“Ah, Lord Tragget.” Edana smiled into her words. “Our esteemed Inquisitor, welcome.”
“I am blessed to be in your presence, Holy Lady,” Tragget replied.
“May I congratulate you on your recent appointment,” Edana said with a smile. “It was well earned and deserved, although I see that your predecessor left you with a mantle of office somewhat too large for you.”
The perpetual frown on the young man’s face broke into a momentary, awkward grin. “Yes, Holy Lady. It is a large robe to fill.”
Edana smiled. “Well, we shall see to it that the tailors provide you a better one on our return to Hrunard.”
The Inquisitor nodded his thanks.
Edana considered the Inquisitor for a moment and then spoke quietly to the Aboth-Sek. “Leave us.”
The Aboths quietly moved away into the far corners of the Kath. Edana could no longer see them but she knew that they were there looking after her. Their oath bound them to silence and secrecy on her behalf, but a little caution was never a bad idea.
She slowly began to walk between the pews of the nave. The Inquisitor fell into step with her.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked quietly.
The silence between them seemed longer than their echoing steps measured.
“I am not sure, Holy Lady,” he replied.
“You are ‘not sure’?” Edana’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “What do you mean, Tragget? You dragged me across the Hadran Strait and into this shack-heap they call a town for ‘I’m not sure’?”
“Revered Mother of the Pir,” Tragget breathed out carefully. “The Elect are, of course, already on their way, but I’d like a little more distance between us and this place before I take a closer look. It would not do to examine this catch while we are still so close to town. After all, it was your reading of the dreamsmoke that started us on this hunt.”
“Yes,” Edana sniffed, “but it was you who brought us to this particular field. How did you know to hunt here?”
“It is my calling to know, Revered Mother,” Tragget answered, his eyes cast down to the floor.
“Indeed,” she coolly replied.
Berkita ran through the front of the shop and directly into the deserted enclosure of the forge.
For a moment, she stood in the place where she and Galen had stood so many times before. She could still feel a part of him there, smell his hair that was no longer there and feel the touch that was gone.
She wanted to fall to the floor and die. But Galen was still out there breathing somewhere in the world, and for that alone she had to keep going on.
Galen was lost—lost to a world suddenly far larger and more frightening than Berkita had ever supposed. The world beyond her town was the place of half-remembered names and shadowy legends. She had to go to him. She had to find him, save him, and she had no idea how to do so or where to even begin.
She knew only one soul who did.
“Cephas!” she cried out, her throat raw from screaming. “Cephas, where are you!”
The ting of metal swinging in the breeze.
“Cephas! By the Claw, answer me!”
She was shaking now.
Suddenly, the stones of the floor swung upward. Berkita leaped back out of the way, astonished at the opening suddenly appearing at her feet.
“Ell, so much for secret caverns, eh?” Cephas pulled himself quickly out of the hole. “No needin’ that hidin’ hole now, er is?”
The dwarf had changed with astonishing swiftness. Berkita had glimpsed the strange little man at the edges of the crowd in the square; he was hard to miss in his outlandish clothing. This had all disappeared, however, in favor of his brown leather vest and a massive traveling cloak. His bedroll—a human invention to which Cephas had taken a fancy—was slung over his shoulder and across his wide, hairy chest. His hair seemed to stand out straighter than ever in every direction from his head.
“Sorry for ye, er I.” Cephas began stuffing his traveling sack. Feeling his way about the back room, he pulled several strips of dried meat from where he had stashed them and pushed them into the oiled leather pack. “Sorry for Galen er I. Do er I can fer the lad. Bring his bones back home er I may.”
“Where are they taking him?” she demanded.
“Far,” Cephas said flatly, still feeling his way down the items on a shelf and occasionally dropping one into his sack. “Galen be riding the Blood Road now. Flows like a vein er is. The heart be in Hrunard. Bleeds out in Enlund. Cephas smelled the iron in er spilled blood come the Enlund Plain.”
