by Tim Stead
“Are you there, Bren Ashet?”
“I am here.”
He hated the way the Bren could do that. It was standing to his left in full view, and yet just a moment ago he would have sworn he had looked in that direction and not seen it.
“I have questions,” he said. The Bren blinked. It said nothing. Narak put the lamp down and sat in a chair. “Of all the messages that you could have left, you chose to point me to the most trivial thing. You did not mention Seth Yarra; you did not mention that an army was being landed on the shores of the Great Plain. Almost any piece of information would have been more useful to me than the one you chose to give me. Why is that?”
“I do not understand the question.”
“It is simple enough. Why did you give me the least useful piece of information when you had many more valuable secrets to impart?”
“I carried the message. That is all.”
“I am asking the sender of the message. I take it that he has another Bren Ashet just like you at his side, and that even as I speak he is being told what I say.”
The Bren shifted uneasily. It blinked three times. It was the first time that he had seen it make an involuntary movement. He was right then. The Ashet were a conduit, one here, one there, repeating his every word, reporting every movement.
“It is true,” the Bren said.
“Does the sender who refused to name himself have an answer for me?”
The Bren said nothing again. It stood quite still and did not blink. It was listening, he guessed, to another part of its scattered mind. How would that be, he wondered, to be in ten thousand places all at once, to see the world through a myriad of eyes? He saw one thing at a time, sometimes less. He tried to imagine seeing through the eyes of every wolf, all the time; to know what they knew, to hear and scent the woods, the plains, even cities and mountains all in the space of a breath. Surely it would be a brief prelude to madness.
“The sender will speak to you,” the Bren said.
“What does he say?”
“You misunderstand, Narak. He will speak to your face. He will not converse through Bren Ashet.”
“He will come here?” Narak was on his feet. He wasn’t altogether sure that he wanted another Bren in Wolfguard. One was enough strangeness in the place.
“No. You will come to him.”
“I will?”
“There will be answers to your questions.”
“How far must I go?”
“It is far, but it will not take long. There are quick roads beneath.”
Quick roads? What could the creature mean by that? Roads were roads, and the speed you travelled depended upon your feet, of if you were more fortunate upon the feet of your mount. He had no more time for consideration, however. The Bren touched the wall next to where it was standing and the stone simply ceased to be there. Instead there was an opening about six feet in height and the same across. He saw stairs vanishing down into the darkness.
“I will be safe?” he asked.
The Bren paused before the doorway, its pale skin framed in the darkness of the opening. Listening again.
“It is assured,” it said. “Follow me. You will not need a light.”
Narak put the lamp down with great misgivings and when he looked up the Bren was no longer visible. He stepped up to the doorway. He would never have guessed that there was a secret door in his own lair, the safest, most private place in his home, but there it was. He could see steps leading down, plunging into stygian darkness.
He eased down slowly, one step at a time, and very quickly he was blinded by the dark, running his hands over the rough stone walls as he edged down. The steps seemed to spiral down to the left, and he paused after perhaps a dozen paces and looked back. There was a faint glow above him, yellow lamplight glinting off a few stones that caught it and passed on a fraction of its comfort, but no more.
He listened. He hoped to hear footfalls ahead of him, but he heard nothing. The silence made noises out of nothing, a faint hum, a hissing. These were the noises that he heard when there were no others, when he sat alone in the lair and listened to the rock, the blood pumping around his body, his own noise.
“Why have you stopped?”
The Bren’s voice made him jump. It was no more than a few feet away, and startlingly loud. He looked in the direction from which it had come, but could see nothing.
“I am blind here,” he said.
“There is light,” the Bren assured him. “It is enough for the Bren.”
Narak waited a little longer for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark, but beyond the faintest glow he could make out nothing. He was as likely to break his neck as get to his destination like this. He thought for a moment about going back for the lamp, but he realised there was another solution. He was a wolf, after all.
He dropped the veil and took on his aspect. Suddenly he saw the walls, the roof of the tunnel above him, and the Bren just a few feet below. The walls themselves appeared to give off a faint, greenish light, and a closer look revealed a lichen coating every surface. It was the source of the glow. The Bren took a step away from him. It looked cowed and afraid. So the power of the aspect was not wasted on the night folk. Well, that was worth knowing.
“I see better in my true form,” he said. “Lead on.”
The Bren nodded and quickly began down again. It continued for some time, turning down the stair as it corkscrewed into the rock, always just in sight. It moved silently, did not brush the walls as it passed, a feat that Narak tried to emulate, but could not. His hands sought the comfort of the rock, otherwise their descent was so fast and spun them so that he felt he might fall from dizziness.
