The Runes of Norien

CHAPTER FOUR

  I

  And then their heads were forcefully plunged into the milk, blinding them and depriving them of breath; and in their dying horror they flailed and fought, until their thrashing weakened and ceased, and they went still and limp.

  Finally, they were let go, and the Sacred River whisked their disgraced corpses swiftly away.

  Or that was what the handful of witnesses perceived.

  For the moment they were submerged, Gallan and Raddia gripped one another’s hands beneath the surface of the milk and did as they had agreed upon: counted to ten while tossing madly about, then to twenty while their writhing appeared to grow weaker, and finally to thirty, at which point they stopped moving altogether, and waited for the hands of their drowners to release them. And once the current swept them along, they half-turned their faces to the surface, wide-open eyes unblinking and lips parted, and breathed as surreptitiously as possible.

  Whatever was in store for them after they washed up in the Mists, they would confront in time; for now, the important thing was they were still alive.

  Of course Gallan and Raddia’s botched mating and subsequent submergence might have turned out quite differently if it weren’t for the fact that, at the time of their humiliating death, the people of Lurien were distracted by their imminent doom.

  Things had begun to unravel the moment most Lurienites, emerging from their troubled sleep, were greeted by an alarming, unfamiliar greyness in the air, and stepping out of their homes saw that the eye of the Ghost, if such it were, had grown overnight into a great round chasm of uncolour, tinging the sky a shade that was neither light nor darkness but a dreary in-between. If fear had colour, this would be it.

  Thus, in so dire a predicament, the Surfacing Rite of two Makerless Mates, one of whom had to keep his head hanging to conceal an eye of blue, drew a very slight crowd – it wasn’t even attended by a Sage, since presumably the Circle was struggling to cope with the looming disaster.

  Yet even so, Gallan and Raddia’s mating wasn’t merely fruitless but the height of impurity and failure. For one thing, and although they were secretly hoping that the Rite would be abortive (for how could they possibly manage to raise a pair of Mates in a world that looked as if it were coming off at the seams?), when they’d been sitting up to their shoulders in the Sacred River’s milk for quite some time and the milcloth of their robes showed no sign of dissolving, they realized that nothing, not even a Fault, was forthcoming. And for another, though she managed to hide it by shaking her head till a lock of hair dangled before it, Raddia’s right eye – as Gallan told her, mouthing the words while blinking his own eye – had suddenly acquired a large green spot.

  The assistants to the Rite, themselves terrified and gazing skywards instead of at the barren smoothness of the milk, were quick to lose their patience.

  The milk has been corrupted, one of them – a fat tall woman holding Raddia’s shoulders firmly – said to the others.

  No! Never!, Gallan’s equally forbidding helper barked. The Sacred River is pure and potent as it is eternal! It’s these two whose Substance is corrupted!

  Indeed! chimed in a third woman who stood aside. Just look at them! Not enough Substance in them to melt their rags of milcloth, let alone give surfacing!

  And their eyes! a man’s voice came from the back. They’re as good as submerged!

  Let’s be done with them, then; we each have our own kin to tend to –

  If the Ghosts let us live.

  And so the women thrust the worthless Mates with all their strength into the milk, and Gallan and Raddia, who by then had had ample time to take as deep a breath as their bosoms allowed, began to count the precious moments.

  They had agreed that they would only flip over and swim to the bank after they had passed the thick veil of the Mists, but just as they did the Sacred River entered a forest so impenetrably dark, that they were seized by panic and dashed to the bank.

  Then they shook themselves and wrung their robes and stomped their feet in the grass – unfamiliar in colour and height – but when all these failed to warm them they did what they needed most: dove into each other’s arms, holding tight and stroking away one another’s sobs of fear and joy.

  However, once they had somewhat recovered their composure, and cast their eyes about, they found themselves in an extremely joyless part of Lurien (if this were still Lurien, a question they both srhunk from considering).

  To begin with, even though they’d been expecting some measure of darkness at the other side of the swirling wall of mist where they now stood, the woods around them were so dense, and the trees so formidably tall and massive, that their canopy all but eclipsed the sky. And if it were so murky in the day, – even on this dreariest of days, when the white light had given way to an ashen dimness – they didn’t dare imagine what it would be like after redfall.

