City of Jade (16 page)
Authors: Dennis McKiernan
And perhaps you will die needlessly
, thought Aylis; she did not say it aloud.
, thought Aylis; she did not say it aloud.
At a gesture from Balor, one of the miners brought a small sample of the stone to the DelfLord, who handed it to Aylis. She looked at the rock with its scintillant glitter, then handed it back.
Balor said, “We find it five ways: veins, sheets, flakes, nuggets, and as an ore. The veins, flakes, sheets, and nuggets take little or no refinement, but this”—he held up the stone—“is the hardest to separate from the rock. We crush it to a fine dust and wash it down a very long sluiceway, and the heavier starsilver sinks to the bottom and is trapped by retaining bars, while the lighter stone powder is carried away.”
“I see,” said Aylis, and again she looked back at the Lair.
“Would you like to examine the Lost Prison?” asked Balor.
“Indeed. In fact, if you don’t mind, I would use my powers to .”
Balor turned up a hand and inclined his head in assent.
As Aylis stepped back into the Lair, Balor followed and stood silently by.
Aylis laid a hand on the upraised block, and then muttered an arcane word and after a moment said, “Four. There are four events of significance here.”
She fell silent and closed her eyes. Heartbeats passed, and then she smiled and said, “Ah, that’s how it was made.”
More moments passed, and she gasped. “It comes, the Gargon.” Her heart raced, for once before she had faced such a Demon, in a dreamwalk with the Pysk Jinnarin. “It is but a vision of things long past,” Aylis murmured a time or two, the mantra settling her fast-beating pulse. Then she smiled and said, “The trap is sprung.”
After still another moment she gasped and with unseeing eyes looked toward the gaping hole and cried, “Oh, Adon, it’s loose! It’s loose! No-no-no-no, the slaughter, the terrible slaughter.” Aylis, weeping, broke free of the vision and turned to Balor and, sobbing, leaned into him.
At a loss, Balor stood rigid for a heartbeat or two, but then embraced the Seeress and silently held her till the weeping subsided.
Finally, Aylis took a deep breath and Balor released her. She stepped away and said, “Forgive me, DelfLord, but it was a terrible thing I .”
“The Châkka, they could do nought?” he asked.
“Nothing,” replied Aylis. “The Fearcaster’s gaze froze them.”
“As we thought,” said Balor.
Long moments passed in silence, but at last Aylis said, “There is one more event I would , the fourth and most recent one of those I detected.”
But Balor held up a hand of caution. “My lady, are you certain you would see this thing? I would not have you suffer again.”
Aylis’s heart went out to the stalwart Dwarf who sought to protect her from perhaps a vision of sorrow. “Lord Balor, I thank you, yet whether it is a revelation of distress or joy, it is one which I must .”
Balor sighed and inclined his head in acquiescence.
Aylis braced herself and laid a hand on the slab and whispered an arcane word. Once more she wept, this time softly, at the of seven allies who were trapped herein, only to escape Foul Folk and fire, though not all made it out alive.
The following day, Aylis and Balor returned to the eastern end of the Dwarvenholt. But Aylis was not finished with her
In all, Aravan and Brekk needed three days to choose the thirty-nine other Dwarven members of the warband, and they had just begun making preparations for the journey south to the
Eroean
.
That night Aravan said, “Thou didst vanish, Chier. I slept alone yesternight and the night before.”
“I was learning about starsilver, love, and winnowing out signal events. Perhaps one day I will tell you what I gathered. Besides, you were busy, and what better way for me to while away the time? And as for sleeping alone, well, so did I.”
“Thou art not yet ready to tell me what thou didst glean from thy study?”
Aylis smiled and said, “Not yet,” but Aravan noted her eyes were glistening, as of tears unshed. He said nought, but simply took her in his arms and held her close.
That night they made tender love, and the next morning Aravan left the holt and took to wing as a falcon and flew toward Darda Erynian, the Great Greenhall, that forest lying eastward nigh fifty leagues and across the River Argon. It was therein where Aravan hoped to recruit a special scout.
The next morning as well Aylis closeted herself with DelfLord Balor and the holt’s Loremasters and she related to them what she had learned concerning the Gargon’s Lair and the relevant events thereafter. Even then her eyes filled with tears, as did those of the Châkka listening, and they cast their hoods over their heads at the telling of when the Gargon broke free and slew the miners who had inadvertently set it loose. They wept as well when she spoke of how Braggi and his raiders were slaughtered by that dreadful monster. Yet they cast back their hoods and shouted, “Châkka shok! Châkka cor!” and “Brega, Bekki’s Son!” and “Hál, Deevewalkers!” when she told how that Fearcaster had met its doom.
That evening, as Aylis returned to her quarters, lost in contemplation, she took a wrong turn and wandered into corridors heretofore untrodden by her. And as she started down another of these, at the far end she noted several veiled and graceful beings shepherding a number of chattering Châkka offspring at the distant end of a long corridor. Without thought, Aylis spoke an arcane word invoking her
Oh, my, they are all male children, and those with them
—
females they are, and long past their childhood
—
yet their is completely different from that of Châkka males. Are these Châkia? The hue of their would make them be of the Kind I learned about when I studied in the City of Bells. If so, what are they doing here?
—
females they are, and long past their childhood
—
yet their
Of a sudden, Aylis realized that these were indeed the Châkia, and exactly who and what these graceful creatures were.
