Son of Avonar

CHAPTER 31

The day flew by in a blur of grass and rocks and scattered trees. As we galloped toward the soaring majesty of the Dorian Wall, the gently sloping hillsides to the east and west of the river yielded to rougher country. Craggy knobs appeared, at first one here, one there, and then on every side. The meandering Glenaven moved faster here, darting restlessly between the rocks that threatened to stay its progress. Nowhere did I see any choice to be made as to our course.

We stopped briefly at midday to rest the horses. The hills and knobs had finally formed a continuous barricade on either side of the river, creating a narrow valley sparsely scattered with pine and fir. The air was hot and sultry, the breezes of the open country blocked by the encroaching walls. Though it seemed a year since Midsummer’s Day, little more than six weeks had passed. The land remained awash in summer.

We did not resume the morning’s banter at our stop. D’Natheil’s eyes flicked frequently back the way we had come. Half an hour and we were on our way again, Baglos in the lead. Rowan and Kellea rode side by side just behind the Dulcé. Paulo stayed close at their heels, and D’Natheil and I brought up the rear. I was not about to let the Prince lag behind as he had on the day of the storm.

“Do the Zhid still call to you?” I asked, as we wound our way up the narrowing gorge.

“Yes. But it’s easier now. I try to concentrate on everything you told me, on your stories.”

“The J’Ettanne were your people every bit as much as those in your Avonar. That’s why I chose those things to talk about.”

“You’re an exceptional storyteller. They seem far more real than anything Baglos speaks of.”

“Can you remember nothing of your years with Dassine? Ten years it would have been.”

He shrugged. “I keep thinking that if I work at it hard enough, I’m bound to see. But the memories stay just out of reach.”

“Why would Dassine have taken your memory and your voice before sending you? What circumstance could force him to do that? He said he had no alternative.”

“Perhaps he thought I wouldn’t do what was needed. Because of the person I am. It’s likely I don’t want to know what’s hidden.” Winter had touched his voice, and he dug his heels into Sunlight’s flank. “Come, we must move faster.”

The Prince rode ahead to where Graeme Rowan was picking his way across the swift water. The track ahead of us on the east side of the river was tangled with tree roots and underbrush, for the water had eaten away at the bank, leaving it narrow and steep-sided. The track on the west side of the river was still unobstructed. I considered briefly that the east side might be the “lesser passage” of the riddle, but a few moments’ observation convinced me it had been more than four hundred and fifty years since the east bank had been passable.

I needn’t have worried. The Writer had buried his instructions so cleverly that he hadn’t felt the need to make them true riddles. The way was very clear.

Half an hour or so after the river crossing, we heard a considerable rush of water ahead—a swirling pool of icy blue-green, the turbulent confluence of two healthy streams that formed the Glenaven. The stream on the right flowed from a broad grassy valley that angled almost directly west, funneling the afternoon sunshine straight into our eyes. The stream leaped and bounded its way through thick grass, dotted with clumps of yellow, blue, and white flowers.

The left branch flowed from a passage of very different character, a gloomy, narrow slot that at first glance appeared to have no path at all. Everything in my nature beckoned me to follow the sunlit valley, but I assumed that the darker way was ours.

“The lesser brother?” asked Rowan.

“It’s the first likely thing,” I said. “If there’s a path…”

“I’ll take a look. If we go a little west where the water’s slower, we can cross easily.” In moments Rowan was on the spit of rocks and sand between the two forks. Then he splashed through the stream, rode into the shadowed mouth of the narrower passage, and disappeared.

D’Natheil kept glancing over his shoulder while we waited. After a time that likely seemed far longer than it was, the sheriff rejoined us. “There’s a path. Narrow. But I went in fairly deep, and it continued as far as I could see.”

“Hurry,” said D’Natheil. “Choose.”

“We go left,” I said.

“Some will go left,” said Rowan. “Kellea and I have decided that it’s impossible for all of us to outrun a determined pursuer in these conditions. And it looks to get worse. But if the two of us were to go west, while the rest of you take the opposite way, then, unless the fellows on our tail have Kellea’s talent, we might fool them. She says that it might be possible to mislead even one like her, if we take something with us that belongs to each of you. That may give you time enough.”

“I hate splitting up,” I said, though I knew that he was absolutely right.

“We’ll loop back if we can. Kellea can find you.”

I pulled off the scarf I used to tie back my hair. Baglos produced a kerchief of his own and D’Natheil’s discarded sandals. Paulo had nothing to give, but Kellea startled him by riding up close and yanking a hair from his shaggy mop. “Ow!” Paulo slapped his hand to his head.

