The Eye of the Hunter (48 page)

“This I believe: The yellow-eyed Man, whoever he is, is in league with the
Spaunen
and drives them to acts of savagery and ruin. This I know, for he it was who commanded the
Rûpt
when Galarun was slain and the sword taken. The keep I found was in ruins, made so by
Spaunen
, perhaps at the behest of a yellow-eyed Man—Ydral, who is said to have lived there…a rumor at best. Yet even though it is but a rumor, even though I have no evidence of it, found no proof of it, I do believe that Ydral is the one who dwelt in the keep in Garia.

“Where he has gotten to, I cannot say.

“Mayhap this Baron Stoke is Ydral. Yet when I searched for confirmation, his bartizan in Vulfcwmb had been destroyed, collapsed by the Drimma, and his mansion in Sagra had been burned, and nothing came of it.” Frustrated, Aravan’s voice took on a dark tone. “If Ydral is the yellow-eyed Man I seek, if he is this Baron Stoke…or in league with Stoke—”

Aravan slammed his fist into his open palm, his face dark with fury. Gwylly and Faeril drew back in apprehension, and when the Elf saw this, he opened his fist and relaxed his hands and slowly let the tension drain from him.

Faeril reached out and touched Aravan’s arm. “Are you all right, Alor Aravan?”

Aravan took her hand in his own and gently held it. “Aye, Faeril, I am. I did not mean to affright thee, nor Gwylly. It’s just that I have been searching for so very long for Galarun’s murderer and the Dawn Sword…and only shadows and whispers do I find.”

Gwylly cocked his head, his viridian eyes glittering. “This Dawn Sword, do you really think it will be found? I mean, you’ve been searching for—for millennia, and if you can’t find it…well, maybe it’s lost forever. Perhaps it is a false hope.”

Aravan took a deep breath. “Dara Rael gave me hope with her augury of the Silver Sword, and Faeril here has renewed my hope, for not only do we have Rael’s prophecy, we now also have Faeril’s.”

Gwylly leaned back in surprise, and Faeril’s eyes flew wide. “My prophecy? Why, I’ve never made—” Suddenly the damman remembered falling through the crystal.

Aravan smiled. “Rael said:

“And thou didst say:

“Surely ye both see the linkage ’tween these two.”

Gwylly shook his head,
No
, and Faeril turned up her palms.

Aravan took a deep breath. “My interpretation is by no means certain, for auguries are oft subtle…and dangerous—thou mayest deem they mean one thing when they mean something else altogether. Yet as to the linkage ’tween these two prophecies, this I ween is the way of it: To bear the Silver Sword forth upon the Dawn implies a Dawn Ride from Adonar unto Mithgar, as prophesied by Rael. Yet the way is sundered. Hence, for such to happen requires a Rider of Impossibility, a Traveller of the Planes, and that is what thine own prophecy foretells, Faeril.”

Now both Gwylly and Faeril nodded, and Gwylly said, “So you think it likely the Silver Sword and the Dawn Sword are one and the same, and believe that my dammia’s words fit hand in glove with Rael’s.”

Aravan smiled at Gwylly’s apt turn of phrase. “Aye, that I do.”

Faeril looked up into Aravan’s face. “But what about the child—the
Child of the same
—what does that mean?”

Aravan laughed. “Ah, wee one, did we know that, then the world would be at our feet, for our sight would be clear beyond that of all other beings.”

* * *

They forded the Hanü the next morning, faring southward toward the slot between the Bodorian Range on their left and the Skarpal Mountains on their right, the terrain rugged, their progress slow. Through foothills and craggy tors they rode, among wooded land canting this way or that and pitching up and down, and at times they had to dismount and walk, occasionally backtracking to find an easier way. Often they had to stop and give the steeds a rest. And their travel was not aided by the weather, for it rained that day and all the next, and the slopes became slippery and at times too slick, too loose, for the horses to traverse, though perhaps the mules and ponies could have gone on for they seemed more sure footed.

The following day the skies cleared, though the rain-soaked soil was yet a hazard. In the afternoon of the day after, they came down a steep grade and to the banks of a river. It was the Venn, having swung through its wide westerly arc and south, flowing on its own journey down to the Avagon Sea. And they had come to its course once again. Across the Venn lay Garia to the west; on this bank, Alban to the east; mountains before and mountains aft, and a river threading southward between.

