“My brother Gaheris was the bravest man in all Rannul.”
The chieftain did not speak. But he rose to his feet, his ax in his hand, and towered over his daughter. She faltered and did not dare to approach another step. But she drew herself up straight, standing upon both feet, without aid of her crutch. The pain of her crippled foot shot up her leg, up her spine. She ignored it.
“The courage of my brother feeds the fire of my heart,” she said. “I long only to honor his name, to live a life as courageous as his. And so I have come to tell you, Father: I will marry Callix, prince of Kahorn. And I will bear his children, mingling the blood of Kahorn and Rannul forever. Even as Gaheris refused to take the blood of a man who was not his enemy, so I will join my blood with that same man.”
She drew a deep breath and announced to all who stood within hearing, “The war is over.”
Gaher raised his ax higher, and the gleam of its blade drew every eye to him. His warning voice rumbled deep into every heart. “If you do this thing, Itala, my child,” said he, “I will kill you.”
Itala let her crutch fall away behind her. She turned and strode with painful, gasping, unsupported steps to the nearest of her father’s warriors. He did not resist when she reached out and took the sickle blade from his hand. Whirling about, she faced Gaher, her teeth bared in a snarl. “Do as you will, Father,” she said. “My heart is set, and I will not turn aside.”
Gaher approached. In three great steps, he closed in upon her, and all the villagers drew back in dread of the slaughter that must follow. But some recalled how Itala had accomplished the impossible, how she had slain the mighty Hydrus when no other had succeeded in many generations preceding. They knew how ferocious was the heart in her breast, and many caught their breath, waiting to see what she would do with the weapon she bore.
None expected to see her cast the sword aside. It thudded in the dirt, unused. And Itala lifted her clubfoot and brought it down hard in a single step forward to meet her father’s attack. She flung wide her arms, exposing herself to his blade.
For a moment, perhaps, the villagers saw again the powerful chieftain’s son, Gaho, dropping his knife. For a moment, perhaps, they saw him again turn to his father and say, “It is done.” They saw him take upon himself the blighted name of Draven rather than spill another man’s blood.
Perhaps Gaher saw the same as they. No one could say or would dare venture a guess. But the entire village watched how, though he drew back his arm for the killing blow, he stopped. His ax hung suspended in the air. Itala’s life was counted in heartbeats.
Gaher gazed upon his wolf-pup daughter. The bravest heart in Rannul.
He turned aside.
“Go,” he said. “Away from here, Itala. Never set foot in Rannul again.”
As one body, the villagers released the breath they had held. The warriors turned angry faces from their chief to the girl but made no protest. The women and children clutched each other, and their hearts beat with new thoughts and new ideas they had never before considered.
Itala stood frozen, her arms still outspread. Then, slowly, she dropped them to her sides, sagged, and nearly fell. She did not fall, however. She staggered back to her discarded crutch and retrieved it. With the same hobbling stride she passed from the center through the parting crowd of villagers, her people.
“Itala,” said Gaher.
She paused. She did not look back but tilted her ear to catch whatever words her father might speak.
“If your sons are as brave as you,” said the chief, “all Rannul will tremble with fear when the Kahorn war drums sound.”
Only then did Itala look around, meeting her father’s distant gaze. “If my sons are as brave as my brother Gaheris, the war drums will never sound again.”
“There,” said Akilun, stepping back from his work. “I do believe that is done.”
The girl sat with her chin in her hands, gazing up at the carving of Draven. It was indeed complete. She saw now that he held a candle in his right hand, raised to the level of his eyes. The carefully shaped wood seemed to flicker and dance like a flame. Perhaps it was a flame indeed, captured in stillness but no less alive. And was that a reflection of the same light she saw in those wooden eyes gazing down upon her?
“Draven,” she whispered. Then, “Gaheris.”
“Yes. Gaheris,” Akilun responded. He sat down on the floor beside her, his elbows on his knees. “You know that name, don’t you?”
