by R. J. Grieve
Iska was by now ashen-faced and trembling.
“Do you know what this means?” she asked. “It means that any woman of the House of Parth who had the gift, but refused to use it for evil, was killed and her body hidden in these mountains.”
They were all as pale as Iska by now. Vesarion, looking at the young girl, no older than Iska, said in a shaken voice: “This is a hideous crime. Are you telling me that your ancestors were so evil that they were prepared to murder any of their number who did not conform?”
“Yes. The ‘Book of Lies’ referred to in one of the inscriptions can only mean the Book of Light. It was proscribed many centuries ago and, as far as I know, Callis has the last surviving copy hidden in a secret chamber under the library. Always, the women of the Royal House of Parth were supposed to use their gift to enhance the power of their king. I never knew that some refused. I never knew that such a gift could be used for good, rather than evil. When my father tested me with the ancient rites when I was just a child, I desperately wanted to have the gift so that I could please him, so that I could be a true daughter to him, and when I failed, I felt utterly worthless and rejected. It was only much later, when Callis took me under his wing and let me read the Book of Light, that I realised how wrong I had been. I would rather live as just an ordinary person with no special abilities and be capable of good, than have all the power in the world and use it for darkness and evil. Now, more than ever, I am glad I failed that test, for the so-called gift is nothing but a curse. It either turns you to evil and the service of the Destroyer, or it costs you your life.”
“But that would mean that these girls must all have been murdered by their fathers and brothers, Iska!” exclaimed Sareth. “If that is true, you have had a narrow escape indeed. If you had inherited the power and refused to use it as they wished, you would have been the next in this sad line.”
“Do none of their names mean anything to you, Iska?” Eimer asked.
“No. Their memories have been totally expunged from all records. It is as if they never existed.”
Eimer for once in his frivolous existence looked solemn. “What sort of place is it that you are taking us to? What sort of place can do so much that is wicked?”
“The Kingdom is not wicked, Eimer,” she replied passionately. “Neither are the people. It is only the ruling house that is evil, for they dedicated themselves to the Destroyer long ago, and that comes at a price. My father was quite old when I was born and now, twenty years later, he seldom leaves the palace, but in Mordrian he has a son in his own likeness. They have always been of one mind in all that they do, for Mordrian, in his quest for power, continues the family adherence to the Destroyer.”
“What about the younger son?” Sareth asked. “You’ve barely mentioned him.”
“A weakling,” said Iska contemptuously. “He lives in Mordrian’s shadow, doing all he is bid as if he has no will of his own. Kerac holds me in as much contempt as his brother but with less cause, for he will never ascend the throne.”
Bethro, who had taken no part in the discussion, but was instead still examining the fascinating inscriptions, momentarily raised his gaze to the ice curtain and suddenly froze as stiff and transfixed as one of the corpses. His eyes bulged, his breathing stopped and every particle of colour drained from his pendulous cheeks.
Incapable of moving, he managed to force out one word: “L-look!”
Something in his tone caught the others’ attention and they all turned to follow the direction of his stare.
There, being slowly etched by some invisible hand into the ice curtain, was a message in the Old Language. Even Eimer, who could not translate it, recognised one word: - ‘Iska’.
The flowing script grew letter by letter, word by word, until three words were clearly imprinted into the ice:
‘Iska ia celedri’
No one moved or spoke, until a drop of hot wax, running down the candle onto Sareth’s hand, caused her to start. As if the movement broke the spell, Eimer asked in a hushed voice:
“What does it say?”
For a moment there was no reply, not even from Bethro, then in a sombre voice, Vesarion translated:
“It says - ‘Avenge us, Iska’.”
Chapter Twenty-one
A Question of Courage
Sareth was awoken the next morning by the persistent cheeping of a little bird in a bush nearby. Lazily, she rolled over onto her back, aware of a pleasant sense of well-being and opened her eyes to look up at an azure sky through the lace-like leaves of the mighty beech tree that soared above her. The little bird continued its diatribe, chasing the last remnants of sleep away like a morning mist and she tucked her hands behind her head and watched, with dreamy detachment, the soft play of the dappled sunlight through the leaves as they trembled in the faintest breath of air. The camp fire had died down and was now merely sending up a tendril of smoke that drifted indecisively in the calm air, scenting the glade with the delightfully bitter-sweet smell of wood smoke. Her companions were no more than five shapeless huddles under their blankets and as no one showed even the slightest tendency to stir, Sareth, shifting her position slightly so that the warmth of the sun fell directly on her face, lay contentedly letting her mind drift as effortlessly as the wood smoke.
It seemed almost impossible that it was only yesterday that they had been deep underground in the darkness and cold of the ice tunnels. On this warm, sunny day it seemed like some grim hallucination rather than reality. Surely it was in some dreadful dream that she had seen the writing appear in the ice?
The message had brought Iska to her knees on the icy floor, shaking and sobbing.
“What do they want of me?” she had wept. “How can I avenge them? I am only one person with no special position or ability. I am not a great warrior who could fight for vengeance, or a sage who could summon it. I am just one girl alone, so how can I do what they ask?”
