In the Earth Abides the Flame (51 page)

Villages, castles, cities and provinces razed. People killed, and worse, by an army intent on spreading word of their ruthlessness, their efficiency, their skill and their rapacious hunger.

The Destroyer would come to Faltha to gloat over our destruction, as if the death of the First Men could somehow spite the face of the Most High. But he would not remain here. Instead, he would bequeath Faltha to the; most faithful of his henchmen, with instructions to make our suffering a lingering one, but to destroy us all in the end.

'Then he would gather his forces and assault Dhauria. In his fear he imagines the place of his humiliation, the country within which the Most High once dwelt, to be much stronger than it is; therefore he will not make war with us until he has subdued all other enemies. But we are weak, having rationalised the Destroyer out of existence, and wholly unprepared for the force of hatred he would unleash upon us. We would fall before him, and the Destroyer would kill us all, before coming to make his home in Dona Mihst. There he would gnaw the bones of history, tormenting himself with the judgment of the Most High until his life became an unending weariness. His fate would indeed be just, but of no comfort to the thousands who would die, or to the few who remain alive.

'Even then, if we fail in our quest, the Most High would not completely abandon Faltha and Dhauria to their long fate. A remnant would be raised up to oppose the Destroyer; if not in this age, then in the next. He will not see darkness wholly conquer. But in the meantime much that is beautiful, praiseworthy, or loved even if it is plain, will be lost. Loulea will be no more.

Disaster will descend on the innocent without explanation. Unlike you, the villagers will have no one to ask "why" before they die.'

'I don't want that to happen,' said Leith. 'But I cannot believe the Most High's chief weapon against the Destroyer is a group of villagers from Firanes. How heartless to take such a risk with all of Faltha! I would feel much better if the best of Falthans were part of his plan.'

'We do not know all of the thoughts of the Most High. It may be he has other plans being enacted at this moment - or perhaps we are indeed the only hope. Who knows? But the best of Faltha have already deferred to you villagers, and so I tend to think if we fail, Faltha will be irrevocably lost. Whatever is raised up in the ages to come will not have the benefit of what we are now. They will look back on our simple pleasures with envy, regarding us as a legendary, classical age of truth and beauty.'

'Then I will resist the Bhrudwans with everything I have,' Leith declared, moved by Phemanderac's words. 'But I feel as though the Most High is claiming me, whether I want him to or not, and I am losing myself in the process. Why does it have to be that way?'

Phemanderac walked for a time, deep in thought, trying to shape a reply to Leith's question.

He was aware the young man was deeply troubled, and the fears he had discerned in the youth from the moment he met him in a Widuz dungeon were coming to the surface.

The travellers made their way through a narrow belt of broad-crowned trees, closer now to the mountain flanks than the foam-flecked river. Deciding on a response to Leith, the philosopher turned to him. As he opened his mouth to speak a heavy black shape dropped from the branches above them, landing between Leith and Phemanderac.

* * *

'Beware! Look out!' came cries from all around them, as the Arkhimm became aware of the danger in their midst. The warnings came far too late. Leith swept out his new-found sword, but even as he did so he knew he was far too slow, and wondered why he was not already dead.

'Hold!' cried Hal.

Leith looked on the black-robed form beside him. Recognition came slowly, mainly because he was simply not expecting to see this particular person in the mournful wasteland of Astraea. It was Achtal, the Bhrudwan.

Hal hobbled to his side as the others stepped away, unsure of him. Leith watched Hal and the Bhrudwan embrace, then exchange words, and with surprise noticed Achtal's poor condition.

His black robe was worn, travel-stained with mud and worse, torn to tatters around his feet.

There were fresh scars on his exposed forearms, neck and cheeks; and he looked thinner around the throat, as though he had been starved.

