The Journey to Karrith

by Ted Neill

  Haille moved forward on the rock ledge, grit and lichen flakes grinding beneath him. Veolin moved the folds of her robes to produce a wooden box which she set at Storn’s feet. It was made of red wood, the panels smoothed to a shine. Her motions were quick and perfunctory, as if not a moment was to be wasted or rather not a moment to be prolonged in proximity to the vaurg. She turned, gravel shifting under her feet. Her blue eyes flashed in Haille’s direction and he willed himself lower into the stone, wishing he were invisible. If she saw him she showed no sign. Instead she returned to her place in the circle and turned her back to Haille.

  He heard a voice, not Veolin’s, but one of the elves. “Open it.” It was unmistakably a tone of command meant for Storn. Storn crept forward and reached out with his remaining hand. The box was made for soft elven hands with fleshy fingers, not the unforgiving claws of a vaurg. Storn struggled to find a grip, his long nails slipping and scraping against the box before catching on the lid and opening it.

  His eyes widened and he leaned over whatever was inside. With a glance upwards as if beseeching the watching elves for permission, and receiving it, he reached into the box and removed his own severed hand. It was withered and blackened, rot setting in, yet he held it to his chest like a child might a kitten or puppy. He even toyed with the limp unmoving claws. He stepped back from the box with another glance at the elves. It was Veolin who raised a hand towards the fire in the brazier.

  “Burn it,” she said.

  Storn shifted his weight from one foot to another, his good hand flexing around the severed one before straightening his back, stepping forward, and extending his reach towards the brazier. He was too short to reach it but his feet found easy holds on the stone so that he climbed the corner, thrust his arm deep into the fire—as if his scaly skin were impervious to the heat—and released his severed hand.

  It sat on the coals, a black silhouette, the edges smoking, the nails cracking until the flesh itself took light and yellow tongues of fire leapt forth. Storn was motionless while the limb withered, the skin peeling and curling like leaves that lifted up and drifted into the clouds of smoke and disappeared. When there was little left of the hand but crumbling red hot bones that merged seamlessly with the coals, Storn broke out of his stillness and looked around.

  The ceremony over, the elves that had led him out turned back to the gate and the darkness beyond it. Storn followed them inside, the last of the six closing the gate after him. The other elves were already filing away toward some entrance below Haille. He studied their shapes from above, trying hard to distinguish Veolin’s figure, but each floated with the same grace and soft footfalls that he imagined her to move with. It was only when he caught a flash of blue over a wall of white bandages that he felt a trilling in his chest and knew he had picked her out from the others.

  An unseen gate clanged closed below. He waited a few beats before rising on the tips of his fingers and easing himself back from the ledge. The elk—Adamantus—was waiting for him when he turned. His coat was brushed clean of the blood of the vaurgs and his antlers shown like newly polished blades. His head was lowered as if ready to take a mouthful of grass but his lips were still and his eyes turned upwards, studying Haille beneath a furrowed brow. So many times Haille had thought the elk’s face was human in its expressions. He realized now these were true emotions all along. He sensed no reproach towards him for his eavesdropping but the elk did look curious. This was the first time Haille had been alone with Adamantus. How did one speak with an animal? When an answer did not come to mind, Haille remained quiet, staring. It was the jays, tweeting and whistling that finally broke the stillness between them.

  “They are loyal to you. You’ve tamed them well,” the elk said in his baritone voice that sounded as if it reverberated through a barrel before coming out his mouth.

  “I killed their mother.” Haille surprised himself at the admission but then again, he was surprised to be speaking to an elk. Perhaps it was important to speak only the truth to enchanted animals. The elk turned his head and looked at him out of the corner of his eye as Azure hopped through his antlers. Haille continued, “It was the day I learned my own mother was dead. Until that day I had just thought she was on a long journey and would come back somehow. I should have known by then but I didn’t. Perhaps I didn’t want to. It was some children at school who told me—teased me—for having killed my mother in childbirth. I ran out into the forest, crying, and while I was there this blue jay started diving at my head. I struck her. It was a lucky—or unlucky—strike. She tumbled to the ground, stunned. Before I knew it, I had crushed her with my hands and feet.

