Caerna'tha
Part One
1
"I dream of the
meadows, green-gold 'neath the sun, sweet with the dew of the morn ..."
The bell-toned voice
drew Abramm Kalladorne into the sunlight of the open meadow, a yellow
butterfly zigzagging ahead of him above a patch of purple lupine. He pressed
through the bloom-laden stalks into rippling grass, following the plucked
notes of a lirret and a voice as familiar as his own. She must be just beyond
that primrose at the meadow's far edge.
Children's laughter
echoed in counterpoint to her sweet voice, and his pace quickened. Ian would
be over two by now, walking well, maybe even talking in phrases and
sentences, while Simon would have left all his toddlerhood behind, a real
little boy at last. Then there was Maddie. Abramm ached for her so badly sometimes
he could hardly bear it. Now finally, that was behind him. All the worrying
about threading the high passes before winter closed them had been for
naught. In a moment he would step around that bush and there she'd be, her
gray-blue eyes widening with surprise at the sight of him an instant before
she'd cast her lirret aside and fling herself into his—
His foot slipped, and he
lurched to regain his balance, gripping his walking staff hard as he drove it
into the snow. The misstep jolted his entire body as the vision winked out
and the dark, icy reality of the blizzard-swept heights filled his senses
again. She wasn't here. His boys weren't here. There was no meadow. The
passes were not behind him, and winter was very definitely closing in....
Realization slammed him
so hard he reeled to a stop, struggling to breathe as he felt again the cold
and the exhaustion and the misery. Wind screamed around him, pelting his
heavy woolen cloak with slivers of snow and flapping its snow-caked hem about
his legs. For a moment the desire to give up was so strong he nearly
collapsed.
But
he couldn't. Maddie was waiting for him. His boys needed him. And so he drew
a deep breath and reached up to dash away the ice that continually froze onto
his beard and mustache. Chunks of it clung also to the long hair dangling
beside his face, some of them rasping against the inside edge of his cowl,
others frozen to his beard. He no longer felt his feet, and his fingers, numb
beneath a double layer of glove and mitten, could hardly grip his walking
staff.
He squinted down the
rocky hill to where a shin-deep trough of footprints angled across the slope
through the rapidly accumulating snow. At the end of his pocket of
visibility, the last of his companions were starting down the next switchback,
obscured by the shifting veils of snow. Shuddering, he started after them,
placing steps and stick carefully to avoid any more almost-falls.
Neither he nor anyone
else in his party had any real idea where they were going, only that having
come through the Kolki
Pass they must descend
the barren slopes beyond to an ancient Terstan monastery just below the tree
line. "The way will be
obvious," the men back at Highmount Holding had assured
them. Maybe it would be if clouds hadn't swallowed the world and driving snow
hadn't made it hard to open one's eyes and the rock cairns that were supposed to be their
guides weren't fast disappearing beneath the drifting snow.
It was typical, though,
of the bad luck that had plagued them since leaving Kiriath, transforming
what should have been a three-week journey through the pass into a six-week
trial of endurance. They'd run out of food two days ago and burned the last
of their dung-pats in last night's fire. Water had been in short supply for
over a week, and they had an old man, a pregnant woman, and a number of
children with them. Thinking they'd be in Caerna'tha tonight, they'd left
much of their bedding and tents with the wagon when it had irreparably broken
down in the pass that morning. Now, with the day three-quarters gone, and the
tree line still who knew how far below them, their situation was growing
desperate.
For not the first time
he sent up a prayer for guidance and protection.
Thus, when the trail rounded
a rocky slope to emerge onto a promontory overlooked by a small trailside
hut, he should have been elated. His traveling companions certainly were.
Many were already picking their way up the steep, narrow stair to the doorway
where two men worked to string up a blanket.
At the base of the stair
in the slope's lee, the big, blond former blacksmith, Rolland Kemp, lifted
the pack frame off their one remaining horse. "Ah, Alaric!" he said
as Abramm drew up beside him. "I thought maybe we'd lost ye." The
wind was lessened there in the slope's lee, but it still made conversation
difficult. Rolland tossed the frame onto the ground, then bent to dig through
one of the discarded saddlebags. He pulled out a near-empty grain bag and
offered the remainder of its contents to the horse. Snow mounded on his
shoulders and clung in balls to the fur-lined rim of his hood.