“We’ll see you again before we’re done!” called the sheriff. Kellea was already galloping into the sunlight, and Rowan’s great black horse shot after her.

“Go with your gods, Graeme Rowan. And you, Kellea,” I called.

D’Natheil and Baglos were almost halfway across the water, and I was right on their heels, glancing back to make sure Paulo followed. But the boy sat at the joining of the water, looking back and forth between the two parties. Before I could call out to him, he clucked at Molly and bolted westward after Graeme Rowan. I couldn’t worry about his safety. There were no assurances along either route.

I disliked the eastern passage from my first step into it. The path Rowan had seen was scarcely worthy of the name—a narrow band of damp sand along the west side of the river. The walls of the gorge became steeper and rockier the farther we rode, and, in some places, the river widened until it reached almost from one wall to the other. Once, the track disappeared completely, and we had to ford the shallow water to pick it up again on the other side.

Another hour and the walls had become sheer rock faces, and the bottom of the rift grew darker, musty and close in the warm evening. Stomach in a knot, I glanced up frequently to prove to myself that there was no roof to cave in on me. The sky held the deep blue of evening, but in the flat-bottomed gorge it was already dusk, forcing us to slow our pace. The path varied a great deal in width, drips and trickles in every direction warning of side streams waiting to trip us up. And early spring waterfalls had bored out deep pools in the streambed, abandoning them as traps for the unwary traveler now that summer had quenched the falls. When the first stars winked into life overhead, we had found no spot suitable to stop for the night. I had to trust Firethorn to find safe footing.

We proceeded without incident until a soft word from the Prince signaled a halt. We dismounted, unsaddled the horses, and pulled out food and blankets, fumbling our way about in the dark. Baglos dragged brush from the steep banks and piled it up between us. “My lord, the only fuel hereabouts is damp and green. I’ll never get it lit. Hot food and warmth would restore us all. If you could help, as you did in the storm…”

“I think not,” said the Prince. “Since we split off from the others, I can’t feel the pursuit behind us. Every time they’ve caught up with us again, I’ve just worked some sorcery. I’m beginning to think that the more I do such things, the easier I am to find.”

His theory made sense. And as for me, I was too tired to regret the lack of comforts. I was long past hungry and could think of nothing but rolling up in my blanket and stretching my tired muscles on the damp earth. I told my companions to wake me when it was my turn to watch. “… or if there’s need, I’ll watch with you,” I told D’Natheil.

“This night is not so dark as the last,” he said from somewhere in the murk. “Nothing to fear.”

As I drifted off to sleep, I felt vaguely as though I were forgetting something important, but I was much too tired to dredge it up.

Baglos woke me while the strip of sky above us was still crowded with stars. “There’s been no disturbance,” he said, as I tried to clear my groggy head. “When the Prince turned the watch to me, he said our pursuers have not yet discovered us. He sleeps.”

It didn’t take Baglos long to join D’Natheil. Soon I heard the soft snoring I’d come to recognize as his. I leaned against the cliff face behind me and to my disgust found my back soaked almost immediately. Groping about in the dark revealed no dry spot. It would be a mistake to lie down again and expect to stay awake, so I had either to sit up without support or try to walk a few steps here and there without stepping on my companions or falling into the river. The hours until dawn stretched very long.

Morning came to the sky much earlier than it came to the bottom of the gorge, but even in the gray light, I found both the source of the dripping noises and the reason I could find no dry spot to lean on. I’d never seen anything like it. Moisture was leaking from the pores of the rock wall. If the sky had not been cloudless, one might have thought rain was falling high above the cliff tops. Thick moss, tiny red flowers, and slender vines of deep green laden with miniature purple berries burrowed their roots into the wet rock face, creating a colorful vertical garden. The sight changed my whole perception of the rift.

“The ancient face that weeps.”

I jumped. D’Natheil stood just behind me. “Of course! The third clue. ”When one ascends the ancient face that weeps.“

I peered into the blue-gray haze up the gorge. “But how does one ascend it? The walls go straight up and crumble in your hand. And why would they send us this way, if we needed to be on top? Surely there would be an easier path.”

“I suppose it will come clear like the other clues.”

