by George Hatt
Barryn’s veins surged with a thrilling warmth that raised the hair on his forearms. The excitement of his journey—and a nagging twinge of fear—banished the exhaustion of his nightlong vigil.
He stopped at the gate in the weathered timber palisade. A pair of watchmen in cloaks and steel-riveted nasal helms paced the top of the earthen berm forming the base of the ancient defensive work. Two more cloaked figures approached Barryn from the dreary morning gloom. Fine swords hung from their belts, and they were dressed for a long journey. “A traveler in the wild is only as good as his companions,” one of them said.
Barryn recognized the deep voice of Paardrac, one of the druids of the clan and his favorite teacher. He recalled the answer to this next part of the ritual. “I go to the Neverfar Realms where none living may follow,” he said.
The other figure replied, “The path is dangerous and full of enemies. Whom will you trust on the journey?” This one was Paardrac’s acolyte, Banton, who had taken this very journey five years ago.
“I trust only those whom I can see in spirit,” Barryn recited.
At this, the two figures drew back the hoods of their woolen cloaks, showing themselves to be men, not formless shades. “Before you trust others, you must first trust yourself,” Paardrac said.
“Before you search others with spirit, you must first behold yourself,” Banton followed.
Barryn recited the final piece of the ritual. “I behold you and see that you are friends.”
Paardrac smiled through his long, gray-streaked beard and clapped Barryn on the shoulder. “Let’s be off, then.”
CHAPTER TWO
Barryn
Barryn and his companions walked a few hundred yards down the rutted, muddy road then turned north along a logging trail. They probed their way through the thickening woods, stopping only to give a brief salutation to the sun when it showed its face through a break in the coniferous trees. Ancient, rotted limbs that were lopped off harvested trees lay in tangled clumps along the path. The debris and stumps were all that remained of the greatest trees in this part of the forest, lying in the shadow of their lesser brethren as the underbrush wound and tangled around them.
“Which trees do the loggers fell?” Paardrac asked Barryn as they walked along.
Barryn paused by one of the larger stumps and imagined the massive tree that once stood in its place. “The greatest ones, I suppose,” he said. “The trees with the tallest and straightest trunks are used by the seafaring clans for masts on their ships, and our people use them to make beams for longhouses. We take great hardwoods for furniture and the sacred carvings in the temple.”
“The great trees also end up as bowls and rake handles,” Paardrac said.
The druid narrowed his eyes, blue like an evening storm and surrounded by tan, wrinkled skin, and thrust his graying beard toward Barryn. He pointed at the stump. “This tree began as a humble acorn lying in the dirt, then took root among all of the other saplings crowding the forest floor. It somehow grew taller than the rest and for hundreds of years. Its branches reached to the great lights of the heavens, and its roots delved toward the heart of Fentress, into darkness that the greatest druids can only glimpse. It lived long, only to be cut down by men now dead to be made into huts and tool handles that did not outlast this stump,” Paardrac said, tapping the stump with his staff. “You say the greatest trees are those that the loggers cut down, but these are not the greatest. Which ones, then, are the greatest?”
Barryn considered. “The ones that can defend themselves, the man-eating woodwight trees from the Sagas?”
The druid persisted. “No. Which of these trees, the ones you’ve ever seen?”
Barryn looked back at the stump. “I don’t know.”
“A great sage taught the ancients in the heavens eons before they fled the ravening Vehir. His name has been lost to the ages, but his parables live on among the secret teachings of our order of druids,” Paardrac said. “There was once a tree with spindly, gnarled branches and a knotted trunk that no carpenter would give a second look to. Its leaves were bitter and caustic, offering no medicinal value and no pleasant flavor for cooking. And so it grew, unmolested by carpenters and wheelwrights and healers, until its great canopy could shade a multitude below and shelter flocks of birds in its branches above. It was rejected by the highly skilled artisans and powerful men of that age, and thereby lived in peace for thousands of years.”
