Shiloh

by Helena Sorensen

  “Valour’s Glass!” Isolde said. “’Twas a gift from Omega.”

  “Yes,” Ezra replied. He would have said more, but Amos erupted.

  “You’ve given us no answers. What comfort is it ta tell us we’ll languish in the darkness ‘only until the day breaks?’ When does the day break? Where? How? The words mean nothin’!”

  “And what of Phebe?” Simeon added. “Have we any hope of findin’ ’er, of savin ’er?!”

  Ezra waited long to answer. Amos grew impatient and stormed from the room. Orin watched from a corner. Isolde stared at her lap. Simeon’s eyes held Ezra’s all the while. Beneath the radiant warmth of the immortals’ face, there was a sadness.

  “You see yourselves, I think, as very small. You look to me as though I hold infinite power and you hold none. Even now, you forget your glory, your gifts, your names.” He sighed and leaned forward in his chair. “Small gifts I can give you, and provisions for your journey, for I have sworn to help you. But even I cannot tell the path of escape from the Shadow. None of the immortals can. It is a path only the Children of the Morning can find, a path only Ram himself could devise.”

  Simeon slumped in his chair, resting his forehead in his hand as Ezra stood. “There is always hope, Simeon — hope for Phebe, for all of you. Others have found the way. The Shadow could not hold them.”

  Thirty-Five

  As Amos and Simeon loaded the horses’ bags with supplies, Ezra pulled Isolde aside.

  “Follow me,” he said, and motioned her toward a long corridor that ended in a flight of stone steps. The staircase bore back into the wall for some distance before taking a sharp left and climbing steeply upward. Ezra moved swiftly; Isolde had to hurry to keep him in view. Higher and higher they climbed through what seemed like endless stone passageways. Sometimes the stairs would rise for great distances in one direction. At other times, they wound in tight circles.

  Within half an hour, Isolde was exhausted. But just when it seemed her strength would fail her, she stepped out onto a landing at the peak of a craggy mountain. Two colossal towers jutted from the mountaintop. They were the highest points of the ancient watchtower, though their tops were broken and tumbled. Isolde’s first thought was to look up, to search the sky for some glimpse of the stars as the sons of Burke had done. But overhead was only Shadow.

  “Have you the glass?” Ezra asked.

  “Aye.” Isolde pulled the silver glass from her belt. “But it holds no magic anymore, Ezra. Not fer me, at least.”

  “For the daughter of Valour? The glass cannot be broken, Isolde, and it is yours by right. If it has failed you, it can only have been because the glass had nothing to show. Try it again. I brought you here, to the heights of the ancient watchtower, to give you the gift of sight.”

  Carefully, slowly, hardly daring to hope, Isolde lifted the glass to her eye. She winced and pulled back, then tried again, opening her eye gradually as she looked through the glass. Spread out before her was a world she had never seen, could not have imagined. What first caught her attention was the River Meander. The iron-black water shone a sparkling iridescent blue-green. Beyond the river, all the country bloomed with color: deep green leaves and rich brown soil, flowers of bright purple and blazing red and cheerful yellow. There was one thing in particular, though, that filled her with longing. It was the sky. Through the glass, Isolde could see no Shadow in the sky. No fog. No mist. It was clear and bright and wide open. She felt she could fly up into its liquid blue heights for a thousand years and never reach its end. And the sun was suspended in the midst of it: round and red and gold and unspeakably bright.

  When she could bear no more, when her eyes had drunk their fill, she lowered the glass and looked to Ezra. “What magic is this?”

  “Omega’s glass reveals the world behind the veil of darkness, the world stripped of Shadow.”

  “Did Valour . . . did my people . . . ever see Shiloh in this way?”

  “Valour saw only glimpses, and the glass was lost before ever she understood what she had seen.”

  “She died, then? Here, in the darkness?”

  “Yes.”

  “And will I share her fate?”

  “No, Isolde. I think not. But this glass and this gift are not for you alone. Your companions will need you in the days ahead. You go into deep darkness, blackness of darkness. More than ever, you cannot trust what your eyes may show you. Remember the glass.” With that, he disappeared down the staircase into the heart of the mountain.

