The Dark Glory War (47 page)

Lord Norrington nodded. “Your reasoning is sound, Prince Augustus.”

My hands were trembling as I set my plate down. “Don’t do this, my lord, don’t send me away.”

Lord Norrington looked up and fixed me with a compassionate stare. “You think I am willing to send you away because what we are going to do will likely result in our deaths, don’t you? You think I wish to spare you that pain, to preserve your life.”

“Yes, Lord Norrington.”

“You’re wrong, Hawkins.” He looked around the circle, past the leaping flames that hissed and snapped. The others had stopped eating and regarded us carefully. I remember Drugi wiping food from his white beard with the back of his hand, watching me to see how I was reacting. All of them knew Lord Norrington was, in fact, attempting to save my life, and they seemed ready and willing to aid him in that effort.

“You’re wrong, Hawkins, because the battles Prince Augustus will fight could just as easily destroy you as any we will engage in. You will not be spared hazardous duty. You will be there, fighting along with the others. You will be spared nothing.”

I stood slowly, fighting to hold back tears. “Respectfully, my lord, I submit you are wrong. I will be spared a chance to put an end to the evil that has taken over my life. You cannot have forgotten how, on the first night I wore a moonmask, I slew a temeryx to save a friend—only to find his life had been ruined by the beast. My family, back in Valsina, thrills to tales of this expedition, but I know fear gnaws at them, the same way it gnaws at each of us. Friends have died because of Chytrine, and friends have been broken, and the whole of my adult life has been centered around stopping her. While what Prince Augustus sets out to do is right and necessary to blunt her evil, what you will do will be the thing that puts an end to it. If I go with him and, somehow, you fail, I will know it was because I was not there.”

Lord Norrington’s eyes narrowed. “And what if we all fail, Hawkins? What if the cold kills us? What if we never find her and are trapped in the mountains, waiting to starve? There are a thousand ways we can fail. Those of us who are going have lived our lives and can assess the risks. We know what we are doing. You do not.”

I raised my chin. “I tell you, my lord, that in the last months I have lived a lifetime as well. I know the risks. There may be a thousand ways the effort can fail, but the thousand and first would be to leave me behind. Narrow the odds at least that much.”

Lord Norrington stared into the fire for a while, then looked over at Prince Augustus. “I thank you, my friend, for your asking after Hawkins. I apologize for putting you up to that.”

Augustus nodded once. “It was my pleasure to help you. And, Hawkins, know that what I said concerning you was the truth. I would gladly have you beside me.”

Lord Norrington smiled, then looked around the circle again. “I should have known better than to ask what I did, and I apologize to all of you for this public display. Tarrant Hawkins here is someone I have known since before he could walk. Among us, as you may know, when a youth receives his first adult mask—like the one he wears now—it is customary for friends to offer gifts. I offered him the choice of anything it was my ability to grant. Hawkins here asked for only one thing: my trust. I gave it to him and now reaffirm it. It is my hope you will join me in that trust, for he is very much a worthy companion on this quest of ours.”

Those gathered at the fire, those who would brave Aurolan, grumbled and nodded their assent, then went back to eating. Occasionally one or the other of them would look at me and nod, not the nod of an elder indulging a child, but the nod of a peer to a peer. In that fire burned any doubts they may have had about me.

Over the years I have had time to reflect on that incident. I do not yet know if Lord Norrington meant truly to offer me a chance to escape, or if he wanted a way for me to show the others that I was as committed to the quest as they were. Perhaps it was a bit of both, but the core of it came down to his letting me take responsibility for my own life.

Had I, at that point, come to believe my own legend? It was easy to be humble in such heroic company, but their easy acceptance of me did let me believe I deserved to be there. Idid believe my role would be critical in hunting down Chytrine, though never would I have expected my role to be warped the way it was. And while I will not say there are not days when I wish I had gone with Augustus, I do believe the choice made at that fire was the right one, despite everything that flowed from it.

Leavetaking that next morning was full of cheers and hearty brags. A thousand locks of Chytrine’s hair were promised that morning, I figure, and twice that number of sword cuts to her heart. I’m sure most of them saw us as riding off to reap glory, but by the same token, I don’t think but a handful of them would have come along with us if offered the chance.

