A quick sidelong glance at his father’s house revealed nothing of his fate. Light could rarely be seen inside and Ahren was fairly certain that Edrik had slept through the attack in an alcoholic stupor.
He hammered on his friend’s door and shouted, ‘Likis, are you there? Are you all alright?’
‘Ahren?’, came his friend’s voice from inside. Then he heard the scratching sound of the latch being drawn back and the curious face of his friend appeared. The merchants’ colours were even on his night cap and Ahren couldn’t help sniggering when he saw his friend, in spite of the situation.
Likis pulled the cap from his head and muttered, ‘what’s been going on?’ Beside him were his parents with concerned faces. They were both holding daggers and spied over Ahren’s shoulders into the night outside.
‘We heard the alarm bell and wanted to go to the village square but then everyone started shouting we should stay at home. We heard the all-clear bell earlier but nobody stirred around here and we thought better safe than sorry, so stayed put inside’.
‘Fog Cats, a whole pack of them’, Ahren explained quickly. ‘We’ve killed them all’. He thought he’d just leave it at that for the moment. The task he still had to perform was difficult enough, and he didn’t want to frighten his friend to death.
‘Listen to me. Master Falk has to leave Deepstone for a while and I’m supposed to go with him. So, it’s farewell for now…’ His voice had been cracking with emotion until it finally trailed off.
Likis stared at him in amazement and said, ‘now, in the middle of the night?’, while his mother added, ‘after an attack like that?’
Ahren decided to tell a white lie to prevent an avalanche of questions. ‘We want to be sure that we got them all and find out where they came from’. He really was befuddled about the wizard’s and his master’s motives but that sounded plausible enough and the attack had somehow been connected with their imminent journey. At least that’s how he understood it.
He hugged his astonished friend and said over Likis’ shoulder to his parents, ‘thank you for everything’. He couldn’t say another word but it seemed to have been enough. They gave a nod, full of understanding and warmth. Once again Ahren asked himself what his life would have been like if he had had parents like that. Strangely, the question had lost its force, for the path of his life had led to Falk, and that had made up for a lot that had happened to him before, in spite of all the dangers. He let go of Likis and said, ‘I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon. Look after yourself and your parents and stay well clear of Sven. He’ll be looking for a new target when I’m gone’.
‘I’ll take care of him, don’t you worry about that’, said his friend in a husky voice. ‘And don’t you go falling into the clutches of some Dark One’.
They both gave quick nods, then Ahren turned on his heels and disappeared quickly between the cabins so his friend wouldn’t see the tears streaming down his cheeks.
Chapter 13
It was a sorry sight that greeted Ahren when he reached the village square again. Villagers were standing all around in various states of dress. Most had woollen coats thrown over their nightgowns. Here and there blood-stained bandages glistened in the torchlight and the sound of distraught voices was punctuated by sobs and quiet sobbing. At the other end of the square he could see a row of motionless figures, lying on the ground and covered by woollen blankets.
Falk pulled him away before he could go over. There was no sign of Uldini. He grasped his apprentice by the shoulder and said, ‘you don’t want to see that, believe me’.
‘Who?’ asked Ahren, flatly.
Falk listed off a few names but none of them were people he had been close to. He felt a mixture of relief and guilt, but then Falk continued, ‘Rufus is lying there among them’.
Ahren felt a stabbing pain in his chest. Even though the unremarkable boy hadn’t been a friend really, he had always been nice to him. Ahren had learned to value his calm, steady manner in the Godsday school. Now he recognised three of the names. Rufus’ parents and his ten-year old sister were also among the dead. He could see the faces of the three in his mind’s eye and he felt sick. He doubled over and supported his hands on his knees and breathed deeply while Falk whispered to him, ‘I know it’s hard but every second counts now. A horde of Dark Ones are coming in our direction right now, and the quicker we get away from there, the safer these people will be’.
‘Uldini said the Fog Cats were after four people. He means us, doesn’t he? Likis, Holken, Rufus and me. It’s all connected somehow with the light at the Spring Ceremony, isn’t it?’ Ahren spoke in a hushed voice but Falk motioned to him to be quiet.
