“You’ve probably heard the story before. It’s a popular one in the Deeps,” said Vaujn, taking his seat once more. “You know, the quest for the Eggs of Ohrme. Mordigul and Merridel and the duaurnhuun. It’s practically the king’s favorite.”
“That was here?” Osrith took another drink from his chilled stone mug. “I always thought that was out west in Dyrkensgraab somewhere?”
“Nope. The river Dolset runs east from here.” He jabbed his finger at the map. “East, but mostly down. You’ll drop several thousand feet before it levels off completely, and you’ll drop pretty fast, too. The rapids are some of the meanest and longest I’ve ever seen, and I grew up in Rockflow, so you can guess what that means. That way will cut your time in half if you don’t drown. But there are other complications.”
“Other complications? That’s usually where I tell prospective employers to forget it.”
“Yes, well, that’s probably a good policy. You see, some parts of Mordigul’s legend don’t want to die and fade into memory.”
Osrith didn’t like what he was hearing. Vaujn was being deliberately evasive. It was obvious he didn’t even like broaching the subject. “What part, exactly?”
Vaujn shrugged apologetically. “The part about Oszmagoth.”
Oszmagoth. The Sunken City. In kin legend, it was one of the most mysterious and dangerous of places. A once-proud andu’ai metropolis that was struck down by cataclysmic magics, falling through the center of Mount Tanigis to rest in the Deeps, where it became the haunt of every unspeakable creature in the whole of creation.
It was a good story, when told well, but Osrith didn’t put too much stock in it. He had seen more of Rahn than any handful of men, and of the hundreds of tales he had heard, there were only two or three that seemed close to reality. Certainly there was once an andu’ai city on Mount Tanigis, and certainly it had plummeted down the throat of the still smoking volcano, but of the rest he was less sure. Shadowborn and srhrilakiin and misshapen creatures from beyond the Veil: these were not at all uncommon in the embellished world of myth and adventure. But where Osrith dwelled, in the cold grind of day-to-day reality, they were a rare bunch. Of the ancient legends, it seemed only the hrumm and dringli were found in any real numbers.
Then again, he reconsidered; he was being tirelessly hunted by the Pale Man himself. He’d once thought those stories were but legend, too. He decided to treat the idea of Oszmagoth with a little more caution, at the very least.
“So,” he finally managed to say, “what sorts of obstacles should we expect to find there, then?”
“Well,” said Vaujn, very business-like, “we’re pretty sure the dragon’s gone now. Has been for a couple of years, if we hear the signs correctly. It’s a very distinctive sound they make, you know.”
Osrith paled. As most sane men, he had no desire to seek out a dragon for any reason. He would as soon turn around and go dig Dieavaul out of the snow and then jump on his unholy sword. “Is that the same dragon?” he asked, trying in vain to remember how many hundreds or thousands of years ago the kin heroes had gone on their adventure.
Vaujn shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.”
“Anyway, it’s gone now. But we think that the srhrilakiin are still thereabouts, and there are some wild dringli tribes down further deep from up here – possibly some hrumm. And there’s always the occasional cave-mantis or eloth ready to drop on your head. Oh, and stay on the south bank. The blood mites generally tend to avoid it down that end because of the rockfishers. At least you can see the rockfishers, right? Before it’s too late, I mean.”
“Was there anything else?”
“Aside from the curse, no. Not that we know of.”
Osrith returned the look of irritation and exasperation that the captain had lent him when Kassakan revealed who and what had been buried in the kin avalanche. “And I should probably know what that is?”
“Oh, no,” dismissed Vaujn, “nobody knows what the curse is. That’s the problem, you see.”
“Because nobody comes back?”
“I told you I didn’t recommend it,” said Vaujn. “We’ve avoided it like the grey plague ever since Merridel dragged her husband out by his hair. But there’s always some kin with delusions of grandeur. You know the type.”
Osrith put his face into his hands and pressed his fingers against his eyelids. There was no getting around it. He was an idiot. Though it went against every mercenary adage he had ever learned, he could feel in his heart what his decision was going to be. And it was a stupid one.
