Thaniel lowered his head and looked into Aram’s eyes. “You cannot avoid it, my lord. I am sorry, Aram, but your life is no longer entirely your own.”
58.
“Yes, I heard this from Alvern already,” Aram replied as his irritation threatened to become anger. With an effort, he suppressed his frustration and continued on in a calmer tone. “What is it that I cannot avoid?”
“Do not be angry with me, my friend,” Thaniel replied. He lifted his head and gazed into the deep black-blue sky of the eastern horizon, beyond which lay the high plains of his youth. “That which you cannot avoid,” he said, “was commissioned to occur by those that are higher, even, than you – by the creatures that told of your return to earth.” He lowered his head to look again at Aram. “That is why we must wait upon Lord Alvern.”
Aram gazed back at him and then acquiesced in silence, nodding shortly and then turning away to go among the trees and gather fuel for a fire. When he had managed, with his dagger and a chunk of flint he found in the rocks along the stream, to set flame to kindling, he warmed some banzo seeds in the pot he’d been given by Metch. After he’d eaten and was seated on a log enjoying the heat from the fire, he was surprised to look up and find Thaniel standing near him in the twilight, watching him closely.
“Have you supped already?” He asked the horse in surprise.
The horse ignored that. “What happened, Lord Aram?”
Aram gazed back at him, frowning, until comprehension came. “In the tower?”
“Did you pierce the grim lord with the Sword?” Thaniel lifted his head to peer at the empty space above Aram’s shoulder. “Where is the Sword of Heaven?” He asked.
“The Sword is gone.” Aram shook his head as he gave his answer. “No, I did not pierce him with it. He was too powerful. I could not get close enough to thrust it into him. So, I gave it to him.”
The horse started. “You gave it to him? Then how –?”
Aram smiled ruefully. “That was its purpose all along.” He paused and glanced up at the stars overhead, just now beginning to flare and brighten, like candles newly lit in the blackness of the firmament. “Everything that I accomplished with that blade in the years after I received it was intended to make the grim lord desire it, nothing more.”
The smile faded. “And he did desire it – he desired it greatly, so greatly that he was blinded to the danger.”
Thaniel shifted his massive bulk in astonishment. “You gave it to him?” He repeated.
Aram nodded. “That was the purpose for which it was made. Once in his hand, the Sword awoke to its true meaning. It consumed him, dissolved him, and destroyed him utterly.”
The horse stared. “Then you were meant to give it into his hand all along.”
“Yes.”
Thaniel arched his neck in sudden anger. “Then why were you – and so many others – made to suffer, and die? Why was not the weapon given to him long ago, by them?”
“Consider, my friend,” Aram suggested gently. “Had one of the Brethren – the gods – simply tried to give the Sword into his hand, he would have suspected treachery and refused it outright. The grim lord is – was – no fool, and he would have guessed at the weapon’s purpose. So they gave the weapon to me instead, and I, foolishly thinking that piercing him was the reason for its creation, began a campaign of trying to get close enough to him to put it to the purpose I supposed for it.”
He smiled slightly as he met the horse’s gaze. “All of which made Manon believe that the gods had given into my hand a weapon containing their combined power – placing the engine of their own destruction within his reach.” He shrugged. “It was an intricate deception, and he fell for it.”
“And the gods knew this all along? Kelven knew?” The horse inquired and though his anger had subsided somewhat, his voice yet rumbled with disapproval. “Then the deception was practiced upon you as well, and it cost – or nearly cost – your life.”
Aram shook his head, though the smile faded. “They did not know, my friend. Even Lord Kelven did not know the truth of it. I think that Humber and Ferros both suspected the Maker’s intentions, but even they did not know for certain.” He looked up. “If any of them had known, then the enemy, as clever as any of them, would have discovered the truth and the plan would have failed. It had to be – everything had to be – as it was.”
