“This is why! This is why I should have never come with you, Cal!” she cried out. “I am cursed! If it wasn’t for me, my father would have never taken that fruit of the tree, he would have never listened to that foul Sorceress of a woman. He would have never needed to surrender our home and our city… and I would have never been here to murder this poor beast!”
Deryn stared at Cal, wordlessly urging his compassion. The groomsman looked away, shifting uncomfortably on the ground, listening to the sobs of her shame.
“Astyræ.” Deryn finally said kindly. “Come now.”
“No! Stay away from me!” She argued. “I’ve ruined everything, can’t you see that?”
“If it weren’t for you and your bow, Lady Astyræ, we might all be weeping tears of an even greater sorrow,” Deryn continued.
“I’m cursed, Deryn,” she said.
“Enough of that, now,” came the gruff and weary voice of the groomsman as he stood and walked towards her. Her shame seemed to somehow wake his heart. “I believe you. And though I don’t know how, perhaps we might still find another way.” He took another step towards her and raised his eyes to meet hers.
What she saw stole her breath. “Cal?” she whispered, concern coloring her words.
“You are not cursed,” he said with a begrudged compassion as he wiped his own tears from his eyes with his bloody hands.
“Cal?” she asked again, and this time her slender hand reached out to touch his blood-smeared face.
“It’s nonsense. You can’t quite possibly hold yourself to blame for the choices of your father. Love is foolish, I know that-” He tried to explain, but her concern cut him off.
“Deryn?” she interjected.
“My lady?” Deryn asked worriedly, sensing the dread in her voice. “What is it?”
“I don’t understand,” Cal said, his brow furrowed in confusion.
“What is happening to him?” she wondered aloud. “What is happening to his eyes?”
“My eyes?” Cal asked, confused now at the turn of events. “What are you talking about, woman?”
Deryn flew to them in a hurry, and what he saw made a shiver run down his tiny, blue-winged body. “Cal,” he said with both wonder and confusion.
“What in the damnable dark is the matter?!” Cal said in frustration. “What is going on with you two?”
Astyræ’s fingers wiped at the blood of the Stag that had been smeared across the face of the groomsman. As she did, the dark brown color of his eyes was wholly replaced with a burning white glow. “Oh Cal!” she breathed. “Your eyes … they are on fire!”
“What is it? What does that even mean?” he asked again, searching both of their faces for answers. “Deryn! What is she talking about? Tell me true, brother!”
“Look,” Deryn said as he gestured to the reflective glass-like sand of the Ágoni gi. “See for yourself, my friend.”
Astyræ took his hand without saying a word and led him to the hallowed gravesite of the long dead Jacaranda tree. The violet in her own eyes began to sparkle in hopeful wonderment, overcoming the yellow of self-loathing sorrow.
Cal searched her face for answers, but could not find what he was looking for.
“Look into the glass, my friend, and tell me what it is that you see.” Deryn told him.
Cal turned his gaze from his friends and peered into the ancient mound. There, in the midst of the sacred glass, two white orbs stared back at him. As they came into focus, he saw his own reflection materialize around them. “What in the name…”
“Yes, my friend,” Deryn agreed aloud. “What, indeed.”
“My eyes?” Cal reached his hand up to cover one, and as he did the reflected light darkened. “What happened to me?”
“Perhaps the Stag was right,” the Sprite told him. “It may be that he will show you the way after all … only not in the way you might have first thought.”
“But how?” Cal said, looking back at the lifeless body of the white cervidae on the forest floor. “How could he?”
“Perhaps he is also a fool,” Astyræ said aloud, still mystified at all that had just happened. “Perhaps it was love that caused him to be so.”
“Tell me,” Deryn asked, “what do you see?”
“What do you mean, what do I see? I see you, Sprite, and I see the lady, and I see … I see the dead Stag,” Cal answered defeatedly.
“Keep looking,” Deryn urged.
“I don’t know what you mean, Deryn!” Cal blurted as he turned his head this way and that, scanning the land about them. “I see the clearing, and the trees, and I see-" His words caught in his breath. “What?”
“What is it, Cal?” Astyræ begged as she held onto his arm.
“What is that over there?” he mused aloud.
“Over where?” Deryn asked, looking in the same direction as his white-eyed friend.
“There! At the base of the large, soldier pine!” Cal called as he ran from their encampment towards the edge of the clearing. “Look! See? White markings!”
Cal bent down to examine them, his chest heaving with excitement. “They look like rubbings from a…”
“From a stag?” Astyræ finished his words for him.
“Yes, my lady,” he said as his own heart softened at the smile on her beautiful face. “Like rubbings from a stag.”
“Perhaps he will show us the ancient path after all,” Deryn mused.
“Perhaps,” Cal agreed.
“I am sorry, you know,” she said once again, and her apology found his heart like the silver arrow of the fabled bow.
“I know,” Cal told her.
“What should we do with him?” Astyræ asked. “It cannot be right to leave him here for the carrion and the beasts of the forest. It is my fault he is dead … the least I can do is honor him.”
“Aye, my lady,” Cal agreed with a tone of deep appreciation in his voice. “It is fitting for such a beast to be given a burial worth its majesty.”
