“I’m very glad to hear it.” Florm stated caustically. “If you would, pack some apples for the road and I’ll carry them. And you will need a vessel to carry water. You will ride Thaniel as always. No armor—we need to move fast—but perhaps you should use the saddle.”
Aram agreed and within an hour they were ready to travel. Aram took his best lance and his best bow with all the arrows that he could secure to the saddle. He took his lightest and best sword as well. After sending Cree after Alvern, he climbed upon Thaniel’s back and they went out the avenue to the intersection of the great roads and turned north.
XXVI
The horses moved briskly along and by early afternoon, they’d left the valley floor and were following the ruins of the road up through the timbered foothills where Aram had first found the material for his bowstring. A while later they passed the junction where the road from the west came down out of the foothills to the north of Aram’s mountain. As they emerged out of the timber onto the crest of a long ridge and the road straightened out for a long run to the north, Aram heard a clear voice descend from the sky into his mind.
“I am here, lord Aram.”
It was the eagle, Alvern. Aram looked skyward but could make nothing out in the blue depths of the sky. He answered with his mind.
“I am very grateful for your help, lord Alvern.” He turned his head and squinted upward. “I cannot see you.”
The eagle’s laugh was sharp like crystal. “Never fear—I can see you well enough, my lord, and I am happy to be of service. Cree told me of your plans. There is nothing untoward in front of you for at least the rest of the day. I will go before you and watch with diligence.”
“The Maker bless you, my friend.”
“Oh, He has, my lord, I assure you. I will scout ahead and report back before nightfall.”
“Thanks.”
With Alvern’s assurance of a clear road, they concentrated on making good time and by nightfall were in broken and rugged country, characterized by open, rocky ridges and steep, heavily timbered draws, that was unfamiliar to Aram. The ancient road, however, went straight on into the north, arching over massive stone bridges that traversed steep ravines with frothing streams and slicing through angled hillsides covered with dark-green, pungent brush. At sundown, they camped in a stand of enormous, ancient firs with broad, sweeping branches above a clear stream that tumbled down through rocky pools surrounded by stands of thick willows.
Alvern had reported that there was no sign of enemies for at least another day’s journey. Aram decided to have a fire. It was late in the year and they’d climbed ever higher throughout the day, and the night promised to be cool. The horses grazed on stray bits of grass that grew among the patches of brush out on the open hillside. At dusk they joined Aram beneath the trees.
After supper, Aram banked the fire and looked across at Florm. “How far is Camber Pass, my lord?”
Florm considered. “Eight or maybe even ten days north of here. It’s been a long time since I came this way. The Pass is the only way through these mountains to the lands beyond. That’s why the road is here. Thousands of years ago this road was the main route for trade between the city of Ram and the valleys and wooded lands to the north. It joins up with the great valley road below the Pass on this side and ends beyond it at the intersection of another great road that runs east and west through Vallenvale.”
“And what is Vallenvale?”
“It is a great valley, more than four hundred miles long, lying east and west between these mountains and the Forbidden Mountains further north. Eastward, the road runs by the ruins of several ancient cities of men, including Tiras, built by one of your ancestors. Westward, it angles around to the north through the mountains and eventually comes to the tower of Manon.”
“Forbidden Mountains?”
“The mountains of Ferros. Many of them smoke and some weep fire from their summits, even through the snow and ice. Men have never gone there.”
Aram shook his head in amazement. “I’m beginning to believe that I have lived my whole life in one small corner of the world.”
“The world is large, indeed,” Florm agreed. “Kelven’s mountain is in the middle of it. That’s why it is called the Mountain at the Middle of the World.”
“And that’s where we’re going?”
“That’s where you are going.” Florm corrected him. “Horses cannot climb it. Rather, we cannot get to it in order to climb it. But you can and we can get you close enough that you can reach it.”
Aram lay back and stretched out on the ground by the fire, staring up through the impenetrable darkness of the massive firs. “Why are the mountains of Ferros forbidden?”
