“I think there are no more,” declared Arin in a voice tight with tension. Even so, she did not lower her bow.
They listened long, their eyes wide and scanning, their air coming in short gasps. No other peril hove into view and all they heard was the sound of Aiko’s yet frightened horse clattering at the end of the rope tied to the slain pony. Of Arin’s horse and pony there was no sign, both having fled on down the pass, away from the hideous Troll.
“My tiger is silent,” hissed Aiko.
Arin took a deep breath and slowly let it out and then lowered her bow. After a moment Aiko sheathed her swords and stepped to the side and picked up the wicked-bladed throwing star, the one that had bounced off the Ogru’s stony hide. She turned to the Dylvana. “You should have fled, my Lady,” said the yellow warrior. “We both should have fled.” She gestured at the fallen Troll. “Such a Hitokui-oni cannot be defeated with ordinary weapons.”
Arin glanced at the dead Ogru and then back at Aiko. “Mayhap thou shouldst tell that to the Troll.” Then Arin broke into gales of laughter as the battle tension shattered at last, Aiko joining in, covering her own giggles with both hands.
* * *
Taking a deep breath and holding it, the Ryodoan stepped to the dead Troll and bent down to retrieve the shiruken embedded in the creature’s left eye.
“Take care, Aiko,” warned Arin. “Troll’s blood is scathing and will burn unprotected flesh.”
As Aiko straightened and pulled on a pair of leather gloves, Arin fetched a canteen and handed it to the Ryodoan. “Here, wash any blood away.”
Again the yellow warrior bent over the Troll and reached for the embedded shiruken. As Aiko did so, Arin’s gaze widened. “Oh, Aiko, I’ve just had a thought: here we stand in a gloomy mist, and thou dost pluck a blinding thorn from a monster’s eye. Could this be the one-eye in dark water? Have we slain our hope?”
With a thuk! the shiruken came free and Aiko, yet holding her breath against the Troll stench, straightened up, her dark eyes wide with Arin’s question. Then she shook her head and turned up her hands and said, “I do not know.” She looked about. “Perhaps the mist does serve as dark water, and the monster as a one-eye; yet whether or no this fits your vision, I cannot say.” She washed the star blade free of grume and dried it, then slipped it back into her belt next to the other. She glanced at Arin and then turned toward the Troll. “Should I cut out the eye of the kaibutsu so that we may take it with us?”
Take these with thee, no more…Arin scrunched her face into a squint of disgust, but turned up a hand and said, “If we find a one-eyed person in Mørkfjord, we can always cast this one away. —’Ware the blood.”
Aiko nodded and drew her dagger and bent down, but then straightened up and said, “Which eye should we take—the pierced one or the other?”
“Oh,” said Arin. She pondered a moment. “The pierced one, I deem, for it is the one which makes him a one-eye.”
“But then, Dara, does not the damaged orb make the other one the true one-eye?”
“Aye, it does at that. Yet redes are things of twists and turns, and oft depend on the unusual.”
Aiko nodded. “And a pierced Troll’s eye is unusual?”
“Indeed,” replied Arin. “For had the Ogru but blinked, thy star would not have cloven through and we would now be the ones lying dead instead of the monstrous Troll. But this one lies slain, all because of a damaged eye, and that is what makes this Ogru different from others of its Kind.”
And so, Aiko began hacking out the pierced orb, and where Troll’s blood struck stone, it sizzled and popped, and threads of dark smoke rose up. Meanwhile Arin retrieved the goods from the slain pony and stripped it of salvageable tack, and laded all on Aiko’s still skittish horse. They washed the blood from the damaged eye and wrapped it in the cloth of an empty grain sack and tied it up in another, then slung it with the other goods. Aiko washed and dried her dagger and sheathed it back in its scabbard. And then walking and leading the horse, they started down the mountain pass, going after Arin’s runaway steed and the pony tethered after.
Down they went and down, leaving a dead horseling and a one-eyed slain Troll behind.
