by Tom Deitz
Once on the ledge, Merryn reached up to receive a heavy coil of rope that Strynn and the man were lowering from the cleft, using what looked like torn-up strips of a Warcraft cloak to constitute the line. Once she’d freed it, Merryn secured the rope to a stump and tossed the remainder down to the raft. Avall watched it uncoil, fascinated, praying it was long enough to reach them. Unfortunately, it came up a span and a half short.
There followed the most frustrating morning Avall had ever spent, with both his wife and beloved sister so near and yet so far, and their presence all but proof that at least one of their quests had succeeded, and every breath bringing them closer. But there was no time for casual greetings as they called directions and encouragements to each other and tried to finesse the raft into a position from which someone could make up the difference between cliff wall and lake, while Merryn made her way down to a precarious perch a scant two spans above the water’s edge.
And then the raft was bobbing within reach of the cliff, and Bingg was stretching as far up and overboard as he dared, fingers questing for Merryn’s, which she in turn stretched down toward him one-handed, while the other hand held the rope and both feet anchored her at an angle from the cliff.
But Bingg was not quite tall enough to make contact, and the raft was proving unwieldy in the sudden wind that had kicked up and was raising waves that now threatened to suck them away from their goal, now to dash them into it.
And then one of those waves spun the raft a quarter turn around, which put Avall on the shoreward side. And while Rann jabbed frantically with his oar to keep the rock away, Avall reached out and—with his extra height an advantage—managed to clasp Merryn’s fingers.
Power surged through him—or joy so strong it was effectively the same. And then Merryn was pulling, drawing him to shore, while Rann shifted over to seize Avall, and Bingg worked his way between them to tie one of their makeshift ropes to the end of Merryn’s while Myx and Lykkon secured the other end around the decking near the mast.
All of which brought the raft even closer to the cliffs, where Bingg was finally able to loop the rope around a finger of stone that looked like it would hold the raft securely and keep it relatively stable.
“Should I come down?” Merryn called.
Avall thought for a moment, then shook his head. “We were already trying to get to shore. We’ll come up. But what—?”
“Later,” Merryn and Rann chorused as one, though both Rann and Div (who had claimed the next ledge up the rock face) were having a hard time keeping their eyes off each other.
“Right,” Avall agreed regretfully, gazing around to where his crewmates were already untying loads in anticipation of landfall.
Riff however, looked troubled. “If we’re not careful, we may lose the raft,” he warned. “A little care now could save a lot of grief in the long run. I’d suggest we off-load the most irreplaceable items regardless, then try to stabilize the raft as best we can.”
“Actually,” Rann mused, stroking his chin, “if we tied it off a little better, the lot of us might be able to hoist it as far as that ledge Merry’s on.”
“Sounds as good as anything we’re likely to come up with in a hurry,” Avall agreed. And with that, he slung a pack onto his back, grabbed the nearest length of rope, and with Merryn’s assistance, struggled ashore. Thanks to the near-vertical slope, he had to climb hand over hand, and it was touch-and-go at times, yet before he knew it, he had reached the second ledge, where Div awaited. There was no time for reunion in either place, however, merely a pause to tie his burden to the fabric rope Strynn and the stranger commanded, and watch them heave it up to where that third group of allies waited.
By which time Bingg was clambering up the rope and Lykkon was getting ready. Only then did they realize that Kylin might be a problem. For, blind as he was, and no stronger than Bingg for all he was larger, he might have trouble climbing—yet the trek was too perilous for him to assay unassisted. Kylin, however, disagreed vehemently—and amazed them all by shinnying up the lower rope with uncanny ease, only slipping once, right at the end.
Riff—as nominal captain—was the last to come ashore, and that only after he had checked the knots that bound rope to raft four times. That accomplished, they set their backs and arms to it and heaved from Merryn’s perch. The raft rose, if slowly and awkwardly, for it was heavy, and they were all tired from their morning’s exertions. In the end, they only managed to raise it half its own width above the water, where, fortunately, a pair of rocky knobs provided rests atop which it could lodge—which, with the slight slope, provided minimal security at least. Not that Riff didn’t risk a potentially deadly fall securing the corners to a few stray roots, scraggly trees, and sturdy vines.
