by Ben Blake
*
It took two days to reach the meeting place, most of it on the main east-west road up into the Aiguille. Further on the road ran into the Raima Mountains, then turned south into Alinaur where the last Tei-jo warriors held on in their high crags, defying the armies of the church to drive them out. Beyond even that it reached the sea, a narrow channel of turbulent water beyond which lay a sandy waste where the Jaidi still lived, men with curved swords and women in veils and felt slippers. Japh found that a thrilling thought. Perhaps he would go there one day, to lounge idly beside a spring and drink sour wine out of a worn skin, while beautiful desert ladies fed him dates and raisins.
For now, he had duller work to do. He left the road as it climbed into the Aiguille, and was promptly lost in the network of canyons and narrow valleys that tangled about one another between the rocky hills. And he couldn’t even ask villagers for directions, since some of them would certainly be loyal to the All-Church, and would report it. So he spent most of the second day riding from one flyspeck village to another, searching for the one with a ruined windmill on the ridge above. Part of the trouble was that half the villages of the Aiguille might have been the one, and Japh couldn’t tell for sure until he was very close. He came within fifty yards of three different windmills, in three narrow valleys, before each time he realised he’d gone wrong again.
It was strange, that he saw these hamlets as remote and provincial already. A week ago he wouldn’t have thought so. But he had been to Mayence since then, with banners floating from its towers and men from all nations in its wide boulevards. He had watched the Guard change at the Margrave’s palace, resplendent in coats of crimson and gold, and gaped at the dome of the Hall of Voices like the small-town lout he was. Such things left a mark. He would never be able to look at Parrien in the same way again.
He knew he’d found the right windmill when he saw that the ground around it had been chewed up by the movements of many men and horses, and found a forgotten tent peg next to the remains of a cook fire. But it was too late by then: the field was empty, the army gone.
Calesh had said it would be, if Japh took too long to return. He looked around in dismay, wondering what he was supposed to do now, and that was when he noticed a note pinned to the inside of the door.
Japh
We are going on. If Luthien is with you he’ll know where. If not, go back to the inn and wait. Keep Kendra safe, and we will come to you, or send. Be wary.
C
He stuffed the paper into his pocket. There was no sense leaving it for someone else to find, though the note didn’t actually reveal anything, even where the others were going. Japh knew that, actually: the Hidden House. But nobody went there without an invitation or a very good reason. Japh was wise enough not to consider trying.
He went to check the windmill’s back room, where the horses had been kept. The spoor he found was a day old at least. For a moment he considered trying to follow the others, but he was a town boy, and what he didn’t know about tracking would fill all the halls of the Academy. Besides, the thought of going to the Hidden House was more than slightly unsettling. He had heard stories about it all his life, but actually setting foot there would be a little like sticking a pin in an angel and finding it bled just like anyone else.
Back outside the windmill, he stopped and looked at his horse. Then he took the reins in one hand and began to walk. After five days of riding his tailbone ached; he thought he might have a blister back there. If he rode any more his arse would take on the shape of the saddle before he got back to Kissing the Moon. He’d never imagined, in all his dreams of adventure, that much of it would involve weary muscles and skin soaked from a night of rain.
That night he couldn’t make a flame catch on wet kindling, and spent the darkness huddled in his cloak against the late spring cold.
Seven
Through the Hills
It was a betrayal. A breach of faith. Across eleven years and two continents, through war and peace, these three men had held true to each other. The fourth had not. Farajalla could see no other way to regard it.
Calesh could.
“Luthien has done what he feels he must,” her husband said, when she spoke of it. “As we all have. Friendship is not friendship if one man is compelled. He’s followed his soul, my dear.”
She shook her head. “He should have come.”
“He hasn’t seen me for six years,” Calesh noted mildly.
“Neither had Baruch or Raigal,” she answered in a tart voice, “and they came. What’s different for Luthien?”
“An oath.” He smiled sadly. “He took the Consolation, and Luthien won’t have done so lightly. He was always the most devout of us. And as we know, some oaths are more important than others.”
“You don’t blame him? You don’t feel any anger at all?”
“Anger? No. Regret, perhaps.” He fell silent, wearing the inward expression that meant he was thinking. Farajalla waited for him to speak again. When he did his tone was diffident, as he felt for the words he wanted. “You know how there are times when you know something is missing? You might not even know what it is, but you don’t feel… right. Complete.”
