Master Baccus had demonstrated unimaginable skills the previous day, but going against an elite, let alone six of them, was madness. The tension rose markedly in the following seconds. One of the elite’s hand flashed to the hilt of his weapon. His father’s knuckles turned white and shook slightly at his reins.
‘But it’s going to pour’ was all Prince Hedgard could think, as if in his rising panic the nasty weather awaiting them was more important and worthy of attention than what was happening at that moment.
The king’s jaw muscles were bulging in a jerky rhythm. The elite to the left of Master Baccus looked in his direction for the first time. His face was an impassible mask but a dark light burned dangerously in his eyes. Master Baccus shook his head and sighed heavily.
“As you wish my king,” he finally conceded, respectfully bowing his head to the king. “I will tell you all I know. But you are not going to like it.”
Chapter Eleven
The prince woke up stiff, aching and cold. His body throbbed quietly under the numbness of the night. He was resting, half-sitting, half-laying against the rough wall of a small cave. His left shoulder was propped against a craggy rock that protruded from the wall and his neck was bent at an awkward angle. As he came to, the first thing he became aware of was the hilt of his sword sticking painfully into his side. Second was a severe cramp in his back and a raw pressure on his shoulders. He had fallen asleep with his pack on and was paying the price for it. He forced himself to sit up. His thoughts were muddled but as he had done upon waking every day since he started his journey, he instinctively checked for the stone at his neck. He felt the reassuring shape under his shirt and without any further thoughts he ventured a look around. His neck protested loudly and his forehead started a low pulsing of its own. He slowly rubbed his eyes, inhaling the thick, oily smell of pine sap his hands exuded, and then got out of his pack straps. His back ached in sweet relief at the release of the weight. He stood up and faced the blinding light pouring into the cave some fifteen feet away. He looked at the rock by the cave’s entrance.
“The boy, where is the boy?” his mind suddenly snapped.
His aches seemed to slip away as the events of the previous day came crashing back into focus.
“How long was I out? The creatures! They might be close!”
He stumbled forward, anguish starting to flourish in his chest. He braced himself for panic and fear to strum hard at his nerves and was surprised at the decidedly vague feeling of concern that rose inside of him instead.
“They’re not around anymore,” a gentle voice whispered.
He stepped out of the cave in a hurry and found himself on a narrow headland. It took a few seconds for his eyes to get used to the daylight and when they did, what they came upon took his breath away. Down a dizzying plunge along the vertical mountainside, the valley of Haliphanp spread out before him in awe-inspiring beauty. So far below him that it made his head feel light, forests, lakes, hills and fields stretched toward the horizon in a dazzling patchwork of texture and colors. On either side of him stood massive mountains that reached far into the sky and disappeared into masses of gray clouds, while slightly above eye level, scores of pristine clouds spread lazily atop one another into an equally impressive skyscape that over the countryside in a slow dance and projected long shadows beneath as it went. The prince stood there, rocking lightly on his heels, the wind caressing his battered body gently as he took in the utterly magnificent and humbling sight. While he lost himself into the grand tableau in front of him, he forgot his concerns. For a moment the Father of fathers he had been seeking for years stopped his ceaseless tugging. For a moment the monsters of Haliphanp he faced the previous day stopped poking their nightmarish specters in his consciousness. For a moment, like he used to so long ago, before he lost all he knew -so long ago that it felt like lifetimes ago- he once again was lost in the present; fully of the instant, fully himself again. And then, past a handful of bushes to his left, came the sound of snapping twigs and the distinctive crash of branches slapping against each other.
“The child?” the prince wondered.
He walked along the ledge and past a handful of bushes. The boy stood in front of the dense forest wall. He was covered in dark green filth. His blue outfit was heavily spotted with thick, viscous liquid. His hands and the sleeves of his shirt were dripping with a semi-congealed, dark mucous reminiscent of animal fat. The boy himself did not seem hurt in any way. His young features did not betray any emotions.
