“Take your company and scour the lands about the Hilgari,” he ordered. “But do not reveal yourself unless no other option is present.”
“Yes, Captain,” Arthfael replied.
“Where did you encounter the army of the Sorceress last?” the captain asked Marcum.
“East of the North Road,” he replied. “Nearly a league.”
“You won’t find any of them left in that heap of bones, laddie,” Brádách said with a laugh. “My band of cripples, and the Priest here, we dispatched the last of them.”
“He tells the truth,” Marcum said, his head feeling dizzy after so much blood loss.
“They were patrolling eastward,” the corporal said, interrupting the conversation. “We attacked them, not the other way around. They were marching out from the city, to only God knows where … but it was east, alright,” Johnrey said with conviction.
“Start there, Arthfael,” Faolan commanded. “The city has already fallen, and though our brave woodcutter friends have aided in dispatching some of these Ravens from this world, the whole of their army is still at large. We must find them, and their dragons, and uncover their intentions if we are to stand and fight them.”
“Yes, my captain,” the large Sprite bowed his head and addressed his company. In a whirl of silver and violet, the twelve shot to the sky in search of the Raven army.
“They are beautiful, aren’t they?” Annsley whispered beneath the cover of the wagon.
“Yes, but are they big enough to make a difference?” Gabriel asked.
“I sure hope so,” she replied.
“My dear lady,” Faolan addressed Keily with all the sincerity in his violet eyes. “Once we find them, we will not let their evil go unrequited. Of that, you may rest assured.”
“Now, if you don’t mind me interrupting.” Elder John spoke up, inserting himself into the conversation. “We still have quite a distance to travel yet before we are safely inside the halls of Petros. And there is quite a number of you that could use a good tending to.”
“He is right,” Marcum said exhaustedly, turning to Elder John. “The THREE who is SEVEN has smiled down upon us with your kindness, and we would be fools not to heed it.”
“But Marcum?” Keily protested.
“Gather the children and the wounded and see to it that they make their way into one these carts,” he told her sternly.
Her eyes found the children under the woodcutter’s cart, and when she saw them, the fire of her revenge cooled in the weight of her duty to them. “Sir?” she said to the Poet atop the cart. “There was a boy, it must have been days ago now … I put him on a horse and sent him westward. My friend told me once of the Poets in the mountain, and I took his word to—"
“Roshan?” Elder John said.
Her eyes went wide with amazement at the very mention of his name. “You found him?”
“Well, no,” Elder John replied.
Her face fell, confused all over again.
“Rather, he found us! Ha!” His laughter seemed so out of place here in the treeless outlands at the foothills of the cold Hilgari. “That boy … well, he is the reason that the Sprites and I were even out here looking for you.”
“God bless you, Roshan!” she prayed under her breath.
“Is he alright?” Ryder asked hopefully.
“Well, look here now,” Elder John said with great happiness in his eyes. “Aren’t you a brave little one to have traveled all this way.”
“I’m brave too,” Gabriel said, climbing out after her. “I have a sword that one of the guardsmen gave me. Well, it’s a knife, really. But I can use it against the Ravens if they come back.”
“Haha!” Elder John laughed again. “Oh … and you must be the bravest of them all, young lady?” he said to Annsley as she put her arms around the other children’s shoulders. “Keeping watch over your friends.”
“But sir?” little Huckston asked. “Is Roshan alright? Did he get hurt?”
“Come see for yourself, my boy,” Elder John said as he patted the seat next to him. “All of you, hop on. I have much to show you, many bright and beautiful things. And yes, your friend Roshan will be delighted to see you again.”
The remnant of guardsmen, woodcutters, cripples, cooks, and the Priest saw to it that the wounded were carefully loaded into the two carts. Those that were able walked alongside, with bows at the ready and hands upon hilts. They were grateful for the hope of someplace to rest and recover, though not trusting the passage there would be wholly safe.
As the wagon traveled the rocky paths and pitted roads of the foothills, Keily couldn’t help but think about Yasen. “Oh Yasen, I hope that you are greeted by unexpected strangers … and I pray that the hospitality you find keeps you safe enough to return home to me.”
They traveled slowly, so as not to add further insult to the injured, when the ground beneath their boots began to change. The same flagstone road that Cal had traveled so long ago now took them along the base of the mighty Hilgari, up amidst the pillars and the carvings of the faded highway.
“This must be the palace that Cal was talking about,” she said aloud.
“Cal?” Elder John said. “Did you say, ‘Cal’?”
“Do you know him?” Keily asked the old Poet.
“Ha!” Elder John said. “Symmetry … all the good stories have symmetry, my dear.”
“I am not sure that I know what that means,” she said sheepishly.
“The first time I met Cal, we rode this very same cart, drawn by Ransom, my mule, along this very same road!” Elder John said as he fondly remembered that very first encounter. “And neither he, nor any of us, for that matter, had any clue as to what we would all be getting ourselves into.”
“So, it’s true, then?” she asked. “This place, this … um, Petros? It is a palace?”