He lowered his eyes and stared down into the fire. A look of acute sadness came over his face. “Even all the blood, all the lives that were lost,” he said softly. “It all had to be.”
When the horse did not reply, he looked up. “It was the Maker’s plan, Thaniel, and it worked. Manon took the Sword from my hand willingly. He lusted for it; I gave it, and it destroyed him. He is gone and the world is free.”
The horse watched him for a while, then, “How long have you known that such was its purpose?”
Aram shook his head once more. “Not until the very end. At the last, as he crushed the life from me, in the midst of terrible pain, I remembered that which Kelven had said to me – that the Sword was meant to destroy Manon, not to defeat him. All at once, I understood what was meant by those words.”
The horse went silent, gazing out into the gathering dusk. Then, after a while, he looked back at Aram. “It is right that the gods sent you back,” he stated quietly.
“It was not the doing of the gods,” Aram corrected him. “Humber did not know how to accomplish my return. Only the Maker has such knowledge. The Guardians returned me to earth on instruction from the Him. It was His doing – it was all His doing. As Joktan said – in all this we are made aware of the immense majesty of the Maker’s thoughts.”
Silence fell again and then Thaniel said, “I told you once that I could not live in a world where you were absent. I am glad, my brother, that I will not have to endure the truth of those words.”
Aram nodded as he added more fuel to the fire. He looked up. “As am I,” he agreed quietly.
The next morning, Aram arose early, while the eastern sky was yet pale and pink. He was anxious to get home to Ka’en and his child. As soon as Thaniel came back from the stream where he’d been drinking, Aram swung up onto the horse’s back.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
Thaniel didn’t move.
Swinging his head around, he reminded Aram, “We must wait upon Lord Alvern. Please, my lord; it is what must be.”
In acknowledgement of this, Aram groaned and then sat still, in silence, breathing deeply, tamping down his frustration and his eagerness to go to Ka’en and his daughter.
After a time, he said, “Cannot we go on for a space, and shorten the distance we will have to travel when Alvern comes?”
Thaniel thought. “We can, my lord,” he agreed.
Before they had gone a mile, the eastern horizon brightened. Another mile and the sun rose, warm and bright, in a clear morning sky. Ahead, they could see into the valley, and the pyramids by the junction. Thaniel halted.
They waited in impatient silence, broken only by the sound of birds chirping in the thickets and Thaniel’s occasional, “just a bit longer, Aram.” Irritation at the lengthening delay began to gather and pool in Aram’s heart.
Then, barely two hours after sunrise, Alvern came down and hovered upon the wind. In the great bird’s beak, something gleamed.
“You must wait, Lord Aram,” the eagle stated. “You must give them a few hours more to gather.”
Aram frowned up at the eagle as Thaniel shifted his great weight, stamping his hooves upon the ancient stone.
“Who?” Aram demanded. “Who is gathering – and why must I wait for them?”
“Forgive me, my lord,” Alvern insisted. “But all of this is needful. It is necessary that they see you return to them.”
“Who are these people that must look upon me even before I may go to my wife?” Aram demanded of the bird once more, and his irritation began to rise and harden into anger. Suddenly, giving in to frustration, he urged Thaniel
forward. “I am going to my family.”
At this fiercely insistent statement, and despite his own reluctance to disobey the instructions of the Astra, Thaniel moved forward, albeit hesitantly.
Alvern tilted his wings and dropped down to stand upon the pavement in front of the horse, spreading his wings wide until they blocked the entire width of the roadway. “Please, Lord Aram, you must accede to this. I understand your impatience, and I regret the delay, but I have been instructed by those that serve Him who is Highest that this must be so.”
The horse came to a halt. Aram gazed at the eagle angrily.
Keeping his great wings spread wide, blocking the pavement, Alvern spoke quietly, answering Aram’s earlier question, “Those that must look upon you, Lord Aram, and witness your return to them, are your own people.” After another long moment, in which he and Aram stared at one another, the eagle continued. “This is the express wish of the Maker, my lord – and is the doing of none other.”
