The Unchosen: Book One of The Queen Beyond

by Simon Markusson

  “She likes ye, ye know,” Ryferuv said, somehow seeming to know Molgrimin’s mind. “As much as ye like her. More, maybe, seeing how ye are acting.” Molgrimin looked up at that and met his friend’s golden gaze silently, but Ryferuv was undaunted. “Ye should go talk to her, Molgrimin.” The man knew how to take Molgrimin’s pulse, and he softened his tone. “Soon as this damn hunt is over, if ye ask me. Ye know ye want to. Bloody hells, ye should be bringing her out here, not us.”

  Molgrimin had thought of that. Taking her here where he was most in a gentle state. Most himself. But every time, he had cursed himself for a fool. “She wouldn’t like it,” he said quietly.

  “She would,” Ryferuv assured him, and he tossed away a twig he’d been cracking. “Damn me if she wouldn’t. She’d bloody be arms deep in gutting a deer to have yer attention. I’ve seen the way she looks at ye. Ye just...ye just don’t like yerself enough to realize it.”

  Molgrimin didn’t answer, but in his head, he reluctantly changed his judgment: Ryferuv was the wiser of them.

  They passed down a rocky slope as they continued, and for a while, they nurtured a silence that allowed Molgrimin to struggle with his indecision. Indecision as to whether he should leave on the morrow and ride as fast as his heart soulfully desired to reach Kast-Harnax and embrace Ingathain with all the tenderness he felt for her. Even thinking of it — thinking of what his dreams so often held — made his heart beat harder and with such a sweet and yearning ache that it robbed his breath. Aye, I shall leave. I must.

  Suddenly, the tranquility of the forest was not so soothing anymore, and he wondered how he could have endured spending so much time here, away from her. I must see her. They passed cliffs and dense thickets of pines on scraggy hills, but Molgrimin no longer saw much of the beauty around them for the longing that grew in his heart.

  They only sighted Hy a few times, when they stepped over fallen trees and through brown and copper-colored clearings that opened up in the woodland to let their view stretch, but it didn’t worry them. They might lose Hy sometimes, but the dog never lost the hunters. He always returned if his tracking yielded nothing. It was getting late, though.

  “Too little game around,” Ryferuv complained. “I say we try to the west more.”

  “That’s if ye want deer,” Arjomag claimed, holding to know these lands best.

  “A stag would look as pretty on my wall,” Ryferuv said. “Much more hunting here, and they’ll stay bare. And I’ll be dead to mosquitoes.” The moinguir waved after the pests. “Maybe we should call this a day and try elsewhere tomorrow.”

  Not I, Molgrimin thought, having come to a decision. It felt good, that thought. It felt damn good. He could not understand why he hadn’t decided upon it earlier. The image of Ingathain shone in his mind, the thought of her smile. What am I doing in this bloody forest? Gods, what if she thought him uninterested... And what should she think, when ye flee to the woods every chance ye get?

  “Perhaps we should try the stream,” Kartyvas said. “It was long since we had some fish.”

  Ryferuv grimaced at the suggestion. “Too damn many mosquitoes there. I’ll bloody eat the dog if he brings another hare, though.”

  “He’ll find something,” Arjomag uttered quietly, as if he’d had a premonition. The burly, brown-haired moinguir was a mighty good hunter. It was his bread and butter, and Molgrimin knew that Arjomag understood it in ways he did not yet himself. Or ever would. He had gone silent and intent now, as if expecting something to appear at any moment.

  “Maybe ye should be out there sniffing along with him,” Molgrimin suggested.

  “It’d be for the company in such case,” the moinguir retorted.

  “Look there!” Kartyvas called suddenly, and he pointed to their side — past the clearing and past a curtain of tall, reddish pines. “An eagle, is it?”

  The bird was a shadow, flying above the treetops while the blushing sun sank among them.

  “What is that in its talons?”

  They soon saw it clearly: a long, slithering shape struggling feebly against the raptor, coiling and then falling down again.

  “A snake,” Arjomag said, and then he spat. “Worse omen.”

  They stopped to watch the bird pass, and Molgrimin could not help but shiver as it flew over them and then turned northwest. Just a bird, he thought firmly, knowing better than to trust to superstition.