“Hrunard?” she gasped. “Across the strait!”
“Strait? Aye,” the dwarf chattered on, never stopping his intent work gathering items about the shop. “That the beginning er is. This dwarf walked the land, Lady Arvad! Under the burning stars, this dwarf walked! Beyond the ruins of Mithanlas, beyond the Desolation itself this dwarf walked! Yer talk of dragons were not tales in those lands er is. Their wings burn clouds in Hrunard! Their breath breaks stone in Hrunard!”
Berkita sucked in a breath. “How do we get there?”
The dwarf stopped his work. A long moment passed and then he began to shake with a deep, rumbling laughter. “We? We don’t get er is, Lady! Cephas walks the roads!”
“No, Cephas.” Berkita stepped forward, more determined with every word. “No! I will walk the road, too.”
The dwarf turned slightly toward her. He could not see her, but the dwarven custom was that watching the words coming from an elder’s face had more meaning. “The old Empire Road Cephas walks. The long road down Dragonback! Around the wide Chebon Sea, Lady! Dangerous road by day. Deadly road by night. Five bright moons pass ’til Mithanlas er is! Blind old Cephas save Lady Arvad trouble of dying?” He laughed again and resumed packing. “Joke good as er is!”
Berkita swore under her breath. Her only hope of finding Galen was a blind old dwarf who didn’t want her help.
She saw what she needed in an instant. She pulled the large, heavy ax off the wall, startling the dwarf. She turned and swung it over her head, putting all her strength and speed into the blow.
The dwarf leaped back at the sound of the blade through the air. “Wait! Lady!”
Too late. The heavy ax smashed down through the strongbox chained to the floor near Galen’s table. Gold and silver coins spilled out onto the floor.
“Argh, you’ve dented the blade sure er is!” the dwarf moaned.
“You walk at night, dwarf, but I ride by day: ride the caravans, freight wagons, ships—ships across the straits, Cephas! I can buy you a lot shorter road than you can walk!”
Cephas shook his head slowly. “You buy a shorter road, perhaps, Lady. Perhaps you buy a quicker death?”
Berkita looked at the coins on the floor and then back to the dwarf. “Then if I die, you will bring my bones back, too.”
Cephas thought for a moment.
“Done!” he said, and held out his massive hand.
7
Falls
First, he was aware of the pain—an overwhelming, pervasive pain like an aura encompassing his entire being. His mind had retreated from it several times, but now he knew from somewhere at the bottom of thought that he must face it or die. There was a press in the back of his mind demanding that he awake—a sense of danger that—
He opened his eyes wide.
The sunlight was low on the horizon—lower, certainly, than he remembered it being at the Festival. Unless the sun had somehow reversed itself, it was late in the afternoon. He must have been unconscious a long time. Some awful stench bothered him, although he could not quite place the strange smell. The sunlight flickered through the woven pattern of wicker bars that—
Galen suddenly scrambled to his feet, slamming at once into the barred walls of the cage. He railed against them, his muscular arms shaking the crossed pattern of the ironreed strands under his white-knuckled grip. Dried rawhide secured the strands and refused to break. Galen’s feverish eyes d
arted wildly, taking in the gently rocking vista of his homeland that lay torturously outside his reach. The trees of the Margoth Wood that he had grown up in were drifting by slowly. The tall oak trees were just starting to turn their autumn colors, their broad leaves a brilliant splash of color on a warm and sunny day. The grasses beneath them were still supple and green, not yet having heard the call of a new season as they basked under a glorious sun.
Galen pushed himself away, then lunged once more at the cage wall. He screamed with a gravelly voice, like an animal filled with mindless, blinding rage. His full weight smashed again and again against the ironreed lattice but it yielded only enough to absorb the force of his blows. At last, spent and frustrated, he turned and slid his back down the cage wall until he sat panting amid the soiled and filthy straw that covered the floor.