The passage ended, and they burst out into a vast chamber. This was the cave beneath Wolfguard, he was sure. The roof was a hundred feet above him, and great spears of rock plunged down from it, meeting towers from below like the teeth of some mythical beast. He paused. The lichen was here, too. It was everywhere, but not on the teeth of rock.
He followed the Bren again as it scrambled across fallen stone, through gaps in the monster dentition of the cave, and quite quickly they came to another cave mouth leading off to one side. He had lost his sense of direction completely. The spinning around of the corkscrew stair had been far more effective than the blindfolded spinning which he had done as a child when they played blind chase.
“This is the road we must take,” the Bren said.
Narak looked down the cavern beyond the opening, and was surprised to see that it ended not more that thirty yards from where he stood. There was a feel to it, though. The same crisp tingling that he got when he translocated. It was the feel of magic.
Quick roads. The phrase made sense now. This was a magical means of travel, a portal that would take one elsewhere. The Duranders could do this, but he had not thought it of the Bren.
The Bren Ashet stepped into the doorway and spoke words in its own tongue. Narak repeated them to himself, trying to memorise the words. It might be useful to know them.
“Follow,” the Bren said and walked into the tunnel.
He followed, felt a shift in the light as he walked, a change in the air. It was cooler. There was a faint smell of… something. He could not place it. They emerged into a tunnel that was clearly artificial. The walls were smooth as glass and curved twenty feet above his head to meet in a sharp point. The passageway was twenty feet wide. The Bren did not pause, but continued to walk swiftly, turning to the left, and Narak had to abandon his study of the walls and hurry to catch up.
The tunnel went on in a straight line. Occasionally there were other tunnels off to the sides, all the same, smooth walled and of equal size. They passed many such passageways, each of which plunged off into the distance through the rock, and as time passed Narak began to gain an appreciation of how vast the network of tunnels must be. Hundreds of miles, perhaps thousands, and he had yet to see another of the Night Folk.
That changed, though. His guide took a tu
rning and quite quickly they were among the Bren. Many stopped to stare at him, but seeing his guide they returned to their tasks, or continued walking. As time passed fewer and fewer of them spared him a glance. Narak was fascinated. He remembered the Bren from long ago, from the time when he had become the Wolf somewhere deep beneath the earth in a place like this many centuries ago. Some of these he recognised, but others he did not. There were no other Ashet among the ones he passed, but he saw tunnellers, slow and massive, some with blunted chisel hands, other sharp and fresh. He saw many of a small, delicate form, blue skinned, large eyed. They walked together in groups. He had no idea of their purpose. Occasionally he saw a warrior, black and armoured, striding through the others with smooth, long steps. The armour was like chitin, a natural growth, but Narak knew it was harder than that. Even so, the warriors reminded him of lobsters or insects. The spines at knee and elbow could disembowel a man; the outer edge of each arm was as sharp as a sword, and he knew that they were fast and agile. He had seen them fight, once, so very long ago.
A sudden turn brought them to a small chamber. It was unfurnished. The Bren had no use for furniture in the same way that they had no use for weapons or tools of any kind. Each Bren was suited to its task, born to it, and needed no artifice. The chamber was empty apart from two Bren, a warrior and another Ashet. This, then, was the creature from which the message had been sent.
“You are the sender,” Narak said.
“You are Narak the wolf,” the Bren said. It did not move its head; there was no inflection to its speech, no accompanying gesture.
“I have questions,” he said.
“Yes.”
It was like speaking in a muffled chamber. Nothing came back to him from the Bren, so sense of being. Its eyes were on him, but that was the only sign that it was speaking to Narak.
“You know my question,” he said. The creature was not intimidated by him, which was unusual. He was Narak, Wolf God, revealed in full aspect, but his creature looked at him as though he were an outcrop of rock, one that he might have removed if it inconvenienced him.
“The question is why. The answer is that it was my choice, and I chose.”
“Who are you?”
“Bren Moraine, sixth rank.”
“What does the sixth rank signify?”
“There are five ranks beneath.”
The Bren was playing a game, he realised. He was here for its amusement. Oddly, he did not feel offended. It was so many years since anyone had treated him with contempt that it fascinated him. This Bren Moraine believed itself far above him in station.
“How many Bren Moraine does the sixth rank command?” he asked.
“Thirty-seven thousand, four hundred and forty-eight,” it replied. Narak thought he detected a hint of satisfaction in the words. He was impressed despite his reluctance. It was a large army, and the Bren were formidable warriors.
“It is a goodly army,” he said.
“It is a division,” the Bren said.
“A division?”
It did not answer, and Narak felt it had scored another point. The words sounded even more satisfied.
“How many divisions do the Bren possess?”
“Eight.”
