Brotherhood Saga 03: Death (16 page)

Once more, he couldn
’t help but wonder just what it wanted.

“It probably wants nothing,” he mumbled.

If anything, it was likely it wanted him gone, if only because he was trespassing on territory ancient and considered nothing more than a grand, sweeping burial ground.

Sighing, no longer sure what to think of the situation at hand, he pulled the pot from its rack and placed it on the ground beside him, a smile partially spreading across his face when the smell of
warm vegetable soup wafted up and into its nose

Ah,
he thought.
Food.

After turning to place a pail of water beside the horse, he took a bowl from the saddle, filled it with soup, then spooned some of it up and ou
t of the bowl, where he blew over it until it chilled and placed it into his mouth.

On the distant hillside, the creature seated itself on its haunches and began to tilt its head back and forth.

I wonder why it does that,
he thought, unable to tear his eyes from the spectacle before him.

Was, like he imagined,
it stuck within a certain frame of mind, forced to repeat choice activities over and over, or was it just curious—fascinated by the lone human and horse that wandered through its territory?

Whatever the reason, he couldn
’t dwell on it, otherwise he was apt to lose his nerve and turn back.

He
’d spent too much time on the road to return to Ornala shamed and without dignity.

The creature howled.

Odin closed his eyes.

Shivers of unease crawled up his back and spiraled down the center of
his spine.

If only it would be quiet. Maybe then he would have some semblance of peace.

No matter how far or quickly he progressed through the Whooping Hills, the creature w
ould not approach him. At times he tried to beckon it forward with simple thoughts and words, if only to draw its attention to see if it really was, in fact, real, but each time he did the creature would only continue to skirt at the edge of his vision, occasionally howling and offering a menacing glare that could easily have been taken for something far sinister had he known its true purpose.

Just remember,
he thought.
It’s curious. Nothing more.

On the seventh night of his escapade through the hills, he decided without much dignity in his mind that they were to continue on throughout the evening. Despite having stopped only to water his horse, feed it a carrot and to eat a piece of apple himself, he pushed them forward without a doubt in his mind or a flicker in his heart, regardless of whether or not the horse below him seemed to complain with light grunts and ragged gusts of breath.

If he wanted to maintain some semblance of sanity, they would have to leave the hills as soon as possible. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could take listening to the sound of screaming.

Shaking his head, then reaching up to adjust the hood of his cloak, he drew an arm close to his chest and sighed when he felt the wind come up.

Like they were famed for, the sound of the wind whipping along the hills seemed to create an affect air would have had when pressed to the ground at high concentrations of speed.

Such a weird thing,
he thought.

His thoughts eventually led him to fantasize about what the Centaurs must have been like when they
’d roamed these hills. He’d yet to see any animals that they could hunt—wild cow, goat or otherwise—so what they would have eaten he couldn’t be sure. Then again, if humankind really had led them to extinction, who was to say that the animals in the area had not gone along with them? The hills could have been described as ghostly, ethereal, maybe even haunting, which only led him to believe that the thing pursuing him along the hills was an apparition.

Sometimes, they said the spirits of long-dead creatures could continue on to take watch over the
living, mortal world.

Knowing more than well that it was better not to chance thinking about the possibilities, Odin raised his head and sighed when he saw what appeared to be the first sight of the
hills lowering.

It would not
be much longer before they crossed into the Great Divide.

The night swallowed with it the hopes and dreams of men and beasts as clouds shadowed the sky and hid the moon behind their folds. At first intimidated by the aspect of a lightless night, then discouraged by the idea that he would not be able to see anything but the apparition’s beastly red eyes, he considered the idea of pushing the horse for yet another night, but realized—with pure, utter horror—that should he continue pushing it, he was likely to run it into the ground. For that, he dismounted with fear in his heart and unease coursing through his veins, arranging camp, then feeding both himself and the horse.

When he went to bed at night without a single glimpse of the thing on the far hills, he believed himself lucky and praised by whatever higher powers that could possibly exist.

However—like most things, the peace and silence came to an end.

Stirred from sleep by the sound of the horse whimpering and the disturbance of dirt being kicked up from one of its massive hooves, Odin opened his eyes and trained his attention on the darkness that shadowed the outskirts of the campground. Wary, unsure and disturbed by the idea that something could be hiding
and waiting to capture them, he drew the black blade from its sheath and held it steady as he carefully rose into a sitting position, the light from the fire catching the dark metal and reflecting flashes of grey back into his eyes.

At his opposite side, the silver sword began to hum.

Shortly thereafter, the hilt of his own sword began to shiver within his grasp.

What in the world?

He was not able to finish the thought, for the figure appeared from the darkness and drew all source of sanity from his mind.

The apparition that had been following him for the past week-and-a-half stepped into the campground with its head held high and its red, glowing eyes fixed directly on him. Its body huge, emaciated, ribs peeking from its chest and its stomach hollow and seemingly without life, the dog—if it could be called that, for its ears were much too long to be any dog he had ever seen and its snout too short and stout for it to be considered something of the canine variety—took a few steps forward and extended its elongated neck toward the glowing fire.

At first, Odin thought it would simply shy away.

However, when the dog
’s snout touched the base of the flame, the world went dark.

The horse screamed.