“Like a play,” she said, “with one actor missing.”
His face cleared. “Yes, exactly. Or a poet with no words to speak. I feel like that now, but it isn’t the fault of the actor, or the words.”
She understood, in a way, though it still seemed like a betrayal to her. A bond forged in blood and fire ought to be enough to bring any man back to his friends, no matter how much time had gone by since he saw them last. The ties between these four men, which she still didn’t really comprehend, should have done so easily. Yet it seemed Luthien had chosen to stand aside and watch his brothers in arms go on alone. He would nurture his own soul while others were put in peril, and Farajalla could only think that if he held on that course, his soul would likely not be worth nurturing any more.
She let the matter drop though. If she saw Luthien in the future she would have hard words for him, but there were other things to occupy her thoughts in the meantime. Such as where they were going.
They rode through the high, rocky country of the Aiguille, halfway between the low hills of Sarténe and the mountains to the south. Farajalla could see them in the distance, touched near their crowns with white and wreathed in clouds that never fully cleared. The horses walked a crooked path between strewn boulders and gullies where hardy plants straggled, spots of green amid the thin, arid soil. The rain of three nights ago had been sucked in by earth parched for too long, leaving hardly a trickle behind.
But there was evidence of the work of water, if you knew what to look for. Those scattered boulders had been moved by floods, rushing down canyons in a frenzy of foam and scoured soil. The few streams meandered through beds of gravel, splitting into braided channels and then joining again, at the bottom of wide gorges with walls of sheer smooth stone. Farajalla had seen the same thing in Tura d’Madai. When rain did come here it came hard, and flowed off the exposed rock into the canyons where it quickly became a flood, strong enough to tear the stone itself. Half a day later it was gone, down into the gentle rivers of the lowlands, and the Aiguille began to thirst once more.
They watered the horses when they could, twice going down into a gully to do so. There was no point trying to hide evidence of their passing. There were only five horses now, the four riders and one animal for gear: the fifty-man escort had been left that morning at a Hand-owned estate near a sizeable village called Verfeil. The rest were scattered across half a dozen larger holdings, whose captains were doubtless all trying to cajole each other into giving them more help. The Hand of the Lord owned estates all over Sarténe, but the sudden presence of five thousand soldiers was straining even those resources.
Still, for once the soldiers could sleep in proper beds, or at least pallets, both of which were better than bed rolls on hard ground. Farms could always find work for idle hands, and
besides that, it left hundreds of men to make sure no one trailed after the four riders to the Hidden House.
And besides that, not many men were allowed to lay eyes on the Hidden House, even among the Hand of the Lord.
It would be hard for a man to follow here anyway. The horses left little trace on the stony ground, and for long stretches there was nowhere for a stalker to hide when someone looked back, as Baruch especially sometimes did. The stocky man seemed edgy, which in turn began to make Farajalla nervous. Oblivious to it all, Raigal Tai rode with his hands loose on the reins, letting his enormous gelding pick its own path over the ground. Several times he sang in a strong deep voice that echoed off the rock walls, mournful ballads of his homeland, until Baruch told him testily to shut up.
“I already know that mist-wreathed trees are beautiful,” he said. “I don’t need to hear you wailing about it.”
“Wailing?” Raigal grinned at him. “You want to hear wailing? Maybe you should ask Bullfrog to sing, then.”
“What Bullfrog does isn’t singing,” Baruch said. “He makes a noise like a bag of tormented cats.”
Calesh only chuckled in amusement. Men were strange. Doubt their honour or courage and they flared up like bonfires, but about minor matters they traded insults with smiles and laughter. Farajalla’s back stiffened when they spoke like that to her man. They should not mock Calesh, no matter how trivial the words, or how easily he tolerated it. She would not permit them to. And yet she did, aware still of a bond between these men that she didn’t share, and of which she could never be a part, love or no love.
On the morning of the fourth day from the windmill, the wind brought them the faint tang of the sea.
“Nearly there,” Baruch said. He sat straighter in the saddle, brushing something from his horse’s mane. Farajalla thought he was uneasy, and trying to conceal it.
“Up here?” she asked doubtfully. The wind twisted through the canyons with a low moaning sound. “The Hidden House is up here?”
