The company trudged on. Mist curled around the trees, making shadows and light appear from nothing. The Triker took on an eerie feel, but Lacdur and Feywen took them through without hesitation.
Nightfall brought them to a cave like the one from their first night though much deeper, made so by the rocky terrain in the area. Screened away by the heavy trees, this refuge would allow them a fire for the first time in days. Their fire would have to be kept small, but for one night, they’d get some hot food, dry clothes, and a measure of comfort. Conra went to work preparing a meal, and within an hour, the Elf had concocted a stew they consumed almost before he took it off the fire.
Lacdur bellowed out, “If Elves could do business as well as you cook, we’d all be in better spirits.”
The words were strange to Darr, and his face must have showed it because Feywen sat down next to him after supper and explained.
“Lacdur doesn’t mean to be cruel by what he says,” Feywen said. “It’s an ingrained belief among the Dwarves that the Elves are responsible for our struggle. A long time has passed since the Aeon Wars, but much of the old bitterness remains. My people have exerted much effort into rebuilding our nation, and our efforts would be less of a struggle if trade routes stayed open. The Men of Kurflin won’t let us pass into Cortaz, and the Elves are self-sufficient on their own without the need for trade.”
“But the Cortazians, and even some of the Kurflinese, are helping you fight the Soul Seekers,” Darr replied. “That has to mean something, despite the inability to trade.”
Feywen nodded in agreement. “It means much more than I can explain. These small steps couldn’t have been taken without my father. He knew the other kings of Ictar well enough to establish some small trade with them. He went so far as to open up civil talks with the Ogres, which inspired Elf King, Lendor Terwin, to do the same. However, with my father’s death, I fear the Dwarf Elder Council will do nothing to aid his previous efforts.”
Darr fell silent, but Feywen continued. “My hope is things will change after this war. I believe this war will help instigate reliance between the races. If all goes as planned, the three races of Man, Elf, and Dwarf will all be fighting for a common cause, and when the dust clears the battlefield, we’ll see we accomplished it by working together.”
“That’s a very noble idea,” Darr replied. Before he could think better of it, he asked, “Feywen, why are you here?”
“Do you mean, here in the Triker, or here, avoiding any responsibilities I might have in Jakova?” Awkward, Darr shifted, unable to think of a correct response, but Feywen laughed. “I’m here because I believe my father would have wanted me here. If there’s anything I learned from the events at the Tower Castle, it’s that my father believed whole-heartedly what Caeranol told him. Whereas Lendor Terwin and Ariel Forn expressed disbelief, my father was filled with hope after the encounter. He believed our destiny was in the Chosen of the Light. Yes, my father would’ve wanted me right here, guiding and aiding you and your sister in any way possible.”
Feywen smiled, and rose from his seat. “I’ll leave you with that thought. Lacdur and I have some scouting to do.”
Darr smiled. Feywen Dery might by a man of mysterious ways, but he was bound by his beliefs. Without him, Darr had no idea how they would’ve gotten this far.
* * * *
Screams echoed through the Currents. After shaking off his initial shock, he put his ear to the spirit realm. The voices were disjointed and distant, close one second and moving away the next. The spirits themselves were in a state of commotion, their voices long and eerie. It took Darr several moments to focus his mind enough to move.
The Summoner sat up. The walls of the cave glowed red from the embers of the dying fire. Erec and Jinn slept beside him, and the Dwarves hadn’t returned from their watch. Nidic Waq and Conra were nowhere to be seen. Darr got up and stepped over his siblings, walking lightly towards the entrance of the cave. Outside, Conra stood motionless, his face turned out into the blackness of the forest.
Darr walked to the old Elf’s side. “What’s going on?” he whispered.
“I can’t be sure, Boy,” Conra answered. “I heard screaming. The sound startled me and I woke up, and right away I could smell smoke.”
After a few deep breaths, Darr shook his head. Conra glanced sideways and grinned. “You wouldn’t be able to smell it. Whatever’s burning is a long way off.” The Elf turned back, looking out into the night. “I might not be young anymore, but my Elven senses are as strong as ever.”