Down the Venn rode the five, along the river’s edge, at times on the bank, at times in the water along a shallow shore, following the meandering watercourse, for it was easier than riding through the steep flanking tors. Water cascaded from the mountains, braw streams leaping down the slopes, plunging, shouting in waterfalls, churning into the waters of the Venn. And whenever the comrades rode a distance in the crystal stream, Gwylly would cast out a hand-held line baited with nought but a daub of crue; even so, he managed to catch three fish this way, Faeril laughing in delight.

Urus and Riatha rode in enchantment, for it seemed to them that nature itself recognized their trothplight, for the days were cool and the nights warm, and it was as if the birds caroled paeans of joy for their ears alone. And even the animals of the forest and of the river appeared to celebrate their love, pausing to look at the Elfess and the
Baeran and to be seen by them in return: otters mudsliding; beavers in their ponds on dammed-up tributaries, slapping water as the two rode by; stags standing nobly, bounding away; squirrels chattering above in the trees…. What a wonderment! Idyllic. Serene. The woes of the world banished…. Or so it seemed to the lovers.

Though Aravan rode in silence.

Seven days they followed the river, but on the eighth they left its bed, for again the Venn swung on a westerly arc, and the five cut cross-country through the foothills of the Bodorian Range, striving for direct route to the port city of Thrako. Yet once again the weather turned and wild spring storms raged, thrown against the land by the Avagon Sea. Two days they spent against a high stone bluff, sheltered under a shallow overhang, while the wind and rain lashed at them and huge strokes of lightning crashed near, great blasts of thunder whelming in after. It was all they could do to keep the animals from bolting, and they got little rest.

After the storm, they camped for two days, recovering. But on the third day’s dawning, once again they took up the journey, wending down through the hills and tors, following vales and streambeds, following the paths of least resistance. Even so, the way was formidable, and there were full days they traversed but ten miles or so. Yet onward they struggled, at times riding, at other times leading their mounts through thickets and briars and up steep hillsides and back down again, riding left and right to find ways down bluffs and up, and ways to pass beyond canyons. Often they speculated that perhaps they should have continued following the River Venn even though it did swing wide westerly, for surely that easy route, though longer, was swifter. But they did not turn back, for now they were deeply committed, and Riatha’s map showed that soon the way would ease. At last the hills began to diminish, and their course took them down toward a broad plain. South they continued, now veering westerly, as out onto a rolling land they came, arcing for the port town some hundred or so miles distant.

That night when they camped, Riatha and Aravan sang Elven songs and spoke invocations, and all stepped the slow, stately dance to a chant by the Elfess—Aravan Gwylly, Faeril, Urus, and Riatha herself, all moving to her cant, celebrating the summer solstice.

Over the next three days, they began to see signs of civilization: farms, herds of sheep and cattle, growing fields of grain, roads and tradeways, steads, cotes, shacks, occasional hamlets.

At last they came unto Thrako, a port town of some five thousand—a massive city to the Warrows.

It was the twenty-fourth day of June.

* * *

Twenty days they waited ere catching a ship bound for Caer Pendwyr. A coastal freighter, from Hovenkeep, it was the
Orran Vamma
, Hovenian meaning “Golden Dolphin,” though the round-bellied craft was a far cry from the sleek-swimming denizen of the sea. It reminded Faeril of the Fjordlander knorr the
Hvalsbuk
—the
Whale’s Belly
—and she smiled at the thought, noting that Gwylly was smiling, too. Yet the
Orran Vamma
would transport them and their steeds to Hile Bay in Pellar, landing at the port of Pendwyr.

And so it was that on the fourteenth day of July they boarded the
’Vamma
and set sail for Pellar.

* * *

The
Orran Vamma
wallowed and broached its way down the coast, stopping it seemed at every port city along the shore, offloading cargo, onloading cargo, Captain Ammor, a large, laughing Man in his fifties, trading and buying and selling.