  Moreover, it was bitingly cold and damp, and soon Gallan and Raddia were shuddering in their still-soaked clothes.

  What are we to eat? Where are we to sleep? How can we stay alive in this horrid place? These anxious questions flew back and forth between their minds, till suddenly they were distracted by something that made them briefly unmindful of their wretchedness.

  First they heard its soft treading from behind a clump of tall weeds and then, as the sound grew louder and the thing was about to emerge, the two Mates stepped back and once more fell into each other’s embrace – for Lurien abounded with stories about the hideous, predatory monsters that lurked in the Mists.

  But the moment it stepped out of the weeds, its sight instantly filled them with relief, though neither of them had ever beheld such a creature.

  It wasn’t remotely monstrous – in fact, it resembled a kid, although its coat was reddish and the timid gracefulness with which it approached wasn’t goat-like at all. And the creature’s eyes, despite being two orbs of glistening uncolour, exuded a kindness that could calm the most cowardly heart.

  Still, seeing that its pace hadn’t relented at their sight, and that it was coming purposefully towards them, Gallan and Raddia retreated again till their backs came up against the coarse bark of a tree.

  Then the creature stopped and looked up into Raddia’s eyes, prompting her by some suddenly and inexplicably obvious feeling of safety to extend her hand and softly stroke its downy head.

  What are you doing? Gallan said, alarmed. Don’t touch it! It may be dangerous!

  But, look! Raddia said, her mind’s voice light as laughter. It’s rubbing its little head against my knuckles! No beast as gentle as this can be dangerous!

  And before she knew it, the kindly creature had taken two of her gloved fingers into its mouth, sucking on the milcloth as if it were its mother’s teat and tickling Raddia into a burst of giggles – which Gallan, staring at the absurd display, soon joined in.

  A few moments passed in this soothing state of amusement, but then the beastling released Raddia’s glove, and turning around it started to walk towards a pathway that was concealed by a thicket. And acting upon a deep trust, the mutual trust of living things who sense no harm can come from their contact, Gallan and Raddia followed it.

  It led them into a clearing surrounded by bushes, whose spiky leaves were sprinkled with small round fruits of a colour so dark it might as well be uncolour, and glancing at them with its glowing, friendly eyes, the creature stretched its neck and started to pick off the fruit with a swiftness and determination suggesting great enjoyment. So after a while Raddia walked over to one of the bushes, and begun to pluck the soft beads, gathering them in the hollow of her palm – and then, selecting the tiniest one, she gazed at it and slowly brought it to her lips.

  “No! Don’t!” Gallan shouted, and darting towards her he managed to knock off the handful of fruit just in time. “Don’t you see how dark they are? They must be filthy – deadly, even!”

  Raddia frowned, and nodded at the beastling. “This little fellow seems fine
to me,” she said, and kneeling she started to pick up the scattered fruits.

  “But – but it’s an animal!” Gallan said, kneeling too.

  Right now I daresay we’re no better than animals ourselves, Raddia said, looking him in the eye. And famished ones at that. For indeed, what with Lorn and Navva’s brutal deaths, their Surfacing Rite and the eye of the Ghost, they’d gone for more than a day without a bite of food.

  And despite its darkness, the fruit was not merely safe but delicious, sweet and sour and tangy and mouthwatering, so that soon both Mates were on their knees, picking the bushes clean and consuming the round beads voraciously, by the handful, until their faces and gloves were smeared and dripping with uncolour juice which, just like hungry beasts, they sucked off with moans of delight.

  When next they looked, their four-legged friend was gone, seeking perhaps its Makers – but Gallan and Raddia didn’t mind, for the clearing, with its perimeter of tall trees intertwined at the top to form a dome of thick entangled branches, seemed, if not the ideal place to spend the night, the best they could hope for under the circumstances. Thus they began to build their little nest, breaking off leafy boughs and arranging them on the ground in a makeshift bed, and then making a fire by rubbing some glowpebbles together and using their spark to ignite a small pile of the driest twigs they could find.