Not half a league up the gorge, the river made good on the previous day’s threat. The path vanished, and the water spanned the breadth of the rift. For a while the going was easy, the clear water only hoof-deep, the stony bottom easy to see. But then I followed D’Natheil around a sharp bend and saw the water lapping almost to his knees. “Stay to the right,” he called back to me, as I felt the icy water seep into my boots. Repeating the warning over my shoulder for Baglos, I fixed one eye on the Prince and one eye on Firethorn’s footing to make sure we followed his lead exactly.

For a long hour we had no relief from the frigid water that varied from ankle to knee in depth. My feet were numb, and I patted and soothed Firethorn, promising him a winter of dry oats and hay if he would carry me through safely. I did not see Polestar step into the pool or Baglos slip from his saddle into the water. I only heard a great splash and a cry for help behind me.

“D’Natheil!” I yelled, coaxing Firethorn back toward Baglos, who flailed the water in panic. The Prince was just disappearing beyond the next turn.

D’Natheil quickly reversed direction and dived into the river from the back of his horse, swimming with powerful strokes toward the floundering Dulcé. Catching him around his chest, D’Natheil dragged Baglos back across the pool, swimming until he could get a foothold and then wading through chest-high water until he could haul himself and his soggy servant across the saddle of the patiently waiting chestnut. The wild-eyed Polestar found his way back to the shallower water. I maneuvered myself so I could grab the jittery beast’s reins before he could bolt back down the gorge. The incident was over in moments, and I was relieved to see the chestnut lunge out of the water onto a mostly dry shore after one more turning of the path.

Soon the three of us were pouring water from our boots and stretching the cramps from numb legs and feet. The drenched Baglos was shivering, for the morning shadows held none of the previous day’s warmth. “I don’t know what happened, my lord,” he said. “My vision grew blurry, the beast stepped off into the deeps, and everything was topsy-turvy.”

D’Natheil looked at me. “I should make a fire for him.”

“No, look,” I said, pointing to the rift wall. The timing of the rescue was perfect. The rays of the morning sun that had shone so tantalizingly on the west wall finally swept the shadows from the floor. “Go over by the rocks, Baglos. Wring yourself out and sit in the sun, and D’Natheil won’t have to risk an enchantment to warm you.”

The Dulcé was indignant. “I would never ask my lord to endanger himself for me,” he said through chattering teeth.

“Of course not. I didn’t mean to imply it.”

As I tethered the horses to a willow sprouted from the weeping wall, I noticed Baglos’s leather bag hung over Polestar’s saddle. Thinking to make a peace offering for my ill-considered remark, I pulled out the Dulcé‘s silver wine flask and took it to him. “Might this help?”

Baglos snatched the flask from my hand and jumped up. “No, woman, not this one! This is not—This one is only for the most dire circumstances. The other is the one to use.” He crammed the flask back in the leather bag and pulled out a different, plainer one. He took a sip and offered it around.

We wiped down the horse, wrung out our clothes and each found a spot in the sunbeams. D’Natheil groaned in pleasure as he stretched out next to the cliff wall and closed his eyes. I sat with my back propped against the wall and my face to the sun and watched the steam rise from my soggy boots. “One blessing of this experience,” I said, “is its close resemblance to a bath. Just a bit warmer water, and I might have dived into it myself.”

“Bathing!” said Baglos in disgust, as he dabbed at his damp tunic with the only dry corner of his blanket. “Immersion is an unhealthy habit. Just feel the chill. I cannot understand those who promote such practices. My uncle Balzir said that bathing can reduce one’s height by a full measure. The Dulcé do not hold with it.”

“Dassine must have approved of bathing,” said D’Natheil drowsily. “Someone was forever hounding me about it.”

Baglos and I looked at each other with eyebrows raised. The Prince did not even seem to realize what he was saying.

“He most likely hounded you about many things if you were the wicked boy Baglos describes,” I said.

“Many things: don’t run, don’t argue, don’t fight me, don’t tell. Be careful. Let me show you. Read… think… fifty generations. We’re wrong… the answer is there to be found. Our enemies do not sleep. Look deep, beyond the surface…”

I motioned the excited Baglos to silence and said, softly, “But he was kind to you. He didn’t beat you like the other Preceptor—Exeget—did?”

“Yes and no. His voice was kindness. And wisdom… like my father. Wicked humor, but so hard… unrelenting. Always it was ‘someday” “—D’Natheil’s mumbling slowed—”someday all will be clear. Someday, your gift… make all the difference. But it was so long waiting“—the words were a long sigh—”so long in the dark. Why so long, Dassine? Let me go. For the love of heaven, let me… ah…“

D’Natheil jerked upright, startled awake by his own cry. A flush of embarrassment suffused his face. “I must have fallen asleep. Fires of night…” He rubbed his head vigorously. “Have you dried out, Dulcé? We must get on.”