  Horses and riders hastened along the stony floor of a narrow canyon, cutting a path to the eastern side of the Black Mountains. Isolde rode Echo, who tossed her mane and whinnied, glad to be moving again. Ahead of her, riding Brand, was Amos, his skin now clear and smooth. Simeon rode Willa at the head of the company. Orin was as yet too weak to travel, and Simeon hated to leave him behind. Were it not for Ezra’s gift, he could not have done it.

  “For you,” Ezra had said, handing Simeon a woman’s apron embroidered with the sign of the Star Clan. “It belonged to your mother. The Bright Immortals kept it when they drew you out of the River Meander, in memory of her.”

  Simeon had only stared back at Ezra, uncomprehending. But slowly, as if in a dream, scenes rushed before him: he saw Jada as she told him the true circumstances of his birth, saw the tiny blanket in Orin’s cottage, saw the man himself as he told of his wife’s drowning, saw the sign of the Star Clan tattooed on Orin’s back as he beat the flames on Caedmon’s tunic.

  Ezra had smiled as Simeon’s eyes grew large and his mouth fell open. “Son of Burke. Son of the Star Clan. Son of Orin.”

  Now, as he urged Willa around a rocky outcropping and through a narrow ravine, he savored the memory of his reunion with his father. Though nothing of substance would change about his relationship with Orin, Simeon felt somehow whole for the first time. And that knowledge gave him strength, even in so dark a place as this.

  A night and a day they traveled along the base of the canyon, dreading their first sight of the country that waited on the other side of the mountains. The sound of rushing water grew as they went.

  Too soon, the protective walls of the gorge began to sink, and the company was forced into the open. They led the horses up a steep embankment and surveyed their surroundings.

  The air was close and wet, and full of the roaring of the mighty river that rushed past, hurrying westward to feed the voracious appetites of Meander and Lost. Mist rose from the ground like steam from a pot. It wrapped the travelers in strange eddies and currents. Ahead, ghastly light from many blue lanterns illuminated the skeletal timbers of a bridge. They all sensed, in a way that made them tremble, that they had never known darkness before this day. “Blackness of darkness,” Ezra had called it.

  A shriek cut through the mist. “Aaaaagh! It hurts! It hurts my eyes! Throw it in the river!”

  They drew their daggers as a ghostly man appeared. He was thin as death and dressed in rags, and his eyes were wild and wide and fully white.

  “Put it out! Drown it in the river!” He scratched and clawed at Simeon as he screamed. He was reaching for the lantern, feeling for it. While Amos and Isolde stood by with weapons at the ready, Simeon gaped, unsure of what to do, baffled by the attack of a blind man who fought to destroy a light he could not see.

  Finally, Simeon blew into the lantern, extinguishing the light, and immediately the man was calm. He dropped his arms, turned, and, with a queer cock of his head, walked in the direction of the bridge.

  They followed the madman, for the river blocked their path, and the bridge appeared to offer the only safe crossing.

  A group of huts lay just beyond. Some were lighted with sickly blue fire, though what magic produced the light, none of them could tell. They heard the murmuring of many voices, the plodding of weary feet. Men and women, eyes white and unseeing, paced the well-worn paths that wound throu
gh the village. They wandered from hut to hut and back again or circled the huts unceasingly. They were filthy, and their clothes were threadbare, some hanging in shredded flaps from their bodies. And all of them were murmuring, whispering, muttering.

  A haggard man made laps around his hut. And while he walked, he spoke one phrase: “Down under the darkness.”

  An old woman whispered as she shuffled from rock to tree and back, “No road out o’ the Shadow, No road out o’ the Shadow, No road out o’ the Shadow . . .”

  More grotesque still were the children. A young boy rocked on his heels, back and forth, back and forth. A little fair-haired girl skipped blindly along a muddy path chanting, “Gone, gone away ta the Hall o’ Shadows, Gone, gone away ta the Hall o’ Shadows . . .”

