Shadow on the Stones
Page 3
Struggling with the unnaturally deep sleep that had fallen upon him and was now so rudely being dispelled, Isar opened his mouth and tried to muster his thick and sluggish tongue to ask what the matter was. He felt as though part of him was awake and the rest was struggling behind, trying to catch up.
Seeing his lips move, her thin fingers went to her mouth and she shook her head. He stared stupidly at her. She pointed to the figures lying around him still locked in sleep and again indicated that he should make no sound. First light was creeping through the doorway and he could see the shapes of the other occupants of the house like humps and hillocks in the half dark.
She tugged at his arm, determined that he should wake and follow her.
His eyes began to close again. He was still weary and confused.
She pulled his rugs from him and roughly poked and tugged at him to force him awake. Through the haze of his sleepiness he caught an impression of fear and urgency in her movements. He began to realize that he might be in danger and that she was trying to warn him.
Suddenly he was fully alert.
So urgent was her insistence that he had barely time to gather his belongings together before she had him stooping and crouching and creeping to the door of the house. She went ahead of him and held him back with her hand while she made sure all was clear outside.
He followed her unquestioningly when she gestured him on.
It was very early indeed and the village, half hidden in mist, its inhabitants still lost in sleep, seemed ghostly and unreal.
The air was chill and the grass wet from the night’s rain.
He held her hand and allowed himself to be led away from the village, first to a clump of trees and then, stumbling and slithering a bit, up a muddy hill.
Every time he tried to open his mouth to ask a question she put her finger on his lips and he was silent.
When they reached the top she pulled him down beside her amongst the long wet grass and pointed to a winding path, barely visible, to the south west of the village.
At first he saw nothing but the track threading brown amongst the grass and bracken, but soon he caught a sound followed almost immediately by the sight of a group of men emerging from the mist and bearing down upon the houses.
As they drew nearer Isar noticed that they were led by one of the villagers, one who had not joined the others in sleep but had crept from the house when the questioning was at its height. The men behind him were larger than he, dressed in dark leather, carrying staves and armed with axes and swords. They stepped in time with each other in a way that made Isar shudder. It was as though by giving up their individuality of movement, they gave up their humanity.
He looked at the girl’s tense face and knew that she had saved his life.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered, ‘may the Spirit realms keep you as safe as you have kept me.’
She shook her head slightly and there were lines of anxiety still upon her pale face. She pointed away from the village.
He followed her gaze. Was there further danger there?
She tugged his arm and he knew he must follow her yet again. The men were out of sight now, but it was not safe to stay so near the village. If the informer had convinced them that there was a traveller from the east present without the Mark of Groth upon his forehead, they would certainly scour the countryside until they found him.
‘Where can we go?’ he whispered to the girl.
Again she put her finger on her lips. Again he fell silent and followed her.
They had travelled a long way and the grass was already dry in the morning sunlight before she allowed him to rest.
Sitting with his back against a mossy rock he turned to her and said: ‘I owe my life to you, but I do not know your name.’
A sad shadow flitted across her face and she turned away from him, staring out across the wild and rocky moor that stretched to the south of them.
Thinking that she had not understood, he repeated the question more slowly, emphasizing every word, as he would for a person who did not speak his language.
‘Your name?’
She was silent still.
He took her arm and turned her to face himself, and then he put his hand on his own chest.
‘My name,’ he said distinctly, ‘is Isar.’
And then he pointed to her and his expression was questioning.
‘Your name?’
She shook her head sadly.
He looked at her, unsure what to do next.
She looked at him long and thoughtfully and then half opened her mouth as though she were about to say something, but shut it again before she did.
His eyes on her were so intense and curious, so gentle and so warm with friendliness she seemed to take heart to try again. But this time she opened her mouth wide and pointed to the inside of it.
Puzzled, he leaned forward and looked into her mouth.
And then he understood.
‘O no!’ he whispered.
Na-Groth had not only put the mark of slavery upon her forehead, he had cut out her tongue as well!
He drew back in momentary revulsion at what he had seen and then he realized that her eyes were still upon him and she had noticed his reaction and had been hurt by it.
Tears were welling up in her eyes.
Filled with regret for the tactlessness of his expression and bitterness at the cruelty of Na-Groth, he took her hands, pulled her tenderly towards him and kissed the scar on her forehead.
She smiled for the first time since he had seen her, and with that smile her thin, gaunt face became beautiful and full of light.
‘But you can hear and understand?’ he asked.
She nodded vigorously.
He thought about the situation.
He did not know how she had known that his presence had been betrayed, but it would be clear to Na-Groth’s men that she had helped him to escape.
There could be no going back to her home village.
She would have to come with him.
But where was he going?
