Jed looked up at the crumbling castle on the hill above, wondering if the walls might fall down and crush them in an avalanche of stone. He never really believed the stories about the old castle. He had assumed they were tall tales told to lull small children to sleep. When he and Kylla had learned that this year’s school trip would be to the shores of Lake Kenno’Cha, near the rumored resting place of the ancient abandoned castle, they had spent weeks planning a midnight mission to explore the ruins.
“Let’s get up there before we lose the moonlight,” Jed said.
Kylla took one look up the hill and glanced sideways at Jed. “Race you.”
Jed and Kylla ran pell-mell up the hill, zigzagging between the wide slabs of granite and thin, wispy trees. As usual, Kylla took the lead before they were halfway up the hill. Kylla held the hem of her cotton dress high above her knees, her thin legs flashing in the moonlight. Jed tried to suck in more air to power his already tiring legs, but he knew it was hopeless.
Kylla loved to race. And she nearly always won. Jed was not the only boy she bested in contests of physical strength on a regular basis. He was merely the only one who didn’t resent her for it.
Unsurprisingly, Kylla reached the top of the hill first. Hands on her hips, she waited for Jed to catch up. Breathing heavily, Jed stopped beside her and bent down, placing his hands on the knees of his woolen trousers as he sucked in air.
“Couldn’t we…just…walk…someplace…for once?” Jed panted.
Already beginning to breathe normally, Kylla smiled at him. “Where would the fun be in that?”
“The fun,” Jed said, “would be in not feeling like I needed to puke.”
As he calmed his breathing, Jed took a moment to survey his surroundings. The castle wall curved gently, completely encircling the towers within. A singsong rhyme all the Kellish children sang telling the story of the castle came to Jed’s mind.
Once there was a castle made of stone,
Walls round and white as bone
But stones crumble and walls fall,
And bury treasures beneath them all.
Though white as bone, the wall of the castle was in no way complete. Sections of the wall had collapsed over the many years since its construction and now there were large gaps easily big enough for Jed and Kylla to climb through.
Jed motioned toward the nearest fissure in the wall and started walking.
“Let’s go.”
Kylla followed silently. The immensity of the adventure they were on finally began to sink into Jed’s thoughts. If the story about the ruined castle was true, the other stories might be true as well. Stories of magic swords and precious jewels. And a monster. He hadn’t forgotten the stories about the monster.
Jed stopped in front of the gaping hole in the wall and looked to Kylla to see if her competitive streak was still strong.
“Want to go first?” Jed asked.
“Only if you’re afraid to,” Kylla replied with a sweet smile across her face.
Jed frowned. He hated it when she outwitted him.
He climbed over the large stones of the fallen wall, careful to maintain his footing. Not wanting to seem anxious, he didn’t look back to see if Kylla followed him.
The pile of rubble sat a few meters high and it took only moments to climb down to the other side. At the bottom of the pile of stones, Jed found himself in a large courtyard, the three towers of the castle rising above him.
Each tower stood nearly fifty meters tall and sat equidistantly from the circular wall and from each other. A row of two-story buildings connected the towers to the wall, splitting the courtyard into three sections and leaving the space between the towers empty.
Or almost empty. A dark mass was barely visible at the very center of the courtyard. The castle towers seemed to drench the courtyard in shadows, lending an eerie atmosphere to the grounds the full moon above could do nothing to dispel. As Jed stared into the blackness between the towers, something brushed his shoulder.
Leaping back and sucking in a quick breath, he saw Kylla standing beside him.
“Jumpy?” she asked, grinning.
“Not funny,” Jed answered. “You go first next time.”
Kylla brushed off the suggestion with a shrug. “Which one?”
“The stories all say the treasures of Lord Narrish are hidden beneath the tower closest to the gods,” Jed said, mentally bringing to mind the stories he had studied about the castle.
“Whose gods?”
“The stories never say. Maybe it will be clearer from the center of the courtyard,” Jed suggested.
“You mean where it’s darkest,” Kylla said, staring into the blackness between the towers.
Jed slid his knapsack off and opened it to reveal a small lantern. “I swiped this from Mrs. Lemmick’s tent. Let’s hope she doesn’t need to use the latrine in the middle of the night.” Pulling a small box of matches from his pocket, Jed struck one and lit the lantern, holding it up as he slid the straps of his knapsack over his shoulder again.
Jed looked at Kylla in the lantern light and smiled. Kylla smiled back and they both laughed. They were frightened, but excited. This was what bound them together more than anything. The love of adventure, of seeing something new, something they weren’t supposed to see. Facing fears, and daring each other to leap beyond them.
They walked slowly through the courtyard, their footsteps echoing loudly on the stones beneath their feet. As they passed the base of the towers and stepped into the shadowed inner square, a chill passed through Jed. He shivered and stopped.
Swallowing, he turned to Kylla. “Did you feel that?”
“Yep,” Kylla said, looking over her shoulder. “No wonder they say it’s haunted by the spirits of dead warriors.”
“You always know the right thing to say to calm my nerves.” Jed frowned and began walking again, quickly fading into the darkness, even though he carried the lantern ahead of him.