  Hy’s sudden barks reached them, cutting through the silence. Wildly, the dog called, and farther away than they had thought. “Quickly now!” Ryferuv urged, and they ran in the direction of the sounds, hurrying through spruces and junipers that attacked them with their needles and jumping over mossy lumps and logs in their haste.

  When they passed a ruined anthill, Arjomag cursed. “I don’t think we’ve got a moose on our hands.” They climbed a last, cumbersome slope, and from its sparsely wooded crest, they all immediately saw that the man was right. In the clearing below, some two hundred yards beyond the crowding vegetation, Hy was barking at a bear. A big one with fur of a dark brown color bordering on black. It lumbered a few steps now and then, but whenever it tried to leave, the dog would run in and bark loudly, making the beast sit down on its rump.

  “A bear,” Ryferuv observed very keenly. “Look at the size of it!”

  It was a large animal, especially when placed next to the dog, looming over the canine like a silent rock. It didn’t seem to be aggressive towards Hy, though, displaying something more akin to puzzlement.

  Kartyvas looked uncertain when he turned to Molgrimin. “Do we kill it?”

  Molgrimin hated that, how the man was asking him about this animal as if it were something special, as if it would need to be he who decided this. He only had a temper. A bloody bad temper. “Aye,” he said coldly. “We kill it.”

  “Then let’s go,” Ryferuv said impatiently, though it didn’t seem as if the bear were leaving anytime soon.

  “I think,” Arjomag put forth, stopping his friend with a hand on his shoulder, “I think, perhaps, this is Molgrimin’s game.”

  He too, Molgrimin thought glumly even as Ryferuv silently agreed. Very well. He wouldn’t wait, and he readied his rifle as he made his way down the hill, leaving the others behind without a word. He’d need to make the last approach more stealthily.

  Molgrimin lost sight of Hy and the bear when he stepped in among the trees, but he did not lose the dog’s guiding barks. Treading slowly through the brush, he made little sound even among the twigs that lay strewn over the ground and the branches that tried to scratch against his clothes. The wind was weak, and whenever it blew, it blew against him. That was good: his scent would not run ahead.

  The last stretch he crawled very silently, very carefully, and not even someone listening for him would’ve caught a sound. Soon, he saw his prey past the parting trees, the dog still barking before it. The bear’s flank was turned to him; he could pick a good shot. He managed to crawl up really close without the bear noticing him. It was big, but it was certainly no cave bear, even though it appeared heavier than what he had seen before of its kind.

  He stopped when he was perhaps just some thirty yards away from the beast, a proximity that would give him the shot. He planted his elbows and steadied the rifle, taking aim where the heart of the beast would be. Hy was still barking loudly.

  Perhaps Molgrimin happened to make some unintended sound, perhaps a breeze changed direction and betrayed him, he didn’t know. But for some reason, the bear turned its head and looked at him. His heart pounded as those dark eyes regarded him silently, but the bear did not attack or flee. Or even move. It sat still and watched him, the barking dog forgotten.

  Molgrimin blinked, blood thumping in his ears while he considered the trigger under that empty gaze. His finger trembled. He changed his aim and put a bullet in the beast’s skull. Hy jumped at the falling animal at once.

  The night was as dark as it would get when the hunting party returned to the burrow with the new fur, thoug
h that didn’t mean they couldn’t see. The late-summer nights were quite bright here, and the chilly blue gloom that surrounded them wouldn’t deepen further. The others commended the fur, as they had done for most of the trek back, and Ryferuv advised him to bring out the salt soon as they got inside. Molgrimin only felt an odd disquiet and little interest. His friends didn’t see it, though they saw the low burrow that rose above its pouring rivulet, the grass upon its height stirring in the winds like the hairs of some sleeping creature.

  “Ah, bloody time to be eating!” Ryferuv exclaimed cheerily. “Some porridge and a big fat bit of butter.”

  “Look, there seems to be someone here,” Kartyvas whispered, nodding at the trees. Three hunters were approaching with rifles hanging around their shoulders and some pheasants hanging at their belts.

