Prelude (The Songs of Aarda Book 1)

by K Schultz

  People rambled through the limestone structure too. There was nowhere else to run. He awoke, sweating and breathless, as he peeled off his damp sheets.

  “What does it mean?” he shouted into the darkness. “Why can’t I get a decent night’s rest? Leave me alone, damn it.” Rehaak rose, drew on his clothes, and threw another log on the fire. Although his anger boiled, he shivered while he paced in front of the hearth. He kicked the door open wide and stood in the doorway, his back to the fireplace. Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he headed for the privy for a different type of release.

  The wet, windy night had an edge as sharp as broken flint. “It must be near dawn,” Rehaak muttered. “I hate these nights awake and alone and full of doubts. Am I like the man who mutilated his body after he was dead? Am I dead inside but still capable of inflicting injury on myself and others? Has the color leached from me like the villagers from my dream because I lack purpose and direction? I vowed to become a better person, but I am the same selfish fool I have always been, still hiding from my responsibilities. Is this prayer, or am I talking to myself?

  “Destruction still looms over Aarda, because my past failures meant my warnings went unheeded. Had they not exiled me, I would have run away, but I could never run far enough to escape myself. A long string of broken promises and compromises led me by small steps to where I now stand naked and ashamed. I sought refuge and lived in peace for almost two years. Now doubts circle inside my head like carrion crows waiting for a meal. My refuge has become a prison.

  “Since I abandoned my mission, I am hollow like a pumpkin lantern — a smiling face without the candle inside to give light to the grin. I have reached my thirty-fifth summer, but I am no wiser than when I left home as a youngster. The Dark Ones are coming, and I have done nothing because I am powerless without clear evidence.”

  Raindrops on the leaves and the wind moaning through the trees drowned out other noises. Rehaak, head down and shoulders hunched against the rain, strode toward the privy.

  “Creator, I need your help. I tried, but they would not heed the warning. Is there time to change my course? Am I courageous enough to change directions? Can you give me another chance, or have you abandoned me forever?”

  Escape

  Laakea’s hat snagged on a branch and fell to the ground. He bent and scrabbled around in the leaf litter looking for it. Cold rain trickled down his neck. Brambles scored his hands while the water inside his boots squelched between his toes and sucked away more of his body’s precious warmth.

  The wolf behind Laakea howled again, near enough that Laakea imagined the animal’s hot breath on his heels. He gave up the search for his hat. The second wolf’s answering howl came almost directly in front of him to the left. Laakea again veered right and pressed onward. His heart hammered a slow, labored rhythm against his breastbone.

  Is that a light?

  More isolated and alone than ever, he struggled ahead, but his numbed legs buckled, and he fell. A branch gashed his forehead on the way down, pain radiated from the wound, and the cold mud of the forest floor seeped through his clothes. He suddenly felt too warm. His numb fingers fumbled with the fastenings of his cloak, but he couldn’t remove the garment. The buttons of his wool overcoat also proved too difficult for his cold hands to manage.

  The wolves howled again nearer than before, and panic gave him a surge of strength. He gave up his efforts to disrobe. He cursed, stumbled to his feet, and lurched forward, grasping saplings, leaning against tree trunks, anything along the way that kept him upright and moving forward.

  A yellow glow, yes.

  Laakea willed his legs to move and set his course toward the light flickering ahead of him. But he grew weaker with each step.

  A lantern or maybe a campfire.

  The firelight lured him like a moth drawn to a candle. Laakea needed no reminder that moths perish in the flame. Aelfric had told him stories of rough men, human wolves, who preyed on weak and helpless people. If the fire belonged to the brigands who lurked in this forest, they would gut him like a fish. In any case the wolves should give up their pursuit around other men.

  I will risk it. I was stupid and careless. I should have planned...should have taken provisions, a bedroll, my bow, the sword Pa made for me before I ran. Too angry...no time to prepare. Laakea’s jumbled thoughts had drifted again. Death awaited him if he allowed his mind to wander. No use thinking about what I should have done or making a list of things I don’t have.