  It was almost beautiful, this peaceful, fragrant nook, and as they sat and felt the fire’s lovely warmth creep inside them, the two Mates couldn’t help but wonder why this part of the world had been invested with so much ugliness and terror, of which, at least till now, they hadn’t seen or felt the slightest hint. Even when reddening had claimed the unseen sky, the reddish tinge of what little light broke through the canopy gave the clearing an appearance of some slowly breathing, living creature – as though these weren’t real woods, but the insides of some immense body lying silent and still, a body that would no more hurt them than one would cut off a limb because a butterfly had alighted upon it. So why all these lies? Raddia thought; why all this fear of the Mists when in fact they were – the wildness of nature aside – so like the rest of Lurien?

  But her musing was cut cruelly short, for suddenly the sky erupted in a rumble so loud it shook the ground they sat on, and moments later ether milk was pelting down on their arboreous roof, slipping through the branches’ gaps and falling upon them hard and fast, forcing them to flee before they were drenched to the bone.

  Yet as they tore blindly through the wilderness, groping around for any kind of shelter and finding none, it became bitterly evident to them that, for all their desperate will to survive, they couldn’t live as animals; they had no pelt to warm and protect them, no claws with which to burrow into the ground, no wings to carry them swiftly to a place of safety – a home, like the one they’d been so painfully forced to abandon.

  It was in this state of breathless misery that Gallan and Raddia first came upon the thing that summed up all the fears concerning the Mists: Mirror Mountain.

  By then they’d been completely disoriented by their frantic, sightless running, so when they suddenly darted to a spot of lessened dimness and found themselves past the border of the woods with its trees’ relative cover and wholly at the mercy of the pouring ether milk, they were so taken aback by the mountain’s abrupt appearance – its invisible summit blending with the tainted brown sky – they simply stood and stared, oblivious to the coldness of their sodden, clinging garments.

  They had been told that it was made of a strange, unclean rock that showed you your image, which, at a single glance, would drain all of your Substance and leave you a babbling fool, dummer than the dummest beast. That inside it, protected by hosts of man-eating monsters, lay the doorway to the worlds of touch, filth and madness.

  And yet the looming mass of Mirror Mountain was nothing like the Lurienites’ collective object of dread. Its rock was strange indeed, resembling neither glowstones nor dullstones, but its uncoloured vastness, rendered slick and gleaming by the deluge of ether milk, showed no image other than its own imposing self. As for its size, twice as immense as all of Lurien’s hills and pastures and quarries and woods put together, it brought to one’s mind not a squalid place of exile, but the centre of a world so awesome and untamed, it might well have been the origin of all things, Lurien among them.

  And as if to further belie the rumours they’d been brought up to believe, when a rope of lightning shot across the sky, briefly illuminating the scene, Mirror Mountain, through the mouth of a cave they saw at its foot, offered Gallan and Raddia safe haven.

  So great was their joy and relief at finally finding refuge for the night, the two Mates, once inside the cave, started to shriek and jump and dance about, blessing their good fortune. Admittedly, the air of the cave had an unpleasant smell, and they would have to sleep on bare rock without even the comfort of a fire, but all these things were unimportant when compared to braving the elements without the least cover.

  And as they felt their way to the depth of the cave, whence came a strange but highly pleasurable warmth, Gallan and Raddia literally stumbled upon a real monster.

  The reason they hadn’t perceived its presence till that very moment, was the creature’s astonishing size, which made it seem as one with the surrounding dark stone walls, and its breath sound as part of the wind that blew through the cave from outside. But when they collided with it, their faces plunging into its thick fur, and in their terror backed away gasping and screaming, it let out a deep moan of distress over being so rudely awoken, and uncurling an enormous body it stood on its hind legs before them.

  And though there was only the dimness from outside to see by, it was enough to realize that they were in the company of an otherworldly, terrifying beast.

