Elilod handed him the sword, which he took awkwardly, not because of his little experience with weapons, but more because he feared he would drop or damage it. Initially it felt extremely heavy, as if it was many times the weight of what it appeared to be, as if, indeed, it still held some of the weight of the colossal form he saw in the lake only moments before. In time, however, the weight adjusted, so that he felt he was holding it naturally, as if it had become a part of him, an extension of his being.
“So this is why I’m here,” he said.
“Yes, little fish. You fell into the Chasm of Issarí, and perhaps you thought it was the evil Taarí that pulled you under, that separated you from your companions, but that was not so. It was us, us who dragged you down, and us who pulled you up. And the bridge fell because Issarí, who still holds some sway upon that passage, willed it, that you might be swept down to us, where you might take on your true role, that you might fulfil your true duty.”
Yavün felt overwhelmed by all of this, and though part of him felt immensely special and privileged, another part felt like he was a puppet being pulled to and fro, and that any movement he seemingly made of his own was willed by another. It was a very unsettling feeling, and it made him wonder if he was being used or lied to.
His thoughts were jarred by a strange sensation from the sword, a dull vibration that sent tiny shudders into his body, and in these shudders he thought he could recognise a pattern, as if it were a language of some kind. He then began to suddenly become aware of a powerful mind within the sword, a force beyond anything he had ever felt before.
“What you are feeling is the mind of Adag,” Elilod said. “For he is made into the very metal, beat into the blade, hewn into the hilt. The sword is known by many names, but one of these is the Old Arlinaic title of Délrachúgorin, the Sword that Lives.”
* * *
That night was one of the oddest in Yavün’s life, in a life filled with many odd moments. He slept by the Great Lake, with the Sword of Telm beside him like a sleeping lover. He kept his hand upon the blade while he slumbered, and so at times it thrummed, and so at times his dreams took on new meaning, as if Adag were speaking to him in sleep.
When day came, and he found he was less rested than before, Narylal came to him to tell him that Elilod had another gift to give. Her voice and eyes betrayed that she was jealous that this token should go to him instead of her.
“There is one other trinket I would have you wear,” Elilod said, and he produced a strange ring from his vestments. It was an odd type of silver, with two bands that interlocked with one another, so that it could be worn upon two fingers instead of one. It looked almost like a tool of bondage, a manacle for a finger instead of wrist.
“What is this?” Yavün asked when he felt its cool touch upon his hands.
“This is the ring Issarí gave to me many ages ago,” he said. “It means more to me than any other thing in Iraldas, and yet means nothing in comparison to her, to her love, and to my love for her.”
Narylal looked coolly upon Yavün, as if in the eyes of a father she was no longer the favoured child.
“It is called in the Taarí tongue Ada Pysaa, Two Fishes, and it has spent most of its time beneath the sea, where for a long time all that it has united is metal and water, giving birth to rust. Yet even though its sheen has faded, it is still dear to me.”
“Then why are you giving it to me?” Yavün asked.
“Some in this world are gifted with the clearsight,” Elilod said, “but there is another type of sight that the Céalari have, and it is a kind of foresight, showing us what shall come to pass. In this way we are fated to a certain end like any other, and we do not need to look within the waters of the Issar Chammas to see what doom lies before us. And so I know that my time here is waning, and clutching to a trinket would not make that time pass more slowly, nor save me from my fate. I do not know how it all will end, only that the end is fast approaching, and I would that this small symbol of love live on beyond me, and perhaps bring some love to others.”
“But I am alone,” Yavün said, and he felt it more than ever now, and resented that he was reminded of it, as if lovers must mock the lonely to better enjoy their love.
“Then make of it a promise, little fish,” Elilod said, closing Yavün’s fingers until they tightly clutched the ring. “The sword must find its sheath in the heart of another. It is the promise it made to the smith who crafted it. This ring must be worn by two in whom each is the part of their heart that is missing. It is the promise it made to the jeweller who made it, and she made naught that did not live up to its promise. So then, find another little fish to share the Ada Pysaa.”
