There had always been a wildness to him, but it was like it had been uncaged and now grew by the day, despite Harriet’s frantic efforts to tame him. Eventually she abandoned her project and regarded him with surly disappointment.
As his evenings were freed, Aedan found he had the time to resume his lessons with his mother. They read to each other from the store of books Nessa had managed to slip in between her belongings while packing. When the others retired, the two of them would translate stories and jokes into Orunean, talking and laughing late into the night. Instead of making him tired, Aedan found these times reviving his mind in the same way exercise was reviving his body.
As Aedan’s strength increased, so did his father’s restlessness. One afternoon, Aedan spotted a column of grey smoke a few days journey back along the trail they had taken. When he reported it, Clauman dashed from the house and ran to the nearest vantage point. He returned pale and tense.
“Time is up,” he said. “We leave at first light tomorrow.”
The women were seated at the table when Clauman, followed by Borr and Aedan, rushed into the house. Clauman told his wife in clipped terms what he had seen, and informed her that they were to begin packing immediately.
“But who is it?” Nessa asked.
“No way to tell at this distance. And we are not waiting to find out.”
“Do you think they are after Aedan?”
Clauman’s expression shifted and his eyes turned back to her as if he had been thinking something very different. “Aedan? Yes … of course. Who else?”
Aedan felt his skin turn cold at the idea of being dragged before a court with Dresbourn as judge.
“Is it more of that hullabaloo from the Mistyvales?” Harriet asked in the way a nanny speaks to a tale-spinning child.
Clauman raised an eyebrow at her tone. He replied without expression, “It seems they aren’t satisfied with our exile.”
There was a heavy silence in the room.
“Castath, you say?” asked Harriet.
Clauman nodded.
“Borr and I have been talking. We’ve had enough of being marooned out here on our own. This was supposed to become a busy road. Instead it’s been forgotten. So we would like to come along and start over at Castath too.”
Aedan muttered something rude under his breath.
“We will take the DinEilan road, east of Vallendal,” said Clauman. “Through the territory of Kultûhm.”
Nessa paled and Aedan shuddered as they now remembered the original plan.
“Then we cannot join you,” said Borr, whose eyes were large with disbelief. “How could you even consider that route? Haven’t you heard what –”
“Oh hush!” said Harriet. “The quantity of stories only proves that they are all nonsense. That’s always the way it works. The more stories there are about something the more certain you can be that none of them are true, or haven’t you learned that yet?” It was the nanny tone.
Borr dropped his head. Everyone else shifted uncomfortably.
“Anyway,” Harriet continued, “that is the shortest route from here, and I don’t want to be travelling when the baby gets bigger.” She patted her belly and winked. Realisation didn’t come immediately, but when it struck, Nessa leapt off her chair and threw her arms around her friend.
The men exchanged a silent handshake.
Aedan slipped away and, after checking that nobody was watching, retrieved the little leather case from under the stairs, hung it around his neck and tucked it under his shirt.
Borr and Harriet had a large wagon drawn by a ponderous carthorse. They had to pack and unpack several times through the night before they were satisfied. Finally, Borr strapped a few chicken coops on top and tied a dozen goats to the back while the rest were freed. Clauman groaned as Snore flapped his way up the luggage and settled himself bravely beside the hens.
Borr and Harriet lingered a while as the other wagon moved off. When they joined the trail, their faces reflected the thoughtfulness of leaving home.
Clauman doubled back to cover the tracks and to pin a note to the door. Aedan had watched over his mother’s shoulder as she wrote what her husband dictated. The note invited visitors to make themselves at home until the owners returned from a two week long gold-scouting trail. Aedan hoped that one of the visitors would be literate. Anyone would wait a long time for news of gold.
For ten days they travelled east, Clauman pushing for speed, seething at every obstruction, peering back from the top of every rise. The terrain grew more rugged and the land wilder by the league. Often in the night, Aedan woke to the noises of nearby sniffing and the leafy crunch of padded feet. Once, the camp erupted in a furious squawking and flapping. The yells of the men and screams of the women were enough to frighten away whatever had applied its very sharp teeth to the hutches, as deep grooves told in the morning light. The next evening there was another attack. This time the growls were deeper and the wagon shook with some violence, but by the time the men approached with flaming branches there was no predator to be seen. It was only when the sun rose that they discovered three of the goats were missing. From then on they kept the fire burning high all night. Whoever was on watch had the responsibility of adding wood whenever the flames dipped. They lost another four goats when Harriet dozed off.
Near the end of the second week they reached a split. Left led to a pass in the mountains and eventually to Rasmun. It was the old Orunean road, forgotten and overgrown. They turned right, onto what was little more than a vague suggestion of wagon ruts.
Mostly they were not sure if what they had was the road or a deer track. Times beyond count they had to double back and find detours around gullies or thickets the wagons could not cross. Twice they came upon stone bridges spanning deep ravines. Clauman walked up onto the first of them alone while the others watched in tense silence. Aedan could see his father stepping across holes where rocks had lost their grip and plunged into the churning river below. When Clauman came back he shook his head and opted for a long detour. The second bridge was in better condition, though it spanned a far more terrifying gorge. This time the detour would have been too long. They led the wagons over one at a time, and all released deep sighs of relief when the last wheels rattled off the stones onto the grassy earth.