  So tall was it, it had to crouch to be able to stand inside the cave, thus dropping its head so low they could feel its hot, foul breath on their faces. And what a head it was! Thrice as big as the biggest bull’s, with yellow eyes filled with murderous wrath and great jaws armed with teeth so big and sharp, the merest bite could chop one’s head right off. And from its mighty shoulders there descended two forelegs, thick as tree trunks and equipped with massive, sharp-clawed paws.

  And while they stared, too petrified to flee, the monster had advanced towards them, and placed its arms around them, trapping them in its deadly embrace.

  There was no time to think, and though Raddia knew well how dangerous it was to use your mind to curb the will of a large beast – the sudden rush of Substance could provoke a violent reaction – she saw no other chance of survival, and so, mustering her courage she commanded the monster to release them and go back to sleep.

  But this had no effect on the alien brute, or rather the reverse effect – for, bringing its paws closer and making its grip even tighter, it started to walk backwards, dragging them to the blackness of the cave.

  This is it, then, Gallan said, holding Raddia’s hand and shutting his eyes; they’d escaped being drowned in the Sacred River only to be devoured alive by this vile thing.

  Then the monster stopped, and placing its forelegs on their shoulders, it forced them to kneel and then to lie down, and lay down itself; but instead of tearing them apart with its claws or biting their faces off as they expected, it moaned a bit, its huge torso moving this way and that, until it settled in the same position from which it had risen. And then it let out a deep loud yawn, laid its head on the stone floor, and drawing them closer to its chest it fell asleep.

  Gallan and Raddia were so dumbstruck, it took them a while to realize what had just happened: the monster didn’t want to eat them, but to send them to sleep, as if they were its offspring, little monsters that had wandered off and come back drenched and shivering.

  Nothing – not their Makers’ death, not their near-fatal Surfacing Rite, nor even the prospect of the uncoloured hole swallowing up the sky and obliterating Lurien – had caused them as much bewilderment. In a single moment, thei
r world had changed forever.

  Because, ever since they had emerged from the milk, they’d been taught to dread the touch of even a flower on their bare skin; told that contact begets perdition. To touch is to die. To touch is to kill. To live is to be an island. Thus the Three Doctrines dictated – and how silly, how preposterous they seemed right now, when their faces were buried in the fur of a beast holding them tight, and not a bit of their Substance was lost to its tender touch, a tenderness moreover which, although extended by an animal, was greater and more heartwarming than anything Lorn or Navva had ever given them.

  But before long the tangle of their thoughts began to fade, as the beast’s deep, calm breathing and the soft throb of its heart against theirs began to lull them into a state of absolute safety and physical bliss – and cuddling up against the monster’s warm pelt like sucklings, Gallan and Raddia fell into the sweetest sleep.

  Three days they spent in the lair of the monster – though soon they ceased to think of her (she was a female animal) as such, for her affection was so great it made them feel ashamed for their initial horror and mistrust.

  Not only did she cradle them to sleep, lying with her back turned to the cave’s drafty mouth to shield them from the cold, but each morning she left and came back with what nourishment she could procure: empty beehives dripping with honey, large, queer-coloured fowl, and a peculiar breed of animal they’d never seen before, which she caught in a large pond of ether milk that lay near the cave: creatures flat and shiny, with round milky eyes and spiky skin which, sliced in the middle by a single cut of her claws, revealed a pale reddish, soft, delicious meat they’d roast on small glowstone fires that their self-appointed protectress, unlike any other beast, showed not the least fear of.

  However, after a while it became quite obvious that the frequent hunting and the forfeiture of sleep and sustenance – for she wouldn’t touch the food she brought before they were done eating, by which time there was little more left than gristle and bones – was taking its toll on the selfless, loving beast. A sluggishness began to claim her, a weakness apparent even in the dimming glow of her eyes. And the same way they had felt the benevolence of her Substance, they now sensed its gradual dwindling.

  And meanwhile the eye of the Ghost grew bigger and bigger, and the sky, be it day or night, darker and darker. There was no point in hiding and driving the poor beast to death from exhaustion, especially if Lurien itself was coming asunder.