The large woven cage swayed gently back and forth with the deliberate, pounding strides of the torusk underneath. The massive creature was the most common beast of burden in all the Pir provinces. This one appeared to be nearly ten hands high at its shoulder plates, with the dual ridge of flattened plates running from just behind the large crest bone that protected its neck down to its wide, flattened tail. Their docile spirit, powerful legs, and gentle gait made the torusks ideal beasts of burden.
Galen shared a large cage on this creature’s back with about thirty other people. Straw was strewn in a thick layer on its bottom. He looked into the faces of his companion travelers. Some of them he recognized—there was Haggun Harn that he had seen taken at the Election. Epheginia Gallos and her mother, Miural, were also huddled together in one corner. He knew them all well, but none of them would meet his gaze.
The others were strangers. Each was dressed for the Festival but must have been taken in other townships—Whethrin or Shardandelve farther up country in the Dragonback. Some rocked back and forth on the hay, others had cried their eyes red and dry, while still others, their eyes bright or glassy, sat staring toward a horizon that only they could know.
Galen did not care. His world was outside the cage, and getting farther away by the moment. Still panting, he dragged himself around the crossed ironreed, looking longingly back down the road. The torusk on which he was carried was only one in a long line of beasts, all making their way down the coastal road toward Leeside. In the distance beyond, he could still make out the wisps of smoke from the evening fires of Benyn. There, the families of his hometown would be fixing their Election feasts, preparing to settle in at the close of a satisfying and joy-filled day.
Somewhere among those thin columns should have been smoke from his home fire. Somewhere beyond the tree line, Berkita should have been helping her mother with their feast, laughing happily at their own blessed fortune and smiling with hope for a future. Somewhere beyond the distant ridgeline, Galen should have been sitting next to Ansal by a blazing hearth, talking of the good business at the forge while Berkita smiled at them both. Somewhere under the dimming sky was a life that should have been his. Somewhere down that road was everything that he ever wanted.
His hands on the wooden lattice, he pulled himself around to look forward. Several more torusks preceded them, their long, slow stride gracefully conveying them over the crest of a small hill. He could see the road winding down among the shoreline rills. The forest continued down a ways on his left toward the coast but had given way to the gentle climb of grassy knolls on his right. The trees of the forest cast long shadows in the lengthening sunset under a salmon-colored sky. It was toward that sunset that he was traveling: away from the life he loved toward lands that he had only heard named in whispers . . . or not named at all.
Hot tears stung Galen’s eyes. Blinking, he saw a Pir monk walking below him along the side of the road next to the cage.
At once, Galen pressed forward, his hands gripping the strands of the ironreed as he yelled. “Help me! There’s been a mistake made! I’m not one of these people! I don’t belong here!”
Next to him, another man pressed forward, his hair unkempt and his eyes red. “Help me!” he called out to the monk as well. “Let me out! I’m not mad!”
“No!” Galen growled at the monk. “Listen to me! You’ve got to help me—I’m not one of the Elect!”
Several more of the prisoners saw the monk as well. They all rushed forward, making the cage sway precariously.
“Help me, kind sir! I’ve never harmed anyone . . .”
“Let me out! I demand that you let me out . . .”
“Vasska save me! Vasska hear my prayers!”
Galen reached out through the woven reeds, the noise of the denials around him mounting by the moment. “No! Don’t listen to them! I’m a faithful member of the Pir!”
“I’m a faithful member of the Pir, too!” a woman shouted.
Galen pressed on. “I’m the one who is sane!”
“No, I’m the one who is sane!” the wild-haired man next to him cackled.
The monk turned, and it was only then that Galen saw that he was holding a staff.
“No!” Galen screamed. “You’ve got to listen to me!”
The monk turned the eye of the dragonstaff toward him.
“You’ve got to listen to me, too!” the crazed man shouted, just as the horror of the dragon’s eye filled Galen’s head and robbed him once more of conscious thought.
She hovers there before me, just beyond the glistening strands of the spider’s web.