'Achtal tells me he left the Company three days after we did,' Hal reported to them after some minutes' conversation with the Bhrudwan. 'He says his place is by my side, and so he had to find us. When he left them the Company were well, had eluded pursuit, and were together in Instruere trying to decide what to do next. They had agreed not to hazard an escape from the city, because they believed they still had a role to play there. Achtal took his leave from them, and forced his way across Southbridge. It was difficult to achieve, the more so because he tried not to take any lives. In this he succeeded, but at some cost to himself. Outdistancing the pursuit on foot, he took a horse some distance south of the city and set out after us. He would have overtaken us quickly - in fact, he believes he may have seen us in the distance - but the horse he stole pulled up lame, and he fell into the hands of his pursuers.

'They treated him roughly, but he bided his time, and made an escape when his captors relaxed their vigilance. This time he could not avoid spilling blood, slaying two of the guard.

He took one of their horses, and applied his tracking skills to find and follow our trail, but the day he lost meant he arrived in Kinnekin too late. We had already left in Prince Wiusago's company. He continued southwards towards Brunhaven, and there he lost the trail.

'He spent three days searching for news of our passing, though he describes it as "sensing the trail of his master". To his surprise he eventually discovered we had gone inland, and recovered our trail on the borders of the Mist. Anxious to avoid drawing pursuit after us, he first made sure the Instruians went south before he ventured too far inland.'

'The Instruian Guard would not have gotten very far if they tried to enter the Mist,' Te Tuahangata said confidently.

'It is so,' Hal agreed. 'Though Achtal did not know that being unaware of the reputation of the people of the Mist. It appears the Children remembered the tales we told them of our companions remaining in Instruere, or perhaps gained insight from some other source, for they did not hinder him in his journey through the Mist. From there he followed our path through the Valley of a Thousand Fires and on into Astraea. He thinks he must have passed us in the night. He saw us from afar across the river flats, but at that distance could not be sure we were not of the guard. So he waited in the trees until he could be certain.'

'Be welcome, Achtal,' the Haufuth said formally, acknowledging the Bhrudwan. 'You have endured hard trials in the service of your new master, and have proved yourself faithful. I name you now as a companion of the Arkhimm, and bind you to the purpose of our quest.'

As Hal translated, the imposing warrior nodded gravely. Then he spoke.

Achtal will serve,' he said. Achtal will repay trust, make right his wrongs. But Achtal serve his master Hal, not Arkhimm. If Hal serve Arkhimm, Achtal serve Arkhimm.'

'Fair enough,' the bulky headman replied. 'Hal is one of the Arkhimm. I see no problem with the arrangement. As a token his service is accepted, he may eat his fill from what remains of our stores.'

'Good,' said Kurr, sloughing off his pack. 'It's about time we stopped anyway. My knee is giving me fits.'

That evening, while the travellers built a fire and prepared their meal, Hal tended Kurr's knee and Achtal's various wounds. They slept beside a small lake that in the still hour of dawn became a perfect mirror, reflecting the lower slopes and thick cloud cover. The following morning saw them working their way through a patch of bush barring their way. The valley ahead began to rise more sharply, and on both sides the mountains hemmed them in closely.

The clouds remained low, preventing any sighting of their objective, but even if the skies had been clear they could not have climbed the ridge to their left, such was its steepness. To their right, the river was still full, surging brownly from bank to bank, in places the colour of tea.

'Leaf-stain,' Hal speculated. From folds and gullies in the mountains poured waterfalls, sluicing the rain from the shoulders and tops of the steep-sided peaks hidden far above them.

Mist rose like smoke from the bases of these falls, swirling along the mountainsides, entwining itself among the deep beech rainforests.

Some time before lunch they broke through the bush and scrub, and found themselves beside the river. It narrowed here, to perhaps only a hundred yards across, and the level had subsided somewhat: looking back downriver, Leith noticed that the river had forked. They had taken the left-hand fork without knowing it, and were now following the smaller of the two streams.

'If we knew where we were, it might matter which fork we took,' Prince Wiusago said when Leith drew it to his attention. 'But since we don't, we might as well continue on up this valley.'

There was a trace of self-deprecation, even of bitterness, in his normally light-hearted voice, and his long hair hung lankly over his shoulders in the misty morning.

They took lunch there on the banks of the stream, listening to hidden birds exchange liquid notes in the bush behind them. The song hung long in the still, humid air, and peace settled on them all like spring snow. We might be in the wrong place, but it feels right, Leith thought.