Slowly, slowly they progressed, if progress it could be called. Down the coast of Garia and through the straits past The Islands of Stone, a place where it was said that nothing grew and arcane stone figures stood, some folks claiming that ’twas sorcery that had graved them, others claiming that they were carven merely by water and wind. Regardless, these isles had a sinister reputation, for in times past, they had been the lair of many a pirate, striking out from the hundreds of inlets between.

Past the narrow channel to the Inner Sea they wallowed, not sailing into the great body of brackish water, neither fresh nor salt, but faring onward in the coastal waters of the Avagon Sea.

Along the shoreline of Southern Riamon they sailed, stopping now and again.

It was during this part of the journey that Gwylly and Faeril discovered why Aravan brooded. During a starlit summer night, as buccan and damman strolled the deck,
they came to the bow of the
Orran Vamma
, and there stood Aravan and Riatha, the two speaking low to one another in the Elven tongue.

“[
…Vio alo janna…
] I am simply saying, Riatha, that he is a mortal Man, and as such, tragedy will surely come unto ye both as he—”

“As he grows old and I do not.” Riatha’s voice was bitter, her eyes filled with despair. “Aravan, Aravan, dost thou think that I have not considered this? It has bedevilled me for more than a thousand years!”

Aravan took her hand. “I know, Dara. I know.” He fell silent for a moment, then continued, “Thou art like unto a
jaian
to me, Riatha, and I would not see thy heart shattered.”

“As was thine own at Rwn.” Her words were an observation, not a question.

Bleakly, Aravan nodded.

They stood a moment longer, the water
shsshing
against bow and hull. At last Aravan spoke again: “There is this, too, Dara: There may come a time in our pursuit of this yellow-eyed monster that thou must choose ’tween thy love’s life or death, and the lives or deaths of others—the Waerlinga, you, I, to name them—those likely to be in jeopardy. At Rwn, I chose one way. How wilt thou choose. Dara? How wilt thou choose?”

As Aravan released Riatha’s hand and strode off from her, Gwylly and Faeril shrank back into the shadows. Riatha stood at the bow and watched the phosphorescent waves before them, and what she thought, neither buccan nor damman knew. After a moment they, too, crept away, leaving the Elfess standing a lonely vigil.

* * *

At last they came to the coastal waters of Pellar, and finally unto Hile Bay, ringed ’round by high sheer cliffs, towering upward a hundred feet.

As they sailed into the harbor, the city of Pendwyr could be seen above, its buildings ranged along the lengthy, steep-sided headland sheltering the bay. At the tip of the headland, separated from it by no more than fifty feet, stood a tall, sheer-walled stone island, its surface on a level with that of the city, a castle occupying the heights—Caer Pendwyr. Beyond the island holding the caer stood two more plumb-sided islands towering up nearly as high, and it could
be seen that buildings were thereupon, but what they housed could not be discerned, and none aboard spoke of their purpose.

The
Orran Vamma
docked alongside other coastal freighters in mid-afternoon. Faeril and Gwylly, Aravan, Riatha and Urus, and the ponies, horses, and mules were offloaded as dusk fell across the bay.

Slowly they made their way up the cliff-side road to the city of Pendwyr, taking rooms at the Silver Marlin.

It was now the tenth day of August.

They had begun their journey on Springday Night, one hundred forty-two days ago, travelling from the Great North Glacier in the far Grimwalls unto this inn in Pellar, nearly three thousand miles in all. Yet their purpose for coming here had not been achieved,
might not
be achieved, for it depended upon a boon yet to be granted in the High King’s castle a mile or so away, and relied upon redemption of a pledge made by a child of ten a thousand and thirty-seven years past.

Summer, 5E988 to Autumn, 5E989
[The Present]

G
wylly came instantly awake.
What was that?

The buccan did not recognize his surroundings, for he was in a broad bed, and the room did not rock and sway.

Again came the light tapping on the door.

“Unh,”
he groaned. Trying to sit, he found his arm trapped under Faeril, the limb totally asleep, and he had to pull his entire body away to get free. When he had struggled to an upright position, his eyes swept the chamber.
Oh. The Silver Marlin. No wonder it doesn’t rock and sway. It’s not the
Orren Vamma
…thank Adon
.