It took us three days to reach the pass. Life settled into an easy routine during that time, and the falling snow softened the landscape so effectively that it was almost possible to forget the business we were about. The snow brought with it a silence that made every forested stretch we rode through into a peaceful temple. I let myself think about the good times in my past and project them forward, seeing myself with Seethe at my side. In those moments I did not doubt my ability to survive and, rather foolishly, I assumed that if / could survive, all of us would.

Because of the snow we did not push on as hard as we might. While I was used to winters in Oriosa and dealing with snow, Drugi and Aren taught me a great deal about surviving in the colder north. Some things were simple, like learning not to build a fire beneath snow-laden branches, since the snow, when warmed by the fire, would fall into it and smother it. They also showed me how to read tracks in the snow, and we all rejoiced that there were no temeryx tracks for me to learn from.

Other things were more important. We melted snow for water and had to stir so it wouldn’t scorch. More importantly, we never ate snow and, as much as possible, drank only teas or water that had been heated. Toward that end we kept water-skins between our coats and us, letting our bodies warm the water. Cold water would chill us and, given our circumstances, that would kill us, too.

At night we slept two to a tent, sharing body heat beneath thick blankets and skins. Drugi showed us how to make shelters of snow, so we often built a wall to the windward side of our tents. Seethe and I shared a tent. We were more than companions but less than lovers. Though we huddled together, our naked bodies pressed tightly to each other, we did not make love. It really wasn’t necessary—we had each other and that was more than enough. We slept in each other’s arms, woke to warm and heartfelt greetings, and then rejoined our other companions to continue our journey.

At noon on the third day, as we crested a hill, Lord Norrington called a halt. The skies had cleared and ahead of us, barely a half-day’s ride away, lay the pass. Snow blurred details of the pass’ steep sides, but could not erase the impression that the mountains had been cloven with a giant ax. Snow filled the pass, and even though we could see everything very clearly, we caught no sign of Chytrine.

“Either she’s already made it through, or she got buried in it.” Drugi nipped off a piece of dried beef and tucked it inside his left cheek. He pointed the rest of the beef stick toward the pass. “Could be a snowtide caught her.”

Lord Norrington’s breath came white through the green wool of his scarf. “Doesn’t matter what she did, as long as she didn’t turn back. The question is, can we make it through?”

Aren Asvaldget tossed back his wolfs-head hood and looked north. “Snowtide might have let her pass, but it would get us. See the wind curling snow out into ledges to the east there? Those come down and they’ll never find us.”

Drugi nodded his agreement.

Lord Norrington reined his horse around. “Faryaah-Tse, the mountains forming the eastern side of the pass are part of Boragul, aren’t they?”

The diminutive urZrethi nodded. “The advent of cooler weather was what drove urZrethi south long ago. Boragul was abandoned.”

“Abandoned completely? There’s no one in there?”

Drugi shook his head. “I’ve seen sign in them mountains. Something lives there.”

Faryaah-Tse held up a hand. “By abandoned I mean that those who could or were brave enough left and went south. Those who were left behind were of no consequence. I do not know if they have died out.”

“Are there ways through Boragul?” Lord Norrington patted his horse on the neck. “Could Chytrine have used Boragul to return north, or to bring reinforcements south?”

The urZrethi sat back in the saddle, bringing her left leg up and laying her shin across the horse’s shoulders. “Thereare ways through Boragul, unless they have collapsed because of age. I would imagine we can even find an entrance. As for Chytrine and her use of Boragul, I do not know.”

She hesitated for a moment, then plunged into an explanation. “You men, you think of the urZrethi or elves as all being the same. I shall confess to you that men often seem the same to me. However, you all come from different nations and have different customs. Would it surprise you to know a man of Valsogon who knew nothing of Oriosa? So it is with us. I come from Tsagul. We reached furthest south in the invasion and are proud of that. For those left behind we have little concern.”

“I understand, and do not consider your lack of knowledge a flaw.” Lord Norrington opened his arms. “Our choices, then, are this: we turn back now, or we go forward and seek to enter Boragul. We will see if we can travel north from there and, if there are any urZrethi still living there, we shall determine if they know of Chytrine’s fate. I am for pushing on, but I shall abide by the wishes of the majority.”

