The Eye of the Hunter

by Dennis L McKiernan

  Urus and Riatha remained in the camp, Riatha wearing the blue stone amulet.

  Once again Urus stepped to the well. The stone ring was yet slathered all ’round with slime, there where the wyrm had been. And the smell was as that of a dark mire. Even though the trough was made of stone and filled with water, Urus dragged it away from the well and back to the campsite, for he could not abide the odor the creature had left behind, and Urus would lave the filth from Faeril’s garments.

  As the Baeran knelt at the trough and washed the damman’s clothes, beside him Riatha cleaned Dúnamis of mucous and gore, scrubbing the blade violently, as if it were befouled, corrupted by unspeakable filth, desecrated with vileness, as if it had been violated by the creature. In her hand she had a small brush, and she jabbed the brush at the blade, and jabbed it at the blade, and jabbed it, and jabbed. Her breath came in sobbing gasps, and tears ran down her cheeks. And she jabbed and jabbed.

  And Urus reached over and stilled her hands.

  Riatha stopped moving altogether and quietly wept. Urus took her in his arms and held her close, stroking her hair. “Shh, shh, my beloved,” he whispered.

  Riatha did not answer, sobbing still, as would a child lost. Urus said nought. He held her. She wept.

  At last Riatha spoke. “Dúnamis, my sword. I Truenamed it. For the first time since I have had it, I invoked Dúnamis.”

  Urus nodded. “I heard you say to Halíd that without the power of the sword we would all have perished.”

  “But it stole life, Urus! It stole life! Didst thou not see Faeril’s hair, Gwylly’s, Halíd’s? It took life from them and gave it to me.” Again Riatha wept.

  Urus held her gently still. “List to me, my love: had you not called on your sword’s powers, we, none of us, would have life at all.”

  “I could have tried harder to overcome the…the song of entrapment. Mayhap I needed not Dúnamis’s power, yet I did not wait to see.”

  “Had you hesitated, Riatha, Faeril would now be dead.”

  Riatha gritted in return, “Never before had I used it, never again will I. The cost is too high.”

  “The cost would have been even higher otherwise.”

  Riatha wept still. But at last she choked out, “But oh, my beloved, what have I done to thee and the others? What have I done?…What have I done to ye all?”

  Urus’s only answer was to wrap her tightly in his arms.

  * * *

  When came the dawn the Warrows wakened, momentarily disoriented in their new campsite, out from under the sickly palm trees, far from the well.

  [“Where are we?”] mumbled Faeril, speaking in Twyll, the damman sitting up, clutching the blanket about her. [“Where are my clothes?”]

  Gwylly sat up beside her and fervently embraced the damman. “Oh, my dammia, you are all right! You are all right!”

  He held her at arm’s length and looked at her, his emerald eyes flying wide at the sight of the silver streak in her hair. But then he clasped her to himself again. “Oh, Faeril, the thing, it was after you and I couldn’t move.”

  “Thing? What thing?”

  “From the well. A giant leech-like thing, only worse—” Suddenly Gwylly glanced wildly about, seeking, seeing all his companions but— “Reigo! Where’s Reigo?”

  Riatha squatted beside the Waerlinga and handed over Faeril’s freshly scrubbed clothes, now dry. “Reigo is dead, Gwylly. Slain by the wyrm.”

  Faeril felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach. “Reigo dead?”

  Riatha nodded, saying nought, gesturing toward a pile of scrub on which lay Reigo’s blanket-wrapped remains.

  “Oh, Gwylly.” Weeping, the damman threw her arms about her buccaran, and he held her tightly as tears streamed down his own face.

  * * *

  After a listless breakfast, they broke camp.

  “What about the well?” asked Gwylly. “Do we destroy it? Break down the stone sides and topple all within? Bury the monster?”

  Aravan shook his head. “It contains precious water. Someday we will return and destroy the monster within. Halíd has set warning stones about, configured to say to all that they must not be within this basin when the Sun is not in the sky. I think the wyrm will not hazard the daylight.”

  Faeril looked at the Elf. “Another Djado place.” Her words were a statement, not a question.