Although each of them in turn, even Gorm - who wasn’t entirely sure what the fuss was about - tried to comfort her, in the end it was Eimer who succeeded. He knelt on the floor before the distraught girl and gently gripped her shoulders, causing her to raise a tear-stained countenance to him.
“Do you not realise, Iska, that you are already on the path to avenging them? Whatever reason your brother has for causing the sword to be stolen and brought to Adamant, it is not a good one. These women all lost their lives because they opposed the Destroyer, because they would not aid the House of Parth. In retrieving the sword and thwarting whatever evil scheme Mordrian is planning, you are avenging them.”
All trace of the flippant young man was gone and he looked steadily into her eyes in a manner that made even those who had known him since childhood scarcely recognise him.
“I do not wish to bring my country to ruin,” she said constrictedly.
“No one is asking you to do that, but you do wish to stop Mordrian and save Eskendria, do you not? I do not know if that is the vengeance that these victims of evil had in mind, but I think it is near enough. Eskendria stands for all they believed in, for all that they died for. They would not want it to fall.” He then added with the touch of a wintry smile. “And despite what you said, you are not alone. The five of us have committed ourselves to this cause and we will not turn back until it is done. If you remember, I once gave you a promise that I would see this through, and for all that I am considered an irresponsible idiot, I will not break it.”
Visibly touched by his words, she placed her hand over his and clasped it warmly. “I have never doubted you, Eimer, not for an instant.”
Sareth, silently watching, saw a glimpse in her brother, not of the carefree scapegrace, always ready for a dare, but of the makings of a fine young man that she had only dimly suspected might be there. For the first time, it flashed upon her mind that her younger brother might very well have qualities buried deep within him that would have made Enrick extremely uneasy had he known they existed. The thought was so unexpected that it star
tled her, yet hard on its heels came a warm feeling of pride in him. Looking up, she knew that someone else had seen it too. Her eyes met Vesarion’s and she drew a slight smile from him in recognition of how easily they read each other’s thoughts. He held her gaze for a long moment, as if unwilling to break the connection between them, before he turned to the pair still kneeling on the floor.
Gently he said: “We must go, Iska. Our last candle burns low.”
With a last sad glance at the row of stone coffins, they left the pillared hall behind and its occupants to sleep once more in the darkness and silence.
But the vindictive mountain had not yet finished putting obstacles in their way. As the candle burned lower, they came for the first time to a fork in the tunnel.
Bethro looked down first one fork, then the other, both seemingly identical.
“Which way?” he asked, looking at Vesarion as if he possessed some magical power of divination.
“We can’t explore them both as we haven’t enough light left,” Vesarion replied. “Whichever we choose must be the correct one, or……” His voice trailed off, and he cast an anxious glance at Iska.
“……or we’ll be left in the darkness and cold to join my ancestors back in the pillared hall,” she finished for him.
“Surely we must be nearly through this miserable mountain by now,” complained Eimer. “I mean, we’ve been walking for hours. Surely, the presence of those coffins suggests that there is an entrance nearby.”
“Perhaps,” responded Sareth. “But which way?”
It was Gorm who finally resolved their dilemma. As usual, whenever they halted, he had sniffed around inquisitively, going a little way first up one tunnel, then the other. He returned, his yellow eyes glowing a little disconcertingly in the candlelight.
“That one,” he said, with all his usual brevity, indicating the left-hand tunnel.
“Why is that, pray?” Bethro asked condescendingly. “They both look exactly the same.”
“This one smells different,” was the unexpected explanation.
Vesarion was looking down intently at the small Turog, not dismissing what he said as easily as Bethro.
“What do you smell, Gorm?”
“New air.”
“What?” gobbled Bethro.
“Air in tunnel is old. Smells newer that way,” he asserted, pointing to the left.
“That’s good enough for me,” declared Sareth, making up everyone’s mind for them.
The passage, which had been reasonably straight until then, began to twist and turn in a downward slope, producing so many sharp bends that it started to unravel whatever sense of direction remained to them. At last, after skidding down a slippery ramp, the thing they had feared all along finally happened – without warning, the last candle went out.
Darkness fell like a blow.
“Oooooh!” howled Bethro.
“Quiet!” snapped Vesarion, his voice sharp in the enveloping blackness.
“Ooooooh!” howled Bethro even louder. “I can’t see! I can’t see! We are lost!”
There was the sound of a sudden scuffle, followed by a sharp thump and a cry of pain from Bethro.
“You little rat! You kicked me on purpose!”
“Accident,” said Gorm’s voice, which even in the darkness carried overtones of satisfaction.
“Both of you keep quiet!” ordered Vesarion peremptorily. “I think I see something. Everyone stay here. I’m going to move forward a little.”
A silence fell that was broken only by slight shuffling noises as Vesarion felt his way forward along the wall until he reached a corner.
“I see it,” his voice echoed back to them, infused with excitement. “I see it! I see light!”
