The Eye of the Hunter (49 page)

One arm dangling uselessly, Gwylly slid out of bed and staggered to the door, opening it to find Aravan standing there.

The Elf smiled. “’Tis dawn.”

Without saying a word, Gwylly stumbled back to the bed and tried to get in again; with only one arm he struggled to clamber up into the great four poster, a full Man-sized bed and him nought but a wee Warrow. Aravan boosted him up, and. Gwylly fell over, rolling and then lying on his back, his good hand massaging his sleeping arm.

Beside him, Faeril opened her eyes.

Aravan threw wide the drapes. Pale morning light filled the room. “Come, wee ones, we don’t wish to be last to the caer. Petitioners will line up shortly, and we must needs arrive early to get a hearing this day.”

“Ow! Ow!”
yipped Gwylly.

Alarmed, Faeril bolted upright, scrambling ’cross covers to the buccan’s side. “What is it, Gwylly? What’s wrong?”

“Ooo,”
he moaned. “Pins and needles, love. My arm was asleep and now wakens.”

Relieved, Faeril plopped facedown on the bedding.

Aravan crossed the floor, heading outward. “I’ll see ye adown shortly for breaking our fast.”

“Elves,” growled Gwylly, “never sleep!”

Grinning, Aravan stepped from the room and closed the door after, turning toward Riatha and Urus’s chamber.

Faeril slid backwards off the bed. “Come, my buccaran. Aravan is no doubt correct. If we would see the Steward…”

Within a half hour, Faeril and Gwylly joined Aravan in the common room of the Silver Marlin, the Elf just now being served, the maid bringing a large platter of breakfast eggs and rashers of bacon and helpings of bread and honey. Too, there was a pot of hot tea with milk on the side. As the three were lading up their trenchers, Riatha and Urus joined them.

Aravan smiled at the glum looks on his companions’ faces. “’Twas a merry time last night, neh?”

Staring at the Elf, Riatha slowly shook her head in ‘wilderment. “How thou canst down glass after glass of brandy, Aravan, and yet be chipper in the morn, I’ll not know. Some arcane secret gained from years at sea, mayhap?”

“
Akka!
No secret to it, Dara—I’ve not yet been to bed.”

Urus choked on his tea, but managed to swallow most of it ere he burst out in strangled laughter. “Arcane secret!” he wheezed, coughing, grinning sideways at Riatha as she pounded him on the back. “Some secret!”

* * *

The Sun had just cleared the horizon as they strolled toward the distant caer, the summer day promising to be clear and warm. A southerly ocean breeze swept gently across the headland. They passed through a city made primarily of stone and brick and tile, stucco and clay, the buildings for the most part joined to one another, though here and there were stand-alone structures. The narrow streets and alleyways twisted this way and that, the cobblestones of variegated color. Shops occupied many first floors, dwellings above. Glass windows displayed merchandise, the
handiworks of crafters: milliners, coppersmiths, potters, jewellers, weavers, tanners, cobblers, and the like.

The city was beginning to come awake, a few storekeepers sweeping the flag walkways before their shops, light traffic trundling, waggon wheels and horses’ hooves clattering on cobble.

“Stone and brick,” Faeril commented, her eyes taking it all in. “It seems as if only the bright-colored doors are made of wood.”

“Lack of water,” said Aravan when Faeril remarked upon it.

Gwylly looked up at the Elf. “Water?”

“Aye. Water…or the lack of it, I should say.”

The buccan swept his arm in a wide gesture. “But there’s an ocean surrounding.”

“But no wells, Gwylly. No wells.”

Noting the looks of puzzlement on the faces of the Waerlinga, Aravan explained. “Fires need a lot of water for putting them out. A wooden city with buildings this close”—he waved at the surrounding structures—“would flare up like a tinderbox, were there to be a conflagration…”

“They could store seawater in tanks, barrels,” offered Faeril.

Aravan nodded. “They could, but store fresh instead…and use it for cooking and drinking, washing and bathing.”

Gwylly looked about. “Where do they get their water?”

“Wells yon,” replied Aravan, pointing in the general direction of the plains beyond the headland.

“Too, they catch and store the rainwater that runs from the tile roofs,” Riatha added, nodding at the ingenious gutters channelling water into the buildings, where stood waiting vats to collect it.

