“I cannot tell you what the journey is. I know the beginning. This is that. And I know the end. The journey itself is up to you. There are many paths you may follow, and there are many adventures you may encounter. Those are solely yours to decide. All I can tell you now is where you begin,” the white horse answered in as matter of fact a tone as Maelich had ever heard.
Maelich’s head dipped slightly to the right, “So if I understand you correctly, you want me to embark on a journey with no stated purpose to possibly encounter many adventures while I have no idea where my final destination lies based on the advice of a white horse with no name.”
“Not exactly,” the white horse replied. “My want has nothing to do with your journey. It is merely my role to guide you along your path. Like I said, the journey is yours.”
“What if I do not accept this adventure?” Maelich asked.
“The journey has chosen you. There is nothing for you to accept,” the white horse paused. “Before Ouloos existed, even before the slow cycle of time began, this journey was yours. Whether you leave now or postpone your departure, the journey will always be there until you make it.”
Maelich shook his head, “So I do have a choice.”
“Somewhat,” the white horse agreed. “You can choose when you begin. However, at some point the journey will have to be made.”
“What if I decide I will never make the journey?” Maelich asked.
“That is not possible. All journeys must be completed. We do not always choose our journeys, but they are all completed at some point. This journey has chosen you, and you will complete it. There is no other outcome.”
Maelich shrugged, “Where does this journey begin? If I decide to make the journey, I need to know where to start.”
“The journey begins where you are currently laying your head, in a hut with the man who once was your father.”
“The man who is my father,” Maelich corrected.
“Fine, the man who is your father,” the white horse conceded. After a brief pause, he continued, “Your mind has become a puzzle that is not ready to be solved yet. In any event, the journey begins in that hut.”
Maelich chuckled under his breath, “I’ll tell you what a puzzle is to me right now. Where is my hut, and how do I get there from here?”
“You know the answer to that,” the white horse replied. “Think about where you came from.”
“I came from there…” Maelich began. He stopped short as he turned to point at the forest he had stepped out of and found it to be missing. There was nothing but more grass where the forest had been. As far as he could see in any direction—save directly behind him where a talking, white horse stood under a tall oak on a steep hill across a small creek—was the same waist-tall grass he was standing in. Slowly he turned back toward the white horse and was startled to find himself standing directly before him, both of them occupying the space under the tall oak at the top of the steep hill. Even more confused, Maelich began again, “I came out of a very dense forest. It was right there,” he motioned over his shoulder. “It is gone now, but it was there a moment ago.”
“Of course it was,” the white horse agreed, “and now it is not. And you are standing with me under a tree on a hill. So what?”
Maelich scratched his head, “So, I thought you said you had no riddles. It most certainly feels like you are pulling some form of prank on me right now. How did you get me up on this hill without me realizing it?”
The white horse shook his head, “This is not a riddle, nor is there any form of prank afoot. The forest was there, and now it is not. You were there, and now you are here. I have no control of the forest or of you. You are the only one who has any control of anything here.”
Maelich shook his head back at the white horse, “I certainly don’t feel like I have any control of anything here. Everything is just happening.”
The white horse shrugged and remained silent. Maelich puzzled at that for a moment. He had never seen a horse shrug before. He had never heard a horse speak before either. Compared to speaking, a shrug seemed far less impressive.
A few moments of silence passed before Maelich picked the conversation back up. “Where should I go from here?”
The white horse turned and said, “Walk with me.” Then he proceeded to walk up into the yellow glow that was the sky.
Maelich sighed and followed a few steps behind. He strolled along in silence, steadily moving upward, surrounded by the yellow glow that served as the sky in this place. The tall, still grass expanded beneath him in all directions. After what seemed like a very short while, the white horse stopped. It didn’t feel like they had journeyed more than a few hundred feet. However, when Maelich turned back toward the oak on the hill, he could no longer see it. He looked down and determined they had also climbed much farther than he felt they should have. The tall, still grass appeared very far away.
