by BJ Hanlon
But just then there was something that caught his eye. It appeared in front of him and was odd. It was a dark cloaked form that was to the right of their path and seemed to be approaching very fast.
The form was on some sort of boulder and seemed to be standing perfectly straight on it. The weird thing was the boulder seemed to be sitting at a forty-five-degree angle.
Then Edin noticed the figure was resting on a gnarled staff like he was waiting for a friend at a tavern.
Edin tightened his grip on Berka as they were about to pass. Suddenly, an arm snapped out of the cloak and a strong hand grabbed Edin’s bicep like the tentacles in his nightmare.
Edin clamped his own hand harder on Berka’s forearm as their downward momentum turned to a sideways and then upwards. It was as if they were the hand on a clock telling the time at an extraordinary pace. They spun until they were looking back up the mountain, at the stone giant high above them.
Then they started back down, though a lot slower. Edin saw the lake below them again.
The man held on as the rock slab crashed into the trees below, flipped up, and disappeared. Suddenly, the man let go of Edin’s arm and they dropped to the hard stone that’d been carved by the sled.
Edin collapsed to his chest, laid there, and panted tasting the stone and gravel bits still settling from the disruption. Off to his left, he could hear Berka doing the same. There was no movement from either of them.
A foot touched his gut and he felt it lift him and flip him to his back. Edin looked up into the rising morning sun toward the face beneath the cloak. It was covered but he was near certain it was the hermit.
“Thank you,” Edin hissed when he’d finally caught his breath enough to do so.
“Thanks,” Berka gasped next to him.
Then, he felt the thumping of the stone feet pounding down the path.
Edin shot up, his body on fire from the run. The stone giant was coming down the new path toward them. Its single eye staring at Edin.
It wanted to attack. It wanted to kill them right then and there.
Edin began to scramble to his feet when the old man held up a hand and the giant stopped before them with the vortex of wind and stone being the only movement. Then slowly, it began to drop. The head, arms, and legs fell in on each other and then into the vortex. Then the ball of stone and wind slowed down before them.
Edin stood, his mouth hung open while rocks began to tumble out and stop and form a pile of about twenty stones. Most were the size of his head, sitting silently in a tomb-like memorial.
The tomb of the stone giant.
“You control them?” Edin gasped after a few minutes of trying to get saliva in his mouth and his tongue to work.
“It was an elemental, not a giant. A stone giant is different, cruder,” the old man said. Then he whipped his cloak back and started heading west across a stone path. Edin and Berka looked at each other, they looked at the pile of stones, then at the crystal-clear lake and valley below. It was gorgeous. And he saw the animals on its banks and the trees beyond. It was almost the place of his dream, his vision. Or maybe it was the same place only at a different angle. Not as low, not as westerly.
“This is it.” Edin stood, gaping. “Arianne, is she here?”
Edin saw the man stop and turn back.
He shook his head and then turned away. Slowly, he started along a trail that was almost invisible but cut like a blow across a mound of potatoes toward the north.
Edin hadn’t had much hope when he asked and now he was certain. It wasn’t her in his dreams. Despite his body crying for a rest, he stood. He started after the man down the path. Behind, he heard Berka hustling and panting.
The trail headed straight for a few hundred yards curving slightly northwest. Then they reached a crossroads of sorts. A cross-stairs really as a set of steps ran both up and down from there. The man turned up and they started climbing.
There was something about this valley that seemed serene. Edin looked toward the lakeside again and saw the beasts down below, large bovine creatures, hogs, monkeys, rodents, thin deer and possibly even crillios. It was like a vision of the peaceful paradise.
Between them were men. The outline of people who were drinking from the lake, fishing or lounging.
Then he looked down to Berka who looked wearily back at Edin. Something in his demeanor said he didn’t like were this was going. A sort of ‘is this really a good idea’ look.
Edin shrugged and followed the hermit up the wide stairs.
After a while, he noticed the man was barefoot and stepping on rough stone. His brown cloak hung over his ankles and he wore a single threaded rope around his stomach like some of the more devout Vestion monks that live in monasteries. But his was gold.
Was he a monk? No, Edin thought, he made an elemental disappear. No monk could do that.
Finally, they reached the top and what looked like sheer cliffs with a path through it. It looked like a dark and intimidating path. Like the entrance to an abandoned graveyard.
Edin swallowed and then above it, he saw they were on the southern side of the grand, central peak. It was almost sheer for thousands of feet and he could see the same general type of apertures as the city in the ravine.
The peak was taller than Erastio’s Rise.
The old man moved through the gap with the two weary travelers behind, trying to keep up with the old man’s swift pace.
Just before they entered, Edin felt a tug on his arm and turned to Berka turning and waiving his hand out toward the landscape down below.
They were a few hundred feet above the valley and the long lake that went as far as the eye could see. It was like they were standing on the precipice of heaven and staring down at the earth for the first time. Edin’s mouth dropped.
“That’s,” Berka said.
Edin just nodded. He remembered looking out over the mountains in Erastio’s Rise so long ago and being completely awestruck by it.
