Darkin: The Prophecy of the Key (The Darkin Saga Book 2) (36 page)

The early meadow morn was drenched in low-lying clouds, and through the fog little was visible, but the riders galloped swiftly and with purpose, as Pursaiones had long known her way without sight.

“Are you sure you remember the old path?” Taisle said, disbelieving Pursaiones, thinking their new-built wall would thwart them from leaving.

“I am certain I do—Remtall taught me the way,” she replied with a smile.

“He always did like you most,” replied Taisle apprehensively as they came upon the first inclining foothills. Hours passed and soon the riders were trotting steeply up a barely passable ridge. Low-lying clouds had dissipated, and visibility was good again. Eventually, Pursaiones called them to a stop, breaking by a trickling spring that the horses refreshed upon. She looked over the narrow pass they would soon attempt, then patted her horse on its soft brown mane.

“We’re sure-footed today, eh girl?” Pursaiones said, reassuring herself more than her horse.

“Did you and Remtall ever actually take this ridge?” Taisle asked, beginning to doubt the feasibility of what looked to be a severe drop ahead of them. The mountain transformed into a sheer face, and only a thin ridge hugged the flat rise of granite, bushes sticking out from between cracks in the rock; at one point, it seemed, the entire ridge disappeared, revealing a free fall of several hundred yards.

“Of course not—Remtall never left the meadow, you know that,” Pursaiones replied.

“Right—I just…was hoping, I guess,” Taisle gulped. In a moment Pursaiones drove her steed on, and together they reached the narrow ridge, hanging nakedly. Hundreds of yards below spread the valley, a massive forest-blanketed stretch of foothills that bridged the base of their mountain to that of the next peak in the range.

“Steady girl,” Pursaiones said. Her horse tried in vain to find footing. Soon the ridge grew thinner, more treacherous, and the horse refused the path, as there was no clear footing. It would not against its better judgment take another step forward.

“Purs—it looks like we’re going to have to turn around, head to the wall. Maybe we can expose a spot, break it down,” suggested Taisle.

“And leave Rislind defenseless in our wake?” she scolded him. “Ah!” she whipped her horse, and for fright of another hit, the horse leaped forward, bounding over the missing length of the ridge where it receded into the rock face.

“Purs!” screamed Taisle in horror: her horse lost its footing and began to slip sidelong down the edge of the thin ledge. In a panic, it slipped farther, then toppled off the ridge and began to freefall. Pursaiones realized her doom and screamed violently. The horse neighed, writhing wildly in thin air, bucking Pursaiones from its back; they fell quickly, drifting apart in space, plummeting faster toward foothills two hundred yards below. Taisle wailed in disbelief, tears flooding his face as he watched in agony, entirely helpless, unable to help her.

“Pursaiones!” Taisle yelled—she’d fallen too far now, could not hear him; the last thing she was to hear was the sound of her own screams, the ferocious neighing of her equine companion. Taisle hung his head as her screams grew faint, far, out of reach—he no longer heard the death shrieks, and he closed his tear-filled eyes. Salt-tasting sorrow ran in streams to his lips. He bit so hard against the side of his tongue that it bled. His tears mixed with blood, all of which dripped from his chin.

“Damn you Noilerg! Gaigas! Damn every last one of you!” Taisle screamed with every last ounce of energy in his body. His horse retreated in fear, knowing well the plight of his sister horse, knowing better than to try the leap himself. For several minutes Taisle tried to reassemble coherent thought, but he could not. Nothing seemed to make sense to him now—it didn’t mean anything if he continued on, it didn’t mean anything if he went back to town; there was no purpose left for him. He looked at the sky, spirit filled with the ache and desire of one convinced he is in a terrible nightmare.

“Wake up—wake up Taisle!” he screamed. The heavens did not yield a response to him. He became aware that he was all too awake, that he would not snap out of his new reality; it had just happened, it was irreparable, unchangeable.

“Hi,” came a soft voice from near the ridge where Pursaiones had slipped to her death.

“What?” snapped Taisle, wondering if he had entered into madness, hearing voices in a state of heart-ripping delusion.

“I said, hi!” came the happy chirp of a young man. Taisle watched, completely petrified: the figure of a human floated up from beneath the edge of the ridge to the spot where it completely disappeared into the rock face. Taisle rubbed his eyes, his horse whinnied wildly; the man was still there, hovering in midair, floating over hundreds of yards of empty space, smiling at him.