  “There was no blood, just a cracking noise. Her bones made a snapping sound, like crushing a wicker basket.” He picked up a pinecone and tossed it over the edge. “But right after I did it I came to myself. I heard this mad tweeting nearby. It led me to the nest of these little ones. They were just fledglings. I felt awful for what I had done. I had just killed another mother. What self-worth I had left was gone.” He shrugged and let Sapphire land on his finger where she began to preen herself. “Raising them was my way to try to earn it back. Insufficient I know, but what else could I do?”

  The elk faced him, Azure fluttering away and Cyan taking her place in his antlers, blue jewels moving through a silver crown. “There is more to you than is apparent at first glance, Prince Haille,” he said.

  “Mainly that I’m cruel.”

  “And compassionate. It was compassion that moved you to befriend the vaurg to save Veolin.”

  Haille stood up and stretched. “That was just as much anger. I was outraged. But it was also something else—” Haille felt himself reaching for something that seemed just on the edge of memory, some imperative, but the harder he tried to remember it, the more it receded. He shook his head. He had lost it.

  “Perhaps we should be getting back. The elves might not be pleased to have either of us wandering about,” Adamantus said.

  Haille agreed and retraced his steps up the hill. He liked the elk for some reason, finding him good company, and free of judgment. He also felt that the elves bore a certain respect for him and an understanding Haille did not share. But he was uncomfortable asking too direct a question of the elk, such as where he was from, how he came to speak. Perhaps in time. Instead he asked, “What will happen to Storn?”

  “He can’t go back. He certainly can’t wander freely here either. They have him below ground in darkness. It is what he is accustomed to.”

  “A prisoner or a guest?”

  “That remains to be determined.”

  “For us all.”

  Chapter 16

  You and Yours

  It was the end of the day, their second since moving deeper into Karrith. The sun was just stretching its rays along the tips of the tents when the war horns began to blow from the eastern flank. A cloud of dust hung in the air followed by billowing smoke. Men rose from beside the cooking fires and the clatter of arms sounded within the camp. In the king’s circle of tents, squires hurried to help their masters buckle armor and tack their horses. Gail had Barnaby ready in short order, as she kept his saddle and bridle close and always ready. The king himself, in shining mail and a glittering half helm, rallied the knights and nobles of the high houses. As Darid mounted Barnaby and Gail handed him his sword, Sergeant Callum came running past.

  “Sergeant, what news?” Darid called out.

  Red faced, sweat ringing beneath his arms, Callum panted, “Maurvant raiding party killed a few men and set fire to some tents. They have been repelled. They’re already riding back from whence they came. They must have seen our numbers and grown afraid.”

  Already the king with his cavalry was riding down the central thoroughfare, the royal compound emptying as warriors, idle too long, leapt to join the fight.

  “My lord,” Gail said, nearly swallowing her words. “Might I be so bold as to offer counsel?”

  “It is welcome,” Darid said with a narrowing
of his eyes, Barnaby stomping his hooves beneath him.

  “Might you call the king back?”

  Callum, who had remained close by and overheard, snorted, “You forget yourself Horse-boy.”

  “Let him speak,” Darid said, raising his hand.

  “We are surrounded by buttes and box canyons, I know because the squires and I scouted them yesterday. Perfect ground for an ambush. The Maurvant have kept their attacks small and their numbers hidden by design. They now make an attack with the setting sun in their eyes and follow with a swift retreat. I reckon it’s a feint to draw out our cavalry.”

  “You mean to say that they plan to attack the body of the camp?”

  She shook her head. “Twilight is not the time to start an attack of armies afield. It’s more in keeping with their methods to try to wound the body by attacking the head.”

