by Martin Gibbs
That would lead him straight onto Crown Road.
Part III
A Knot Upon a Knot
In which threads begin to merge into one giant mess of a knot. How will it be untied? And who will do the untying? Or does this drag on forever? Why so many questions?
Chapter 23 — Revenge?
Revenge is of the Dark. If someone slights you, it is not worth slighting them in return. For their actions they will be punished. For yours, you will be punished twice: Once for the deed and once for the intention.
Prophet Gorand
Gryn made it easily to Crown Road. His experience and training in the northern climate allowed him to cover a large amount of ground in the dark and in a very short amount of time. Once a glimmer of daylight had emerged, he started jogging—the action helped warm his body. However, once the sweat started to trickle down his back, he stopped. The sweat would easily freeze and set him into cold-shock. He did not intend to succumb to the elements before he could kill these dangerous men.
Crown Road was completely deserted this far north. When he passed the tree line, he instinctively put up the hood of his coat and quickened his pace. Gray Gorge was not far.
As the snow began to fall and the stones of the road fell away to packed earth, he noticed three horses trot past him, half-open saddlebags swaying. He was on the right path…the travelers had abandoned their horses and gone on foot. Or were they dead? He hoped not; he wanted to be the one to slide his sword into their soft bellies.
He started walking north, but a thought struck him, and he returned to the horses. It took a fair bit of soft whispering and patting, but he calmed them down to a point—used to having riders for countless miles, the poor creatures’ eyes were all whites. Gryn was lucky he didn’t take a hoof to the stomach.
Gryn rummaged through the saddlebags of the first horse, but found nothing apart from a few lighter shirts and a half-empty jar of dried meat. On the second he found little more and turned to walk away when he noticed something sticking out from a smaller bag. He snatched up the item—a piece of well-worn paper. One side looked to be a notice from a University. “Ha!” He laughed. One horse tittered, and he quickly shushed the beast. “That proves that,” Gryn muttered. As he started to crumple the paper, he turned it over…it looked like some sort of code. He read it, and as he did, his eyes widened. “Sacuan bless us, they were trying to cavort with this warlock, weren’t they?” he asked the paper. Two Knights were gone, their knots permanently undone, and all at the hands of these children. But they were children no more, this note seemed to prove they were something far more dangerous. Huyen and Yulchar could sit by their warm fire and return to the fat man…by then it could be too late.
He soothed the horse and mounted, letting the other wander, and rode toward the rocky walls of Gray Gorge. Once he saw the distinctive outcrop, he dismounted and patted the horse; it took a few steps in a circle, then started wandering south again. He didn’t care. He wouldn’t be needing it anymore.
Gryn read the paper again and started toward the huge outcrop, feet shuffling slowly in the snow, his eyes darting to the rocks every so often.
What is this anyway? He thought. “Beneath the finger—that must that giant rock there...fifty paces... can’t read this very well...fifty paces north.” He paused. “Entrance. Entrance. Of course... some sort of cave or tunnel through the Gorge. How clever. How demonic,” he hissed.
He walked the paces indicated and stopped, regarding the paper. “West five. Stop. North again, ten…now three paces.” He stopped before his nose smashed into the rock. “Sacuan bless me, this is wrong!”
Gryn retraced the paces and came face-to-face with the rock again. With no hope that anything would happen, he pressed his hands against the rocks. Nothing but cold rock…he cursed softly and stepped back. He glanced hurriedly along the rock face and cursed again. Nothing. Slow down…he could hear the voice of Yulchar admonish him. Painfully, he forced his eyes to move across every square inch of the rock face, starting at a height that would make sense for an entry. His eyes burned from the cold, and as he moved down to nearly waist-level, he nearly gave up but forced himself to inspect every inch.
He almost missed the discoloration from the other minutiae he was inspecting. But the change in color was so abrupt, and so well-defined along a line that he nearly yelled aloud. “Sacuan bless us all, and curse these demons,” he spat. With a gloved hand, he pushed on the rock, praying to Sacuan that it would at least move a little.