“I don’t know that they are. Men have always called those mountains forbidden out of fear. I’m not certain that there is any official sanction against entering those regions.” Florm answered. “They are too rough for horses anyway. But men fear Ferros—always have.”
Aram frowned. “Like they fear Manon?”
“No. With Manon, they fear an evil they know—an evil with which you, yourself, are familiar—and horrors that they have seen. With Ferros, they fear what is unknown and what cannot be seen. He lives in the underearth—that is all that men know. That, and the fact that he refused to help Kelven in the war against Manon.” Florm lowered his head and closed his eyes. “We will take care to avoid his mountains as well on this journey.”
Aram watched the sparks from the campfire rising like multi-colored, temporary jewels to vanish into the thin, dark air under the trees. “I wonder if Kelven will tell me where to find the weapon?” He said quietly.
Florm’s head came up but it was Thaniel that spoke with sudden urgency. “What’s that? What weapon?”
“The sword.” Aram rolled over and looked across the fire at the horses. “The sword in the riddle. The Sword of Heaven.”
“So you’ve been thinking about that, have you?” Florm asked.
Over in the darkness to Florm’s right, Thaniel had moved closer and was listening intently, the light from the fire shining in the depths of his large eyes and illuminating the muscular outlines of his massive shoulders.
Aram sat up and looked at them both. “Yes, I have. I’ve thought about it often and long. The riddle states that ‘he ascends the height to put his hand among the stars and wield the sword of heaven’. It must mean that there is a weapon that can be used effectively against Manon. Maybe he has it there—on the mountain. Maybe he will give it to me.”
Florm gazed at him, the flames reflecting in his great black eyes. In the glow of the fire, the two horses looked otherworldly as they focused their attention intently on Aram. “So you no longer think that it is allegorical, or worse, rubbish.”
“I never thought that it was rubbish, my lord. I’ve never thought that of anything you’ve told me. But what is the point of there being a riddle if it cannot be solved in such a way as to aid us in our war against evil?” Aram lay down and rolled onto his side, staring into the fire. “What other purpose could he have for summoning me?”
“Maybe he just wants to encourage you, my friend.” The old horse suggested.
“Maybe.” Aram agreed. “But I’d rather have the weapon than the encouragement.”
Florm chuckled quietly and lowered his head. Thaniel continued to gaze at Aram a few moments longer then turned away and melded into the darkness.
There was frost on the ground in the morning and Aram awoke stiff, with aching in the wounds he’d received of Kemul and the fight with the lashers at the village of Nikolus Mathan. He stood slowly and looked about him. They were near the top of a long straight ridge that ran to the northwest but there were taller mountains on all sides, especially to the north and east. The sun would not rise high enough to shine upon them for some time. They ate and headed north. Aram looked up through the branches of the tall trees into the sky.
“Are you there, Alvern?”
“I am here, lord Aram.”
> “Where did you sleep, my friend?”
“On the high rocks. There are many lovely high rocks here. If the food was more plentiful in this part of the world, I could live here.”
Aram smiled. “Are you hungry now? I could help you find food.”
“No, I did not mean to suggest it. I am good for many days, thank you.”
“What are your plans for today?”
“I am going all the way north to Camber Pass and search out the road and countryside for signs of the enemy. I will be back before nightfall.”
“That is a long way. Will you not tire?”
“It is nothing to me, my lord. Kelven’s winds will bear me.”
As the morning passed away, and the ground became more rugged and the trees around them grew taller and thicker, Aram was increasingly troubled. Something in all of this seemed wrong to him the more he thought about it. He decided to mention it to Florm. “My lord, why is Manon searching this country for Thaniel and me so far from where we fought the battle?”
