Jarka Ruus

  “Tell me again.”

  He pouted harder. “I got in some trouble with my tribe. I had to flee for my life. They might still be chasing me. Alone, I’m not much good against a lot of the things that are Jarka Ruus. I know how to find my way and mostly how to avoid them, though. So I thought we could help each other.” He folded his arms defiantly. “There, are you satisfied, Grianne of the curious mind and endless questions?”

  He was being insolent, but she let it go. “I am. For now. But in the future, you will tell me the truth about your motives and your plans, little rodent, or I will feed you to the bigger things you seek to avoid. I don’t like surprises. I want to know what you are thinking about. No secret plans, or our bargain is off.”

  “Then you agree that we should travel together?” he asked. He was positively gleeful. “That you will watch out for me?” He caught himself. “Well, that we will watch out for each other?”

  “Let’s just start walking,” she said, and turned away.

  They walked all that day, traveling east below the Dragon Line and across the grasslands and foothills of the Pashanon. The weather stayed gray and misty, the sun never more than a faint brightness high above them, the world they journeyed through composed of brume and shadows. The air was damp and chilly, a discomforting presence that made Grianne grateful for the clothes and boots that Weka Dart had brought her. The grasslands and hills were coated with moisture that never quite evaporated, yet the land remained barren and lifeless. The absence of small birds and little animals was unnerving, and even the insects tended to be of the buzzing, biting variety. Grasses grew thick and hardy, sawtooth and razorblade spears that were a washed-out green and mottled gray. Trees were stunted and gnarled below the Dragon Line, and many were little more than skeletons. The waters of the ponds and streams were stagnant and algae-laced. Everywhere they traveled and everywhere she looked, the world seemed to be sick and dying.

  Yet the Jarka Ruus had existed for thousands of years. She tried to imagine a lifetime in such a world and failed. It frightened her to think of being trapped there for long. If she had not believed that she would find a way out, she would have been devastated. But she never wavered in her certainty that she would. Those who had sent her there had made a mistake in letting her live. They might think themselves rid of her, but she would prove them wrong.

  Her thoughts drifted frequently to the cause of her predicament. It was impossible for her to know exactly who had transported her, but she could make an educated guess or two. What baffled her was why they hadn’t simply killed her and been done with it. It was what she would have done to them when she was the Ilse Witch. Leaving a dangerous enemy alive to come looking for you later, no matter how difficult the task, was always risky. So why had they let her live? It would have been no more difficult for them to kill her than to send her into the Forbidding. It made her think something else was happening, a reason for her enemies to keep her alive and imprisoned. It also made her ponder anew the source of the power it had taken to put her here. It was more than even the most powerful of the Druids possessed. It was beyond anything that existed in her world.

  It was a power, she was beginning to think, that might have come from the Forbidding itself.

  Her ruminations kept her occupied for much of her journey. Weka Dart continued to skitter about, dodging sideways and occasionally climbing up and down trees and rock formations, but always moving. He did not talk much, for which she was grateful; absorbed, apparently, in keeping an eye out for the things they should avoid.

  There were a great number of those, and they encountered many of them on their way. Ogres and giants stomped through the grasslands, mindless behemoths, dim-sighted and single-minded, with great shoulders hunched and massive arms dragging. Harpies flew overhead, winged shrews that screamed and spit venom at each other and anything below. A scattering of dragons came and went, smaller for the most part and different from the Drachas. Various forms of Faerie creatures were glimpsed, as well, particularly kobolds, which seemed to live in large numbers in that region.

  Once, they saw a village of Gormies, far in the distance, a mud and grass huddle of shelters cut like caves into a hillside. Walls fronted the village and spikes jutted out of the earth in pointed warning. The Gormies themselves, ferret-eyed and wiry, crept about their enclosure like shades.

  “What would frighten an entire village of those little terrors?” she asked Weka Dart.

  He laughed and growled deep in his throat. “Wait and see.”

  She did so, and a few hours later she had her answer. They had just crested a small rise, catching sight of a valley that stretched away to the east when Weka Dart wheeled around suddenly, hissing, “Down, down!” She dropped at once, flattening herself against the earth, pressing into tufts of the spiky grass that grew everywhere, her breathing turned sharp and quick. The Ulk Bog, stretched out beside her, wormed forward just far enough that he could see something that was still hidden from her.

  “Watch,” he whispered over his shoulder.

  She did so, peering into the valley, waiting. The minutes passed and nothing happened. Then an ogre of monstrous size lumbered into view, hunched over and shouldering a massive club. It was young, Grianne guessed, coarse hair black along its spine and across its shoulders, and its thick skin leathery and smooth. It was shaking its head from side to side and brushing at the air as if to ward off gnats or flies. But she saw neither.

  “What is it doing?” she whispered.

  Weka Dart’s eyes were bright. “Listen.”

  She did, and then she heard it, too—a high-pitched, keening sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was clearly bothering the ogre, who was grunting with annoyance, lifting its head every so often in a futile effort to search out the source. The sound intensified steadily, turning to a wail that cut right to the bone, raw and harsh and filled with pain.