I lie within a tiny glade. The web glistens by the light of a round moon, blue-white in a still night. It is a place that I have never been before. The chill of the night bites into my bones as I rise from the frigid ground.
Wondrous as all this is to me, I cannot take my eyes off the winged woman. I fear her and love her all at once. Her beauty is unlike anything I have ever seen, yet there is something distant and removed from me that I cannot understand. There is no warmth in her. I still fear her voice; a sound filled with more terrible longing and sadness than I can possibly recount to you. I cannot understand her words, yet their passion and power are capable of stopping the birds in flight and the rivers in their courses. I know that she weeps and that her tears are more than the world can bear—but does she weep for me?
As I weep for myself?
I come to stand before her now, my feet breaking the frozen grasses as I walk. Each blade shatters with the sound of smashing crystal beneath my bare feet.
She gazes back at me through the frozen web strands with sorrowful eyes that mirror the breaking of my own fragile heart. Can she read my thoughts? Can she read my heart as well? I cannot know, for she is gratefully silent this night, and were she to speak, her voice might shatter the world and me with it. Yet there is something in her eyes that calls to me, speaks to me with some understanding beyond words.
I reach out toward her. The iced strands of the web cut into my fingers with a razor’s bite. My blood runs down the webbing, clotting soon in the chill. I taste the iron in my own blood as I suck on my split fingers.
The winged woman drifts closer to the web that stands between us. She reaches forward with her delicate fingers. I hold up my bleeding hands, shaking my head.
She wonders at my gestures but halts for a moment. Her face contorts at my words. A question seems to form on her thin lips. She is staring at the glistening web between us. Her large eyes narrow for a time as she considers the patterns before her, then she reaches forward once more with her delicate hand.
As I watch, the strands begin to thaw, the warmth of her approach melts away the bitter chill. The ice turns to water and the strands become supple. She pushes the weave of the web strands easily. They separate.
I smile at her in awe.
She smiles back at me, beckoning me toward her.
I step through to the other side, my feet and hands numbed by the cold.
BOOK OF GALEN BRONZE CANTICLES, TOME IV, FOLIO 1, LEAVES 6-7
Galen awoke.
He tried to rise but his limbs were stiff. He rolled over, his back ag
ainst the cold, hard ground.
He was staring up at the large cage harnessed to the back of the torusk, almost ten feet above him. Several of the Elect inside the cage were staring back down at him, muttering to each other in astonishment.
Galen suddenly realized that it was he that had amazed them.
He was lying outside the cage.
He clambered to his feet. The great caravan of torusk beasts had stopped next to a river. Each of the beasts was taking its fill before continuing the journey. Galen could not place the spot exactly in the darkness, but he suspected that it was the Whethril River east of Benyn.
It did not matter. Galen was somehow free of the cage. How he was free or why were all questions that were best examined later and in a place far from here. All that was important now, he knew, was to get away as quickly as possible.
The river, he knew, was his best hope, but the Inquisition monks accompanying the caravan were intent on the watering of the torusks. Escape first; river later. Galen moved quickly and as quietly as he could toward the line of trees bordering the road. He paused only a moment in the underbrush, glancing back to see if anyone had noticed his leaving.
The wild-haired man with the red eyes, outraged that he was still in the cage, was screaming at the top of his lungs and pointing directly toward where Galen crouched. Some of the monks were being bothered enough to start paying attention.
Galen did not wait for them to become curious; he turned at once and ran heedlessly into the forest. All he could think of was getting away—putting distance between him and the monks. Then he could take the time to think. Then he could formulate a plan.
The trees were black shapes against the moonlit shadows of the forest. Galen crashed through the underbrush, the trees raking his skin as he ran, cutting into his flesh.
The ground beneath him suddenly fell away. Galen stumbled, tumbled down a steep embankment and over a precipice. He fell for what seemed an eternity, then slammed into black water. The icy cold shocked the breath from him. He flailed, frigid needles seeming to prick his skin everywhere.
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