“I can see why it might puzzle you, my friend. This country is so vast and the distances great. It is time-consuming to search it. But Manon is not troubled by the passage of time. He is an immortal. And he is by nature thorough. It is true that he encountered you for the first time many miles south of this place.” Florm stopped and stretched his muscles in the light of the sun that had just topped the mountains, luxuriating in its welcome warmth. Then he continued. “It is also true that he knows that you came from somewhere in the region to the north of the battlefield. It is a region he knows all too well. His troubles have always germinated in this part of the world.”
“This part?”
“All of this land.” Florm answered. “From these mountains south to your valley and eastward across the plains of the horse people all the way to the mountain of Kelven. Also Vallenvale to the north. It is the part of the world that was never fully under his control. It is this part of the world that has always produced the men that challenged him. Do not think it strange that he started where he did—he will begin here and move south and east. He does not care how long it takes. Unless we give him a reason to stop, he will search it all until he finds you.”
They came just then out on the top of a long ridge running from the northeast to southwest where the road angled down through the timber into a broad, open valley. At the bottom of the valley there flowed a substantial river, running from their right to their left toward the southwest. Looking at it, Aram realized that it probably emerged from the mountains somewhere out on the plains of his youth. It might even be the river in the wide valley across the sand hills to the north of Nikolus’ village.
The road upon which they traveled descended down around the timbered slopes to the valley floor and intersected with another on the near side of the river. This new road ran away to the southwest along the tangent of the river until it went out of sight around the edge of a mountain that jutted out into the valley. To the right the road ran along the grass-covered floor of the valley for several miles and then climbed ponderously up through a heavily timbered saddle that rose between high mountains from which the sources of the river bounded and fell.
“Camber Pass?” Aram asked.
“Yes.” Florm answered.
“That will be a long climb.”
“Indeed. It will take the better part of a week to gain that summit.”
“You were explaining why Manon was looking for me here.” Aram reminded him.
“In the great war,” Florm continued, as they moved off the top of the ridge and down through the tall trees toward the valley floor far below, “Manon controlled the lands around his tower in the northwest and all the great plains to the south all the way to the ocean. Joktan ruled Vallenvale, as well as the valley where your city is, and the high plains where my people dwell.
“When Manon first encountered you, you were mounted. He knows where the horses live. And he knows that free men always lived in the vast lands between his tower and the high plains of the horse people. Since you were mounted, he knew that you were in alliance with my people, so he would assume—especially since you fought his army alone without any help from the people of the town—that the conflict near to Derosa only meant that you wished to show yourself there.
“I doubt that Manon would assume that you were from Derosa yourself and since he is ever methodical, he would send his minions into all the land between his tower and the mountain of Kelven to conduct a systematic search. And that’s what he is doing. Besides, he needs to discover whether you are alone or if there are more like you.”
“So he would have found my valley.”
Florm looked at him. “He wouldn’t have to find your valley—he knows that it is there. He just doesn’t know where you are. He’s not looking for a particular place; he is looking for you—and us.”
The road wound downward at a gentle angle through vast, sweeping amphitheaters filled with conifers and around ridges punctuated by immense spires of rock as it fell toward the floor of the valley. Aram gazed up in awe at the ramparts of the mountains around him. They seemed to pierce the sky with their tall jagged peaks. He glanced at Florm.
“What do you think Kelven wants with me?”
Florm laughed quietly. “You assume that since I am old, I know so much. But compared to Kelven, I am an infant. How would I know what a god desires of you? He will tell you—he did not tell me.”
It took two days more to descend to and negotiate the wide, open valley and five more to climb the broad, timbered slopes beneath Camber Pass. But at last they camped just below the summit of the pass by one of the clear, cold springs that fed the mighty river in the valley behind them. Alvern had reported that it was clear all the way to Vallenvale beyond but that there were lashers in the vale, searching the countryside and the ruins of the ancient towns. They would encounter them within two or three days.
