At that, another silence fell for a moment.
They contemplated each other across several paces of cold, snowy pavement and then the darking spoke again. “Do you think this a lie and not truth, slayer?” It asked. “Or a dream, perhaps?”
Brenyn, surprised by the question, found his rage ebbing at the tenor of it. Was he dreaming? He gazed about him, into the dim, gray coldness of the winter day. Looking back at the darking, he shook his head. “Who can say what is a dream? I cannot.”
The darking moved its hand and the image of Emi vanished once more. Then it pointed its long, thin finger at Brenyn. “This is no dream, slayer. Nor is it a lie, but truth. My queen wills that you come to her; and come to her you must. You will go back to your bed now. When you wake upon the morrow, a coravum – a servant of my mistress, appearing as that which your kind names a raven, will call to you three times. Then you will know.”
“And Emi?” Brenyn pressed him. “Will she live?”
The low sound of laughter came again as the darking turned away. “She will likely yet live a year or more hence, when you come at last to bend your knee before her who rules over all.”
“She must live,” Brenyn called as the darking began to meld into the gloom. “Emi must live.”
“Farewell, slayer,” the darking answered, and it vanished. The staccato sound of malevolent mirth faded, carried away upon the ice-laden wind.
54.
Brenyn jerked awake, sitting up and gazing about him into the dimness, where four walls, a single chair, and the foot of his cot told him that he was back at the inn. Gone was the lonely stretch of road leading east, gone was the darking and its vicious laughter, gone was the chamber where Emi lay upon her cot, threatened by a sorceress who was the master of the terrible fiends that troubled humanity. Outside the small square window, the day lightened toward dawn and huge flakes of snow yet fell from the sky.
Had it all been a dream? – or, as the darking stated, truth?
If it were not a dream – then what of that other vision of Emi from three years gone? He had dismissed it as but a dream. But had it been more? His heart ached as he considered the possibility that it had been Emi herself, upon that lonely stretch of road, three years gone, begging him to come and find her.
I am so lonely, she had said.
Inside Brenyn, his heart, rendered cold and lifeless as stone for these several years when he had thought Emi gone and lost to him forever, thawed, came to life once more, and then broke.
There, in the morning twilight of the small room, he wept.
How long he sat, weeping bitter tears, Brenyn knew not, but, when he came to himself once more, the snow had ceased to fall and the morning, outside the window, had brightened. The fire on the far side of the room had burned down to gray coals and ash, and the room was cold, but he did not care.
Pulling on his boots and gathering his pack, he went out and down the stairs to return the key and go and collect Noris.
The proprietor saw him come. “Breakfast is ready, sir.”
Brenyn shook his head. “I must get on,” he said. “Where is a market that I might replenish my kit?”
The proprietor frowned at this and indicated a young man that was sweeping the snow off the walk. “Let me send Ruall to get your supplies, if you will – give me a list and he will go and collect all that you require while you partake of a nice hot meal. It is cold out there this morning.”
Brenyn hesitated. As anxious as he was to go up the road to verify the validity of his night vision, he would go farther with a full stomach. He nodded. “I will provide a list and money,” he said.
The man indicated a door to his right. “Go in then, sir, and I will send Ruall and a parchment to you at once and bring a plate.”
Brenyn found a table. The proprietor brought breakfast and the young man, his son, brought a parchment and a quill. Brenyn scribbled down his needs, including dried meats and flat breads, and then ate. By the time the young man returned, he had collected Noris and tried to settle his bill, but his money was refused.
The proprietor and his son stood on the walk as he mounted up. “Heaven go with you, sir,” the man said.
Brenyn nodded. “Thank you and farewell.”
He turned Noris and rode toward the east and the heights of the plateau that rose above the town, coming to the narrow valley with its rushing stream within a half-hour. The sun broke through the thinning clouds and took the edge off the cold day as he turned northward up the valley.
Then, he abruptly drew Noris to a halt.
Up ahead, sitting in the highest branches of a dead conifer, a raven watched him come, head turned, its dark eye glistening.
The raven watched him for a long moment and then called, three times. Then, leaping up, it gained the sky and flew toward the east, disappearing over the hills on the far side of the valley.
When the bird went from view, Brenyn realized that he had caught his breath and held it. The words of the darking that had inhabited his “dream” were verified by the raven’s call.
It had not been a dream.
In that moment, Brenyn’s heart soared with hope even as it quivered with terror for Emi.
She was alive and not beyond his reach, though in mortal danger, if the darking could be believed, in every moment that she drew breath. And she was hundreds, perhaps thousands of leagues away, somewhere far to the east.
Urging Noris into a fast trot, he continued on up the road, turning eastward at the top end of the valley and coming to the crossroads where he had once mourned the loss of Emi and where he had first noticed the odd configuration of the junctions in the ancient stone. To the right, down the southern road, lay the valley where Marta had managed her market and where he had crossed the valley to join Murlet’s band.
