“Not made for tall men,” he said to Kagne.
“Aye,” Kagne replied. “Or for men at all?”
On they went. They reached an intersection. The new passages to either side seemed different from the corridor that led to the cliff door: quieter, even darker if that were possible. Without comment, Sandun continued along. Eventually they came upon a chamber with a high roof. The sound of dripping water came from the right side near the door. Very faint sounds came from the dark opening in the floor at the far end. Near the opening in the floor were stairs leading up into black shadows. Piles of ancient rotted wood were visible along the walls. The remains of furniture? Sandun could not tell.
“What is making that sound?” Kagne whispered.
The two men stood very still beside the chamber’s entrance. Sandun’s heart was beating loudly in his ears. It was cold in the room, and the drip of water seemed to grow louder. The faint noise they heard could not be distinguished. Was it water through a pipe? A waterwheel turning far below? It went on and on, changing only slightly with time.
Sandun relaxed a little and moved away from the wall. The sound of dripping water came from a niche nearby. He watched as a drop of water slowly formed at the end of a piece of wet stone and fell onto another piece of wet stone emerging like a cat’s tooth from the floor. Cave teeth, they were called. The Keltens found two more openings leading away from the chamber.
“Ghost Wolf has vanished,” Kagne said. “I don’t see anything for us here.”
“Wait a moment. Hide the knife.” So saying, Sandun put Skathris in its sheath. “There it is…” Sandun scarcely breathed the words, as if speaking would cause it to vanish. At the top of the stairway, the faint otherworldly colors of Ghost Wolf could be seen.
“It’s waiting for us,” Kagne said. “By all the stars, Sandun, now I’m afraid to follow it any farther.”
Sandun harbored no doubts. “I’m going to find out what it has to tell us.” Drawing Skathris again, he went up the stairs. Passing by the dark hole in the floor, he saw what looked like a different flight of stairs going down into utter darkness.
Stationary and barely visible at the top of the stairs, Ghost Wolf looked altered. Less like a jagged hole of darkness and more of a human shape with a sort-of head and perhaps eyes, or places where the colored lights appeared more frequently.
As Sandun approached the top of the stairs, Ghost Wolf moved off, gliding along down a widened corridor. This passageway was at least a foot higher than the previous one, although Sandun kept his left hand above his head, just in case. They passed several openings to the right and the left—corridors or long rooms filled with endless night? Sandun could not say. Ghost Wolf kept moving steadily onward. The corridor bent first to the right and then to the left. They passed through another chamber with at least six other entrances. Sandun thought the halls in this section of the rock city had a certain elegance to them, and they were free of dust or any other indication of age. With sufficient light, exploring the stone city might prove interesting.
Kagne whispered, “If we go through another intersection like that, I may not be able to find my way back.”
“I know the way back,” Sandun told him. The route they had taken burned in his mind, like a trail of secret fire.
Ghost Wolf passed into a long room and came to a halt beside a collection of objects on the floor. This was it. They had reached the destination. Sandun halted some thirty feet away from Ghost Wolf and looked around. Five or six of the items between him and Ghost Wolf were glowing faintly, like Skathris. Whether the objects had been glowing before Ghost Wolf passed over them was difficult for Sandun to say. The room Ghost Wolf had led them to was broader and taller than any they had entered thus far. Broken reflections of pale light from the far end of the room suggested a mirror or perhaps windows made from small panes of glass. Two intact chairs stood upright close at hand while heaps of sticks and rotted fabric hinted at other fittings ravaged by time.
Ghost Wolf had now assumed the outline of a child, or a short man, or a Piksie. For some reason, the room gave Ghost Wolf a solidity or strength that it lacked elsewhere. Ghost Wolf had no face or body but instead looked like someone had drawn a small human and then erased everything but flashing eyes.
After a pause, it spoke.
“Welcome. You have been a long time in coming.”
