The Book of Heroes (39 page)

The guardsman sprinted toward U-ri, but she held up her other hand, stopping him. “It’s all right! Stay back!”

The guardsman blinked, uncertain of what was going on. Beads of sweat dripped down his face.

Then the man with the sword lunged toward U-ri. He knocked her flat on her back and had her by the collar before she knew what was happening. The man’s blade swung up into the air.

Instinctively, U-ri took her hand from her forehead and placed it on the man’s face. She could feel the bony ridge of his nose beneath her palm, the hollow curve of his cheek. “Leave this man at once, traveler without a home! You do not belong here!” she shouted.

The man froze, the point of his sword pointing straight up toward the sky.

“Be still, traveler,” she repeated, gripping the man’s forehead tightly.

She could hear words in her head.
They’re coming from the glyph!
It was telling her the words of the spell she needed to recite. All she had to do was repeat after the voice.

“Pitiful wanderer in eternity, you have lost your way. You do not belong in this place; this man is no fit vessel for you.”

The possessed man’s head dropped, and he began to groan. Spittle mixed with blood dripped in a viscous line from his mouth, staining the cobblestones below.

“State your name, traveler. Tell me your name.”

The man shivered beneath her hand. More saliva poured from his mouth. His cracked lips opened.

Behind her, the guardsman and all the spectators stood frozen. There was complete silence on the street.

“I…have no name.”

“Tell me your name.”

“We are many…we are unattached…we have no name.”

Large tears began to fall from the man’s eyes. His hand fell, the sword clattering to the ground. He crouched and U-ri sat up, moving her hand from the man’s face to the top of his head. She tried stroking his hair. She could sense the mark on her hand glowing. She could feel its warmth.

“Nameless traveler. Hear the echoing of the Great Wheels. Hear the voice summoning you back to that land removed from the tides of time.”

Your father is the vast darkness, your mother the eternal light.

“There you must return. The Great Wheels call to you. To their circling you must return. Leave!” U-ri shouted the last word, removing her hand from the man’s head and pointing straight upward.

As though following her finger, the pink haze around the man’s head began to drift upward. Pulled by her will, it lifted into the air, until the man was entirely free of it. It twisted like a snake swimming through the air, going straighter the higher up it went, until it became a sharp line, like a spear, shooting straight up into the heavens.

The crouching man fell heavily on his side. He was unconscious.

There was a moment’s silence. Then everyone began to shout at once. There were cheers mingled with screaming. A few brave souls stepped toward U-ri, while others sought to flee.

The guardsman lowered his pistol and walked over to her. He looked down at U-ri with a hard expression on his face. “Who are you?” Aju interpreted from the back of her collar. She didn’t have to answer him though. The guardsman stuck his pistol in his belt and turned to the spectators. “This girl here’s a mage!”

A ripple went through the crowd. Some of the ones who had been trying to run away slowed their pace and came back.

“You’re not from this town, are you? You traveling? By yourself?” the man asked, reaching out to offer his hand to U-ri and help her to her feet. U-ri shook her head several times to indicate she couldn’t understand him.

“She’s the one, she’s the one!” one of the spectators—an older woman—shouted, pointing at U-ri. “She’s the lost child from Aisa’s!”

The guardsman’s eyes went wide and the little mustache beneath his nose crinkled as he smiled. “Is that so!” he exclaimed. “Well, you’ve just saved me some trouble then.”

The spectators stepped aside as another town guard carriage came swiftly down the street, a little late for the action. The guard with the mustache called out to the new arrivals. “You take care of him,” he called out, indicating the fallen man. “I’ll handle the lady.”

A few minutes later, U-ri was climbing into the guardsman’s carriage, not in the back, but up front, next to him in the driver’s seat. The step was too high for her to climb, so the mustached guardsman had helped lift her up.

U-ri caught a glimpse of Aisa among the milling spectators. She waved and nodded her head to the woman. Aisa simply stared back, not even acknowledging her.

Maybe mages aren’t all that welcome in this town.
It had certainly caused a commotion amongst the spectators when the guard announced her in the street—but she had attributed that to mages being a relatively rare thing. Some of the town children ran after her carriage as they took off. Everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of the new mage.