He thought on her words for a moment before answering her. “It was. Well, now that I say it … it still is. Only, it is so much more than that.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The reunion of Cal’s woodcutter brothers was both unexpected and deeply needed. “Goran!” Cal said as he embraced his old mountain of a friend. “But how? How did you find me? How did you find this place?”
“Well, it was not that hard, brother,” said Oren.
“Aye, we just followed the stink of horses without any difficulty at all,” Alon said as he came over and made a show of smelling his groomsman brother. “That’s how we always know where to find you!”
Cal laughed, overjoyed to be amongst such friends and in such a place. “But tell it true, how did you find me?”
Gvidus lumbered to the front of the group to see how his watercart stowaway had faired all this time in the wilderness. “Ah, not too much the worse for wear now, are you brother?” The large-bellied woodcutter smiled, the creases in his round face punctuating his gladness at the reunion.
“You told us you were headed north, groomsman. So, when the evil storm landed upon the shores of the colony…” Goran’s words trailed off as he pictured the fear that had befallen all of them that dark, damned day. “Yasen sent us off after you. Told us to find you, or if not you, then to find this Shaimira you had been looking for.”
Cal’s eyes looked at the thirty or so woodcutters, scanning their faces in search of Yasen.
“He is not with us, brother,” Gvidus said sadly.
“Aye,” Alon agreed somberly.
“What?” Cal said, confused about his absence. “Why not? Did that damned Pyrrhus do something?”
“What could a one-armed flicker of a knight do to the North Wolf, huh?” Oren said mockingly.
“Not if he valued his last remaining arm, that is!” came a call from the crowd.
“Aye,” Goran agreed as he thumped his fist against his own chest. “It wasn’t Pyrrhus; at least I don’t believe it was.” He rubbed his hand over his tired, road-weary face as he collected his words. “Something has happened, brother. Something bad, I fear, though we
can’t rightly say what.”
“Something evil,” Gvidus agreed. “Yasen was summoned by that fool of a governor right after the black storm crashed in on us. He told us to make for the North, but we couldn’t just leave him there.”
“So, Soma decided to follow after him.” Goran continued, worry aging his face. “We waited for him to return and tell us what he saw… but he never came back.”
The sadness of the moment was interrupted as Astyræ ran up to the largest woodcutter and wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders. “Goran!” she exclaimed, overjoyed to see the man who had watched over her in the bowels of the cave. “I am so glad to see you!”
He blushed as he hugged her back. “Ah, it’s good to see you too, little sapling.”
“I can’t believe we finally found you all,” Oren said happily.
“Aye!” agreed Alon. “But who is in charge of this place? It’s… well… it’s unbelievable really.”
The keepers of the pass snapped into formation, bowing their helmed heads as the Queen of Shaimira approached these strangers. She met Cal’s eyes, suspicion and curiosity unrelenting in her stare.
“I am Johanna, Lord of the hidden realm, granddaughter of King Julen, and Queen of the Amaians.” She stood tall and proud before these men of the woods, her guard flanked on either side, hands upon hilts and eyes fixed on these strangers.
Gvidus was the first to kneel, and then Goran, then the others. Alon made an elaborate show of a bow and Oren punched him in the arm, motioning with a roll of his eyes for him to kneel like the rest of them.
She smiled at their awkward formality, intuiting that it was genuine if not even a bit noble for the bearded axe-wielders.
“It has been long since we have had strangers enter beyond the Pass of Kemen, and yet, in not much more than a few days, the men of Haven have found our home for a second time,” she said cautiously. “Tell me, how did you come to find this place?”
“My Lord,” Goran said, stumbling over his words as he beheld the beauty of the Queen. “I mean, my Lady.”
She raised an eyebrow as she watched him compose himself.
“We have been traveling for a very long time, it’s hard to tell anymore, you know. We started out north, trying to find traces of our groomsman friend. A while into our journey we saw lights off in the distance. Not the amber flames of torches, or of campfires. They were white. Pure, burning white. We thought maybe it was Cal. Maybe he finally found the light he had been looking for all this time.”
Astyræ looked at Cal, her gaze curious and dumbfounded. “How can that be?” she whispered to him.
So we followed the white lights, and they lead us past league after league of elm and oak, spruce and pine,” Goran continued.
“We even saw an old sailing ship out there,” Alon interjected.
“Aye, right smack in the middle of a clearing!” Oren exclaimed. “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“Even then, it doesn’t make much sense,” Alon agreed.
“What he says is true,” Goran said apologetically. “There was a ship out there in the forest, but the light was beyond it, and so we kept following it. It lasted until we came to the strangest of camps, where we saw a handful of slain men. Well… I’m not sure if they were still men anymore.”
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“I’ve seen dead things before, my Lady,” he went on. “I’ve seen dead men before too; their skin was far too grey, and whatever it was that oozed out their wounds was no longer blood.”
“Aye,” came a chorus of agreement.
“It was black,” Goran continued. “The strangest part of it all is that their bodies were undisturbed. I’ve spent most of my life in the wilderness of this world, and it doesn’t take long for the scavengers to come for anything dead. But no wolves, no carrion; not even a fly buzzed about these bodies. Their flesh was too foul even for the flies to eat.”