CHAPTER 31
Leading the horse, Arin and Aiko walked down the stony way, fog curling about them and swirling after as they passed through the mist-laden air. A mile they went and a mile more and onward, until in all they covered just over a league, and at last they came upon the runaway steeds, horse and pony nibbling on new spring grass at the foot of a modest slope of slow-melting snow banked against the north face of a great sheltering boulder. The animals looked at Arin and Aiko as if asking “where have you been?” Cooing softly, Arin gathered them in.
As the Dylvana fed the steeds each a cup of grain, Aiko transferred the salvaged goods from her horse to the pony. Shortly they continued onward, Arin and Aiko now mounted.
Down through the blowing mist they rode, the cloud thinning as they descended, until only vague tendrils grasped at them, and soon even these were gone. Another league they fared and the pass debouched onto wide grassy plains. They had at last ridden down from the clouds to come to the Steppes of Jord.
They set up camp in the lee of a hillside at the foot of Kaagor Pass. They had just built a fire to have some hot tea when the rain began to fall.
* * *
The next morning, thoroughly drenched, Arin and Aiko studied the map. They decided to follow an old road alongside the Grey River, then cross over to Arnsburg and rest awhile, after which they would push onward, fording the Judra into Naud where they would turn north and follow the banks of that river through Naud and Kath to Fjordland, where they would turn away easterly to ride to Mørkfjord within, the entire route some six hundred miles altogether.
“If we press,” said Arin, studying the way, “we should arrive within a month.”
* * *
North they started, bearing slightly west, following the road down from Kaagor Pass as a thin dawn mist seeped up from the dank ground, and within two leagues, just this side of a thicket straight ahead, they sighted a fork in the road—one route turning westerly toward Jordkeep, the other bearing northward to Arnsburg. Yet as they came toward the split, a chariot drawn by four horses abreast rumbled out from the copse, two riders within, one driving, one bearing a spear and buckler. The two-wheeled war-wagon trundled to the junction, where it stopped and waited.
Arin glanced at Aiko. “What says thy tiger?”
“She whispers only caution, Dara.”
“As I, too, thought,” said the Dylvana.
Arin turned her attention back to the chariot and the warriors within. The wagon itself seemed made of wood and covered with a hide—armor of sorts. The wheels were large, the iron rims wide, the better to run over rough ground. A cluster of spears—perhaps ten or twelve in all—stood to the right side and rear, and Arin could see what she deemed was a readied bow racked on the right-side hand rail.
As they rode closer, Arin turned her attention to the warriors: they were women, tall and fair, fierce warrior maidens of Jord. Steel helms they wore, dark and glintless, one sporting a long, tailing gaud of horsehair, the other bearing wings flaring. Fleece vests covered chain-link shirts, and long cloaks draped from their shoulders to ward away the icy chill of the early morning mist.
They looked proud and hard, standing as they did, their weapons at the ready, their visages resolute and framed by coppery hair, their clear eyes flinty as these strangers came into the realm of the Vanadurin. And when Arin and Aiko reached the juncture…
“Stanse!” commanded the spear-wielding warrior, speaking in a tongue neither Arin nor Aiko knew, yet the meaning was clear and they halted their steeds.
“Hva heter Da? Hvor skal du fra? Hvor skal du hen?”
“We do not speak thy tongue,” said Arin, casting back her hood.
The warrior maidens’ eyes widened slightly at the sight of an Elf. The charioteer holding the four-in-hand said, “My Lady, the
se are suspicious times, for the realm of Jord is at war. Hence we need know your names and where you are from and where you are bound.”
“At war?” asked Arin.
“Aye. With the Naudrons.” The maiden waved a hand vaguely to the east.
Now Aiko cast back her own hood, and again the eyes of both maidens widened, for never had they seen a yellow-skinned person before.
“I am Dara Arin of Darda Erynian. My companion is Lady Aiko of Ryodo. We are bound for Fjordland.”
The charioteer spoke rapidly, translating Arin’s words to the other.
“Hvorledes kommen de til den Jordreich?” asked the warrior holding the spear.
The driver turned to Arin. “How did you come to the Jordreach? Surely not…” She glanced up the road at the col.
Arin turned and waved a hand toward the Grimwall. “Through Kaagor Pass.”