  “The king.”

  She nodded.

  “How can you be so sure?” Darid asked.

  Because it was what she would have done as Avenger Red. But there was no percentage in that argument for her now. Her mind raced to invent a rationale. A night in the caves on the edge of her father’s territory came to mind. She saw raindrops chaining in puddles, cedar boughs dancing in the wind, and smoke curling from a fire. And she remembered that mercenary Cody had told stories from the Izlay war.

  “My father fought in the Izlay war. On the losing side. They were often against overwhelming numbers but had the advantage of fighting with the indigenous people who knew the territory better than the invaders. These are tactics they would have used,” Gail said.

  “If the king is in danger, more than he realizes, I must be at his side. For this is Karrith and I know these lands better than most in his party,” Darid pulled on Barnaby’s reins, steadying him.

  “Do you want me to teach a lesson to this squire, captain? Teach him his place?” Callum asked.

  “No, sergeant. I will proceed to the king’s side.”

  “I caution you, sir. It is a trap,” Gail said.

  “Alex, armies run on order, even if you and yours don’t. God’s be with us.”

  He kicked Barnaby and was gone. Gail was left staring at the fire pit. So lost in thought was she that she did not notice Callum step up alongside her until he had taken her by the collar and dragged her into the tent. The table fell over as he threw her into the interior. “About time you learned the order of things around here, runt.”

  Before she could pull herself upright, he planted a kick into her gut that sent her reeling and lit the corners of her vision with spots of color. There was no fighting back. If there was any time she loathed her lot in life, her freakish smallness, it was now. Without weapons she had no advantage. She curled into herself, trying to protect her head from the blows that kept coming, each sending shards of pain through her body. Callum was breathing through his teeth, leaning on the leg of the overturned table while he stomped on her. Her entire world was reduced to the shocks of pain and the intervals in between. Time was fluid, malleable, seconds dragging out like eternities. Nothing existed except the knowledge it might not end and that, in truth, she deserved every blow. The faces of so many children, forced into labor, torn from their families, tortured, killed even, flashed in her mind. Each one accusing her. She was guilty, not for the insubordination Callum accused her of, but things so much worse.

  Callum lifted her up by the hair and stretched her neck back. His face was close to hers, the cut sewn shut on his cheek bending like a second, scowling mouth. She recognized the same feeling of insight into herself and her life that she had experienced in the fountain. Somehow it allowed her to surrender, to prepare herself for the worst. This was the beating she had been earning her entire life.

  “Do your worst,” she heard herself say.

  Tears streaked down her face, but not tears of fear as Callum surely thought, tears of release. For only in this suffering, and the inevitable end she sensed coming, would the scales ever be tipped right. The journey that had begun in the font was coming to an end.

  He cocked his head sideways before a grin exposed his teeth. “Who do you think—”

  But he never finished his rejoinder. His head snapped forward with a loud thud and his body fell limp and heavy across her. No sooner had his weight pressed down on her than it was rolled away. She looked up to see Patrick looking down at her, Kevin behind him, one of the logs from the unlit fire outside in his hands.

  “Alex, are you all right?”

  She spat a gob of red blood and felt one of her teeth had gone missing. “Just desserts,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” Patrick asked.

  What was she talking about? For the things she had done she had deserved to die, not to be saved.

  “Why was he beating you?”

  “A lifetime of wrongs.”

  Patrick and Kevin glanced at one another. Her mind was still stuck on justice. Surely if she was still breathing it had not been measured out completely. But maybe there was reason in it, there was something she and only she could do. The clue lay in Darid’s words before he left.

  “Order,” she said, rolling onto her side then into a sitting position, her head throbbing. “Callum did not like it that I didn’t respect the order of things. Armies run on it.”

  “That is no reason to beat you,” Patrick said.