Bingg, who was the lightest, made one final trip down to confirm that the remaining supplies were securely lashed to the deck, and then he, too, joined his fellows on land.
And then the rope was coiled again, and Strynn was pulling it upward, and the rest of them were climbing the vines—which proved far easier than the rope had been.
By unspoken agreement Avall went first, and so was first to scramble over the upper edge and find himself suddenly in Strynn’s arms—and utterly at a loss for words because of it.
It was as though she read his mind—which perhaps she did. “We’ve basically succeeded,” she told him tersely, obviously holding back what, if his own heart was any guide, was a flood of emotions, all of which distilled down to the look in her eyes: joyful, yet grave and troubled. “I’ve got a cold, but I’ll survive, and Krynneth’s … not himself, but improving.”
It took Avall a moment to absorb even that much information, and another to peer through the rough-cut hair and sunken features in search of the Krynneth he had known. The man looked awful—clearly something terrible had befallen him, and perhaps the rest of them as well. But he was also grinning and thrusting out his arms for an embrace Avall was not slow in granting, awkward as it was in the narrow tunnel in which they had found themselves. “Avall!” Krynneth crowed, in an oddly childlike tone. “Avall. Avall. Avall.”
“That’s me,” Avall murmured, gently prying Krynneth’s arms away, while his gaze sought Strynn’s anxiously. “Come, Kryn,” he continued, we have to get out of the way. There’re other people—”
The next few moments were another study in chaos, as the tunnel proved barely more than one-person wide, even without packs to consider, which resulted in Avall and Strynn being at the head of a line that was pushed farther and farther into the unknown of the cliff face.
And then they were twisting around a corner and then another, and morning light became no light became firelight again, as they found themselves entering a large chamber lit by three small torches.
But the chamber was not empty.
The messily dead corpse of a very large male geen lay against one wall, with a handsome female birkit worrying at one well-muscled haunch. And against the other wall—
Avall had no choice but to leave Strynn and rush toward it, kneeling in the mud as he regarded what might yet save his Kingdom—if he could get it there …
The royal regalia he had sent away what seemed so long ago—though why it was here, he had no idea. Surely this was not the hiding place Merryn had chosen.
Not with a freshly dead geen to guard it.
But he would get no answers now, not with the rest of the crew crowding in to join them. Merryn made her way toward him through the chaos. “Not how I’d thought to meet you, brother,” she chuckled, finally enfolding him in the hearty embrace necessity had delayed for so long, “but I’m beyond glad to see you—thought not here. We’ve got a camp a shot away on the other side. That would be the best place to figure out what in the name of The Entire Eight is going on.”
“Sounds wonderful to me,” Avall agreed, adjusting his pack. “I’ve had enough water for a while—though we’ll need to go back to the island at some point to retrieve some things.”
“All in go
od time,” Merryn sighed. “For now, we really do need to get back to camp. We left the horses unattended, and as you may have noted, there are geens about—and you know what they like to eat.”
“We’ve known,” Avall replied offhand. “About the geens, I mean. We’ve seen them on the cliffs.”
Merryn nodded absently, then started abruptly, and whirled back around to face him, face hard and intense. “Them? There wasn’t just the one?”
Avall shook his head. “I don’t know how many. Several. Though we haven’t seen them lately. It’s been”—he glanced at Lykkon—“how long?”
Lykkon scowled. “Let’s see, we’ve been here eleven days. We saw them the first morning, and every day after that until the rain—”
“So there could still be some around,” Merryn spat, suddenly all business. “Come on, we have to get back to camp!”
