“Oh, Jinnarin, Farrix,” said Aylis, keeping her own voice low, “I would hug you both, but I’m afraid I would-”
Farrix, the male Pysk, laughed quietly and said, “Crush us? You probably would at that.”
Jinnarin grinned and said, “Aylis, I would have you meet our daughter, Aylissa, named after you, of course, though mostly we call her Lissa. Lissa, this is your aunt Aylis, or rather your adopted aunt.”
“I know the tale well,” whispered Aylissa. Just under twelve inches tall and with mouse-brown hair, she looked much like her mother, for Jinnarin’s hair, too, was mouse brown, though Farrix’s was coal black. A tiny glitter of some kind of stone on a silver chain hung about her neck and carried a trace of odd ‹fire›. Yet whether it was a token of power or simply something imbued with an unknown essence, Aylis could not say.
“I am so glad to see you,” said Aylis, “but how did you come to know we were here? Was it the Woodwer who told you?”
Farrix again muffled a laugh and shook his head. “Nay, Aylis, ’twas instead a dark bird-”
“Aravan?”
“None other. We thought it was out to snag one of us, a black falcon there in the woods. We readied our bows in case it flew nigh, but it lit on a sturdy limb well up in the trees. Imagine our surprise when in a flash of light it transformed into Aravan. Like to have shocked me silly.”
“Perhaps thinking we might take him for a shape-shifting Black Mage, he remained up in the tree out of range of our arrows until he had explained all and why he had come,” said Jinnarin, taking up the tale.
“A good thing that,” said Aylis, for she knew how deadly were the tiny shafts with their tips of nearly instant lethality.
“Indeed,” said Jinnarin.
“I am so glad he sent you for a visit,” said Aylis, “though I’m afraid the warband and I cannot stay overlong.”
“Not just a visit, my dear,” said Farrix.
“No?”
“Nay.” Farrix then gestured to Aylissa and said, “I would have you meet the Eroean ’s new scout.”
Tiny, brown-haired Aylissa then bobbed a curtsey and smiled.
16
Greatwood
JOURNEY TO THE EROEAN
MID SUMMER, 6E1
“How very splendid,” said Aylis. “You are Aravan’s new scout.” “With Vex, that is,” said Lissa, “else not much of a scout would I be.”
“Vex?”
“My fox,” she replied.
“Ah, yes, you do need your mount,” said Aylis, smiling, imagining tiny Lissa trying to scout afoot, battling her way through weeds and such, rather like someone of Human size trying to pass through an entangled jungle. No, a Fox Rider without a fox would be at the mercy of many things, the least of which were plants. “Speaking of foxes,” said Aylis, looking about, “where are they?”
Lissa gestured westerly toward the darkness cloaking Darda Erynian. “Rux and Rhu and Vex are just at the edge of the forest. We didn’t want some silly Dwarf spitting any of them with a crossbow bolt, thinking they were vermin.”
Aylis spluttered and slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing aloud. Finally she mastered herself and said, “Silly Dwarf? I think I’ve never seen one ever do even the slightest harebrained thing.”
“True,” said Jinnarin, “though when deep in their cups they can be quite rowdy.”
Aylis smiled and nodded, but Farrix asked, “When did you see Dwarves deep in their cups?”
Jinnarin said, “It was wintertime in the port of Arbor in Gelen. It was twelfth day of Yule-the first day of a new year, as the High King measures time-and that evening a gentle snow began falling. The hole in the hull of the Eroean had finally been repaired, and two days after, when all had recovered from the labor, a grand celebration was held in the common room of the Blue Mermaid Inn. All of the Elvenship crew were there-sailors and warband alike-as well as Aylis and her father, Alamar.-Oh, and me and Rux. I was lurking in my darkness at the top of the stairs. There was singing and dancing, and Lobbie played his squeeze box and Rolly his pipe and Burden banged away on his drum. All the sailors and warriors stomped in time and clapped their hands, while Aylis and Aravan danced a wild, wild fling, stepping and prancing and whirling about and laughing into each other’s eyes. Chakka chanted marching songs, the words in a brusque language strong. Mage Alamar made the air sparkle with untouchable glitter in a rainbow of dazzling colors, and he caused a strange musical piping amid the sounds of ringing wind chimes. And then Aravan played a harp and voiced stirring sagas, odes to make your heart pound and your blood run hot. And Aylis sang in a high, sweet voice, and not an eye was dry when she finished. And while Dwarves or Men stood guard at the bottom of the steps, allowing no townsman to go up to where I was, many a member of the crew came and sat by me in the darkness, and they laughed and joked and shared their sweets with me. And the Dwarves began arm wrestling with any and all, and bets were laid and war cries shouted and they did become quite rowdy.