Faeril looked at Gwylly. “Not much of a place to build a city,” she commented. “No water.”

Aravan smiled down at her. “Thou art correct, wee one, yet it was not meant to be a city.” He held up a hand to forestall her questions. “At first, ’twas merely a fort, yon”—he pointed at the caer—“easily defended ’gainst invaders, though long sieges would eventually prevail o’er the defenders.

“The city came after, growing bit by bit over the centuries, till it is as ye see it anow.” Aravan fell silent, and they strode onward, drawing closer to the caer.

In spite of the ocean breeze, an effluvia of middens rode on the air, and now and again a heavy drift of noisome odor surrounded them, raw and rank. Finally Gwylly wrinkled his nose. “
Ugh!
What is that?”

Aravan glanced at Riatha, but it was Urus who answered. “Humanity, Gwylly. Humanity. Whenever this many people are crushed together…”

They continued onward, passing through several market squares, for the most part just beginning to set up business for the coming day. Even so, it could be seen that some would sell a variety of goods, while others seemed to specialize: fish, fowl and meats, vegetables and fruits and grain, cloth and woven goods, flowers, and the like.

Past shops and stores, past restaurants and cafés, past inns and taverns, past large dwellings and small squares, past hospitals and chirurgeons, herbalists, tea shops, smiths, stables, jewellers, clothiers, tailors, cobblers, greengrocers, past every kind of shop and merchant that Gwylly and Faeril could even imagine and some they hadn’t, past them all went the five. And for the most part, these shops and businesses were just beginning to stir.

As the comrades came into the vicinity of the caer, the buildings took on a different aspect, the face of government—a great courthouse, a tax hall, a constable station with jail above, a firehouse, a library, a census building, a hall of records, a cluster of university buildings, and other such.

At last they came to a wall, and warders stood at the gate. Several petitioners were lined up waiting, sitting on the stone benches provided.

Called forth by the guard, the gate captain was clearly taken aback by the appearance of Elves at his station, but it was the Warrows who astounded him, for throughout the ages they had rarely come to Pendwyr, and in fact had taken on an aura of being a legendary Folk.

“Well, I’ll be…” he breathed, then realizing his station, gruffly said, “State your business.”

Urus answered. “We have come to speak with King Garan, to redeem a royal pledge.”

The captain looked up at the huge Man towering above him. “The High King is in Challerain and will not return for another seven weeks.”

Aravan smiled. “The Steward will do for now.”

* * *

“Adon, what a tale!” The speaker was Leith, Garan’s cousin and Steward in Pendwyr when the King was away at Challerain. Leith was a slender, grey-haired Man in his fifties, with the eyes of a hawk, some said. “What say you, Lord Hanor?”

At Leith’s side sat a huge-girthed Man of perhaps forty, with dark brown hair and eyes. Advisor to the Steward and High King alike, Hanor steepled his fingers. “I won’t mince words, m’Lord: were this tale to be borne by anyone other than Elves and Wee Folk, in Jugo we would call into question either the sanity of those who told it, or their honesty.”

Across from the two sat the five companions: two Warrows, two Elves, and a Baeran—Folk not often seen in Pendwyr. Because of this fact, they had bypassed most of the bureaucracy and had gotten swift audience with the Steward. And now they were in one of the Steward’s private chambers in Caer Pendwyr, the castle on the first towering rock pinnacle jutting up from the sea beyond the headland.

Hanor shifted his mass in the broad chair. In spite of his girth, great strength lay within his bulk. “I mean, trapped in a glacier for a thousand years? Why, look at him: he has the appearance of a Man no more than thirty. Yet are we to believe the tale, he was some sixty years old when he fell in—”

“I was fifty-nine,” rumbled Urus.

“Fifty-nine, sixty, it is of no matter,” replied Hanor. “By your youth, given that you are now more than a thousand years old, why, were it not impossible, I would say that you have Elven blood running in your veins.

“Mayhap, though, it was the ice that preserved you and your youth….”

Aravan leaned forward. “How this Man survived is not at issue here. That he did is enough.

“What we came for was to redeem a pledge made long past by Aurion, son of Galvane, a pledge made unto this Man, Urus, to Dara Riatha, and to Tomlin and Petal, the ancestors of these Lastborn Firstborn Waerlinga, Gwylly and Faeril. And that pledge was to render aid—”

“Wait!” interjected Faeril. “Let me read his words to you.”