CHAPTER XIX:
JEWELS IN THE WILD
(SOUTHWEST OF ERON–HIGH SUMMER: DAY LXXXVI–MIDMORNING)
To Avall’s surprise, it was barely four hands past sunrise when they made their way out of a second cleft in the rocks and once more beneath open sky. More surprising, it took a moment to adjust to terrain that, instead of sloping sharply downhill, ran off gradually through woods that would have seemed perfectly ordinary had at least a third of the trees not been of a kind he had never seen before. Lykkon hadn’t either—nor Riff, who was connected, via Shipcraft, to Wood and ought to know. And that difference as much as anything confirmed the fact that they were very far from home indeed.
The ground was soggy underfoot—from days of rain that had penetrated even to the undercover—and Avall found himself scanning the leaf mold for the distinctive tracks of geens. He found none—no one did. But that didn’t stop Rann from foisting his pack on a startled Krynneth and jogging off with Div in advance of the rest of the party—overtly to check on the horses, but equally likely to secure a few moments’ privacy with his lady.
Not that Avall wasn’t glad to see Strynn as well. Yet somehow the present reality of their reunion failed to match the image of that event he had carefully tended in his mind, with the result that everything seemed slightly unreal. Given the way they always had to relearn each other after every separation, he supposed it would take a while before things between them regained a comfortable level. Now that they had the regalia again, he hoped he would have that time.
He was carrying the Lightning Sword because someone had to; while Merryn took charge of the helm; and strong, stocky Riff shouldered the shield along with the largest pack. It was a practical arrangement in the extreme, but such casually cavalier treatment of valuable artifacts once again put Avall off—probably because it was yet another example of the reality of an event having no relationship whatever to how he had expected it would be. Beyond that, he had also realized that far more information needed to be imparted than a simple explanation of why half of Eron’s High Council was here in the middle of the Wild. Like Zeff’s latest ultimatum, for instance, and Rann’s rebellion, and the circumstances that had precipitated them here—all of which now seemed more like an extended, and not entirely pleasant, dream, than any real series of events.
Nor were Merryn—or Strynn or Div—likely to be pleased with what they heard. And who could tell about poor Krynneth? Whatever happy reunion anyone was anticipating would dissolve into argument and anger sooner than anyone thought, once certain hard facts were made known.
All thanks—yet again—to the Eight-cursed gems!
Which was another oddity, Avall reflected, as he strode through the dappled forest shade, angling toward the brighter light of the meadow now visible beyond the farther trees. When had he grown so accustomed to the notion of staying here, anyway? Either on the island itself or on the cliffs around it, both of which showed promise of possessing more than enough raw materials to construct a nice serviceable small hold? And now all that was about to change just as he’d begun to accept it. Eight! Before long—maybe even within a hand—he would be marching off to war again! He wondered if he was remotely ready.
But they had reached the eaves of the woods by then, with the meadow beyond, and the sheer beauty of the place jolted him back to the present, so that, for the too-short while it took to reach the camp, Avall forgot how ephemeral happiness could be.
Fortunately, the horses were alive, healthy, and no more nervous than typical, though Div was handing out sugar treats in a manner so profligate it prompted a scowl from Merryn.
“We’ve got food,” Bingg volunteered, shedding his pack and gazing about anxiously. “If no one minds eating waterbeast.”
“I’m sure it’s better than horse,” Merryn sniffed—and that settled it. “We’ve got cauf,” she added, with a twinkle in her eye. “I don’t suppose you lads do?”
“Some,” Avall retorted loftily, “though ours is, uh, somewhat … adulterated.”
“You were on that island how long?” Merryn muttered. “Didn’t someone say eleven days?”
“It’s a long story,” Avall sighed. “Perhaps we should all sit down.” And that comment seemed to be the cue for everyone to unload their packs, divest themselves of unnecessary clothing and war gear, and find places on and around the rock that anchored the camp. “The first thing you should know,” Avall continued when the din had more or less subsided, “is that we didn’t choose to be here.”
