by Candy Rae
“Come on then,” said Aranel and led the way forward.
Hand on her sword hilt, Aranel took a deep breath and approached the door.
She stood, other hand on the door latch, silent, listening for any sound from within.
“I smell nothing,” offered Urieline with a swish of her tail. “Open the door.” She really wanted to get out of the rain.
It creaked open and Aranel peeped in. It smelt musty, as if no one had been there for a long time. She expelled a huge sigh of relief.
The lodge was deserted of life except for a few scurriers who hurried away from them as fast as their short, multiple legs would allow. The room they entered appeared forlorn and empty, as if it had been a happy place once and was waiting for the time when more elves would return and again bring songs and laughter with them.
“Empty,” she said in a relieved voice as she stepped over the threshold.
Urieline clipped in after her, nosing Aranel aside as she strove to get out of the rain.
The two of them looked around the room. Urieline’s ears were twitching and Aranel almost forgot to breathe.
It wasn’t a large room, but it was panelled – panelled, Aranel noticed with a sinking feeling, from floor to ceiling on all four walls.
“Finding the right panel may take some time,” she said to Urieline.
Urieline whinnied; the sort of unicorn whinny that Aranel knew meant that she was laughing.
“I don’t think so,” she said, lifting one of her front hooves and pointing in the direction of the fireplace. “I think it will be one of those there,” she said, “one of the three with the circles carved on the front.”
“Why do you think that?” asked Aranel, nevertheless walking in the direction of the fireplace.
“Because Lord Arovan wouldn’t place the message behind a panel you couldn’t find, silly,” she answered.
Aranel began to tap the first panel with the round carving, but nothing happened. She tapped the second then the third.
“They sound exactly the same,” she said doubtfully. “Are you sure these are the ones?”
“No, I’m not sure. I only thought they might be the ones. Try feeling around the edges.”
Aranel did that.
“There’s nothing that remotely feels like some sort of opening mechanism.” She sighed with frustration.
“Oh well,” comforted Urieline moving her hooves restlessly on the thick wooden floor. They made a clippy, hollow sound. “We can try again later, once we’ve found something to eat.”
“We?”
“I meant you,” she whinnied, “I don’t have hands, remember?”
There was, of course, nothing to eat in the lodge although Aranel hunted high and low for anything even remotely edible. Eventually she ventured out to one of the outhouses and returned with a half-full sack of ground meal.
Urieline was pleased but Aranel rather disgruntled. She couldn’t risk lighting a fire in case the searching gryphwens saw it and came to investigate. Dry meal for supper didn’t sound very appetising.
She decided to eat the stale bread she had in her pack. “I’ll make do with this meantime,” she told her four-hooved companion. “We’ll take some with us when we go, though one day we must reach a place where we can cook. How much do you want?”
“Half of it,’ announced Urieline. “I am very hungry. Put it in that bucket over there, the one that has the firewood in it.”
Aranel did as she had been ordered, emptying out the wood and filling it with the meal and as Urieline stood eating, sat and stared at the fireplace, munching the hard bread.
She turned and watched Urieline eat.
“You’ll be sick if you eat so fast,” she warned.
Urieline looked affronted. “I believe that I am old and wise enough to know what will make me sick and what will not.”
“I wish I could work out how to get behind the panels,” Aranel said between mouthfuls, ignoring Urieline’s sally. “Perhaps its not these ones at all. It would be pretty obvious, here in the main room and beside the fireplace.”
“Only to those who know you are looking for a secret panel,” Urieline said. “It just looks like these three have a carved decoration on them.” She regarded them with critical appreciation. Quite good actually, the carver knew what he was doing. A skilled elf.”
“But my father wasn’t a skilled craft elf,” Aranel said suddenly, “and he wouldn’t have wanted any elf, however trustworthy, to know where the secret panel is. We have been looking in the wrong place. We have to look for an inexpertly carved, decorated panel.” She looked around the room. “But where?”
“Not in here,” said a decided Urieline, shaking her black head. “How many rooms does this place have?”
“Just this one and what must be the bedroom. I took a look at it when we came in,” she answered. “There’s a wee slip of a room off the bedroom. It’s only got a tiny little window and the room itself is tiny.”
“Any furniture in it?”
“A desk and a chair.”
“A study then,” Urieline guessed and harrumphed with surprise as Aranel jumped out of her seat and hurried in its direction.
“A study!” she called over her shoulder. “Of course! It’s where he would write, and it is panelled too.”
Urieline clip-clopped after her and stuck her head into the little study.
“Get back for a moment,” Aranel ordered. “You’re blocking the light.
Urieline stepped back, disappointed. She would have liked to help Aranel find the panel. As she could not do anything to help Aranel for the moment she decided to investigate the bedroom.
She clipped over the floor to the window, ears pricked and nostrils flaring. She turned round and studied the floor over which she had just walked. A sense of something unexpected prickled at her senses. What was it? All of a sudden Urieline realised what it was. There were no hoof marks in the dust. There was no dust. This floor had been swept, and recently too. The shelf under the window had a thick layer of dust on top, and so had the tops of the skirting boards, but on the floor, none.