“I am ready at your command, my lord.”

The lingering echoes of D’Natheil’s anguish made ordinary conversation seem too trivial to pursue. I wondered if his memory was truly returning or if his rambling had been some dream-wrought confusion of all he’d heard from me and Baglos and Dassine. What did you dream when you had no person within you?

The next bend in the river shoved all thought of D’Natheil’s memories out of mind, for the Writer’s third clue lay revealed in awesome clarity. The path we traveled extended into the haze as far as we could see, but not fifty paces from the bend, another track branched off from it and angled steeply up the eastern wall. From somewhere in the distance, beyond our farthest view, we heard a muted rumbling of wind or water.

“Ascend the ancient face that weeps,” said Baglos in wonder.

I took a deep breath. Heights did not terrify me as did confinement in the dark, but I’d never done anything quite like this. I wondered if there would be room to dismount if we had need. “I’ll have to trust you once more,” I whispered to Firethorn, stroking his neck.

We took it slowly, speaking calmly and continually to our horses. The trail, a great seam in the tilted strata of the rock, was wider than it looked from below—in a few spots even enough to turn the horse around—but not so wide as to tempt me to linger one moment more than necessary. I would not have been surprised to find it dwindle away into nothing at the first angle in the cliff. Truly, I believed my worst fears confirmed when we approached a jutting corner where a huge boulder hung out over the trail, only air visible beyond it.

D’Natheil went first, crouching low in the saddle to clear the overhang, then disappearing on the other side. I was next. I huddled down into Firethorn’s ruddy mane and prayed the beast had sense enough to stay as close to the wall as the jutting boulder would permit.

Once I rounded the corner, the rumbling that had grown louder at each step of the ascent became a roar, and even the fearsome aspect of the ledge path faded into insignificance when I beheld the source of the noise. At the end of the gorge was a towering cliff of red and gray, the granite base of the ice pinnacles that stretched as far as I could see in every direction, so close that I felt I could reach out and grab a handful of snow from each one of them. From a seam in the cliff sprang a waterfall that dived in thundering splendor to the valley floor so far below us that the river was but a narrow ribbon. The afternoon sun sparkled on the spray that wreathed the falls, bridging the end of the gorge with a perfect double rainbow.

D’Natheil was stopped a few paces ahead of me. “It has to be there, does it not?”

“I believe so,” I said. His words eerily reflected my own thoughts. No J’Ettanne could have resisted the call of such beauty.

“Perhaps I was sent just for this. I’ve never seen the like.” Behind his wonder echoed such lonely sadness as would soften stone.

“Demon-spirited beast! Black-hearted wretch!” The cries came from behind us. Baglos stood just on our side of the overhang, looking back through the treacherous corner and waving his hands. Polestar was nowhere to be seen.

“Baglos, what’s happened?” I called.

“The wicked son of a Zhid is most likely halfway back to Yennet.” The Dulcé trudged up the steep path toward us. “The turning at the boulder was fearsome. I dismounted so as to walk, and the beast shied. Pulled the reins right out of my hand. Oh, my lord prince, what an incompetent fool they have sent you as Guide.”

I could not disagree. One look at the long, steep track that lay in front of us told how near impossible was our position. Even if D’Natheil or I were to take Baglos up to ride double, almost all of our food was on its way to Yennet. Right into the arms of the Zhid. Everything… “Baglos, was the journal still in your pack?”

The Dulcé looked as if he were going to be sick.

“Most unfortunate,” said D’Natheil.

“More than unfortunate,” I said. “I can remember the clues and the map, but what if there’s more we need from it? What if we’ve made the wrong interpretation and must begin again?” The stupid, clumsy fool.

“I know only one way to get it back quickly,” said D’Natheil.

Sorcery, of course. Calling Polestar back to us. “I can’t tell you to take such a risk.”

“The journal must not fall into the hands of those behind us. Even if by some chance what I do doesn’t bring them down on us, they would eventually decipher it. It might tell them what we would not.”

Baglos was silent and anxious through all of this, clutching his hands to his breast, his dark eyes flicking from the Prince to me.

As he had on the hillside next to the ruined castle, D’Natheil closed his eyes, made a small movement of his fingers, and whispered the horse’s name. Then he sat down on the trail to wait, drinking from his waterskin and dangling his feet over the stomach-churning drop to the rift floor. I was more comfortable close by the cliff wall and was too unsettled to sit down anyway.