The druid paused and gripped his oaken staff. Barryn noticed its grain and the intricate knot work carved into the wood as he considered the meaning of the parable.
“Think deeply on the rejected tree that mastered the nwyventh of being useless,” Paardrac said.
They continued up the logging trail for a time while Barryn tried to understand the wisdom of being useless. This was a new concept for him. Nothing of the tree lore or the sagas he had learned even hinted that being useless was a virtue. He walked as quickly and silently as he could. They were making for the volcanic springs at the headwaters of the Crone River, one of the three great rivers issuing from the Stone Kingdom Mountains. It was a sacred place for the Caeldrynn, but especially so for Clan Riverstar. Many of the other clans took their names from totemic animals or heroic ancestors. Clan Riverstar was one of the few named after celestial bodies or high holy places.
Late in the afternoon, Barryn felled a deer with one of his bronze-tipped arrows, and the three made camp among the trees on top of a small hill. They had left the logging trail and were now following the hare-sized rune stones and bent trees marking the path to the headwaters. Barryn took first watch after their satisfying meal and tended the coal beds over which they smoked the remaining venison. When it was his turn to sleep, he curled into his woolen cloak and immediately fell into an exhausted slumber.
Barryn awoke with a start toward the end of the second watch and reached for his bow. He was fumbling to string it when Banton stopped him. “Peace, lad. Shush! It was only a dream.”
Paardrac unfolded from his rumpled nest of leaves and blankets and rose to sit on his haunches, wrapping his cloak tightly around him. “There is no such thing as ‘only a dream’ on a vision quest. What did you dream, Barryn?”
The boy had now strung his bow and nocked an arrow. He scanned the darkness beyond the reach of the dull red glow of the coal beds. The treetops were black and ragged against the brilliant, starlit sky with its two crescent moons. “I have dreamed about spiders all night,” he said. “Sometimes I was covered in them. Other times they were crawling out of my clothes or into my bed. Just before I woke up, a beautiful woman brushed a huge one off my chest, but it jumped back at me. And I still feel it coming for me.”
“Barryn, calm your breathing and put your bow away,” Banton said. “You’re armed, afraid and exhausted. That is when accidents happen.”
Barryn whipped his body around, drawing and firing into the darkness behind him. The arrow ripped through the night and stopped abruptly with a wet and crunchy thud. A tangle of cane-like legs and a chitinous, bulbous body festooned with spines, fanged mouthparts and multiple sets of inky black eyes half-charged, half-flopped out of the trees and fell on Barryn, knocking him down and scattering one of the coal beds with an eruption of sparks and half-cured venison. The horrid thing hissed and squealed through the plates of its exoskeleton, and its five pairs of segmented, clawed legs thrashed and flailed the wolf-sized body around the campsite. Banton snatched the boy and dragged him away from the struggling creature, and Paardrac charged it with sword drawn. The two men hacked and chopped at the thing, methodically destroying legs and wickedly spiked pedipalps before they hurt the druids in the monster’s death throes.
Paardrac cleaned his gory blade and sheathed it after the mangled creature ceased its struggle. He found Barryn’s arrow buried to the fletching between two rows of the thing’s eyes and gingerly pulled it out, then he set it down gently next to Barryn and touched his shoulder. “Come. Your arrow killed this creature, and you mu
st lead us in the blessing of its spirit.”
The boy sat in the dirt trembling. “It’s horrible,” he gasped.
“Its kind was here before the Justified Ancients conquered Fentress. It died seeking food, and it fought valiantly,” Paardrac said. He helped Barryn to his feet. “And so did we. Come.”
Barryn helped the men drag the creature away from the camp and said a blessing over its tangled carcass. When they returned to camp, Barryn collapsed into a sound sleep the rest of the night. He dreamed, but remembered very little, only glimpses of a golden-haired angel or goddess calling his name.
