by BJ Hanlon
Edin stopped and looked back at Berka.
“You can handle this right? I mean you’re part glasorio.”
Edin remembered being pummeled into near oblivion in the river near Alestow. A phantom pain in his shoulder was like a kick to his consciousness. “Have you ever tried to hold back a river?” Edin asked. “I don’t care how strong you are, water always wins.”
“Being bashed into nothingness by a raging flash flood, not the way I’d hoped to go,” Berka said in a solemn voice.
“Me neither.” Edin had an idea. He reached up and touched the walls on both sides, the left then the right. They were smooth but there were a few indentations here and there. “Remember that story about the two thieves that were thrown in an abandoned well to die?”
“That fake story? What do you call it? Fiction.”
“Yes.”
“You know I do not read.”
“It’s about time you do.” The water began rising. It hit his groin now. “Back to back, lock our arms together.” They did so, Edin was facing the right wall, Berka the left. “Okay, left foot first. Use your legs to push into my back.” The pounding was growing louder behind them. The sound of cavalry, though it wasn’t actually cavalry in the sense of coming to rescue them.
“Ready?” But as he said it, he felt Berka push.
Edin flopped forward and nearly face planted into the wall. As he righted himself, he screamed, “Wait for my signal.”
“You said ‘ready.’”
Edin looked down and saw the water rising much more rapidly now. He glanced up and could feel the white water. It was almost a part of him. His heart thudded in his chest. “Now,” Edin said.
They pushed into each other’s backs. After two steps, they were out of the water. Edin gasped. “Right, left, right, left.”
Then he saw it. White and running like the horses in the cavalry. In a blink, the water moved from around a slight corner and raced at them.
Without talking, without any sort of communication, they tightened their arms like vices and moved much quicker. Foot after foot.
It rushed below. Drops splashed up and wetted his butt like he had an accident. Then a tug at his sheath. He felt the hilt of his sword digging into his thigh.
Another step and it dropped back to its rightful hanging place. They stepped again and were now three feet above the raging river.
“Stop.” Berka huffed.
Edin did. His chest pounded, his muscles were shaking and he was sweating from more places than he thought possible. Edin looked up and saw the blue sky beyond the lips of the two cliffs. It was maybe ten feet up.
Below, he heard the water slowing. Edin looked down and saw the line dropping. They could continue up or go back down.
“What, do you think?” Edin huffed.
Berka’s head flopped around behind him. “I don’t want to have to do this again,” Berka panted. “Ever.”
It was settled. “Left, right.” They went slower as they climbed closer and closer to the top. Then as they were nearing the edge, he realized that there wasn’t a way to pull themselves up. One could push and the other would fall, unless.
“Hold on for a moment,” Edin said. He concentrated on an area below him. He remembered one of the first things he practiced. Making an apple turn into a huge ball. Edin held a hand below him and thought about it.
Normally, it wouldn’t take much concentration, but being here, exhausted and sweating profusely thirty feet above a less than raging, but still deadly river, took a bit extra.
Edin saw the ball expand outward first so that it reached the walls and then slowly, it began to rise like bread after the yeast was added. He felt the center pushing him up first, his feet sliding against the rock wall as they rose.
The pain in his thighs lessened and he saw over the apex of the cliff. Then Berka’s back was gone. Edin yelped and had the ball push up quicker. It flung him forward about five feet. Edin slid on the ground picking up scratches from rocks and fallen sticks. He was beneath a large tree that was beginning to bloom.
He laid there breathing heavily. His eyes hurt from sweat, his body was sore from the climb and the water. Now he could just sleep.
“Come on blotard. Can’t rest on your laurels,” Berka shouted.
Edin glanced over to see Berka leaping the crack and sitting down next to him.
Edin said, “I didn’t get my beauty sleep yesterday like someone.”
“Too bad. You could use it.”
“You’d have to sleep for a decade to be as pretty as me.”
Berka slugged him in shoulder and then looked off at the mountains. “My question is, why didn’t you do that from the start? You could’ve let us ride up like we were on a waterwheel.”
“You try holding a culrian with a raging river pounding at it.”
“Always complaining, lazy abo— mage.” Berka paused. “Sorry, old habits.”
“At least you’re learning.” Edin said, “How about we rest here for twenty minutes then we can continue through this unending mountain range with no food.”
“Sure,” Berka said and laid down a few feet away. “You are a beast though. But it has only to do with your face not your talent.”
“Oh, go eat califoo’s poop.”
“A what?” Berka said and then started to chuckle. A deep throaty chuckle that echoed through the world around them as if they were in a great echoey vault.
The thought struck him as odd. He rolled over and looked above his forehead. There was a sloping hill covered in leafless trees to the west, at least according to the sun. The hill curved around like a half moon nearly encasing them.
The gorge from the river split it in two. On the far side, there was a cracked rock that could’ve once been flat. Edin looked up at the walls and saw small holes in the rock, ridges that were nearly flat. “It couldn’t be.”
“What couldn’t be?” Berka said.
“I’m sorry?”
“You said, ‘it couldn’t be’.”
