Jarka Ruus

TEN

She awoke to the sound of weasel voices, raspy and sly, the words indistinguishable one from the other. The voices giggled and snickered, little taunts intended to disparage her, to make her feel vulnerable and weak. She listened to them from within layers of cotton that wrapped about her like a chrysalis. The voices hissed with laughter. She was a nameless corpse, they whispered, an empty shell from which the life had been leeched away, a body consigned to the earth's dark breast for burial.

She fought against a sudden stab of panic. She was Grianne Ohmsford, she told herself in an act of reassurance. She was alive and well. She was only dreaming. She was asleep in her bed, and she remembered …

She drew a sharp, frightened breath, and her certainties were gone as quickly as the voices, disappeared like smoke.

Something had happened.

Still wrapped in cotton that filled her head and mouth, that bound up her thoughts and clogged her reason, she tried to move her arms and legs. She could do so, but only with great effort. She was terribly weak and her body was responding as if she had slept not for one night but for a hundred. She brought one hand to her breast and found she was still wearing her nightclothes, but no blankets covered her. The air smelled stale and dead, and she could not feel even the smallest trace of a breeze. Yet where she slept within the towers of Paranor, there was always a breeze and the air smelled of the trees, fresh and green.

Where was she?

The softness of her sleeping pad and comforter were gone. She felt hard ground beneath her bare arms; she smelled the earth. Her panic returned, threatening to overwhelm her, but she forced it down. She had no patience for it and no intention of giving it power over her. She was not harmed; she was still whole. Deep breaths, one after the other, calmed and steadied her.

She opened her eyes, peeling back the layers of deep sleep into which she had sunk, squinting into hazy gray light. It was night still. She was staring at a darkened sky that domed overhead in a vast leaden canopy. Yet something was wrong. The sky was cloudless, but empty of moon and stars. Nor was the sun in evidence. The world was cast in the sullen tones of a storm's approach, shrouded in layers of silence, in hushed tones of expectation.

It must be twilight, she decided. She had slept longer than she thought. The sun was down, the moon not yet up, and the stars not yet out—that would explain the strange sky.

The weasel voices were gone, a figment of her imagination. She listened for them and heard nothing, either in her mind or in the real world. But there was no birdsong either, or buzzing of insects, or rustle of wind in the trees, or ripple of water in a stream, or any sound at all save the pounding of her heart.

It took her a while, but she finally forced herself to move, rolling to her side and then into a sitting position, wrapping her arms about her drawn–up knees to keep herself in place. Slowly, her vision sharpened from a watery haze to clarity, and the spinning that had begun when she levered herself upright faded.

She looked around. She sat in a ragged, blasted landscape, surrounded by trees that were wintry and thick with withered leaves. The trees had the look of blight about them, sickened so that they could no longer thrive. Because she was sitting on a high piece of ground overlooking several valleys and, further out, a river, she could see that the forest extended for miles in all directions, bleak and unchanging. Farther out still, at the edges of her vision, mountains loomed stark and barren against the skyline.

Paranor was nowhere in evidence. Nor was there any sign of anything else man–made—no buildings, no bridges, no traffic on the river, not even a road. No people. No life. Seemingly, she was alone in this empty, alien world.

And yet …

She took a second look around, a more careful look, seeing her surroundings with a fresh eye and, to her surprise, recognizing what she saw. At first, she couldn't believe it. She was still struggling with the idea that somehow she had been transported in her sleep—drug induced, she was certain—to a strange and terrible place, all for reasons that were not yet apparent. Disoriented and confused, she had misread what was now patently clear. The land she was looking at, although now turned lifeless and empty, was the land she had gone to sleep in last night.

She was still in Callahorn, in the Four Lands.

Yet it was not the Callahorn she knew and, from what she could see of it, only a ruined shell of the Four Lands.

She sat staring off into the distance, her gaze shifting from feature to feature to make certain. She took note of the Dragon's Teeth, their jagged outline unmistakable, as familiar to her by then as her own face. And there, a glimpse of the Mermidon, south and west where the mountains broke apart. The plateau on which she sat was where the Druid's Keep had stood. North, south, east, and west, the geography was just as it had been for thousands of years.

