Then his thoughts turned to the road ahead. Tomorrow they would cross the Camber Pass into the country beyond. If they could elude the lashers, they would then turn east toward the mountain of Kelven. He’d already seen a much larger portion of the world than he’d ever imagined had existed, a great expanse of it lying just to the north of his own valley. It made him feel small, poor, and inconsequential.
Pondering the imminence of contact with the lashers tied up his insides, and pushed necessary sleep far from him, so he sent his thoughts further ahead, to the meeting with Kelven on the mountain at the middle of the world. What would he find on that mountain? A god, alive and vibrant? A specter, like Joktan? Or something else? And was there, in fact, a weapon?
As he drifted toward sleep, his thoughts concentrated on Joktan. Where had the old spirit been during the past few weeks, he wondered? Joktan always showed up when Aram was in duress yet, when Aram was in torment over Ka’en, he’d been left alone. Perhaps the ghostly king only cared about those things that touched his own desires, like his ancient need for revenge upon Manon. Or maybe he had respect for Aram’s privacy. Finally, as the fire decayed into a mass of cooling, darkening coals, his thoughts grew quiet and he slept.
There was a heavy mist in the morning, curling up the slope from the many collisions of the tumbling streams with the rocky hillsides. The mountains were hidden and they could see only a few yards along the road. The sun broke through an hour later just as they arrived at the summit of Camber Pass and looked down into the wide green land beyond. Aram gazed out upon it in stunned amazement.
Florm glanced sidelong at him. “Vallenvale.” He said.
Aram’s valley would fit inside the vast expanse of Vallenvale many times. It was a broad and long valley, green and lush, running east and west, bounded on the south by the mountains of which Camber Pass was a part. A wide river flowed from east to west along the vale’s northern edge. Beyond that, mountains of massive size and stunning height rose up in great sheer walls of stone.
These mountains were majestic beyond imagining, with stupendously steep ramparts and massive flanks. Curiously, their summits were tinged with rust. Even the snow and ice clinging desperately to their peaks was touched with the peculiar hue. There were no foothills clustered at the bases of these mountains; their feet were planted securely in a broad band of heavy, dark woods on Vallenvale’s northern border.
To the west, the vale was bounded by jumbled, thickly timbered hills, cut by a deep canyon through which the river made its exit. But back to the east the broad valley extended beyond the jutting mountainsides out of range of Aram’s sight. Though the timbered slopes of the southern mountains extended their flanks in gentle intrusions of dark trees into the valley, most of the vale was open and carpeted with lush grass.
The great road on which they traveled wound down into the vale and met up with another broad thoroughfare that traversed the valley from east to west near to the distant river. As Aram’s eye went along it, here and there, every twenty miles or so, it resolved large areas of piled stone ruins, the broken remains of ancient cities and towns. Once, long ago, thousands of people had lived in this lovely place.
There were indications of other roads and lanes as well, conduits that extended from the great main highway at right angles, and ran into the broad area of verdant green south of the river. Many of these ended at overgrown rectangles of crumbled stone. North of the river, at the base of the mountains of Ferros, dark and forbidding woods crowded to the edge of the water. In two places that Aram could see, bridges arched the great stream and roads went some way into those woods on the far shore and were swallowed from sight.
High in the air out over the valley, Alvern sailed on the currents. Aram could not see him but knew that he was there.
“What do you see, lord Alvern?” He asked.
“The lashers are below me, to the east,” the eagle answered, “searching the meadows, the ruins, and the woods. There are many more than ten—in fact, there are many groups of three or four, or even ten. There may be as many as a hundred. They are thick on the valley floor from the river south to the mountains. I cannot easily see, lord Aram,” the great bird stated matter-of-factly, “how you are going to pass them undiscovered.”
“No,” Aram agreed. “Nor do I.”
He looked over at Florm. “What do you think, my lord?”
The old horse gazed out across the wide valley. “We could ease as close to them as we dare at the end of a day and then try to pass during the night, but I am certain they will post sentries and that might lead to a blunder on our part. I think we should try to make our run in the first light of morning—surprise them if possible. But it will be very dangerous if it can be accomplished at all.”
Aram held up his bow. “For some of them as well, my lord. As long as we can avoid a general engagement, I can kill or seriously wound any that get too close, maybe enough to clear a path.”
Florm nodded his great head. “I believe that Thaniel and I can escape them if we can get a clear road to the east. My only worry is about them wounding or killing one of us. I am the only one of us that knows the way to Kelven’s mountain, Thaniel is the only one who can bear you across the high, barren plateau to the east of Vallenvale, and you are the one that Lord Kelven wants to see. Maybe we should take our time and let the eagle watch until there is an opening. Not rush things.”
“If they give us an opening,” Thaniel interjected, “surely we can outrun those clawed beasts. When the eagle tells us that there is a break in their lines big enough to run through, then our hooves will set the road on fire.”
“Yes.” Aram agreed. “We’ll run for it. I’m certainly not anxious to fight three or four lashers at once, let alone an army. They may get careless and provide an opening. Until then, let’s be circumspect, avoid a fight.”