  Aravan nodded. “Another Djado place. A place where death came in a hideous shape and slew a comrade.”

  Urus stared at the distant well. “A place where death dwells still.”

  Now they stepped to the ground where Reigo lay, Halíd with a torch in hand. The Gjeenian looked at the others, then down at the blanket.

  “As the haft of the arrow is feathered

  with one of the eagle’s own plumes,

  and loosed into the sky to fly up forever,

  so, too, is this one’s soul loosed from its bow.

  May the heavens above accept this worthy

  Realmsman

  who lived in Honor, sought Justice, and spoke Truth.

  Fly up, Realmsman, fly up forever….

  Thou wert cherished.”

  Halíd thrust the torch into the brush, and the dry branches crackled with flames, fire springing up as the Gjeenian moved about and set the whole to burning.

  Tears ran down the faces of all as they stepped back from the roaring pyre. And then slowly they walked toward the waiting camels, Gwylly placing his turban back on his head. “Oh, Gwylly,” said Faeril as she watched him, “your temples are grey,” and at these words Riatha turned to Urus and buried her face in his chest.

  At last they rode up and out of the basin and away from a place of Djado, away from the Well of Uâjii, the camels trekking south into the endless dunes of the Erg, seeking a place where kandra once grew, a place where Dodona might be.

  And as they moved southward, up from the desert floor hindward a plume of smoke rose into the sky.

  * * *

  They travelled fourteen leagues that day, encamping in the dunes for the night. And as they sat beneath the stars, they spoke of the thing in the well.

  “Perhaps it was the creature who dug the well so deep,” said Gwylly.

  “A trap, do you think?” asked Faeril.

  Aravan nodded. “Mayhap. Mayhap.”

  “Perhaps this thing is the reason why Prince Juad’s expedition disappeared…and the one that came after,” suggested Faeril.

  Again Aravan nodded. “Mayhap, Faeril, but that wouldn’t explain the vambrace and shattered arm bone Gwylly found at the Oasis of Falídii.”

  Faeril shook her head. “Perhaps it was a survivor fleeing from the wyrm’s trap, and he died or was slain as he went for help. Or it could have been someone who died on the way to the well. Perhaps something else haunts that place…the oasis, I mean.”

  Gwylly took a bite of his crue. “Oi! Urus, when the bucket was stuck at the bottom, it could have been in the grasp of the leech-wyrm.”

  Urus shrugged.

  Faeril glanced from one to another. “I didn’t see it at all,” she remarked, “though I did have black dreams of a dreadful thing, a thing cloaked in darkness.”

  Gwylly looked at the damman. “It was cloaked in darkness, Faeril. I had a devil of a time seeing it.”

  Riatha, who had remained quiet until now, exclaimed, “Thou saw it, Gwylly? But I thought that thou hadst swooned ere the light of the sword drove back the wyrm’s impenetrable black.”

  “Oh, I was out, all right. I didn’t see the light from your sword, though I wish I had. No, I saw the leech dimly before I put the stone in your hand. And it was surrounded by a terrible murk.”

  Faeril cocked her head to one side. “Just like the Dimmendark?”

  Gwylly paused in thought. “I suppose it was, love.”

  At Caer Pendwyr both Warrows had read the High King’s copy of the Raven Book, an illuminated tome telling the tale of the Winter War. It described a darkness that had come over the land, a darkness cloak
ing Modru’s Hordes as they marched south from Gron, conquering all in their path. Yet Warrows could see far through Modru’s Dimmendark, and the Wee Folk had proved his undoing, or a small group of them had, one in particular—Tuckerby Underbank. It was he who was responsible for the writing of the Raven Book, or as it is more formally called, Sir Tuckerby Underbank’s Unfinished Diary and His Accounting of the Winter War.

  Aravan leapt to his feet. “Hai! Once again jewelled Waerling eyes see through a darkness dire to foil a foul foe!”

  Gwylly smiled up at the Elf. “Ah, but it was your blue stone that saved us all…that and Riatha’s sword.”

  A bleak look came upon Riatha’s face, and she stood and walked away in the night.

  After a moment Urus got up and followed.

  That darktide, only Aravan and Riatha and Urus stood watch, for the others yet were drained, weary.