But blasted and leeched of life, a corpse of the sort she had thought herself to be on waking.

And where was Paranor?

She could reach only one conclusion. Either she had awakened in the aftermath of the Great Wars or gone into a future in which a similar catastrophe had occurred. But that was impossible.

She checked herself carefully to make certain she was all in one piece, and having done so, managed to get to her feet. Her dizziness and the sluggish feel of waking from a deep sleep had worn off, and her strength was beginning to return. She gave it a few more minutes, still puzzling through her situation, still trying to make sense of it. She couldn't, of course. There was no way to do so without knowing both where she was and how she had gotten there.

She realized she was hungry, and she started to look for food. In her world, the one she had left behind that looked like this one but apparently wasn't, there would have been berry bushes in a clearing near a stream not far from where she stood. While Ard Rhys, she had gone there from time to time to pick the fruit, a private, secret indulgence about which only Tagwen knew.

But it was unlikely that such sweet fruit grew anywhere in this world. Her hunger would have to wait.

She started to walk through the trees, looking for water. As she walked, she listened futilely for the sounds of other life. What sort of world was she in where there were no birds? Were there any people, any creatures at all? Was it possible that she was the only living thing there? The forest was empty and dead, smelling of its own decay. The gray light was unchanging and oppressive, and the sky remained empty of sun, moon, or stars. Even of clouds. The dark, ruined world felt incomplete, as if it were only a faintly cast shadow of the real world.

She found a stream finally, but the water looked so foul she decided against drinking it. She sat down again, her back against a blighted oak, and looked off into the shadowed trees, into the distance, reasoning out what had happened. Clearly, she hadn't come on her own; someone had caused her to be transported. She could safely assume it had not been done for her benefit. Most likely, given the number of enemies she had made, it had been done to get her out of the way. Further, it had been done using magic, because there was no other explanation for how something so difficult could have been accomplished. Yet no one she knew possessed such magic. Not even she could transport people to other places.

So perhaps it had been accomplished by someone who was not of her world, but of another.

But what world would that be? Surely not this one.

She gave up thinking about it finally, deciding that she should walk to the edge of the bluff for a better look around. Something else must exist in the place, another creature, another life–form. If she could find it, whatever it was, she might be able to determine where she was. If she could do that, she would have a better idea of how to get back to where she belonged.

The walk took her only a short time, though it left her winded and fatigued. She wasn't herself yet, and she would have to be careful how she expended her energy until she was. Thin and diaphanous, her nightclothes billowed about her as she walked. They were warm enough for the moment, but totally inadequate for the task at hand. They would deteriorate quickly. Yet where would she find anything to replace them?

When she stood again upon the heights, close to the bluff edge and still in the shadow of the lifeless trees, she began a slow scan of the countryside, searching for movement that would identify life.

She was in the middle of this search, completely absorbed in her efforts, when the Dracha appeared. Her concentration was so intense that at first she didn't even know it was there. But in its eagerness to reach her, it stepped upon some twigs and gave itself away. Even so, it was on her so quickly that she barely had time to react. At the last possible moment, she threw herself to one side as it lunged for her, leathery wings spread wide, jaws snapping. She managed to avoid the jaws, but one wing caught her a glancing blow and sent her spinning. The breath left her lungs as she slammed into a tree trunk, and the air before her eyes danced with dark spots.

A Dracha, she thought in disbelief, it can't be. It's not possible. They don't exist anymore.

But there it was nevertheless, wheeling about to come at her again. It was big for a Dracha, fully twenty feet long from nose to tail and wing tip to wing tip, sinuous body heavily muscled and covered with glistening scales, back ridged with spines and razor–edged plates, legs crooked and claw–tipped.

Knowing she was dead if she didn't act quickly, she righted herself against the tree trunk and screamed the magic of the wish–song at the beast. Her voice was hoarse and raw from her long sleep, the magic badly managed and scattershot at best, but it was enough. It caught up the Dracha and threw it away as if it were made of straw. The creature hissed and shrieked, enraged at what was being done to it. She saw the fury mirrored in its lidded yellow eyes. She saw it in the twist and snap of its scaly body as it tumbled away into the trees.

