by BJ Hanlon
Behind, he heard the sound of the horses retreating. Edin felt the top of the snow pile about to melt. He felt the form in his mind and imagined it in his hand. He let its base water element begin to move and shake. The flakes, all began to twist and spin as they warmed. He felt the water, it was a ball of warm water now, and he let it grow and spin faster and faster as it delved deeper into the snow.
He blocked everything out and only saw it with his mind’s eye. There was a path being cut as the water rolled like a fat giant was doing a cartwheel through it.
Sweat began to pour down his brow and his arm was beginning to grow heavier, his body getting fatigued. He didn’t know how far to push it or if he busted through. Edin held it and then he felt something pushing on his mind, on his body. He didn’t know what it was, but it felt as if he was at the edge looking over the precipice of a deep gorge. Like he was standing on the Great Cliff with his toes just over the edge between life and a painful drop. The edge of exhaustion.
Edin let go. He opened his eyes and saw the wheel of water lose its form and hit the road before him. It splashed and began to run everywhere.
Some of it dug into the walls of the avalanche melting it and causing parts to fall over into the new gap. More flowed down the sluice-like channel toward Edin. A wave, about a foot high came toward him threatening to soak his boots to the shin. Edin formed a culrian bubble around him. The water hit it and fell to the sides and then made its way to the little stream that was to the left.
After a minute, there was barely a half an inch of flowing water. Part of the avalanche had caved in, but it wasn’t deep. A foot at the most.
More though, they could see through to the other side. He turned back to Grent and Dephina.
“So how many can you use now?” Grent asked handing the reins of Edin’s horse back to him.
“Five,” Edin said.
“One more and you’re him,” Berka said. “You’re the legend.”
“What legend?” Dephina asked.
“The Legend of the Ecta Mastrino.”
9
Jont’s Pass
The channel felt cold through the hall of snow, however, they got through it easily. Edin wasn’t as exhausted as he’d been. There had to be a point when if he stopped using the talent, he could still fight, if only with the sword and staff.
The trail rose with a soft rocky slope heading a bit more west but still with a southernly trajectory. They were a bit higher on the low side of one of the mountains. To the left grew a steep drop to a deep ravine. Down there he could see more trees and rocks and dead bushes. The road was thin though wide enough for a cart. A single cart.
Edin wondered what would happen if two carts came together in the same section of road. It had to have happened before. Edin glanced down again to see if maybe the remnants of one of those meetings was visible. There wasn’t anything that stuck out.
There were birds above swooping through the mountains. They were probably returning from wintering in Arsleta or the Yijan Atoll, the warm southern islands where it never grew cold and a breeze from the sea kept you from overheating in the depths of summer. At least that was the gist of a poem he’d read.
Edin was never entranced with poetry and then he wondered why he’d read it in the first place. Maybe it was something his mother had him read or maybe it was Kes’ idea. His first love… or at least his first crush. Edin closed his eyes as a squawking gull sounded above him.
He looked up and stared at the birds and his thoughts turned back to Arianne and when he watched that V from the courtyard. He couldn’t help how quickly his thoughts flipped. Like an egg frying on a metal stove. Where was she? What was she doing? Was she really alive?
Edin’s gaze turned back to the mountains all around. These were the same as the ones he’d looked out onto from the Timeless Keep. The formerly Timeless Keep as it was now most likely a complete ruin. His heart panged and he saw the birds flying directly overhead. He thought about them letting loose their white droppings on his head.
Edin shook his head, where they were was dangerous and he had to pay attention. Dematians could be around. Could be watching him. He needed to silence that voice in his head that said, abandon this quest; find her.
The voice was more likely in his heart. He scanned the mountain above them and in front and even below.
All around, there were snow drifts melting, though they were kind enough to still offer passage through the pass. The drifts weren’t huge and when no one spoke, he could hear the stream gurgling, droplets the size of an acorn splashing, and the clapping of the horses. It was a melody that numbed the brain.
The air grew colder but still fresh as they rose, the horses snorted here and there but seemed fine. Then a large flat area seemingly appeared out of nowhere. It was as if it were sliced out of the mountain.
“About here is good for lunch,” Grent said and pulled toward it. It was a long and flat space, about the size of the Yaultan village square, and the stone was smooth. “The horses will need more frequent breaks in the thinner air.”
At the back of the space, there was a twelve-foot-high snow pile in its own shape of a mountain.
As he remembered the town square, he knew it was in the place where they’d throw rotten vegetables at the clown during the harvest festival. Off to the right of it, a broken-down cart with two wheels missing was in the same place you could get a butter corn.
Even the other leftover remnants from travelers, spread across the ground like discarded clothes in a sloppy boy’s chambers, reminded him of the grounds the day after the festival. Days of joy with nothing to worry about. Nothing but whether to go to university or run off to the military.
Hindsight would put him in the university. Edin had enough of the traveling and fighting.
Grent spoke as they dismounted. “I want you all to know that while it may be spring a bit earlier this far south, it stays cold in the mountains.”