Paardrac and Banton did not sleep. They sat near one of the remaining coal beds and watched Barryn as he slumbered. Paardrac held the arrow he had pulled from the giant arachnid and twisted it between his fingers for a minute, then poked the tip into the ground between his feet.
“How does a hunting party usually discover that a kor-toth is stalking them?” Paardrac asked his acolyte.
“The hounds bark constantly, and the horses are impossible to manage. Then one of the hunters gets dragged screaming into the woods, and the hunt is over,” Banton said.
“Have you ever heard of a group encountering one without losing at least one or two of their number?”
“No.”
“Nor I. Not in all my years, not during my travels among the Caeldrynn and across the Empire. Kor-toth are impossible to track, and they are absolutely silent until the moment they strike.” Paardrac absently twirled the point of the bronze arrowhead in the dirt.
“The greatest hunter alive could not arrow a kor-toth in the dark as it leaps in for the kill,” Banton said.
“Indeed not. But our young Barryn did just that.”
“What do you make of it?”
Paardrac stuck the arrow into the ground. “We must read the omens very closely. Perhaps you will learn something of the druid path that I was waiting until much later in your training to teach.”
The three broke their fast and dismantled the camp at first light, erasing all trace of their presence save the mangled kor-toth. Paardrac and Banton cut out three of the creature’s obsidian-black fangs, and Paardrac tied one on a leather thong he produced from his light traveling pouch. This he gave to Barryn. Paardrac and Banton put theirs in their pouches so the creature’s smell would ward off bears and wild cats—the more mundane predators in the Fentran wilderness.
“No matter the signs and omens that we see on your vision quest, this will mark you as a hunter and a warrior,” Paardrac said to his charge. “We can go back to the village now, and your position in the Clan will be secure.”
The druid’s offer startled Barryn. “But all I’ve ever wanted to be was a druid! What did I do wrong?”
Paardrac raised his hand reassuringly. “Nothing! You did nothing wrong. You have been an excellent student of the druid path your entire childhood, and you have shown your wisdom, strength and honor on your vision quest. But you have also slain a kor-toth before it could harm you or your companions. If we make you into a druid, we will be depriving the Clan of a fine young warrior. I must give you the choice.”
“I want to continue,” Barryn said.
Paardrac scrutinized Barryn, seeming to look at him and right through him at the same time. After several seconds, he stroked his beard and nodded. “Very well. Find the next rune stone and lead us to the Sacred Springs.”
The three spent the day stalking through the woods toward their destination, navigating from one druid sign to the next. They moved as silently as they could, but not out of fear of predators, for the acrid stink of the kor-toth would frighten even panthers and bears. They were listening to the voices of the woods: the wind through the trees, the songs of the birds, the deer barking and crashing through the underbrush. Wisdom lived in these voices, just as it dwelled in the herb lore and the epic poems that the druids passed from one generation to the next. When the travelers spoke, it was Paardrac asking Barryn to tell him about an herb they encountered or what powers were associated with a tree they passed.
But the wisdom of the trees had not alerted Barryn of the kor-toth. No whisper on the breeze told him of the danger. The stars and the moons said nothing to him of the ancient, native terror that had stalked them in the wilderness. This was something his training had not prepared him for, and when he tried to ask Paardrac if the woman in the dream was a heroine or goddess he had not yet learned, Paardrac answered with yet another question about tree lore.
The non-answer excited Barryn. The deepest, most profound mysteries of the druids could not be revealed directly—he was advanced enough in his training to understand that much. The easy concepts could be told and memorized. Harder ones must be practiced. The deepest knowledge must be discovered by the student under the supervision of the teacher, but with minimal guidance. And that must be the case with the gods and goddesses, he reasoned. He dove into the walking lessons with a new vigor. He calmed his breathing and tried to still the rising excitement so he could enter a trance-like state while still avoiding stray roots and stones in his path.