Then her voice gave out; she was still too weak to sustain the magic for more than a few seconds. She staggered to her feet, watching as the damaged beast hauled itself upright, dazed and battered, but still dangerous. It turned toward her, eyes glistening from the shadow of its horned brow, the sound of its breathing heavy and thick with anger. Long neck extended, it flicked its tongue out from between rows of dagger–sharp teeth. It stared at her balefully for a long moment, weighing its options. She held her ground, staring back. If she tried to run, it would be on her in seconds. All she could do was to run her bluff and hope it worked.

For a moment, she was certain it wouldn't. The Dracha was too furious even to think of backing away. It would come for her because that was its nature. It was a dragon and dragons were relentless. It would not back away until one of them was dead.

But then it surprised her. Perhaps it decided she wasn't worth the trouble after all, that she was too dangerous, that there was easier prey. It spat venom, came toward her a few steps in menacing fashion, then turned away almost disdainfully and disappeared into the trees.

She took a deep breath to steady herself. A Dracha. There hadn't been Drachas in the world in thousands of years, not since the time of Faerie. There were dragons still, though only a few, hidden in the mountains, in deep caves and bottomless crevices, in places far beyond the reach of men. But no Drachas—no small flying dragons of that sort.

She took a long moment to consider what encountering one meant. Her thinking shifted. There were no dragons in the aftermath of the Great Wars. There were barely any humans. Was she somewhere farther back in time, before the age of humans, when only Faerie creatures existed? That would explain the presence of the Dracha and the absence of Paranor. It would explain why the geography of the world about her looked so familiar, yet was devoid of buildings like Paranor. There would have been no buildings and no people in the first age, when the world was still new, populated by Faerie creatures that required no shelter save that provided by nature.

But had the age of Faerie been so bleak? She hadn't thought so from her readings. She had not imagined it possible. That world was newly made and fresh. This world was dying.

A rustle in the branches overhead drew her attention. The sound was so slight that she almost missed it. But her encounter with the Dracha had put her on guard, and so she glanced up and caught sight of the creature. She stepped back automatically, tensing in expectation of a second attack, but what she found instead of another Dracha was some sort of monkey. It skittered through the trees on spindly limbs, flashes of its hairy, gnarled form appearing through breaks in the ragged boughs. Having been seen, it was trying frantically to escape.

Impulsively, she yelled at it. She didn't pause to think about what she was doing, merely acted on an instinctive need to stop whatever it was from getting away. She was successful. Startled by the sound of her voice, the creature lost its grip and fell, tumbling end over end through the limbs to land with an audible grunt not a dozen yards from where she stood.

It lay dazed and twitching as she walked over to it, and she glanced about as she approached in case it had friends in hiding. But no others appeared, and this one seemed barely able to draw breath after its long fall. It lay on its side, panting heavily, face upturned to the sky. She changed her mind about it as she got closer; it wasn't a monkey, after all. It was hard to say what it was. What it most resembled was a Spider Gnome, but it wasn't that, either. Whatever it was, it was easily the ugliest creature she had ever seen. It was barely four feet tall. Its body was all out of proportion, with bony protrusions and elongated limbs. Coarse black hair sprouted in thick patches from the top of its head and from its dark, leathery skin through rents in its worn pants and tunic.

It recovered and struggled up, still trying to get away from her. She grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and held it fast, holding it away from her as it tried to bite her, using teeth that were considerably sharper than her own. She shook it hard and hissed at it, and it quit trying to bite. It hung limply in her grasp for a moment, then began to chatter wildly. It spoke a language she didn't recognize, but the cadence and tonal repetition suggested it might be a derivation of the tongues with which she was familiar. She shook her head to show she didn't understand. The creature just kept talking, faster now, gesturing wildly. She answered, trying various Gnome dialects. It paused to listen, then shook its own head in reply and began to chatter again. It was so animated that it was bobbing up and down as it spoke, giving it the look of a disjointed puppet, its limbs manipulated by hidden strings.