“Umulig!” snorted the spear bearer.
“That cannot be!” declared the charioteer. “There is a vanskapnig—a monster—living there.”
“The monster, the Troll, is dead,” said Arin.
“Dod? The Troll is dod?”
“Aye,” replied Arin. “We slew it: by five-bladed throwing-star and bow and arrow.”
“Now it is I who will say impossible!” proclaimed the driver.
Aiko shifted in her saddle and her hands went to the hilts of her swords. Her voice came low, dangerous: “Call you my Lady a liar?”
“Aiko, no!” snapped Arin. “These are allies. And we are now in their realm. —Show them the eye.”
Reluctantly, stiffly, her glare never leaving the eyes of the offending warrior maiden, Aiko dismounted.
The chariot driver murmured a word to the other maid, and that warrior grudgingly leaned her spear away.
Aiko then turned and stepped to the pony and undid the grain sack holding the Troll’s eye. She moved to the fore and squatted, setting the sack to the ground and unwrapping the grisly orb.
Both warrior maidens gasped, and a string of words rattled between the two. At last they turned to Arin and Aiko, and the driver said, “We apologize for our doubt, Lady Arin, Lady Aiko, but such a thing has never been.”
“We were guided by the hand of Fortune,” replied Arin, “else we would not be here speaking with ye.”
“Where is the Troll?”
“We left it lying where it fell,” growled Aiko, hardly mollified, wrapping up the eye again. “It’s not as if we could have hauled such a monster down from the heights on the back of our pony.”
Now the charioteer laughed. “Of course, how foolish of me to ask.” She turned and translated for the other, and then both broke out in laughter.
“Come,” said the driver, smiling. “Come to our camp, and we shall all have some tea and celebrate your astounding deed.”
* * *
Later that morning, Arin and Aiko pressed onward, now riding cross-country northward, their plans and their route changed by the war. For it seemed as if Arnsburg lay in disputed land, the area between the Judra River on the east and the Grey on the west, territory claimed by both Jord and Naud. And so the Dylvana and the Ryodoan aimed to pass ’round the western edge of a set of hills some two hundred miles to the north, where rise the waters of the Little Grey. Then they planned to swing northeastward and ride across that corner of Jord to reach the realm of Fjordland, crossing the Judra at the wide shallows near the foothills of western Kath. By this route they would avoid the war altogether, or so they hoped.
“I would not entangle myself in the disputes of men,” declared Arin.
“Nor I in wars I know not,” said Aiko.
And north and west they fared.
* * *
A week they rode and another, and the stench from the rotting Troll’s eye became unbearable. And so in a small Jordian hamlet, they sealed the putrescent orb in melted beeswax and honey in a tarred leather bag tightly wrapped.
* * *
The days had grown long with the coming of summer, and finally the solstice arrived. And a full moon shone down on Arin and Aiko as they stepped out the Elven rite of celebration, the Dylvana singing and guiding the Ryodoan through the intricate paces of the stately sacrament.
* * *
On the twenty-fifth day of June they forded the lower Judra, and over the following two days they rode north until they came to the sheer cliffs above the Boreal Sea. Now they turned along the coastline and rode east-northeast as the surf pounded below, the horses and pony clattering along shieldrock bared in an earlier time.
On the twenty-ninth of June they came to a mighty fjord and turned inland to reach its far tapered source, and they rode up onto mountainous slopes, canted land where their journey was slowed.
The air grew colder the higher they went, and in the twilight of the following day they rode past the foot of a glacier, where small blue flowers nodded in the wind. It was now the thirtieth day of June, and morrow night would mark a full year since Arin had had her vision. And as this penultimate evening fell, they espied the lights of a town down by the water’s edge.
Arin gazed at her map and nodded, then turned to Aiko and said, “Let us go down and find a suitable inn….”
They had come to Mørkfjord at last.
CHAPTER 32
Egil gazed back and forth between Arin and Aiko, his one good eye wide in amazement. “Together you slew a stone-hided Troll?”
Alos shuddered and seemed to shrink within himself.