That night, two wolves crept silently and suddenly into the firelight, startling the horses. They were Leorg and another wolf that he introduced as his cousin, Gorfang, a rangy black fellow that seemed to embody menace. Leorg stopped at the edge of the light and addressed Aram.
“We are gathered, my lord, at the base of the Pass, on the edge of the vale, if you wish us to fight. There are more than a hundred of us.”
Aram glanced out into the darkness beneath the timber. It was unsettling to think of more than a hundred wolves gathered somewhere out in the gloom beyond the fire, but then he looked back into Leorg’s clear eyes. This was a wolf, he realized, like Durlrang, who could be trusted. And unlike Durlrang, he already considered Manon an enemy, without any prompting from Aram. “Thank you, Leorg, but we are going to try and avoid fighting. With the help of the eagles we’re going to try and slip past them to the east.”
“East? But that way, beyond Vallenvale, lie the entrances to the mountain of Kelven.”
Aram nodded. “The mountain of Kelven. That’s where we are going.”
The wolf sat back on his haunches and gazed at Aram in astonishment. “If I may ask, my lord, why do you go there? Lord Kelven has been gone from the earth for time out of mind.”
Aram glanced at Florm, who said nothing. Beyond his father, Thaniel had turned his back to the fire and was gazing steadily out into the darkness. Aram looked back at the wolf. “We shall see, Leorg. It may be that Kelven’s spirit survives. He may yet take an interest in the affairs of earth. Your mother suspected something of the sort, did she not? Why else would she have gone into that region to give birth to you, a prince of her husband’s people?”
“I never thought of it in that way, my lord.” The gray wolf stared into the fire. “It would be a blessing of the Maker if Kelven could yet help us.”
“Well, we shall see.” Aram said quietly. “I’m going there to see what can be discovered. It may be that I will find help beyond our imagining. That is why we cannot risk a general engagement with the lashers.”
Leorg turned his nose up to the dark
ened sky and spoke almost in a whisper. “The Lord Kelven may yet live?”
“Yes, he may.”
Leorg lowered his gaze to Aram’s face and studied him silently, then the wolves stood up and at an unseen signal from Leorg, Gorfang bowed and left the light. “We will do whatever you need from us to aid you in escaping the lashers, my lord.” Leorg said. “You only need instruct us.”
Aram nodded his gratitude and the wolf turned and glided into the night. From beyond the fire, Florm studied Aram with his large, dark eyes for a long moment. He turned his head and gazed out into the darkness after the wolves and then glanced up into the deepening sky.
“Wolves answer to you, and eagles do your bidding. I declare, my young friend, if I didn’t know better, I would think that you were Lord Kelven himself returned.”
“I’m glad that you know better, my lord, for I am much less than that.” Aram replied as he stretched out and gazed up through the trees at the stars. “Kelven wouldn’t have knots in his stomach as he contemplated the next few days.”
“Don’t be so certain of it,” the old horse answered. “There is not such a gap between his kind and yours as you would think. When the Maker made all His works, He created a hierarchy—it’s true. But there is just a step, no more, between the ranks of most of His creatures. And the rank of men is just a step below that of the gods.”
Aram sighed. “Would that that was true. I would take my best weapon and face Manon right now.”
“It is true, and believe me; you will face Manon—when the time is right. But only when the time is right; Joktan’s mistake must not be repeated.” Florm cocked a leg and lowered his head, closing his eyes after one more furtive glance out into the gloom beyond the fire. After a few moments, he was asleep. In the darkness behind him, standing between his father and the night, Thaniel followed suit.
Aram lay awake for some time, thinking about many things. He thought of Ka’en and whether it might be true as Florm saw it concerning her consideration of the killing of Kemul—that she was horrified by the deed but not necessarily by the man that had done it. He thought of his harsh treatment of Findaen and his companions and regretted it deeply. Findaen was a friend and true, and Florm was right; their cause would undoubtedly be lost without him. For just a moment, he wondered if Ka’en might be lying in her bed even now, thinking of him.
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