She set it down and released it, pointing at it in warning to keep it from trying to flee again. It frowned at her and folded its arms over its chest, managing to look defiant and frightened at the same time. She tried a handful of Dwarf and Troll dialects, but it didn't seem to understand those, either. Each time, it would stop and listen to her words, then start chattering away in its own language, as if through insistence and repetition she could be made to understand.

Finally, it plopped down in the grass, arms folded over its chest, eyes turned away, mouth set in a disapproving line. She saw the knife at its waist for the first time, an odd–shaped narrow blade that curved and serrated at the tip. She saw a small pouch attached to a belt, both decorated with beads sewn into the leather. The pockets cut into the sides of its worn pants were sculpted with thread. Whatever species it was, it was advanced beyond the Spider Gnome level. By the same token, it wasn't a member of any race she could put a name to.

She gave up on the Dwarf and Troll dialects and was about to give up on the creature, as well, thinking that it was hopeless, that she should leave it and move on, go hunt for something else. Then she decided, rather impulsively, to try speaking to it in the Elven language, even though the creature looked nothing like an Elf. But the Elves were the oldest species in the world and their language had been around the longest. The response was immediate. The creature shifted to a variation of what she was speaking at once, and she could understand him clearly.

«Stupid woman!» it snapped, the words strange–sounding in the odd dialect, but comprehensible. «Yelling at me like that. Look what you did to me! Look how far I fell! I could have broken every bone in my body!»

He rubbed his arms as if for emphasis, daring her to contradict him. She narrowed her gaze at him. «You should watch what you say to me. If I don't like what I hear, I might break every bone anyway.»

He grimaced. «I could hurt you, if I wanted. You ought to be afraid of me.» His odd face scrunched up, and his tongue licked out like a cat's, revealing the razor–sharp teeth. «Who are you? Are you a witch?»

She shook her head. «No, I am Ard Rhys of Paranor. I am a Druid. Where am I?»

He stared blankly at her. «What's wrong with you? Why don't you know where you are? Are you lost?» He didn't wait for an answer. «Tell me what you did to that Dracha. Magic, wasn't it? I've never seen anything like that. If you aren't a witch, you must be a sorceress or a Straken. Are you a Straken?»

There was another name she hadn't encountered outside of the Druid Histories. Strakens were powerful magic wielders out of the world of Faerie, gone for thousands of years. Like the Dracha.

«Is this the Faerie world?» she asked, beginning to think it must be.

The spindly creature stared at her, head cocked. «This is the land of the Jarka Ruus. You're inside the Dragon Line, above Pashanon. You must know that! Where is it you come from?»

«Paranor. Callahorn. The Four Lands.»

She paused with each name, searching his eyes for recognition and finding none. But the words Jarka Ruus meant something to her. She had heard them before, though she couldn't remember where. «What are you?» she asked him. «What Race do you belong to? Are you a Troll?»

«Ulk Bog," he announced proudly. He smiled, showing all his considerable teeth. «But I don't have a home at present because I'm traveling. This country is too dangerous. Dragons everywhere, all sorts, and they like to eat my kind. Of course, I try to eat their eggs, so I guess it's fair they should try to eat me. But they're much bigger than I am, for the most part, so I have to be careful. Anyway, I don't want to stay here anymore. Where are you going?»

She didn't have the faintest idea, of course, since she didn't even know where she was. She wasn't at all sure she was going anywhere until she figured out what had happened to her. Nevertheless, she pointed west, if only to satisfy him, at the same time trying to figure out how to extract some useful information.

«Ah, Huka Flats. Good choice. Soft earth for burrows and tender rats to eat.» He hitched up his belt. «Maybe I should go with you, since you don't seem to know the way. I know it. I've been everywhere.»

Ulk Bogs had disappeared with the world of Faerie, as well, she was thinking. Everything suggested she had gone back in time to the beginning of things, back before Men were created. The idea was so ridiculous that she kept searching for a better answer, but nothing else suggested itself.

«Are there lots of dragons here in the Dragon Line?» she pressed. «Big ones, as well as the Drachas?»