At the foot of the bridge, Aedan found a stone pillar engraved with symbols he had never seen. He scraped away some of the lichen and peered at this remnant from a distant time. The edges of the script were weather-scarred in a way that told of great age, but the symbols themselves told nothing until he began to look more carefully. Some of the shapes were almost like pictures – waves, fire, the moon, a bird – and he began to wonder if it might actually be possible to understand something of the meaning. He pored over it, full of imaginings, until voices called him back to the present and to the receding wagons.
More and more regularly, Clauman sent Aedan ahead to scout and find where the dwindling marks reappeared. When Harriet objected to a child being given that responsibility, Clauman’s reply was terse: “I taught him. He can manage.” Then he turned to Aedan and whispered, “If there’s one thing she knows, it’s not to be found out here.”
Aedan laughed and his heart swelled. It was a sudden togetherness, a sharing, and he knew how much he had missed working beside his father. Clauman was often distant, even when near. But in that little shared secret, that moment of understanding, the magic of a father-and-son bond was rekindled. From then on, Aedan scouted with a will, dashing off when sent and cutting across any terrain to reach a vantage point from where he could discover the best route.
Hills grew around them as they approached the constantly rising DinEilan Mountains. When they reached the foothills, the colossal peaks filled a great portion of the eastern sky. Mornings were now cloaked in a dreamy shade, and dew remained long on the grass until the sun was able to clear the spine of the range.
The trail rose and fell steeply over the many valleys and sometimes wound along
the contours of great mountain slopes that pushed out between the hills. Aedan often found his eyes drifting from the road, drawn up the grassy banks that rose higher and steeper until at last, when it looked as if they would fall back on themselves, they gave way to sheer walls of grey rock. The precipices were stern in aspect and bewildering in size – when they could be seen – for they were lost more often than not in mist and cloud. It was the first time he had been at the foot of one of the great mountains, and he knew now why there were so many poems about them. He also knew, without bothering to attempt it, that it would never be possible to squeeze them into words.
The shapes of the peaks, oddly enough, were more obscure from close. They hardly resembled the names they must have been given from a distance – the Red Fist, the Bullhorns, the Chariot, the Three Sisters. The horns looked as blunt as the fist from here and the sisters were nothing alike. This, however, did not take away from their impressiveness, as each day they soared higher and higher over the approaching travellers.
The wagons splashed and clattered over rocky beds of young, shallow rivers and creaked up the ridges where the tough stalks of dense tussock grass sighed in the wind.
From here they were finally able to look out over the great expanse of Lake Vallendal, a body of water so vast as to be more of an inland sea. Aedan had often heard of the great lake. Many myths and adventures surrounded it, some of which played out in his imagination as his eyes took in the great reaches, like the fleet of fishing boats that sank in a storm and were said to now sail beneath the water, searching for the harbour. When the lake was still, it was a giant mirror cracked only by the occasional breaching fish or a busy fleet of ducks, but when the wind was restless, the choppy water looked dark and deep and full of mysteries.
The mood of the party grew heavier as they progressed. Clauman’s eyes cast about in all directions, not just behind. They were now in the heart of DinEilan – the territory of bears and wolves said to be unusually bold and vicious, and soon they would enter the lost realm of Kultûhm.
Travelling so near to the peaks, they often woke in thick mist that would slip off the rim of the mountains and glide down through the valleys during the night, swallowing the slopes and woods in a murk of quiet secrecy. It made travel far more dangerous. Aedan never ventured far ahead in these conditions for fear of getting lost in the vastness of dim, shrouded hills.
The day was just beginning to clear when Nessa exclaimed and pointed to a stand of trees a few miles up the valley they were crossing.
“Look! They are as big as the pearlnut tree.”
Even at a distance it was clear that the trees were giants, swaying with ponderous gravity in the wind that caused lesser trees to shake and shiver. It was not just the trees that were oversized – even the surrounding scrub and wildflowers stood as thick and tall as reeds. The island of strange growth reminded Aedan of the way grass springs up near a seep or over a patch of rich soil, but he had never known water and compost to produce such growth.
Aedan wanted to explore, but Clauman kept him back, eager to push on and leave the area by nightfall.
Aedan slept fitfully that night. It was a little before dawn when something drew him from sleep. He sat up and listened. A chattering river leapt down its rocky bed nearby, a few crickets creaked, there was a muffled pop from the sleeping coals in the fireplace – somebody, probably Harriet, had let it die out again.
That was not good. He listened now with a sense of alarm. It had been something else, something that had not belonged …
A huge sound filled the air. He jumped to his feet. The distant reverberations of something between a bellow and a howl shook in his chest. The tone was floating and mournful, but full-throated, deep and resonant.
Clauman had his head cocked. He was listening too. Nessa’s eyes were wide open.
“What is it?” Aedan whispered.
It boomed again. Far away, yet loud enough to rouse any sleeper. Borr and Harriet, however, slumbered on.