  Isolde moved in closer, taking the torch from Amos’s hand. She saw it first on the shift of a woman who leaned against the wall of her hut. It was embroidered in the hem. Then it appeared in iron, hanging around the neck of a young man. Another of the villagers drew the sign in the mud with a stick, then smudged it out with a wild slash of his arm and drew it again. The sign of the Sun Clan.

  “No!” she cried, and covered her face with her hands. These were her people, the dying remnants of a mighty tribe. Here were the sons and daughters of the Sun Clan. At the height of their strength and boldness and vision, they’d been dismissed as mad, and the judgment had lain upon them for a thousand years. Now, in the Village of the Blue Lights, Isolde grieved to find that her people had indeed gone mad. But was it despair that drove them here or some dark curse? She reached out to touch the arm of the fair-haired girl who skipped along the path.

  “Child,” she said. But the girl pulled herself from Isolde’s grip and skipped away, resuming her chant.

  “What is this place?” Simeon whispered.

  Isolde fought the tears that rose to her eyes. She had clung to the hope that her people had found a way out. To learn of Valour’s death in the darkness was a cruel disappointment. To find the rest of the clan here, in this place, was unthinkable.

  “’Tis the final home o’ the Lost Clan, Simeon . . . my clan.”

  “Not all o’ them, perhaps,” he said. “Some may have continued on, may have finished the journey.”

  “Ta linger so long here . . .” Amos began, peering through the maze of huts. “Are they born this way? Born blind?”

  Isolde approached a woman who walked in slow circles, clutching a little baby in her arms. The child blinked empty white eyes and stared at nothing.

  “No more,” Isolde said. “No more o’ this.” She touched the silver glass in her belt and stiffened her resolve. “If the Shadow takes me, then so be it. I won’t stay here another moment.”

  They led the horses over the ghastly bridge, into a grove of trees on the south side of the river, leaving the Village of the Blue Lights and the Lost Clan behind them.

  Not so very far away, suspended from a tree in a globe of crystal, Phebe waited. Her fingers tapped weakly against the walls of her prison, and her mouth opened in a silent scream. Soon, her hands would be forever stilled, her cries forever silenced. Time was slipping away.

  Thirty-Six

  Night was falling, if that distinction could be made in this lair of perpetual night, and the mist had grown so thick that they halted not far into the trees on the other side of the river. They spread their blankets, ate from the stores of food Ezra had sent and fell into their own reveries.

  Amos rested his head on his right arm. On his left was a leather guard. A new quiver and bow lay on the ground just beside him. These had been his gifts from Ezra, and he was glad of them. He felt more like himself with a guard on his arm and a quiver and bow slung over his shoulder. As his aching muscles relaxed and he moved toward sleep, he mused on Ezra’s words.

  “Why have you come?” Ezra had asked.

  Amos had felt a sinking inside him, like quicksand. “Fer Phebe,” he had said.

  “Yes, for her. But there is more that you seek, Amos. What is it?”

  Amos had searched, digging deep, fearing the pain that would surely accompany the memories of his past. What was it he sought? What had driven him into the path of darkness? And what was drawing him out of it?

  “Amos, as a boy your father told you of Maeve’s dreams, of Evander’s quest, of the sons of Burke, of stars and sun, and a time before the Shadow fell. And you believed him?”

  “Aye.”

  “You are a true son of Evander, born with courage and strength, born to see beyond the darkness.” Ezra’s eyes had burned through Amos as he spoke. “When did you forget? When did your eyes cease to really see?”

  He had remembered Abner then, lying in his arms in the tangled undergrowth of the Whispering Wood, his lifeblood draining out on the ground. His chest had clenched tight within him, and he had felt he could not breathe for the pain.

  “Why him? Why did ’e have ta die?”

  Instead of answering the question, Ezra had asked another. “What did your father believe?”

  Amos remembered his father’s stories: of light and hope and a world beyond. But there was more. Amos thought back to the arguments he’d had with his father over going to the river or hunting in the forest alone. He’d always known that his father had been afraid — afraid for his family, afraid for himself. As much as he had spoken of light, as fiercely as he had clung to that hope, it was the Shadow that held sway over Abner.