No one dissented and so, with Faryaah-Tse Kimp leading us, we rode forward toward the destiny that would consume us all.

Faryaah-Tse’s trail took us east for an hour and then north toward Boragul, along the banks of a stream that gurgled beneath snow and ice. Ahead of us lay a deep, narrow canyon that had its southern face exposed to the sun. Whatever snow had been deposited there had long since melted to fill the stream beside which we rode. As nightfall approached, we came to the mouth of the canyon.

“We have to stop here.” The urZrethi turned in her saddle and held up a hand. “You can go no further for the moment.”

Drugi pulled down his grey scarf and spat. “There’s no entrance to nothing in there. I’ve been in there afore and seen nothing.”

“This surprises me not at all.” Faryaah-Tse tossed the reins of her horse to me, then tugged off her boots. Before any of us could question what she was doing, her feet broadened out into a spoon shape and her legs lengthened so she didn’t have to hop down off the horse. She stood up and the snow supported her. She crunched her way to a standing stone on the west side of the canyon mouth, touched it, then walked over to one on the east side and touched that one, too. Then she returned to the center of the canyon and waved us forward.

I saw nothing different until I reached the line linking the two stones. As I passed through it a light dazzled me, almost as if the setting sun had risen again and left me snowblind. I felt my stomach roil and tasted my luncheon broth again, but choked it back down. When I looked around I saw much of the same little canyon I had before, but toward the back, down somewhat low, it curved to the west.

Faryaah-Tse took the reins from me and led her horse on foot. “Not far now.”

Drugi kind of hunkered down in his saddle as he looked around. “I’ve not seen this before, and I was here.”

The urZrethi looked at him. “You were not meant to see this, Drugi Oldach. No man was, nor elf. This was meant for urZrethi eyes alone.”

As we came around the corner and could see into the western branch, my breath caught in my throat. There, not a hundred yards off, stood a massive stone portal carved out of the rock. It was round, and water that had dripped down from above coated the rim in ice. The circular portal’s edge had been carved from the living rock and worked with odd runes and sigils. The door itself, which appeared to be a big round slab of black rock, was recessed several feet. Broad steps led up to the platform before the door.

But more impressive than the portal itself were the paired statues beside it. They showed two female figures, naked, kneeling. Instead of arms they had wings and had raised them high above their heads, as if trying to touch the sun. The figures looked serene and powerful.

“Who are they?”

Faryaah-Tse turned at my question. “There is a myth among the urZrethi that the truly powerful and complete urZrethi will be able to assume a shape that will permit flight. It has less to do with the size of the wings than the nature of the spirit that will allow the person to soar. It is perhaps not unexpected that those who dwell largely within the earth wish to fly.”

I slowly nodded and wondered to myself if this myth did not also explain why the urZrethi courted the wrath of the elves when they created Gyrvirgul as a home for the Gyrkyme.

As much as the elves saw the Gyrkyme as bestial abominations, perhaps the urZrethi saw them as an embodiment of their dream. Regardless, even Winfellis seemed to be rendered breathless by the statues’ beauty.

We rode in solemn silence to the portal. Lord Norrington dismounted and, along with Faryaah-Tse, mounted the steps. The urZrethi studied the runes around the portal, which had a diameter of at least a dozen feet, then shucked a glove and extended an arm up to touch the arch’s keystone. Both of them stepped back as a grinding started from within, then slowly the black doorstone rolled to the left and warm air gushed out to wash over us.

The warmth was welcome, but the scent was not. Part musty and a bit sharp, it reminded me of a barn that had not been mucked out recently enough. I suppose I should have taken the sharp scent as a good sign, since that meant there were living creatures about. I would have, too, I think, but the Boragul urZrethi quickly showed themselves.

Four of them came hobbling out. Their flesh varied between the yellow of old bones and the white-grey of cold ash. Some had mismatched feet, others had a spare joint in a leg, and one even had a second, smaller pair of arms sprouting from its waist. They all seemed to be female, or at least, some of them had breasts, though too many had an odd number. Their eyes usually rested on either side of their noses and often lined up with each other, which couldn’t be said of their ears—in the case of those who had any.