Sareth knew that she would never forget the moment they broke out of the tunnel. The entrance had not been so very far ahead of them when the candle had finally gone out. The faint daylight had been partly obscured, both by a sharp bend in the tunnel and by the fact that the narrow entrance was blocked by a plug of snow and ice that allowed only a pinprick of grey to alleviate the darkness. Gorm produced a small axe from his pack that he normally used to chop firewood and the others used what implements they had, and they all began to attack the ice with all the vigour of those desperate to escape. They chipped and levered at it until piece by piece it broke off and the passage behind them began to fill up with the debris. When the last piece of rock-hard ice broke free, Eimer thrust his hand through into the stiff graininess of snow. Several hard blows with Gorm’s axe and it fell away, precipitating such a sudden burst of sunlight into the passage, that after so many hours spent in darkness, they all winced in pain and screwed their eyes up. One by one they staggered out, blinking owlishly, into the brilliantly lit world beyond.
They had emerged on the far side of the mountains, just above the snowline. A flawless cobalt sky vaulted over a glittering white slope, quite blinding in its purity. High above them, the Cloudy Mountains for once stood bare and clean against the blue, their jagged peaks straining to pierce the sky. Only a short distance below, the dazzlingly bright snow ended and the fir trees began, dusted with snow at first, but as the mountainside steeply descended, soon poking through their usual green bristles.
From the height of the snowfield they could see, spread out below them like a map, an immense, flat plain encircled by mountains. It was divided neatly into many cultivated fields and orchards, and was dotted with small villages. Its perspective was blurred in the distance by the heat-haze of early summer, but far away, in the centre of the plain, could be seen the indistinct outline of a great city, shimmering gently in the sun.
Sareth, a little overcome by what she saw, could hardly take in the ripe lushness of the plain.
“I have lived with snow and ice and greyness for so long now that I think my mind had accepted that it was winter. I can hardly believe that it is still summer. Is all of this Adamant, Iska?”
“Yes. Everything within the ring of the mountains, within Haleb Lor. We are not in the Kingdom yet because we have not crossed the Curtain of Adamant, but all you see before you is my home.”
“To think I did not believe it existed,” admitted Vesarion in an unaccustomed moment of humility. “I assume the mountains shelter the plain from cold winds?”
“Indeed,” agreed Iska. “They also take most of the rainfall, so the plain is irrigated by a network of channels bringing water down from the mountains. It is very fertile. My country may have its flaws, but at least no one starves.”
Bethro was squinting at the sun and from the rapt look on his face, was clearly deep in thought. He emerged to give them the benefit of his deliberations. “I’m afraid we lost all track of time in those tunnels,” he explained. “I could not understand why the sun was so high in the sky and the answer must be that we passed the night under the mountain. It’s no wonder I feel so tired.”
Eimer yawned. “For once, Bethro, I agree with you. Let’s get down from this accursed snow to a warmer spot, then some food and sleep will not go amiss.”
By the time the others awoke from the sleep of exhaustion, it was almost mid-day. Sareth had built up the fire and was boiling water over it in a blackened pot hung from a tripod.
Eimer surfaced looking dishevelled and bleary-eyed and even Vesarion, normally neatness itself, arose with hair rumpled and the makings of two day’s worth of dark stubble on his chin.
“If we are going to enter more civilised regions once more,” announced Sareth in amusement, “then you two will need to shave. You look like a couple of cut-throats returning from a hard night’s work. I have some hot water for you, so make yourselves presentable. Iska and I are going to the stream to see what soap and water can achieve.”
When they returned, Bethro, whose plump cheeks rarely produced a bristle, had requisitioned the pot and taking charge of the culinary arrangements, had produced a meal. As they sat around the fire, enjoying the fact that he had the ability to produce a repast out of nothing, I
ska felt impelled to broach a delicate subject.
“When we go through the curtain into the Kingdom of Adamant proper, I’m afraid that you cannot come with us, Gorm. Despite the fact that both Parth and the Turog serve the Destroyer, they are deadly enemies. The Curtain was designed for many reasons, not least of which was to keep the Turog out. If you were seen, you would be instantly killed and we would be undone. So you must wait for us here.”
The Turog had been listening to her intently, bread poised half-way to his mouth, but when she stopped speaking, he reacted stubbornly.
“No,” he declared with an air of utter finality. “Go with Sareth. Not stay here. Can’t protect Sareth here.”
“But, Gorm…..”
“No. Go with Sareth.”
Vesarion, sensing that this could go on almost indefinitely, intervened. “What about the rest of us?” he asked Iska. “Do we pass muster?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she replied. “Adamant is a great city but it is not like Addania where there are many travellers and merchants from other countries. No one comes to Adamant, and no one leaves it because of the curtain, so strangers are unknown. Your clothes are passable because leather jerkins over linen shirts are fairly common, but you must keep all weapons out of sight. No one is permitted to carry weapons except the King’s Guards, so you must keep them well hidden. However, we have another problem. Your accents are as foreign here as mine was in Eskendria - only more noticeable. In Adamant, we speak a version of the modern tongue that is actually a little closer than yours to the Old Language from which it derives – so your manner of speaking will draw unwelcome attention to us. Try to say as little as possible, and if you must speak, say that you are from the region of Lysar. It is a remote district where the inhabitants keep to themselves. I think it best that we avoid the villages altogether and try to travel mostly at night, if the moon will oblige.