“May magic and beauty both rest eternal in their glass tomb,” Deryn said, giving both his permission and blessing over the groomsman’s thoughts.
“Thank you, my friend,” Cal said as he nodded his head in understanding of the extravagant generosity of his Sprite companion.
The three of them dug their hands into the crystalline shards of the ancient tears, preparing a place to bury the White Stag who may very well have been sent by the THREE who is SEVEN Himself. When space had been made enough for the beast, they dragged the lifeless body and laid it to rest. Before they covered the holy cervidae, Astyræ reached down and removed the arrow of Arianrhod from his pierced body, seeing it right that the instrument of its demise not sully the tomb of its sacrifice.
“There,” she said as she snapped the barbed bolt in two and threw it upon the clearing floor. “Never again will that shard of the Silver Moon draw blood from any beast of the ground, for it has flown recklessly this dark day.”
Cal reached out and took her slender hand in his own as Deryn spoke words over the grave.
“Bealtaine do íobairt chruthú ár baois an ciallmhar, agus is féidir leat maith dúinn ... ar feadh tréimhse nach raibh a fhios.”
“What does it mean, Deryn?” Astyræ asked him, removing her hand from the groomsman’s with a mournful look upon her face.
“May your sacrifice turn our folly wise, and may you forgive us … for we did not know,” he told her.
Astyræ’s eyes slipped closed as a tear escaped down her cheek. “We did not know,” she whispered.
Cal reached for her again, but Deryn’s outstretched hand gave him pause. He stepped back, trusting in the wisdom of the Sprite and yet wrestling with the tension in his own spirit.
“May it be so.” Cal agreed.
“Come now, my friends,” Deryn spoke into the silence. “The path has been marked for us, and it is time that we follow it.”
Chapter Four
“Where are we?” The crimson haired woman asked aloud. “Where does th
is pass let out?”
“North!” Portus, the tanner, replied. “I mean, that is where Engelmann told us it would lead us, right Margarid?”
“Yes,” Celrod said. “But where north? North of the city could be a thousand different places.”
“Not that I am complaining or anything!” Timorets, the brewer, said light-heartedly as he kissed his flint and looked nervously over his shoulder, trying to raise the spirits of the remnant of Haven. “As long as this place doesn’t have dragons or soul-feasting butterflies, it will make do!”
The eleven weary travelers let out an exhausted laugh, both nervous for whatever lay next before them, and at the very same time grateful that they had indeed passed safely through the heart of the mighty Mt. Aureole.
“Where is that bird when you need him?” Harmier said, his eyes searching the darkened sky about them for the Owele that had led them to freedom.
“We are north of the city alright, but I can’t see much more than that,” Michael told his friends. “Except … except that we are still in the mountains somewhere. I think we are still rather high up.”
“Cair!” Celrod, the schoolmaster, exclaimed. “The Black Mountains of Cair. Leagues and leagues of inky-black rock, hard granite whose only relief is eastward.”
“Eastward?” little Georgina exclaimed. “But what is eastward? My papa said that the only things east were outliers and witches, not to mention the shadow cats and … and … and giants!”
“My dear little girl,” Harmier, the merchant, said with kindness in his placating words. “Outliers are the last of our worries. With any providence we might just find ourselves some friendly ones! And as far as witches and giants and the like … no… no such things exist in this world.”
“No such things?” Fryon said, amused at the merchant’s dismissal of such evil. “Do you not remember what we just escaped? Oweles and dragons?”
“Of course I remember!” Harmier shot back. “That doesn’t prove that a child’s fairytales are true!”
“Aye, but it does change things a bit for me,” Fryon argued. “I would have never told you that dragons are real either! But then … we all know the truth of that matter now, don’t we?”
“Fair enough then,” Harmier relented. “Let’s hope, shall we, that there is something more hospitable than whatever wild beasts your papa told you about, Georgina, and perhaps a little less wild than what we all might fear.”
“So … east, then?” Margarid said, her words coming out with trepidation. “That’s not what Engelmann told us to do … that’s not where the arrows pointed.”
“Aye,” Michael agreed as he reached up to take her kindly by the shoulders. “But I don’t think that Engelmann would have had us blindly walk off the face of these black mountains, in the pitch of this darkened world of ours, just to perish by following the direction of his arrows. Do you?”
“Mar, he is right,” the tall tanner agreed.
“Besides,” Michael said again. “I don’t think we are done heading North. We just have to take a bit of a roundabout way.”
“To the north, then!” Celrod said in an amused tone. “North … by way of East.”
“That might just be the smartest thing this old school master has said yet,” Timorets said with a slap to Celrod’s large, rounded shoulders.
“North by East,” agreed Fryon.
“Aye,” came the rumbling of agreement from the remnant.
“What do you say, Margarid?” Michael asked.
She nodded her understanding, squinting in the pale, violet glow about them. “North by East, then.”
Michael kissed her dirt-smeared forehead. “Come on, my lady. We won’t last long up here, not with that biting wind nipping at our backs. Grab what you can, and let’s hope that Harmier is right; that there is something or someone out here that might have some hospitality to share with us.”