  Finally, the ogre stopped walking altogether, turning this way and that, blunt features twisted into an ugly knot. Grianne flattened herself further. The ogre was looking for something on which to vent its irritation, and she had no desire to provide it with a target. Weka Dart lay motionless, as well, but she saw the knowing smile at the corners of his mouth. There was anticipation in that smile, and she did not care for the look of it.

  Suddenly, small, four-legged creatures began to appear, coming out of the grasses and from behind the rocks, a handful at first and then dozens. Their sharp-featured cat faces and sleek, sinuous shapes were unmistakable; she recognized them at once, even though she had never seen one before. Furies. She had read about them in the Druid Histories. Only once since their imprisonment had they broken through the Forbidding, doing battle with Allanon and nearly killing him. They were creatures of madness and mindless destruction, the worst of the many bad things imprisoned in this world. They attacked in swarms and were drawn to their victims by a hunger for blood. In the world of the Jarka Ruus, everything avoided them.

  They closed now on the ogre, coming at it from all directions, so many that she could no longer count them. The ogre waited on them, its small, piggish eyes already anticipating the damage it would inflict on the creatures. Perhaps because it was young, it did not realize the danger it was in.

  When they attacked, leaping blindly at the ogre, it smashed them like flies, wielding club and fists with equal effect. The Furies were smaller and their bodies unprotected, and those it found could not save themselves. But there were too many for the ogre to stop, and soon they had broken through its defenses, biting and tearing at its massive body with teeth and claws. Bits of flesh and patches of hair came away, and in moments the ogre was slashed and bleeding from head to foot. It fought on, killing Furies as long as it could, struggling to stay upright.

  But in the end, they pulled it down, severing ligaments and tendons, shredding muscle and flesh, draining its blood and its strength until it was helpless. Bellowing in rage and despair, it disappeared beneath their relentless onslaught, b
lanketed in a squirming, heaving mass of furry bodies, borne to the earth until its life was gone.

  Grianne, who had witnessed many terrible and violent deaths in her own world, nevertheless cringed at this one. The ogre meant nothing to her, and yet she was horrified by what had happened to it. She wanted to look away when the ogre was reduced to its final shudders and gasps, but she could not. It took a tap on her arm from Weka Dart to recall her to her senses.

  “This way,” the Ulk Bog whispered, “while they are busy.”

  They crawled through the grasses along the top of the rise and then down the reverse slope until they were out of sight. Once concealed from view, they stood and began walking, neither speaking, concentrating on the sounds that came from the other side of the hill.

  When they were far enough away that they could no longer be heard, even by cat ears, Weka Dart turned to her. “Better they find it than us,” he said with a wicked smile.

  She nodded in agreement. But she did not feel good about it.

  They slept that night in the trees again, and Grianne did not offer any objections. She understood how vulnerable they were to the creatures that roamed the Pashanon under cover of darkness. Many she had not even seen, but a single viewing of the Furies was enough to persuade her. The trees offered little enough protection, she guessed, but she would take what she could find.

  In her dreams that night, she saw the ogre die again, the scene replaying itself in various forms. Sometimes she was simply a spectator, a passive viewer to the death scene. At other times, she was the victim, feeling the teeth and claws of the cat things tear into her, flailing and helpless beneath their attack, thrashing awake in a cold sweat. At other times still, she was a participant, one of the Furies, assisting in the destruction of another hapless creature, driven by bloodlust and hatred, by feelings she thought she had left behind when she had ceased to be the Ilse Witch.

  She woke tired and out of sorts, but she kept it to herself as they continued their travels east, walking the grasslands through another dismal and oppressive day. They followed the banks of what would have been the Mermidon in her world. She didn’t bother to ask Weka Dart for its name, content to be left alone while he sidled back and forth about her at his own pace. It rained on that day, and even with the great cloak to protect her, she was soon drenched. They saw little of the land’s denizens and no sign of the Furies, and for that she was grateful.

  On the afternoon of the third day, they reached a break in the Dragon Line that she recognized as the mouth of the pass leading to the Hadeshorn and the Valley of Shale. A twisting, dark defile, it wound upward into the cliffs and disappeared into the mists.

  “Do you know this place?” she asked Weka Dart. Rain dripped off her hood and into her face, and she brushed it out of her eyes. “Have you been here before?”

  He shook his head. “Never.” He glanced up into the dark mass of rocks. “It doesn’t look like a place anyone would want to go.”

  “It is where I am going,” she said. “You needn’t. Do you want to wait for me here?”

  He shook his head quickly. “I’d better stay with you. In case you need me.”

  They began to climb, working their way through the rubble-strewn foothills until they had reached the base of the mountains. There, the terrain turned steeper and more treacherous. There were no signs of passage, no marks on the rocks or wearing down of the earth. The pathway she knew to be there in her own world was not there in the Forbidding, and she was forced to blaze it on her own. Perhaps no one had ever come that way before. Weka Dart trailed her with less enthusiasm than he had displayed on the flats, grumbling and muttering the entire way. She ignored him. It had been his choice to come. She was no happier than he was to have to break the trail.