Conra eased back inside the shadows of the cave, and his gnarled hand came up and brought Darr back with him. The Summoner kept his mouth shut, placing his trust in Conra. Two shadows materialized out of the darkness, they were on top of them so quick Darr couldn’t react. His stomach jolted up into his throat, and though Lacdur and Feywen came into view, it took a moment for Darr to relax.
“‘Aos--what’re you two doin’ here?” Lacdur grumbled, his large frame taking up every possible inch between them.
“Calm down,” Conra said, “we just came out here to investigate.”
“Investigate what?” Feywen asked.
“I heard screaming,” Darr replied, “but it came from the Currents.”
Conra nodded and added, “I heard something too, but not like the boy did. I heard them, and I could smell smoke.”
“Elf blood,” Lacdur muttered but Feywen silenced him.
“We haven’t heard anything since we left,” Feywen said. “In fact, there hasn’t been a single sign of the Soul Seekers. You really heard screaming?”
Darr hesitated and said nothing.
“I need to know what you heard.”
Darr couldn’t think how to proceed. Feywen and Lacdur might not know anything about the Currents. Potentially, he’d be exposing a secret known only to a select few. But if Feywen had proven anything, he was a man who could be trusted.
Darr took a deep breath. “As a Spirit Summoner, my mind is connected to the Currents. The realm connects every living creature on Ictar, and because of this, I can feel and hear...”
“Bah!” Lacdur grunted, his voice rising into the night.
Feywen remained reserved, his face sincere. “I have heard of this phenomenon, Darr. It is rarely documented, but the oldest of the Dwarf histories record accounts of Summoners who can feel and hear the presence of other living creatures across the Currents. So, what is it? What did you hear?”
Darr shook his head. “My memories are fragmented, like a dream, but I felt pain and fear. I heard the screams of people far away. And I heard the spirits. They were crying out, I think.”
Feywen fixed his gaze on Darr as if measuring his credibility. “Lacdur and I will take one more pass through the area. Perhaps there is something we missed.” Lacdur grumbled muttered something, but he didn’t argue before he disappeared into the trees.
Feywen paid him no attention and followed after, but after a few paces, he stopped and turned his head. “Where is Nidic Waq?” he asked. “If anyone knows what’s happening, it would be him.”
Darr shook his head. “I don’t know. He was gone when I woke.”
“He was missing when I woke as well,” Conra added.
Feywen nodded, a dismissive gesture, before stalking off into the woods after Lacdur. His lean frame melted into the shadows. For a time, he stood alongside Conra, staring off into the Triker Forest after them.
“So,” Conra said with a sigh, “you can read the Currents, huh? That’s how you took care of the crab, isn’t it?”
Darr grinned. “I suppose it was something like that.”
For a long time, the Elf didn’t say anything. “You know, Boy, one of these days I’m gonna have to know more about this magic you work.” Conra looked at him for a moment longer before turning with a sigh and disappearing back inside the cave.
Darr considered going after him and telling him everything. Conra had been patient from the beginning, and still he knew next to nothin
g about his summoning abilities. With a quick glance back out into the trees, Darr decided to save it for another time. Where had Nidic Waq gone? He couldn’t worry about it.
Tired again, Darr left his thoughts outside the cave, and retreated to the comfort of his blankets.
* * * *
The warm smell of pan bread filled Darr’s nose. He stirred within his blankets. With the realization that morning had arrived, he threw off his bedding and leapt to the side of the fire. Erec, Conra, and Jinn were awake and eating breakfast. Nidic Waq continued to be absent.
Erec looked up at him and said, “Feywen and Lacdur left early this morning. They said they’re still scouting.”
Darr sat down and let the warmth of the fire sink in, troubled, but also relieved that the Dwarves had not found anything last night. Conra offered him a slice of bread and a piece of cheese. He accepted them and devoured both within minutes.
He was in the middle of gathering his things when Feywen and Lacdur appeared through the sun-washed cave entrance.