“And when the celebration came to an end, it was in the wee hours of the morning. All had by this time fallen silent but for the snores, with sailors and warband sleeping in chairs and on benches and on the tops of tables and under them, too, as well as atop and behind the bar. Outside the gentle snow had become a storm. It was the second of January, and the twelve days of Yule were ended.”
As Jinnarin spoke, Aylis’s eyes filled with remembrance, and a tear trickled down one cheek.
“Are you all right?” asked Jinnarin.
“It was a splendid time,” said Aylis.
“Would that I had been there,” said Farrix, “instead of trapped in my dreams in a crystal cave.”
“Me, too, my love,” said Jinnarin, pulling Farrix close and pecking a kiss on his cheek.
Lissa sighed and looked at Aylis and said, “Perhaps something just as wonderful will happen on our voyage.”
“One can only hope,” replied Aylis.
“Speaking of the voyage,” said Jinnarin, “have the members of the warband been pledged?”
Aylissa looked at her mother. “Pledged?”
Jinnarin nodded. “They must take a pledge to keep secret your existence, or, for that matter, any Fox Rider’s existence from those not of the crew.”
“What?” Lissa looked to her father for confirmation.
“We don’t want anyone to know we are real,” said Farrix, smiling.
“But everyone knows that Pysks are real,” protested Lissa.
“Only in legend, daughter,” said Farrix.
“If they knew we were truly real,” said Jinnarin, “especially if Humans knew, they might try to trap us. You see, they think we can do magic, and they would like to have us grant them three wishes.”
Now Aylissa looked at Aylis, who nodded in agreement and said, “Sometimes Humans can be truly foolish.” Then Aylis turned to Jinnarin and said, “If the Dwarves have not already been pledged by Aravan, I will have them do so ere we reveal our scout to them.”
“Good,” said Jinnarin.
The Pysks and Aylis spoke for long moments more, but Farrix finally said, “We must let our sister and our daughter get some sleep, for the journey ahead is a long one. Besides, we can ride with them through the whole of the Greatwood in the coming days, and surely we will have enough time to catch up with all that has gone since last we saw one another.”
And so, cloaked in their ‹wild-magic› shadows, the three Pysks slipped undetected back past the Dwarven sentries and to their foxes in Darda Erynian to await the coming of dawn.
At the request of Aylis, Brekk assembled the full warband, and they stood in ranks behind him, all but the two sentries perched upon the remains of walls. And to her question, “Aye,” replied the stalwart Dwarf. “Pledged us he did in Kraggen-cor, including the two who are to take the animals back. And as to the Eroean , we are to keep the secrets of her making as well as her pace locked away in our memories forever. To that Captain Aravan added that no matter what we might see or
do or hear while serving aboard the Eroean , we will tell no one of whatever befalls without the leave of the captain. Our pledge includes a vow to keep secret the presence of any strange beings or creatures who might sail with us as members of the crew. We are so sworn, and neither torture, drink, death, fever, nor ought else will pry words from our lips and cause us to break our vow. And we took that oath on Chakka honor, as well as swore by Elwydd above.”
Aylis smiled and said, “Captain Brekk, I would say that was quite sufficient.”
Brekk frowned and asked, “Then, my lady, can you tell us what this is about?”
“Indeed,” said Aylis, and she extended her hand in a welcoming gesture toward one of the massive tumbled-down stones. “I give you our scout, the Lady Aylissa.”
Of a sudden, one of the shadows at the base of the block vanished, and in the morning light stood a fox, red with black legs. And upon the fox’s back rode a tiny maiden dressed in mottled grey leathers, a bow across her shoulders, arrows in a quiver fastened to her hip. And at no urging, it seemed, the fox stepped forward across the pave stones of the ruins of Caer Lindor. Blue-eyed and pale she was, her brown hair bound away from her face by a rune-marked strip of leather ’round her brow, her mane falling to her shoulders. And only the murmur of the faint breeze and the rustle of the leaves of the overgrowth of ivy sounded in that moment, for it was not certain that anyone even breathed. And when she reached the stone before Captain Brekk, the fox came to a stop and Aylissa looked up at the Dwarf.