  Ezra’s incandescent face had searched his, perhaps reading his thoughts.

  “And your mother? What did she believe?”

  Amos had remembered Wynn smoothing his hair and pinching his chin. He’d seen her sitting before the fire with the spindle, rocking and rocking. He had realized then, with a shock, that the memory brought no stabbing pain in his gut. Ezra’s water had been the death of the Nogworms, and the last of them, writhing in forgotten corners of his body, had gone.

  For the first time, it had come to Amos that his mother had believed herself helpless and vulnerable. When Abner had died, when Amos had failed to protect the flock from the cats, she had been certain of her doom, and she had given up.

  “And Phebe?”

  What his sister had endured during the years of his absence, Amos could not imagine. But he had recalled her lovely face on the night she was taken. He had heard her voice again, heard her plead with him to remember. And in return, he had snuffed out her last flicker of hope with careless fingers.

  “What can I do? How can I save ’er?” he had asked.

  “You were born with light, Amos, light that can pierce the Shadow. You have it still, dim though it has been these many years.”

  Ezra had smiled then, his eyes sparkling. “What do you believe?”

  There was a foul stench in the air when Amos woke to the sound of Brand’s stamping. He could hear Simeon’s and Isolde’s soft breathing next to him, but he could see nothing at all. The lantern was dark. He listened again, forcing himself to think past the reek that permeated the air. There was the sound of the horses’ snorting and stamping. The sound carried farther than he would have thought possible. An echo, perhaps? No. There were other animals stamping in the distance, pawing at the earth. He was sure of it. He could hear the sound of their breathing, of hot breath drawn in and out of many nostrils.

  “Sim, Isolde!” he hissed. They stirred and woke.

  “What is it?” Simeon asked.

  “We have ta get out, away from here. I fear fer the horses,” he whispered.

  Isolde was first to understand, first to move. Hastily, she stashed her blanket and climbed into Echo’s saddle.

  “The horses?” Simeon asked.

  “Aye,” Amos answered. “Hurry!”

  He grabbed a torch, kindling it with bright fire. Simeon lit the lantern. They rode, dodging the dark trees that crowded the path of escape. Behind them and beside them
the noises grew, as a black tidal wave rushed through the trees, close on their heels. Dark eyes reflected the firelight. Hoof-beats shook the ground. These were the Daegan. They stood taller than stallions, narrow-shouldered and thick-chested. Their coats were black, their manes short, and two spiraling horns jutted out from each head. The light glinted off the horns, their ends like daggers. And as they ran, as they closed in on their prey, they lowered their heads.

  The trees of the wood were closing ranks. “Faster!” Simeon shouted.

  There was an agonized scream from Brand, and Amos glanced down to see blood spilling from a gaping hole in the horse’s hindquarters as the monster’s horn was drawn out. Amos took an arrow from his quiver and shot it deep into the shoulder of the Daegan. The beast only reared up, tossing its great head and preparing for another attack.

  Amos cringed as he kicked Brand hard, urging the wounded animal onward. He thought he saw, up ahead, an opening in the trees. Brand surged forward as the Daegan’s hooves hit the ground, and they raced for the opening, just a swath of white in a maze of black trees.

  Another of the Daegan was closing in on Echo. The flashing black eyes and pointed teeth had come even with Echo’s flowing mane when Isolde jerked her leg up and kicked the animal in the face. The toe of her boot gouged the eye out of its socket and sent the creature off its course. But others were nearby, their heads lowered, their great, spiraling horns pointed at the horses.

  “We won’t make it, Amos. We can’t!” Simeon roared.

  But Amos’s face was fixed on the break in the darkness ahead. As they closed in on the gap, Amos saw that the light was not an opening in the trees, and his heart sank. They were lost.

  “It’s a tree!” Simeon shouted suddenly. “A white tree!”

  Wild hope rose in them. They pressed the horses, leaning forward, willing the animals to run faster. There was no time to plan, or even to think what they did. As they neared the white tree, its branches lowered, and one by one, Simeon, Amos, and Isolde leaped into the safety of the white bark and shimmering leaves.