Feywen bent down to Darr and said, “We searched for nearly three hours last night. I’m sorry, but we found nothing.”
With a quick nod and a smile, Darr thanked him for his efforts and returned to packing his things. Did I dream it all? It wasn’t possible, unless Conra had dreamt the same thing. He finished packing and hurried outside the cave to gather with the others.
“We’re a few hours from the Crossroads,” Lacdur announced when Darr appeared. “We’ll be there by noon if we push it. I’ve got contacts there who will resupply us and give us horses from the remainder of our journey. If we’re lucky, we might ever get to sleep in some real beds.”
Abrupt as always, Lacdur turned and led the way. He kept a path parallel with the rocky terrain leading south. The day was pleasant and warm, filled with fresh smells of pine and the soft chirping of birds. An hour past midmorning, Lacdur took them sharply away from the mountains, leading them east.
A few minutes into their new course, Conra called a halt from his position at the rear of the procession. The five members of the little company huddled around the Elf. He stood looking up as if testing the air.
“What is it, Conra?” Jinn asked.
The Elf shook his head, his gaze still directed upwards. “I can’t tell exactly. I smell smoke again.” He lowered his eyes. “I smell death.”
“From where?” Feywen asked, his voice calm but firm.
Conra pointed in the direction they were heading. “It’s definitely coming from up ahead.”
“I don’t smell anything,” Erec stated.
Lacdur laughed and said, “That’s cause you don’t have the magic-tainted senses of an Elf.”
“That’s enough, Lacdur,” Feywen retorted without a trace of patience. “Put whatever prejudices you have aside and use your instincts, for spirits’ sake.”
The Dwarf warrior lapsed into silence, his face a mask of humiliation. Conra shook his head and said, “I can’t be certain, but I’d guess from up ahead.”
Feywen’s face remained unreadable, but his fear rippled out into the Currents. “We must hurry,” the once-prince said.
The line reformed and this time Feywen led the way, forging through the trees with single-minded purpose. Darr hurried alongside Jinn, and together they struggled to keep up. Darr gave his sister an encouraging smile, but it didn’t dispel the look of worry on her face. The smell of smoke began to waft through the trees. Something terrible waited for them, and Darr knew with certainty the screams in the Currents last night weren’t a dream.
Feywen fell into a dead sprint, his legs flying effortlessly over fallen branches and underbrush. The others struggled to keep up, but only Erec had the stamina to keep his pace. Feywen had thrown caution to the wind, and it occurred to Darr they could be heading into a trap. Hopefully, Lacdur still watched for the presence of Soul Seekers.
Sunlight flared before them, pure and warm. The trees broke apart and a field of long grass appeared. Smoke billowed before them, thick plumes centered on a dark smattering of deadwood across the field. No, not deadwood. Houses and buildings, structures reduced to blackened timber and rubble. Feywen raced ahead, and this time, even Erec fell behind.
The others slowed but they didn’t stop running. The fields leading into the Crossroads became bumpy and rough, the grasses burnt through in spots. Darr tripped and fell into a heap, but Lacdur lifted him up.
At Darr’s feet, a Dwarf child stared lifelessly up at him.
The body, along with many others, lay strewn throughout the fields. Some were bloodied and torn. Others were motionless heaps. They all stared into the morning sunlight, their eyes drained of color. Darr dropped to his knees, retching and coughing with the images burned into his eyes.
“I know it’s hard,” the Dwarf warrior soothed while hefting him back up. “We have to get moving. We have to see if any one made it.”
Darr nodded, but the images of those Dwarves, broken and lifeless, were stuck in his mind. Lacdur dragged him for several paces before his legs could keep up with the mechanical motion of running. The others were far ahead now. Darr didn’t really care. He wanted to run in the other direction.
Darr Reintol.
The voice came from the Currents. It belonged to Nidic Waq.
Walk the path you must, but do not let your fear get the better of you.
The voice, imagined or real, made him remember. His fear weakened him. Darr shut out the images of the dead, focusing instead on his sister and brother, Feywen and Conra.