“Give me some more ale,” he muttered, and tried not to think about it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
OLD BONES
THE night closed in, enfolding the edges of the Crehr ne Og in an embrace of moonless dark. Callagh was nestled in the thick mid-limbs of an oak, bundled in her cloak and sheltered from the numbing wind, her lidded eyes keeping watch in the stillness. She had come far in a few days, and they were days dimmed early by the constancy of bruised skies and sporadic gusts of obscuring snow.
A distant baying floated on the wind, and Callagh closed her eyes. The Wolves of Winter, she thought. That was the legend. The wolves of Arag Ghûol. When they came, so did the iron season.
The beasts were seldom seen but often heard as they embarked each year on their eternal, and seemingly futile, hunt. Their barks and howls floated across the heaths and highlands in counterpoint to their silent master, Ghûol. He quested in their wake for the dreaded rhiad-bannon, the Hound of Souls, so that he might wrest the spirit of his beloved daughter Lleuwyn from its charge. The same daughter he’d doomed to that fate, wagering with the gods.
The Old Gods do love a bargain, she thought.
Ghûol drove his wolves hard after their quarry this year. Deepingmoon and Darkmoon brought snow, and deep snow on occasion, but storms did not usually threaten in earnest until the aptly named Stormmoon.
Callagh shivered, but not from the cold. Cold alone didn’t bother her. She’d weathered worse, and dwelling on discomfort didn’t help. No, it wasn’t the cold or the snow or the early onset of winter that made her wary – it was thoughts of Arag Ghûol and his wolves and the tracks that she’d followed for the past two days.
Legends such as that of Ghûol and the Chariot of Winter, and the dreaded beast of rhiad-bannon that he hunted: these were stories that once had thrilled her. She’d believed them, at least in a distant sort of way, but her experience in the Ad Craign Uhl had changed that. There was a frightening depth to every legend now, that even in sincere belief she had previously not devoted much thought.
Is Ghûol really hunting the rhiad-bannon? she wondered. Does it really hold the secret of his sweet Lleuwyn? Or was Da’ right – just a bunch of damn geese makin’ grief for skittish hunters?
The tracks.
Geese did’na make those tracks, she thought, as if she needed the reassurance. Nothing should make those tracks.
She had followed them out of curiosity and convenience. The imprints were roughly the size of a bear’s, but with distinctly canine pads, and spacing and depth that revealed a long loping gait. She’d never seen anything like it. It headed in roughly the same direction as she, so she stalked the beast, whatever it was.
It was that first night that the baying began, but only several spans later did she make the connection with the legend of the rhiad-bannon.
What else would make those tracks? And what else, but the wolves of Arag Ghûol, give it chase?
The beast of legend was the size of a bear, a giant wolfhound with scraggly mottled coat and eyes that burned green. In some stories, it was winged; in most, it was not. But in one thing all legends agreed – it had eaten Roald adh Rhiad, the Lord of the Hunt, and only spit him out again at the behest of the divine hunter’s sister, Roaìl. But not before first digesting his arm, and with it, all of his forest lore.
Callagh brushed her thumb over the brooch in her pocket. Keep to the old ways, ahn cr
anaoght, and the old ways will keep you. Those words echoed in her head, a constant toll and a persistent reminder that the life she had known was somehow changed forever. Old things are waking.
Callagh pulled the cloak’s cowl down over her face and settled her thoughts. I don’t need to know what river I’m on to know I’m floating downstream, she told herself, and eased into a wary sleep.
Callagh blinked, wondering if she’d slept through the night, but the darkness that greeted her told her it had not been long. Perhaps a half-span, at most. She glimpsed the ruddy light of Ghaest through the clouds as the restless wind briefly exposed the Dead Moon to the night, but it was a few spans to suns-rise, of that she was sure.
Chased off the big bright girl, did ya’? she thought. A grin may have played about the corners of her mouth, but no sooner had she started to relax than her spine stiffened.
