He stepped into the darkened studio, all the perfect renderings of Karak staring back at him in disappointment and accusation beneath the thirty-foot ceiling. Their features shifted in and out of focus, bathed in yellow from the flickering candlelight that filtered in from the hall. The same sort of gut-wrenching vertigo he always felt when inside this room followed, dropping him to his knees as bile rose in the back of his throat. Darkfall slipped from his grip and clattered to the hard ground. He crawled across the floor and rested his head against the raised threshold of the arched doorway, waiting for the feeling to pass.
He was breathing deeply, trying to quell the coming sickness, when suddenly the sound of rushing wind filled his ears. The door to the keep opened and closed, and then voices echoed off the walls, speaking in a hushed conversation that was peppered with uneasy laughter.
Curiosity momentarily curing him of his ills, Vulfram straightened up and peered around the edge of the doorway, his eyes catching sight of four people who were standing in the middle of the hall, locked in quiet conversation.
His mother was there, looking elegant in her purple dress, her shoulders covered with a heavy shawl. His father stood beside her, hands on his hips, not speaking, and Vulfram shuddered at the sight of him. When the other two figures came into focus, Vulfram furrowed his brow in confusion, for before his parents stood the Left Hand of the Highest, Crian Crestwell, Clovis’s youngest child. A broad smile stretched across the young man’s face, one that belied the cautious expressions of Vulfram’s mother and father. Even stranger, however, was the small wisp of a girl whose hand was locked in Crian’s. She was absolutely beaming, a perfect illustration of youthful innocence, with a shock of bright red hair and a lithe frame. She was gazing up at Crian with the same sort of naïve wonder with which his wife had once looked at him. It was a look that spoke of the clarity of dreams, the purity of love. Tears formed in Vulfram’s eyes once more, and he had to hold his breath in order to stay his faltering composure.
“This will be your home for the foreseeable future,” his mother said to the young couple. “There is a room for you upstairs, but mind you, the one next to our daughter Adeline’s. Her raving may prove an unwanted antidote for sleep. If it becomes a problem, please let me know, and I can prepare a chamber higher up in the tower.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” replied Crian, gazing lovingly at the girl on his arm. “As long as Nessa is by my side, there is nothing we cannot overcome.”
“How quaint,” said Vulfram’s father.
The group made their way toward the stairwell. Vulfram caught a glimpse of his mother’s face, hardened yet striving for compassion, a look he had seen often of late as the pressures of her duty as Minister of Justice bore down on her soul.
She said, “I hope you realize how fortunate you two are. You assaulted your sister and deserted your post. And you, Nessa…you have blasphemed against your own creator. That is unprecedented in this land, and I imagine in yours as well. I have had men executed for lesser offenses. Crian, I do not know why your father has chosen to spare you both. What you did to your sister alone deserves harsh punishment. Though your lives will be difficult from here on out, you should look at this turn of events as a blessing. Your heads could very well be set on spikes right now.”
“I know, Minister,” said Crian, but the way he smiled broadly and held the young girl showed he didn’t truly understand the threatening words that came from her mouth. He was oblivious, as was this strange Nessa, the two of them trapped in a bubble of infatuation.
Vulfram and Yenge had been like that once. A long, long time ago.
That was when Vulfram noticed a strange rectangular object wedged beneath Crian’s arm. It was a mirror, framed with elegantly polished ivory. He had seen a similar one hanging from the wall in the Renson library. The sight of it set his blood to boiling, and his thoughts started spinning wildly.
The group started up the stairs, continuing their conversation, and when they were out of sight, Vulfram eased his way quietly out of the studio. He crept to the bottom of the stairwell, trying to decipher what was being said.
It was his mother’s voice he heard next.
“…as your father the Highest knows, the position is a difficult one. It is a lot of responsibility for one person, especially considering the duties he already holds. But should he take up the mantle for himself, I am sure he will make a fine Lord Commander.…”
The voices became muffled after that, as the four climbed higher up the tower. Vulfram felt faint and collapsed against the wall. The words he’d heard replayed in his mind, creating dark scenarios that threatened to undo the very fabric of his being.