“I do,” said she. “I did not realize Draven was the same man, the Gaheris of whom I’ve heard tell. And that means . . .” She turned to the Kind One, her eyes bright with tears which spilled over and streamed down her soft cheeks. “That means Itala is alive!”
“Indeed,” Akilun said. “I met her soon after the story I told you ended, when I and my brother entered this world. She and her new husband told us of all that had taken place. We found Yukka defeated and the tree dead. But we also found much darkness and fear remaining in the hearts of the people. So we stayed a while to build this House. We stayed so that the light Draven first carried would shine all the brighter in this land.”
“And what happened next?” the girl asked eagerly even as she wiped away her own tears. “How does the story continue?”
“Dear child,” Akilun said, “what happened next is happening now. The light Draven bore into the dark places underground is still alive, still shining. It is not a light that can be buried. The hope Draven carried into this land will only blaze with greater strength over time.”
“Not Draven,” said the girl. “Gaheris.”
Akilun bowed his head in solemn agreement. Then he said, “Our work is almost complete. Another three nights, and you will see the light shining from this hilltop.”
He stood then and helped the girl to her feet. “It is late,” he said. “You must return to your village now. And tell your grandmother what I said. Three more nights. Only three.”
So, even as the sun began to fall from the sky, the girl hastened from the house and on down the hillside path. As she went, she believed she glimpsed red asters blooming among the twining tree roots. And in the branches over her head, was that a thrush she spied, its bright breast flashing white? Did he sing his morning song even as the dusk of evening covered the world?
Her heart was both heavy and light by turns. She wept but could not say whether they were tears of sorrow or of joy.
“Gaheris,” she said to herself. “His name is Gaheris.”
This truth she treasured close to her heart, even as she determined to ask one final question.
Three nights, the Kind One said. But the days in between them passed so slowly. All of Kallias village waited in eager tension. Those who worked the fields found their gazes turning up to the promontory more often than not, studying the high stone walls above them, the distant gables and sloping rooftops. Those who traversed up and down Hanna’s flow turned their canoes toward the cliff looming above the river.
The girl said nothing. She did not ask her final question but held it close inside. Her grandmother had not spoken to her since her return, not even to ask if she had heard the end of the story. She had no need to ask, the girl suspected. Grandmother always knew.
Then word came down to the village, carried on the swift-flying feet of the day’s water-bearer: Come to the Great House! Come, it is finished!
“It is finished,” the girl whispered, in echo both of the message bearer and of another man of long years ago. Suddenly she found her grandmother beside her.
“I need your strong arm, my dear,” Grandmother said. “It is a long walk up the hillside, and I am old and crippled. Will you help me?”
The girl and the old woman joined the mass of people on the road up the hill. Never before had the girl seen so many people gathered at once: all of Kallias from all over the surrounding territories, come together for this great trek. Someone near the front began to sing, and soon the song rippled down, carried by hundreds of voices. The girl
heard her grandmother singing, and she blended her own small voice with the others.
It seemed to her that it was the same song the morning thrush sang, only in the words of mortals:
Beyond the Final Water falling,
The Songs of Spheres recalling,
When the sun descends behind the twilit sky
Won’t you follow me?
The doors of the Great House were flung wide open as the people of Kallias approached. The enormous hall easily accommodated all who came, for it was vast and somehow seemed even bigger now that people entered within. The girl, who had already been inside, nevertheless felt overwhelmed by the beauty around her, illuminated by the torches held high in men’s hands. The carvings of stone and wood. The colored tiles upon the floor. The murals, the etchings, the tapestries.
In the center was a great object wrought in silver, an enormous sphere of filigree work, large enough to contain a bonfire. A chain attached to it reached up into the rafters of the ceiling above. Off to one side, the girl glimpsed the Strong One, braced as though prepared to pull the chain and lift that silver orb up to the very heavens. But just now it rested upon the floor, and all the people of Kallias stood around it, wondering.