  A root trapped his foot, and he fell again, and hopelessness overcame him. The fire could mean his salvation or a grisly death, but he was freezing, and wolves hunted him, so to stay where he was, guaranteed his demise. The fire at least held the possibility of keeping him alive. It was the best choice left to him. Laakea set his course by the light and pushed aside the wet undergrowth that jabbed and slashed his exposed skin. Each step demanded a payment drawn from an internal account of willpower and energy with a balance near zero. At least I will be warm when I die.

  Aelfric’s relentless schedule of combat training at home had appeared pointless to Laakea since nothing threatened them, and there was no enemy to defeat. Tonight, alone and unarmed in the darkness, he wished he had paid more attention. The skills his father taught him might have saved his life tonight...if he had weapons. But his father’s lessons were useless to him when he was cold and tired, with only a dagger for defense.

  Hope blossomed when the light grew brighter as he moved closer to it, and it became two, one large and the other smaller.

  A doorway...a window...in a house...I can do this.

  The wolves’ howls faded into the distance.

  Thank the gods. They lost my scent, or the smell of men scared them off.

  Laakea tried to shout for aid, but little more than a groan issued from him. His jaw and his lips were as numb and sluggish as his arms and legs. It was a race now. Time became elastic, measured in sodden footsteps. Seconds stretched into what felt like hours. Laakea’s limbs behaved like they belonged to someone else, but he commanded them to cooperate, and they responded grudgingly like the arms and legs of a string puppet.

  The golden voice spoke again. “It is not ended.”

  He drew closer to the radiance of the doorway, but it grew dimmer instead of brighter. His eyelids grew heavy. His consciousness drifted like the wind-driven clouds overhead. Fog overwhelmed his mind and blurred what little he saw in the darkness. Oh, gods, just a little farther, please. His knees buckled, and he sprawled onto the wet litter of the forest floor face down; his outstretched hands barely slowed his fall. Blackness swallowed him in a single gulp.

  Discovery

  Rehaak had dressed quickly since his bladder needed relief as much as his troubled mind and guilty conscience. Heavy overcast and drizzle, typical of late autumn, made it difficult to see the trail ahead as he headed down the path to the privy, but the track was familiar. He muttered to himself as he walked, a habit he had picked up since living alone.

  “Since I came here, I have spent so much time by myself that isolation has developed into a habit, and I have made no friends except Isil. She never makes demands, and she has no expectations of me. Her visits are my only moments of peace since the nightmares began. I trust Isil more than anyone, yet I dare not share my deepest fear, the Nethera invasion, and my shame for turning my back on our people after my failure in Narragan. I am afraid to lose her friendship once she knows the truth.” He reached the privy and relieved himself.

  Rehaak had fallen into the mindset of his neighbors. In Narragan, Rehaak had been a public figure; here, he was an outsider. Out here, people tried to escape their pasts and valued their privacy, what they did before was no one’s business but their own, and Rehaak, like others, had built a wall around himself. When someone needed healing, he healed them, and because of his skills, most people treated him with respect. The residents valued his abilities, not his company. Rehaak knew the difference and accepted it. He remained an outsider, o
dd and untouchable, even here, where odd or untouchable was the norm.

  “I am overwhelmed by the bustle of village life because I have become more sensitive to people’s emotions. When the Dark Ones arrive, New Hope’s citizens will die, and I see no way to prevent it. Friendships will only deepen the pain of their deaths and my sense of guilt for failing to warn them. I carry enough guilt already.”

  Rehaak sighed and shrugged. “Tonight seems a night for prayer. Lord Creator, I cannot hide any longer, please give me one more chance,” he said, not believing the Creator heard his prayer, much less would answer it.

  The light from the hearth glowed through the open door of the cabin and ruined his night vision, but it guided his way back from the privy. While Rehaak walked toward his cabin, he heard what sounded like a groan. Twigs snapped in the bracken ahead. He stopped and listened, but only the patter of rain on leaves broke the silence.