With a wrench they moved off again, and for the rest of the afternoon and all the next day made good time, following a narrow strip of land between the river and the bush. Late that day, however, they came to their first check, a fast-flowing stream lying directly across their path. It took them an hour to find a crossing, well upstream, where the water flowed noisily through a gorge so narrow they could leap across it. The return downstream was fraught with difficulty, as in places the water flowed hard against a cliff: at one point Leith found himself up to his chest in water so cold it seemed to burn him, clinging to a rocky outcrop as he edged his way around a bluff.

'Chin up, Leith!' Phemanderac called to him from the safety of a pebbly beach a few yards downstream. 'Lucky the rain stopped, or the water would be over your head!'

'And if the rains hadn't come at all, we could have paddled through the stream two hours ago.'

'If this is the hardest obstacle we have to overcome, then -Leith!'

The youth lost his grip, and suddenly he disappeared from Phemanderac's view. 'Leith!'

A moment later he reappeared, held above the water by a Bhrudwan hand. The philosopher drew a deep breath, and in that moment the man from Dona Mihst, the scholar who loved only his books, realised the depth of the regard he had for the Loulean youth. Strange, he considered. He's no student. We have nothing in common. Why the friendship? In a moment he had the answer: Perhaps our shared danger, our shared destiny, has forged bonds between us. He chose not to examine his answer further.

Late the next morning the Arkhimm came to the headwaters of the river. The land about them had the appearance of having been blasted by some giant engine of war. Impossibly steep great grey walls, roughly chiselled by wind, rain, frost and ice, overhung them like the walls of an impregnable fortress. Thin water-curtains were the walls' only adornment. The cloud-shrouded heights above might hold snow - it certainly felt cold enough down in the bowl at the valley's head - but there was no way of telling.

'Where to now?' Kurr asked Wiusago. His question hung like an accusation in the misty air.

'Up,' came the terse reply.

'The hills are less steep off to the right,' Te Tuahangata said. 'We could hazard a climb there.'

'Come, then,' said the Haufuth. 'I'm getting sick of these hills. It's time we found the Almucantaran Mountains. I don't imagine the Bhrudwan army will wait forever.'

That afternoon their luck seemed to turn: a little way up the broken slope of the ridge before them, they came across the vestiges of a path. Without doubt it was man-made. It took a winding route across the face of the slope and back, in places carved with great labour into the exposed bedrock bones of this hard-edged land. Up and up they climbed, until the sound of rushing water in the valley below receded beyond hearing. When Leith next looked up, they were almost into the clouds. A minute later the wet, cold fog slipped around their shoulders like a shawl. 'Keep close,' the prince called from somewhere ahead. Leith hardly heard him.

It wasn't Prince Wiusago's fault they missed the path. Nobody, no matter how experienced a guide, could have held them to the narrow path, grey on grey, in such a fog. It was so thick Leith's legs seemed to disappear into it, and he could not see Phemanderac in front of him or the Bhrudwan behind. In fact, not until some time after they veered left when the path went sharply right did they realise their mistake.

'I should have been leading,' Te Tuahangata said sullenly, as they perched precariously on the mountainside, trying to decide their next move. 'I've spent half my life in the mist.'

'But have even you seen fog as thick as this? We have nothing like it in Loulea.' The Haufuth gave Te Tuahangata an opportunity to agree with him, in order to redeem the Deruvian prince.

To his relief the Child of the Mist shrugged his shoulders. 'We stay home in mist like this.'

'But we don't have that luxury,' Kurr reminded them. 'At the very least we must find shelter. A night on this ridge could kill us.'

Even as he spoke the light dimmed noticeably. High above them the sun dipped behind the mountain peaks. A cold wind like the breath of ice stirred Leith's mist-moistened hair.

'Can we go back down?' he asked.

'You saw the path we took,' Kurr answered grimly. 'Hard enough to hold to in the middle of the day. It would be madness to attempt it at night. Better we should chance it up here.'

'Then let's take advantage of the light that remains,' encouraged the Haufuth. 'Wiusago, find us a path!'