Brenyn did not hesitate but passed through the junction and kept straight on along the road that ran toward the east. Up ahead was the fateful spot where he had abandoned his search for Emi because of the lonely and remote nature of the landscape through which this roadway passed. Now, as he rode onward toward the distant mountains, the heights of which were lost in the cloud cover of the storm that had moved east, he cursed himself for giving up, even as he knew that, at the time, he could not have possibly known where she had been taken or even if she yet lived.
All those years ago, he had not known that the darkings had a mistress that dwelled in the east of the world and had taken an interest in Emi. Pondering that while Noris moved eastward at a good pace, he realized now that the darkings had taken Emi, not for any interest in her, but in him.
He thought of the raven that had followed him and Emi as they played along the banks of Small River. It had appeared in the days after he had saved Emi from the flood – the first time that he had employed the magic in his blood and had stepped out of time.
It occurred to him that, just as he could sense the nearness of creatures of magic, the mysterious she that ruled the darkings would likely be as sensitive – perhaps more so – to the employment of magic and therefore her eye must have fallen upon him that day.
So, had she caused Emi to be taken to lure Brenyn out into the world – and to draw him to her?
If so, why then the delay of several years before sending a darking in a night vision to summon him?
As he ruminated upon all these things, he passed along the road by the place where he had camped all those years before and saw that it was the place where the events of his “dreams”, the one of the night just passed and the vison of Emi of two years gone had both occurred – or had been staged.
And that thought troubled him and gave him pause.
Were the images true, he wondered? Or had the darking’s mistress – the darking queen – manipulated his own thoughts and desires against him? Was all this a ruse? – even the triple call of the raven, that the darking lord had named a coravum, confirming the night vison? – was all this done to lure him away from guarding the princes to whom he had sworn an oath o
f protection?
Speaking to Noris, he slowed the horse to a walk.
Conflicting thoughts struggled for supremacy in his mind. If he could be certain that Emi truly lived and was a prisoner of the sorceress that ruled the race of darkings, somewhere in the east of the world, his path would be plain before him. He would travel any distance, face any challenge or danger, to set her free.
But, if all this was simply a clever deceit on the part of the darking horde to lure him away from those he had freed from their tyranny, then every mile that he went along this road was rendered as a terrible mistake.
While he agonized, he came to the bridge that crossed over the deep chasm where the river cut through the high country on its way to the valley off to the right. Jed was down there, with Evonne and those that had remained behind when the rest of the band had gone east to Magnus. Brenyn hoped that they yet dwelled in peace and would ever do so. But was he even now leaving them, and all the others – Johan and Taumus, and everyone else – to the mercy of the darkings if he abandoned the west for the unknown east?
Reining Noris to a halt, he gazed eastward while he wrestled with what to believe. The storm that had dropped snow overnight had moved east, but intermittent low scudding clouds blocked the sun every so often and sent down small hard flurries that the wind whipped past his face while he sat and struggled with whether to ride on or turn back.
After a time, he dismounted. Pulling up the collar of his coat, he went to the edge of the bridge and gazed down upon the frothing river churning southward a hundred feet below and thought back over his conflict with the darkings.
At first, each of them had attempted to slay him with their strange weapons that spewed black, ice-cold death.
Then, the lesser black darkings had fled from before him.
And three of the powerful lords had faced him in unison.
In every case, they had failed, and he had prevailed.
Was this supposed vison of Emi simply another gambit?
At that thought, Brenyn’s heart constricted.
He needed her to be alive, he needed her to be within reach of salvation. And after so many dark years of believing her lost to him, the thought that he might go and find her – and save her – was irresistible.
But did the darkings – or their queen – know this?
By tempting him with the idea of rescuing her, were they simply drawing him away, into the wilderness, thereby depriving Prince Johan and Prince Taumus and their people of his protection? – along with Gatison, Garren, and the others?
The day waned, the snow finally ended, and the sun fell low in the west and still Brenyn hesitated. But at last, as the sun fell to the sit on horizon, his heart seized upon the only thing that truly mattered. If Emi lived, he must find her, whatever happened to the rest of the world.
And she had seemed real, very real, in the vision shown to him by the darking.
And it had been her own soft and beloved voice, in the night vision of three years gone, that had spoken those heart-wrenching words to him. I am so lonely.
It was that memory that at last decided him. He would go and seek for her, however long the road, however many the days or weeks or years, however many the difficulties. He would go and find the woman he loved more than life.
Besides, he told himself – as he journeyed into the east, he would yet slay every darking that he found, and that would help to protect those that he left behind him.
Mounting up, he rode toward the east, coming down into a low swale where the ruins of an ancient town clustered near the old road just as the sun slid below the edge of the world.
He encamped in the ruins of a tumbled-down building and moved on the next morning at the first hint of the cold dawn.
Before the end of that second day, he passed where he had turned around all those years ago, and was in new country, where he had never set foot. That day he travelled across a sort of high and barren plateau as another storm began to darken the sky to the west behind him. Night fell, snow fell, and still, there was no sign of human habitation.