Rolland had become
something of a friend on this journey. As the strongest of the men, he and
Abramm were most often called upon to search for the lost, unstick the wagon,
or carry extra loads—and the shared experience and responsibility had bound
them together. Besides, Rolland had an easy temperament, a level head, and a
strong sense of loyalty. He was a good man, and a good husband and father. If
Abramm couldn't have Trap here with him, he thought Rolland might be the next
best thing.
Now Abramm turned to
stare over the promontory into the stormy whiteness, relieved they had a
place to escape the cold, but uneasy nonetheless. Caerna'tha was supposed to
have been but a few hours' hike once they'd left the pass. Wind gusted
against his side, ice crystals stinging his cheekbones and making his eyes
water as he searched for some sign of the monastery's presence: the glint of
a window, the straight line of a wall, even the dark bulk of a mountainside.
But swirling white obliterated all beyond the small promontory on which they
stood.
"See
anything?" Rolland shouted from the other side of the horse.
Abramm shook his head.
"It could be right there, for all we know."
"An' we could
blunder off the trail and get hopelessly lost b'fore we found it,"
Rolland said. As with every other man in the party, ice clotted his blond
beard and brows, framing a small patch of wind-burned cheekbones beneath
deep-set blue eyes. "Ye wanna help me get Pearl here up that stair now?" He
slapped the mare's flank, dislodging a mass of accumulated snow.
Abramm glanced back at
the hut where the last of the women and children disappeared through the
blanketed doorway. His uneasiness remained, but he could think of no reason
why it should—other than the fact he was hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and
deeply disappointed they'd not reach Caerna'tha after all. He was sick to
death of snow and cold and wind and, truth be told, these people and their
endless needs. If only he could—
His breath caught and he
froze, listening hard. "Did you hear that?"
Rolland regarded him
blankly.
"Sounded like
someone screaming." But he heard nothing more and clearly Rolland had
not noticed it. Probably the wind. Or maybe another hallucination.
Though all the other
huts on their journey through the pass had had linked to them a shelter for
the animals, this one did not. Since the mare refused to climb the
ice-slicked front stair, Abramm suggested they take her back up the trail and
try leading her across the slope on a level closer to where the hut sat. But
they could get her to go only a little way off the trail before she refused
to go another step. Finally they had no choice but to tether her to a pile of
rocks back at the foot of the front stair.
"I hate leaving her
out here," Rolland said, and Abramm marveled, not for the first time,
that a man as big and strong and fearsome looking as Rolland Kemp could be so
tenderhearted. He clapped his friend's beefy shoulder. "She'll be all
right, Rollie. She's weathered worse up in the pass."
"I suppose
..." Rolland shook out his own blanket and laid it over the mare as
Abramm started up the stairway.
Fatigue was closing in
hard on him by the time he gained the top of the slippery steps. He was
reaching to push aside the blanket when again he heard the distant scream.
Skin crawling, he cast back his cowl. But the sound did not repeat; instead
he heard voices arguing inside the hut.
"Well, if yer
friend Alaric hadn't insisted on stoppin' early yesterday, we'd have gone on
and found the right place t' camp." That was Oakes Trinley, former
tanner and city alderman, and the group's self-appointed leader since long
before Abramm had met them. "An' if we'd camped in the right
place—"
"He didn't
insist!" a female voice interrupted him. "You all agreed it was a
good idea, so don't go blaming Alaric for what was your decision." Marta
Brackleford, the widowed sister of Trinley's wife, Kitrenna, was one of the
few who had no compunctions about speaking her mind to him. Once married to a
banker, and proprietor of her father's printing business, she'd been an
independent woman all her adult life. She'd also taken an unveiled interest
in Abramm, which made him as uneasy as it warmed his heart.
Trinley, on the other
hand, had disliked him from the moment he'd joined the group at Highmount.