  “I know them,” said Arjomag. “They have a burrow to the north of here.”

  “Hail, friends!” one of the newcomers greeted them. “We heard there were more people down here, and I almost suspected that one of them ought to be Arjomag.”

  “Aye, and hail to ye as well, Gravjayg,” Arjomag returned with a nod. “I see ye’ve had a good hunt.”

  “Aye, we have,” Gravjayg answered happily, patting the pheasants that he carried. “We thought perhaps we’d be welcome to share these with ye.”

  “You’d be most welcome,” Ryferuv eagerly assured them. “Far better than porridge, that.”

  “That is a fine fur ye got there,” another of the hunters noted with appreciation. “Bear, eh. It was some time since I saw one here. Who felled it?”

  “Heh,” Arjomag chortled, nodding to Molgrimin. “Ye have the honor to stand before Molgrimin Goldenfury.”

  That seemed to give rise to some wonder. “A Goldenfury, aye?” Gravjayg frowned. “Shouldn’t ye be at yer kinsman’s wedding, friend?”

  Now it was Molgrimin who frowned. “A wedding? There is not to be any wedding that I know of.”

  “But there is one,” another hunter insisted. “King Mauroc’s son is marrying a Stonehall girl. Aye, Ingathain is her name. Quite a beauty.”

  “Ye misunderstand, friends. Molgrimin is King Mauroc’s son, and he’ll marry the lass two years from now,” Ryferuv said to clear the confusion.

  The three hunters looked at each other. “Nay,” Gravjayg said slowly. “The son was Harkalan Goldenfury. We come just from Kast-Harnax, and the preparations were already fully underway. They engaged very suddenly, and the wedding will be in two days. There is no mistake on our part.”

  Molgrimin’s friends shouted down each other to compete with protests and corrections, saying that surely, it was not so, Ingathain was betrothed to Molgrimin, the oldest son. They must have confused things. But Molgrimin hardly heard them. He knew that what the three hunters said was true. Somehow, he knew.

  He dropped the fur he carried. Perhaps the others saw something in his face or in his stillness of motion, but they swarmed around him, worry large on their faces as they told him to stop, to come inside, to not do anything hasty. But things had changed now. Something within Molgrimin stirred. It opened its eyes for the first time, and the peace of the forest was torn asunder.

  He threw Ryferuv aside with a roar when the moinguir planted himself in his way, and then all fled before his glare. He spared but a moment to look at them, but their faces seemed to hold nothing but pale and wide-eyed apprehension now. He turned and ran to his mount, Meriehse, where she grazed with the other yilval — and he cared not for a saddle when he leaped upon her strong back. “Kast-Harnax, Meriehse,” he growled in her ear. “Home.”

  The golden steed had run, swiftly leaving his pleading friends behind.

  Tears were in Molgrimin’s eyes as he lay there in the room at The Good Pie, in exile and desolation. Damn you, Thalduywan, he cursed feebly in his mind, and yet there was a deeper thought running through him that refused to be silent. The bear does not answer to the runes, it said. The blood is on my hands.

  Molgrimin just lay there, unmoving, waiting for the nightmares that would continue to haunt him.

  The blood is on my hands.

  16

  Whispers from the Past

  Alwarul searched even in his dreams, but there, the search was different. A search already made, leading him yet again. He sought the source. He looked upon himself from the outside, an observer who felt the need of the puppet. Darkness swam over his vision like smoke and mist.

  He was on that cold isle again, the waves of the sea roaring against the cliffs and the gray shorelines of sand and rock. Cloaked and hooded, he passed through the fog that swept in along with the waves. Upwards, he went, climbing over a craggy land filled with slippery stones and puddles while the winds lashed in sudden gusts around him, cold and foreboding as the endless roiling of the sea. Yet when he watched himself braving those treacherous grounds, hood held against the bitter hales, he also saw another. She passed like a specter only a few steps behind him, heedless of the winds and the treachery of the stones. But there was a grim cast to her posture, and he was filled with cold when he watched her. She was clad in black, as if she were in mourning, and a subtle veil was draped over her face, allowing him to imagine tears running down her slender cheeks. Had she been there before, in life? He barely paid notice, for he was on the hunt, and her presence seemed as natural as the sounds of the raging black sea.