“You’re…real?” Taisle said, struggling to form words.

“Of course I’m real! And your friend is very lucky I passed this way,” came the exuberant reply.

“What?”

“Taisle!” came a desperate high-pitched wail; rising up from below the man was a horse and a woman.

“Pursaiones!” gasped Taisle, his eyes filling with tears again. “How is this possible—I must be dreaming—I must have fallen and hit my head on a rock!”

“No, you’re quite awake,” came the chipper voice in response. Motioning his body toward the cliff, the man flew forward and landed, hopping lightly to where Taisle had retreated back from. The horse in thin air and Pursaiones followed on their own, landing farther behind Taisle.

“My name is Adacon—nice to meet you,” came the sweetest voice Taisle had ever heard. Taisle jumped from his steed and squeezed the man as hard as he’d ever done in his life, deciding he didn’t care anymore whether he was dreaming or not: he would accept it either way—Pursaiones was alive.

“I thought it was over, I was expecting pain to come—all I could think about was the pain,” Pursiaones said, bewildered.

“It’s quite alright, you’re safe now,” Adacon reassured her.

“Who are you?” Taisle said, finally releasing the man.

“I am Adacon, I’ve just told you that,” he replied eagerly.

“But—it’s just, I’ve never seen Vapoury before, especially not
flying
!” Taisle said. Pursiaones lay flat against the ground, embracing a patch of grass, sighing after each breath of soil.

“How sweet I never knew, solid ground!” came Pursaiones in a frenzy of relief. Her horse already seemed to have forgotten its near death experience, and was fraternizing with her brother horse, grazing lazily upon the sparse shoots rising between cracks in the granite. 

“Well, I’ve just learned it really, so don’t be that impressed,” Adacon replied.

“Thank you so much,” whimpered Pursaiones. She shot to her feet, forgetting she hadn’t thanked him for saving her life.

“You’re quite welcome. You haven’t told me your names,” sprang Adacon’s incessant cheer, miming the youthful essence of Tempern.

“I’m Pursaiones, and—”

“I’m Taisle.”

“Pleased to meet you, Taisle and Pursaiones,” Adacon responded with a smile. He brushed away his maple hair which had grown long and straight, occasionally falling over his face. Through stone-grey eyes Adacon gazed at them, perplexed by something.

“You’re both from Rislind, aren’t you?” he asked, curiosity piquing.

“Yes,” they answered together.

“Then—pardon me for asking—why did you come this way? Surely the wall of vines would be the easier way?”

“The wall of vines was destroyed—so we were forced to seal the way with a wall. It’s impassable now,” Taisle answered quickly.

“Destroyed? That’s strange,” Adacon said, wondering how the Vapoury of the magical bramble could have been tampered with. “Why do you leave? I didn’t know that anyone traveled away from Rislind—especially with times such as we’ve had lately.”

“It’s a story of oddity—there’s been a light, a ring of light, surrounding the peaks of the Rislind range,” Taisle began.

“Then, after we went to find out where the light was coming from, one of our friends was kidnapped,” Pursaiones explained.

“Not really one of ours—a stranger, new to our village,” Taisle rejected her inclusion of Noilerg. Adacon looked concerned.

“Zesm,” he said to himself, recalling the detailed stories of Remtall’s, in which his son had been taken in the night, sold into slavery. “Was the kidnapped one a child?”

“No, a man—middle-aged,” Taisle replied.

“And you’re trying to find a way out of Rislind to find him?” Adacon asked.

“Yes—to save him,” Pursiaones went on. She explained the situation at length to Adacon, from the first story of ghosts in the village, to the night they caught Noilerg stealing, to the destruction of the magical entrances, to Noilerg’s prominence among the town people, and finally, to the sight of the strange metal vehicle in the forest that had made the awful clicking sound. Adacon listened patiently, seemingly with all the time in the world to listen, nodding as they relayed the events.

“That is odd—click, click, click, you say?” he asked again.

“Yes, and we saw him—strapped into the thing, horrified. Whoever or whatever it is, it’s got him, and it was not friendly.”

“I’d guess that the light around your village is connected to that thing somehow,” Adacon suggested.

“You’ve already done more than anyone could ask, but will you help us get out of these mountains?” Pursiaones begged. Adacon’s smile vanished for a moment. He seemed to ponder whether or not he should let them out of Rislind—whether or not it would be safe for them to carry on.