  Rehaak walked forward cautiously, fearing another attack by unknown assailants. A wolf howled in the distance as Rehaak tripped and toppled headlong onto the muddy trail. He spat out a mouthful of dirt and rubbed the muck off his lips as he looked back to see what caused his fall.

  A tall man in sodden garments sprawled across the pathway. Rehaak turned him onto his back, but it was too dark to see his face. The big man’s breathing was shallow and labored. His presence left Rehaak with two choices: he could leave the fellow here to die and bury the corpse in the morning or drag him into the house and try to revive him. He suspected he would regret the decision, but he chose compassion over convenience.

  Rehaak’s feet slipped and squelched on the rain-drenched trail, causing him to fall several times. Soaked and caked with grime, he shivered as the chill air found its way through his garments and numbed his fingers. The stranger’s clothes tangled in the underbrush along the trail and slowed his progress as Rehaak dragged him homeward. Mud mixed with rainwater stung Rehaak’s eyes, but he persisted. At last, the stranger’s body bumped across the threshold. Once inside, he unclenched his cold-numbed fingers from the stranger’s garments and kicked the door closed.

  Rehaak gasped from the exertion of dragging the large stranger inside the house. “Let’s see who you are,” he stooped and wiped the mud from the fellow’s face.

  The young man’s skin was pale, tinged with blue around the eyelids and lips, not the usual verdigris of an Abrhaani complexion. His hair, caked with mud, looked blond, though it was hard to tell, and his fingers lacked webbing between them. Though the gangly frame was man-sized, the face belonged to a beardless youth. He was a lad about to enter manhood, lean, muscled, accustomed to hard labor, and half a span, the distance from outstretched thumb to the little finger, taller than Rehaak.

  “Well, now I have a puzzle to solve. Let’s get you dry and warm. If you make it through the night, I will need to hear your story, young fellow, and I suspect it will be most interesting.”

  Rehaak removed the boy’s belt, dagger, and homespun garments. He hung the clothes on the clothesline beside the fire to dry and rolled the stranger close to the hearth, hoping the warmth radiating from the blaze in the fireplace might revive him. Apart from small cuts and scrapes, there were no wounds. A walk through the dark forest explained the bruises and abrasions, but they didn’t account for the reason for the youth’s presence in the woods at night.

  Rehaak covered the lad with his spare blanket and faced the hearth with the boy’s supine body between him and the fire. He stretched out his legs, leaned back in the chair, lit his pipe, and blew smoke rings at the ceiling while he pondered the situation. The boy provided a diversion to keep his troubled thoughts at bay until morning.

  Rehaak knew of the Eniila from the books he studied and from traders’ stories. This man-child fit the descriptions, and there were rumors of an Eniila smith who lived near the village of Dun Dale. He had never been there, although Latonia had asked him to brew a potion for the man’s wife. New Hope contained enough people for him to avoid; Rehaak didn’t know the folk in Dun Dale because he limited his trading to New Hope, but now he wished he had more information about the village. Villagers said the smith had crossed the Syn Gersuul from Baradon years ago, so this lad must be the smith’s child. But why journey at night and alone?

  Strange that any members of that hard, violent species would live among us.

  What is this young fellow trying to escape? Have I made a mistake by isolating myself?

  Rehaak spoke to the unconscious youngster as if he could hear. “It has been decades since your people drove mine from the coast of Baradon, but both our species have long memories of the wars we have fought. We make poor neighbors without the Syn Gersuul keeping us separated. We trade now, but most of my people are bitter at the loss of the seaports we built on the coast and angry about the Abrhaani slaves, who work for Eniila masters. You are a puzzle, my young friend.”

  Rehaak sat, smoked, and pondered his options.

  When morning came, it caught Rehaak by surprise. He had fallen asleep in the chair, his pipe lay on the floor beside him, only embers remained in the hearth, and his back ached. He stretched, and his ligaments popped but didn’t ease the stiffness in his joints.