  * * *

  “It is a most distinguished look, Gwylly,” said Faeril, commenting on the buccan’s grey temples.

  Gwylly glanced up from his breakfast. “Perhaps, my dammia, yet nothing to compare with the silver stripe in thy raven locks—a truly beautiful enhancement.”

  “Was it the wyrm, Gwylly, that changed your hair and mine and Halíd’s?”

  Riatha, overhearing, said bitterly, “Nay. Not the wyrm. Instead, ’twas I who caused such. I and my sword.”

  Faeril sipped the gwynthyme tea prepared by the Elfess, for Riatha had gauged that it would help restore energy to Faeril and Gwylly and Halíd. “How could you cause such, Riatha?” queried the damman.

  “My sword is Truenamed, and when invoked, it draws energy from allies, strength…and if the need is great enough, e’en life itself. It was meant to be a Dylvan Champion’s sword, to be used among abundant allies, at a time when a War is to be settled in a battle of Champions.

  “But at its forging, the blade was instead given unto my mother, for there was sudden strife on the land and she was in immediate need of a weapon, and the reach and weight of the sword not only was fit for a Dylvan male, it also was fit for a Lian female. When the War ended, the weapon was by then my mother’s, and when I came unto Mithgar she gifted it to me. Neither of us had e’er invoked the sword…until the wyrm at the well”—Riatha glanced at Urus—“and then I had no choice.

  “I Truenamed the weapon, and it drew the energy I needed, the strength, the life, to o’ercome the creature.” Tears filled Riatha’s silver eyes. “It drew life from thee and gave it to me, and that is why thy tress is silvered and Gwylly’s temples grizzled, and Halíd’s locks shot through with grey as well.”

  Faeril stood and stepped to the Elfess and threw her arms about her. The wee Warrow, saying nothing, simply held Riatha. And Riatha, weeping silently, clung to the damman as would a castaway cling to a floating spar.

  * * *

  They came up a long, stony slope to the wide rim of the plumb-walled canyon in late morning, the Sun high overhead. They looked down within the deep gorge, seeing greenery on the distant floor. And in the vast silence they could faintly hear the sound of a fall of water coming from below.

  From beneath his robes Aravan retrieved the one of Riatha’s maps that he had borne all the way from Sabra. He glanced at the chart and then at the position of the Sun. “We have arrived at the place where kandra was said to have grown.”

  Faeril sat on the double saddle down and in front of the Elf, where she had ridden the day before, now that Reigo was gone. “Dodona,” she breathed.

  “Mayhap, wee one. Mayhap.”

  Urus rumbled, “See you a way down?”

  Long they looked for a place to descend. Finally, Riatha pointed to a distant, narrow slot cleaving full down the face of the sheer bluff opposite. “There. Mayhap yon crevice provides passage, can we find its far extent.”

  No other path seemed to offer itself up for the six to follow, though the wide gorge turned beyond seeing ’round a steady bend, past which there could be a route down.

  They backtracked north and west, coming to the far northern extent of the wide ravine, the walls yet sheer to the bottom. ’Round this end they swung and rode southerly once more, and at last they came to the crevice Riatha had seen. They trailed it down slope back to its origin, and found that the camels could squeeze through, though if they came to any blockage, the animals would have no room to turn about.

  “Hold,” called Urus, then—“Raka! Raka!”—commanded his gelded dromedary to kneel. ’Mid hronks of protest, the camel reluctantly obeyed. “I will walk and see if it provides passage through,” said the Baeran, dismounting.

  “I will go with thee, Urus,” declared Riatha, her camel, too, grumbling as it knelt.

  And so did all the camels growl, as down they were commanded, the remaining companions dismounting, as well.

  Leaving camels and comrades behind, Urus and Riatha stepped into the slot, disappearing ’round a twisting curve and into the shadows beyond. Faeril heard a faint shing as Riatha drew her sword.

  * * *

  Time passed, perhaps a half hour all told, and up through the slot bouncing from the walls came the echoing call of a Jillian crow.

  Gwylly leapt up from the rock where he had been sitting. “Safe passage!”

  Halíd looked at the buccan, questioning.