‘I’ll explain it all to you later but our friend says the others are safe. The attention is focused on you, him and me’.
‘Why?’ asked Ahren insistently.
‘Later. Now let’s scram’. Falk grabbed his upper arm and led him through the crowd. ‘I’ve already told the village council and Keeper Jegral and explained our future absence. Uldini is waiting with our four-legged friends so as to avoid questions being asked that we can’t answer’.
They arrived at the edge of village square and melted into the thicket of trees before Ahren had a chance to look for any familiar faces among the villagers.
Falk began to march as quickly as possible off through the forest. Within a few paces Culhen was by Ahren’s side and the young man gratefully stroked the animal’s coat, which was now dripping wet. Culhen must have used the free time to have a bath in a stream. Ahren smiled mischievously. He suspected, and not for the first time, that his four-legged friend was rather vain.
Selsena was waiting for them further back in the forest, standing motionless under an enormous oak tree. Her silver skin was lacerated with countless red welts, where the claws of the Fog Cats had scratched through her hide. Ahren stopped in shock but a wave of calmness came to him from Selsena.
‘It’s fine. Everything will be healed by the day after tomorrow’. The dark shape of the wizard came forth from behind the tree and looked at her with a critical eye. ‘Is everything sorted or do you still have to hold hands with someone or other’, he asked in a biting tone. His voice was beginning to come back to normal but he still seemed to be suffering under the emotional recoil of the death bringing fire magic.
‘How many were you able to save?’ asked Ahren, partly out of curiosity but also in an effort to distract the magician. If healing magic could help to restore his balance, then perhaps the memory of it could too.
‘Five villagers will live to see another day although it was a close call for two of them. And I had to put them all under a sleeping spell, so there wouldn’t be a new village legend about a healing black dwarf’. The biting tone could still be heard in the magician’s voice, although a little fainter.
‘Make yourself useful and heal Selsena’, growled Falk and glared at the little being.
He nodded in reply and said, ‘another bit of magic won’t make any difference, all the Dark Ones in the area got a whiff of us long ago’. He murmured a few words that Ahren couldn’t understand and green sparks appeared around the ball, which Uldini was still holding in his right hand. More and more sparks appeared over the course of perhaps ten heartbeats before they soared up and then dived like a swarm of glow-worms down onto Selsena, who stood stock still. The sparks landed on the welts where they went out, leaving a faint green glimmer, which gradually faded and disappeared. A perfect hide remained where the lights had been extinguished, leaving no sign whatever of injury.
‘Are we ready then?’ The wizard’s voice sounded tired rather than irritated. Ahren decided this had to be an improvement.
‘Where exactly are we going?’ asked Falk hesitantly.
‘To look for the Einhan of course. First the elves, then the dwarves. And, of course we need our Finder of the Path.’
The wizard stood there hopping from one foot to the other and for the first time he really looked like a little boy.
The young Forest Guardian had to keep reminding himself that the boy beside him was one of the Ancients, one of the wizards and wizardesses who had unlocked the secret of eternal youth for themselves. And he wasn’t just anyone, he was the highest and mightiest of the Ancients. Everyone knew the story of the gods’ darling, the Ancient who knew how to do magic like no other being on Jorath. But the legends had never said anything about a delicate nine-year-old. Ahren brooded and turned to Culhen who was standing on his hind legs with his tongue hanging out and looking from one to the other. Then it slowly dawned on him what the ancient boy had just said. Elves and dwarves? Ahren felt a thrill of anticipation in spite of all the horrors of this night. This journey promised to be exciting!
Falk said, ‘then we’re going to have to stop here in the forest temporarily. Otherwise Selsena will attract too much attention to herself’.
Uldini looked critically at the Titejunanwa’s horns and nodded.
‘It’s a detour of only a few miles, and we’re definitely going to need the rest of my armour’, continued the Guardian.
Uldini raised no objections and so Falk tapped Selsena on her hide and started off.