Eight. It was a huge number. An army of that size could sweep the six kingdoms from end to end in a few months. None could stand against it. But it was needed. If the Bren were to move against the Seth Yarra they would need such an army.
“Bren Moraine, Sixth Rank, you had a great deal of information about the movements of Seth Yarra. Why did you choose to provide me with the least significant item of information when many others would have been more helpful?
“I am required to warn. That is what I did.” But as little as possible, so that the warning might be dismissed; and yet the messenger had told him more that that, and perhaps more than the sender had intended.
“Required? Who or what requires you to warn?”
“Pelion’s law.”
“You do not like us, Bren Moraine.”
“You are not necessary,” the Bren replied, and at last there was a hint of passion in its voice. “You crawl and squabble and waste upon the skin of the sacred earth. You lack common purpose, you lack direction, you lack cohesion. You are each of you alone and against all others. There is not one admirable thing about you.”
“Pelion thought not. He thought we should be warned, or so it seems.” So the Bren thought very little of men. Well, that was to be expected, Narak thought. If the Bren were all born to purpose, unquestioning in the execution of their function, then men would seem strange indeed. Men decided for themselves, made their own allegiances, followed their own paths.
“Pelion did not see you for what you really are.”
“Pelion was a man, Bren Moraine. He created you.”
“He set himself apart from men. He made what was better.”
Narak studied the Bren, but he could read nothing from its eyes. It did not speak at all with its body. Throughout the exchange of words it had not gestured, there was no expression on its face, or if there was its subtleties were lost on him. His only clue was its voice, and yet, little as that was, it was enough to tell him that this Bren believed what it said. Pelion had left men behind, created what was better and stronger. The only thing standing between men and the scorn of the Bren was Pelion’s law, whatever that might be. He had no knowledge of it.
But the messenger, the Bren Ashet had told him more. It had said that the information was permitted, but what if that was not true? The more he thought about it the more certain he became. There were divisions among the Bren, just as there were among men. The law was the law, and some, like this Moraine, would do only what the letter of the law required. Others would go further. Others would help.
And yet that was an optimistic view. This Bren represented the warriors of the Bren, and if the warriors were set against men, then he could expect no more than the law demanded. He needed to know more.
“You have promised to rise against the Seth Yarra,” he said.
“It is permitted. They are numerous, and they pose a threat, even to the Bren.”
“You will rise in the spring, the one that follows the one that is next?”
“We will obey the law,” the Bren said.
“And why have you brought me here?” It was a sudden change in the flow of the conversation, and he hoped to elicit an honest response with the surprise, but the Bren did not blurt out an unguarded answer. It was silent for a while, and perhaps it was silent to let him know that it had considered its reply, for when it spoke it was not a measured answer.
“I brought you here because I wanted to see you,” it said. “It is said that you are the greatest among men, that you are the most favoured of Pelion’s last tinkering with mankind. Some even say that you are Pelion’s heir. I wanted to see the truth of it, and now that I have seen you I can dismiss the heresy with authority. You are a single creature like all the rest of your kind. There is nothing of Pelion in you.”
Narak was inclined to reply, to disabuse the creature of its error. He had known Pelion. For two months he had been with him, and Pelion was a man, a powerful man wielding the most awesome powers, wise, kind, but clear headed enough to do what he thought must be done. Pelion had liked wine, he had laughed at jokes, smiled at irony, allowed his eye to linger on a beautiful woman. He was a man in every sense of the word that Narak understood. Few had seen this, even among the Benetheon. Pelion was a stern task master and his project had been serious, dangerous, and complicated. His mask had slipped only a few times, and most had not noticed.
Narak’s memory of Pelion was of an old man; so old that he had forgotten centuries of his life. Thousands of years had ticked by like decades, even like years. He was a remnant from a different age, and all the years of his life had weighed him down, crushed him into an appearance of old age. Pelion was tired, but death does not come easily to immortals, and Pelion was chained to his life by his duty. He feare
d that men would destroy their world; that they would multiply, cut down the forests and trample the plains. So he had made the Benetheon, guardians of the world that was not given to men, lords of the wild places, and then he had stepped aside.
It was an odd thing, the stepping aside. They had all felt it. Pelion was not their creator, but he had changed them beyond recall, and in that moment they had all felt his absence, and yet not his death. Pelion had unmade himself, and yet he was still somewhere. Narak had never understood it.
Near the end he had sensed that the old man was withdrawing from the world, saying farewell. It was the way he looked at the trees, the way he listened to the wind, even the way he breathed; deep, hungry breaths that drew the essence of the world into his lungs like a sigh in reverse. Narak had sought out the best wine and taken a bottle to Pelion as a gift.
