Exiles From The Sacred Land (Book 2) (27 page)

Trendan reached the ruins of Brightonhold Keep about midday. The Enforcers’ former stronghold already had weeds growing around its perimeter. A few Enforcers tried to keep the order alive for a time, but without the numbers they previously enjoyed, the task proved to be impossible, and the keep was now destined for ruin. Trendan surmised that the order was probably doomed from the beginning and would eventually cease to exist entirely, even in the remote parts of the known world. He also presumed that some other, similar organization would rise up to take its place.

He searched around the façade of the keep, looking for signs of which direction Dorenn’s party might have gone. It had rained sometime in the last week, and the rainwater had washed away almost all trackable marks. He was about to give up when something peculiar caught his eye—a shattered stone. He poked around at the stone, turning it over and noticing that it was charred black in places. He picked up several pieces and sniffed them. They had an acrid burnt smell that reminded him of how singed hair smelled. He caught sight of footprints leading away from the shattered stone. He got down on his knees and examined the print now mere inches from his face. Although he could not be sure, the prints looked very close to the print of the boot Dorenn wore. A faded crisscross in the upper left of one boot print convinced him. Dorenn had stepped on some broken glass in the kitchen at Brookhaven once, but he never had the sole repaired, and the now faded pattern imprinted the soft ground from the rains before. Mysteriously, the footprints were single.
What is Dorenn doing walking off by himself?
Trendan wondered. He decided to follow the trail.

Trendan estimated that he was approximately one and a half to two days behind Dorenn. He moved quickly, fearing all the while that Fayne might be following. In fact, he was sure she would try, but he expected that she would take time to bury her mother before heading out after him. She was good, too good; she rivaled his own tracking skills. If she really wanted to track him and catch up with him, she would find a way.

Even though the Sacred Land was in the process of rejuvenation, there were still immense tracks of land where the sparse trees, long since dead, and barren landscape offered little in the way of protection from the harsh cold of winter. The season was still young. The snows had not yet fallen, but the west wind hollowed on occasion. The north wind blew bitter cold, and neither wind was ever a pleasant breeze.

Trendan trekked across the Sacred Land, carefully choosing his path. There were no game animals or plants to sustain life, so he had to rely entirely on his meager provisions. By now, Trendan realized that Dorenn was traveling to Signal Hill. He remembered the way from a scouting expedition when he trained as a youth, but he still had to consult his map. He had found evidence twice of where Dorenn might have made camp, and he kept to the crisscrossed boot print as his guide.

It was midmorning on the fourth day of tracking when Trendan caught the scent of something burning in the wind. He could see no smoke, but the smell was unmistakable. By late afternoon, he could see the smoke rising in great black billows on the horizon. The evening sun hung heavily in the sky when Trendan reached what he presumed used to be Signal Hill. Bits of rocks covered by a slag of molten metal marked the village entrance. He could only see one man alive, digging among the charred remains.

“You there,” Trendan called out. “What happened here?”

The man took one look at Trendan and bolted behind some of the rubble and was gone. Trendan knew that Dorenn had helped save the village and that it was being rebuilt. He couldn’t imagine Dorenn would have anything to do with destroying it. He combed the village until the sun went down but saw no other living soul. At last, he found a building with a roof still intact and three standing walls. It faced a direction defensible with his bow, so he decided to make camp there for the night and continue to search in the morning.

Trendan awoke the next morning to an arrow pointed at his head. Dressed all in black leather adorned with silk stood Fayne. Her bold, emerald green eyes were transfixed on Trendan’s face. Even though she appeared incredibly angry, Trendan thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The moment hung awkwardly in the air for several long moments.

“Fayne, I—”

“Don’t you say a word!” she commanded.

“But I—”

She pulled back harder on the bow string, and Trendan closed his mouth.

Several more moments passed.

“Are you going to shoot me with that arrow?” Trendan asked.

“Are you impatient to die? Would you like me to hurry this along?”

Trendan sighed. “Not particularly, no.”

“Why, Trendan? Mother had not posed a threat to you.”

“She was a spy and a traitor. I had to do it, out of duty.”

“You are half right. I am a spy, but I was never a traitor.” Kimala’s voice came from beyond the wall. She entered the dilapidated room. “But you never gave me the chance to prove it, did you?”

“How can you possibly be alive?” Trendan gasped.

She eyed Trendan for a moment, contemplating. “All right, I will tell you.” She sat on the end of a broken rock wall. “When Fayne was a little girl, I was working in my garden and was bitten by a snake. Only, this snake was put there by Toborne. I was married to a man that opposed him, and he wanted to destroy that man’s family for leverage or Fawlsbane knows what for. The snake venom was made to corrupt me and turn me into whatever Toborne suggested. I was given to Naneden, his apprentice, and forced to turn against my family. It worked for a while, until I was ordered to kill Ianthill’s family. Enowene caught me before I could follow though, and with the help of Erinthill and Brynna, cured me and restored my free will. I vowed to destroy Toborne and Naneden for what they did to me and my family. I have been working as a spy for Enowene and Lady Shey ever since.” She smiled wickedly. “The venom of the snake had one happy side effect. I took on the properties of that snake forever. Its bite made me immune to all known poisons.”

“Who were you married to?”

“That, my dear boy, is another story. The rest of this story will have to wait for safer times to be revealed. I would be happy to tell you if I could, but there are others I must protect—more of my family than whom you see here.”