“If it comes to that,” Thaniel said savagely, “we will take a fair amount of them into the next life with us.”
Florm glanced at his son but said nothing.
For two days, they went slowly and cautiously up the great valley road toward the east with Alvern watching from his post high in the sky. At night, they took turns keeping watch. There was no thought of a fire and Aram slept fitfully with his weapons at the ready. Finally, on the morning of the third day, they heard Alvern’s clear voice in their minds.
“My lords, a possibility has arisen. The lashers have broken their ranks into two scattered groups. The main group is examining the ruins of a large town near the south mountains, far from the road. The other group is farther to the east but they are also to the south of the road. At this moment, there are none near the river. If you can get past the first group undetected, perhaps you can outrun the second.”
From Thaniel’s back, Aram met Florm’s eyes. “Now?”
The horse took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
“Go.” Grunted Thaniel.
The horses lunged forward. Thaniel’s powerful legs began to eat up the pavement stones in great strides and Florm struggled to keep up with his son. Aram held his bow at the ready with three arrows clenched in his fist. The wind created by their speed stung his eyes as they rushed eastward along the worn but still smooth stones of the ancient road.
“The first group of lashers is to the south.” Alvern’s voice came again. “As yet, they do not see you. In another mile, you will be safely past. The second group is farther ahead, nearer the road. They will see you, but I think not in time to catch you.”
“Thanks.” Aram replied simply. He was lying low along the profile of Thaniel’s neck, trying to reduce their resistance to the wind.
The mile that would move them safely past the lashers seemed never to end. The vale was so vast, green, and changeless that there was no sure marker to gauge their progress. As the horses thundered eastward, Aram kept his head flat against Thaniel’s neck, watching the southern horizon, and Alvern was silent. The ruins of the ancient town to the south came even with them and began t
o fall behind. Then—
“They see you,” Alvern said, his voice sharp and urgent. “They are coming.”
Aram squinted hard and looked into the south. Pouring out of the distant ruins was a long dark line of lashers running at an angle to their flight in an attempt to intercept the horses and the rider. Even from that distance, Aram could hear their harsh, guttural shouts. The quarry they’d been sent to find had finally been flushed.
Then Alvern spoke again and he sounded frightened. “Lord Aram—they must have a means of communicating with each other over distance or their hearing is better than I thought. The group to your front is alerted and they are moving to close off your line of escape. What should I do?”
“Is there any way around that you can see? Any road that is clear?”
“No, my lord, I am sorry. They are forming a crescent to your east and southeast. You must retreat. To get through them you will have to fight.” The eagle’s voice had risen in alarm. “And there are very many.”
“Is it a single line, Alvern? Can we punch through?”
“No, my lord.” The eagle was in obvious distress. “They have learned from experience. Each line is four or five deep. I am afraid for you.”
Aram loosened his sword and slipped his bow into position and wondered if they should turn around and run away. Even then, though, they would be pursued and the beasts would find his valley. That thought filled him with anguish. Thaniel and Florm had slackened their speed and raised their heads in indecision. He looked back toward the south. The dark line of lashers was closely rapidly, enveloping them in a sweeping crescent of deadly intent.
Fighting through that host would be a hopeless endeavor, but he despised the thought of turning back and guiding this bloodthirsty army of monsters into his homeland. Besides, very soon their line of retreat would be closed by the lashers charging from the south. Aram sat up in an agony of doubt as the horses slowed even further. The eager howls of their enemy rolled over them in fierce waves from across the sea of grass. He glanced to the north, into the deep, dark woods beyond the river, and he remembered the bridges he’d seen from the pass.
“Alvern, is there a bridge across the river nearby?”
“Yes, my lord. Less than a mile ahead on your left. But the lashers to your front are nearer it than you. The horses run faster—but they will have to run like the wind to reach the bridge before your enemies.”
Florm heard him. “We can give the effort our all, if you wish. But lord Aram, do we want to go toward the mountains of Ferros?”
“It is that or fight, or run away, my lord. Perhaps, if we can get across the river, we can yet flee to the east, through the forest. It will be difficult but they will have no advantage, either. If all else fails, maybe we can defend the bridge.”
“Well, we are in it, now.” Florm sounded resigned but defiant. “I would rather race them through dense woods than face them on open ground. What is your word, Thaniel, my son?”
Thaniel responded as he surged suddenly forward. “Let’s make for the bridge, my lord. I would not retreat in the face of these vile beasts. We will either reach the bridge before them or fight our way through.”
Aram flattened himself against the horse’s neck. Florm and Thaniel surged ahead, pounding along the pavement with their heads low, every muscle in their great bodies straining. Aram glanced southward and saw that, while the lashers had closed the gap, they were falling ever so slightly behind. But eastward, toward the morning, dark shapes came rushing at them in a long unbroken line curving out of sight to the south—dozens, perhaps nearly a hundred eager lashers closing in for the kill.
Then he saw the bridge, a narrow stone span arching over the broad, calm river, coming up on the left. It was ravaged by time but still intact, and they were going to get there first, if only by a moment. The lashers to their front seemed to suddenly understand their quarry’s intent and made straight for the bridge, unloosing their weapons as they came.