  “I deserve it more than you know,” she said, looking up into his eyes and spitting again. She pulled herself up by the same table leg that Callum had leaned upon. “The king is riding into a trap. We’ve got to help them.”

  “How do you know?” Kevin asked, letting the log drop to the floor.

  “Call it an informed hunch. I tried to explain it to Darid and Callum but the truth did not work.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Lie, of course.”

  She turned to the armory chest, opened it, and drew out her bow and quiver. She slid on her baldric and both swords. The daggers she had planned to trade she shoved under her belt.

  “Lie to whom? What are you saying?” Patrick asked.

  “The other squires. If I’m wrong, the foot soldiers need to stay here to repel any further attacks. They’re too slow anyway. The squires, they each have horses though.” She smiled to herself, knowing she was taking a page from King Talamar’s book. “Tell them the king ordered for them to follow. They will be more than happy to prove themselves.”

  “But who is here with the authority to order them?”

  “Nobody but us. And that means there is nobody to stop us.”

  “But did the king really order this?” Patrick looked confused.

  She met them both in a wordless stare.

  “Don’t answer him,” Kevin said. “We won’t question. But you better be right.”

  “I hope I am.”

  Chapter 17

  Under the Elven Lantern Light

  Sandolin showed no surprise to find Haille and the elk crossing the lawn towards his home when they returned. Haille was glad his excursion was not poorly received. The others had wandered outside as well: Cody reclined in a hammock slung between trees while Val sat under an apple tree sharpening his sword with a whetstone. Haille took his turn to sleep the rest of the morning in the sun.

  Maylief served a lunch of sweet cakes and a potato stew. By midafternoon Haille had started a game of tag with Gavin and Roslyn, chasing them through the slanting sunlight amid clouds of butterflies. For a while after, they engaged in a game of tossing and smacking pinecones about with sticks then, tired, Gavin suggested they play a game of kerosar.

  The elflings settled on the lawn by a playing board with figurines set on either end. The board itself was incised with two overlapping circles crosshatched by a grid of lines. Gavin and Roslyn moved figures and rolled a set of dice in patterns too arcane for Haille to understand. What he did grasp was the artistry of the figures. There were eight to a side. Gavin’s were armored and cloaked in a variety of colors. One in a red cloak and
blue half-plate armor with golden hair caught Haille’s attention. The detail on the warrioress was so fine he could sense a similarity between this figure and the striking woman on the relief wall in the plaza where they had broken their fast. She was unmistakable, with piercing green eyes staring out from a face that was a mask of smooth ivory.

  “Gavin, who is this supposed to be?” Haille asked.

  The elfling propped his head up on the heel of one hand and took the figure up in the other. “This is Auren Hintland, greatest of the Vespar.” The metal of her miniature sword held at guard across her body flashed in the sunlight. “She defeated the Kryen and trapped them in the Seal of Dormain.”

  “The Seal of what?”

  “Not all of them,” Roslyn piped up, plucking a figure from her side. Her figures were uniformly dark, arrayed in grays and charcoal robes, but one stood out among them for her head of wavy auburn hair. “She didn’t defeat Rach’mar. She’s my favorite.”

  “She can’t be your favorite, she is a Kryen,” Gavin insisted.

  “She is my favorite of the Kryen.”

  Haille took a closer look at the figure in question—equally detailed and equally beautiful, except for one flaw: the eyes appeared to be mismatched in color, one green and the other blue. Haille didn’t know such exquisite craftsmanship was possible.

  “And just because Rach’mar was not trapped does not mean she was not defeated,” Gavin crossed his arms and stared at his sister.

  “No one knows what happened when she dueled Auren Hintland,” Roslyn said.

  Gavin twisted his mouth, then smiled. “No, but they will know I beat you.” He moved a piece on the board and swept up another one of her Kryen figurines: a handsome but stern looking older man. Haille noticed a name stenciled onto the base that read, “Yervon Aschand.”