The garrison of the town guard was a solid-looking stone structure two stories tall, with some carefully trimmed trees in the front yard. U-ri stepped out of the carriage by the front door, and the mustached guardsman let her inside. The ceiling was high and though the light was dim, the place had a lively feel with people running this way and that, some in uniform, others in civilian clothes.

She was taken to a small room with a window overlooking the front garden and told to wait. As she sat patiently, she spotted one or two of the children that had chased after her carriage hiding behind the trees outside the window. U-ri waved, and the children began whispering furiously to one another. Then U-ri jabbed her finger straight at them, and they scattered like cockroaches in the light.

“It’s not nice to tease the children, Lady
Allcaste
,” Aju said, chuckling with her. “And I noticed you were able to communicate with your glyph by yourself. Congratulations.”

“Is that what happened in the street?”

“Yes. You recited all the proper words without me having to tell them to you.”

I’m getting used to this, slowly
.

A moment later, a guardsman with an impressive-looking crest on his shoulder came into the room, together with a man dressed all in black and wearing eyeglasses. U-ri thought they might be the mustached guard’s commanding officer and some sort of local official, but as Aju interpreted for her, she discovered that the man in black was a priest in the Church of the Haetlands. U-ri began waving her arms and making gestures again, occasionally saying the word “Katarhar.”

“A mage that can’t use magic of tongues? That’s inconvenient,” the officer said, rubbing his rather large belly through his uniform.

The priest smiled. “She is still young. Yet, if one skilled in the ways of magic wishes to go to the Katarhar Abbey ruins, it falls to us to do everything we can to aid her. Besides, we must reunite her with her parents.”

It was decided they would take her there by carriage. She was made to wait a little longer, during which time they brought her some bread and soup. It was delicious—another stark difference between this town and the village of Kanal.

Once again, U-ri found herself riding in a carriage. This one was slightly smaller than the one before. She sat in the back, where there were only two seats. Yet two horses pulled in front, instead of the usual one.
Probably to get us up the mountain road,
U-ri decided.

The priest and yet another guard she had not seen before sat in the driver’s seat in front, leaving U-ri alone in the back where she could speak freely with Aju.

“Looks like we have to head in the opposite direction first,” Aju commented as the carriage raced out of the town, onto a broad thoroughfare heading north. U-ri worried that they might be going to a different place entirely, but the road soon curved several times. Soon, they were making straight for the dark mountain.

“I wonder what the people of this town think of the abbey?” U-ri wondered out loud, thinking about what the priest had said about them doing everything they could to help her get there.

“I doubt they think about it much at all. It’s probably a gathering place for mages or students of magic these days—hardly their concern,” Aju conjectured from his place in U-ri’s hands, where he curled about himself sleepily. He did not sound overly concerned.

“Even though the place is a ruin?”

Aju shrugged. “Didn’t Ash say people still went there?”

Neither of the two in the front so much as glanced back at U-ri while the carriage sped along. They stopped once to rest the horses a short while after entering the hilly forest at the foot of the mountain. U-ri got out of the carriage to stretch her legs, and the priest offered her a canteen of water. The priest said something, but Aju was back in the carriage sleeping. U-ri said she was sorry and looked as apologetic as she could. Then the priest put one hand to his chest and drew the shape of a cross on his forehead with the other. It was a slightly different cross than the Christian one, with two vertical lines and two horizontal lines. U-ri couldn’t tell whether he was giving her his blessing or warding himself against some evil on the road ahead.

The carriage began to climb the mountain road, bumping as it went. The vibrations woke Aju immediately, but they could hardly speak to another. U-ri was afraid she’d bite her own tongue if she tried to talk, so violently the carriage swayed. The road angled upwards steeply and was very narrow. Rocks littered the ground. The two in the driver’s seat ahead were rigid, clinging to railings on the sides for dear life. U-ri hit the back of her head on the carriage window several times.