His mother had betrayed him. His kingdom had betrayed him. His god had betrayed him. And though it didn’t come without its own form of heavy-handed guilt, given the way he had profaned against Karak this very evening, anger rose within him. He twirled around, making his way uneasily back to his father’s studio and snatching Darkfall from the ground. The sword had come to rest at the feet of a white marble sculpture of Karak, standing ten feet tall. He reared back and lopped the head from the statue with a mighty swipe. It clanked to the floor, cracking in two upon impact. The two halves rocked in place, both eyes seeming to stare up at him accusingly.
Vulfram slumped down, letting the sword trail out before him. In his inebriated mind, the conspiracy deepened. The mirror was further proof. They were all against him; they wished to devastate his family, take his mantle of leadership, and leave him a ranting lunatic like his sister. And then there was Crian. The man had broken his oaths, attacked his sister, and been caught red-handed with his red-headed tart. Yet Crian had been allowed a stay of punishment, given the opportunity to live his life in whatever way he saw fit, all the while holding onto the western deserter he loved.
But Lyana, whose only sin had been naïveté and fright, was being forced to perform heinous acts as a form of sadistic punishment.
The world spun out of control, and Vulfram collapsed, holding his head in his hands, wailing to the empty hall that he wanted a second chance, that he deserved it. He’d been loyal over the many years of his life, loyal as he bore down the whip and scarred the flesh of his beloved. He wailed and wailed over the fact that everything that had happened was, at its core, not fair in the slightest.
CHAPTER
24
They set up camp in a rock-strewn valley. Jacob was unusually silent while striking his flint, the sparks he created bringing his body in and out of focus like a phantom. Roland wanted to offer to take up the camp-making duties, as doing so might take his mind off the air’s numbing iciness, but he refrained. The First Man was frustration personified at the moment. Seven days of searching, of winding deeper into the Tinderlands and then back toward the river, and nothing had crossed their path—no stray humans, no wild beasts, not even a pack of wolves. Traversing the barren terrain was akin to hiking across an endless, dead steppe. Even during the cloudless days, when the sun shone down on the land with all the intensity it had in the south, there was an ever-present chill in the air. The small spattering of grass that covered the stony earth was brown and dead, brittle as hay, and there were wide swaths of ice that seemed to appear from out of nowhere.
Roland sighed. The trip across the Tinderlands had been a monotonous undertaking for the most part. The only excitement the group had experienced occurred on the first day, after he, Jacob, Brienna, and Azariah crossed the narrow strip of rapids opposite the defensive tower the Drake villagers were constructing. They had been greeted by a mudslide on the other side of a hill they crested. Roland had plummeted down the slope, flipping and slipping and whacking his head on dried roots and hard stones. When his descent finally came to an abrupt stop, he found himself surrounded by craggy rock faces on all sides, standing tall and dead like monuments to long-forgotten gods. He emerged covered with sticky sludge, his brain pounding in his skull, his entire body sore. When he called out to the other members of his
party, he discovered them spread out along this odd desert of crude, naturally formed shrines. All but Jacob, that is. They searched the maze for hours, not discovering him until well past dusk, sprawled out on his back, moaning. Brienna had needed to slap him across the face to wake him.
Now the seventh day of searching came to a close, the sun dipping behind the mountains, allowing the blackness to swallow them whole. The mudslide and maze seemed so long ago. The monotony of each passing day bore down on him, causing his feet to twitch impatiently. He wanted to leave this place now, wanted to go home before something bad happened to them in this dead land.
Azariah warmed his long, elegant hands before the fire, his words breaking the lengthy silence.
“I think one of the villagers might have gone insane,” he said, the firelight reflecting in his eyes.
“Why would you say that?” asked Brienna.
The Warden raised his hands and gestured all around him. “Take a look. There is nothing about. This place is completely, irrevocably dead.”
