Before the end of the first week, he was several thousand feet higher on the mountain and back upon its western flank. He could see the entirety of the high plateau that he and the horses had crossed laid out before him, a broad desolate oval encircled by snow-covered peaks. A storm was over Vallenvale beyond, hiding it, and would no doubt overspread the plateau within hours.
Surely, he thought, by this time his friends the horses had managed to put that high desolation behind them and had gotten into the gentler country beyond. Not that they would then be clear of menace. That gentler country harbored its own dangers, being near as it was to Manon’s tower. There would undoubtedly be servants of the enemy present in that country, seeking answers as to what had happened to their missing comrades and to the man their master had sent them to capture.
Aram knew what had happened to Manon’s missing servants. He had watched as perhaps a hundred lashers, dread and terrible lieutenants of the grim lord that had pursued him and the horses into the darkness of Ferros’ domain, were condemned to perish in the fires of the abyss. Ferros was a god as well, the lord of the underearth, and Manon’s brother, but he cared for nothing and no one, and took no counsel from others. He had destroyed Manon’s foul legions and only allowed Aram and the horses to go free after the intervention of those mysterious beings, the Guardians, strange and powerful creatures that were the protectors of the Call of Kelven – a small silver cylinder that hung even now around Aram’s neck; a device by which he could summon the horses across great distances.
But though he had let them go, Ferros was unlikely to take any further interest in his affairs or that of the two horses that now made their way through that dangerous country toward the pass that would lead them southward into safer regions. Still, Florm was old and wise and Thaniel was strong; surely they would pass through the vale undiscovered, slip over the heights of Camber Pass, and get safely to the south.
Up and around the mountain Aram went, for the rest of that week and then a second, as the vastness of the world fell away beneath him. At the end of the second week, for four days, clouds closed in upon the mountain. Although they did not touch it, they closed off his view of the world with an eerie gray solidness. The mountain was sheathed in a cone of dense fog, as if an impenetrable gray-white curtain had been hung down the angled slopes of the mountain, a hundred feet off the mountainside, but encircling it completely. When the storm finally cleared, the earth below, in all directions, was white. Winter had arrived in its fullness.
The trees thinned as he gained altitude and spread their branches out less, still growing tall but slim and he could see out through them more easily as he climbed; he now had a clear view of the broad earth as it curved away from the mountain in all directions. Across the northern quadrant of the world, sharp, barren mountains, rimed with ice, marched away for a hundred miles before ending at the edge of a flat white waste that extended northward beyond the reach of sight.
To the west and northwest lay the high plateau, smaller now from this vantage point. That barren, rocky oval was bounded on the north by the rugged barren peaks of the arctic range, and on the south by even higher mountains that separated it from the high plains of the horses, which he could now see. That broad and familiar land, inhabited by his majestic friends, stretched to the south and southwest beyond the mountains.
Three hundred miles or so to the west, the mountains that separated the barren plateau from the high plains of the horses to the south were almost touched by an extended arm of the northern range at the far end of the plateau, where a forested saddle fell away into Vallenvale beyond. Beyond and below that saddle, in the broad vale, he and the horses had nearly been run to ground by that large company of lashers to whom Ferros had shown no mercy. Running for their lives, they had entered a cavern in the Forbidden Mountains, across the river Secesh to the north. Rendered unconscious by mysterious threads of clinging black, like spider’s webs in the darkness, they had awakened to find themselves in the halls of Ferros.
Now, Vallenvale’s long, wide lushness was buried in white, snow-covered from one end to the other. The broad range to the south of the vale and Ferros’ mountains to the north had their rugged contours softened by a heavy burden of snow. The wooded hills at the far western edge of the vale were also snow-covered; beyond them, their sharp, black peaks peering over the rim of the world, rose the jagged black summits of the mountains around Manon’s tower – but that structure, even if it could be seen at this distance and from this height, did not resolve itself to Aram’s eye though he looked long and hard.
Aram turned and looked again to the southwest, gazing at the familiar lands of the horses beyond the massive mountains. This range of mountains, over whose tall peaks he looked with such longing, marched in a long curve out of the west, along the southern edge of distant Vallenvale and the desolate high plateau nearer at hand, almost to the lip of the crater at the foot of Kelven’s mountain before turning sharply and going away to the south, forming as they went the eastern border of the Inland Sea, the great body of water that lay on the extreme eastern edge of the lands of the horses.
West of the sea, Aram could see the broad high plains of the horses curving away over the rim of the world. At the southern extremity of the Inland Sea, the mountains fish-hooked back to the west again, angling toward the hills around Derosa, beyond which, too far to be seen even from this height, were the southern plains and the ocean.
Due south of Kelven’s mountain, to the east of those rugged peaks, heavily wooded hills and hollows tumbled down from the heights, their aspect growing more gentle and the rivers in the vales growing more substantial as they trended south and southeastward toward the unseen, distant ocean. This immense forest was bounded on its eastern flank by higher, drier country, a region which, eventually, as it went away over the curve of the world, appeared to become nothing more than pure desert, broken by scattered mesas and dry washes.
