The Hickory Staff e-1

by Rob Scott

  Despite the rests, it was enormously hard work. Their vigilance began to fail, and they took several blows that nearly shook them from their precarious perches on the Capina Fair’ s upper deck. Garec found himself doing less poling and more gripping of lifelines. Several times, lacking the strength to push them away from an underwater boulder, he simply cried out to prepare the others for impact.

  By nightfall, they knew they would not survive much longer. Mark, shattered, lay with his back propped against their packs as he tied strips torn from his tunic over the huge blisters that had welled up on both palms. Brynne secured a line about her waist, but she knew if she fell overboard she would not have the strength to pull herself back up; she would most likely be dragged beneath the surface and torn apart on the rocks.

  With every twist in the canyon, the group held their collective breath, some in the hope that they would spot the end of the rocky bluffs, the others in fear that a large waterfall lay in wait just out of sight. But each turn brought an audible groan from the disheartened company as nothing changed: time and again their anticipation was for naught. The river careened fiercely onwards through the curving canyon, winding its way inexorably towards the Ravenian Sea, all the while draining their spirits and slowly dismantling their craft.

  Darkness came early. Deeper sections of the river that had given a scant few moments’ rest were now giving way to large flat rocks that lay just beneath the surface. Anticipating a gentle touchdown from a short waterfall into the soft well of a deep hollow, Steven’s teeth rattled as the Capina Fair came down hard on a flat boulder he had missed. Rocks and water blurred together and for a moment Steven half expected an all-black world to shroud them, just as the all-white world had blanketed him and Lahp high among the glaciers in the Blackstone Mountains. Pushing hard, he shoved them back into moving water, then suddenly angry, called to Garec.

  The bowman turned. His eyes were sunk deep; in the twilight he looked like a lifeless skull; Steven jumped when the skull spoke. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Take this,’ he said, passing him the pole and moving carefully across to the pile of sodden packs and the hickory staff.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Brynne called over the water’s roar.

  ‘There’s no place to go ashore, and if we’re going to survive, we must have light.’ His fingers, stiff and blistered, were clumsy as he untied the ropes holding the staff safe.

  Mark nodded in understanding.

  Holding the staff close to his face, Steven drew a deep breath and summoned the magic. No, he thought, it’s different this time, a release not a summons… like that morning in the Blackstones with the pine tree – that was a release, too.

  As it had before, the staff’s power flowed through him easily; Steven felt the familiar sensation of time stretching to accommodate him – he wondered once again if time really was slowing, or if he just imagined it. Suddenly, the river seemed manageable, and Steven cursed his wretched insecurity: he should have drawn on the staff’s power much earlier. A little uncertain what he should do next, he placed the end of the staff into the riverbed and envisioned the water slowing, levelling, gently moving downstream at a leisurely, navigable pace. At first nothing happened; Steven could still feel the raft being buffeted violently – then, things calmed. The river still raged, both behind and before them, but the Capina Fair seemed to settle, floating as if adrift on a small pond.

  ‘Good,’ Steven said, and raised the opposite end of the staff above his head. ‘Now some light.’

  He focused his concentration, visualising a torch he had seen hanging in a wall sconce in Estrad. Gilmour had stolen that torch, used it to light their way – and to light his pipe, of course. Almost immediately a small yellow flame burst in the air above the raft. Bigger, Steven commanded in his mind, and as if it had heard him speak out loud, the light grew until the walls of the canyon came into view.

  With their path lighted and the Capina Fair floating in a gentle current, Mark commented, ‘That’s better. We could go on like this all night.’

  ‘Yes, but we really ought to find some place to go ashore,’ Garec said. ‘We need repairs, and if we don’t dry out and warm up, the cold will kill us before the river ever does.’

  ‘We ought to rest, too,’ Steven added. ‘I could sleep until noon.’ He used the English word.

  ‘When?’ Brynne looked at him through sodden hair, a tangled frame about her beautiful face.

  ‘Noon,’ Steven smiled. ‘It means midday with some conviction.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It means lunch,’ Mark added dryly.