The moon rose. The light of it was so much brighter than the girl could have imagined. She looked up from her study of the filigree orb and watched through the open doorway as the moon appeared. Across the hall, through the opposite door, the falling sun flared equally bright, as though reaching out to the moon in glad greeting. It was far more brilliant than anything the girl had ever before seen, so beautiful that she was almost afraid.
Suddenly Akilun stood beside her, holding a candle in his hand, very like the one he had carved in Draven’s fist. A light, so small compared to the glory of the sun and the moon, gleamed from its wick.
“Will you light the great lantern?” he asked her.
The girl stared, unable to speak or think. She felt her grandmother squeeze her shoulder, pushing her gently forward.
“Go on, Gahera,” the old woman said. “Light the lantern.”
All of Kallias watched as the girl took the candle in her hands. Akilun then led her to the orb, and she saw the wood and kindling mounded inside. Her light was so feeble; how could it possibly set such a thing ablaze?
The girl leaned forward, right into the silver lantern. She touched her candle to the kindling and watched it flicker there. Then she said, “Light up, little flame! Light up this darkness!”
The blaze caught. Akilun snatched her by the waist and pulled her back as the whole orb flared up with a white fire unlike anything the people of Kallias had ever before seen. The girl recognized it, however: It was the same light that shone in Akilun’s lantern.
Akilun signaled to his brother, and Etanun the Strong One heaved upon the chain. The lantern rose up, like a celestial sphere itself. At last it was caught up into the joint glow of the sun and the moon shining through the doors. There burst over the mortals such a brilliance of color and light and, most of all, song.
The girl, still held in Akilun’s arms, heard the sun and the moon singing the Songs of the Spheres. It was a language beyond anything she knew, ringing in her heart and her soul rather than her ears. She could not help but burst into song of her own, frail though it was. All of Kallias raised up its voice in anthem:
Beyond the Final Water falling,
The Songs of Spheres recalling!
The Song went on and on in bountiful echoes, reverberating throughout that massive hall.
But the girl stopped suddenly and turned to Akilun. “Where is my grandmother?” she asked, surprised that she could hear her own voice even amid that music. Perhaps it was so because she spoke in her own mortal language, which is heard with the ears.
Akilun smiled and indicated with a sweep of his hand. The girl looked where he gestured. Through the thick-gathered throng of people she saw a clear path to the far wall. The wall where Draven’s statue stood.
Her grandmother stood before it, drawn up to her full height, standing straight despite the pain of her crippled foot and the bowing weight of age. She gazed into the carved face, smiling, and her smile was like the Song itself.
The girl slipped from Akilun’s side and hurried to join her grandmother and the statue. Though her grandmother did not turn to her, the girl knew that she sensed her approach. She slipped her hand into the old woman’s, feeling the strength there, though the grip was weak.
“Who chose my name, Grandmother?” she asked.
“I did, Gahera,” her grandmother said, turning then to smile upon the girl. “I named you for my brother. And a brave name it is.”
Tears fell down her face as she spoke, shining bright in the light of the sun, the moon, and the lantern high in the ceiling above.
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ANNE ELISABETH STENGL makes her home in North Carolina, where she lives with her husband, Rohan, a kindle of kitties, and one long-suffering dog. When she’s not writing, she enjoys Shakespeare, opera, and tea, and practices piano, painting, and pastry baking. Her novel Starflower was awarded the 2013 Clive Staples Award, and her novels Heartless, Veiled Rose, and Dragonwitch have each been honored with a Christy Award.
To learn more about Anne Elisabeth Stengl and her books visit: www.AnneElisabethStengl.blogspot.com
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Table of Contents
The High Promontory
The Name of a Man
Across the River
Shadow on the Water
A Slow Climb
The Hunting of Hydrus
Mortal Sorrow
Of Blood and Madness
Too Dark to Speak
Blackened Embers
Fall of Tears
Arms Outstretched
A Hard Tale
Rumor of Hope
An Old, Old Story
The Candle
Spiral into Darkness
The Fallen Tree
The Legacy of Gaheris
Draven's Light Page 15