Callagh sensed it, before she even looked – something watching her. It was the feeling of being prey. Once, after a fruitless morning running far afield to track a mighty buck, she’d had the same feeling. She’d turned back only to find the tracks of a mountain cat trailing hers from the edge of the brush. The cat had apparently decided she was not worth the effort, or found better game, and Callagh hoped she might have similar luck this time.
But when she peered down, it was not a mountain cat that watched her. A pair of lambent green eyes sparkled from a translucent shadow, a giant hound sitting on its haunches, staring back up at her.
The rhiad-bannon.
Those eyes lead to undernland itself, she thought, and then in horror, looked away. I looked into its eyes! Right into them like a damned half-wit stupid girl in a bardsong.
She didn’t die, however; and the rhiad-bannon didn’t threaten her. Nor did it move away. As she examined its shadowy bulk from her perch, it watched and waited, its eyes never blinking.
“What?” she asked aloud, fear swallowing any intended insolence into a harsh whisper as her throat tightened around the words. “What do ye want of me?”
It cocked its big shaggy head, just as one of Calvraign’s hounds might startle at an odd noise. Then it rose and lumbered a few yards away. It looked back at her and sat, staring to the southeast.
That bloody beast is bigger than most bears, she thought.
Callagh dropped to the ground, her heart racing, but she knew what it wanted of her, and she couldn’t imagine refusing it. Her bow was strung, but she didn’t bother to nock an arrow. She didn’t think for a moment that she could outrun it or slay it. The Hound of Souls did not appear to a mortal without reason, and foolish was any mortal who might take such an omen for granted.
She stopped next to it, fighting an urge to reach out and run her fingers through the ruff at its neck. Instead, she followed its gaze. There was a faint glimmer off in the woods, an orange-red flicker barely bright enough to cast a shadow, tucked in the hollow of a shallow hillock.
“A camp?” she asked, this time her whisper intentional.
A distant baying lilted through the wood, and the rhiad-bannon’s ears lay flat against its head. A low growl brewed in its throat.
“I’ll do what ye want,” Callagh said. “But I’ve no clue what-”
The Hound leaped, and a cold strong wind blew through the trees after it, rustling the leaves with a keening insistence. The baying sounded more distant than ever, yet felt somehow as if it was just over her shoulder, out of sight.
Then silence and emptiness.
Callagh looked to the light of the nearby fire and frowned. “Ah, hang me!” she cursed under her breath, and crept forward.
Callagh’s footfalls were soft, and her pace that of a patient hunter all too aware of the price paid for haste. She had an arrow at the string, but lowered it after a careful examination of the clearing.
The hillock was long and narrow, covered in mossy rocks and comparatively young growth. Callagh judged it might be an old barrow mound and, considering the company she’d been keeping of late, it seemed an appropriate place for the Hound to point her. But, aside from the low, hot, almost smokeless fire, there was no movement here, and no life. Not so much as a curious tree-nape.
But the smell told her there was more to know, here. The stink of copper and sweet perfume and acrid charcoal was thick in her nostrils. It was the smell of flesh and blood and organs as they burned, not cleaned and dressed for the cook fire, or wrapped for a funeral pyre – a body burned whole.
Callagh found a plethora of prints in the dirt and snow about the fire. Boots, mostly heavy tread, possibly armored. They had come in from the southeast and exited the same way. Nothing had been dragged, but she did notice one delicate set of prints entering the clearing. A child, or a very petite woman, had accompanied perhaps a dozen men. But there was no sign of her exit. More puzzling, there was no indication of a struggle.
Callagh stared back into the flames again, and the dark blotch of a body on which the fire still fed. Hesitant but determined, she approached the dwindling blaze. The flames were low, and white, and hotter than she thought was quite normal. She grabbed a thin branch from the ground and poked at the remains.
She jumped back with a scream when the blackened husk moaned, tripping on her heels and falling on her backside.
“Ahn cranaoght,” the corpse intoned in a familiar voice, flames licking from the jaw as it spoke. Its empty eyes and nasal opening glowed eerily from within. “Do not fear me, little ghost.”