The horses swung onto the bridge just as a volley of arrows from the massed crossbows plunked into the water, while a few of the missiles rebounded off the stonework on the upstream side. One whistled savagely past Aram’s head. Then they were out over the current and charging for the far shore. Fifty yards behind them, the first of the lashers entered the span.
The broad, deep waters rolled solemnly and heavily beneath them as the horses raced over the ancient stones. Beyond the bridge, the road disappeared straight into the deep green wall of the tall dark trees, cutting a narrow swath into the gloom. They clattered off the bridge and were immediately swallowed up by the denseness of the forest. Aram stared to the right, looking for an entrance into the woods to the east but the road was sunken into the soft earth and above the steep, overgrown bank, the trees grew massive and thick. Florm and Thaniel also, even as they thundered forward along the deeply shadowed roadway, studied the thick trunks for egress to the east.
Then, suddenly, the trees were gone and they were racing northward between towering walls of stone, up through the narrow hall of a dark canyon. There was nothing else that they could do but go forward. On their left was a turbulent, tumbling stream bounded on its far shore by sheer canyon walls, to their right, a perpendicular mass of rock rose away toward the dim heights, and the howling mob of lashers shouted from the narrow road behind them.
“What now?” Gasped Florm.
“Keep going.” Aram said. “Maybe we’ll find a gap or another bridge, someplace defensible where we can turn and fight. Or maybe this road goes up and over the mountains somewhere.”
But then the road turned sharply to the right and then left again toward a dark opening in the rock and they and the small stream entered into the mountain and utter darkness. Before the horses could slide to a halt, clinging strands of soft filament, like unseen spider’s webbing, came out of the night and covered them. Aram had a moment of shock and surprise as he felt consciousness leaving him, and then the world went dark and silent, and he fell gently into a welcoming abyss.
XXVII
There was no pain, or any other sensation. Slowly, ever so slowly, Aram regained awareness but only of the fact that he existed in time and space. He seemed to have no body, no arms or legs, not even a head. And he could not see. As the scope of his awareness gradually grew in strength, he began a diligent hunt through the vaults of his memory but found them barren. He did not know where he was or even why he would be anywhere at all.
Then came nausea, sudden, painful and dizzying, but it gave him a sense of physicality and substance. The nausea was followed by a sensation of dense, uncomfortable heat. And though he could not remember opening his eyes, he was suddenly aware of the existence of sight and of the fact that there was light. Dim and diffused, reddish in color, but it was light.
Tingling and pricking pain far from his center of consciousness gradually brought his extremities back from the nether regions and incorporated them into his realm of sensibility. Fingers and toes, arms and legs, they were all there and evidently uninjured. After a few minutes, because of an increasing awareness of pressure against his shoulder blades and the rear of his skull, he realized that he was lying on his back on a hard, smooth surface.
Then, at last, came memory. He remembered the flight across the bridge, running from the lashers, and the dense woods and the canyon that led into the mountain. But there, memory ran out of ground. What had happened since, he did not know. At least he was whole and seemed to be unhurt.
And he was unrestrained. No ropes bound his limbs. He blinked his eyes and something very far away—or very far over his head—gradually came into focus. It seemed to him that he was looking into the deep recesses of a concave bowl of stone. It was, in fact, he finally realized, a ceiling, an exceedingly distant ceiling of smooth, curved rock.
When he could, he rolled his head to the left and saw above him an enormous dark object supported by columns of black. His head rolled further and there was a shiny black hoof, topped by a column of blac
k hair. Florm’s leg—or perhaps Thaniel’s. He lifted his head and tried to sit up but his muscles would not respond. He lay back, gasping in the heated air. He tried his voice.
“Lord Florm?” He croaked.
“Silence, Aram.” Florm whispered urgently into his mind. “Do not speak in this place.”
“But where—?”
“Please, my lord.”
Hearing terror in a voice where he was unaccustomed to hearing it, he complied and lay silently on his back, gazing up at the remote stone. As his hearing improved, he became aware of a commotion occurring somewhere beyond the vicinity of his feet. Guttural and raucous voices rose up as if out of the depths of a well. Lashers. Now he understood the terror in Florm’s voice. They had been captured.
And he was lying helpless, prone, with no strength in him. But as his vitality began to return he wondered—why was he not bound? Perhaps they were confined in a cage or a pen of some kind. He rolled his head to either side, searching beyond the columns of the horse’s legs, but every architectural object in view seemed to reside at a great distance from him.
Finally, after several minutes, he felt his muscles responding. Quietly and slowly, with great effort, winded and quivering with weakness, he sat up and looked around. He tried to stand but could not. His legs would not yet respond to commands from his brain. He was seated on flat stone in a nook of the wall of an enormous chamber between Florm and Thaniel. The horses were standing but with their heads lowered. The three of them were on the upper level of what appeared to be a huge underground amphitheater carved completely from living stone. Below them, in concentric, descending levels, a seemingly unending series of steps curved down and away from them in enormous semicircles.
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