Brienna muttered something incomprehensible in response.
“There is something out here,” said Jacob. Roland glanced at his master, watching him toy with his knife while he sat there with crossed legs.
“I think you are mistaken,” said Azariah.
“I think not,” Jacob snapped back. “I know there is something out here. We’re close. I can feel it.”
Azariah laughed. “You’re becoming as delusional as the villagers then, my friend. Perhaps it is you who has lost his senses. Should I be sleeping with one eye open from now on?”
“Perhaps you should.”
“Boys,” said Brienna, her tone weary. “Can we please stop this? My head aches. I need sleep.”
“Very well,” said Azariah.
Brienna turned to her lover. “Jacob, please come here. I need comfort tonight.”
Jacob jammed his knife into the ground and stood up. He sauntered around the fire, an odd look of frustration painted across his features, and slipped beneath the blankets with which Brienna had covered herself. The elf wrapped herself around him, and he around her, pulling the blankets up over their heads. Roland expected to hear the muffled giggles that usually came next, and to see the pile of blankets bulge and shift as the couple wrestled playfully, but it remained still but for the steady rise and fall of their breathing.
There would be no games tonight, it seemed. Brienna’s mood had soured along with Jacob’s. This awful place had once been her homeland, lush and alive and teeming with game. Now it was cold, desolate, and uninhabitable. All this she had told him one night while they shivered together in front of the fire, Brienna pining for the beauty of Kal’droth, her every word followed by harsh and biting profanities.
Roland took a swig from his waterskin, then uncorked the small vial of apple brandy Ephraim Wendover had given him and downed a gulp of that as well. The liquor warmed him ever so slightly, taking the most abrasive edge off the cold, but the feeling didn’t last long. To Roland, the cold was the absolute worst part of this entire, ill-fated journey. He thought he’d had it rough on the way to Drake, but the town had seemed downright balmy compared to where he was now. In the Tinderlands, he found, the cold was a living thing, a demon that circled him at all times, crystallizing the moisture in the air, filling his lungs with its frigid evil, making every breath laborious. No matter how many layers he piled atop himself—and Turock Escheton had been more than generous in supplying them with the necessities for their journey—his body was locked in a near-constant shiver. Even pushing himself physically didn’t seem to help, as exertion only made him sweat, and that sweat soon cooled, occasionally freezing on his flesh and making him colder than ever. He thought to ask Azariah for a swig from the large wooden carafe he carried with him, but the Warden was fast asleep, bundled to the neck, and snoring heavily.
Roland was all alone—the last conscious being in a land of the dead.
He lay awake for a long time, coverlets stacked atop him. Halfway through the night, as always, the cold invaded even those. The combination of the chill and the uncomfortable hardness of the uneven ground beneath him told him to give up on sleep. He sat up, poked a twig into the bed of glimmering coals, and tossed another couple of dried-out logs onto them. They caught fire almost immediately, crackling as the flames grew higher. If there was one good thing about the Tinderlands, it was the fact that there was plenty of undisturbed and well-seasoned firewood about.
He sat there for some time, poking at the fire, adding more sticks while his mind drifted to home. He was thinking of Mary Ulmer and the way her perky little breasts heaved whenever she scrubbed the family laundry in a thin, sheer blouse two sizes too small for her, when a strange sound echoed through the valley. The stirring in his abdomen retreated. For days he had heard nothing but the hiss and pop of the fire come evening, along with Azariah’s snores, but this was different—this was foreign. He froze in place, afraid to move, when he heard it again. It was an odd sound, like waves crashing against living rocks, making them all sigh at once.
The third time it happened, a very human-sounding scream followed, and Roland tore off his blankets and shot to his feet. He frantically lit the end of a dried stick and thrust it all about, searching for whatever beast was stalking them. The sound came a fourth time, and he retreated a step, tripping over the lump of Jacob and Brienna in the process. He careened backward, the dark vertigo playing tricks on him, and smacked his elbow when he landed.