Shaking, Callagh crawled to her knees, dizzy. She found no words, staring mute and pale into the fire.
“My thanks for your attention to my bones. It has been years since I have felt kindness. It is dark where I dwell.”
“Why aren’t you at your rest?” Callagh managed to say. “I thought…. I thought I helped you.”
“Ah, but you did help. No longer to my mortal husk am I tied. And I am here because of that. Here to help you.”
“Why?” Callagh’s gaze was transfixed on the delicate skull. So small. There was no doubt that this was a child, and less than a ten-year if she guessed right. She fought to swallow her bile. “Am I dead?”
“Not yet. Not even a little.”
“Then who are you? And why help me?”
“I am a friend to you, and a servant to a power that you also serve, by action if not word. I can say no more. The Wards of the Dead prevent me from speaking plain, or I’ll bring greater doom on us both. That, alas, is how it must be between us.”
Callagh had always been puzzled by the old man in the Ad Craign Uhl, but also amused, and never threatened. Now, suspicion ate at her gut. “And what’s it I’m doin’ that needs helping? There’s too much chance droppin’ in my lap all at once to think it coincidence.”
Callagh planted her fists on her hip. “The old man I talk to for years on end just happens to be some kind spirit to help me, and he speaks from a lil’ girl burnin’ up in a fire that just happens to be on my way, that just happens to be past the Hound of Souls and to the left, eh? It’s bloody odd, I think.”
“Not so odd, and no coincidence. Our conversations over the years were no more happenstance than the Black Bard’s with your young beloved. You were both crafted to a purpose.”
Callagh snorted. “What am I, then? Some pawn to be played.”
“A pawn? Certainly not. A game piece of sorts? Well, yes. We all are, by someone else’s hand. You have played Mylyr Gaeal – you know the truth of it. It’s easier to put your piece into play with your opponent than it is to set up the strike. Positioning the pieces several moves in advance. Anticipating your opponent without tipping your own strategy. Tricky. But here we are, and for several players of the game, including the hand that guides both of us, pieces held in reserve for years are nearing conflict.”
“And what if I’d rather have a scone and a nice cup o’ hotblack, eh?” Callagh challenged. “What then?”
“I won’t make decisions for you. I will only give you choices. How you choose will determine how the game is played out
. And how the other pieces may fare.”
Callagh felt some of her defiance drifting away. “Calvraign,” she said, nibbling on her upper lip. “Does he serve the same power? I can help him?”
“No, a different hand moves his destiny; and yes, you may indeed help to save him. But we have little time left. The door to your world is loose on its hinges, but even so – when this flame dies, this door closes.”
“And what about her?” Callagh asked, pointing at the charred skeleton. “Did she have a choice?”
“She was not one of us, and nor was her choice – but she gave herself to the flame, and she is consumed to the purpose. In so doing, she left the door ajar for me. It was an unexpected courtesy.
“The flame she served is growing hungry, little ghost, and this flame burns with more heat than light.”
“You want me to go put this fire out for you, is that it?”
“Oh no,” he said. “Follow these tracks. Find the men who made them. They are going where you need to be, and they can help you for a time, if you can gain their trust. As it happens, they are short one young servant girl in their camp.
“No, I don’t want you to extinguish this fire. Not yet. Sometimes it is the heat of a wildfire that brings life to a dormant seed from which a mighty tree might grow. For now, I want you to tend it.”
The flames were dimming, the heat fading, the skeleton crumbling to ash. The voice was thinner as it continued, “You will be far from our source of power. I do not know when or how we may help you once beyond our boundary, but look for our signs and you will find them. If you do not look, they will not appear.”
“All very bloody mysterious,” complained Callagh. “And how am I to know that I’ve found the right men? Or what this fire is, and how to tend it? Can you not start me off a bit with another damn riddle or some such?”
Darkness was reclaiming the dying fire, and the skull cracked, shifted, as it spoke again, so faint that Callagh leaned as close to the fire as she dared.
In Siege of Daylight Page 17