“It’s not that high.”
Aram turned to gaze once more into the southeast. He nodded slowly. “Yes, it is.”
Florm laughed. “There is a road that encircles it to its summit. Others have climbed it.”
“But not you.”
“No, nor any horse that I am aware of. A few other men and an army of lashers have been to its summit. But your feet will be the first to scale it in more than ten millennia.”
“And Kelven is up there.”
“He is.”
Aram pulled his gaze away from the mountain and turned to look straight into Florm’s black eyes. “You told me once that he was disembodied in the last battle of the great war.”
“I did.” Florm agreed.
“And yet he lives?”
Florm looked at him patiently. “You must understand, Aram. The force that binds the spirit to the body, thereby keeping the body alive, is a strong and potent force, the most powerful force in the universe. It is much stronger in some than in others. In your people, for instance, it has grown very weak over the centuries. That is why your people do not live very long lives and are so easily slain.
“It was not always so. In ancient times your people lived rich and full lives encompassing hundreds of years. Many of your ancestors lived for more than a thousand. Joktan ruled for more than seventeen hundred. But Manon broke the will of your people and the life force has grown small inside you. It is not so with horses. I, myself, as you know, am almost twelve thousand years old.” He chuckled as he blinked his large eyes in the face of the viciously cold wind. “And today, by the way, I feel it.”
“With the gods, the force is unbreakable by any will other than their own or that of the Maker Himself. Kelven knew this when he went to war with Manon. He also knew that the only way to stop Manon was to break the force within him. Therefore, Kelven devised a plan. He intended to sacrifice himself for the good of humankind and the world.
“He thought that if he could engage Manon and his armies in close combat, he could violently disembody himself, ripping his soul from its bodily moorings in such a detonation that the resulting blast would slay Manon’s army and sever Manon from his body as well. Then neither of them could be physically active in the affairs of the world. Kelven would lose his power and influence but so would Manon.
“No one knows whether rumor of Kelven’s plan had reached Manon’s ears or if he was simply fortunate in the fact that his own designs counteracted those of Kelven. But Manon had learned a dark skill that no one knew of or thought possible. By expending just some of his life force, he could project his image to great distances. During the wars, he often employed this dark art, seeming to appear suddenly in the midst of battles, demoralizing his enemies.
“You saw this yourself. In the battle before the walls of Derosa, such a thing almost killed you and Thaniel. And that was the result of only a small effort on his part. In times past, by immense effort, he was able to appear to be in several places at once and this helped his cause greatly.
“When it came time to confront Kelven during the siege of the Mountain, Manon put an enormous amount of himself into one singular projection, so that Kelven would see him and believe him to be present. It was a dangerous gambit. Manon had to put enough of his force into his projection that Kelven would take the bait, and yet keep enough back so that he could survive the confrontation.
“Kelven saw Manon’s projection and believed it to be him, and when the battle lines closed, he destroyed himself, slaughtering every soldier in Manon’s army and slaying his enemy, or so he thought. But Manon did indeed survive though he was so battered that it took him nearly a hundred centuries to recover. And after he regained much of his strength, of course, he had to rebuild his armies before he could resume his quest to dominate the world.
“Even though Kelven failed, this blow to Manon was the only reason any free peoples survived, especially those out upon the fringes. Now though, he has rebuilt a good portion of his strength and is seeking by dark means to enlarge it. Once he has brought the world to heel, he will use it to gain access to the stars. If he succeeds, the world will succumb to complete darkness and the stars themselves may go out. Hope will be forever lost for all of us.”
Florm’s great frame shivered from the force of the biting wind, or perhaps because of the significance of his own utterances. He looked earnestly over at Aram. “We must not let him succeed.”
Aram stared up the massive slopes of the distant mountain. “I told you that I thought the riddle meant that there was a weapon to aid us in this fight. I still believe that. But if, in fact, it doesn’t mean that there is a weapon—then what is to be gained by me going up to see Kelven, if indeed he is still there?”
“I don’t have all the answers,” Florm answered. “In truth I know very little. I only know that Kelven is still there for I have talked to him, and that he wants to see you. It is up to him to answer the rest of your questions.”
Aram gazed at the ancient horse and slowly nodded. “Alright. Then I will go to him. Let’s move on.”
It took four more days of grueling travel to reach the mountain; all the time fighting the fierce wind that slashed obliquely out of the north and never once relented. There was no wood for fires and they were reduced to huddling together at night in low places of the plateau or behind the tall spires of rock. There were no trees and very little grass for the horses.
The wind, though bitterly cold, drove the moisture from their bodies. The water in Aram’s canteen gave out quickly and they were forced to find and break through the frozen surfaces of ice-covered pools scattered here and there about the high plateau. And the supply of food in Aram’s pack shrank alarmingly.
The mountain grew before them, day by day, until it was immensely broad and terrifyingly high. About noon of the fourth day, they came at last to the end of the plateau, arriving suddenly at the rim of an enormous crater, the walls of which fell away from their feet in a nearly sheer precipice. Here, the wind sweeping across the plateau was challenged by an equally violent rush of bitter cold that roared up and over the crater’s rim.
“You can see,” said Florm, gazing down the perpendicular slopes, “why we cannot accompany you. No horse can descend this.”
“Indeed,” Aram answered. “I don’t know how I will do it.”
He studied the rocky crags descending to the plain far below. Looking down slopes that angled just a few points off vertical, he wasn’t sure how a descent could be accomplished. Here and there, though, there were places where the walls of rock had slid away, creating chimneys filled with loose rubble that might allow a very deliberate man to descend hand over hand, foot by careful foot, to the floor of the crater far below.
And far below, where the walls of the crater merged with the plain, the flat, arid land stretched away for fifty miles or more until it touched the base of the mountain. The plain was everywhere desolate, dry, and rocky. Here and there, plumes of smoke rose from fissures in the cracked and broken earth.
From the very center of the crater the mountain arose in an enormous mass, fifty miles at least across its base, towering into the firmament. As he stared at it, Aram could see that here and there upon its broad slopes, there were hints of dark green, as if there were trees. His eye traveled upward to where the summit seemed to merge with the distant sky.
“Winter will catch me long before I scale that.” He said as he dismounted from Thaniel’s back.
“I told you, Aram.” Florm answered. “There is no winter on Kelven’s mountain.” He stepped back from the rim of the crater, out of the cold wind rising from the plains far below. “Although it will soon be upon us here in force. It is time to part, my friend.”
Aram met the horse’s gaze for a long moment without speaking. Then he looked quickly away as his eyes suddenly filled and his heart threatened to burst with emotion. He drew in several deep breaths of the frigid air, lifted his pack to his shoulders and slipped his bow and one quiver of
arrows over his head. He studied the rocky slope below him for the best way down. Then he looked back at Florm.
“Will you be here when I return?”
“No.” Florm shook his great black head. “We cannot winter in this high country. We must return to the shelter of your valley at the very least—and if there is time and the passes are not closed, to our own lands. But you have the Call, Aram. Use it when you descend the mountain and Thaniel and I will hurry to meet you here or out upon the plateau. Don’t delay your return beyond the spring. Every day the world slips further into peril.”
Aram nodded and adjusted his pack. “Perhaps, my lord, I will return with something that can turn the tide of all our fortunes.”
He stood for a moment with one hand on the arched neck of his ancient friend, and the other on the muscular shoulder of Thaniel. Then he slipped over the rim of the crater and began his descent down the rocky slope toward the wide, arid plain and the vast bulk of the mountain rising beyond.
End Book One
Kelven's Riddle: The Mountain at the Middle of the World Page 46