So whoever had been here had forgotten those but had dusted and swept the floor.
She didn’t think Lord Arovan had visited for some time, years even, so who had been here? Had they been looking for the very same thing she and Aranel were searching for? Had they found it?
“Got it!” cried Aranel from the dark corner in the study where she had been feeling the panels with her fingers. “There’s a tiny little circle roughly carved in one corner.”
“Can you get it open?” asked Urieline from the bedroom.
“I’ve tried pushing and I’m feeling for some sort of mechanism.”
After a considerable while an exasperated Aranel sat back on her heels.
“Nothing, I can’t find anything.”
“Try the ring,” suggested Urieline. “Your father must have given it to you for a reason. Perhaps the ring is the key.”
Now why hadn’t she thought of that, he had said it was the key?
Hurriedly, Aranel pulled off the ring and pressed the round sapphire against the rough carving.
There was a click and the panel opened outwards, like a cupboard door.
“It’s open,” laughed a relieved Aranel as she fumbled for what was inside.
There were two objects inside the hidden compartment.
One was a dagger with a blue, leather-covered hilt and a swirly decorated metal blade. The other was a note. It was addressed to Aranel. With fingers that trembled, she opened the folded sheet.
‘Aranel’, she read, ‘I must be careful what I write here, but write something I must. You need directions about what you must do. The T’Quel, as was prophesised, is beginning to fail. When it does, the old magic maintaining the barriers between our world and the other will collapse, and chaos will ensue. I have been trying to locate the jewels, the stones of the writings, the Tarna, that will restore the magic, but I have an enemy here in
Alfheimr who wishes my quest to fail. I do not know whether he wants the barrier down or whether he wishes to use the jewels to control the T’Quel, this world and the other for a nefarious purpose of his own. It does not matter. He must be stopped, and you can only do this by first finding the other two of the trio of which the sapphire in your ring is a part. I had all three in my possession once but misunderstanding the situation I hid them where my enemy could not find them. To retrieve them is your first task. You must also find the Tathar. He will have answers. His fortress is at Nosta, high in the mountains behind the T’Quel. He is no longer there but it is at Nosta where you must begin your search. I have left further instructions for you there; you will know the location when you see it. I am sure too, that the Tathar has to have left a clue about where he has gone. I hope he will also know where the other Tarna are. Yes, there are nine in total. All are needed to restore the magic. The Tathar must be persuaded to empower the focus. May success follow you everywhere you go Aranel, my daughter. The dagger is for you. It is one of three I had made. Look to your sisters. Arovan Cuthalion.
“Well,” said Aranel. “Now we know. I wonder who the enemy ‘he’ is that my father mentions.”
“I have no idea,” said Urieline. “We do not know enough to make a guess. We must go to Nosta. Let us hope that we can reach there safely, and unseen by enemy eyes.”
“You think the enemy my father writes of is the same as who was behind the attack on the castle?”
“It is a safe assumption to make,” the unicorn answered. “He had worked out that your father had the sapphire ring in his possession and that he knew where to find the others. We must make haste.”
Aranel shook her head.
“We need to rest,” she said. “If we rest for what remains of today, we can leave at dusk. Unfortunately I think tomorrow will be a fine-weather day but we should be able to reach the forest edge before dawn.”
Urieline found herself agreeing to Aranel’s plan. She was tired and needed to build up her energy. Their journey was only at its beginning and she had no idea how far they would have to travel and where it would end. She did, however, mention that she thought there had been someone here and not long ago.
“I never noticed the lack of dust,” confessed Aranel. “There should have been a lot, shouldn’t there?”
“Yes. We have to assume there was someone here and, whoever it was tried to hide their tracks; they swept away all traces of their footprints.”
“Perhaps I’d better take a look around, see if they were careless enough to leave any clues. If they were careless enough to forget to dust everywhere, perhaps they … perhaps they dropped something.”
“Were the panels in the study dusty?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean they found father’s note.” She got to her feet. “I’ll go take a look.”
The only thing Aranel found was a glove that had fallen beneath the bedframe. She brought it back into the main room to examine and show to Urieline .
“It’s too big to belong to father,” she said, examining the stitching and the leather it was made of. “I don’t recognise the leather either, it’s sort of strange.”
“And it is a peculiar colour,” observed Urieline.
“So it is. A sort of green-blue.”
“I’ve seen something like it somewhere,” mused Aranel, frowning. “Now, where was it?” Suddenly, she clicked her fingers. “I remember now. Those visitors from the castle last autumn, they wore gloves just like this one.”
“Where did they come from?”
Aranel frowned again. “I think they came from the islands,” she replied. “I had just got back from weapon practice with some of father’s karl-elves and I didn’t pay them much attention. Is finding this glove important?”
“It could be,” replied Urieline. “It may mean nothing, but I think we should take it with us, just in case.”
“A clue about the enemy father spoke of, a clue about his identity? He is one of the Water Elves?”
“Let us just say that anything is possible,” Urieline answered, laying down her head. “Now sleep.”