“A bit late for that.”
“You should’ve probably kept the cloak,” Berka said but Edin was only half listening. He stared off to the south beyond the road and mountains. He was looking at nothing.
He felt a touch on his arm. Edin blinked and looked at Berka. “Where are you?” he asked. “You’re not…” Berka trailed off pleading with his eyes.
“He’s not what?” Grent asked.
Edin looked back at them and then at Berka. “I’m not?” Then he saw the question again. The same from last night. It was the same as that voice in his heart.
Edin thought about it again and his heart panged. ‘She is being held.’ Suuli said and despite his advice to follow the path, he still wanted to leave and go searching.
There were a few moments when he saw the others really staring at him, as if they were trying to read his mind, to feel what he felt. Hopefully, they never would.
Edin smiled at them. He once had family and he had a home too at one point, and the love he’d dreamt of rescuing since he was a lad. All of it was gone.
“He is asking if I’m going to run off and search for Arianne,” Edin sighed. He laid back on the ground and looked up at the wide-open sky. A beautiful blue sky, much different than those first few nights in Carrow. Edin closed his eyes and took a breath. “I haven’t decided yet.”
For a while, despite his not answering them, not giving them the decision they wanted, they continuously tried convincing him to follow their path forward. His path forward.
That wasn’t hard to do as there was only one real path, or road as it were. It was the one headed west through the Crady mountains. Somewhere in here was the keep he first met Arianne and west of there, the Susot Vale and the tribe of elves.
He didn’t know much more except that somewhere was a great lake surrounded by mountains and cut off from the world. But he didn’t know where. He thought he’d been in Arianne’s head but couldn’t be certain. In fact, he doubted it now. That meant she was truly lost.
They began again after about
an hour and the road descended back down the flank of a wide mountain in a nearly direct southern route. Not the way they were supposed to go.
Edin was beginning to think this wasn’t made by a mage. No mage would’ve sent men following a random trail north and south, east and west and all the compass points in between. This had to have been a trail carved out of the mountains by an extremely stubborn, ambitious man, and most probably, stupid.
He watched peaks pass by slowly like the crests of waves in the slowest tidal sea imaginable. As the trail widened slightly, Dephina moved beside him and was now on the inside of the trail as Edin took the outer edge.
To his right was a drop of ten or so feet. Not bad until he saw he’d land on a slope nearly eighty degrees that ended in a deep grassy vale that may get half a day of sun at the most.
“So, what is she like? This woman of yours,” Dephina said. “Is she as brilliant as I am? Or as beautiful?”
Edin glanced at her and smiled. He felt slow in his mind, slow and tired.
“Edin?” Dephina asked again.
He looked back and then up at Grent and Berka who were ahead. Edin cleared his throat. “Sorry?”
“What’s she like, your princess?”
“She is everything.” He smiled. “She makes me feel like,” he sat for a moment trying to find a something tantamount to her, he tried to snatch words from the air like an illusionist snatches coins from ears.
Then he gave up. “There are not words.” He felt tears forming in his eyes and knew he sounded corny and awkward for him.
Maybe a poet could describe this feeling. Edin thought. Maybe he could’ve read more poetry in his youth.
Edin felt weird, he didn’t like it, showing these feelings, telling people about them. He clenched his jaw and looked back toward the road. “I’d like to ride in silence for a while.”
And they all kept silent. For a long time, everyone but the horses and birds were quiet.
As they were rounding a bend, a shaggy haired mountain goat blocked their path for a moment. Then, without warning it leapt from the road toward the grassy vale. It landed lightly on a rock some twenty feet below. It looked up at them and made a very long bahh sound. Edin looked above them at the stone and wondered if there were any others, or if it was only this guy.
“That thing is crazy,” Berka said turning around in the saddle to stare down at it. “Did you see that jump?”
Edin nodded. He was taking up the rear again and saw all of them looking back as if they were making sure he was still with them.
Of course he was. Where did they think he’d go? Did they believe he’d just stop in the middle of the pass and climb into the mountains?
“That’d be impossible for any man. How can a stupid goat do that?”
“It is what they were meant for,” Dephina said. “Every animal in the world has things they were meant to do in life.” She was talking loudly, so they all could hear, and her voice seemed to echo far off. “For most animals, it is engrained in them. For humans, there can be great deviances from where they’d originally began, their original intentions, and how their lives end up based on the choices they make. Animals do not have those choices.”
“You sound like Horston,” Edin said. His first words in hours.
Grent laughed. “I’ve been telling her that for months. Oww.” Grent was turning in his saddle when a hunk of something clipped him in the back and dropped to the ground.
Dephina chuckled. “You say that again you get rye.”
“Are you throwing our food? We kind of need that,” Grent complained.
With the crazy agility Edin had seen the first time he met her, Dephina leaned down while still in the stirrups until her head was near her foot. She reached out and snatched the bread and popped back up.
Edin realized he was smiling and got rid of it.