And for most of the next hand he explained why. At that, he only touched the high points, but neither Merryn, Strynn, nor Div had heard anything of what had transpired after Strynn had departed Tir-Eron in search of Merryn: not about the progress of the war itself, nor the coup in Tir-Eron.
“That will have spread by now,” Merryn opined when he had finished. “There’s no way this Ninth Face won’t have coordinated attacks in all five gorges.”
“They wouldn’t have to in Half or South,” Avall grumbled. “Those two were already well on their way to chaos when the Face made their move.” He broke off, raising a brow at Strynn. “Though if anything had happened there, surely someone would have sent word to War-Hold. I don’t suppose you heard anything, did you? Assuming you went by there?”
Strynn shook her head. “Nothing.”
Avall flopped back against the rock and folded his arms across his chest, frowning intently. “One troubling factor is that the nature of the attack makes me think that not only is the Ninth Face involved, but that they have access to some form of distance communication.”
“Gems?” From Merryn.
A shrug. “Maybe. But I’m thinking it might be Wells. I’m finding that the more I deal with them, the more there seems to be some commonality between the effects of the gems and those of the Wells. At minimum, both affect a person’s mental powers. Beyond that, one seems to allow communication across distance, the other seeing across distance—and maybe time as well.”
“But how do you know that?” Merryn shot back, brow furrowed by a frown of her own.
“Because the last Well I drank from was the Well beneath the Ninth Face’s citadel, which should, in theory, owe no loyalty to me—or to the King, rather—yet it showed me a vision of the lake we just came from.”
“But I saw it, too!” Div countered. “In a dream. And I’ve never drunk from a Well in my life, nor had contact with a gem in eights.”
“You’ve had contact with the birkit, though,” Strynn observed. “And they also seem to be some kind of catalyst.”
“Or repositories,” Avall gave back, returning his gaze to Merryn. “And I suppose I should add that I dreamed about the geen with the sword, which might tie them into the mess as well. We need to talk about both those things, too—but not until after we’ve walked the straight trail. For instance, did Strynn and Div catch up with you before or after you’d hidden the regalia? Obviously you have it now—but that doesn’t mean you hadn’t hidden it earlier. Though why you’d be here—”
Merryn cleared her throat, took a long swallow of cauf (augmented with some of the remaining brand
y) then sighed—loudly. “If you’re through arguing with yourself, brother, there are a couple of things you ought to know, one of which will likely please you, the other of which almost certainly will not.”
Without waiting for reply, she launched into the whole long tale of her capture—first by Krynneth, then by the Ixtians—which was followed by an equally lengthy account of the geen’s theft of the sword.
Avall was frowning like thunder when she finished—but as much at Div and Strynn as at his sister. “You should have kept a closer eye on her,” he growled at them. “You know how she is.”
“If they had, you’d be floating around the lake in pieces,” Merryn replied airily, but her face was traced with guilt—like a little girl caught at something dangerous by her elders. “It was act or argue,” she continued, frankly. “I knew that time in which to confront the geen was limited, and that it was ultimately my fight. But I also knew that Strynn and Div would insist on coming along if they knew I was going—which would have reduced us to arguing about who would stay with Krynneth, who was too much risk to take along. Div would ultimately have won, because Strynn was simply too sick to make an effective second—if nothing else, because she was likely to sneeze or cough, and thereby alert the geen or geens. But if Div and I had been killed, that would have left Krynneth in the care of someone who might—forgive me, Strynn—die herself, so I had to be sure there was someone strong in camp, and that left Div. It was pure logic, brother, nothing more.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Strynn sniffed. “Besides, there’s an even more important reason I couldn’t go—one that Avall certainly needs to know.”
Avall lifted an inquiring brow. “And that is?”
“I’m pregnant—about an eighth now.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in—though if anyone voiced a reply, Avall didn’t hear it. Only when Rann and Lykkon slapped him on the back at precisely the same time did he truly realize what his wife had said.