Oh, my, could this be a punishment set by Elwydd in atonement for a long-past dark deed?
In that moment she realized why they were in the Dwarvenholt, and she wondered if the male Dwarves knew these things or if it was instead a long-held secret.
Oh, my, could this be a punishment set by Elwydd in atonement for a long-past dark deed?
In that moment she realized why they were in the Dwarvenholt, and she wondered if the male Dwarves knew these things or if it was instead a long-held secret.
All this Aylis grasped with but a single glance, and she quickly turned away and said another arcane word to lessen the level of her , for she would not further pry into the privacy of those she had seen.
As she retraced her steps to reach her own quarters, Aylis knew that it would be unlikely she would ever tell anyone ought of what she had inadvertently learned.
The next morning, Aylis and forty-two armed and armored Châkka assembled in the East Hall at the Dawn Gate, along with Aylis’s horse and all the ponies and supplies they needed for the full of the trek. Forty of the Dwarves formed the warband that would serve on the
Eroean
; the remaining two would bring the animals back to the Dwarvenholt once the far goal had been reached. Easterly they would ride in cavalcade, aiming for the ferry at Olorin Isle and Darda Erynian beyond, where, at the ruins of Caer Lindor, they would meet with the scout Aravan had recruited, were he successful in doing so. From there they would turn south and journey to the hidden grotto in Thell Cove, where they would meet the
Eroean
.
In saying farewell, Aylis embraced Balor and whispered, “Thank you, DelfLord, for letting me see the Gargon’s Lair, and for being there when I needed a friend.”
Balor awkwardly returned her embrace and harrumphed a gruff growl and said, “It is I who owe thanks, Seer, for your visions have told us much of what we did not know of the Lost Prison as well as the deaths of Braggi and his raiders, and the final slaying of the Ghath.”
Then the DelfLord moved back and nodded to Brekk, and at a command the Dwarves mounted up, Aylis stepping to her horse and mounting as well.
Balor then strode forward and said, “Forget not this,” and he handed up to Aylis a well-tied leather pouch filled with a pound of starsilver ground to a fine argent powder. “Open it not in the wind,” he added, “else that black-haired Elf of yours will come and ask me for more.”
Aylis laughed and momentarily considered putting the pouch into her saddlebags, but knowing that what it held was more precious than diamonds, she knotted the pouch to her belt.
And they rode out from mighty Kraggen-cor and down the Pitch, called Baralan by the Dwarves, and out through the foothills and onto the wide wold they fared, heading for the mighty Argon River and the Great Greenhall beyond.
15
Scout
JOURNEY TO THE
EROEAN
EARLY SUMMER, 6E1
EROEAN
EARLY SUMMER, 6E1
On the evening of the seventh day and some fifty leagues after leaving Kraggen-cor, Aylis and the Dwarven warband reached the banks of the Argon River upstream from Olorin Isle. To the south some five leagues away lay the vast forest of Darda Galion. Yet that twilit woodland was not their goal, but Darda Erynian instead, the Great Greenhall lying just across the wide flow. They made camp at the embarkation point of the ferry, for they would cross in the light of the morrow rather than in this day’s darkening eve and its ensuing depths of night.
As they had each sunset along the journey, within a perimeter of Dwarven guards they set up camp and took a late meal of jerky and crue. And by one of the small fires, Brekk turned to Aylis and asked, “My lady, who is this scout we will meet in the ruins of Caer Lindor?”
Her mouth full of the waybread, Aylis shook her head and continued chewing. After a moment she took a gulp of tea and then said, “I know not, for Aravan said nought to me, other than I might find it a pleasant surprise.”
“But, my lady, you are a Seeress. Can you not know?”
“Ah, Brekk, I like to be nicely surprised. Besides, looking into the future is somewhat difficult and shows many paths. To winnow out the true one is not simple.”
Brekk grunted, but otherwise did not reply.
Aylis looked across the water at the island lying a mile short of two leagues downstream. From the northern tip of the isle, smoke rose into the air, for there lay a small cluster of dwellings. “Who plies the ferry?”
“The Baeron, this year,” said Dokan, Brekk’s lieutenant, sitting across the fire from her. “Next year it will be ours to do.—We Châkka, that is.”
“Baeron and Dwarves alternate?”
Dokan nodded. “Aye. Long past, it was the foul Rivermen who worked the ferry, but they were thieves and robbers and worshipers of Gyphon. Rivermen would waylay boats upstream, cast the cargo overboard, and let it float to the isle, where their kith would snag it and take it as their own. They tried to blame all on the Race, a furious set of rapids and rocks where the river pinches down in a narrow canyon twenty-five leagues to the north. But they were revealed for the vile folk they were”—Dokan clenched a fist—“and the Châkka and the Baeron dealt with them.
“Even so, there were among them some who declared innocence, and those were spared, and they then plied the ferry. But during the Great War of the Ban, Rivermen came to Caer Lindor, claiming that Foul Folk had floated downstream and onto their isle and had raided and slain, and they asked for sanctuary in the fortress; it was these very same Rivermen who aided the Foul Folk to overthrow the bastion, long a thorn in Modru’s side.” Dokan paused and ground his teeth in rage over vile deeds done during his distant ancestors’ time. Finally he took a deep breath and said, “After that war came to an end, we Châkka and the Baeron trade off operating this crossing.”
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