“I want to see my wife and child,” Aram stated in a hard tone.
“And you will, my lord.” The eagle leaned his head down and deposited the gleaming thing upon the road. It was the crown of Joktan. Alvern looked up at him. “You know me well enough, my lord, to know that I would never challenge you. But you told me not a week ago that you knew what you ought to do with the remaining years of your life upon earth – and that you will expend them in that task and the acceptance of that obligation. This gathering of your people is a necessary part of it.”
Aram and the eagle continued to gaze at each other as silence came and lay between them, and the morning lengthened with the ascending of the sun.
Then, as he remembered that his returning to earth – which made reunion with his wife and child possible – was the result of great and astonishing kindness on the part of Him who desired that thing which Alvern now related, his anger faded. Aram sighed deeply and nodded his acceptance. “Alright; so be it. How long must I wait?”
“But a few hours, my lord,” the eagle assured him, lowering his wings. “Until perhaps about mid-day. I will go now and tell them that you will arrive before the city at mid-day; that will hurry them.”
Aram grimaced and looked up at the new day’s rising sun. It lacked three hours of finding the apex of the sky. “Mid-day – that long?”
“Please, my lord; I beg of you.”
Aram swung down and stood by Thaniel. “Mid-day,” he said, “and then I will come and see my family.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Alvern looked down at the crown. “Lord Joktan – and the Maker – both desire greatly that you wear this crown. It is a symbol of that which you have become.”
Aram gazed at him narrowly, smiling a wry smile. “They told you this themselves?”
“No my lord – as you well know,” the eagle reproved him. “The beings that imparted to me the knowledge of your arrival on earth told me of this desire on the part of the king and the Maker.”
Slowly, Aram nodded and moved forward to retrieve the crown. “I promised Lord Joktan that I would do so,” he stated, and he picked it up and placed it upon his head.
Alvern looked at him with approval for some time, and then the eagle folded his wings and bowed his head to him. “May it remain there for many years, my king,” he said.
Spreading his mighty wings once more, catching the breeze, the great bird lifted up and flew back toward the city.
Aram and Thaniel spent the rest of the morning walking along the river and reminiscing over shared adventures, though Aram cast many an eager glance toward the slopes of the black mountain. Because of the intervening wooded hills, the city could not be seen, but his gaze was irrevocably drawn to it nonetheless. As if hindered by some greater power, the morning passed away with excruciating timidity. Between myriad anxious glances toward the southeast and the unseen ramparts of Regamun Mediar, Aram kept an anxious eye upon the sun that seemed to hang in one portion of the sky for centuries before climbing higher.
59.
And then, at last, when for Aram the delay had become unendurable, it was time to go. The sun had finally found its way to the very height of the sky. He swung up onto Thaniel’s back. “Let’s go home,” he said, “I can wait no longer.” And they headed south into the valley toward the junction with the avenue that led up to the city.
As they came out of the trees and the black mountain and the city at its base came into view, with the long avenue that led toward it, Aram drew in a sharp breath. Hundreds of wolves, hundreds of horses, and more than a few hundred people lined the avenue from the junction all the way to the city.
The wolves were first, closest to the junction with the north-south road, and they bowed their heads over to the ground as Aram and Thaniel swung past them and turned onto the avenue. Oddly, they made no sound. Despite the massed hundreds, the atmosphere along the avenue was so quiet that Aram was able to hear the gentle susurration of the breeze as it passed through the limbs of the trees in the orchard off to the side.
The horses were next, and neither did the ranks of those magnificent people make any sound as Aram and Thaniel passed. Rank by rank, they shifted their front legs and lowered their heads to him.
Then they came to where the humans, both men and women, and surprisingly, even a few children, lined the avenue for the rest of the way to the defensive wall.
Before Aram and Thaniel had turned onto the avenue, those gathered there had believed that they would cheer when the man that would be their king and his mount came into view.