  It was not long before they heard the wailing. The sound was unmistakable, a low moaning that might have been just the wind or something alive and in pain. It rose and fell in steady cadence, trailing off entirely at times, only to return seconds later. She tried to ignore it but found it impossible to do so. Changes in pitch and tone set her teeth on edge. The sound raked the rocks of the pass, tunneled deep into its crevices, and slithered down its gaps. Weka Dart hissed in dismay and frustration and covered his ears with his hands. When she looked back at him, his teeth were bared.

  The shadows appeared soon after that, sliding out of splits in the walls and from behind rocks. They were not cast as shadows should be, but moved independently of the light, separating themselves from solid objects in ways that should not have been possible. They flowed across the pass, crooked black stains that tracked her progress like predators. When they touched her, their blackness trailed across her skin with icy fingers.

  She knew instinctively what was happening. She was being told to turn back. She could feel the warning in the touch of the shadows and hear it in the sound of the wailing. But she ignored it, as she knew she must, and continued on.

  By nightfall, they reached a break in the rocks that opened through a thick curtain of gloom and mist to a hole in the sky. Grianne Ohmsford stared in surprise, then realized that the sky was ink black and empty of stars or moon. There was simply nothing there. She walked forward, unable to believe she was seeing correctly.

  Beyond the break in the rocks, where the mist and gloom fell away, she found herself standing on a rise that looked out over the Valley of Shale.

  It was as she remembered it and yet not. The sharp-edged ebony stones were the same, strewn across the empty slopes like shards of polished glass. But a wall of mist enclosed the valley, a wall so deep and so high that she could see nothing save the black hole of the sky above. The mountains had vanished. The world had disappeared.

  All that remained was the Hadeshorn, pooled at the bottom of the valley, its still waters shimmering dully in the deep gloom. Its flat, mirrored surface gave off a faintly greenish light that reflected from the pieces of stone. Mist rose off its surface like steam, but no warmth was to be found in those waters. Even from where she stood, Grianne could feel that the lake was as cold as winter and as lethal as death. Nothing lived there that hadn’t crossed over into the netherworld long ago.

  Weka Dart scuttled up behind her and peered about. “This place is evil. Why are we here?”

  “Because answers to my questions are to be found in the waters of that lake,” she replied.

  “Well, ask your questions quickly then, and let’s be gone!”

  The wailing began anew, low and insistent, seeping from the stones and filtering through the air. The shadows reappeared, taking form this time, some familiar, some not, swirling about them like phantoms come to haunt. There were no voices, no faces, no human presence, and yet it seemed as if life might be embodied in the shadows and in the wailing, bereft of substance and soul, trapped in the ether. The sounds and the shadows responded to each other, speeding and slowing, rising and falling, a symbiosis that reflected a terrible dependence.

  “Straken, do what you must, but do it quickly!” Weka Dart urged, and there was fear in his voice.

  She nodded without looking at him. There was no reason to wait, nothing to be gained by deliberation. She could not know what waited for her when she summoned the spirits of the dead. It might be different here than in the Four Lands. It might be lethal.

  It might be her only hope.

  Resolved, she started down.

  Twenty-one

  She felt the presence of the dead almost immediately. They had assumed the forms of the shadows that flitted about her and taken on the voices that wailed from the rocks. They were a part of the air she breathed. As she descended the slopes, she found them all about her, pressing close, trying to recapture something of the corporeal existence they had left behind in crossing over into the netherworld. Shades felt that absence, she knew. Even dead, they remembered the substance of life.

  This phenomenon would not have happened in her own world, where shades were confined to the depths of the Hadeshorn and no trespass into the world of
the living was allowed. But in the Forbidding, more latitude seemed to be given to the dead, and though not yet summoned from the afterlife, they were already loose in the valley.

  She sensed another aberration, as well. The shades that visited her were not friendly. At best, they were hostile toward all living things, but she sensed a specific antipathy toward herself. She could not determine the reason for that right away. They did not know her personally or possess a specific grudge that would explain their attitude, and yet there was no mistaking it. She felt it prodding at her, small barbs that did not sting so much as scratch. There was disdain and frustration in those scratches; there was outright dislike. Something about her was angering these shades, and although she sought to discover a reason for it, she could not. Shades were difficult to read, their emotions not connected to the physical and therefore not easily understood.

  She considered using her magic to push them away, to give herself space in which to breathe. But within the Forbidding, her magic could have unforeseen consequences, and she did not want to risk losing a chance to speak with the shades of the Druids. Her purpose in coming there was to summon them, and she could not afford to be distracted from that effort. The lesser shades were annoying but manageable.

  Even so, her journey to the floor of the valley seemed endless. The shades rubbed on her nerves like sandpaper. Their whispers and icy touches left her unsettled and anxious. She felt something of her old self rise in response, an urge to crush them like dried leaves, a desire to scatter them beneath her boot heels. It was what she would have done once upon a time and not given it a second thought. But she was no longer the Ilse Witch, and nothing would ever make her be so again.

  She glanced back at Weka Dart. He sat cross-legged on the rise, hands over his ears, face knotted in determination. He was hanging on, but it was taking everything he had to do so.