He looked at the open moor to the south, the hills behind him and to the east. The east was where he longed to be, but between him and his home lay unknown country filled with alert and hostile men.
He looked at the girl and his brow was creased with worry.
She was sitting with her knees drawn up and her chin resting upon them, staring unseeingly into the distance. The light had gone out of her face. She was exiled from her home and friends, companion of a fugitive.
Isar shut his eyes tightly and then opened them wide, hoping to find that the whole thing was nothing more than a bad dream.
But it was not a dream.
‘We cannot sit here forever,’ he said at last, decisively. ‘You have saved my life and taken me from danger and it is now my turn to do this for you. It will not be easy, but we must return to my people and fetch help.’
To his surprise the girl shook her head.
‘What do you mean? You will not come with me?’
She shook her head.
‘You will come with me?’
She nodded affirmatively.
‘What then? Why did you shake your head?’
She pointed to the west and nodded, pointed to the east and shook her head.
He frowned. Was she saying that they must go deeper into Klad?
She pointed yet again, vigorously, to the western hills.
‘But why?’ he demanded, frustrated that she could not answer.
She shrugged helplessly, but pointed yet again and her face showed her determination.
‘No,’ he said, ‘you are wrong in this. There is nothing we can do against Na-Groth by ourselves. No, do not nod your head at me! Believe me, there is nothing we can do. We must go east and bring help from the Great Temple.’
He could see she was going to be stubborn about this, but he decided it was up to him to make the decisions. He pulled her up by her arm and turned her towards the east.
What if she had some good reason for going west?
But if she had she could not tell him, and he chose to believe that it was her fear of the unknown that kept her tied to her own country in spite of everything.
After a while she tired of fighting him and walked beside him without being held, but her face was sulky and her eyes were downcast.
They made good progress although sometimes they had to weave backwards and forwards across the country to avoid groups of Na-Groth’s warriors and villagers they could not trust.
The sun had just passed its zenith when she held him back and began to look around her nervously like a young doe sensing danger.
At first he could hear nothing, but he remained still, respecting her superior sensitivity to danger.
And then, borne on a breeze, he heard distinctly what she had already heard, the distant bark and howl of dogs on the hunt.
He had heard packs of wild dogs in the forests and had feared them and pitied their hapless prey, but there was something mingled with the sound this time that made his body suddenly cold.
The throats of men were uttering sounds as savage as the dogs. Together they were hunting and together they were coming nearer.
The girl and Isar looked at each other and knew, without any doubt, that they were the prey.
They looked around desperately.
Where was there to run?
Where to hide?
It was the girl who made the decision.
She seized Isar’s hand and they ran and slid and stumbled back down the hill they had just climbed so laboriously in the heat of the day. She turned him into the wood at the foot of the hill, through it and out the other side. She was making towards a gleam of water she had noticed earlier.
His lungs were aching with the effort, his blood hammering in his ears, but, louder than the hammering was the ghastly howl and jabber of the hunters as they came nearer.
The girl gave his hand a sudden tug and before he knew what was happening he was plunging off a low cliff into a lake. The shock of the cold water banged all his breath from him and, gasping and choking, he allowed himself to be pulled by the girl, who so much smaller and frailer than he, could swim with the strength and precision of a fish. She guided him under an overhang of rock and they hid close to the slimy, muddy bed of the lake edge, their heads obscured in water reeds and shadowed by the overhanging cliff.
They could still hear the dogs, but they could not see them.
Isar struggled to regain his breath. Mud and waterweed plastered his head and the girl herself looked uncommonly like a rat, her face was so pinched and thin, her hair so closely bedraggled about her face. At another time he would have laughed, but now it was all he could do to keep hidden and prevent himself coughing.
The dogs were confused by the lake and led their human counterparts in several directions. Isar could hear the angry shouting of the men and thought perhaps they would be safe at last, but then he noticed that they had found a way down to the water’s edge and were beating the reeds to find them. Startled water birds sprang up screeching and flew off in every direction. The air was noisy with shouting, barking, howling, yelping, screeching and the beat of stick on reed and wing on wing.
The girl pulled him under the water and started to swim towards the centre of the lake. He followed, though swimming did not come easily to him. His movements were clumsy compared to hers, but he managed somehow, his lungs almost bursting with the effort of holding his breath under water.
They had to surface.
There was no way to hold their breath longer.
In fear and dread they broke cover, took deep gulps of air and plunged again.
So quickly had they dived they had no time to ascertain whether they had been noticed by the hunters.
They had to swim on, not knowing if their pursuers would be waiting for them when they reached the shore or not.
Everything had happened so quickly Isar had not had time to grasp the full reality of the situation.
Now, in the murk of the cold and clouded water, his aching lungs told him that death could be very near.
A wave of longing to live flowed through him like pain.
Why had he let the days pass by so casually?