Now, as the former
alderman started to reply, Abramm forcefully stomped the snow from his boots,
cutting him off. Pushing aside the blanket, Abramm stepped into the close,
warm air of the dimly lit chamber beyond.
People sat or curled on
the floor between piles of salvaged bedding and gear. A rope net full of
murky kelistars hung from the ceiling timber. Others gleamed here and there
throughout the company—most of them warmstars—while in the shadows at the
back, old Totten Ashvelt picked his way through a rubble of fallen stones,
filling the many chinks in the wall with dried grass from the floor. The
three mothers in the group wrapped their crying children into blankets,
promising they'd have all the food they wanted tomorrow when they reached the
monastery.
For now only snow filled
the kettle on the cooking tripod, heated by a fire ring heaped with
warmstars. Trinley stood near the doorway, a stocky, broad-shouldered man in
an ice-caked leather greatcoat. Marta faced him from the far side of the ring
of warmstars, her dark eyes flicking to Abramm as he entered. A blush
deepened the pink of her wind-burned cheeks.
Trinley turned to glare
at him, but Abramm made no mention of the recently terminated conversation,
shrugging out of his rucksack as he informed them of the situation with the
mare.
"And Rollie?"
Mrs. Kemp inquired from Marta's side. "He's not going to stay down there
with the beast all night, is he?"
Abramm smiled. The woman
knew her husband well. "He'll be up shortly, ma'am."
She seemed content with
that, but Marta gave Trinley a look of alarm.
"We're not below
the tree line yet, Marta," the alderman said before she could speak.
Abramm had no idea what that
was about and was too tired and discouraged to care. He picked his way
through the clutter of people and belongings to a clear spot on the other
side of the warmstar ring and settled tailor style before it. As he stripped
off his ice-crusted mittens, Marta said quietly, "They told us
specifically not to stop after we left the pass. To go straight to
Caerna'tha."
"And in good
weather that would have been fine," Trinley retorted. "But it's not
good weather, and anyway, if Caerna'tha was an easy walk away, why would
anyone build this hut? Besides, if the wolves are rhu'ema spawn like they
said, they won't be out in this storm anyway. The horse will be fine. Stop
worrying."
Wolves ... rhu'ema
spawn ...
Abramm stuffed the wet mittens into his rucksack and conjured his own
warmstar to hold directly against his palms, thinking he should know what
they were talking about but unable to make his mind focus on it. Instead, it
wandered off into an exhausted haze that involved another reunion scenario
with Maddie and the boys....
The painful tingle of
his hands returning to life brought him back to the moment. A sense of being
watched and mocked swept over him. Probably with his head bent like this, the
others felt freer to stare at him and exchange whispers. They'd all die now,
and it would be his fault.
Not my fault. I
wanted to move on.
"But you didn't
move on, did you? And now you are stuck."
He wasn't sure who had
said that. Were they speaking aloud? Why did everything sound so far away? He
wanted to look around, but he couldn't seem to lift his head.
"Stuck." Two voices taunted him in
unison: "You didn't think you
could escape us, did you, loser?"
And suddenly he knew who
they were. Rhu'ema had dogged him on the journey through the pass, knowing
exactly who he was, even if the people he traveled with did not. They'd
delighted in harassing him with a stream of subverbal insults and threats.
He'd spent many nights maintaining the Lightshield he'd routinely conjured to
protect everyone—a duty few of them knew he carried out.
Knowing they'd be forced
to ground once the storm hit, the rhu'ema had come ahead to wait for him. And
not just to wait ...
He sensed other minds
through theirs—dark, savage minds, full of bloodlust. Human, yet not human at
all, feeling the wind and the snow as they ran toward the feast that awaited
them in the heights....
"NO!" The
shout burst from him as he surged to his feet, drawing the startled gazes of
those around him. The room whirled briefly as he stared back, struggling to
understand what had just happened. He'd stood up too fast for one thing.
"Sit down,
Alaric," Trinley growled. "Ye were only dreamin'."