The next evening, after a long sleep and a scanty repast of soaked meal (Aranel) and dry meal (Urieline), they left the lodge.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 12
‘To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first.’
(Henry VIII)
(William Shakespeare (1564-1616))
NOSTA
Aranel was aware that they were being hunted. She could hear the shrieks of the gryphwens calling to each other as they flapped around above the treetops, beady eyes aware of every movement below.
That was why she had dismounted and the two of them were walking, flitting from one heavily canopied tree to the next, with one watching the sky and the other watching where they were putting their feet, or hooves in Urieline’s case.
Of course, gryphwens, unlike gryphons, could not see well in the dark but it was full daylight now and night a long way off. Their journey through the forest had taken much longer than expected.
Gryphwens did not hear as well as gryphons. Unfortunately this was not much help to Aranel and Urieline as the forest was still and eerily quiet, unnaturally so, like Rohir had noticed during the time of the attack on Tanquelameir.
The two of them would need every ounce of luck they could muster if they were to reach the edge of the forest unseen and Aranel certainly didn’t want to be stumbling over tree roots during a moonless night.
Between the edge of the forest and their goal was the Tarquel River, the fast-flowing expanse of water that marked the boundary into the mountains. They dared not use the ford and Aranel hadn’t worked out yet how they were going to cross the river, but she did know that to attempt it in daylight would be an act tantamount to suicide. They would be in plain sight of the searching gryphwens.
“If we can reach the edge we can rest,” Aranel whispered in Urieline’s ear, “and cross at dusk. Perhaps the gryphwens will go home to their eyries. Even they must have to sleep.”
“There might be a mist which will cover us,” said Urieline in a low whinny. “There is often a mist here I know.”
“It’s certainly the season for it,” agreed Aranel.
“We can hope.”
Aranel was relieved she was journeying with Urieline as her companion. Unicorns always knew where they were. If she had been on her own, struggling through the trees, Aranel would have been utterly and hopelessly lost by now, despite her innate abilities to sense the difference between north, south, east and west.
* * * * *
They reached a spot perhaps two cians short of the edge of the forest mid-afternoon of their third day and found an old, thick-branched tree to shelter under.
“I think it is going to rain again,” said Aranel.
“Good,” said Urieline, lying down and tucking her legs under her body. “It will make us less readily seen and gryphwens dislike the wet. If the rain gets very heavy they will not fly at all.”
“There is that,” commented Aranel as she tried to make herself comfy, her back against Urieline’s belly. “It’s unpleasant though. My boots had only just begun to dry out.”
Urieline looked complacently at her hooves.
Aranel ignored the look. She wasn’t in the mood for jokes about how a hoof was better than a foot.
“You won’t be able to go much further with me,” she said, lazily contemplating the branches above them.
“I will go with you across the river,” the unicorn replied, “then to the base of the cleft in which the stairs to the fortress are situated.”
Aranel sat up at that.
“You know where the Tathar’s palace is? You knew and you didn’t tell me? Here I was worrying about finding the blasted place and you knew all along!”
“I don’t know exactly where the cleft is,” she admitted. “I have never been there.”
Aranel’s arch look asked the question.
�
�Urien told me,” she answered. “He has been there. Once he came with your father. We cross the river here then turn east. The cleft is about half a cian along. Thick trees, much like this one, hide it. You would not find it if you knew not where to look. I will wait for you there when you climb up to Nosta.”
Aranel would have liked to ask some more questions, such as, who else had Urien taken to the cleft but Urieline had closed her eyes and was, to all intent and appearance, fast asleep.
Aranel debated whether to try and wake her up but decided against it. Unicorns were notoriously testy if they were rudely awakened from their slumbers.
She closed her own eyes. Not long after she was falling into tired slumber herself.
* * * * *
It was already past dusk when Urieline nudged her awake.
Aranel had been dreaming of happier days when she hadn’t had to sleep on the cold, damp ground, fleeing from enemies and being part of a quest that she, as yet, only partly understood.
“Whassat!” she exclaimed then realisation hit. It was time to cross the River Tarquel.
“Quiet!” hissed Urieline.
Aranel was instantly alert.
“I believe we may not be alone,” said Urieline in the quietest whinny she could manage.
“The enemy?” whispered Aranel.
“Perhaps a hunts-elf only, but we must make haste. Come.”
Still more than a quarter half-asleep, Aranel scrambled to her feet and followed Urieline out from under the tree. Aranel felt nervous and edgy. She kept her hand on her sword and was ready to draw it at a moment’s notice.
She stumbled over some tree roots and grabbed on to Urieline’s mane to keep herself balanced. Urieline plodded on, as sure of foot as a ghrandhir.
As quietly as they could, the two of them made their way to the river’s edge.
“We shall have to swim across,” said Urieline. “There is a ford, but I do not think it wise that we spend time looking for it. If there is an enemy out there he could locate us easily if we spend time floundering around.”
“I agree,” said Aranel. “Is the water deep? Swimming isn’t one of my best accomplishments.”