Why had he not shot each moment like a golden arrow, using to the full the bow of life he had been given so freely as a gift.
He knew death was not final, but only the entrance to other realms of Being ... but ... he enjoyed being Isar. He did not want to change ... not yet...
‘O Lord of Spirit, Lord of Sun, Lord of the Circle out of which there is no passing ... give me longer as Isar ... longer to love those that I love ... longer that I may bring help to the people under the shadow of Groth!’
* * * *
His head broke the surface of the water ... the sun burst with light into his eyes and he could see nothing but brightness and gold.
Blinking and dazed, he could feel the young stranger’s hand in his and his clothes dragging on him and the mud of the lake bed sucking at his feet as he stumbled and struggled out on to the pebbles of the shore.
The voices of his enemies were in the distance.
He looked back and saw them still beating the reeds on the other side. Unquestioningly he followed the girl into the woods that bordered the lake and that mercifully hid them from their pursuers.
But she would not let him rest until the sun was setting, and then they fell upon the hillside, aching in every limb, caked with dried mud, scratched and torn by briars, but alive, and safe at last from the hounds who had lost their scent.
* * * *
Isar, lying on the ground, staring up at the strange luminous blue of the sky just before night fall, saw a lark soar high above them and heard its sweet call as it turned to find its nest.
‘I shall call you Lark,’ he said. ‘You remind me of a lark.’
The girl looked at him, puzzled. A lark is noted for its song, and she had no voice.
He smiled and understood her thought.
‘You are small and light and swift. You ride high and see further than most of us. You do not sing with words, but I hear the sweetness of your voice in my head,’ he said, and he closed his eyes sleepily. ‘Besides,’ and his thoughts seemed to continue in his dreams, ‘the lark is a sacred bird and leads men to the safety of the Spirit realms.’
4
The Sacrilege
Slowly the Spear-lord’s wife, Isar’s mother, Fern, walked amongst the green profusion of her garden. The sunset had been magnificent, but for once she had not bowed her head to it, nor murmured the customary words of evening prayer.
This coming darkness brought one more night of danger to her much loved son and the prayer she must say must not be one of custom, but of power and sincerity.
As she walked she gently touched the darkening branches of her Rowan tree. She believed all nature was so interdependent and interlinked that if one tree accepted her prayer, other, rooted in the same earth, would respond to it. Their combined energy would carry her prayer to the great spirit guardians of the earth.
She sank upon her knees and lowered her forehead to the earth.
She listened to the minute earth sounds of growing roots, of burrowing earthworms, the slow suck and slither of slug and snail. Deep in the earth she felt the process of decay and renewal as once dead matter was slowly changed into a new cycle of life. Below that she could detect the restless shift and grind as strata of rock deep buried sought new levels and readjusted to old. Nothing stayed the same.
She could not hold Isar immobile, to be broken by the slow chisel of time. She did not ask that.
But tears nevertheless fell on the soft grass for what could never be.
‘What are you doing?’ a deep voice spoke above h
er, and she looked up the full length of Karne, her husband, who seemed, from this angle, to be a giant.
He took her in his arms and lifted her up. He saw the tears on her cheeks. Gently he wiped away the small shreds of grass and stick that adhered to her soft skin.
‘I was praying,’ she whispered with a catch in her voice as she tried to stop herself weeping.
He held her close.
He kissed her deeply on the lips.
At first she surrendered to the kiss and felt comforted by its intensity. But a cold feeling began to come over her and she pulled herself sharply back.
Had she imagined there was the taste of parting in the kiss?
She looked at him.
He was in his travelling cloak, a broad leather belt fastening his sword to his side, leather on his arms for protection, and, over his shoulder, the fighting bow he had not used since Wardyke’s war.
He put his fingers to her lips.
‘I know, I know,’ he said softly. ‘But it has to be. You must stay at home and pray, but I must go and seek him. I will bring him back to you. I swear it!’
‘How can you swear it?’ she said fiercely, weeping, her voice harsh. ‘Do you know all that the Spirits know? Are you God Himself that you can order a man’s destiny?’
‘Destiny comes from men’s thoughts and men’s actions working within the limited circle of our existence. The Lord who wears the whole of our universe as though it were one bead upon a necklace, will not deny my right to use my body and my mind while I have them, in the way that seems right to me.’
Fern wanted Isar safely back more than anything in the world and she trusted Karne greatly, but what if Karne were lost to her as well as Isar ... how would she live?
‘You must not think those thoughts,’ chided Karne, seeing her expression. ‘I will take care. There are other men coming, but I cannot wait until they are all assembled and ready.’ Karne had never been noted for his patience! ‘I will go ahead and when they arrive I will know the situation exactly and what the plan must be.’
‘Does Kyra know that you are going?’