“Ouch!” he exclaimed.
“What in the name of Ashhur?” Jacob’s voice called out.
Roland flipped onto his stomach and lifted his head. The light from his quaint fire was enough to illuminate Jacob and Brienna’s sleepy, stunned gazes. He opened his mouth to tell his master about what he had heard, but the effort was unnecessary. The sound rang out through the valley again, louder than before, this time not fading away, but seeming to linger, like fizz bubbling at the top of a mug of mead. It was droning and deep, yet its tone was oddly inconsistent.
“What was that?” asked Brienna.
Roland shrugged.
“How long has it been happening?” asked Jacob.
“Not long. A few minutes, maybe.”
Roland watched Jacob cock his head. When the sound came again, still increasing in volume, the First Man grinned.
“I knew it,” he whispered.
A short while later—it had taken a bit of effort to rouse Azariah, who was a deep sleeper—the quartet was wandering through the darkness, a single torch lighting their way. They progressed in a single line: Jacob in the lead, Brienna behind him, Roland third, and Azariah taking up the rear, each holding the shirt of the one in front so as not to fall out of line. The strange sound increased in frequency and consistency the farther north they tread, until it became as ever present as the insects that rubbed out their nightly song back in Safeway’s numerous gardens. Roland’s heart started to race. He knew he should be frightened, but Jacob diffused that fear with his unyielding excitement and curiosity. The fact that his master wasn’t scared meant he shouldn’t be either.
The noise led them up a steep incline, the loose rocks underfoot making each step treacherous, and then along a narrow ridge, the right edge of which fell into a steep drop. Jacob kept his eyes focused on the landscape before him, calling out urgent whispers to those following him whenever he came across a potential hazard. Somehow, despite the array of dips and cracks and sharp stones that littered their path, all four of them made it across the precipice without losing their footing.
And still the sound rose in volume.
Jacob steered them downward, through a narrow passage cut into the rock that reminded Roland very much of the Cavern of Solitude back home, complete with the sharp edges jutting from either side. With Jacob’s torch as their only light, Roland found himself flailing in the darkness. Once he veered too close to the wall, and a pointed stone slashed through his heavy woolen tunic, leaving a shallow gas
h on his arm. Roland bit down his cry. The last thing he wanted to do was to appear a burden to the others.
The cavern emptied out behind a row of boulders twice his size. A strange glow lit the top of the boulders, flushing the surface red and yellow. Once they emerged, the strange sound could be recognized for what it was—voices chanting. It was almost like prayer, an everyday occurrence for anyone who had been born and raised in Paradise. Jacob stopped, extinguished his torch, and pressed them all against the rocks, raising a finger to his lips. He was still grinning.
“I think this is another valley,” he whispered. “Proceed with caution. We do not know who lies beyond this wall.”
They all nodded in silent agreement and followed him.
The wall of stone progressed in a curve, the narrow duct they found themselves in gradually expanding until they had room to walk abreast of one another. The height of the wall lowered, allowing in more light from the other side. Roland tugged at his collar, sweat building up at the base of his neck, and it took him a few moments to realize he was no longer cold. In fact, he felt hotter than he had on the most sun-drenched summer day while slathering fresh tar on Jacob’s roof. Though it was a surreal feeling, he was silently thankful that his bones were no longer rattling.
A few hundred yards farther along the crevasse, they came upon a gap in the wall. Jacob halted them there, gazing around the uneven stone portal, his entire body bathed in red light. Roland saw his eyes widen, his jaw drop open, and his hands fall to his sides.
“What is it?” asked Brienna.
Jacob turned toward her slowly and then moved so that the rest of them could get a look at whatever strange ritual was taking place on the other side. It seemed to take forever for the line to progress, and impatience tickled the back of Roland’s throat and tingled in his legs.
When he finally arrived at the gap, squeezing in next to the beautiful elf while Azariah wedged his head in on the other side, he understood Jacob’s shocked reaction.
Dawn of Swords Page 37