Instead, the crowd gathered before the walls of Regamun Mediar found themselves awed into utter silence by the sight of the tall, gaunt man on the horse – for with their first sight of him there came an abrupt comprehension of what his presence there on that day meant to them and to all the world.
His cloak was stained with the dust of many miles. He bore no weapon, and his brow was encircled by a simple band of gold with three triangular extrusions above its front portion, the middle extrusion slightly taller than the rest. Stamped upon the very front of this circlet of gold, in the middle, there was a symbol, as of the sun in the fullness of its glory.
Watching him come up the avenue, it suddenly occurred to all of them what it was that they beheld. This man had gone into the stronghold of the evil that had threatened to enslave and destroy them and their world, and had slain the god who was the source of that evil. He was then rumored to be dead – nay, known to be so – and yet now had returned alive.
No one fortunate to witness this moment on this day would ever forget what his or her eyes beheld beneath the bright light of that noonday sun.
Borlus and Hilla were there, in the foremost rank, between the horses and the people. The bear’s small eyes shone with pride though he gave no verbal response as Aram recognized him with a nod of his head.
The sky above was filled with hawks and eagles, but no sound came from those denizens of the skies, either.
Even Thaniel must have realized the majestic import of that thing of which he was a part, for he formed his great, muscular neck into a proud arch as he cantered along the avenue. Only Aram seemed unimpressed by it all, intent as he was upon reaching his wife and child. Still, he deliberately met many of the pairs of eyes that gazed upon him and nodded his head now and again.
Other than the ringing of Thaniel’s great hooves upon the ancient stonework, utter silence reigned –
– except for one small voice.
Far back, in amongst the throng, a young boy sat upon his father’s shoulders.
“Is that him, Papa?” The boy asked. “Is that him?”
“Be quiet, child,” came the father’s hushed reply. “Do not speak. Yes – that is the great king.”
At the wall, Aram dismounted, and glanced around at the crowd. Every eye was fixed on him. He let his gaze rove among the throng for a moment, nodded silently once more, and then he went into the passageway beyond where he ascended the stairway up to the porch.
There,
he found Findaen, Boman, Matibar, Edwar, Andar, and High Prince Marcus, along with Generals Thom Sota, Olyeg Kraine, and Kavnaugh Berezan. Mallet, Jonwood, Nikolus, Timmon, Ruben, Muray, and many others stood there waiting for him, in a line that stretched from his left to his right before the city.
As he rose above the stairs and stepped out onto the great porch of his city, every man of them went to one knee.
“Please,” Aram responded to this action, “stand up.” His eye found Findaen. “Where is she?”
“At home, my lord, with your daughter,” Findaen replied, but then he indicated the walkway that led out to the dais upon the defensive wall. “But will you not speak to them first, my lord?”
Aram hesitated and then agreed to this necessity. He turned to go, but looked back as he did so. “How will we feed all these people?” He asked. “Has provision been made for them?”
Findaen smiled. “You are as thoughtful and pragmatic as ever, my lord,” he answered, and then he nodded. “Yes, Dane and Arthrus have managed to wrestle enough oxcarts filled with food stores across the hills and into the valley to provide for them all.”
Aram nodded his approval and then went across the stone bridge, out to the dais, and looked down the long avenue, lined with representatives of the noble peoples of the world. Realization of the truth of an ancient mystery dawned upon him and he looked down, at the metal tubes that passed through the stonework. For the first time, he understood their purpose.
He looked up again.
“Manon the Grim has fallen,” he said, “and will not rise again.”
And then, as his words resounded through the metal pipes and out along the avenue, the people cheered.
The roar of approval redounded against the ancient stone of the wall like the thunderous wave of a mighty ocean. There were deeper notes that sounded inside Aram’s skull; these emanated from the minds of hundreds of horses and wolves. Among those, one voice stood out.
Kelven's Riddle Book Five Page 43