“You realize that you have done nothing to convince me. How do I know you speak the truth?”

Fayne let the tension out of her bow. “Believe it for me.”

Trendan softened, but he still could not forget that Fayne had given him cause to doubt her. If he had not gone looking for her that evening, he might have never found out that she was carrying on a secret conversation, or that she was Kimala’s daughter. He looked into Kimala’s eyes. Something was still not right. He could feel a coldness there. He could follow Fayne’s wishes and keep Kimala close with caution. He decided that he did not entirely believe Kimala’s story, but he would go along with Fayne as if he did, for now. He would keep a sharp eye on the traitor and, if the time came, use something stronger than poison. This time, he would wait to see the results for himself.

“All right, I will believe it for you, Fayne.” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Did you two see anyone out there among the rubble who could tell us what happened here?” He wanted to change the subject as soon as possible.

“Not a soul,” Kimala answered.

“Do you think your friend did this?”

“It’s possible, I suppose, but I have never known Dorenn to be destructive like this. The only fact I know for certain is that he came this way.”

“There isn’t much around Signal Hill,” Kimala stated. “There are only two possibilities—North to Lux Enor and Naneden’s army or east to Symbor, the Vale of Morgoran, or Brookhaven.”

Trendan thought for a moment. “If I had to guess, I would say he went to Brookhaven or the Vale of Morgoran. We should go east.”

“If he did destroy this village, I say he went north to Lux Enor,” Kimala said. “There is a small village not far from here on the edge of the Borderland Forest, which lies between the Sacred Land and the fields of Enoria. Tippen’s Landing, I believe it’s called. We might find our answers there.”

“No, we head east,” Trendan insisted. He collected his pack and his provisions and walked out into Signal Hill. The embers of the buildings around him had begun to die out. Something nagged at his mind while he surveyed the landscape, and he turned to the girls, who were already directly behind him.

“I have changed my mind. We head north. I don’t want to believe Dorenn did this, but I know he was here. If he did do this, he would not go home. If we go north, we might be able to pick up his trail before getting too far out of Signal Hill, before going too far out of our way.”

It took most of the day to reach the village of Tippen’s Landing. Trendan let Fayne do most of the tracking so he could keep an eye on Kimala. His alliance with Fayne and Kimala remained an uneasy one, but he felt that it was better to have Kimala in front of him, in view, than skulking behind him somewhere in the shadows. Trendan figured they would stay the night in Tippen’s Landing but was surprised when Kimala led them to the outskirts of the village.

“I don’t understand. I thought you wanted to take care of business in the village,” Trendan commented to Kimala.

“I never said that,” she retorted. “I only said we needed to get here.” She let out a heavy sigh as if she was irritated that she must stop and explain. “If it will stop all the fool questioning, there is an ancient site hidden near here. The wielders of old used to use these places of power to travel long distances.”

“Like a dragon stone?” Trendan asked.

“Aye.” She looked at him with malice. “Not everyone is best friends with the dragons of Draegodor. It is a rare thing for the more common folk, even wielders, to carry around a Lora Daine.” She looked around for a moment. “This way.” She headed off the path in a new direction. “The portals of Migarath were mostly destroyed, but a few remain. In the old days, there were several portals scattered throughout the lands. The ones that remain are now largely forgotten.”

“Do they allow you to travel anywhere?” Fayne asked.

“Unfortunately not. They only let you travel between portals. That means we are limited to only the portals that remain.” Her mouth curled in a wicked grin. “There is one other advantage. If the portal has been used recently, we can see where the user traveled.”

“You think Dorenn somehow used the portal? That’s preposterous. How would he even know it existed?” Trendan scoffed.

“Simple, the portal field is unique. I have not felt it for a while, but it’s unmistakable. Someone used it recently, and Fayne has been tracking Dorenn right up to the stop we stand on. It looks like he was told about the portals, or by some other means, he knows about them.”

Trendan looked up at the fading light. “How much farther, then? We are about to lose the light of day.”

Kimala kicked at the ground and then bent down and dusted the area with her hand. “Stand back,” she commanded as she stood upright and raised her hands in a circular gesture. The ground that was there before was gone, and a rectangular opening big enough for a person to get through appeared parallel with the ground. Dust from the opening fell inside onto steps leading down. “Move quickly, the opening will only remain for a few moments.”

Trendan stepped inside. He had a difficult time suppressing the feeling that Kimala was somehow leading him into a trap.
It was pitch dark inside, and as soon as Fayne and Kimala followed him down the steps, the opening closed and the chamber became absolute darkness.

“There used to be magical illumination that would light up in the presence of someone entering the chamber,” Kimala explained.

Trendan readied his bow and reached for an arrow. If it was a trap, he would be prepared.

A few moments more and two blue crystals on stands, about the size of a man’s head, illuminated a rounded, standalone archway at the center of the room, carved with a frieze of animals, forests, lakes, and mountains around its circumference. There was no indication of an active portal within the circular structure. Footprints in the dust led up to the opening, and sure enough, one boot print had the telling mark that gave it away as belonging to Dorenn. Trendan was perplexed. Being half-elven, and in spite of his appearance, he was far older than Dorenn, and he had never heard of the portals.

“All I have to do is reactivate the portal and it should open directly to the portal, on the other side, last traveled,” Kimala said. “Trendan, the footprints in the dust, do you agree they belong to your friend?”