A voice sounded in his head. The voice was just like his own and poked him.
You know what they’re doing, they’re putting on a show. They don’t care about Arianne. Only you do. You must find her. The voice said in his mind.
She’s being held and I don’t know where. It’s a huge world. She could be in the Esto Mountains? Edin responded, his own head fighting it.
You need to look; how would you feel if she left you?
I’m following my destiny; I’m helping the world. It is what’s best and she’d agree.
Just maybe not best for you.
Dephina just spoke about it, didn’t she? Our intentions can change, what we want is also not necessarily what we’re made for. He told himself and let the doubtful voice leave his mind.
The road flattened in a deep ravine next to a small stream with leafless trees and bushes on the banks.
The water bubbled and trickled over rocks heading the same way they were. Edin guessed it would be dry by midsummer. He followed it with his gaze as they rounded a corner and spotted a lake.
Or at least a large pond.
Running into it was a stone pier angled down like a ramp. Across the way on the far bank, Edin spotted a pair of small animals, too small to tell what they were from this distance, drinking from the water’s edge. The lake was maybe five acres, and it didn’t remind him of the vision, but it was a congregation of where waters flowed.
Usually there were lakes or rivers in mountains. The mountains collect snow in winter because of their elevation and then when it warms, the snow melts and has to go somewhere.
The Susot Valley had the river. Edin guessed that was where the surrounding mountains let loose their excess.
This lake seemed to swing around the backside of a squat fat mountain that from this angle, looked like a cat curled around itself. He wondered what was on the other side. A river or a lake or just more mountains.
The sun was ahead of them now and dipping beneath the gray mountains and the cold wind just began howling through the peaks.
Rocks began to tumble and Edin looked up. There were so many crooks and crevasses that would be good shelters for the local wildlife.
He had nearly forgotten to think about the dematians again. He forgot to watch for them. He’d been distracted. He’d been slow.
He stared at the short squat mountain. It looked like an ancient ziggurat that was built on by a culture long since wiped out.
Were there any more dematians over there? Any more ancient monsters from the past resurfacing?
But the lake was still and seemed to lack life.
“This will be camp,” Grent said as they stopped near the pier. The horses seemed to know what the slab of stone was for and crowded at the water’s edge to drink from the cool mountain spring. They all laid out the bedrolls as Grent started a small fire and Dephina cut up the cheese, bread, and bits of meat.
“You’ve never had my chili, have you Edin?” she said. “I can make it as good on the trail as I can in our apartment. It has green bell pepper, onion, and celery, which in the southern islands they call it the trinity.”
“They call it that everywhere south of Carrow,” Grent said but Dephina didn’t stop.
“I add my own spice blend which, if you ever stop by, I may teach you,” she paused. “Or your lady when we find her.”
Edin looked up at her. Edin had been looking at the horses. His gray stallion, with a white blaze on his face and a long mane, was staring at the cat-mountain across the way.
“We’ll go with you to find her,” Dephina said when they locked eyes. “This I promise you.”
He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”
“But first we find the elves. Where are they? You haven’t told anyone.”
“I promised the she-elf that saved my life. I am not certain I can break that.”
“You must, you will have us with you when we get there.”
“They do not want outsiders, if I tell you then you could let others know.”
“We will keep the secret.” She said, “I’d like to think that Uncle Grent and Aunt Dephina have earned your trust.
”
“And your brother,” Berka said.
Edin glanced at Berka. “You wanted to kill me six months ago.”
“Brothers fight,” he said and took a big drink from his waterskin.
Edin sighed. “You have earned it, and you are my family.”
Just saying that, those words made him feel better. He did have family, didn’t he? Edin stared at her and nodded his head. “They’re very private according to the one I met. And very dangerous.”
“The she-elf who didn’t give you her name.” Grent questioned.
“He did say they were private,” Dephina said. “Maybe it is true that this prophecy states only you can bring them together, but maybe you go off on some wild chase or gods forbid, are hurt.”
The other two looked at her warily.
“Shut up, I’m being practical. It was part of my training and it should’ve been part of both of yours as well.” She said the last pointing first and Grent and then at Berka. “Edin has an excuse, he’s never been in a martial system as any of us.”
“What about you and me training him?”
“Formal martial system and martial schooling.” She sighed. “But see, for my son to grow up in a land free of these demons, I would walk right into that elven village and demand their help to save the world. For him I would punch Yio Volor right in his thick and pompous nose.”
He sat quietly for a moment. “The only statue I ever saw of him had a bird beak of a nose,” Edin said.
“It doesn’t matter. What if what we’re doing this moment is what we’re meant to do? What if it isn’t you who actually get to them, but you facilitate the meeting? Do you know what I mean?”
Edin shook his head. “How would I introduce you to the she-elf if I’m not there?”
She shrugged. “You tell us where to go and we all swear on the lives of our loved ones that we will find them, if it is the last thing we do.”
“And will not reveal their location.” Grent added.
Edin looked around to the others, to his family. “And Arianne?”