  Although the youngster’s color and breathing had improved, the boy had not moved. His hair, now dry, appeared as yellow as ripe grain. The lines and curves of his face, relaxed in sleep, hinted at the features of the man he would become. Rehaak stoked the fire and went to fetch water for herb tea to ease his back pain.

  “If he does not recover, I will bury him near the other graves at the edge of the forest. If he does...”

  Rehaak gathered up his water pot and his smoking things, slid his robe on over his tunic, and latched the door behind him. Once outside, he used the time to think and took the trail that snaked through the trees and headed toward the stream. His footsteps squelched in the soft mud, and the rhythm of his stride provided accompaniment for the morning birdsong.

  Rehaak reached a decision. “Once the boy awakens, I will send him back where he belongs. I do not need to borrow trouble, especially Eniila trouble, and I fear misfortune follows this youngster like a faithful hound.”

  Wolves

  Laakea awoke, warm and alone. The familiar sound of fire crackled in the hearth. Laakea’s last memory was numbing cold, darkness, and firelight in the distance that had drawn him forward with its promise of warmth. Then darkness overcame him until he roused on the packed earth floor in front of this fire.

  Laakea assessed his surroundings like his father had taught him. Dim light filtered through the lone oilskin window, which meant it was daytime. He knew oilskin was the cheapest windowpane available. It allowed light to enter the cabin but blocked the view. The cabin’s rough plank door and river rock fireplace reminded him of home. Laakea’s home was similar, but with three rooms: one room this size, and two bedrooms. His father’s house had a flagstone floor with packed clay between the stones rather than the dirt floor beneath him.

  A straw-filled mattress on a wooden bedframe stood in the corner near the hearth. A table, a bench, and a chair sat along the opposite wall. The bench’s seat planks and the tabletop had been worn smooth on the upper sides, but the chair’s wood lacked the patina and wear of the other furniture. It was a newer addition. There were two battered copper pots near the hearth, and other utensils hung nearby. The meager possessions and narrow bed indicated a single tenant, probably male, occupied this dwelling.

  Laakea’s clothes hung draped over a rope strung from pegs near the fireplace. He wrapped the blanket around himself until he gathered his clothes and slid into the stiff dirt-encrusted garments. Once dressed, he strapped on his belt and slipped his dagger into its sheath. His hungry stomach growled, but his bladder, full to bursting, overruled his stomach’s complaint.

  Laakea slid the wooden latch aside and pushed the crude plank door open. Last night’s drizzle had stopped, but the sky remained overcast and blotted out the sun, so he couldn’t get his bearings until the sky cl
eared. Thick mist hovered above the forest floor, which made the trees and undergrowth look like they sprang directly from the shifting fog. Water dripped from leaves and branches in the crisp morning air.

  Laakea’s distended bladder threatened to explode. Looking around, he saw a trail that branched and led into the forest. Laakea picked the right-hand path and hurried along it, hoping to find a privy. The faint sound of running water ahead intensified his need and necessity overcame propriety. He stepped off the path and aimed his flow against the roots of a dogwood bush.

  A twig snapped. Laakea swiveled to find its cause. Three shaggy gray wolves emerged from the mist and the bracken ferns. Their unusual green eyes sparkled as they glided toward Laakea, legs obscured by the fog, and he whispered, “Thanks be to the gods my bladder is already empty.” He reached for his dagger and crouched into a defensive stance. He backed away from the animals slowly while his heart pounded against his breastbone like his father’s hammer on iron, fresh from the forge. He knew he could never outrun these fleet-footed predators.

  The wolves fanned out to either side and flanked him. Since the wolves’ stood between him and the cabin, he backed slowly down the trail toward the sound of the stream. Laakea had seen what wolves did to a sheep, and gruesome memories of that scene still haunted him.

  Laakea imagined himself helpless as Blossom, the ewe had been, the backs of his legs oozing blood, his throat slashed, and his entrails spilled on the forest floor. He banished the images of them rending and tearing his flesh while he backed toward the sound of the stream. The ground sloped steeply behind him, and Laakea’s footing became precarious, but he dared not lose sight of the predators in front of him.