“What happened?” the prince asked.
“They’re gone,” the boy simply said.
The prince looked at him bewildered. He knew the boy spoke the truth, but his state hinted a something his mind could not accept.
“How?” he asked breathlessly.
The boy turned around to face the open sky before them and did not move or say another thing. The prince knew he would not get anything else from him. He went back to the cave and picked up his pack. Then they once more crossed the wall of needles.
They walked all day, mostly in silence. The path wrapped itself around the mountain. It ever so gently angled up and made their actual advance toward the summit painfully slow. But that their climb took days, weeks or months made no difference to the prince. He did not perceive time like he once did, and days neither felt long nor short. In his quest for the word his life had become a simple rhythm of one-pointedness, every day following the same structured momentum. He would wake up, pursue his goal with all the strength at his disposal, face the Night, and then repeat it all the next day. He did not consider days in term of stretches of time but in terms of single-minded action and the dispensing of his energies in the most efficient manner. And so they walked the rocky path among the scented pine trees with a pointed effort. By the end of the day the pine forest, which at the start of their climb was so despairingly dense and seemed intent on swallowing the trail, had gradually thinned out and slowly relinquished space to the trail. Night came as it always did. They stopped by the trail and sat in silence, the prince raising himself against it and the boy wrapped in his own other-worldly musing. Afterward the prince rummaged through his pack and pulled out some nuts and dried meat and a leather pouch filled with water. They ate in silence in the growing darkness. Neither of them seemed to require much in terms of food or water and they were done quickly. Then they lay side by side on large rocks that more or less formed a half circle on the side of the trail and they lost themselves in the brightly dotted night sky until sleep took them.
Over the next few days, they edged higher and their environment slowly changed. The air grew cold and the pine trees scarce until the trees disappeared altogether and were replaced by prickly, gray shrubs covered with small, green leaves and bright orange berries the prince knew not to eat. The shrubs had thick roots that crawled across the ground and spread in all directions forming a vast web that covered the rocky mountainside. Higher still, as they entered the gray clouds and the world turned frigid and foggy around them, the shrubs gave way to short, thorny bushes that grew sparser and sparser as they went up. No wildlife was to be heard and only the sharp sound of rocks sliding, rolling and bouncing over other rocks and the howling of the wind rushing down the increasingly desolate slopes of the mountain accompanied them. Eventually, the foggy landscape around them turned bare and frozen. Ice covered the rocky ground and the path now twisted and turned around massive boulders which provided cover from the sting of the frost-bearing wind at night. During the day, sunrays scarcely penetrated the icy vapors that hung heavily in the air and formed floating halos that trembled in and out of existence around them. At night, they could not see further than ten feet in any direction. They lay close to each other, their back to a boulder. And as they fell asleep, they peered into the rolling darkness. There, the ever-shifting mist appeared to be home of things untold, roaming at the edge of their perception and the roar of the wind around them was the voice of some great beast taunting them from barely out of r
each. But despite those harsh conditions they pushed on. Over the course of their climb, even though they scarcely exchanged words, they grew, if not close, comfortable with each other. Just like the boy had instinctively known of the prince’s struggle with the Night and the prince of the boy’s different nature, they understood one another despite the silence, and, unlikely companions that they were, they struggled on together.
One morning, as they were trudging along a particularly steep portion of the trail, the boy pulled at the prince’s sleeve. The prince looked back to find him pointing ahead of them. When he first looked up, the only thing he saw was the fog that blanketed the world around them. But then, some thirty yards above, to the right of the path, the fog suddenly opened up like a summer dress blown aside by a gentle breeze and briefly revealed the contours of what appeared to be a human shape before swallowing it again into its folds. The prince looked at the boy who now stood by his side and squinted a question at him. The child, whose head-cloth was partly-frozen and hung on his head like a dead fruit, returned his gaze for an instant before looking up the path as well. For a beat, he blankly scrutinized the dense fog ahead of them and then looked back at the prince. He peered impassively at him for a few seconds and then blinked slowly. The prince had grown accustomed to the boy and the silent conversations they shared. He understood his blinking to mean that there was probably no danger ahead and that they could move on. They resumed their ascent and minutes later, the shape revealed itself to be a shoulder-high pile of stones similar to the one the prince had come across days ago at the very bottom of the mountain path.