This dry, rough country curved around Kelven’s mountain on the east, circled behind the tall, rugged mountains that rose just above the rim of the crater, and went away unchanging to the edge of the world. To the north of this land there were more tall ranges with massive snow-capped peaks separating it from the frozen waste beyond.
Such was the configuration of that portion of the earth that Aram could see as he completed each circumnavigation high on the slopes of Kelven’s mountain.
He was high enough now that circumnavigations of the mountain took barely a day and looking up through the thinning forest, he could see the bare rock of the summit just above him. There was now only one stream tumbling down the mountainside; it was the one on the southern slope and it was as substantial as it had ever been, as if it arose in its fullness from somewhere above.
One mid-morning, when it appeared that one more trip up and around the mountain would bring him into the summit regions, he paused to quench his thirst at a large pool below a waterfall in the stream and spied something enormous, startling white, and oddly shaped in the deep blue waters at the bottom of the pool. His heart constricted in his chest as he gazed down through the rippling water at the strange object. Fetching a stick from the underbrush he poked down at the thing in the pool until the stick found a cavity, then he lifted it out and as it came clear of the water he dropped it on the bank and stared.
It was the huge, misshapen, bleached-white skull of a lasher. The great ribbed horns – gleaming, burnished black when attached to the head of a living beast – were still connected to this skull, but had been bleached as white as snow by the passage of centuries. After studying it for a few moments, Aram clambered upward through the brush, searching along the banks of the tumbling stream, and found that this one skull was not alone.
There were more skulls and odd bits of bone, all bleached perfectly white, scattered along the banks and in the hollows of the tumbling stream. He knew instantly what they were. They were the remains of Manon’s ancient army, every member of which had been destroyed utterly in
the catastrophic event of Kelven’s disembodiment.
They had all died and Kelven had been rendered impotent, but Manon, though he had suffered terribly and had been reduced, had survived. And now, after many centuries, the grim lord was regaining his strength and building an army to replace the one whose bones Aram studied and laid aside here on the mountainside far above the world.
When he had escaped his bonds and fled into the wild almost eight years ago, Aram had been seeking nothing more than freedom and the chance to live a peaceful and quiet life. Instead, he had become the master of wolves and the friend of horses and had discovered that the circumstances of his life thus far mirrored the strange words of an ancient and mysterious Riddle – written, he was made to understand, by the being that lived atop this great mountain.
And to this mountain he had been summoned, and he had come. Not for glory had he come, or for power; nor even out of deference to Kelven. He had not come because he believed in the words of ancient, vague prophecies. He had come for Ka’en, the beautiful and elegant woman that he loved. For in the body of the riddle there was reference to a mighty weapon, a “sword of heaven”. If that weapon were here, and he could convince the god to lend it to him, he might have a chance of standing against Manon and his new army and free the lovely Ka’en and her people from the evil of the grim lord.
As he stood among the scattered remains of Manon’s ancient army, his thoughts rested on Ka’en and lingered there. The question that tormented him daily arose again. He loved her desperately, but would she love him?
The last time that he’d seen her beautiful face, it had been marred by an expression of horror as she gazed down from the balcony of her father’s house upon Aram and the ruin he’d made of a leading citizen of Derosa, the town of which her father was Prince. It was true that the man had challenged Aram to a duel that Aram had tried to avoid – nonetheless, in the end he slaughtered the man as the princess watched. If her thoughts ever settled on Aram as his were now on her, rather than with longing, they might be colored by revulsion for the barbaric man with bloody sword that she had gazed down upon that day.
He shook himself, divesting his mind of tumultuous thoughts, and looked up. There was no longer a seemingly unreachable summit soaring into the thin blue sky above, only a couple of thousand feet or so of bare rock rising over the tops of the trees. And even though ten thousand years had passed, there was a limit as to the distance the tumbling stream would carry odd pieces of the ancient army’s bones. He realized that he must be getting very near to his goal.
Going back down along the steep banks of the plunging stream, he regained the road and went on around to the east, and then to the north, and finally west.
That night he slept on the western slope in a huddle of small evergreens above the road, beneath a sheer wall of smooth vertical rock, the top of which rose a mere thousand feet over his head. The night was cool and clear and as he laid his head back and looked to the west into the darkness after sunset, the Glittering Sword of God hung suspended just above the horizon, ready to plunge over the edge of the world.
Three
In the morning, he gathered a meager handful of berries, ate a plum from his knapsack, and went up the road to the south and then angled east. He was now far above the world. About noon, as he came around on the southern slope, the wall of rock above him ended abruptly, leaving a gap of about half a mile from where it ended in the west to the east where it rose again. It appeared as if the summit of the mountain was hollow and a great circle of stone, with a wide gap in the south, served to fence it in.
The road angled up across gentler ground toward the middle of this gap. There were no trees here in this high sloping meadow, only scattered wildflowers among boulders through which the stream, issuing forth from the gap in the mountain walls, tumbled along rather gently before reaching the edge of the steeper slope and taking its plunge down the mountainside. Stark white lasher skulls and bones were everywhere, and were as common as stones in the stream bed.
