Exile's Children
Page 73
“I drank only a cup or so,” Davyd protested, somewhat crestfallen. “It’s that I’ve not had liquor in so long.”
He seemed at that moment so like a child caught in some naughtiness that Flysse could only laugh. Marjia and Colun—for all they likely had no idea what was said—joined in.
When the meal was finished, their hosts jointly indicated they should sleep, and Flysse returned to Arcole, Davyd following Colun to a separate chamber. Marjia spread the floor with more cushions, and handed Flysse a blanket, then quit the room. As she went through the low doorway, she touched the wall and murmured soft words that dimmed the light, leaving Flysse in a gentle twilight. Flysse arranged the cushions and lay beside Arcole. She’d have held him in her arms but feared disturbing him or aggravating his wound, and so contented herself with taking one outflung hand, which she held against her cheek. It was her intention to remain awake, to watch over Arcole, but food and tiswin and the comforting knowledge they were safe combined with weariness to betray her: she hardly knew her eyes closed before she slept.
• • •
Arcole opened his eyes and moved to rise. Then grunted a curse as pain lanced his back and confused memory flooded in. Of course—he’d taken a shaft and then been rescued by … Images of small, muscular men appeared, one named Colun, who had fed them and … He could recall no more. Cautiously, he lifted his head. He lay in a windowless chamber that appeared as much cave as room, lit by a soft, sourceless radiance. He saw Flysse beside him and felt reassured, then gently disengaged her hand that he might examine the bandage around his waist.
His movements woke her and she sat up, her smile bright as the risen sun as she saw him awake.
“Oh, Arcole!” Her arms enfolded him and he winced, so that she held him gentler, asking, “Does it hurt?”
“Somewhat,” he told her honestly. “Where are we?”
Flysse explained all that happened, and when she was done he said, “By God, we’re fortunate, no?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But still you took a bad wound.”
He said, “I’ve taken worse, I’ll mend soon enough.”
Flysse nodded, and held him until he fell asleep again.
For long days he lay slowly recovering in the chamber, tended by Marjia and Flysse, who refused to go farther from his side than the balcony. Davyd visited him when he woke, and regaled him with tales of their saviors and the fabulous cavern. A whole people dwelt here, Davyd explained, who called themselves—as best he could tell—the Grannach. Colun was their leader, their creddan in the Grannach tongue, and the cave and the houses and the myriad tunnels were magically fashioned by Stone Shapers who were called golans. They had furnaces and forges in which they made weapons and the metalware they used, and some of the tunnels led to mountain valleys, where they pastured animals and sometimes hunted. They had fled there after a great battle—with other folk of a different race, Davyd gathered, some of whom lived west of the mountains, and some to the east. The latter, Davyd believed, were the demons, whom the Grannach names Tack-in. He thought their leader was called Chakthi, and he was despised by the Grannach.
“God, but you’ve learned much,” Arcole declared after one such report. “How can you understand them? Their speech sounds all barks to me.”
“I don’t know.” Davyd shrugged, frowning. “I don’t understand all of it, but it’s as though …” He shrugged again. “As though the more I speak with them, the better I understand what they say.”
“And do they understand you?” Arcole asked.
“Not much.” Davyd shook his head. “Colun learns a few words, but mostly I learn their tongue.”
“That’s as well.” Arcole rested back against a pile of cushions. “One of us had better communicate with them. Now, do you tell me what you know of the western land and its folk? Are they also … What are our saviors called, Grannach?”
“No, I think they’re like us.” Davyd’s excited face grew speculative and he raised a hand to indicate greater height. “They live out in the open and they’re called something like mat-ah-why-ee.”
“Like us, eh?” Arcole smiled. “And fled here too? Is everyone here an exile?”
“I think it must be so.” Davyd nodded. “I think that Colun plans to take us to them when you’re well enough to travel.”
“That shall not be long now,” Arcole said, smiling as Flysse murmured a warning, “for I heal apace.” He paused, then asked, “Do you dream of what lies ahead?”
Davyd nodded again and told them of his dreams.
They had begun soon after his arrival in the Grannach cavern. Dreams of safety at first, as if whatever power shaped his oneiric visions would reassure him this sanctuary was sound. Then they had grown stranger, but slowly clearer and more precise. It was as if, he thought, another mind reached out to communicate with him.
He dreamed of rolling plains, great forests and wide rivers, and of tall, handsome folk mounted on horses; of villages comprised all of painted tents, filled with laughing children. And yet, encompassed within those images, he had felt a sorrow as if something were lost or left behind; and also a great hope, as if the people of his dreams put doubt behind them and looked to a brighter future.
Gradually a single figure had emerged—that of a man whose hair was white as snow, though he was not yet old, and whose face was clearer than any other. A kind and gentle face that smiled out of the dream and spoke in silence, a hand raised to beckon Davyd to him.
“I think,” Davyd said, “that he greets me. I think he welcomes us to his country.”
“Then,” Arcole declared, “it would be churlish of us to refuse, no?”
“Not,” Flysse said firmly, “until you are quite well.”
Time had little meaning in the cavern. That the Grannach controlled its light seemed to confuse the natural pace of the days, as if the exiles’ bodies missed the regulation of sunrise and sunset, and as Arcole’s wound slowly healed, he began to chafe at this new confinement. Davyd, too, began to express impatience. His dreams grew more imperative, as if the white-haired man would have them come to him before the summer ended. Only Flysse was content to linger, and that because she’d know her husband fully recovered before they embarked on fresh adventures.
At last the wound was full-healed. Marjia no longer insisted Arcole wear a compress, nor that he swallow the recuperative drafts, and one day Colun told them—through Davyd—that it was time to go.
They said their farewells and gathered up their packs. The Grannach had already gifted them with fresh clothing, sewn to their sizes, and now added food. With an escort led by Colun, they quit the fabulous cavern.
Colun brought them through the winding tunnels to a mountain valley where sheep and deer grazed under the benign light of a latesummer sun. It was a joy to walk once more under blue skies, to see clouds sail the winds and feel the fresh breeze on their faces.
Stranger still to find a welcoming party camped in the foothills, as if they were not refugees but expected and welcome guests whose arrival had been somewhat delayed.
Arcole and Flysse gazed in wonder as tall men clad in buckskins, their hair tied in long braids, hailed the Grannach. Arcole fingered his musket, murmuring, “They look like the demons.”
“They’re friends,” Davyd said confidently.
He stepped forward, his gaze locked firm on the white-haired man who opened his arms and said, “Well met, brother. I am Morrhyn.”
For Anne Lesley Groell
and Jamie Warren Youll.
With special thanks to Stephen Youll.
Also by Angus Wells
Book of the Kingdoms #1:
Wrath of Ashar
Book of the Kingdoms #2:
The Usurper
Book of the Kingdoms #3:
The Way Beneath
The Godwars #1: Forbidden Magic
The Godwars #2: Dark Magic
The Godwars #3: Wild Magic
Lords of the Sky
About the
Author
Angus Wells was born in a small village in Kent, England. He has worked as a publicist and as a science fiction and fantasy editor. He now writes full time, and is the author of The Books of the Kingdoms (Wrath of Ashar, The Usurper, The Way Beneath) and The Godwars (Forbidden Magic, Dark Magic, Wild Magic). Lords of the Sky, his first stand-alone novel, debuted in trade paperback in October of 1994, and is currently available in mass-market paperback. He lives in Nottingham with his two dogs, Elmore and Sam, and is hard at work on the second book in The Exiles Saga—Exile’s Challenge.