“We must be getting close,” he said as they passed the marker.
By mid-afternoon they had come across another couple of markers and as the day unfolded and the light around them dimmed, their frequency increased steadily. By the time the prince felt the first pull of the Night, the markers appeared every two hundred yards. They settled for the night in a rock shelter formed by a recess on the side of the mountain and fell asleep huddled in the small hollow knowing that they would reach the monastery the following day.
The next day, by late morning, the stone-mounts punctuated the path every twenty yards. They reminded the prince of a loose prayer bead, the sort he had often seen people carry around like some sort of lifeline.
“Maybe they are drowning in their own nonsense, and that’s why they need it,” he often thought as he saw them run manic fingers along the beads.
How appropriate, then, that the path to the Monastery of the Lost Voices was itself an enormous replica of such an imaginary mainstay. The image of fingers on beads brought the boy and his rock to the prince’s mind. The child had not put the stone down since they met and his fingers ceaselessly working the black rock’s rugged edges.
“Maybe that rock of his is such a relic to him” the prince pondered.
Later that day, the monastery first appeared as a dark outline in the fog that progressively turned into a feverish, shadowy mass shifting menacingly in the distance. Before they knew it, its imposing stone structure towered over them fifty yards uphill. Its massive walls, which stretched into the mist and out of sight, were built out of huge, frost-covered, stone blocks which blended seamlessly with the surrounding mountain. High above them, the blue-gray tiles of two impressive domes could barely be discerned through the fog. From where he stood, the prince could not see any opening in the weather-battered façade beside a small wooden door, which seemed out of place in the imposing frontage. They reached the door and in the foreboding shadow of the monastery looked at each other briefly. The prince knocked with the hilt of his sword, four slow beats that echoed strangely in their ears, reminiscent of forests and a warmth they had not felt in far too long. The echo was quickly drowned out by the hurtling of the wind. With it the image of pleasant greenery dissipated and they were left waiting at the end of the trail. To these two pilgrims who had endured the climb of the Holy Mount, time stretched into a fervent twist, despairingly slow while at the same time, in the light of their journey, but the fraction of a breath. Eventually, the boy gave the prince’s sleeve a tug and shortly afterward they heard a key rattle into the lock. A heavy plug reluctantly rotated in its rusted metal bearing and squealed sharply until the lock slid out of its socket in a loud thump. The door creaked open on a dimly lit corridor and a stooped old man in a brown, rough-spun, hooded robe. The old man, a monk surely, held an oil lamp in thin, almost skeletal fingers. He eyed the prince suspiciously for a moment. His eyes shone flat under thick and wild, white eyebrows. When his gaze shifted to the boy his eyes imperceptibly narrowed and then his leathery wrinkled face broke into a glowering smile that revealed a few missing teeth.
“Pilgrims, eh! It’s been a long time,” he said in a slightly trembling drawl.
“We seek audience with the Father of fathers,” the prince said.
There was a slight pause, a contrived second. And when the old man spoke his answer came too late for it to be genuine.
“Indeed,” he said before inviting them in.
He stepped aside and closed the door behind them.
“I’m the carekeeper, Silvius’s the name,” he said. “Follow me.”