Yavün accepted the ring, though he did not know what to think of pledges and promises, so easily broken. In his short life he had been promised many things, few of which ever transpired. Now he had been given several gifts, gifts he could feel and hold and touch, when life had previously given him the gift of disappointment and defeat. He did not like promises any more, and yet he knew that even in his blood there was a promise, and facing Agon was its fulfilment.
V – THE KILLING OF THE CROW
The Al-Ferian began to arm for war, with Athanda taking charge now that Mathal had passed on. She was less wiry than her sister, though still she hunched her back and bent her limbs, as if she were a maple tree. She began to issue orders in direct opposition to those that Thúalim had given, but he did not fight her, knowing that she would win.
“We cannot afford to send an army of many,” Athanda said, “and leave our home unguarded. What good is victory if there are none to celebrate it, and what good is marching to war if there is no home to march to when it is won?”
“Assuming it is won,” Thalla said.
“Let’s not assume, but make it so,” Athanda replied.
“How many can we spare?” Thúalim asked.
“At best, a hundred.”
“That will not be enough.”
“It will have to do,” Athanda said. “Let’s hope that knight has a larger army.”
“I am not sure they do,” Ifferon said. “But if they are all like Trueblade, we will not need so many.”
“Throw a thousand Trueblades at the Beast and it may not be enough,” Athanda said.
“The enemy only needs one soldier, and that is Agon,” Geldirana said. “Our victory will not come through numbers, but how we play the numbers that we have. Against a god, only a god will do.” She looked at Ifferon.
“Let’s hope Éala will do,” Athanda said, and though she was Al-Ferian, she looked as though she had much more faith in her own sword than in the strength of the Céalari.
Before the army was assembled, scouts returned from the forest with news that a giant crow had been spotted, heading for the Black Eyrie with what appeared to be a scroll in its beak. Ifferon perked his ears at this news.
“That nest should be black from the soot of flames,” Athanda said. “If we did not march to Agon, I would have us march there instead to teach the fowl what it means to break their oaths.”
“Agon will have to wait,” Geldirana said. “If that crow has the Scroll of Mestalarin, then we must hunt it down, like the Garigút hunt the crows of Boror.”
“Yes,” Ifferon said. “It may be the only real weapon that we have.” Though a part of him still wished that someone else was there to wield it, he felt more and more that if another claimant came, he would deny them the heirloom.
“Do as you will,” Athanda said. “I will take my people to where Agon is, that Éala might not stand alone.”
Geldirana urged the remainder of the Garigút to go with Athanda, and though they seemed reluctant to follow another leader, there was no reluctance in them to engage in a new battle, even if the battlefield had just one enemy upon it.
As the army was readied, a much smaller force comprised of Ifferon, Thalla, Thúalim, Geldirana and Affon assembled. Ifferon initially objected to Affon joining them, but this only raised the
ire of Geldirana, which came at him as if it were another member of the company. As they argued, Thalla brought Affon aside.
“You have no right to tell me how to raise my daughter,” Geldirana scolded Ifferon.
“I only want to see her safe,” Ifferon said.
“And will she be safe here?” Geldirana asked. “Here where there are barely enough guards to stand by the many open doors? It is a mountain, that is true, but it is no longer a fortress. I sent Affon here to be safe. I sent her here because Oelinor urged me to, as you now do, and he had more of a right than you to tell me what to do. But now she will be safer with me.”
“Battle is no place for a child,” Thúalim said, voicing what Ifferon thought, but dare not say.
“Battle is the place of all who are at war,” Geldirana replied. “No one is exempt from the battlefield, which we call Iraldas. When Agon hunts down the Children of Telm, he does not stop when he is faced with an actual child. Théos is proof of that.”