Arin glanced at Egil, her heart racing suddenly. Why does it please me so that he finds it astonishing? “Aye,” she managed to say, “though ‘twas mostly by Fortune’s favor.”
Aiko shook her head. “Fortune may have smiled down upon us, yet even had that Dame been looking elsewhere, or not looking at all, Dara Arin’s aim was true, else we would have filled the Hitokui-oni’s cooking pot.”
“My arrow flew no truer than thine own cast, Aiko.”
“Fortune or no,” declared Egil, “the fact is, you slew a Troll.”
With shaking hand, Alos poured himself a mug of ale and hurriedly gulped it down, brew running adribble from the corners of his mouth.
Egil rubbed his whiskery jaw. “I thought Trolls nearly indestructible. The stories say that only by a high fall, or by a great rock dropping on them, can they be killed.”
Arin held up a hand. “A finely placed thrust, in eye, ear, or mouth, will do them in as well, Egil. Too, it is said they are tender of the sole of foot; a heavy caltrop will pierce them there, should they tread upon one.”
Alos groaned and buried his face in his hands.
Arin looked at him. “Art thou well, Alos?”
“Leave me be,” he moaned.
Arin looked at Egil questioningly, but he turned up his hands and shrugged, for Egil did not know why the oldster was distressed.
Finally Egil said, “I would hear once again the words of your vision.”
Arin intoned:
“The Cat Who Fell from Grace;
One-Eye in Dark Water;
Mad Monarch’s Rutting Peacock;
The Ferret in the High King’s Cage;
Cursed Keeper of Faith in the Maze:
Take these with thee,
No more,
No less,
Else thou wilt fail
To find the Jaded Soul.”
She looked at Egil. “Canst thou help us winnow the answers?”
Slowly Egil shook his head, lost in thought, his lone eye staring at a point unseen. At last he said, “You deem the Jaded Soul to be the green stone, aye?”
Arin nodded but did not speak.
“And to find it you need all the others named in the rede to go at your side…one of whom you believe is now with you: Aiko: the cat who fell from grace.”
Again Arin nodded silently.
“And the one-eye in dark water you deem is either Alos or me, right?”
Alos groaned. “This talk of finding green stones and of Wizards and T-trolls—I’m not going!” Qui
ckly he poured a mug of ale, slopping some onto the table in his haste. “The one-eye, it’s Egil. Egil, y’hear. Not me. Egil’s the one-eye you want.”
“It could be this,” said Aiko, stepping to Alos and thumping a tightly wrapped leather bag onto the table before him. “The rotting pierced eye of a Troll.”
Alos shrieked and recoiled from the bag, and leapt up and bolted for the door, banging it open and stumbling out before any could stop him; and the measure of his desperation to be quit of this mad Elf and her yellow cohort was plain for all to see, for he had left his mug of ale behind and a nearly full pitcher as well.
* * *
“Aiko, that was unwarranted,” said Arin. “Alos may be the one we need to obtain the green stone.”
Unchastened, Aiko shook her head and gestured after the vanished old man. “Dara, for once I agree with that fuketsuna yodakari: Egil is the one we came here to find.”
“We cannot be certain, Aiko. We cannot even be certain whether or no it is Alos or Egil or the Troll’s eye we need.”
Aiko sighed. “If it is your will, Dara, I shall fetch him.”
Arin looked at the doorway, the door itself slowly swinging shut on its uneven hinges. She waved a negating hand. “Let be for now, Aiko. ’Tis plain to see he is frightened. Let him ponder it some days, then we shall see.”
Aiko returned to her tatami mat, but she left behind on the table the bag holding the Troll’s pierced eye.
* * *
“What is a, um, peacock?” asked Egil, looking up from his supper.
“A bird,” replied Arin, “from far lands to the south and east. I have never seen one.”
“I have,” said Aiko. “They live in Ryodo and Chinga and Jung…and in the islands to the south. They have long, iridescent green tail feathers which they can fan upright in brilliant display. Each feather is marked with an eye.”
“An eye?”
“The likeness of.”
“Oh,” said Egil, stirring his spoon in his bowl of stew.
Arin waited, but Egil did not speak. At last she asked, “Hast thou a thought?”
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