That night he camped in the tenuous shelter of a small copse of ancient and twisted junipers. Fortunately, there was plentiful deadfall lying about, so he would be able to kindle a fire and have enough fuel to keep it going throughout the night. Finding a rocky overhang at the upper end of the grove of trees, he picketed Noris close, gathered wood, and started a fire. Then he lay down next to the overhanging rock and tried to rest, though, until deep in the night, doubts and dark thoughts troubled his mind.
The storm had cleared by the following morning and the day dawned clear and cold. The doubts of the dark hours vanished in the face of new determination.
Brenyn was up and on the road, two hours east of his camp, ere the sun rose above the eastern mountains and looked down upon him. The ancient road went straight into the east. The mostly level landscape, devoid of life except for scrub brush which gave off a pungent aroma, scattered tufts of grass and stunted junipers that clustered atop rounded hillocks, stretched out before him.
The landscape rose gradually as it spread northward, off to his left, toward a distant line of low dark hills. To the south, to his right, leagues away, there were more low, brush-covered hills. And the countryside rose gradually in that direction as well. It was as if he journeyed across the floor of a gigantic shallow bowl rimmed by hills. Whether this ground was too barren to support crops or if some ancient catastrophe had come here, he knew not, but the land around him, on all sides, was devoid of human habitation.
To his front, the jagged mountains that reared there were evidently much farther away, and, as a consequence, much taller and more rugged than they had appeared as he had viewed them from further west. Those gray heights, capped with snow, though they pierced the depths of the firmament, appeared to come no nearer as he journeyed, and the mist of the winter’s day obscured the foothills at their base, still many leagues away to the east.
That day warmed as he went eastward. About mid-day, the road passed along the southern shores of an ice-covered, shallow lake. The ice that lay upon its surface, however, appeared rotten and slushy beneath the brightening sun. Spring had likely come to the lands of Merkland and Magnus, off to the south, and even here, winter was slinking back northward before the warming influence of an ascending sun and lengthening days.
Throughout that afternoon, after he passed by the lake, he began to see the ruins of farms and outbuildings, all made of stone, that dotted the countryside here and there.
All were abandoned, though none showed evidence of war, but simply the ruin brought upon them by the weight of time.
Toward evening, as the sun fell near the western horizon, and slipped behind a heavy gray bank of cloud that threatened the approach of another storm, he came to the ruins of a sizeable town where there was a junction in the ancient roadway.
Here, at this crossroads, the configuration laid down by the ancient engineers once again pointed eastward, as if the stonework had once served as an indicator of something that had mattered to them, long ago.
Brenyn paused at the center of the junction and studied the ancient stone constructs of the town that spread away upon all four corners. Once, this had been a thriving community, but whoever had once dwelled here had lived out their lives in a different age of the world, for there was no evidence of recent habitation.
With daylight failing, he began to look around for a place to shelter for the night. Most of the ancient roofs, undoubtedly once comprised of wood, had long since fallen in and decayed. He rode slowly along the road leading eastward through the town, looking for a place to stay out of the oncoming storm.
At last, near the eastern outskirts of the ruined town, he found a small structure with a corbelled roof that had stood against the ravages of time. What it had been, Brenyn didn’t know, but the entrance was large enough for Noris to pass inside the structure and, after a bit of encouragement, the horse entered.
There was one small win
dow cut into the wall on the east side of the building, so after Brenyn secured Noris near the door, he went into the northwest corner and sat back against the wall. He would have no fire this night, but the evening, though cool, was not overly cold, and he had Princess Alayna’s soft blue blanket.
As the night deepened, he leaned his head back against the wall and tamped down the doubts that threatened to crowd into his thoughts – doubts about his decision to abandon his friends in the west and go into the east, searching for Emi. Fortunately, upon this night, fatigue was Brenyn’s attentive companion, quieting his mind, calming his doubts, and allowing him to fall asleep.
The crash of thunder awakened him deep in the night. The storm had come; but rather than more snow, it brought lightning and heavy downpours of rain. Brenyn, yet tired, listened to the sound of rain pounding upon the slanted stone roof. After several moments, despite the occasional crash of thunder, he slept once more.
55.
The rainstorm had passed by morning. Brenyn ate a cold breakfast, let Noris graze for an hour on the stubby bunches of new grass that grew near the roadway on the edge of the town, and then he mounted up and they went on, toward the mountains.
The sky cleared once the trailing clouds from the storm had climbed up the slopes of the mountains and then dissipated toward the unknown east, and a freshening breeze blew up from the south and warmed the air. Off in that direction, southward, the low hills began to gain height as they rose toward the east and dark shadows of forest began to thicken upon their slopes.
Near at hand, the landscape began to take on a hint of green beneath the strengthening sun. Winter was not yet finished here, but its days were numbered; spring was imminent. Later that day, the foothills at the base of the mountains came near enough that Brenyn could make out the trees that clustered upon the slopes and thickened down in the hollows. The mountains towered far above, rearing high into the depths of the firmament.
A Plague of Ruin: Book One: Son of Two Bloods Page 49