Ifferon shook his head. “All the more reason to—”
“No,” Geldirana interrupted. “If there is one who is not invited to the battlefield, it is reason, and if he were, he would be slain there ere he could do any good. In this war, Agon will not be reasonable, and so we should not be either.
“Besides, Affon has been cooped up in this castle for too long, caged like a hen, when the Garigút need to roam. If she is to one day lead my people, she must know the freedom of the open battlefield, which is as much to us a home as Boror itself.”
“If all of Iraldas is the battlefield, let her fight from a safer part,” Thúalim said.
“Here I end my argument with words,” Geldirana said, and she placed her hand upon the handle of her mace. Thúalim glanced at Ifferon and shook his head.
They grudgingly accepted Geldirana’s decision, knowing that she would not back down, and knowing that they needed her, and perhaps needed Affon too, in the thick of battle, where every sword, even one held by a child, affected the outcome.
* * *
They set out from the Mountain Fortress, down its many winding paths, through the blood-stained and body-filled valley beneath it, and under the boughs of the seemingly endless forest of Alimror.
“It seems like our mission is a trifle,” Ifferon said, “compared to that of others around us who march to war.”
“We also march to war,” Geldirana replied. “We are just marching at a slower pace. Ere we hasten to the Beast, we must find the Scroll of Mestalarin or we may never stand a chance.”
“Can you track the bird?” Ifferon asked Thúalim.
The Al-Ferian took a while to respond. He seemed distracted, watching every fallen leaf, every scrap of tree, and every tuft of grass. “Yes,” he said in time, but he seemed like he was tracking something else.
“You’re not exactly one for words, are you?” Thalla noted.
Another long pause. “No,” he said.
Suddenly he stopped, and the others stopped in turn, as if their feet were chained to his.
“What is it?” Geldirana asked, and she looked around, as if preparing for an advancing enemy.
“This is where he died,” Thúalim said, and he spoke as if the very forest had been cut or burned down.
They ventured a little further in, and they found the resting place of Rúathar—though he did not look restful. He had clearly been trampled and beaten, and though he was tall and broad, and stronger than many others of his race, the life had been sucked out of him by the shadow, leaving just a shadow of his former self, a broken shell abandoned by its soul.
Thalla closed her eyes and shook her head. Ifferon could not help but think of Melgalés and how Yavün had found him. Geldirana bowed her head. While Thalla perhaps could not help but think of the Magus laying dead on the ground, Ifferon’s thoughts were with Geldirana, who could have so easily joined her fellow Ardúnari—and who might still.
“I am but a glimmer,” Thúalim said. “He was the light.”
He knelt down and closed Rúathar’s eyes. All were glad to no longer see his endless gaze, and the moment of horror captured therein. Now he looked more peaceful, while all others prepared for war.
Affon was unusually quiet. It was difficult to be brash in the face of death.
Thúalim noted the fallen Ilokrán, mere inches from Rúathar’s broken fingers. “A shield that was not strong enough,” he said. He took it up and handed it to Ifferon, who reluctantly accepted it. He already felt guilty for losing the one Melgalés had given him, and for holding the second Shadowstone that Rúathar had, which might have combined with the first for a stronger defence. He did not feel he should hoard these all to himself, and he looked to his silent daughter, who still did not know he was her father, and he realised what his first act as a parent could be. He handed her the Ilokrán, and hoped it would do her more good than it did for Rúathar. As the girl took the stone, he thought he saw a gleam of a smile from Geldirana, just a hint of something veiled by her solemnity.
Thúalim then took the pouch from Rúathar’s waist and stood up. He emptied the acorn into his hand. It looked so plain and simple, dull and brown, small and round. It was no Ilokrán or Beldarian. It did not glint, and it had no markings. To anyone else it was just an acorn. To the company then present, it was Rúathar’s life.