«You are a stranger, aren't you?» he said. He was growing bolder again, more confident. He puffed out his narrow chest.

«Of course there are big ones. Wyverns and Frost Dragons. Fire Drakes, too, though not so many of those. Some live right down here in the forests, like the Drachas. You have to watch out for them all the time. That's how I happened to be up in that—"

He stopped himself quickly, looking away into the trees. «Well, how I was, uh … how I was …»

«That Dracha I encountered was hunting you, wasn't it?» she guessed. She leaned close. «Don't lie to me, little rodent.»

The Ulk Bog sneered at her. «It wasn't my fault it found you instead of me. I didn't do anything to make it come after you. I was just trying to hide in the trees, because Drachas don't climb and they can't fly close in where there are branches that might get in the way of their wings, so I …»

She held out her hand beseechingly and stopped him midsentence. She doubted he was telling the truth, but then again she wasn't sure he would recognize the truth if it bit him on the nose. There wasn't much about Ulk Bogs in the Druid Histories, but if they were all like this one they were pretty good at shifting blame.

«Never mind," she told him. «It doesn't matter.»

She cast about for help from any quarter, but there was none to be found. She was alone and stuck with this fast–talking creature unless she set him free, which she wasn't ready to do quite yet. She still might learn something from him if she gave herself a chance. Even by just letting him rattle on, she might stumble over something that would help.

«Tell me your name," she said.

He drew himself up. «Weka Dart. What's yours?»

«Grianne.» She abandoned the Ard Rhys designation because it clearly meant nothing to him. «Tell me more about the Dragon Range. Have there ever been any buildings up here on this bluff? A castle, perhaps?»

He laughed. «Dragons don't need buildings! They rule this territory of the Jarka Ruus. Everything else stays away. If you want buildings, you need to go down onto the plains where the Straken live. Your kind.»

My kind. She remembered suddenly that they were speaking in the Elven tongue—an ancient dialect, but Elven nevertheless, a Faerie language. The Elves were the original people, the only true Faerie Race to survive the Great Wars. There had been Elves forever in the world. If this was the past, even if she was all the way back to the time of the Word, there would be Elves.

«Tell me, Weka Dart," she said. «Are there Elves close by? Where do the Elves live?»

The look he gave her was filled with disdain. «Are you stupid? There are no Elves here! Elves are forbidden! We cast them out, back when we made this world! Jarka Ruus ba'enthal corpa u'pahs!»

She had no idea what he was saying, but she got the message anyway. «But there must be Elves. You are speaking in the Elven tongue.»

He became enraged. «I speak Ulk Bog, my tongue, my language, and it does not sound anything at all like Elfish! I will hurt you if you say that again, whether you are Straken or not! No one can call an Ulk Bog an Elf! We are the free peoples, the world of the ca'rel orren pu'u! Jarka Ruus!»

For a moment she was afraid he was going to attack her; his face was twisted in fury, and his breathing had turned quick and dangerous. She could not imagine why he was reacting that way. If he knew about the Elves, this must be the Old World, and the Elves had always been a part of it, not separate from it, not until after the war when the bad Faerie creatures had been exiled to—

She went still, realization flooding through her, so dark it threatened to bury her in an avalanche of horror. No, she must be mistaken, she thought. But she remembered now the origin of the words Jarka Ruus. She had never heard them spoken; she had read them. They were words from the Druid Histories—Elven words, whether Weka Dart liked it or not. They meant banished peoples, and they had been used first in a time before the Four Lands existed, long ago in the beginning, when the war fought between good and evil Faerie creatures reached its climax.

But she had to be certain. «Ulk Bog," she said to him. «You say there are dragons. Are there giants, as well? Are there demon–spawn and goblins? Are there warlocks and witches and ogres?»

He nodded at once. «Of course.»

She took a deep breath. «Are there Furies?»

He grinned at her with unsettling purpose. «Everywhere.»

She was frozen by that single word. Everywhere. Furies. No Elves, only monsters that preyed on each other and those more helpless. The Ellcrys had shut them all away thousands of years ago in a place that no human had ever gone into.

Until now.

She exhaled slowly. She was inside the Forbidding.