He started down the dark passage. It was a dingy space and smelled of oil and of something terribly ancient. After so many days in the olfactory desert that were the frigid surroundings of the mountains, the pungent aroma was nothing less than an assault on the prince and the boy’s senses. But they followed suit without hesitation or sign of discomfort. When the prince did not offer his name the old man looked back at him, his features elongated in the shimmering light that weakly radiated from the oil-lamp he held. He arched a questioning eyebrow and when they did not say anything he grunted, shrugged, and kept going. He led them through the corridor to a large rectangular room. There a dozen or so monks in similar garb as the old carekeeper sat along the bare walls on small wooden stools, their backs to the gray stones the whole monastery seemed to be made of. A couple of intricate metal candelabras that resembled trees provided some light on either side of the room. As they entered, none of the monks looked up. Their hands were busy over gray rocks of various shapes they held on their lap. The prince could not help but think of the boy’s stone and looked at him. The child did not pay him any attention, but his fingers were running their course on his black rock.
“So he is from here,” the prince thought.
“Over here,” the old man said and he waved them toward an opening in the wall to their left.
They walked into a grimy kitchen; a clutered space with a large, rusted wood stove agaisnt he back wall, and a couple of greasy tables covered with ditry utensils, spreads of dried vegetables, and piles of beans. On the table to their right, a dozen bowls filled with a shiny dark-red liquid were lined up against the wall. Large brass pots and pans hung on the walls and between them the prince could see spongious growths spreading over the gray stones.
“You must be hungry and cold,” the carekeeper continued. “Lunch will be served soon.”
“Thank you, but it’s not necessary,” the prince said, his voice calm but insistent. “I need to see the Father of fathers.”
“Yes, yes,” the old man said reluctantly, “but the little one must be hungry.”
“We are fine, old man” the prince replied. “The Father of fathers, please.”
“It’s Silvius,” the old man grumbled. “And you won’t have an audience with him today,” he said with something of a bite in his tone.
He hesitated for a second and then said in too sweetly a tone for the prince’s taste:
“He’s busy. In the meantime, have some soup.”
He smiled at them and the prince did not like his smile either. The old man turned around and pulled one of the large pots from the wall. He filled it halfway with some murky water from a large barrel next to one of the tables and put it on the stove. He opened the small door on the front of the furnace and fed it a couple of logs. Then he knelt before it and b
lew on the coals without restrain, like a child would, making wet sounds as he did.
“Silvius,” the prince said through a forced smile, “I’ve come a long way to see him. Could you-”
“You’ll see him,” the old man interrupted him abruptly. “You’ve come from far away; waiting a bit longer won’t hurt, then, will it?”
The old man stood up and started grabbing foodstuff from the table and dumping it into the water.
“I have to cook now. Why don’t you both go sit in the serving room?”
He dismissed them with an unctuous wave of the hand. The prince thought about arguing some more and then decided against it. Without another word, they walked out of the kitchen. They sat on empty stools amidst the silent monks and waited. The monks were mostly older men, though a few were probably in their forties. All were thin and wiry, with pale and spotted skin stretched tight on their skulls. Their faces had a dull, detached quality to them; not so much withdrawn as absent. They waited until three loud metallic knocks resounded. Before the third stopped bouncing from one wall to the next, the monks had stood up as one and left the serving room through a door facing the corridor that led to the monastery’s entrance. In an instant of ruffled commotion the prince and the boy were left alone in a forest of empty stools. The boy looked up at the prince and stood up as well.
“I suppose,” the prince said reluctantly.
They followed in the steps of the monks. The door they disappeared through led to another corridor which opened up onto a large dining area. About three hundred feet long and a hundred wide, the room stretched high into a shadowy vault, doubtlessly one of the domes they saw from outside. In the middle of the vast space, three long tables, each sitting roughly twenty monks, were set up. Every twenty feet or so and between each table were more of the tall candelabras. At the far end of the room, another table, smaller than the ones sitting the monks, stood on a low platform. The table was divided in its middle by a large, and shiny black slab that stretched like a folding screen all the way to the back wall. On each side of the divider were candleholders which lit two hooded men in black robes bent over steamy plates.
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