When Maelich turned back, the white horse stood before a large, wooden door set in a brick entryway and faced him. “But…” was all Maelich could muster before the white horse interrupted him.
“You should go through that door Maelich,” the white horse said.
Maelich thought for a moment and then asked, “Why?”
The white horse sighed, “You have asked many questions about the journey. The first answer is on the other side of that door.”
“But I haven’t decided whether or not I want to make the journey yet.”
“No you have not. How will you know what to decide if you do not have any idea what you are deciding upon? Besides, you cannot go back at this point. There is only one way to go, forward.”
“I could go back the way I came,” Maelich argued.
“No,” the white horse countered. “The way you came no longer exists.”
Maelich turned to see he was surrounded by sweaty, chipped rocks that had been carved into rude bricks. “Where is my choice now?” he asked.
“Your choice is to go through the door or not go through the door,” the white horse replied. “You already chose to follow me here. Some choices cannot be undone.”
“Fine,” Maelich rolled his eyes. “I do not like this game, horse.”
“There is no game,” the white horse replied. Before he finished speaking, the bricks and the door vanished and were replaced with dusty, rocky ground. It was light brown—almost orange—and it was covered in giant boulders that looked like they had been there for centuries.
Maelich managed, “How?” before his voice trailed off. Then he spun a slow circle and took it all in. The yellow glow previously replacing the sky was gone. Above him looked like sky again, deep blue with fluffy clouds lazing about. The sun was nowhere to be found, but the vast expanse above him was quite bright nonetheless. Something just short of panic slipped into his mind as his gaze fell from the bright immensity stretching over him down past the end of the cliff he stood upon. His feet seemed far too close to the edge. The height of the peak was impossible to determine as clouds surrounded it, swirling a few hundred feet below him.
“There, Maelich,” the white horse motioned with his snout toward the edge of the cliff. “Far to the south you will find the Sea of Sadness. Once you arrive there, I will visit you again.”
Maelich turned toward the white horse now standing beside him and facing the same direction, “What is the Sea of Sadness?”
“For a god you know very little,” the white horse replied.
Maelich turned to his right to ask more about the Sea of Sadness, but the white horse was gone. He looked back out over the clouds below him. They ended far in the distance, stretching almost to the horizon. Just beyond them he saw what could have been the shore of a great body of water. “That must be the Sea of Sadness,” he said quietly.
Suddenly, he was pounded in the back. The force of the assault carried him toward the edge of the cliff. His arms flew out to his sides desperately seeking something to grab hold of as he spun back toward the rock wall that had been be
hind him. Nothing reached out to meet his hands as they flailed. At that moment, his balance was akin to an old man’s youth, lost, yearned for, but out of reach. By the time Maelich had spun half way around, he saw the white horse smiling at him. He tried to lean forward, but was already too far off kilter from the shove. Leaning out over the edge of the cliff as his arms reached out in front of him, he hopelessly grabbed at nothing. “Why?” he cried out to the white horse as his momentum carried him over the edge.
Maelich raced toward a thick bank of clouds surrounding the peak he stood upon moments prior. It barely took a breath until he was in them. White upon white surrounded him as he began to roll end over end. Disoriented, he couldn’t tell up from down. It no longer felt like he was falling, just spinning helplessly in a cocoon of white. There was no up or down, left or right, just one point where he rotated. Spatially, his body’s movements made absolutely no sense to his brain. Then there was light. He plummeted through the bottom of the cloud bank and the sensation of falling returned. The rocky wall of the peak he fell from was gone. He was surrounded by a wide expanse of nothing as he charged headlong toward the tall, stiff, unbelievably green grass.
The ground grew closer and closer with every second. Maelich’s heart pounded in his chest as all of his limbs flailed. The fingers on both of his hands still opened and closed on nothing, desperately seeking something, anything to grab a hold of and slow his descent. There was nothing to hold on to though. He was racing toward the ground and in moments he would shatter upon it. A scream ripped past his lips from somewhere deep in his belly, right as the ground was about to smash him into bloody pieces.