The first of the smoldering buildings appeared. Smoke billowed past, making it difficult to see, but the others of their company were gathered in a circle around a dark shape. Darr and Lacdur moved closer. Feywen knelt before someone with Conra at his side, their hands working over the body. Jinn stood alongside Erec, looking down at the dark shape on the ground.
Darr’s breath caught in his throat.
It was Nidic Waq.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“The centuries passed and the fighting continued. The races evolved and learned from their wars, and sometimes, short periods of growth would erupt across Ictar. Alliances formed and often resulted in betrayal, but progress inched forward, aiming for a day when the races might find peace among one another. The memory of the Ancients, and the thing that drove them from the world, became like thin smoke, insubstantial and caught only in small pieces.”
~From A Current History of Ictar, as told by Nidic Waq
The spot on the ground Darr had been studying disinterestedly for the past hour hadn’t changed. Dusk had arrived, the sky turned crimson with the setting of the sun. The trees standing around him were dark sentinels, witnesses to the hideous deeds done to the Dwarves they once watched over. Tranquility fell over everything. The smallest chirp of an insect didn’t intrude on the dead city.
“How are you holding up?”
Erec stood over him. Darr leaned forward, burying his head in the crook of his arms. “Not too well, Erec,” he replied, his tone distant.
The breeze carried pieces of ash and the smell of smoke on its back. The burning in Darr’s stomach told him he might retch again. In a swooping motion, Erec swung around and eased himself against the crumbling wall Darr sat against.
“It’s been a hard day,” Erec said, his voice sincere. “I thought you did well out there. You kept it together.”
Darr shrugged. “No, I didn’t. I ignored it. I wouldn’t have gotten through it otherwise.”
“Well, whatever. You showed courage when it counted. Not many could’ve done what we did today.”
With Feywen and Lacdur, Darr and his brother had helped inter several dozen bodies. They found a cold cellar that survived the fire, and for most of the day, they wrapped and carried bodies into the makeshift crypt. Unfortunately, there was no way they could bury all the dead, nor tend to them all. Someone else would have to finish.
“Lacdur said several hundred people lived at the Crossroads up until last nigh
t,” Erec said, as if in a trance. “Over half of that number died. The Seekers didn’t care who they killed. They gave no quarter except to those who had managed to escape, and from the looks of it, not many had managed to do so.”
Erec looked over at Darr. “Do you think he helped them?” Darr didn’t have to ask who he referred to. “You don’t think he was working with the Soul Seekers, do you?”
When they found Nidic Waq, he was bloodied and unconscious. Burns ran down the length of one arm, and a series of deep slashes penetrated the flesh of his ribs. Conra had him carried to a building that’d been partially destroyed in the fire. With Jinn’s help, the old Elf went to work treating the prophet’s injuries.
“No, I don’t think he was helping them,” Darr whispered. “I would’ve known.”
The two were silent for a moment while Darr studied the same spot at his feet. “You didn’t know about Caeranol’s prophecy to the Kings of Ictar,” Erec said. “He hid that from you, little brother. Why not this?”
“Because the spirits wouldn’t have let me near him!” Darr shouted, his face burning with frustration. “They confirmed everything he’s said since Tyfor. I would’ve been able to tell if he was lying.”
Darr’s voice trailed off, lost in the heat of his words. He relaxed his body and focused, letting deep breaths settle into his stomach. The fact remained the spirits had said nothing to him about Nidic Waq except to confirm what he told him. Every word the prophet had ever issued, Darr heard echoed through the Currents. The spirits had never told him anything directly about the man. If he were in league with the Soul Seekers, wouldn’t the spirits tell him? Wouldn’t Racall?
“I think he was here trying to help,” Darr said.
Erec let out a short sigh. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough. Conra says he should wake soon. Speaking of which, the old Elf found some food in that burned out shell we’re calling a shelter. I don’t know what he found exactly, but...”
The Children of the Light: Book 1: Spirit Summoner Page 22