Dreaming? He glanced
around at the rough stone walls bathed with the warmstars' orange glow, and
at the back of the chamber he found two other lights—one purple, one
green—pressed into the cracks between the stone and the slate roof, hiding
from him, even as they laughed at him. For they knew as well as he did that
the discovery was not one he could share.
Trinley laid a hand on
Abramm's shoulder, giving him a little shake. "Relax, man. We're safe
for now."
But were they? Were
those other minds he'd touched nothing but dream creatures? His disquiet
intensified.
One of the children
began to cry. Then Rolland shoved aside the blanket and stepped inside, a
giant in the cramped quarters. He shoved back his ice-crusted hood and looked
about at them, his expression tense. "I think I just heard wolves,"
he announced.
Abramm's heart stopped.
"Light's grace!" he muttered. "That's what I sensed!" He
looked around at the people staring up at him. "This is a trap," he
cried loudly. "It's probably not even a real hut."
Trinley shook him again,
harder. "Stop it, now! That's enough of yer nightmares."
Abramm turned sharply,
knocking the other man's grip loose with his forearm and forcing him back a
step. "It wasn't a
nightmare!"
Trinley gaped at him,
his long gray hair straggling over the cast-back fleece-lined hood.
"There are rhu'ema
here," Abramm said, scanning the back wall. "Ells. They've worked
some sort of spell." An errant draft from the back chilled his face.
In the corner the baby
whose crying had been temporarily silenced by Rolland's entrance started up
again, while the adults muttered one to another.
Trinley stepped close to
Abramm again. "What the plague is wrong with ye, man?" he growled.
"Are ye tryin' to set us all apanic?"
"Of course
not!"
When Abramm didn't back
down, Trinley turned to scowl at the shadows in the drafty rear of the hut.
The others followed his lead, twisting round in a rustling of fabric and
leather. For a moment the babe cried and the wind shrieked and the rope-slung
kelistars rocked gently back and forth in the draft.
Then someone grunted
dismissively. "It looks fine to me."
More voices echoed him,
and Trinley nodded. "Ye've done a lot for us, Alaric, but ye know ye've
been hallucinatin' for days."
"I'm not
hallucinating," Abramm said. "If we stay here, we'll die."
Trinley's grizzled brows
drew downward. "We can't go blundering out into that storm again. If ye
fear t' stay with us, leave. No one'll stop ye. But I'll cock ye on the head
m'self if ye don't stop this wild talk."
Abramm quelled a flare
of irritation, wondering what would happen if he did leave. Which of the two
of them would the others follow? He snorted inwardly. As if there was any
doubt. Besides, he knew he wouldn't be able to abandon the children, and
anyway, Trinley was right as far as he understood things.
My Lord Eidon ... they
won't follow if they don't believe me. But how can I persuade them to believe
me if they can't see the truth? Open their eyes....
More children started to
cry, frightened by his mention of the ells. Their mothers assured them there
were no ells, and shot angry glances at Abramm while the men glowered at him.
Across the ring of warmstars, though, the widowed Marta Brackleford spoke
softly to her sister. "Surely if this hut was a safe place, the
Highmounters would have mentioned it."
"So d' you see these ells o' his,
then?" Kitrenna Trinley asked her sourly. She brushed a wet strand of
gray hair from her wind-reddened face and glanced at the rafters.
"No," Marta
admitted, looking up, as well. "But I sense something here. A crawling
up the back of my neck, as if unfriendly eyes are watching us."
Kitrenna huffed.
"Stop it, Marti! Ye'll just encourage him."
"What if he's
right?"
"What are the ells
goin' t' do t' us, anyway?" Kitrenna demanded.
"Hold us until the
wolves get here," Abramm answered grimly.
Kitrenna looked up at
him. "We don't even know there are
any wolves."
"Rolland heard
them—and so did I, earlier."
"Rhu'ema spawn
can't travel through falling snow," Oakes Trinley pointed out.
"I don't think
they're rhu'ema spawn," Abramm said. "I think they're something
else."
"And how would ye
know that?" Kitrenna sniffed disdainfully and turned back to her sister.