Maelich sat straight up in his cot and howled like he had been stabbed through the eye. Sweat poured down his face, his soggy hair dripping and sticking to it. His clothes were drenched. Hot breath poured out of him in rapid pants. He screamed again to make sure he were really still alive. Little by little his breathing became steady and he calmed. It was all a dream, a confusing and horrifying dream. Slowly, he turned his head toward the right. Ymitoth’s black, dead eyes were inches from his own. The startling sight made him jump, and he howled again.
“Ye been havin’ quite the dream, lad,” Ymitoth remarked, undaunted by Maelich’s scream.
“Why are you ogling me like that?” Maelich shouted. “Sitting with your face so close to me, you scared me nearly to death.”
“Aye,” Ymitoth replied as he sat back into the chair next to Maelich’s cot, “either me or that dream. Ye were mumbling and tossing about, arguing it sounded like, talking in your sleep like someone be here in the room with us. Then ye screamed like ye were being torn apart by amatilazo. What could have scared ye so, lad?”
Maelich thought for a moment as he looked into Ymitoth’s black, dead eyes, “How long have you been you been sitting here watching me?”
“Sleep, she be a frisky vixen sometimes,” Ymitoth replied. “I chased her and wooed her for hours but she fled this way and that. I gave up the chase once ye started with all of that mumbling and tossing about.”
“You couldn’t sleep?” Maelich asked, looking deeper into Ymitoth’s eyes and examining them as he continued, “What were you thinking about all that time? What thoughts kept you from slumber?”
“Ah, ye know, lad, the standard stuff that keeps a man from the warm bosom of sleep, hunting and fishing and fighting,” Ymitoth replied as he stood and walked over to the table in the center of the hut, grabbed a mug that was sitting there, and took a long pull of ale. “We sure did have a time chasing the chookers the other day,” he added after he swallowed.
Maelich swung his legs over the side of his cot, continuing to stare at the dead thing that used to be his father, “Did you just pour yourself that ale?”
“Sure, well, a few moments ago anyway,” Ymitoth replied giving Maelich an odd look as he did. Then he asked, “What be that to ye anyway?”
“Why?” Maelich asked.
Ymitoth chuckled, “Because I’d been parched with the thirst. Why else? Ye been acting strange lately, son. What’s that got ye acting so queer?”
Maelich shook his head, “Oh nothing, nothing’s wrong at all. I’ve just been working through a little puzzle in my head.”
“Aye? What kind of puzzle might that be, lad?” Ymitoth smiled.
“How an inanimate object can move around and do things on its own,” he replied, never taking his eyes off of his father.
Ymitoth took another swig of his ale and nodded, “That be sounding like a doozy of a riddle lad. What kind of object we be talking about now, a tree, or a sword maybe?”
Maelich shook his head, “Never mind, it’s silly to think about.”
Ymitoth shrugged.
Maelich changed the subject, “How far off is the sun?” he asked.
Ymitoth looked up and to the left. Then his eyes scanned across the ceiling, down the wall, and eventually found their way to Maelich’s, “Maybe an hour or just a bit more. Why, ye feel like chasing chookers?”
Maelich smiled, “I do, but that’s not why I ask. Have you ever heard of the Sea of Sadness?”
Ymitoth nodded, “Aye, it be far to the south. Years ago tribes from across that sea marched all the way north to Havenstahl with thoughts of slaughter and plunder. I’d been a far younger man then,” he paused and looked up at the ceiling. “’Twas me first real war, if ye could even call it war. It was more of a route really. The entire war weren’t nothing but a handful of battles what weren’t nothing more than slaughters themselves. We sent them treacherous bastards racing back across that sad sea.”
Maelich reached back into his own memory. Had Ymitoth ever told him that story? He must have. How else would he remember anything from his living years? All his memories should be only what Maelich fed him.