  His eyes were for the temple that rose from the jagged cliffs, ruined and withered by time and neglect, forgotten on the isle that had, for so long, been unvisited by man, forgotten yet now sought. She followed him with the patience of death.

  The temple was gray and bleak, illuminated only by the crescent moon that hung like a talon in the sky, framed by indigo clouds and shining with a feverish luster that seemed fiercer than he had ever seen before. But he did not stay to regard it. He went inside, accompanied by the silent woman, who did not abandon him in the dark halls of the ruin. She stayed closer now as he searched the inscriptions on the walls under a glaring light that he conjured without concern. Her dark presence was close behind, but he still never turned to look at her. He read, and she whispered soundlessly in his ear.

  Comprehension gleamed dangerously in his flitting eyes as he saw the glyphs and sought what meaning he needed. He saw containment and power, and he read that in the light of salvation, yet he looked not to the struggle and the sacrifice, and now names seemed to fall from his mind even as he saw the inscriptions, their sentences full of gaps. The mourning woman whispered, and he saw the directions to another temple that would hold the answers. He smiled then, turned from all knowledge that remained, and left the isle before a new dawn could come.

  She was with him in the looming shadows of the Gray Mountains as well. Still, she followed, and still, her dark presence went unnoticed. The second temple was larger than the first, but it was just as ruined. Its great stair was a jumble of uneven stones over the slope of the mountain. Its walls were full of gaping holes, and its pillars were nearly all collapsed and crumbled like the arches and the vaults and the cupolas that they had once supported.

  He did not fear to tread over the debris inside, walking with a purpose that made his steps confident and unheeding of danger. He went down long catacombs that stretched through the depths of the mountain, and everywhere on the walls were inscriptions. Everywhere, the woman followed.

  She whispered to him again, and he found the segment that he needed, the words that few but he could understand, the key to a treasure that had been buried for eons. And he found the puzzle to its location, a poetic rebus intended to be solvable only by those who would be guardians. But Alwarul solved it, and the woman was silent as he spoke the name.

  “Wythrax.”

  He stood in Wythrax once more, the dark forest of claws and fangs and nightly eyes, yet to the place where he walked, the beasts did not follow. Again, he saw himself before that sinister edifice, that place from which the power had entered his mind faintly and suddenly twenty years past. It had gr
own stronger, and indeed, once he had entered the wild and perilous forest, he hardly needed directions any longer. It drew him, its sleeping potency revealed to his eyes as it had not been revealed to any other, and he could not resist its call.

  For a moment, the woman stood still beside him, below that looming temple, as if, briefly, the hunt had been forgotten and only her grief remained. But then she leaned in and whispered at last, and her words were to follow him where she would not. She watched him ascend those stairs alone, and then she turned as if she wanted to watch no longer. When he stepped into the darkness of the third temple, she faded away.

  Alwarul awoke with a start and fumbled in his wide pockets for a pen and a piece of paper, scribbling in the gloom what he must remember. The woman, he wrote, she was regretful. Who was she?

  When he left the room, he had the note in his pocket, though its significance in the puzzle quickly faded from that initial, flaring revelation of a newly awakened mind. The dreams, too, were forgotten.

  Nathelion was cheerier than ever. The man was laughing loudly at things that the drunken Molgrimin was telling him at their table, and raising toasts that sloshed cider over the brim of his mug. Where does he find his strength? It could not have been the drink, for in contrast to the moinguir, Nathelion seemed clear and alert, even jumpy as he responded to Molgrimin with a quick wit and laughed in good and seemingly endless spirit. “Ah, here comes Alwarul now!” he exclaimed merrily. “Now we can continue!”

  Sir Conrad and the squire were already there as well, and Tim was just chewing down the last of his breakfast pie.

  “Were you under a sleeping spell, old man?” the knight asked without even giving him a look. “We banged on your door an hour ago. I would have left without you if the moinguir hadn’t been so insistent on your company. If you cannot keep up...”

  “Do not worry about me, sir,” Alwarul said stiffly, though he was no longer so certain of his own condition. “I am quite used to travel.”