me here; Mica will bear you if I’m here too. Well, I hope he might, he could decide to buck us both off; we’ll soon find out...! But he can take us there quickly...”
Mica snorted fiercely, tossing his proud head and stamping his hooves as he circled unhappily. The troll sat gingerly behind Rowan, holding onto him so tightly he could scarcely breathe; Rowan loosened the vice-like grip a little, then leaned forward and patted his horse’s neck and whispered in its ears, and they came to an understanding.
In a surprisingly short time they all stood at the end of the Road of the Gods, in a huge open plaza paved with great flagstones. Above them the stairway zig-zagged up the mountainside as it appeared to have done for millennia, before losing itself in a fluffy bank of cloud. It seemed to be carved from the living rock of the mountain, and it began some ten manheights above them.
Between road and stair was a sheer wall of rock that looked completely unclimbable.
**********
“I don’t know how we’re ever going to be able to climb that wall, Rowan, it’s so smooth you’d think it’s been polished,” Cris said morosely. Somehow he’d thought that it would be fairly straightforward, assuming they’d ever managed to find the place to begin with. And that had been a very big assumption, he thought rather belatedly.
“Aye, I noticed that, the bloody stupid thing. But you’re forgetting the tunnel the rhyme speaks about...” Rowan replied.
“... ‘a tunnel for the stairway’... of course!” Rose said, “Do you know, I’ve had the idea all along that the stairway itself might be inside a tunnel... but now...” she shook her head doubtfully.
“Well, tunnel or no, I think it’s time we had a serious talk about all this... we probably should have done it before now,” Rowan looked around at the others seated by the fire. He wasn’t ready to give up yet. He still had a few words he wanted to say to the Gods, if indeed they were here somewhere, and assumptions, big or otherwise, wouldn’t stop him. But he realised that the others mightn’t be feeling quite so strongly about it now: only an obstinate fool like himself would. Yes, definitely time for a little talk, he thought.
They’d settled themselves comfortably in the waystation nearest the great stairway; it was undamaged, as most of those in the valley were, so the horses had the stable to themselves for once and the travellers were in a side building. Their excitement and awe at actually finding the stairway had settled into a kind of quiet thoughtfulness. That was all the better, Rowan thought, for what he needed to say to them. He realised he was twisting his ring around his finger, as he always did when stressed, and forced himself to stop.
**********
“Of course you know that the reason we’re all here is the strangeness of the things that have been happening all over Yaarl, we’ve talked about it enough times to bore ourselves rigid,” he began, “And you’ve all seen some of them for yourselves and heard of others...” the others nodded solemnly, “But really, apart from poor Moss and his Bridge - I’m sorry, Moss, I don’t want to upset you - but apart from that, and Cris losing his little dog like he did – oh, dammit, I’m sorry Cris. I’m not always this clumsy…” He tried again. “Well, you two have only really seen things that are odd, or puzzling, some even beautiful, like those butterflies... but nothing truly dangerous or... or horrible...” He looked around at his friends. They were all watching him intently with wide cautious eyes.
“I think you should know of some of the other things that Rose and I have seen on our way here... of some of the misery... and the casual viciousness of the Gods...” he closed his eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath as too many unwanted memories washed over him. “It’s a terrible tale, but I must tell you... if I can.” He stopped as he tried to get his thoughts under control. Yes, he could do this and he should have done it before they’d all travelled so far. Of course they’d talked about such things on their journey, but he realised now that they simply hadn’t seemed real to Cris and the troll.
“Rowan...” Rose said, her voice troubled. He’d been doing so well, more or less as he’d always been, but she knew that this would likely unsettle him again.
“I know, Rose,” he said, hugging her tightly, “I’m sorry, love, but I have to tell them again. They have to really understand...”
“Not very far downriver from Borl Quist is the town of Crahl,” he began, “We stayed there the first night of our journey. All of the timber is sent there, either down the river or sometimes
on huge ox-carts. It’s not a bad place, it’s quite pretty really, with the river and all the trees... but when we woke there in the morning, all we could hear was the tolling of bells and people wailing and crying... Gods! We’ve heard so much of that...” Rowan said, his voice suddenly bitter, “Overnight the first-born in every generation in every family in Crahl had died: babies, children, adults, old gaffers... all the first-born... even the dogs and cats and horses...”
“Rowan, how didst thee and Rose survive this?” Moss asked gently. Isolated as he’d been, he’d no idea that such things had happened before he’d met up with Cris and the twins and heard some of their stories, and somehow even then he hadn’t truly realised the enormity of it.
“We’re not first-born... our brother Josiah died of a fever when we were only a few months old. He was two...” Rose said softly, reaching for Rowan’s hand and clutching it tightly.
“Aye... poor little Josiah died... and maybe he’s better off.” Rowan stared into the fire for a moment, then continued carefully, his voice sad.
“Snug Neel is near the Grassy Plains, they have fine horses and cattle there. And it’s plagued by huge toads, great horrible warty yellow things they are, twice the size of a cat... I suppose others might find it amusing in some ways, if they didn’t realise, but the toads poison the grasses and everything else they touch. There are thousands of them... nobody has been able to find anything that will get rid of them.”
“Then in Lappet-Thar a great chasm opened up one day... and it closed again as if it’d never been. But it’d swallowed half the town...” he faltered for a moment, old memories almost drowning him, then continued doggedly.
“In some parts of Yaarl all the crops rot before they can be harvested, and the animals sicken and die. If the people don’t move away, they... they starve. And in other parts, men and horses are turned to stone as they work in the fields... and then there are places where there are enormous floating things that kill at a touch. Sometimes they just leave a person witless; nobody seemed to know what it was that made the difference between dying and... and...”