“The pattern of the call reminds me of a woodland fox,” Clauman said, not whispering, “but it’s obviously too deep, too big. It must be something like a bear, though I don’t know any that call in this way. It is probably an animal that we don’t see further west, and it’s definitely something with a big throat.”
“It sounds lonely,” said Aedan.
Though it was dark, the embers illuminated Clauman well enough to reveal a hard look.
“Don’t you get any ideas about going out there. It’s probably a lonely stomach and you’ll fill it nicely. This is not the Mistyvales. We don’t know this area and some of the stories just might … You stay put.”
With that, Clauman got up and began to rouse the fire and boil water, stamping his feet and cracking branches as loudly as he could. Sleeping on the watch was something he was not prepared to accommodate. Aedan knew there would be no point lying down again, so he rolled up his blanket and sat on it in front of the reviving flames as a grey dawn crept in. But that did nothing for his restlessness, so he climbed a tree, hoping to see through the holes that were torn in the mist from time to time. All he could make out were leaves and a few tree tops. When he was slick with an icy film of gathered mist, he dropped down through the branches and tucked into a breakfast of boiled maize crush – a simple porridge, but delicious.
The deep hooting call ceased, but Aedan could not shake a feeling that made him want to constantly check behind him. As soon as his bowl was cleaned and his blanket packed, he scuttled up the tree again in the hope of glimpsing the strange animal. But as he hung in the mist, another thought crept towards him – the fortress of Kultûhm could not be far ahead.
This was the part of the journey that had been hanging in all their minds like a great sleeping bat nobody wanted to rouse. He climbed down as wheels began to creak and roll out of the camp, jumped onto the back of his father’s wagon and climbed to the top of the baggage, the highest point. His eyes were busier than usual.
It was later that morning as the hills were just emerging from their misty blanket when he spotted a dark round tower standing well over the distant hills, cruel fang-like spires cutting into the sky.
It brought an end to conversation. They travelled with their eyes fixed ahead. The beast with the strange call was forgotten.
The land was such that they were not able to give the fortress a wide berth, for on the left the mountain pressed its flanks out, and on the right the lake crept in and stole the low ground. It was with a feeling of some inevitable advancing fate that Aedan watched the tower loom higher with every advancing mile. Most of the day had gone when they emerged from a thick glade to a sight that caused even the horses to stop and raise their heads. Both wagons shuddered to a halt. The whole party gaped.
The ancient mountain fortress of Kultûhm was something that few claimed to have seen, but there were none who had not heard of it, and for good reason. It had been the home of the Gellerac people – the most powerful and, without a doubt, the cruellest empire ever to dominate the western mainland. Their navy had ruled Lake Vallendal, using it to reach far out into the surrounding areas. Fleets would swoop down on lakeside towns and armies would march inland. They would take what they pleased and none could oppose them. Taxes were harvested with a brutality that was almost inconceivable – villagers were simply burned alive until the coffers were full.
There had been many uprisings. Coalitions of rulers had more than once laid siege to their oppressors, but the great fortress had never been taken. Rebel armies broke against the walls like waves bursting on a rocky peninsula.
Yet at the height of Gellerac power, the oppression abruptly ceased. A wrecked fleet of ships was found washed up after a storm, and this was the last that was seen of Kultûhm’s population. The fortress lay open, in deathly silence.
Plague was the word, mostly, but stranger theories abounded. Explorers and researchers, once they ventured behind the great walls, were never seen again. The emptiness of Kultûhm was a qu
estion that had lured many into its shadows, and released none.
While Aedan was not free from curiosity’s tug, he knew too much about those doomed ventures. Looking from this distance was more than enough.
The fortress was colossal on a scale he had never imagined. He had heard stories, even read an account of the dimensions and architecture, but to actually see it now where it crouched on its mountain throne, to fall under the spell of its silent watchful power that seemed to hush even the songs of birds … He shivered. It was as if he had stumbled across some giant predator.
The fortress rose over a hill with sheer quarried sides, dominating the surrounding land. Only the nearby mountains stood above it. The hundred-foot-high walls were of dark stone turned black in places where centuries of trickling water had stained the surfaces and fed cloaks of moss. Trees fought for light at the base while ferns draped, spilling from narrow slits and cracks. An enormous creeper clung from the great round tower and reached its thick arms out over the surrounding buildings like tentacles.
Despite the invasion of plants, a few cracks and some crumbled stone, there was little structural damage that could be seen. Most of the towers and turrets stood firmly among the city that rose within. The place would have been impenetrable even now if it were not for the lowered drawbridge and the heavy wooden gates standing ajar.
Though the castle itself was impressive, there was something else that made it significantly more intimidating. In front of the walls was a plain where about a dozen statues ringed the buildings, facing out as if on guard. But these were statues the likes of which none of the travellers had ever seen. From a distance it was clear that they stood nearly as high as the walls themselves.
Some of these stone giants took the shapes of fully armoured soldiers, one with a sword many times the height of the surrounding firs, one with a poleaxe the size of a small ship. Beyond the giant soldiers were mythical beasts with features so life-like that they appeared only to be holding their breaths while under scrutiny.
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 13