“I did?” Edin said but Berka didn’t answer. “Does this look like an amphitheater?” Edin said raising a hand up as if he were showing it off.
“I guess.”
“And where we stayed, that was a type of village or city of some sort. People used to live here. Hundreds, maybe thousands.”
Berka was quiet for a few moments and then shook his head. “How? There are trees but no place to farm or graze cattle. I doubt this land could sustain even ten people. Or has your stomach not told you you were starving?”
That took Edin’s mind to his growling stomach. “It has,” Edin said. “But what about before? What if this was built before the time of Vestor, before civilization? What if this was pre-history?”
Berka made a funny face, almost a squint like he’d drank a bitter ale. “Pre-history? How can anything be pre-history? It’s either history or its present or its future. Heck even these words now are now history.”
“Pre-recorded history then,” Edin said. “Before people put pen to parchment.”
“Oh, how easy life would’ve been to not have to learn your numbers or letters. I could’ve spent all day wooing the ladies.”
Edin rolled his eyes. “Whatever, what does it matter? We’re still in these mountains blocked off from everything. We still need to find the elves and save the world from the dematians.”
He looked away. Edin wasn’t about to tell him about the vision of the monsters ascending to their world or the fact that something told him he was the one meant to release these creatures and their leader.
That wasn’t a good thing. To prevent it, any sane person would just kill Edin right there. Even if it was his friend.
“Well, we can get going,” Berka said. “If you’re done with your dainty rest my princess.”
“Don’t,” he hissed.
“Right, sorry.”
It was an easier climb through the trees and up the terraces. They were barely two or three feet above each other until they
reached what he hoped was at least somewhat of a flat vale. He didn’t want to even think about his view the night before, the one of nothing but endless valleys and mountains covered in trees and bushes.
After two hours of climbing up and over the terraces, they reached the last one. And saw that there were more mountains and valleys before them.
But between it, was a fat ridge with few evergreen trees and tiny shrubs, still bare, growing out of the ground. They sat down without consulting each other and stared at the path before them.
“If I don’t eat soon, I’m liable to cook you,” Berka said.
“That’s disgusting.”
“Yes, it is,” Berka said and flopped to his back, his chest heaving. Edin closed his eyes and let the world wash over him. The water down below, the wind through the mountains and over the crevasses and the bleating of something.
He tried to ignore it. All of it. He was too tired to think and wanted nothing more than to rest for a while.
“Do you hear?” Berka said.
Edin waived him away.
“It’s a goat,” he whispered near Edin’s ear the warm damp breath tickling the insides.
Edin blinked and looked up at the still high sun. “Well go kill it.”
“You’ve got all the talents. You could just you know shoot one of your knife things.” Edin didn’t say anything. The pounding in his head from listening to Berka was barely rivaled by the ache in his limbs.
Berka whined, “Come on, I don’t want to have to cut off your arm for food.”
Edin shot up. “Seriously? I know people say gingers have no souls.”
“That’s an old wives tale told by people who wish they were ginger. It was a lie then and a lie now.”
Edin looked at where Berka was staring. There were thick trees and rocks and roots but he couldn’t see a goat or anything else through it. He heard the bleating again but couldn’t tell where it even came from. “Do you know where it is?”
“In that,” Berka said pointing where they both had been staring.
His stomach growled as he thought about meat. Edin pushed himself up. “Alright, you go around the backside and try to flush it out. I’ll stay over here and take care of it when I have an open shot.”
Berka nodded and licked his lips like a hungry cat. That too was gross.
Edin crouched next to a rock as Berka moved. He’d always been better at stalking through the forest and leaving as little of a trace as possible. Edin followed him with his eyes, glancing back toward the thicket and the unseen animal.
Edin waited. His mind wandered as nothing but birds, wind, and trees rustling sounded around. He was beginning to think Berka got lost. Nearly a half hour later, Edin was starting to feel cramps rise in his legs. He struck at his thighs and tried rubbing them.
Suddenly, there was a loud cry that echoed through the valley and the thwack of a sword on wood. A bleating scream from some animal, the goat hopefully, sounded and he caught the glimpse of the thing hopping out toward him.
Edin summoned an ethereal knife and tried to stand. His right leg did. His left, did not. Edin tried to compensate for that and threw as the leg refused to answer. The knife flew over the animal’s neck a few inches.
Then the beast cut to its right and bounded straight at a mountain. Edin summoned another ethereal knife and whipped it at the hindquarters.
The goat, the same type of crazy mountain goat that leapt from the mountain, leapt past the attack with the grace of a dancer and bounded up the cliff with astonishing speed. It moved from one rock to the other, stopping and going back on itself so fast he didn’t even know where to throw. He meekly tried one more attack.
The ethereal blade missed like he knew it would.
Edin dropped to the ground. His stomach growling and his thighs burning. He drank from the waterskin, rinsed of all the nasty mintweed thank the gods, and heard the fury and frustration from Berka as he clattered through the thicket.
“How did you miss you blasted fool? All you needed to do was get him. He was right there you blotard.” The insults went on and on for a bit but Edin ignored them.