"He just wants to get t' the monastery as fast as he can so he can lose
the rest of us and strike out fer Trakas on his own. Ye heard him the other night—he
doesn't care a pin what happens t' us."
The accusation stung
precisely because of its element of truth.
"Indeed!?" the ells sniggered. "You can hardly wait to leave them
behind."
Abramm ignored them and
kept his focus on the issue at hand. "How is it you even saw this
place?" he asked of Trinley. "Given how far it sits above the
trail, hidden by all the snow ... I'd think we'd all have walked right past
it. What drew your eye?"
"What the plague
difference does that make?" the stocky alderman snapped. "I
happened t' notice it. Ye're not the only one with sharp eyes in this group,
ye know." With a snort of disgust he raised his voice and assured
everyone they'd be safe here for the night and better able because of it to
tackle the forest in the morning.
Abramm glanced back at
the two rhu'ema, smug and malevolent in the shadows.
"Ye know, ells
bein' here would explain poor Pearl's
refusal t' come up here," Rolland mused from where he stood before the
blanketed doorway.
As Abramm turned to him,
the icy draft from the chamber's rear washed around him again, and with it
came inspiration. Wordlessly he wheeled and picked his way across the crowded
floor to the back wall. There he bloomed a kelistar into the darkness, making
it hard enough he could hold it in one hand while he fingered the wall with
the other.
Furious now, the rhu'ema
crammed themselves back into their crevices. He touched the cold stone, the
rough bristles of grass, then the faint, hair-lifting vibration of the spell.
A rush of threats, alternatives, and condemnation flooded his mind from the
panicked ells. He ignored it, seeking the Light....
It flared from the
shield on his chest and down his arm into the stone veneer of the illusion,
shredding it to streamers of mist. A hole big enough to fit two horses
through gaped in a wall riddled with holes, many of which had already been
chinked with blowing snow or grass. More snow piled up on the threshold as
flakes held back by the illusion fluttered through the opening.
At Abramm's back, people
gasped and a woman cried, "There's nothing there."
Other exclamations
followed the first, the pitch of the voices escalating until in moments
Trinley's feared panic was upon them. People raced about, jabbering, grabbing
this or that without heed. One woman snatched up her baby and hurried for the
doorway without cloak or blanket.
Abramm caught her arm as
she went by him and shouted, "Enough! Stop this NOW!" The old
kingly imperiousness rang in his voice, and the command produced an immediate
and startling effect. Everyone froze and turned toward him. Only the children
continued to cry.
"We must go,"
he said firmly. "And we must hurry. But we must do so in a sensible
manner. Eidon has brought us to this point, and he knew we would take this
detour."
"Aye, an' now we
must pay fer our foolishness," old Totten Ashvelt said fiercely, glaring
at Trinley.
"How will we find
our way in the dark?" demanded Kitrenna.
Abramm reminded them
they had at least an hour of light left.
"Will you lead us,
then, Alaric?" This was from young Galen Gault, Trinley's newly wed
nephew. "We all know you see better in the dark than anyone."
"Aye," Trinley
said sourly. "Please. Lead us. 'Tis what ye've wanted from the start,
isn't it?"
Abramm opened his mouth
to deny it, then realized this, too, was a distraction. What's more, he knew
it didn't originate with Trinley but with the two glowing forms at the back
of the hut. Thus, he gave Trinley a quick nod and set about directing their
preparation to leave. Soon, with Pearl
repacked and rucksacks redonned, Abramm led them down the trail from the
promontory, Rolland on his heels and Trinley bringing up the rear.
The track widened
swiftly, and soon the twisted trunks and snow-laden branches of stunted
evergreens sprang up along its downward side, further defining the trail,
even in the driving snow and gathering gloom. If the wind howled at their
backs, it also swept their path relatively clean of snow.
The trees grew in size
and number as they descended, the wind lessening, as well. The wolves howled
again, and Abramm stopped, tossing his hood back to listen as Rolland,
immediately behind him, did likewise. A second scream answered the first,
followed by a chorus of strange, sharp squeals, undeniably closer than they'd
been before.