It slid noiselessly open.
Gryn sighed. “I’m coming for you. And Ar’Zoth, too.”
The name felt like tar in his mouth.
He took another tentative step forward and hesitated. He swore he heard something far off…coming out of the tunnel. Another step…and the blackness was complete. It was unnatural and it set his nerves on end. I’m a demon hunter, he reminded himself. I fight the Dark. This is of the Dark…this is demonic and can be beaten. Gryn grimaced as a wave of nausea assaulted him and felt as if he were falling into a bottomless well. Black magic, he thought and forced his feet to move forward. There was no other action to take. When he emerged in the blinding light, he stumbled and nearly fell. Shielding his eyes, he followed the path Zhy, Qainur and Torplug had traversed.
What in the…he wondered, as the dark clouds furiously filled the once-bright sky. It hit him. He knew what was coming: snow—an Orca’s belly full. Gryn had been caught in the same blizzard as the travelers—without the storm he would have surely reached them.
His eyes darted along the countryside. The sheer climb to the right was no good, and the abrupt drop into the ravine was no better. He turned around to look behind him. Like the others, he had blindly followed the path out of Gray Gorge to the right, not bothering to look to the left. In that space was a larger clearing that provided a few hundred feet of buffer between the sheer rise and the precipitous drop-off. Two large balsams stood in a clump, but another two had fallen in the clearing. One many years ago, and one still had green in its boughs. Perfect. The one should be easy to use for firewood and the other would provide him shelter.
Beyond the carpeted slope, gigantic spruce trees stood stoically, their boughs laden with snow. A fleeting thought came to him—one of a young man climbing half-way up the massive trees and then sliding down the boughs, leaving behind an avalanche of cascading snow. He discarded the thought as the snow began to gain intensity.
He made his way over to the clearing, cursing as the deep snow soaked his leggings. A warm fire would fix that…if he could create a shelter in time. The wind howled, and he swore he heard it call out to him, The Light has deemed you unworthy. He spat and continued forward.
Snow began to fall harder. Soon it was as if a hundred thousand feather pillows had been opened above him. The sky was white and the snow was adding to its already staggering depth at an incredible rate. The Knight looked out into the wilderness, but now there was no distinction between the snow falling and the snow on the ground. Everything was white.
He reached the fallen tree and collapsed upon it like a weary traveler to a warm bath. The wind howled and the snow dug deeper into his clothing, but he ignored it and began to tear massive balsam branches off the fallen tree. He then shoved them into the rapidly deepening snow, so that the fan of smaller branches and still-green leaves rose to the sky. He made a semi-circle, facing the wind. There were grunts of frustration as a bundle or two would be blown down, but he re-anchored them as fast as they fell. No time for that hand-ax now. Get it later.
“Keep filling it in until there are no more! Fill in the holes!” he yelled to himself, but the voice was drowned in the raging howl.
He swore as a gust of wind and snow tore through a gap in the branches. Cursing, he filled in the space with another branch. He worked until the fallen tree was bare. The final product was a crude, but effective, windbreak. Gryn then used the final bough to sweep away as much snow from the hard ground as he could. He flung his
pack to the ground and sat on a medium-sized rock. He was panting.
“Fire,” he panted. “Now I need a fire.” The wind roared against the balsam branches, but they held. For now.
He groaned and reached for the pack. With a great sigh, he started fumbling inside. He dug out a container filled with dried birch bark. With the flick of a match, a fire was going, and he broke up the branches of the remaining bough. The tree had not been dead for long, so the fire was slow to start and gave off a cloud of thick, wet smoke. But it was still fire.
When at last he had caught his breath, he stared out at the snow and cursed. “Ar’Zoth, this is your work, and you will pay. You and your companions will pay.”
Gryn then dug deeper into the pack, produced the hand ax, and used it to chop pieces from the fallen tree. After a half hour of chopping, he had a pile of wood big enough to keep him warm all night. At last, he sank to the ground, which was now warm and dry. The lean-to succeeded in keeping the wind at bay, and it also provided some reflective heat. It was going to be a nice warm night in his little cabin in the middle of a howling blizzard.