Ahren felt ignored and the events of the last few hours made him combative. ‘I’m going nowhere until someone explains to me by the love of the Three, what is actually going on here!’ And he jutted his chin out, ready for a fight.
All turned around to the apprentice in surprise and Uldini asked, ‘what did you tell him?’
Falk didn’t answer, at which point the boy laughed angrily, making a most peculiar sound and said, ‘he’s your protégé. Good luck!’ Then he pointedly walked on.
Falk glowered at Ahren, a piercing look that he reserved for occasions when his apprentice had behaved particularly stupidly. Then he waved the young man over to him and said, ‘let’s march on and I’ll tell you what you need to know’. Contented with his partial victory, Ahren set off and the disparate group went on their way.
They went through the forest speedily, Uldini floated along again above the ground so he could keep up with the experienced Guardians in the darkness of the night.
Falk rubbed his beard as he always did when he was contemplating something, and finally said, ‘it’s best if I start at the very beginning. You know about the Paladins?’
Ahren answered mistrustfully, ‘I know what was taught in the Godsday school and I know the stories that have been told around the bonfire and in the tavern’.
‘Then you know that there used to be thirteen Paladins, who fought during the Dark Days until the Night of Blood when one of them was killed?’ Falk’s voice was cracking and Ahren nodded. ‘There are some things that the peoples today would rather not talk about. When it became clear that He, who forces, could not be killed on account of the missing Paladin,’ Falk continued, ‘a magic spell was woven as an alternative, which was supposed to prevent him from ever waking up again. But the Ancients were no gods, nor even demi-gods. They had to combine the magic formula with a condition which could dissolve it. Otherwise their power wouldn’t not have been strong enough to cast the spell. Only He, who forces has been able to cast permanent magic spells – and it’s through those spells that the Dark Ones were created’.
Ahren nodded and couldn’t resist a quick glance over his shoulder. Tramping through the forest in the middle of the night so soon after a fight with a horde of Fog Cats wasn’t good for his nerves. The uncontrolled shivering, which he had also experienced after his encounter with the Blood Wolf, had stopped in the meantime, which meant he was gradually getting used to the sensation of danger. Falk had been right in that respect.
‘Thirteen Paladins are needed to defeat the Adversary. For the Three had invested exactly that amount of power into the awakening of the Paladins, which was the same amount of power that had gone into the creation of the Custodian. Not too much, not too little. They were the means needed to recreate the harmony of the creation’.
Falk was staring off into the middle distance. He sounded as if we were retelling something from his childhood.
‘So some of them thought it would be clever to connect the condition for ending the excommunication to the one thing that could kill the Betrayer. As soon as the thirteenth Paladin was chosen, then the magic spell that held the enemy in the Pall Pillar would break. The election was powerful enough as a ritual to guarantee that none of his servants could evade the trigger’.
‘But that sounds like a great plan’, said Ahren, hoping the old man would continue.
‘That’s what everyone thought at the time. But a Paladin had never been killed before. No-one knew what would happen next. It was hoped that the thirteenth Paladin would be born again within a few years, the Pall Pillar would dissipate, and then the three could unleash their powers simultaneously and kill the Adversary before he had a chance to recover from the effects of the enchanted sleep and before he had the chance to form a new army. But they had underestimated one thing’. They ducked under a low hanging branch as they travelled on and he continued to speak. ‘The Three were in a dreamless deep sleep and it was impossible to wake them or to plead to them in their dreams, as they had been able to do before. So for the moment there was no possibility that they could create a new Paladin until they had recovered somewhat, and no one knew how long this would take. The world was caught up in a deceptive peace. The centuries passed and many came to terms with the Pall Pillar and declared the enemy to have been defeated. This is why the religious texts nowadays are no longer very accurate. Nobody wants to hear that the Dark Days could come again’.
Falk looked quickly over at Uldini who nodded back at him.
‘To provide certainty that the arrival of a chosen one would be noticed by us, a ritual was created that found its way into the Spring Ceremony. Centuries passed and nothing happened, the peoples of the creation began to feel safe, and the importance of the ritual faded from memory, as did the threat that the sleeping spell of the enemy would not last forever. Nobody thought at that time that the gods would need more than seven hundred years to gather the strength to dream up a new Paladin’.