Odin threw himself from his bedroll and grabbed his father’s sword in one single thrust.

The creature before him, now only visible by its glowing red eyes, took several steps forward and approached him with ease Odin found almost impossible to comprehend.

“What are you?” he asked, desperate to draw his father’s sword but unsure if he should. “What do you want from me?”

The creature tilted its head back and howled.

On the distant hills, several more pairs of glowing red eyes appeared from the darkness.

What in the world could I have done to summon this upon me?
he thought, shivering, the air growing deathly cold and every fine hair on his forearms rising on end.

To say that he had done nothing would have been an ignorant, bold-faced lie, for this entire journey was toward a venture that could have been described as hellish—agonizing, some would say, for its purpose and deviant need. He wanted to do something that the highest courts of magic had deemed illegal. To summon the dead, they said, was to curse oneself beyond any reasonable measure
. Elves had once attempted to bring the dead back to life, then were thrust into madness and distorted beyond repair. Human men, they argued, were not capable of using such magics, that their minds would simply be rendered and they reduced into bubbling throes of madness, but what comprehension did that regard when mortals were capable of wielding such powers for the greater, grandest evil? Did that mean that even the most skilled of human mages would be thrust into infinity and torn from their place within their minds?

I
’m not doing anything others wouldn’t do.

No, of course he wasn
’t. Anyone in his position would have surely ran away from their kingdom and abandoned their king for a quest that would likely result in his death or eventual, lifelong imprisonment, would have defied the odds and, for reasons unimaginable, what could have been considered common good nature to pursue madness and evil itself.
Anyone
who suffered as he had would blindly do such a thing, for to wander in the dark with only a single flame to guide one was considered to be the grandest thing possible in the minds of many and the hearts of every.

Who was he kidding? His quest was for one thing and one thing only—to bring back a person he had not had enough time with because he felt robbed
of the one form of true happiness he could have ever had.

“I know what I
’m doing,” he said, training his eyes on the apparition that stood before him. “I know what the consequences are.”

Did he, though? Did he really,
truly
know what would happen were he to not only steal, but read from that book?

It
’s time for you to decide,
his conscience whispered,
if you are ready to go through with this.

Odin closed his eyes.

A flower bloomed before his vision.

In hues of red, gold, and of the greatest, grandest yellow, it flowered across his
eyes before it eventually began to lose its petals—first one, then a few, then all, each and every one falling into an imaginary pool of darkness and losing their color before disappearing beneath the waves.

He opened his eyes.

When he found that the apparition before him was gone, he fell to his knees and screamed.

The sound echoed across the hills.

It could have been called whooping, had he a recollection of it, but since he didn’t, he simply called it madness.

What could he do so far away from home?

Nothing, he knew, for there was only one way to go.

Crawling forward, Odin slid into his bedroll as far as he could and threatened his mind to swallow him whole.

There seemed to be little warning when the hills began to end. A grand flourish, a brief drop, a slow but arduous decline that steadily built in pace until the land began to flatten—it occurred to Odin when he dismounted his horse that the majority of the day would be spent navigating the downward pass into the Great Divide below.
In light of this, he took extra care to tighten his hold on the reins and lead the horse along the many bumps and juts in the road to keep it from falling down.

“You
’re doing good,” he whispered, reaching up to stroke the creature’s mane. “Don’t you worry. We’ll be down here soon enough.”

Though that in itself was as bold a lie as any, he said it mostly for his own
comfort instead of the horse’s, who likely knew nothing of human words or what they meant. It had taken him all his courage to even think about descending, let alone actually do it.

And now you
’re freaking yourself out.

Of course, if he truly wanted to be honest with himself, he could say that he was calmer than he expected himself to be. He could have been screaming, ranting, raving or sweatin
g up a storm, because in all actuality, he had everything in the world to be afraid of.

One false step could se
nd him tumbling down the hill.  One misguided direction and the horse could break its legs. One illogical thought and he could miss something very crucial that would impact his journey the entire rest of the way.

As the thoughts continued to surmount against him, arming themselves with swords, daggers, spears and maces, he began to consider the very-real possibility that his horse would be useless within the Abroen Forest. He
’d once heard, through scant conversation among the teachers within the Ornalan castle, that ruts and canyons so deep existed that anyone who fell in them would surely be trapped forever, if not eaten by giant, carnivorous plants that were said to ‘be alive as any animal was’ and that ‘held teeth comparable to knives.’ Were he to come in contact with such terrain, he would likely have to leave his horse behind or tether it close to a watering hole, if only to secure its safety and allow it life that it would otherwise probably not have.

Slowly, as to not push himself or his mount into too quick a stop, Odin raised his hand and looked down at the great gorge in the earth below.

This is where you came,
he thought, sighing, almost unable to contain the tears that threatened to slip from his vision.
This is how you came to get your salvation.

It was highly unlikely that the Elven army had mounted the hills and made their way to the Ornalan border. Instead, they could have d
ecided to pass around the hills together and skirt the border of the Dark Mountains, though imposing themselves upon such a place had likely increased their chance of being attacked. Werewolves, Harpies, undead and even greater, deviant creatures were said to inhabit not only those mountains, but the forests within them. Who was to say that they could have led an entire force through them without being attacked?