“That is when we saw the tracks,” Gvidus grunted as he labored to his feet. “And we knew we were headed in the right way.”
“Aye,” Goran said, nodding his bald head. “We tracked you then, following your footsteps along the bank of the river. When they disappeared, we guessed that you had either been swept away downstream somewhere, or that you had found a place to take shelter.”
“We searched that bank for the better part of a day, and we came up with nothing,” Alon interjected. “Sure, we found the tracks of a few dogs, and what looked like a large stag … but they all led into the water; not a boot or horseshoe print to be found anywhere else along that bank.”
“So we followed them right into the river,” Goran continued.
“And what a comedy that was!” Oren blurted out. “You should have seen these brothers of yours trying to swim! It’s a wonder we are all still not half-drowned!”
Alon elbowed Oren in the side, and shook his bearded head in embarrassment.
“That’s when we found your camp,” Gvidus added. “We all made camp ourselves and dried out a bit, but most of us couldn’t sleep. Something just … I’m not rightly sure how to make sense of it. It felt too close, I guess,” the large woodcutter tried to explain.
“Those falls,” Goran tried. “It was like they were singing to us. Your tracks went back into the water and nowhere else. I watched that never-ending, white water cascade down for a long while. I stood on the bank throwing rocks, thinking hard about this whole damn mess, when I threw a right good size stone into the falls. And wouldn’t you know, it went clean through.”
“That’s when we jumped in the pool and found the path behind the falls,” Gvidus finished for him.
“And so, here you are?” Johanna said. “Two, maybe, three dozen of you? Caravanning through the forests, tracking these travelers … were you seen along the way? Did you leave evidence of yourselves behind you? Did you spy any more of her Nocturnals, dead or otherwise?”
“Nocturnals?” Goran asked, unsure of the term and nervous at the edge in her voice.
“The Sorceress’ soldiers,” she told him. “The fouled bodies you found along the way. They are hers, her army of men who exchanged their souls and their wills to see in the dark. Did you see them? Did they see you?”
“We saw some people, but we don’t know anything about a Sorceress,” Alon offered. “They were no army, just ordinary people, in need of a good bath and a warm meal, I’ll wager.”
“Aye, he is right,” Gvidus agreed. “There were some, hiding in the scrub and the brush; children, some of them. But they seemed afraid of us, not a threat.”
Johanna listened, and as she did a doom she could not seem to shake held onto her thoughts. “Though you may be friends of Cal, and though you may oppose the Sorceress, your arrival is, at the least, unsettling.”
The woodcutters all stood to their feet, exchanging worried glances, bracing for a fight if need be.
“Long have my people been safe here in the cleft of the encircling mountains,” she told them. “I fear that, though guided by whatever light brought you, your arrival will not have gone unnoticed by our enemy.”
The weight of her words settled over all those gathered at the gate of Shaimira.
“Sendoa,” Johanna ordered after a moment of silence. “See to it that these woodcutters are given back their weapons, and find them a place to make their rest and regain their strength.”
The keeper of the pass bowed his understanding and ordered Garaile to release the weapons back to their owners.
“As for longer than that, I am not certain how long our hospitality can prudently endure,” she said addressing the woodcutters. “I will convene with my council, and will address you on the morrow.”
“My lord?” Cal asked, confused by the tension in her voice.
She looked past him, ignoring his interruption. “But for now, you are welcome here, and whatever food or aid we can offer, however brief it may be, you have but to ask.”
“Thank you,” Goran
said, his voice a mix of emotions. “If I can ask a question of you before you leave?”
“Very well,” she agreed. “What is your question?”
“If you have been safe here all this time, time long enough to build all of this,” he said, gathering his thoughts as best as he could, “I doubt anyone would be stupid enough to march an army though a narrow cavern to try and take your mighty gate as a thousand arrows rain down upon them.”
“What is your question?” she said, her patience beginning to run thin.
“What has you so worried then?” he said as respectfully as he could.
“I am not worried about the gate, nor futile efforts to funnel an army though it,” she told them. “I am worried about her dragons.”
The woodcutters stood silent, stunned by the revelation of the Queen. She nodded to her guard, and the column of white capes began to usher her back towards the heart of the hidden city.
Cal had just turned to speak with his friends when the column of guardsmen halted. A lone voice rang out, and its tone caused worry to begin to rumble in his belly.
“Cal,” Johanna said with little love in her words. “Would you please escort me for a moment?”
“Go, brother,” Goran whispered to him. “And see what you can do to lengthen our stay here a bit, huh? Besides, the lady Astyræ will show us around.” He smiled gratefully at the violet-eyed woman.
“Alright then,” he said, embracing his old friend. “I have so much to tell you all.”
Astyræ smiled a worried smile at him.
“Don’t worry my lady; I’ll find you later.” With that, Cal ran to catch up with the column of the queen. Two of the guardsmen parted and let him into the center of the formation.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The bright brass sound of the guardsman’s trumpet woke the whole of the colony’s stronghold to frantic life.
“Open the gates!” Seig ordered as he rose excitedly from his place at the table, looking to see if the fire knight had returned with good news.
The Coming Dawn: Epic of Haven Trilogy Book 3 Page 21