Before very long, the black horse emerged sedately from the shadowed overhang, as if sauntering from the pasture into the stable for his evening oats. As we mounted up to be on our way, D’Natheil’s shoulders sagged.

“Are you well?” I asked.

He shook his head, leaning on the horse for a moment before wearily pulling himself into the saddle. “We’re being followed again.”

Though D’Natheil laid no word of reproach on him, Baglos said very little. He rode stiffly, eyes forward, his volatile emotions for once held close.

As the afternoon sun baked the weeping cliff wall, it was difficult to recall our shivering of the morning. The ascent seemed painfully slow, especially now the enemy was on our trail again.

Late in the afternoon we came to the waterfall, the last steep ascent leveling off into a wide shelf that extended to the very brink of the thundering cascade. I slumped down in the shade, reveling in the cold spray. Baglos, his black hair and beard dusted with the droplets, shouted to be heard above the roar. “What now? Have we come the wrong way? I see no further path.”

“It must be that way,” said D’Natheil, pointing to a rocky chute that led to the cliff tops far above us. The chute was even steeper than the last bit we had just done and was slick with the spray of the falls. In no wise could the horses negotiate it. It would be treacherous enough for human hands and feet.

“Should not the next clue point our way?” asked Baglos. When the wall births the flood, it is wiser to be the rabbit than the fish or the goat. “What could it mean? It seems to fit—at least the part about the wall birthing the flood.”

“I see no choice of directions here,” said D’Natheil. “The divided way must be above us, where we would have the opportunity to cross the river like a fish, or climb again like a goat, or take some other way. The ‘rabbit” way, whatever that is.“

I could not imagine the J’Ettanne using the path up that steep chute. They would have wanted the fortress approaches secure, yes. Secret, yes. Secluded, yes. But not impossible. Examination of the shelf revealed no evidence of a bridge to the other side of the gorge, where there looked to be easier ways up.

Baglos was already fussing about the packs and mumbling to himself about what we would need to carry, and what must be left behind with the horses, and was it not ironic that so soon after bringing on danger by recalling Polestar, we must abandon the beasts and send them back down the path. When he pulled out the journal, I snatched it from his small hand and stuffed it in my pocket. I would not risk losing it again.

Discouraged, I sat by the wall munching a piece of dry bread. D’Natheil sat beside me, his gaze following an eagle that soared on the warm updrafts over the falls. “Perhaps it’s time I went on alone,” he said quietly.

“Don’t you dare—”

“Foolish, I know, to think you’d allow it. You’d throw your horse at me before riding him down that hill, wouldn’t you?”

The nicker of amusement in the Prince’s face rapidly doused my indignation. “Exactly right.”

“I most sincerely do not like dragging you into this… whatever it is that will happen. And not because you are female or incompetent. On the contrary”—his eyes traced the lines of my face—“I think this world would lose much of its richness if you were not a part of it.” He reddened a little and shifted his gaze back to the waterfall.

“Thank you,” I said. A stupid, priggish response, but I could think of none other. I should laugh and dismiss it by teasing him—and teasing myself even more. Only a few weeks had passed since I was trying to decide how to be rid of him. Only days since I had admitted that anything about him sparked feelings beyond annoyance or pity. He changed so rapidly, as if every day the previous day’s persona was sloughed off like an unwanted skin to reveal a new character and manner.

As we sat there, D’Natheil in embarrassment and I in confusion, a rock-mouse scurried from some unseen crevice near the edge of the falls and picked up a crumb that had fallen from my bread. When I shifted my leg to let it come closer, it skittered off to the brink of the falls and disappeared into the spray. I berated myself for my clumsy movement, sure the tiny creature had been swept away in its hasty flight, but in moments it was back, damp but undaunted, searching for another treasure to add to its horde.

“Where did you come from?” I said, as it scuttered back the way it had come. Curious, I crawled toward the curtain of water.

“Have a care, woman,” said Baglos, an anxious edge to his voice.

But I needed no warning. The shelf did not end abruptly at the edge of the falls as it appeared, but extended well past it. As I peered closer, the rock-mouse zipped between my feet and into the shower of droplets. “If you can go there, can we?” Hugging the wall, I stood up and stepped into the spray. Beyond a thin curtain of water was a sheltered overhang, as dry and calm as the eye of a storm. And at the center of the dry niche was a hole in the wall, twice the height of a man and almost as wide. A hole. A rabbit hole.