Ahren listened intently. Much of what he had heard was new, exactly as Falk had said. Keeper Jegral’s official version of the events had revealed little of this.
Falk looked at him expectantly. He had stopped marching, as had the others. Even Culhen seemed to be looking up at him. Had he missed something?
When Ahren didn’t react, Falk continued. ‘The ritual allowed for the stone of the gods to show a sign if the Paladin-to-be touched it during the Spring Festival’.
A nervous silence descended on the group while everybody waited for Ahren to draw the necessary conclusions. Several heartbeats passed during which his reason simply refused to function or to follow the logical chain of events to its inevitable conclusion.
‘You all think that I…’ he finally managed to utter weakly at before trailing off. The idea was too absurd and the consequences were too enormous.
Falk pressed Ahren to him, something he had only done once or twice before since he had known him.
‘I’m sorry, boy’, he whispered.
Uldini looked fixedly over Falk’s shoulder at Ahren during this embrace directly and said, ’you are going to be the future thirteenth Paladin and save the world as we know it, or die trying. Or maybe even before your Naming if we stand around here cuddling each other in a dark forest’.
Ahren shook his head. His thoughts were spinning around in a circle. He, a Paladin? Those two had to be crazy. ‘What do you mean ‘Naming’?’
Uldini took over the talking. He obviously wanted to get the thing over with so they could move on.
‘The awakening of a Paladin involves three steps. First, the birth. Then the selection, in order to see if the successor is worthy. This used to be a formality, as the descendants of the previous Paladins were the chosen ones. Once the selection was made, the power of the outgoing Paladin would begin to pass over to the chosen child. And that was our di
lemma. He had killed the father and the son, so the power of the thirteenth was lost’. He cleared his throat. ‘Then the Naming followed, once adulthood was reached. The Einhan requested the blessing of the gods for the aspirant and he or she received the gifts of the Three: immortality, soul-animal and godly armour – and then we had a new Paladin. All were happy and the predecessor could die at last’. He looked at the apprentice with a twinkle in his eye. ‘You’ve already passed two of the three steps. Unfortunately the last step is somewhat more complicated, not least because you cannot receive your power from your predecessor. The selection released the power. It will be anchored in you when you are named’.
‘What do I have to do?’ asked Ahren curiously, although he feared the answer.
‘You don’t have to do anything apart from accompany us. We’ll find the Einhan and take it from there, said Falk in a comforting voice.
There was that word again: Einhan.
‘What are the Einhan?’ Asked Ahren. Every answer seemed to throw up a new question, something Uldini recognized too. There was scorn in his voice again when he answered.
‘Each is a specific representative of people, elves and the dwarves who intercedes for you before their god. Which, by the way, will never happen if we’re caught by a pack of Low Fangs here in the forest’.
Falk nodded to the wizard and they all went on, the old man leading a dazed Ahren by the arm. Lost in thought he stumbled through the darkness and kept thinking over what he had just heard. Hours passed before they finally stopped. In front of them was a dense thicket of blackthorn, a particularly hardy plant, named after the dark hooks that could be found all over its resilient tendrils. Animals avoided these plants as they were practically inedible and difficult to penetrate. However, they usually stood alone and Ahren had never seen so many together.
‘Wait here’, grunted Falk and drew his sword. Ahren looked at his mentor in amazement as he began to hack down the thicket with fluid movements. Falk had always drummed in respect for nature and pointed out to Ahren how he should behave towards plants and animals. Now the old man was standing in front of him and slashing all before him. Once he had hacked the plants to pieces, he pulled out an enormous, heavy oilskin sack with a groan, and carefully began to undo it. He responded to Ahren’s look of shock with a shrug of his shoulders and the explanation, ‘I planted them to protect my things. The plants were in the wrong place here anyway and were beginning to choke the forest’.
Ahren- the 13th Paladin Page 20