“Lady Aylissa,” said Aylis, “I present Captain Brekk; Captain Brekk, I would have you meet Lady Aylissa and her fox, Vex.”
Brekk found his voice at last and knelt on one knee and said to the Pysk, “Lady Aylissa, now I see why Captain Aravan made us swear the oath that we did. This I would say as well: we could ask for no better scout. Welcome to the warband.”
Brekk raised a hand, and the assembled warriors with one thunderous voice called out, Chakka shok! Chakka cor!
At this roar, even as Vex flinched down, in reflex Lissa’s ‹wild-magic› cloak of darkness sprang up ’round both fox and rider, leaving them hidden in shadow.
Just as Brekk opened his mouth to apologize for startling the tiny Pysk, “I told you they were rowdy,” came a call-Lady Jinnarin’s-and two more shadows vanished from the base of a tumbled-down block, revealing two more Fox Riders.
Down through the Greatwood they fared, angling a point east of due south, and as they rode, now and then they glimpsed among the trees and tracking alongside them a Bear or a Wolf or at times a hawk or falcon. Aylis could see by their ‹fire› that these were no ordinary animals, but were instead shapeshifters. When she spoke of them to the Pysks, “They are Baeron,” said Jinnarin. “A few of those Folk have the power to become the animals you see.”
“Some never become men again,” said Farrix.
“And some never shift into the creatures that they can become,” said Aylissa.
Aylis smiled and said, “I learned about them at the College of Mages on Rwn, but until I met Bair, I had never seen one-never seen a shapeshifter, that is.”
In midafternoon on the fifth day of travel, a distant and continuous roar came into hearing, and the farther they rode the louder it grew.
Riding alongside Brekk, Aylis asked, “What would that be?”
Brekk smiled. “Wait and you will see.”
On they fared and still the sound grew louder. At last they emerged from among the trees to find themselves along the lip of the Great Escarpment, a sheer drop falling away for a thousand feet or so to fetch up against the banks of the Great Argon River. As Aylis looked about, her gaze followed the run of the escarpment, and some thirty miles to the west she saw a huge cataract plunging over the brim of the sheer drop and down.-Nay, not one cataract but two. And even this far from the cascades, still the roar was considerable.
“The great one is Ctor-Shouter-also known as Bellon Falls,” said Brekk. “There the Mighty Argon plunges over. The smaller fall farther west is Silver Falls, or as the Elves name it, Vanil.”
“Now I see why, if the Olorin Ferry got this far and went over,” said Aylis, “none would survive the plunge.”
They camped that night along the strip of land between the trees of the Greatwood and the verge of the escarpment, and the distant roar of two waterfalls lulled them to sleep.
Over the next several days, league upon league they fared along a gentle downslant of land between the forest and the edge of the escarpment, the great, sheer bluff to decline and decline to finally come to an end. And still they rode southerly between the marge of the Greatwood to the east and the Argon River to the west.
Some three weeks after leaving the ruins of Caer Lindor they came to the Glave Hills, and there did the trees of the Greatwood come to an end.
The next dawn, Aylis and Lissa and the warband said their good-byes to Jinnarin and Farrix, Aylis and Jinnarin and Lissa teary-eyed, Farrix snuffling, his voice quavering, as he embraced his daughter and whispered words of advice as well as words of farewell.
Then the warband turned southwesterly and fared into the grassy plains of Pellar: a Mage and a Pysk and forty-two Dwarves, seventy-six ponies, one horse, and a fox.
Jinnarin and Farrix rode to the top of one of the hills and watched them go. And as the warband dwindled in the distance, after a long while Farrix said, “Well, my love?”
Jinnarin turned to Farrix and smiled through her lingering tears. “Yes, my love.”
And they turned Rux and Rhu down the back slope of the hill and rode into the forest beyond.