He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the bedroll, and the blizzard raged throughout the night. When he awoke much later to feed the fire, he wondered how long the blizzard would last. This one had the makings of a multiple-day storm. He would have to conserve his wood and his food. But for now he was warm and protected in his shelter, and he slept again, well into the next day.
The snow did not stop.
Chapter 24 — A Fatuous Path
Have you tried to tie a knot upon a knot? And then do it again? And what is the result? What are you left with? A bulging bundle of completely useless and frayed fabric. Madness. Thus is the mad man.
Prophet Altyu-M’Zhkara, IV Age
“How much farther?” Zhy panted. He motioned the others to stop. The ravine vanished into infinity to their left, and the sheer bank of thin balsams stretched up to their right…the scene itself was enough to induce vertigo, even if one wasn’t standing in the middle of it. Ahead of them, the trail took another gentle turn to the right, but the huge trees blocked any view of what was beyond.
Qainur beamed, even though his chest rose and fell in a slow but pendulous rhythm. “I don’t think much farther…the texts never really said. Just that a short path…led from Gray Gorge through this section of the Spires of Solitude…”
“You’ve been saying ‘not much farther’ for the last couple of days—well before that snowstorm in any case,” Zhy remarked, breathing heavily from exertion. “I’m not sure how much longer I can…keep on this trail. One wrong step…”
The warrior simply stared up ahead. His response was gruff. “I think we should keep moving. I’m sure we are not far. Let’s go another mile or so, and if we see nothing, we will stop.”
“I suppose…I suppose we could,” Zhy replied with hesitation in his voice.
Torplug hazarded a glance back along the trail. There was no longer an easy way out of there. Turning around and walking back would be just as dangerous as going forward. Best to continue and hope that the trail widened at some point. “Let’s keep going, then, but carefully,” he said.
Qainur nodded and continued along the dangerous path.
The scenery did not change much. Snow from the recent blizzard still covered most of the path along with some small obstacles. A wrong step upon even the smallest pebble could send a man into the vast chasm below.
Every so often a light wind would blow snow from the higher branches; the sun glistened off the multitude of crystals, and for brief moments the entire valley looked out of focus. Zhy again wondered how such big trees could grow here, when they were clearly above the tree line. Perhaps the seith’s powers were at work here.
After a while, the trail seemed to widen slightly, but each traveler still kept his eye on the snowy and uneven ground.
Qainur suddenly stopped. Zhy and Torplug nearly slammed into him and stumbled. Thankfully, they remained upright and didn’t go sailing down the canyon. The mercenary looked at a set of stone stairs and scratched his head. As his eyes rose to take in the strange structure, his jaw dropped. The others followed his gaze and were equally stunned.
A stone stairway rose in front of them. The canyon was still to their left, but the trees thinned as the rise seemed reached the heavens. The stairs were tiny and snow-covered. Tufts of wind would blow snow from the stairs, and one could see moss underneath the snow. The staircase ascended at an impossible angle and rose high enough to nearly touch the clouds—had there not been an enormous castle as their terminus. Zhy craned his neck, looking upward, and guessed the structure rose nearly a quarter of a mile, perhaps slightly less.
It is as big as the Counsel headquarters in Belden City, Zhy thought.
The building was a veritable castle with ramparts, towers, and chimneys. An army could be housed there but only if the staircase could support the weight. The entryway was unusually small, however, barely enough for a horse and small cart. There was no great gate. But who needed that if the entrance had been so well protected? And how could such a structure have been built here?
He looked back along the route they had traversed and gasped. Even though most of the trail disappeared around a bend, they had still traveled a long way on a dangerous path—the great balsams stretched out almost endlessly towards Gray Gorge. Farther down the pass, a gust of wind sent a massive balsam branch snapping out into the trail. Zhy was thankful they had not been around, for the branch surely would have knocked one or more of them into the ravine.