Sandun was sure he heard nothing more than the sound of his own worried breathing, but in his mind, he felt Ghost Wolf’s thoughts, and they translated into feelings and images: a hearth, a smile, a hand waving, the sense of longing, a note of reproach. He could tell from Kagne’s sharply indrawn breath that he “heard” Ghost Wolf also.
Sandun had no idea how to respond other than with words, so he said softly, “My name is Sandun. Who are you?”
“My senses are dull, as prolonged illness has shrouded my eyes, and strange noises have made hearing arduous. Come closer! You are from Stead of Warm Springs? Long have I waited for word from you. I am king of Stead Half Cliff. Tell me: When are the others coming? There are so few of us left here. At times it seems there is no one else, save me. Yet my guards must be keeping watch below, just as the farmers silently tend their fields out in the valley. Why should they consult the king when there is nothing to report?”
Curiosity drew Sandun closer to Ghost Wolf, the so-called king of Stead Half Cliff. As he approached, Sandun’s eyes were drawn to a glowing object near his left foot: a golden circle, a little smaller than the palm of his hand, with a twisting shape on the inside. He picked it up and looked at it. The shape inside the circle was a long fox…no, it was a dragon, sinuous with two glittering eyes.
Ghost Wolf kept talking. “You heard, no doubt, of the decision to leave. This is perhaps why you have stayed away for so long. Thinking that all had left. That all had gone to the Ice Hills by the sea? But no. Not all left. Not all followed the traitors, the betrayers, and the false fool with his words of despair.”
Sandun ventured a reply. He attempted to invest his words with meaning, speaking slowly, visualizing, as clearly as he could, the words as he spoke them.
“We are men from Kelten. How can we help you?”
Ghost Wolf paused for a moment and then responded with strong, emotional images. “Who are you? Why do you talk like ignorant children? You carry the weapons of the Dinmot, yet you speak of men, the barbaric giants who hem us in on all sides. There is no Stead of Kelten. My eyes, my eyes…are you spirits, come to haunt me?”
At this, Kagne spoke up. “You are the spirit.” He pointed to a pile of bones, now revealed by the light from Skathris, near where Ghost Wolf was standing. “Those are your bones. Your people have gone long ago. You need to leave this world, find peace in the beyond. You…are…dead.”
Ghost Wolf was still for several heartbeats, as the colors of its mind flickered and flashed. Then it shouted at them, “No! No! I understand you now. You are with the turncoats. Returned to the scene of the crime. The Ice Hills were not to your liking, as I guessed! You hoped to find me old, broken, or dead. Now, all is revealed; you hoped to find me dead so you could take back the stead you abandoned.”
Sandun did not like the direction this conversation had taken. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered to Kagne.
Kagne nodded, but Ghost Wolf’s anger had turned into rage.
“I am not feeble, though you doubtless think age has robbed me. I have learned much since you left. Think me dead? Not so! But I have learned how to draw strength from the living! Suffer now the punishment for treachery!”
Ghost Wolf moved like a gust of wind and was next to Kagne, who went rigid. His face took on an agonized expression; air escaped from his lungs as though he were being squeezed. Sandun slashed at Ghost Wolf with Skathris, but it was like slashing air. There was no flicker, no hint that Ghost Wolf felt the Piksie blade or cared if he did.
Time slowed t
o a crawl as Sandun saw what Ghost Wolf was doing. For the first time, he saw the flickering light that was within Kagne’s body; it was being drawn out. Why had he never seen that light before in a person?
For an instant came the thought: I can run away, and escape while Kagne is being consumed. But he dismissed that notion and grabbed Kagne’s hand.
“You will not defeat us so easily, spirit! We are Keltens! You are no match for the two of us together!”
Sandun felt a tug-o-war; he felt Ghost Wolf’s anger and a trace of panic as well. He tried to hold on to Kagne’s spirit, but how? How can you touch someone’s soul? Not with hands, not with fingers, and not with mere thoughts.