“Not exactly,” Raigal answered. “Blood of the god, it will be good to see trees again.”
And that, Farajalla didn’t understand at all. She turned to Calesh for answers. He was already looking at her, but he shook his head. “Wait until you see. I don’t think I can do it justice with words.”
They dismounted to guide the horses down a steep slope, made treacherous by loose rocks that slid and rattled under their feet. Another many-channelled stream ran along the canyon floor, twisting from one wall to the other, so as the party moved on they had to ford it over and again. None of the men got back in the saddle. Farajalla noted that and stayed afoot herself, studying the ground ahead for anything out of the ordinary. She saw nothing.
“Here,” Baruch said. He turned his horses towards a gap in the cliff to his left. It was really little more than a crack, and the animals laid their ears back and stamped unhappily until Baruch stopped to stroke their noses and murmur softly into their ears. When they were calmer he went forward again, Raigal right behind him. Calesh touched Farajalla’s hand.
“It will be all right,” he said.
She smiled. “Of course it will. I am with you.”
With that she led her horse into the crack. Two steps in the pale spring sunshine vanished, leaving her in shade so deep it was almost twilight. She glanced back, past Calesh behind her, to the sliver of sun at the entrance.
Then that too was gone, as the passage twisted to the right and narrowed still further. The party moved in single file, edging forward past outcroppings of jagged rock. Above them the cliffs hung towards one another, touching in places to shut out even the dim glimmers of the day. A bird cried somewhere ahead, the screech of a hunting raptor, harsh and bitter. Farajalla felt her heart flutter. They filed beneath a great boulder caught between the narrowing walls of the chasm, so low that Farajalla had to stoop to pass through. The horses ducked under docilely enough, Raigal’s big mount almost on its knees. She thought that was odd.
On the far side her nose caught the scent of leaves and damp soil, which was very odd. Another turn, and suddenly the gorge opened out into a wide valley, and she stopped dead with her jaw hanging open.
She was standing at the edge of a forest. A track led away in front of her, vanishing into the gloom under trees packed tightly together, their feet lost in a riot of foliage. Low walls ran along both sides of the path, thick with the large blue flowers of hydrangeas, separating the track from the forest. Farajalla turned quickly to her right as movement caught her eye, and was just in time to see a young deer vanish into the undergrowth. Leaves swirled and stilled behind it. Somewhere ahead the bird cried again, and was silent.
“It isn’t possible,” she said, disbelieving. “I don’t… where are we?”
“On the trail that leads to the Hidden House,” Calesh said behind her. “It’s about a mile from here.”
“The Aiguille is full of little enclosed valleys like this,” Baruch began, and was interrupted at once.
“Not like this,” Raigal said. “The vale of the Hidden House is almost impossible to reach except by this gorge. The slope of these hills,” he gestured to either side, “is too steep. Virtually a cliff.”
“Even so,” Baruch glared at the big man, “even so, it isn’t so unusual to step from the dry rock of the Aiguille straight into a lush valley. And it helps the Hidden House stay out of sight.”
“It would,” Farajalla admitted. “But surely there’s always the risk that someone will wander by. Pure chance would seem to say that.”
“Why do you think the Hand bought those estates back in Verfeil?” Calesh asked. “If we’d been untrustworthy, we would never have been allowed through. Other farms block the approaches from north and south. We’re known,” he added when she gave him a quizzical look. “Two of those estates are run by men we served with in Tura d’Madai.”
“And it wouldn’t matter if they weren’t,” Raigal said. “We’ve been here before. The villagers would remember us.”
“Let’s hope the Lady does,” Baruch muttered. He twisted the reins in his hands. “She doesn’t like uninvited visitors.”
“We weren’t invited,” she pointed out.
“No,” Raigal said, which was not at all reassuring. “But we’re friends. The Lady knows that.”
“More than friends,” Calesh said. “We’re the last, best hope of the Duality. All the things Ailiss has dreamed of doing depend on us. Do you really think she’ll turn us away?”
“She might not know why you’ve come back,” Baruch said.
Calesh smiled gently. “Of course she knows. She knew where to find the Book of Breathing, didn’t she?”
Farajalla looked from the other two men to her husband. “The Book of Breathing?”
“I’ll tell you as we ride,” Calesh said.