Then he shook his head and slowly turned back to gaze at the gargantuan castle that didn’t fit here. It seemed to offer no excuses for its existence but stood stoic and proud against both man and nature. Its silent hulk seemed to whisper quietly. Or was that the wind? Zhy swore he heard a voice in the thin air and the ice-cold breeze. It said, I am doom and despair.
Qainur swatted at something in the cold air.
“What is the matter?” Torplug asked.
“Thought I heard a fly buzzing,” the mercenary said. He too was staring at the strange castle, but again he swatted at something. His face was growing red with irritation.
“There are no flies around here.”
The mercenary grumbled.
“Maybe he hears the voices,” Zhy remarked to Torplug.
“What voices?” Torplug and Qainur answered in unison.
“Don’t you hear it?”
“No…” The mage shook his head slowly. “Maybe you—” He broke off, taking a quick glance along the trail, then up the long set of stairs, and finally at the castle.
“What?”
“This place…this place is wrong,” he muttered.
“I think that is stating the obvious.”
Torplug chuckled without levity.
“Wrong?” Qainur asked. “It’s just different.”
“No,” Zhy snapped. “Different is having a cat with two eyes of a different color. This almost has an odd smell even. Very wrong. It doesn’t fit.”
“Actually,” Torplug explained slowly. “It’s not that kind of wrong, either. I’m not exactly sure…but something isn’t right. Maybe I’m tired. So far I don’t sense any magic…maybe that is why.”
“Huh?” Qainur blurted, confused.
“I would expect magic to cover this place like maggots on a dead ox. If a great seith or warlock is here, there would be wards and traps, all sorts of things. But there is nothing. Just snow and rock.”
“But if his powers are warded…?”
“No, even then there would be something to hold him here. Maybe no one is here, and that’s why it feels so strange.” He paused. “Maybe…maybe…” The mage trailed off. “Well…” He was having quite an animated debate with himself. He would mutter something, shrug, hold out a palm in the air, smile, then scowl again, and shrug. Finally, he looked up. “Maybe there is magic, but it’s old. Or there are just remnants.” He paused again and whispered faintl
y, “Or it’s disguised.”
“I don’t get it,” Zhy said.
“Sometimes those without the gift of magic can still sense it, especially if it is the remains of powerful magic. Those of us trained at the University have learned to ignore such things, as the world buzzes with magic in many places, and we would go mad—” His line of thinking suddenly derailed. “Ah, but never mind. No, if the seith were mad, there would still be wards! It is all very strange.”
Qainur only shook his head. “That’s not all that is strange around here. So you think maybe there is no magic here?”
He shrugged. “It is possible.”
“Hrmph.”
Zhy thought for a moment. That could explain everything. A castle like this seemed very strange in the mountains—if it were abandoned, that would make it even stranger. And no magic?
Qainur interrupted his thoughts. “I think we should find out.”
“Find out what?” the mage asked.
“Find out if anyone is still here. I came this far to learn from him. Let’s see if he is here.”
A confused look passed over Torplug’s face. “I wouldn’t expect you to just stop here and quit!”
Qainur laughed, his breath pluming out in the frozen air. “Of course not! I just—well, it does seem kind of strange, doesn’t it?”
“If you say that one more time…” Zhy remarked, but there was no emotion behind it. He was exhausted and apprehensive. Apprehensive was an understatement. The thin air was challenging to breathe, but it wasn’t the altitude that had sucked the air from his lungs and set his heart racing. They had arrived. This could be it. The end. The destination. Someone or something—maybe nothing—awaited them atop those stairs. He felt like he had finally reached the warm beach only to find a hard scrabble instead of soft white sand. Or worse, like when he had gone out to find Father in the fields and found only a corpse. He shivered briefly and stared ahead. It had once been said that the end of a journey was the start of another, but Zhy only felt as if he were coming up against a blank wall, against a future that was black and meaningless. There was no way to stop it, no way to turn back.