Again, he saw what Ghost Wolf was doing, but he didn’t understand how it was done. A terrible horror burgeoned in Sandun, the fear that he had no solution, as though he were falling into a black pool of freezing water from which there was no escape. After a few seconds of valiant resistance, he felt his own spirit being pulled apart, torn away by Ghost Wolf. But then, the circle of gold, the dragon-circle, warmed in his left hand. Sandun felt it wake, and he looked at it in amazement. He saw an alternate vision: instead of a golden circle he was holding a disk of burning paper, glowing and edged with intense orange lines that crisscrossed the surface. Then he felt Skathris warm in his right hand, and he saw it catch fire with the strange otherworldly colors of Ghost Wolf. Strength flowed into him, and he somehow pushed Ghost Wolf away.
“What are you doing!” Ghost Wolf cried out in this mind. “You can’t use that! You will break it, and everyone in the stead will perish!”
Sandun paid no heed to Ghost Wolf; instead, he kept drawing on the dragon-circle. He felt shielded, protected. Ghost Wolf could no longer tear Sandun’s spirit away. He steeled his mind and then tried to push his shield over Kagne. This was hard. The shield resisted. It didn’t want to expand beyond him. The dragon-circle felt hot in his hand, and in his mind he saw it flashing so many colors it was like a torch.
He kept pushing, forcing his mind on one single thing: countering Ghost Wolf’s repeated attacks by expanding the shield across Kagne’s body. He felt Kagne’s spirit reaching out to him, joining him in his effort. Suddenly, the stone cutter flared up, all pinks and iridescent green. He felt its energy surge, joining or feeding that of the dragon-circle, and—it was accomplished—the shield covered them both. Kagne’s body shuddered and took a gasping breath. The room was much darker than before, but the otherworldly light was flashing all around them, through them.
With a cry of inchoate frustration and exhaustion, Ghost Wolf gave up and pulled away from them, to the far end of the room. There it stayed, slowly losing its intensity. In his mind, Sandun gradually “let go” of the golden circle; it cooled, and its shield faded. Skathris and the stone cutter both brightened in response. Kagne staggered and clutched at Sandun’s shoulder, his breathing ragged, labored.
Ghost Wolf spoke, slowly, as though from a vast distance. “You are men. From Kelten. I felt it as we struggled. I…was mistaken. You were telling the truth. I am…I must gather my thoughts…must consider your words.” Ghost Wolf remained motionless, its otherworldly colors slowly dwindling.
Kagne sat down and shook his head. “You saved me, Sandun.” He swallowed and coughed. “I could feel it pulling me apart, and then I felt you, like Duncan’s cavalry coming over the hills.” He paused and then looked up in wonder at Sandun. “I can still feel you.” He shut his eyes. “I can see you. I don’t know what I see, but I see you.” Kagne struggled to rise, and Sandun helped him up. “Let’s get out of here before that thing slips into madness again.”
Sandun looked at the pile of objects where Ghost Wolf had been standing. There were several swords there and daggers. He saw the weapons with his new vision, and he could see otherworldly colors flickering along their blades. They were like Skathris, but dormant, quiescent, waiting.
Later, he thought to himself. He worried about Ghost Wolf’s reaction if he took the dragon-circle with him, but he didn’t trust Ghost Wolf enough to risk leaving it behind.
“Yes,” Sandun said. “Let’s go.”
With their arms around each other’s shoulders, the two men staggered out of the throne room of Stead Half Cliff and returned the way they’d come.
They reached the door in the cliff just before sunrise.
Basil was happy to see them crawl out through the stone door, but his face fell as he examined Kagne.
“You look terrible,” he said. “What happened?”
Kagne was barely conscious, and Sandun felt too weary to explain what had transpired inside.
“We are alive. I’m going to get as close to the lake as I can before I collapse.”
“Wake up! Master Sandun! Raiders!” Wiyat’s voice was loud, blasting apart his dreams of endless stone corridors.
Sandun sat up and found he was lying on a pile of hay under a thatched roof. A rooster was eyeing his boot with a suspicious glare. Judging from the beams of sunlight piercing holes in the thatch, it was around noon. Wiyat offered him a cup of water and a haunch of roast boar; he accepted both gratefully.