With that, the eleven of them began the slow, winding, steep descent through the barren, black rocks of the Cair. Celrod held on to the brewer, steadying his wounded steps as best as he might, while Fryon, his brother, and Portus went ahead of the others to find a way down the mountain. Day after arduous day they travelled, and though they could see, dimly, by the light of their hope, there was not much more than black rock and black sand for them to notice.
“Do you think … do you think it will always be like this?” Georgina asked Margarid as she held tightly to her hand.
“What do you mean, child?” Margarid asked sweetly as she helped steady her over a rather large step down.
“I mean … is this how it is going to be? Running away from our home? Hiding from dragons? For always?”
Margarid thought on it for a while before she spoke. “I don’t know; I suppose for a while at least. Though, no… I don’t think this will be forever.”
“What makes you say that?” Georgina asked. “Tell me, please.”
Margarid looked to Michael for some kind of help as she did her best to answer the question that all of them were really asking. “Pain can’t last forever, neither can sorrow … I don’t think it is in its nature to do so, try as it might.”
“But what makes you so sure of that?” she asked her auburn-haired guardian.
“I have a friend … well, more like a brother, really,” Michael joined the conversation. “And he believed what the old Arborists did.”
Margarid smiled her permission and nodded her affirmation at him as he spoke.
“That a new light would come, one that would chase away all sadness, one that would rid the world of all shadows and the evil that brooded in them. This new light would put the whole of Aiénor right again.”
“My papa said those stories were just a fool’s dream,” the little girl replied.
“So, you would tell me that you believe his fairytales of witches and giants, but you can’t possibly believe in something truly good, something long foretold?” Harmier said with unbelieving disgust. “Now tell me who is the fool here!”
She wrinkled her brow in slight offense at the merchant’s harsh words, looking to Michael to defend her from the rudeness of it all.
“He is right, you know,” Michael said with a knowing grin. “I would rather make this journey, this unbelievable journey that we have all found ourselves a part of, foolishly believing and foolishly hoping that this new light will come for all of us, than resign to a life without the possibility of a true home for us all.”
“But how will we find it, Michael?” she asked him, tears stinging her eyes as she spoke. “Did your brother know?”
Michael thought of Cal, thought of how believing in this hope was always so natural for him. He thought about his Sprite friend and the great lengths by which he dared to trust his own life to this belief. He thought of how much he missed him, and how he wished and prayed that he was indeed safe right now.
“Michael?” Georgina asked again as she smeared away the tears from her eyes. “What did he tell you?”
“We will find it, girl; we will find this new light when we seek it,” he replied, understanding coloring every utterance of every word he had heard Cal speak to him.
“But when? I want this light now … I want those bad raven men to go away and I want to go home. Why haven’t we found it yet?” she said as she started to cry all the more.
“I don’t know when, I only know how … and so seek it we shall,” he answered her.
“One step at a time,” Margarid added. “And together … until we find it.”
“Aye,” Michael agreed.
The sound of anxious footsteps running towards them woke them from their rather heavy conversation, as Portus came running to them at the end of the line. “We’ve found something,” he said in a whisper. “Not more than three, maybe four hundred paces down and to the east.”
“What is it? What do you see?” Margarid blurted out.
“It looks like fires,” Portus said, catching his breath.
“What color are they?” Michael a
sked nervously.
“They are not green, though they are not very big and they are not very bright,” Portus replied.
“Well, that is a relief,” Margarid said in an exhale.
“Maybe,” Michael said warily. “What do you know? What could you see, Portus?”
“Not much … but they seem muted, hidden behind rocks, or walls, or … I don’t know for sure,” the tall tanner replied. “But they are below us, maybe at the bottom of these black rocks.”
“Well, that is something good to know, at least!” Celrod exclaimed. “My leg is hurting something awful.”
“Aye, and my back is beginning to strain under the weight of all of his hurting,” Timorets chimed in.
“Alright then,” Michael said to the remnant. “Perhaps Harmier was right, maybe we will find some unlooked for hospitality in these outlands.”
“And what if we don’t?” Portus asked.
“We have a few blades, don’t we?” Michael said. “Let’s just make sure we have them at the ready … just in case. We need to stay together, though; I don’t want anyone to be separated from the whole of the group. Tell Fryon and his brother to wait for us, we will meet them as one.”
“Aye,” Portus agreed and took off to tell the others.
“And if their blades number more than ours do?” Celrod asked.
Michael looked below them, unable to see the glowing fires Portus spoke of. “Then we will continue North, by way of East, as quickly as we can.”
Chapter Five
“Who are you?” Seig shouted into the storm, both hands clasped on his upraised sword. “And what have you done with my captain? How did you come upon my ship?”
The man, the thing, the monster who commanded the storm of ravens stood at the bow of the ship, ashen arms outstretched in a display of grotesque strength. Seig watched in horror as he opened his mouth wide, letting out another blood-curdling screech.
A strange mass of soldiers appeared along the bridge deck; their eyes were the same sickly green as the ravens who drove the vessel.
The Coming Dawn: Epic of Haven Trilogy Book 3 Page 3