“That be it then? Ye just be curious about that sea?” Ymitoth asked.
Maelich looked up to see his father’s black, dead eyes staring at him, looking like two total lunar eclipses with a weird, negative glow. He shook his head and said, “No. Would you like to take a journey?”
“Aye, to the Sea of Sadness then?” Ymitoth smiled.
“Yes,” Maelich replied, “to the Sea of Sadness.”
“It be a long journey,” Ymitoth continued to smile.
“Yes,” Maelich agreed, “it is. We should leave now.”
Ymitoth drained his mug and then replied, “Let’s get to packing then, lad.”
chapter 15
the trail
Maelich and Ymitoth were packed and ready to bid farewell to their hut well before the sun peeked over the horizon. Clear skies to the east were just beginning to glow. The chill air surrounding the hut hung still, waiting to be warmed by the approaching sun. Maelich whistled for Validus. He paused a few moments, nothing. Glancing about the loose groupings of trees around the hut, he whistled again. No hoof beats, no rustling leaves, and no happy snorts found his ears.
“Well where do ye suppose that fool horse be off to?” Ymitoth asked.
Maelich frowned, “That is a mystery. Now that I think of it, I cannot remember the last time I saw him.”
Ymitoth cocked his head to the right and looked up to the left, “I guess I could be saying the same.”
“Validus,” Maelich raised his voice and hollered toward the north.
A rustling in a small group of trees off toward Keller’s Hill seemed a fitting response. Maelich charged up the hill. He didn’t make it halfway up the incline before a fat squirrel crested the hill, noticed Maelich, and then raced up the giant oak crowning it. Maelich jumped a bit when he saw the critter. It gave him enough of a start to squeeze the slightest laugh out of him. The chuckle was short-lived. Where could Validus be?
“He must have run off,” Ymitoth said somberly from the bottom of the hill.
Maelich turned as his eyes filled up, “He’s been my horse for,” he paused and thought, “since the end of my twelfth year. That would be…”
“Eighteen years today, lad,” Ymit
oth finished the sentence for him. “I be truly sorry. I forgot it was even your birthday.”
Maelich looked at Ymitoth, thought for a moment, and replied, “I guess it is.” Then he paused for a few moments and continued, “What a grand gift this is. My horse, my only companion on many a journey, is gone. I hope he still lives.”
“Would ye like to look for him, son?” Ymitoth asked.
Maelich shook his head, “No. He could be anywhere. Besides, we have a journey to begin. He’s always been a solid horse. He’ll find his way.”
Ymitoth’s arm fell across Maelich’s shoulders, “Thirty summers…old man, where did the time go, and when did ye get so old?”
Maelich chuckled, “If I’m old, what does that make you?”
“Ancient,” Ymitoth snorted, and they both laughed.
The two men gathered their packs in silence. The sky to the east had brightened as the sun threatened to breach the horizon, splashing red, pink, and orange streaks across it. The brilliant, morning sun would rise at any moment. Maelich glanced toward the vibrant artwork, colors bleeding into each other and mingling like oils on canvas rather than rays of light refracted and split by the atmosphere. Thirty summers made for quite a few sunrises. Each one still filled him with awe.
Both men knew the trail they would take without speaking about it to each other. Without a map and only the loose beginnings of a plan, they would pick their paths based on the sun. Maelich truly had no idea where beyond the Sea of Sadness was their destination, and—according to Ymitoth—the Sea of Sadness was quite large. As long as they kept a southerly direction, they would reach its shore in three weeks.
The sun was fully in the sky as the two travelers rounded Yester’s Pond and picked up a trail that headed straight east. They had hunted it regularly during Maelich’s first twelve summers and both knew it well.
Maelich turned, took one last glance at the hut, and said a silent good-bye. Then he glanced at Ymitoth, smiled, and said, “We have never taken a journey this great together.”
Kallum's Fury (Lake of Dragons Book 2) Page 9