  So on the ashen break of the fourth day, after gathering what provisions they could carry, Gallan and Raddia set out along the steep, narrow path ascending Mirror Mountain. Their guardian, clearly distraught at their departure, first tried to stop them by emitting plaintive moans and by softly nudging them back to the cave with her head, and when eventually it was obvious they were bent on leaving, she stood at the bottom of the winding path and looked on with mournful eyes.

  Yet something of her Substance must have seeped into their own, for although the mountain was filled with hostile monsters, four-legged, crawling and flying, they’d merely bare their teeth and beat their wings and hiss and growl at them and then, sensing some great fierceness they couldn’t contest, left Gallan and Raddia alone.

  Still, it was a gruelling ascent, made even more so by the ether milk storms that broke out and lasted for hours, and by the fact that there were very few caves in which to take cover, so that they were often forced to spend the night out in the open, soaked and shaking and terrified of the precipices yawning before the rough, narrow ledges they had to rest or sleep on.

  There was no turning back, however, no hope whatever in the world they were fleeing, even if their destination was unknown and shrouded in a lifetime’s worth of fear – for the quadruped Maker (as they thought of her) had dispelled their greatest fear, showing them that a world of touch was no more deadly than one of untouch. After all, it was Lurienites just like themselves, pure creatures of untainted Substance, who had sought to end them with such casual cruelty.

  It was a little after they had consumed their last bit of food – some white roots, sour but substantial – that they suddenly reached the top of Mirror Mountain, and the sight awaiting them was a grisly one, enough to rekindle their longstanding terror of all things lying beyond the Mists: the body of a man they could only assume was Gorfen, for he had been mauled beyond recognition, skin, bones, limbs and innards scattered in a wide circle of dried blood and strewn with rags of white, lifeless milcloth. The monsters that had kept clear of them apparently hadn’t spared Tulanda’s ill-fated Mate.

  And surrounded by shreds of flesh and smears of filth, there stood before them the mouth of an even greater cave than the one they’d briefly occupied, as dark and still and menacing as the unithinkable realm Gorfen and all the dead inhabited.

  But despite their fear of what mortal danger might be lurking in the gloom of the cave, when they turned around they saw that a thick wall of mist had risen from the foot of the mountain, moving as fast as a creature of harmful intentions, and that if they didn’t make a run for the cave, it would soon surround them completely.

  So in they hurried, taking out the glowstones they carried and hoping that the cave’s dweller, if there was one, wouldn’t tear them to pieces like Gorfen.

  They had been going for quite a while, wondering at the depths they penetrated – seen from outside, the cave hadn’t appeared to extend to such a great length – when suddenly they saw a glimmer up ahead and stopped dead, instantly reaching for each other’s hand.

  Had the glowstones’ faint blue light caught the alert eye of a monster? To make sure, they quickly pocketed the stones, and were at once immersed in total darkness. So out they brought them again, and at the exact same moment the glimmer reappeared.

  Could it be – us? Raddia said, gripping Gallan’s hand.

  Our own image? Gallan sounded doubtful, but then, closing his fist around his glowstone, he saw the light ahead grow promptly dimmer.

  Dared they approach, and confront their reflections? A surge of mutual panic seized them at the thought. Of course they had seen the faces of countless Lurienites since their surfacing, even if glimpsed furtively, and knew that their skin and hair was white, their lips a pale greyish rose, and their eyes – well, that they didn’t wish to think of. But even so, they dreaded the prospect of looking at themselves, for in doing so they would become as others, strangers observing the countenance of strangers – and what if those two images, albeit their own, were truly able to rob them of their Substance? Maybe that was what had befallen Gorfen as well, and led to his brutal death: he might have come out of the cave helpless and empty, a mass of meat for beasts to feed on.

  But then they felt a cold breath of air at their feet, and looking down they saw to their horror that the mist, like a hunter, had followed them into the cave.

  So on they went, the glow becoming steadily brighter, when all of a sudden, having for a moment looked back to see whether the mist had caught up with them, they turned around and saw that they could go no further – for a few steps ahead, as tall as they behind a sheet of shimmering uncolour, their reflected selves stood and stared at them, their faces frozen by the same terror they felt.