17
Grotto
JOURNEY TO THE EROEAN
LATE SUMMER TO EARLY AUTUMN, 6E1
Down across the plains of Pellar rode the warband, Aylis and Aylissa in their midst, and whenever they could they stopped at crofters’ and replenished their supplies; they especially sought grain for the animals, though Vex provided for her own fare-finding voles and field mice and quail eggs and other such when Aylissa gave the vixen permission to hunt. They stayed on the outskirts of several small towns, taking every opportunity to relax in hot baths and to eat warm meals and to drink a mug or two of ale, good or bad. Yet every dawn found the travellers up and about and making ready to resume their journey.
Some eighteen days after saying good-bye to Lissa’s parents, they crossed Pendwyr Road nigh the Fian Dunes and continued on southwesterly.
And fifteen days after that, they came into sight of the broad waters of Thell Cove. Aylis looked leftward, and just as Aravan had said, in the near distance a long stone bluff covered with vines rose up and graced the shore. She led the warband to the place where the sheer cliff began to rise, and there they hobbled the animals, all but Vex. They waited until low tide, and Aylis then took the lead, and, following Aravan’s instructions, she guided them wading afoot along the high and solid rock bluff, with its long creepers dangling down. Following immediately after Aylis came Brekk, and riding on his shoulder was wee Aylissa, and he bore Vex in his arms. The fox had suffered herself to be carried only after Aylissa had had a long chat with her. The Dwarves had watched this conversation in amazement, for Lissa had postured and barked, whined and turned and twisted, Vex replying in kind. Aylis smiled, for millennia past in the First Era she had seen Jinnarin do the same. Finally, Lissa looked up at Brekk and said, “She’s ready. But if I were you I’d watch my fingers. Vex is likely to nip.”
But Brekk reached down and chucked Vex under her chin, and then grasped the top of her muzzle and gave a very slight squeeze. Vex took no action whatsoever when Brekk lifted her up.
And then following Aylis, the warband sloshed along a lengthy but shallow underwater ledge to come to a strange fold in the vine-laden stone, where the bluff curled out into the water and back, to form a wide and deep channel leading toward a thick dangle of the long, trailing plants.
Aylis paused and gestured to the fold and said, “Aravan tells me that this turn in the stone is all but undetectabl
e from the outlying waters of the cove. It makes the entry to the grotto nigh invisible.”
Onward they surged, to finally reach the wall of creepers, where Aylis pushed through and into the huge lantern-lit grotto, echoing with voices and the sounds of men working and the splash of water falling in cascade. But just above in a Dwarven-crafted stone-walled niche stood crossbow-armed sentries-Humans, part of the Eroean’s crew. As Aylis and the others entered, one of the sentries lifted a horn to his lips and sounded a call.
Voices stilled, and the sounds of mallets and other such fell silent, though the tumble of water persisted.
One of the sentries called down: “Lady Aylis?”
“Who the kruk else would it be?” growled Brekk in response.
The sentry laughed and turned to his comrades and said, “The warband is here.”
At the far end of the grotto Aylis could see the gleaming face of a narrow dam embedded in what appeared to be a broad ledge receding toward the far back of the grotto. Upon the dam itself, men manned wheel pumps-like those used to suck out a ship’s bilge-and water poured over the barrier from the pump outlets in two separate streams. Beyond the dam and jutting above, Aylis saw a part of the stern of the Eroean, the ship captured in a long slip of some sort, its masts rising up into the shadows above.
The Dwarves and Aylis continued wading, as the shelf they followed carried on about the wall of the grotto. Slowly the way rose up until it was above the water of low tide. When they reached dry stone they followed the path to come to the wide expanse of the stone ledge, and carved deep into the rock was the long slip-a Dwarf-cut channel-where they found the Eroean sitting in dry dock above a bottom of sloping sand. The dock itself was sealed away from the brine of the cove by the doors of the gleaming dam, for the barrier was crafted of brass and was Dwarven-made as well. Aylis and the others then saw that the waters were also kept at bay by periodic pumping to rid the dry dock of slow seepage. Aylis also saw that the Eroean-awaiting the renewal of her silver bottom-lay cradled from stem to stern in huge brass trestles mounted on stone pillars-twenty-two in all, or so Aylis later learned. As they crossed the gangway and reached the deck of the ship, Aravan greeted Aylis with a smile and kiss. Brekk set Vex to her feet, and Lissa hopped down and comforted the fox, the vixen somewhat disgruntled at having to have been carried so very far.
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