Startled to be momentarily alone, Kylla leapt to catch up with Jed. Walking slowly but steadily, they soon arrived at the exact center of the inner courtyard, the mystery of the shadowy shape revealed by the dim light of the lantern.
They looked up at a massive statue of a man with a sword locked in vicious combat with a large creature three times his size. The creature had four spiral-shaped horns erupting from its head and a large set of bat-like wings sprouting from its back. It had the face of a ram, but the body of a very large and powerful man. The two figures seemed frozen in the final, fatal moments of a deadly battle.
Jed let out a long, quiet whistle. “It’s true.”
“Is that Lord Narrish?” Kylla asked as she walked around the statue, examining it from all angles.
“Yes,” replied Jed as he followed her around the stone warriors. “The monster is the Morikon, a blended beast created by the dark gods. Lord Narrish is said to have fought the beast in battle for three days, finally defeating him on the morning of the fourth day. The stories say he was so impressed by the courage of the Morikon that he refused to kill it, and instead forced it to guard his treasure.”
Kylla stared up into the eyes of the Morikon, two black crystals inserted into the stone skull of a ram, as Jed lowered the lantern. “This is what we’re supposed to find if we uncover the treasure?”
Jed joined Kylla’s gaze. “That was all nearly two thousand years ago, but if the stories are true, the Morikon is said to guard the treasure until Wyconna’s end…until the Celestial Pilgrim no longer sails between the stars.”
Kylla stepped away from the statue and looked around. It was even darker now, the moon hidden by one of the castle towers.
“How do we find the treasure?” Kylla asked.
“The poem describing the treasure says it lies within the tower that is nearest the eternal gods above.”
“Do you remember what it says, exactly?”
Jed closed his eyes and thought back to the many times he had read the stories of the Old Ones in a well-worn
book called Tales From the Before Time he kept hidden beneath the floorboards under his bed. Originally written by a teacher name Pannu Hyth nearly four hundred years ago, it had been a banned book in the Kellish communities for most of that time.
But, it seemed, Jed’s grandfather possessed a heretical streak deep enough for him to bury a copy in the attic of his barn, which was where Jed found him hiding it one rainy afternoon. Sworn to secrecy, Jed had gobbled up every story in the book many times over the last two years. He knew nearly every word by heart.
Opening his eyes and looking up at the statue of the Morikon and Lord Narrish locked in battle, he recited:
“Sunlight rose on the fourth day
And Lord Narrish beat the beast down.
Beneath his sword the Morikon lay,
Their blood mixed and crusted brown.
Such a fierce warrior the Lord would not slay,
For upon this the gods would frown.
So he cast it beneath the tower clay,
To guard his treasured crown.
And there beneath the tower gray
The eternal gods forever looked down,
And the Morikon slew all who came its way,
Keeping safe the triple mantled crown.”
Kylla turned her gaze from Jed to the stars above. “That’s it,” she said.
“What’s it?” Jed asked.
“The stars,” Kylla answered. “The eternal gods are the stars.”
“A constellation, you mean?” Jed said, remembering the different ancient Origin World names for the patterns of the stars.
“Exactly,” Kylla said, thinking aloud. “When the builders created the ship, they chose the stars from each traveler’s home world to project in the night sky. For us humans they decided to use the Origin World so the stars above us would always remind us of where we came from and how far we had travelled.”
“But each culture on the Origin World had its own stories,” Jed said, following her gaze up to the stars.
“So, who were the gods of Lord Narrish?” Kylla asked. “If we knew his gods, maybe we could find them, or one of them, in the stars above.”
Jed thought about this. In his mind he flipped through the stories of the Tales from the Before Time page by page, seeing each one and looking for a clue as to Lord Narrish’s gods. In his mind’s eye he saw an illustration in the margin of the story of the Morikon — a simple woodcut of Lord Narrish kneeling before an altar with four bowls upon it. The first bowl heaped high with dirt, the second with a flame leaping up from it, the third filled with water, and the fourth apparently empty.
“The elements. Lord Narrish’s gods were the embodiment of the elements,” Jed declared, rather proud of himself for seeing the connection.
“So, where above these towers are there stars that resemble earth, wind, fire, and water?” Kylla asked, more to herself than Jed.
Jed craned his neck back. “The stories showed an engraving with four bowls, each containing an element. They went in order starting with earth, then fire, then water, then air, so maybe what we’re looking for…”
“Are four stars in a row,” Kylla said, pointing to a row of four stars directly above one of the towers. “Those four stars are part of the constellation Aries, or the ram. And the Morikon is part ram and part man.”
She looked down from the stars and smiled at Jed, obviously excited that her love of astronomy, so disparaged by her parents and her teachers as being unsuitable for a girl, had finally proven to be useful.
“Good work, Ky,” Jed said, grinning back at her. “Together, this should be easy.”
Jed started off across the shadow-filled courtyard toward the designated tower, Kylla right beside him. The call of a strange bird, or what Jed hoped was a bird, rang out along the stone walls around them.
Glancing at Kylla, he quickened his pace, and in moments they stood before the doorway of the tower beneath the eternal gods above.
To continue reading:
The Celestial Blade
The Wizard of Time Trilogy (A Fantasy Time Travel Series) Page 93