He remembered why they had ridden yesterday—they were looking for Sogand raiders. The fight with the wild boars, Ghost Wolf, the abandoned underground city, that was all an accident: incidental to their mission. He put his hand to his shirt pocket and felt the metal circle through the fabric; he still had the dragon-circle. A degree of relief and mental clarity came to him.
“How far are the raiders?” he said to Wiyat while he ate the roast boar meat with hungry bites.
“An old couple just came into village. They say raiders are attacking Olitik, the town we passed yesterday afternoon. Sir Ako is all hot to ride.”
“That’s why we came here. How is Kagne?”
“I don’t know. He is in the shaman’s house. Sleeping, I think.” Wiyat paused and then said with some concern, “Are you all right?”
Sandun put his boots on and laced them up. “I’m fine. I’ll be ready to ride as soon as I check on Kagne. Ten minutes?”
Wiyat nodded and walked off.
Sandun had no definite memory of returning to the village. He remembered getting to the lakeshore as the lake turned to pink, reflecting the sky above, but nothing more. He shooed the rooster out of his way and then realized he had no idea where the shaman’s house was. He found a woman scraping a boar skin with a half-moon-shaped piece of metal, and she pointed him in the right direction. Now that he knew the direction of the shaman’s house, he suddenly realized he knew where Kagne was: he could feel his location in his mind. It was an odd sensation. He walked past four houses and stood at the door, which was not much more than sticks covered by a matting of woven bark.
“I’d like to see Kagne,” he said to the door.
“Come in,” returned a voice from the other side.
Inside, he found Kagne lying on a bed. The shaman, still wearing her necklace of coins, was sitting beside him, holding a metal disk in her hand and tapping it with her fingers. Sandun thought her disk looked a little like the dragon-circle he had found inside the throne room last night, the one now in his shirt pocket. He looked at it intently but saw nothing unusual, no hint that it was special. The shaman noticed his gaze and hid the disk in a beaded bag that she carried around her neck.
The old woman asked him a question; the words she used sounded very strange. He had to guess that she was asking him about Kagne.
“Ghost Wolf attacked him,” he told her.
The old woman nodded with a fast, bird-like motion. She said something like, “This happened before, years ago.”
Sandun picked up Kagne’s hand. His friend looked worn, sick, with his skin wrinkled. Then Kagne opened his eyes and said, “Where am I?”
“The shaman’s house, back at the village.”
“That’s funny. I don’t really know what happened after we fou
ght off the mad king.”
“It’s hazy for me as well, though I remember struggling through the hole in the stone door and finding Basil. I scraped my ear on a sharp piece of rock getting through. I came to tell you we are going off to fight the raiders. You stay here and rest; we should be back before nightfall.”
Kagne struggled to rise but gave up with resignation. “How do you feel?”
“This moment, I feel good,” Sandun said. It was true. “Get some sleep.”
“Sandun,” Kagne said very seriously.
“Yes?”
“I see you.”
Sandun knew what he meant. In the dim light of the shaman’s house, he could see faint flashes of color inside Kagne. “I see you as well.”
He went outside into the noon sun. He heard Sir Ako’s voice booming out and Frostel’s loud response. Sandun smiled. Frostel hadn’t yet learned that you obeyed Sir Ako’s orders, requests, or even mild suggestions—or else.
The warriors were standing around their horses, arguing about tactics. Sandun found Basil and asked him where his armor was. Basil led him to a nearby house where his and Kagne’s armor was piled up.
“I had fun getting all that back to this village last night. You didn’t say much. In fact, you and Kagne both looked like clothing being washed.”
Sandun put on the armor while thanking him for his help.
“Let’s go!” Sir Ako shouted.
A group of village men carrying spears and led by Gorgi set out on foot, heading south, while the Kelten war party mounted and rode back along the trail.
“Where are they going?” Sandun asked Basil, pointing to Gorgi’s group.
“There is another path following the stream. Gorgi says it’s impassible for horses, but he and his men can follow it. They will attack after us.”
The Fire Sword Page 27