The group gathered around as Thúalim planted the acorn in the ground close to where his leader had fallen. He scooped out some dirt, delving deep into the earth that was everything to the Ferian and Al-Ferian. To some this was an act of a gardener; to others it was the act of a grave-digger. He planted the acorn, and covered it up. So it was that his people came to bury their dead.
Ifferon was surprised to find that nothing was done with Rúathar’s body. He remembered Elithéa’s words in the Amreni Elé, when she tried to convince them that the body was but a shell, that the true life of a Ferian was to be lived as a tree.
They stood for a time around the tiny mound under which the acorn lay, and upon which a tiny sapling might one day grow, if the world was not destroyed by Agon. Ifferon was reminded of the Amrenan Adelis, the Mound of Mourning, where they had buried Belnavar in what almost felt like another age. He looked to his new companions—and he hoped he would not have to bury them too.
* * *
They left behind the body of Rúathar and the promise of a new oak tree, and they left behind their sadness and their sorrow, spurred on by their anger and their determination to reclaim the Scroll of Mestalarin, and put the Last Words to their final use.
As they delved deeper into the forest, following a series of markings that Thúalim identified as that of the evil birds, they found that it grew darker, and that the trees grew closer together, as if they huddled tightly in fear of something.
Suddenly that something came into view.
In the growing blackness between the twisted boughs, red eyes lit up like lanterns, and instead of illuminating the land, they seemed to cast it into an even greater darkness. As one set of eyes sparked alight, another set joined them, as if the fire was spreading from lantern to lantern. Ifferon thought of the Felokar wolves, but he knew that they were too far from the entrance to Halés to be attacked by those beasts. These were not the yellow eyes of those neutral hounds, who served neither the Céalari nor the Beast, but the red eyes of creatures that bowed down and knew Agon as their master.
Ifferon drew his sword and Geldirana waved her mace. The others raised their weapons.
“Come forth if you dare!” Geldirana cried.
And so the eyes came forward, and the company saw what they belonged to: many black stags, larger than any of their kin, and more evil. Their antlers twisted and curled around in more extreme forms than Ifferon had ever seen, and some looked even more tangled than the branches of the trees around them. Their fur was black as soot, accentuating the evil glower of their eyes.
And so they attacked. In a sudden flurry the stags charged forward, and they rammed and reared, and they bit and bucked.
All the while the company staggered about, striking the animals and warding blows, and sometimes being knocked to the ground from the force of the stampeding herd.
Ifferon narrowly dodged a charging stag, which thundered past and struck a tree. The oak quaked, and the stag’s antlers were stuck deep inside the bark. It pulled and kicked, and it squealed and hollered, as if somehow the tree were attacking it. Ifferon stabbed it with his sword, and so it squealed much louder, but did not squeal for long.
Around him Geldirana moved like lightning, dodging and striking. Thalla and Thúalim had climbed into the trees, from where they both sent down arrows, real ones from Thalla’s bow, and arrows of light from a spectral bow that Thúalim summoned, and they felt no less real to the stags below.
Suddenly Ifferon realised that he did not see Affon in the frenzy, and he called her name, and he heard her call his in return. She was lying several metres away, struggling against a wounded stag, which thrashed its head at her. She clung to its antlers, and she was cast this way and that like a rag doll. And though she was wounded, she did not scream. And though the stag did everything in its power to kill her, she did not call for help.
Yet help came without her call, for Ifferon charged at the animal as if he had antlers of his own. Thus the stag felt his blade, and it bucked no more. Affon still clung to the beast’s horns as its head slumped down, and Ifferon had to pry her fingers off, and hold her quivering hand as he led her away from the battle, where Geldirana laid waste to the remainder of the possessed brutes.
But the battle was not yet over, for the stags had another master, and it was a larger creature of a similar make, but with horns of brilliant white. If the others looked strange, this one looked stranger, as if it had been cobbled together by several different makers. An aura of unease surrounded it, and even Geldirana backed away.
The Children of Telm - The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy Page 60