  ‘That I understand,’ Garec said, ‘and if noon means sleeping until midday, with or without conviction, and then eating lunch, you have my complete support.’

  ‘How can we get ashore, though?’ Brynne asked. ‘We haven’t seen anyplace suitable since we entered this canyon.’

  ‘We’ll just have to keep going until we find somewhere we can tie up for the night,’ Mark suggested. ‘At least now the going will be easier.’

  The raft, as if floating just above the surface of their tiny circle of water, floated surely over rocks, down abrupt cascades and across whirling eddies. They poled to avoid outcroppings of lethally sharp rocks and to maintain their position midstream, but those tasks were no more demanding than paddling across a windless lake. Steven’s flame provided light for their passage as Steven himself continued to imagine a cushioned path for them all the way through the canyon.

  The magic did nothing for their fatigue, though, and the travellers continued scanning the canyon walls, looking for someplace to put ashore for a few avens’ rest. They took turns napping in pairs, but the evening chill coupled with their waterlogged clothing made proper sleep nearly impossible. Mark and Brynne huddled close together, their teeth chattering audibly. Mark brushed Brynne’s hair back from her face and cupped her cheeks in his hands while he told her silly jokes and anecdotes to help them both forget their aches.

  At one point, Brynne interrupted him. ‘I don’t want you to go back home,’ she whispered.

  Mark leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips. This wasn’t the place or the time he’d have chosen for this discussion.

  Brynne pulled him closer and kissed him back, hard and long. He shuddered with need as her tongue moved in his mouth; just the taste of her aroused him like no woman ever had.

  He pulled back slightly, and looked deep into her eyes. He put a finger on her mouth and whispered, ‘You must know how I feel. But right now, it’s academic, isn’t it? Who knows if we’ll ever find a far portal, let alone be able to use it. I do wish I could somehow let my family know where I am – no, not where I am; they’d think I was completely wacko and have me locked up, or medicated to within an inch of my life! But I want them to at least know that I’m all right, that I’m not murdered, or kidnapped or locked up. They must think we’re both dead by now – people would have come to our house days and days ago: the police, Hannah, my students, the principal at my school, friends, Steven’s boss from the bank…

  ‘I know people have probably been in and out of the house looking for clues to what happened to us, so I can’t imagine the far portal is still open. If they found it, they’d have detected its power, even if they didn’t know what the hell it was.’

  ‘You felt it?’

  ‘It changed the air in the room. It almost shimmered.’ He wagged his fingers to demonstrate for her. ‘If somehow the portal closed, though, they’d think it was just an ugly old rug, or maybe a tapestry.’

  ‘Steven is convinced that Hannah is in Eldarn.’

  ‘I know.’ Mark looked down at the log deck, and then back at her. ‘Hannah would have been one of the first to come looking for us. They had plans for the following day, so it may well be true.’

  ‘There might be others here as well?’

  ‘I suppose,’ he allowed, ‘although I hope that before too long someone realised that thing was dangerous and close
d it up.’

  ‘If it’s closed, you might end up falling anywhere in your land.’ She tried to remember Gilmour’s explanation of the far portals. ‘So would Nerak.’

  ‘That’s right – listen to me go on, will you? The truth is I have no idea what happened after we got transported to Eldarn.’ He ran two fingers along her face and across her chin.

  She reached up to take his hand. ‘Regardless, I don’t want you to go back.’

  Mark looked up and saw Steven illuminated in the stafflight. With his hair cropped close and his shaven face, he looked like an accountant on a weekend rafting trip, the one in the play no one gives a second thought to. ‘A red top in Star Trek,’ he muttered to himself, ‘cannon fodder.’ Then to Brynne, ‘I don’t think he is going back,’ Mark whispered, their faces nearly touching in the darkness. ‘He’ll stay here until this is done, and then…’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘And then we’ll decide what happens with us.’ Brynne was back to her opening thought. The tough, knife-wielding partisan grinned, and shot him a sexy come-hither look. She ran her hand down his sodden thigh suggestively.