  “It is Riatha,” explained Gwylly. “The caw of the crow is a signal that all is well and to come ahead.”

  Halíd turned up the palms of his hands. “How do you know that it is not a desert crow simply calling to its mate?”

  Gwylly smiled. “This crow is found only in the Jillian Tors, year ’round, and has a distinctive call.”

  Halíd nodded in understanding, moving with Gwylly to the animals, fixing the lead line of Riatha’s dromedary to the last of the camels in his train, while Aravan tied the lead of Urus’s gelding to the train that followed him. And with shouted commands of “Kâm! Kâm!” they got the grumbling beasts to their feet.

  Into the high-walled crevice they went, Aravan and Faeril first, three pack camels and a dromedary trailing after, Halíd and Gwylly following, three pack camels and two dromedaries in their train, for tethered behind was Reigo’s dromedary as well as that of Riatha.

  Daylight faded as inward they rode, the walls cool in the notch, and even though it was mid of day, the air in the narrow slot felt chill. Downward they fared along a rock-strewn floor, among boulders and fallen slabs, with ragged, shadowed stone looming overhead. The clamor of grumbling camels reverberated along the twisting corridor, sounding as would a mighty caravan, but the softly padded feet of the complaining beasts made no sound as they walked, for as with all camels their steps moved in silence, though their irritated hronks more than made up for any secrecy they might otherwise achieve. And so, stepping silently and objecting loudly, down they went into cool shadow, along a narrow, tortuous path, while high overhead a thin jagged line told where the distant sky was above.

  At last Faeril saw before her a great vertical cleft filled with bright daylight, and she knew that they had come to the end at last, and they rode out into a sweltering blast of heat on the canyon floor, the dazzling Sun blinding, painful to the eyes. Dimly, through tears, she could see two figures walking toward them, and only by the sound of their voices did she confirm that they were indeed Urus and Riatha.

  Halíd and Gwylly came riding outward, and Gwylly, squinting, called, “Hoy! Too bright to see. And it’s like a furnace out here.”

  * * *

  The eyes of the new arrivals adjusted to the daylight as Riatha and Urus retrieved their dromedaries, the odorous beasts sneering and eructing accusations as down they knelt, then stood again.

  “Somewhere south there sounds the fall of water,” rumbled Urus, “and southward, too, are trees in the distance. Let us go there to pitch camp.”

  Down a long slope of scree they rode, down into the gorge bottom, where sparse grass grew among thorny weeds. “Prime camel fare,” said Gwylly, Halíd agreeing.

  They rode a mil
e or so along the burning floor of the broad canyon, here a half mile from rim to rim, sheer walls of tawny stone rising up to left and right, towering a thousand feet high. As they went, the vegetation slowly changed, becoming more succulent. In the distance ahead they could see a line of trees: not palm trees, but something else altogether. Too, as they fared, the sound of a fall of water came louder to their ears, as if they were nearing the source.

  At last they reached the tree line and rode into shade.

  “Grass!” cried Faeril. “Real grass! I was beginning to think that the world was made of nothing but rock and sand—

  “But, Aravan, what are these trees?”

  “Kandra,” declared Aravan. “This is a kandra wood.”

  Large were the trees, spreading outward like oaks. Yet no oaks were these, but of a different ilk, for the kandra leaves were small and bladelike, shaped as rounded stone arrow points—green on the topside and yellow on the bottom, and quaking in the slight breeze as would aspen leaves tremble. Too, the bark was smooth and dun, and the thick boles bulged somewhat at the ground, gnarled roots diving down into the soil. “The wood of this tree is golden, the grain dense, and it seems to have a natural sheen, as if it contained an oil, though it does not burn. It is a precious lumber and found only on Mithgar, and only the wood of the Eld Tree surpasses it in value.”

  Turning rightward, they followed the sound of falling water and came to a wide stream running clear and coursing in the shade cast by overhanging branches of the Kandrawood. Upstream a furlong or two they found a cascade falling some ten feet into a sparkling pool, rainbows dancing in the mist. Above the pool and a hundred yards beyond, the stream issued forth from a wide crevice at the base of the west canyon wall.