As the road topped a small rise near the stream, Aram could see into the hollowed summit of the mountain. It was a vast wide oval valley, perhaps five miles long by three miles wide, surrounded by walls of sheer stone, except for the gap here where the stream left it. And, as near as he could tell, it was barren and lifeless except for a distant patch of green at the far end.
There were no trees bordering the stream as it flowed through the valley, nor grasses or brush; just bare stone and dead earth. The stream bisected the valley and seemed to emanate from a distant stand of tall conifers at the farther end. Between that distant patch of green and the point where the stream exited the valley, besides the bare stone and dead earth, there was one other amazing thing. Rather, the thing that was amazing was found in the sheer numbers.
There were tens of thousands of lasher bones, skulls and odd bits and pieces, here and there a partial or complete ribcage. Like those he’d found in and alongside the stream, these were also bleached white and were windrowed everywhere around the valley. In a couple of places they had dammed the stream and it pooled behind them before plunging over and around them to continue its way toward the gap in the rock and the slope of the mountain.
The road went through the gap in the mountain walls and turned toward the far end of the valley, but it was piled with the refuse of the ancient battle and Aram struggled to make his way along it. After about an hour of picking his way through the debris, as he stood on a mounded pile of bones looking for a way down, he gazed toward the northern end of the oval valley and there, gleaming in the sun above the distant trees, were what appeared to be towers of white stone. Not enough to mark a town, but substantial enough for a very large house or perhaps even a palace.
It took him most of the afternoon to navigate the four or five miles from the gap in the mountain valley’s walls to the grove of trees at the farther end, above which rose the white spires. Everywhere the valley floor was desolate except for tiny, scattered patches of sickly, yellowed grass struggling to grow here and there along the stream; the exposed stone of the valley floor was bleached as white as the bones and was crumbled and weathered as if it had been shattered by great force.
Finally, as the sun sank toward the rock wall to the southwest, he exited the region of bones and stood again upon clear road. To his front there rose a thick wall of green conifers, ancient and enormous, imposing, like the ramparts of a fortress. The road left the shattered ground and entered those dark trees.
It was cool and dark beneath the trees and the road was smooth and easy to walk. The stream flowed quietly back and forth under the road several times beneath arched stone bridges. A quarter-mile or so beyond where he entered the forest, Aram came out of the trees onto a wide paved courtyard, beyond which rose the walls of a large stone building with white towers. There was a deep blue pool of water to his left, on the western side of the courtyard where the stream welled out of the ground in a broad, deep, but gentle spring.
Beyond the courtyard, between two high towers and in the middle of the smooth front wall of the building was an ornate archway leading into an interior courtyard surrounded by walls of white stone punctuated by tall windows. There were plants growing in beautifully wrought urns here and there around the paved area near the pool. And there were tall, evenly spaced lampposts arcing across the space. On the tops of the posts were what appeared to be large glass crystals or perhaps they were jewels of some kind, and they were beginning to glow in the deepening evening.
Seated on a bench, his back to Aram, gazing out across the gently churning water of the spring, sat the robed figure of a tall man with whiteblond hair.
Aram stepped out into the courtyard and hesitated. The air was perfect here and the temperature comfortable. He removed his knapsack and his weapons, laying them carefully aside on a stone bench. Then he went back to the nearest bridge and leaned down, cupping water in his hands and wiping the grime from his face. He looked up. The man had not moved.
> As he went slowly toward the seated figure, Aram studied the building before him. It was constructed of seamless stone, white, nearly, as snow. And the towers that rose above the walls soared into the clear air for two hundred feet or more. There were no flags, no banners of any kind fluttering in the air above the towers. Although perfectly constructed and awe-inspiring in scope, the palace or castle was not ostentatious; it appeared to be exactly the sort of place where a god would live.
Aram dropped his gaze and discovered that the man had risen and was standing, facing him. He was taller than Aram; his robes were silver or perhaps pale blue, and his face was smooth, beardless. He was watching Aram with a slight smile touching the corners of his mouth.
Aram bowed. “Lord Kelven?”
The god nodded and took a few steps toward Aram. Then he stopped and folded his hands behind him and leaned forward, studying the man standing before him for several silent moments. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and gently modulated, like the sound that an evening wind makes as it moves through the branches of trees.
“If there were but more gray in your hair,” he said, “I would have mistaken you for Joktan.”
He moved to one side and swept out his arm, indicating the pair of benches near the water. “Sit, Aram, and rest. Are you hungry?”
“No, my lord.” Aram moved past Kelven and sat on the bench opposite the one where the god had been seated. Kelven resumed his place.
For someone who’d been disembodied in a cataclysm more than ten thousand years before this moment, Aram thought that Kelven looked quite substantial indeed. The god was handsome and though he did not appear old in a physical sense, there was an aura of extreme age about him.
Kelven's Riddle Book Two Page 3