  ‘What? Here?’ Mark was a little taken aback.

  She nodded.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ he whispered, ‘it’s forty degrees, and I know that doesn’t mean anything to you in Ronan, but where I’m from that means it’s a damn sight too cold to get naked outside on a damp raft in the middle of a bloody freezing river.’

  ‘We really should get out of these wet clothes,’ she said slyly, starting to peel her top off. ‘There are a few dry blankets in these packs; we can roll one out and use some to cover us.’

  Mark protested, ‘But the guys are right here.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to be quiet. Maybe we can huddle down here between these satchels.’ She reached under his sweater, and he jumped at her frigid touch. ‘Sorry,’ she said insincerely, and blew into her fingers before returning them to his chest.

  ‘You aren’t going to be denied, are you?’

  ‘Not tonight, Mark, no.’ She giggled.

  Mark had resigned himself to a torrid session of covert sex with one of the sexiest women he’d ever met when Garec shouted, ‘Look! What’s over there?’

  ‘Rutters,’ Brynne spat, then adjusted her tunic. Mark felt the tiny circles of cold on the flat of his stomach warm slightly as her fingertips drew away.

  ‘Where?’ Steven asked, trying to follow the line of Garec’s extended finger towards the canyon wall.

  ‘It looks like a cave,’ Brynne said, ‘a big one, a cavern maybe.’

  Mark stood beside her and peered across the water. The river crashed violently against an enormous opening that jutted upwards through the granite like a jagged flaw in the cliff. There was nothing at all comforting or inviting about the cavern’s mouth. As they drew closer, he could see that the gaping crack reached nearly halfway up the canyon wall to the precipice above.

  ‘It’s huge,’ Steven said.

  ‘Yes, but we’ve no idea how far in it goes, or if there’s a decent place for us to make camp once we get inside,’ Garec said negatively.

  ‘True,’ Steven agreed, ‘but if we don’t take a look, we’ll never know, will we?’

  Garec nodded grimly, giving in, and the two of them steered the raft towards the entrance.

  As they passed from the river into the cavern, the four travellers were struck by the sudden silence. The deafening roar of the rapids had provided a steady backdrop of noise all day, and the echoes rang in their ears as they passed beneath the natural archway. As the cacophony faded, they were overwhelmed by the heavy quiet. They’d been shouting at each other all day; now the travellers spoke in hushed whispers, as if they had broken into a vast stone tomb and feared waking its residents. Steven’s flame pierced the darkness, illuminating a thin passageway ahead.

  Mark stared up towards the cavern’s ceiling, invisible beyond the stafflight, and said sarcastically, ‘Oh, yes, this is much better.’

  Steven chuckled. ‘We do need a bit more light don’t we?’ He raised the staff, closed his eyes and motioned; the flame doubled then tripled in size and intensity until the cavern was dimly lit from end to end. He opened his eyes and grinned.

  ‘Your wish is my command, amigo,’ he said, clapping Mark on the shoulder. Around the Capina Fair, the walls of the canyon dropped straight down into the water. It looked horribly forbidding: as if no place were safe for travellers, but especially not this place. Far above, a crooked stone ceiling loomed over them impassively. Following the river’s current to the far end of the cave, Steven could see that the ceiling dropped down towards the water’s surface. There was a low, narrow passageway, through which the water disappeared into the dark reaches of the canyon wall. They would have to duck, or maybe even kneel if Capina was going to take them further into the cavern.

  ‘Well, there doesn’t seem to be anyplace to put ashore in here, so let’s go back outside,’ Mark suggested.

  Brynne shook her head. ‘No. Let’s push ahead. The current isn’t bad, and we can always pole our way out if we need to.’

  Mark felt the blood drain from his face; he was glad it was too dark for Brynne to see how frightened he was. He hated enclosed spaces. ‘It probably just narrows down to nothing back there. It’ll be a complete waste of time.’

  ‘So then we’ll pole our way out,’ she replied. ‘Steven? Garec? What do you think?’