“Ahem.” Edin turned back to see the old man standing before the opening in the rock. He wasn’t looking at them but Edin still felt like he was watching somehow.
They began forward again and approached the gap.
As it grew closer, Edin became aware of a cold, hollow feeling. The feeling grew with his every step. Then as he entered it, Edin felt a probing. As if there was someone or something searching him. He opened his mouth to say something but didn’t. What could he say? How could he describe it?
Edin wanted to turn and run. To flee like a child from a big angry dog. His feet were growing sluggish and tired, his eyes wearier.
“I feel,” Berka said but didn’t finish the thought.
The crack rose thirty feet like a castle gate but there was no gate or portcullis, at least none he could see. The feeling coming off these stone walls was oppressive. The darkness was like evening on a cloudy, stormy day.
Then, he saw the sheer end of the wall and as he stepped passed it. It was as if he’d crossed into a whole new world. A wide open one and there was sun. The oppressive feeling disappeared and he was struck by the place. A landscape that was huge, a hundred acres of farmland with an orchard and vineyard and the mountain as the backdrop.
Built into the mountain’s face was a castle-like building, a Vestion Monastery actually. They are monks.
Turning back, he looked through the gap. From here, it was clear and light and the valley was heaven. The darkness completely gone.
The parapets were empty and the towers were silent but there was still a feeling that they were being watched. That and the feeling that if one of them took a wrong step, they’d die.
A flock of birds cackled above them. They passed a small shack with a closed door and a hoe leaning against it. To the left he saw a stable and a paddock and grassland. Inside the paddock were the horses but there were no people.
The temperature warmed.
Just off to the right of the path was a wagon that was probably the perfect size for a single do
nkey.
The highest window was probably three hundred feet above them and dark. There were no lights from any of the windows and despite the enormity of the place, the outside was nothing but stone walls with nothing adorning them. No gargoyles or carvings of the gods. None of the windows were stained glass and even the large front doors, easily twice his size, were nothing but a good, solid wood. Oak he guessed.
The only imagery he saw was ahead. On each door he noticed the relief of a head. One looked like a bearded old man, balding at the top with blank open eyes while the other was something different. Something more demonic.
The eyes were raindrops pointed toward a hook nose that stood over a clenched jaw. Edin imagined razor sharp teeth in there.
This gave him shivers despite the warmth and the smell of fruit and honeysuckle and flowers. He looked away and spotted squirrels chasing each other, robins and blue jays were swooping in and dancing around the limbs. Rather large hummingbirds were buzzing next to a large flower with great yellow leaves and a bright red center.
The man climbed the few steps to the doors and gripped a giant metal knocker, about a foot in diameter and pulled. Despite being barefoot and seemingly too old for the job, the huge door that should have weighed at least a thousand pounds, opened silently.
Lights came out. Bright fire light that caught him by surprise. After a moment, the entrance, the grandness of the place struck him like the outer landscape.
They went inside to a long stone foyer with vaulted ceilings and flying buttresses that were simple stone arches. There were columns and doorways on the sides and the room was lit by three wooden chandeliers down the center and two pairs of giant hearths between their gaps. The floor was covered in multicolored rugs and the walls had tapestries of shapes and geometric symbols but no faces. There were tables, chairs, and desks lining the room and in its center. It felt grand but cozy, a very odd juxtaposition.
The man grabbed an oil lantern from a column and turned right. He led them down a smaller, dark hallway with no exterior windows. Like Arianne’s keep, the brick stonework was perfectly formed, though there were no paintings on the walls or statues anywhere. Edin glanced back at Berka who was looking nearly as confused as he was hungry.
Edin cleared his throat. “Excuse me. Where are we?”
The hermit didn’t answer. He stopped at a door and pulled on the handle. Slowly, it opened and light began to flood the corridor.
Then he heard the sound of pens being scribbled on paper.
Many pens, all of them ceased as the door was opened. The man stepped to the side and offered a hand for them to step forward.
“The Monks of Vestor,” he said, then added. “I hate that name.” Then he turned away from them. Edin and Berka stepped inside as ten sets of eyes fell upon them. There were nine people sitting on the ground before short easels. They all held pens in one hand and an inkwell near the other. They were facing the right wall and the tenth man in front. He was cross-legged and holding out a scroll.
No one moved or said a word. They all had great looks of shock on their faces like Edin and Berka were intruders in their home and hadn’t been brought before them by one of their own.
Edin looked back toward the one who’d brought them, but he was gone.
“Where’d…” Edin started and the looked at the people. “Greetings kind sirs.”
Edin locked eyes with the one at the front. The leader or teacher or something. He was older with a ring of white hair around the back of his head with nothing on top. Despite that, the side and back-of-head hair drooped long and was tied back in a ponytail. In fact, all of them wore one, some were brown, others blond, black, or gray.
All but the man that had led him there.
The man at the front slowly began to roll the scroll with one hand toward the other in a show of finger dexterity that Edin didn’t think possible in a man of his age.
Then he stood, bowed to the rest of them, and walked toward Edin and Berka. The man paused, looked them up and then down extremely curiously, and then stepped past them back into the corridor they’d come through.
He waived for them to follow picking up an oil lantern that was on the ground.