The forest covering the mountainside was thick, though individually, the trees seemed very thin. Dry clumps of leaves clung to broken branches. Fallen leaves followed their carriage, drawn into the road by the wind of their passage. Several came fluttering in through the window. The leaves were a pale green color, and they crinkled and disintegrated when U-ri grabbed them and squeezed them between her fingers.

The higher they went, the narrower and darker the road became. The priest lit the lantern hanging off to one side of the driver’s platform. Up in front, the horses whinnied with exertion.

When they suddenly broke free from the dense forest into a flat clearing, it felt like they were emerging from a long, dark tunnel. U-ri turned around, grabbing the railing with both hands to look out.

U-ri had never seen ruins before, and she wasn’t entirely sure she was seeing then now. About the only thing standing was a tall stone wall about U-ri’s height that circled the site of the abbey proper.

The most remarkable features of the mountaintop were the giant, jagged rocks lying about everywhere. All of them were the same smoky gray color, with occasional blotches of darker sandstone here and there, all different shapes and sizes.

“I’ll bet all of those were one rock once,” Aju whispered. “It’s like a giant boulder fell right on top of the abbey, hitting it so hard the rock itself broke into pieces.”

U-ri looked around, eyes wide, and she had to agree with the mouse. Next to where the carriage had stopped was a fallen pillar of some sort with a lantern on it. It made something like an arched entranceway where it leaned against another pillar, leaving a gap through which a person could pass.

Someone came out just then, a man dressed in black. He stooped under the arch and blinked in the sunlight beyond. His clothes looked very similar to those of the nameless monks, though his head wasn’t shaven. Also, where the nameless devout wore no jewelry or accoutrements of any kind, this man had a rosary-like ring of beads around his neck.

The guard stepped off the carriage and began to talk with the man in black. The priest turned and helped U-ri down.

“We’ve arrived,” the priest announced brightly, though he was clearly wary of his surroundings. His eyes darted back and forth. “I hope your parents are here somewhere. Though, even if you’ve missed each other, your magic should work here in order to contact them. I’m sure your parents are capable of such a feat if they found it within their abilities to teach one as young as you.”

The negotiations between the man in black and the guard completed, she was now in the man’s keeping. He extended a hand to her, and pulling her close, he whispered in her ear. “Your companions have been waiting for you.”

I understood him. He speaks my language!

The guard and the priest exchanged a few brief words with the man again; then they jumped back onto the carriage, gave the reins a tug, and headed back down the mountain road so fast they could have been fleeing.

“I am a caretaker of this abbey,” the man said by way of introduction. “My name is Saulo. It is an honor to have you here, Lady
Allcaste.
” Saulo bowed reverently. His hair was white, and his face was weathered and jagged, but his eyes were gentle, his voice warm.

U-ri spotted the vestments of protection draped over his arm.

She sighed with relief. “Ash must have hung on to them!”

Saulo held up the vestments for her, and U-ri hurriedly slipped her arms through the sleeves.

“We are glad you made it.”

As soon as she had on the vestments, a wave of relief passed over U-ri. She was impressed she had made it to the abbey on her own.

“Ash told me you would be fine on your own. Your servant, however, was very worried, I’m afraid.”

“Why should he have been? I was with her the whole time,” Aju squeaked, sticking out his nose.

Saulo did not seem startled by the talking mouse in the least. “And you must be the dictionary.”

“Do you know Ash?”

Saulo smiled and nodded. “There will be time to talk of that in a bit. Please, come into our hall.”

Leading U-ri by the hand, the man walked across the rubble. Though the ruins seemed almost impassable at first glance, when she looked closer, U-ri spotted the signs of wear that come with frequent human passage. They were on a proper path. Even still, they had to duck under fallen pillars and clamber over crumbled sections of wall, and nowhere could she get a view of the ruins as a whole.

Saulo walked ahead of her now; then suddenly the path dipped downward and the man turned briefly to warn U-ri to watch her step. U-ri had assumed they were going down into a cellar of some sort, except nothing about the passage looked man-made at all. There were no steps, nor a ladder, to be seen. From the feel of the rock beneath her feet, she guessed they were heading into some sort of naturally formed cavern.