  ‘Let’s go ahead,’ Garec agreed, ‘what can it hurt? And if we find someplace to go ashore, we’ll have shelter for the night.’ His voice cracked as he spoke and he realised his trepidation was now evident. He cursed to himself and began untying the rope securing his bow and quivers.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Brynne asked. ‘There’s nothing here to harm us. We haven’t seen a thing all day.’

  ‘True,’ Garec replied, ‘but you didn’t get to meet the last charming inhabitant of this miserable waterway.’

  Steven laughed; it bounced from the walls in a quickly moving echo that filled the cavern from top to bottom. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Fine,’ Mark agreed, drawing the battle-axe from his belt.

  The current quickened as they entered the narrow passage at the rear of the cavern, and Brynne realised she had spoken too soon. There was no way they would be able to pole their way back out. Looking over at Steven, she searched his face for signs of insecurity. He looked calm and confident, and she relaxed a little. The staff-wielding foreigner would find some way to propel them back against the current if necessary.

  The rock faces closed down around them until the pathway was little more than two raft-lengths across. They didn’t have to kneel down, but periodically Mark and Garec were forced to duck beneath a particularly low drop in the stone ceiling. Steven’s flame, now unable to float above the raft, moved out ahead to light the roughly hewn tunnel. Despite the luminance and warmth accompanying the fireball, a cold darkness settled about them and no one spoke as they wound their way deeper and deeper into the cavern.

  Finally Garec broke the silence. His face was formless in the murky firelight as he said quietly, ‘That’s it. I can’t reach the bottom any longer.’

  ‘Neither can I.’ Steven stretched low over the side of the Capina Fair, but he still failed to find solid ground. ‘Use the poles against the walls to keep us midstream. The current here is strong but deep. We won’t need to worry about unexpected rapids.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Mark asked. ‘Unless this pops out in an Orindale tavern, we’re going to have to get back out to the river tomorrow. How much further should we let this carry us?’

  ‘A bit further, that’s all,’ Steven suggested. ‘If we can’t find someplace soon to tie her off and dry things out, we’ll head back.’

  The tunnel wound its way in lazy curves back and forth and ever deeper into the gloom. The crisply moving current suggested their passageway stretched onwards, perhaps to the other side of the cliff, but Mark feared the ceiling would drop down suddenly, leaving t
his branch of the river to continue its flow underground. He wasn’t looking forward to feeling the overhead stone close down upon them, or having the walls of their already cosy tunnel narrowing to trap the Capina Fair between ponderous granite bookends for ever. He imagined them being slowly swallowed by a great stone god so beset by the general lassitude of the ages that it would not even realise it had eaten them whole, raft and all. Garec had placed his pole beside him on the deck and now held his bow loosely in one hand. Mark wasn’t sure what Garec planned to shoot, but he wouldn’t deny it was comforting to know he was armed and at the ready.

  Mark had never been one for nostalgia. He sometimes found it a bit worrying that important events, even entire years in his past, somehow collapsed down to just a few moments in his memory. Months of preparation had gone into the state swimming championships, which was probably the most anticipated event in his life thus far. He swam brilliantly, winning three events and shattering two school records – but now, ten years on, the memory of that time had been reduced to just a few glimpses. He could see his coach shouting at him from above the water; he could feel the cold winter air on his still-damp hair as he waited for his ride home. And, most often, he could remember a few seconds of underwater confusion while he reached for the finish wall, looked around and felt the elation well up. Four months of work and anticipation, the greatest single moment of his youth, represented by ten or twelve seconds of colour, sound and feeling.

  But thinking back over the time he and Steven had been in Eldarn, he thought that perhaps things here were different. There was almost nothing that he could not recall in vivid detail: the feel of the stones as they rubbed against his knuckles at Riverend, the smell of lodge pines burning above him as he slowly faded to sleep in the falling snow, the touch of Brynne’s body against his as they lay together in the forest cabin, each having thought the other dead: these and a thousand other incidents, he could still feel them, whole, in his memory. Right now, he was dreading the recollection he would carry of this cavern: he was pretty sure he would have to swim back out of this tunnel, and he knew he no longer had the strength.