Back in the main hall, he led them across the grand entrance and through a corridor on the other side.
He knocked on and opened a door. This was a smaller room than the previous, what was it, a scribe room? There was another man, older and he sat behind a giant wooden desk that made him look small. It was covered in scrolls and tomes. The walls, floors, and even the three chairs before the desk were similarly covered in such things. It was a library that should’ve been located in some larger room, perhaps three times the size.
There were no words between the men and no movements. Edin had seen deaf people communicate with gestures and symbols. He’d even heard in some cities such as Calerrat that people had their own language of signs. But there was none of that.
He knew they were talking without any sort of communication. Then the man they were with turned to Edin and Berka, bowed his head and slipped around the two of them before disappearing out the door, which was abruptly shut when he left.
Edin turned back to the man behind the desk who had resumed perusing whatever manuscript he had before him.
Edin saw the room was lit by candles, many of them with large globs of dripping wax. “This is a death trap.” He whispered to Berka who nodded.
They waited; the old man ran a wrinkled finger across a line on the parchment. The words were upside down and written lengthwise on the paper. It was a long paper too—three feet—and the ends were held down with what could’ve been the tops of banisters from a middle-class inn.
Awkwardly they stood. There was no speaking for a few minutes, and those minutes just continued on and on. The room grew stuffy as if there were more than just the three of them in there. No wind moved; no lights flickered.
Finally, he was coming toward the end of the manuscript. Edin saw his finger on the last line.
His hand fell off the edge and Edin opened his mouth. “E—”
The man held out a finger before Edin even got the start of ‘Excuse us’ out. He moved to the other side and started on again reading the manuscript from left to right.
Berka made a face that said what the heck and shrugged.
Finally, the man looked up. He pulled a pair of spectacles that had been on a rope around his neck up onto his nose and looked at the two of them.
The man wore the same ponytail, though his gray one was at least full on the crown of the head. His eyes looked like large walnuts behind the spectacles. The man’s face was thin and sagged with age. He pushed back from the desk, rolled up the manuscript and turned and stuffed it into a cubby behind his desk that was already jammed with at least ten others.
He turned back, smacked his lips and cleared his throat.
“Well—” he screeched and stopped himself. He coughed and cleared his throat again. He spotted a mug, took a drink, and made a dour looking face. A moment later he said, “welcome,” in a normal voice. “Apologies, it has been a long time since I’ve spoken.”
Edin guessed the man to be in his seventies, maybe even his eighties. An age not often reached in the mundane world.
Then he thought of the elemental and guessed they were not mundane.
“Unfortunately, we are,” the old man said looking at Edin. “We are not magi just ordinary men. And no, these candles will not start the place on fire.”
Edin gaped. Did he hear him? Was he reading his mind?
Then the man turned to Berka. “Why do you believe we do not look ordinary?”
Berka coughed. “You’re reading my thoughts?”
“Well, yes.”
“That is,” Berka started. “It’s unsettling.”
“Apologies. We are so used to communicating with the wave that—”
“I’m sorry, the wave?” Edin said.
The old man looked back to him and tilted his head.
He sighed and then nodded. “I forgot how much people interrupt each other during normal conversation.” He paused. “You’d think humanity would’ve learned to let a person finish before throwing their own voice around like a so-called expert does his knowledge. Alas, it seems that people still simply wish to be heard without ever listening.”
Edin didn’t say anything. His mouth was poised to speak but thought it not too bright to actually do so, especially with the old man making that exact point.
Then Berka spoke. “I’m sorry, are you done?” He looked nervously at Edin and then back at the old man. “I do not want to interrupt.”
The old man sighed and then nodded.
“Okay,” Berka said then looked to Edin who suddenly understood what Berka wanted. He wanted Edin to be the contact, Edin to be the one who asks questions.
“Um, where are we?” Edin said “and who are you?”
“The Monasterion de Vestorion, or Monastery of Vestor in common tongue. We are the—”
“Monks of Vestor, yes the man who brought us here told us,” Edin said quickly. He didn’t want to take any more time talking. Berka elbowed him and Edin saw the old man staring at them with a quite annoyed smile. Right, don’t interrupt, Edin thought. “Apologies father.”
“I’m not a father, I’m an abbot. I’ve been abbot for a long time. You found us, that is in itself a feat worthy of our time and our patience. It must’ve been Vestor that guided you.”
“It wasn’t—”
The abbot held up his hand. “I do not discuss business on empty stomachs in the monastery and you two have emptier stomachs than any man I’ve met in a very long time. So, if you would like, please follow me to the dining hall where we can satiate our appetites.”
Edin’s stomach growled at the thought. Yes, that would be preferable. A part of Edin nagged at him, a part that wondered still if Arianne was part of those visions. He had to ask, “Sir, one thing. A woman, blonde with gray-green eyes, thin and a bit haughty…”
The abbot didn’t say anything.
“Have you seen her? Her name is Arianne Bestavienne.”
He raised an eyebrow. “We have not seen anyone by that description, nor any female in a very long time.” He began moving around the large desk. The man looked old but he moved with a grace that made him seem much younger.