He leaned his head against the rock that he’d crouched behind for so long. “My leg cramped,” was all he said and Berka shut up. His friend looked at him incredulously.
“Cramped?” He scoffed. “Your leg cramped?”
Edin nodded. “You took too long.”
“Don’t blame this on me. Don’t you dare,” Berka reached down and grabbed Edin by the collar. “This is all your fault, everything, the crillio, your mother, Kes, my family.” There were tears in his eyes.
Edin slapped Berka’s hands away and his friend released. “Your family?” Edin asked.
Berka just shook his head. He turned toward the thicket and began walking. “I suppose we’ll starve to death out here.” He shrugged his hunched shoulders. “At least we can make an effort to do what we said we would. At least let’s try to find the damned elves.”
Edin pulled his pack over his shoulder and started after him. It took about ten minutes to finally have the cramp disappear, but he was still weak. The lack of food was huge and growing on his mind. His stomach groaned. It was monotonous and continuous.
They marched through and more evergreens began to appear through the rough terrain.
It wasn’t lush, that didn’t feel like the right word, but there was life. Animals were around, rodents mostly and snakes which Edin stayed away from. He remembered the wyrm’s evil gaze and shivered.
Berka wasn’t as picky. He spotted a snake and snatched it with a look of near lust. Then he skinned it, cooked it and they shared it.
There was little meat, but it helped, slightly.
The valley cut through two mountains toward a third. The path then began to rise to a high escarpment that ran north and south and nearly cut them off. It looked like a terrible climb.
Edin guessed they were south of the Suset Valley. It was the only thing that made sense, so they followed the escarpment north, hoping to find some sort of path up.
Edin hoped there’d be an easier one with maybe an inn on the side of the road and inside a barbequer like Delber.
Just the thought made Edin’s mouth water and his belly go crazy.
Near the northernmost mountain, they found it. Though it wasn’t a trail as much as a long tube-like crater with dried roots, broken stones, and hard soil packed in the ground. It looked almost like a child’s slide and went to the top of the ridge.
There was no barbequer there.
The path was steep and slippery and it took until late in the evening before they finally reached the top and found themselves above an evergreen blanket that stretched for a few hundred yards to the center mountain. In the darkness, he didn’t know which way to go once they reached it, but that didn’t matter right now.
“Keep going?” Edin asked.
“Probably. I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to get up if we stop,” Berka said, his voice was drained and drawling. They kept on.
They headed toward the mountain, the center of the three peaks he’d seen before, or he thought it was. Their feet barely left the stone as they moved. Even the smallest of obstructions, a quarter inch break in the rocks, could cause Edin to stumble. All he could do to stay upright was to drink water and continue on.
He felt like his body would eat itself soon. He found himself seeing flashes in the trees. They weren’t so much lights from things, but lights that outlined the darkness. At first he thought it was some storm far off, lightning in the clouds, but as they continued, he was certain they were only in his head.
Berka stumbled in front of him and slouched to his knees, his head hung over his slumped shoulders like a monk about to begin prayer. Edin stopped next to him and touched his shoulder. “Come on,” he said but Berka was dazed.
His eyes were open but they seemed distant, like some music only he could hear had taken over his mind and began to control his world.
Edin shook
him. “Berks…” he hissed, the light flashing around them again.
They were in a small clearing and he could see the bare northeastern slope of the mountain. On it, he saw the outline of something. Something that for a moment, looked like a dematian.
Edin swallowed and then the flash came again and the thing was gone. Or maybe transformed into a weird rock.
Edin collapsed next to Berka. They were in the open with no fire and no shelter. He began dragging Berka back under the cover of the evergreens.
They were two lost kids in the middle of a rekindled war from millennium past.
Edin dropped when they were covered. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds around them. The blowing of the wind, the crumbling of rocks, and a distant sound of water from far off. The most prominent was his stomach, though he worked hard to forget that. Edin pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. He rested his head on his kneecaps and tried to keep awake in case of attack.
It didn’t work. During the night he let the dreams take over. Arianne and he were in a paradise. They sat on the edge of a large veranda overlooking a sandy beach and soft white-capped waves as they came in. He glanced over and saw her doing needlepoint and humming a tune that reminded him of an old tale of woe. He couldn’t find the words, but he thought one of the verses hidden in that melody went something like:
Felt such sorrow as I’ll ever know
Touched the ground burning with snow
My eyes they tear with memory
A life so fleeting I fail to see
That may have been it, but dream-Edin wasn’t sure. The tune could’ve’ been nothing like that.
Edin put a hand on her soft wrist. She looked at him, a smile gracing her lips like the joy of a child. She beamed, so happy, so beautiful, the sunshine filtered through her blond hair and made her almost ethereal, a goddess.
“I thought you hated needlepoint?”
She shrugged but said nothing. A cry came from the beach. A woman’s cry and then a child’s.
Edin looked away toward the beach and saw it was gone. It wasn’t a beach anymore. It was a wide mountainous valley and far ahead, he saw someone. They were just at the edge of sight, the edge of the shadows of the mountains. Edin started after the person and knew it was Arianne. She’d disappeared from beside him.