“If you don’t, I will try the ridge again, I have no other choice—I can’t let him die.”

“You’re in love him!” Adacon said unexpectedly, a smile crossing his face. Taisle frowned and looked away.

“I don’t know,” she said. “No—I’m not.” She looked at Taisle, but he tried to appear as if he wasn’t paying attention. “No one deserves that, to be taken.”

“I know the pain of missing a loved one. I’ll help, but I hope you don’t get sick easily. I don’t plan on walking out of here,” Adacon said. A joyful expression of eagerness wrapped his face again; in a whirl of strong wind, Taisle and Pursaiones both found themselves thrusted high above the ridge, then above the treeline near the peak, and soon above the entire mountain range. Slightly underneath them were their horses, surprisingly calm for drifting through open space, thousands of yards above solid earth.

“Dear Gaigas!” cried Taisle. His stomach felt as if it sat in his throat. Looking to his left, Pursaiones appeared to have shut her eyes tight, not ready to have left sturdy soil again so soon.

“This is amazing,” said Taisle. He’d overcome his angry stomach rather quickly, and looking around, adrenaline filled his body. He beheld a view he’d never imagined in his wildest dreams: the grass fields of the Rislind Plateau stretched for miles in every direction; behind him was the circular range of the Rislind mountains, concealing the tiny meadow at its heart. To his left was a stream meandering out from the river at the west entrance to the Rislind range, and following the stream Taisle saw it transform, eventually growing into a serpentine river in the distance that dropped suddenly at a waterfall, plummeting from the plateau at its highest point. Directly in front of them was a rover’s dream: the Vashnod prairie. To his right he spied the tiny-looking twin tower of Ceptical, and further in the distance Ceptical tower itself.

They flew on. Taisle gazed in raw splendor at the looming fog-drenched peaks of the grey Angelyn mountains, many times higher than the greatest of Rislind’s peaks. Far to his left appeared a bare tract of arid flatland, burgeoning into a desert, vast, snaking away south.

“Look there!” cried Pursaiones, who had finally opened her eyes after several oohs and aahs had gushed from Taisle as he beheld every feature of the magnificent spectacle below. She pointed to what had already caught Adacon’s attention—it was a thick band of marching rovers, some reflecting light with armor, some not. Adacon knew immediately the blue glint of dwarven mail; neither Pursaiones nor Taisle saw the wide grin that crossed his face. He caught something else in his vision—a silver object hovering in the sky above the marching troop, higher than he flew.

“Are we going to land near them?” Taisle asked. “Maybe they’ve seen the silver thing—” Taisle cut himself off, noticing what had distracted Adacon: a larger version of the vessel he’d seen in the forest floated northwest of them, higher up between a spread of long cloudbands. “That’s it!”

“But it’s impossible—it’s so much bigger.”

“You’re sure that’s what you saw?” Adacon asked, focusing hard on the strange anomaly.

“Yes!” they replied at the same time. Several lines of darker metal ran the length of the oblong vehicle, and three points of light dotted its hull, spread uniformly—other than that, it had no features.

“Maybe we’ll rescue your friend sooner than you thought,” Adacon said zealously, increasing their speed. In the distance, they watched the vessel shoot straight down; in a matter seconds, it had landed on the ground, a small tube glinting silver under the sun, right alongside the band of marching fighters. The marching army slowly came to a halt, realizing it had visitors. The long straight line of warriors began to coil in, surrounding the silver mystery that had fallen from the sky.

“There in a minute friends,” Adacon said to himself. The air around them whooshed violently—in an instant they had closed in on a confrontation between the alien craft and the confounded army of Gaiberth and King Terion.

XXVI: ASCARONTH

“This way,” called Peren to Erguile, who trailed him. They had traveled through the dank winding corridors for hours. Behind them trudged all of the city’s remaining citizens and the last of the Hemlin Army.

“These damned tunnels!” said Erguile in frustration. It hadn’t been official, but he had assumed command of Flaer’s legion and become Peren’s second-in-command.

“Are you sure this is the way, Peren?” came Diblo, an old druid who wore a singed robe of scarlet and green, walking fast alongside the generals.

“As sure as our lore teaches it—I’ve never been through this pass, it’s been sealed for an age. I only pray the Reichmar receive us well when they discover what’s happened,” Peren replied.