"Are those the
wolves, Mama?" a small voice asked as the wind lulled.
"Shh, poppet,"
said the child's mother, Rolland's wife, standing behind her husband.
"Are they coming to
eat us?"
"No, son,"
Rolland said. "Now, hush!"
"They're still down
in the valley, where the deep drifts will hamper them," Abramm assured
them. "We'll reach Caerna'tha long before they get here."
But a dry voice in his
head grimly reminded him that the men at Highmount had said these wolves were
like no others. Huge, agile, able to leap twenty feet at a bound, they were
not real wolves at all, in fact. But something worse.
We'll make it, he assured himself. Eidon will see to it. The wolves
screamed again, as if to contest that view, and he quickened his pace.
The snow had been
knee-deep for some time when Rolland moved to take over breaking the trail.
Stepping aside, Abramm stood gasping back his breath as the others slogged
past him, heads down against the storm. With no faces to look at, his eye
caught on the lights that glowed in the surrounding tree trunks. Green, blue,
red, and gold glimmered from the cracks in the trees' platelike bark—always
on the side away from the wind, as if taking refuge from the storm.
"You're not
going to get away, you know."
He frowned, realizing
that again he was hearing their voices, and irritated he should be able to.
"We've been
waiting for you. They've been waiting for you. Especially for you, O great
slayer of shadowspawn."
As if on cue, another
ululation wailed on the storm winds, closer than ever.
Now Oakes Trinley
approached him, trudging at the end of the line, face turned downward like
the rest. Only as he came even did he glance up. "Still think we'll make
it before dark, Alaric?"
Abramm let him pass
without comment. Before long Rolland surrendered the trail-breaking job to
Galen, who eventually gave it off to Cedric Ashvelt, and on down the line as
the light continued to fail and the wolves' cries drew ever nearer.
Finally, the party
rounded a hill and the clouds parted to reveal a wide valley whitened with
snowfall and cut through by a dark stream. Out of the near bank rose a great
bulk of stone walls and peak-roofed turrets, levels upon levels stairstepping
up the jagged outcropping on which it had been built and surrounded by a
high, crenellated outer wall. In the dimming light, it stood dismayingly
dark, its great mass lit by a mere handful of tiny lights.
A deep ravine spilled
riverward out of the draw to their right, their trail running along its near
side and finally crossing over it by means of a snow-cloaked stone bridge.
Abramm took back the
lead and they switchbacked down a forested slope to the lip of the ravine,
then headed back out toward the valley. The wolves felt so close now, Abramm
feared his little group wouldn't even break into the open before they were
attacked. He urged them repeatedly to hurry, to pick up the children and
guard the mare, but they were all too muzzy with fatigue to obey him for
longer than a few steps.
As they neared the
forest's edge, Abramm rejoiced to see two men tramping through the snow
beyond the trees. A thicket of spruce momentarily obscured them, and when
Abramm emerged into the open, no one was there. He thought he was
hallucinating again until he saw the trail that had been stamped through the
snow, paralleling the ravine to the bridge and over it, then up to the
monastery, looming on the far side. But where were the men who made it?
The others found the
track and burst into excited chatter. Abramm quelled it sharply. "We
have no time to dawdle. Our enemies are close."
Trinley took over the
lead, and Abramm dropped back to protect the rear. Implicitly reassuming
command now that the end was in sight, the alderman called for the lanterns
to be broken out and kelistars placed in them. Though Abramm chafed with impatience
at the delay, he did not object. The kelistars might have a warding effect,
and he feared they'd need all the help they could get.
Finally they were
hurrying along again, the wind pressing them up the trail as it pelted their
backs with snow. Just as Abramm dared believe they might reach the monastery
in time, the wolves burst into loud, triumphant song, sounding as if they
were coming up the ravine even now.
Their howls spurred his
people to panic, and they ran all out for the dubious safety of the bridge.
Excerpted
from:
Return of the Guardian-King
(Legends of the Guardian-King #4)
by Karen Hancock
Copyright © 2007; ISBN 9780764227974
Published by Bethany House Publishers
Used by permission. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
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