When Barryn felt he had opened his spirit, he mentally noted any tree that struck him as meaningful because of its great height or the way its branches twisted into the sky. He memorized both the corresponding runes and tree glyphs. The letters spelled out nothing but gibberish, and Barryn took this occlusion as a sign that he was nearing a revelation. This is what happens on successful vision quests! Barryn thought.
They camped that evening among a cluster of tumbled boulders in the rising ground. The woods were growing thinner as the terrain became rockier and provided less topsoil for the trees to take root. Those trees that did cling to life in the stony hills were gnarled, tortured by the wind and storms. The oldest ones no doubt had witnessed one or two of the cosmic disasters that rent the land and destroyed the kingdoms of old.
The travelers made only one fire and let it burn brightly. They had plenty of smoked venison from Barryn’s kill and did not need to build long-burning coal beds tonight. The fire cast its homey, flickering glow on the travelers’ faces and fended off the chill of the coming night. Barryn stared intently into the flames, seeking patterns to decipher or messages from the fire elementals.
“Barryn,” Paardrac said, breaking the youth’s concentration. “This fire wants poetry. Compose a short tale for us.” It was a common but difficult exercise for druids as they learned their craft and was considered a chore by all but the most dedicated bards. Composition certainly wasn’t Barryn’s strength, but he launched immediately into verse:
So! In the fearsome forest I lay | far from home in darkness
And the Spider stalked us | that slaying spirit of the wood
Its bloated belly seeking to fill | with brave bringers of wisdom
That death shade under starry sky | it skittered astride the killing road
And unto its death was betrayed | by the brightness, the blond-haired beauty
They stared into the fire in silence, the indigo sky darkening around them and yielding to another night of brilliant starlight. At length, Paardrac told Barryn to sleep. He and Banton would divide the watch this night. When Barryn tried to protest, Paardrac interrupted Barryn’s objection mid-sentence.
“Tomorrow we climb to the Sacred Springs so you can look into the well of the void,” he said. “Show us your wisdom by gratefully accepting one last good night’s sleep before your ordeal.”
CHAPTER THREE
Barryn
After a hard day’s trek up the steep, rocky hills, Barryn heard the singing of volcanic springs splashing their playful songs in a wooded hollow nearby. He scrambled as quickly as he could over the last rise to the headwaters of the Crone River. When he crested the hill, Barryn stopped short and stared in awe. Water flowed out of hundreds of fissures in a high cliff face in the Stone Kingdom Mountains into a cold lake below, and several columns of water flung themselves high into the air above the lake’s surface. A circular stone platform 20 feet across
sat near the middle of the lake, surrounded by nine monoliths that rose out of the water and towered over it. Paardrac and Banton caught up to their young charge and stood next to him.
“No matter how many times a druid journeys to this hallowed ground, the Sacred Springs never lose their splendor,” Paardrac said. “When the gods speak to mortals, they do so at places such as this.”
They threaded a trail down the hill toward the shore of the lake and found a weathered but sound wooden boat just large enough for the three travelers and their small field bags. Paardrac and Banton, at the fore and aft of the boat, oared it across the clear lake past the towering columns of water toward the platform and standing stones. Details on the stones became clearer as they approached in the tiny boat. They were rough-hewn and of gargantuan proportions with proud and skillful knot work carved in bands around their contours. Dragons, serpents and trees with tangled roots and branches matched those in the temple in Barryn’s village, only on a far grander scale. The stone platform was also festooned with knot work along the rim rising about three feet above the surface of the lake, but was perfectly circular and level. Barryn alighted on the platform and marveled at the carvings on the top surface.
“It serves many uses,” Paardrac said, answering Barryn’s question before he could ask it. “At first glance, it looks like an astronomical device. And it does that job splendidly. You will learn how to use it as your training progresses. But it also mapped the ley lines of magical force that once crossed this land. Where they intersected, the ancients erected standing stones and barrows to mark the place and, they believed, focus the planet’s energy for spell work. Great magic was once done at these places, and the greatest magic was here where you stand.”