The damman turned to Gwylly, and the buccan dug out
his copy of the journal from a pocket, a journal he had constantly kept with him ever since he had begun to read.

Faeril opened it to the appropriate page.

Faeril closed the journal. “The words were written by Petal, my ancestor, a thousand years ago, and the Prince making the pledge was Aurion. And now we come to redeem that pledge, for we need help in running the monster Stoke to earth.” She handed the diary back to Gwylly, and he in turn passed it across the table to Leith.

The Steward glanced at it, leafing through a few pages, passing it on to Hanor.
“Hmph,”
grunted the stout Man, cocking an eyebrow, “what language is this?”

“Twyll,” answered Gwylly, “the tongue of the Warrows.”

Of a sudden Steward Leith stood. “There is much to consider here, and I have business elsewhere that awaits me. Yet this do I say: Only High King Garan can honor in full the pledge made by his ancestor. However, we shall send messages to the Realmsmen that a menace stalks the land. We will ask for word as to this creature’s whereabouts. Beyond that, the commitment of resources and Men to run this foe to earth must await Garan’s seal.

“Where are you quartered?”

“The Silver Marlin,” answered Riatha.

“I would have you move your quarters to the caer.”

“We have horses,” interjected Aravan.

“Ponies and mules, too,” added Gwylly.

“Stockade them in the enclave,” answered Leith. He crossed to a pull cord. “I will have an attendant accompany you and arrange for rooms and aught else you might need.”

A page hastened into the chamber, and after a few words from the Steward, left. Leith turned. “We will speak more upon this anon, but for now I have several ministers waiting,
no doubt pacing the floor in agitation. Stay here; the page will bring you your escort. Hanor?”

Lord Hanor stood and stepped to the Steward’s side, and together they strode from the room, and Faeril overheard part of what Hanor was saying, “…written in Twyll, a language we’ve never seen. And I have never heard of this Baron Stoke, and it seems to me…”

* * *

They moved into the castle that very afternoon, housing their animals in the stables in the enclave. The enclave itself stood behind the guarded wall running across the tip of the headland, the wall separating the enclave from the city proper. Within this warded tract were a hundred buildings housing agencies and offices of the Realm, providing as well the living quarters for many of the officials and aides within.

The five comrades, though, were given chambers within the caer itself, the walled castle occupying the whole of the spire, the fortified island pinnacle connected to the headland by the bridge.

Beyond the castle spire were two more sheer-sided pinnacles: the first containing lodgings for the King’s closest advisors; the second holding nought but the High King’s private residence. Each was connected to the next by a short suspension bridge a hundred or so feet above the rolling sea.

* * *

Two days later, they related their tale to Commander Ron, captain of the Realmsmen, and within the day the commander sent horsemen galloping forth from Pendwyr, bearing details of Baron Stoke and his monstrous deeds.

Rori, a tall Vanadurin of forty-five or so, his yellow hair and beard in braids, suggested a search through the archives to see if they held any record of Stoke or his Barony.

Following Rori, they crossed over to another of the buildings in the enclave. There they met an elderly Man, Breen, Chief Archivist. “I would not hold too much hope for such an accounting. Most of the records of that era were destroyed by the Hyranians in the Winter War, when the city fell to them,” said the eld archivist.

“What about the records at Challerain Keep?” asked Rori.

Breen ran his hand over his bald head. “Destroyed as well. Burnt by the Horde.”

“Nevertheless,” rumbled Urus, “search what you have and let us know.”

* * *

Weeks passed, and in that time Gwylly and Faeril spent hours at the library, Gwylly continuing his lessons at reading and writing and ciphering. Faeril guiding him and reading as well on her own. In the caer, Riatha and Aravan earned all of their keep by entertaining courtiers, playing harp, and singing and reciting verse. And Urus, it seemed, prowled as would a caged beast.

Yet all were under tension, for Stoke roamed, and they knew not where.

They often took the horses and ponies—and mules as well—out into the plains beyond the walls of Pendwyr, exercising the animals, keeping them in condition for a journey to an unknown destination. All five companions relished these outings, for Pendwyr, though exciting at first, came to be looked upon by them as a crowded anthill, or as Gwylly once laughingly put it, “…a crowded dunghill.”