  And though they had at once lowered their eyes, in that brief moment they had seen that their images were identical to themselves, from their disheveled garments and the leaves and twigs caught in their long hair to the way they held hands and the grasp of their fingers around the glowstones.

  Fearful of the sight, yet at the same time deeply drawn to it, they slowly raised their heads – and so did their doubles. They were in too great a state of agitation to perceive any shift in their Substance, but one thing the reflections did captivate was their mind; because, after all, it didn’t feel at all like gazing at a stranger, a usurper of your life’s essence, but as if, for the first time in their life, they knew not merely their exact appearance but what made them – their fear, and will to live, and boundless love for on
e another – who they were. And so they looked and looked, and then they raised their free hands and touched fingertips with their harmless, timid selves.

  They spoke as one. You’re beautiful, they said.

 

 

 

  II

  Feerien was rapidly devolving into chaos.

  It had all begun with the decapitation of Prince Fantyr and the brutal massacre of his men – discovered by scouts King Fazen had dispatched at once, who had returned so horrified it took threats of flogging to get them to talk, and who described a scene of such unimaginable savagery, it was like coming upon the carcasses of deer slain and devoured by wolves. Apparently, the murderers, after sending off their horrid message, had torn the soldiers from limb to limb, and then – judging from the remnants of numerous fires the scouts had found across the barracks – had feasted on their flesh.

  Of course, since the task of those unfortunate souls had been to guard the mouth of Waste Valley, the first suspicion fell upon the Scavengers, who’d been known – or so the rumours said – to resort to cannibalism when there wasn’t enough of the refuse they fed on to go around. But though reviled, Scavengers were thought to be weak, fearful creatures, always lingering at the fringes of civilized Feerien; certainly no one would ever imagine them capable of butchering dozens of strong, armed men.

  But then reports began to arrive from various places across the Farmlands and the Minelands, brought to the Castle by terrified peddlers who often begged to be allowed to take shelter with their families behind the fortified walls, even if they were to have no home and live outside as dogs; and these reports spoke of a growing army of Scavengers, led by a colossal warlord carried around on the shoulders of his men as if astride a horse, who attacked at will, pillaging homes, annihilating households and eating the corpses (even those of babes), a practice which, according to those lucky few who had witnessed such assaults and stayed alive, gave them a strength no other meat provided ever since the Shy Death had rendered dead animal flesh near useless.

  And as similar stories grew in number and ghastliness, Feeres everywhere began to dread another, ancient rumour, which said that the Disaster hadn’t entirely erased all realms beyond Waste Valley, but that pockets of people had survived, and that during the long centuries of poverty, hunger and disease they’d been made to suffer, they dreamt of one day joining forces and going to war, to avenge the Vanished Kingdoms which had been so cruelly abndonded by the rest of Feerien. There were even mentions of this myth in some of the prophecies pored over by Divinators, though in the end the bringer of the dreadful truth was an ignorant Miner named Tellur Trenn.

  Despite the terror that was spreading fast, the Minelands were said to fare better against the Scavengers’ attacks, for, unlike Farmers, who were completely exposed and had nowhere to hide besides their attics and cellars, Miners could take refuge in the depths of the mines, where even the most vicious killer would hesitate to venture. And yet the Trenns had been too late to leave their home, and were captured by men and women brandishing bludgeons and axes; and Tellur, the tragic father and sole survivor, had been bound in chains and forced to watch as these savages raped, killed, skinned and ate his wife and seven children – and once his inconceivable ordeal was over, he’d been dragged on all fours before the leader of the slayers; true to the claims, he was a mountainous ogre who, while gnawing on a bloody shinbone, told him his own pathetic life would be spared if he hastened to the Castle and announced to ‘that cowardly bastard of a King’ that Feerien’s one and only ruler was he, King Velius the Vast, and that unless he surrendered, his legion would see to it that every last resisting Feere would be slaughtered and roasted on a spit. By the time he delivered his message, of course, Tellur Trenn was raving mad, and soon afterwards hung himself; but his words were to be proven true, when, within days, the Sphere of Toil was visited by famine.

  Because for thousands of years the Castle, home to the Crown and thus the undisputed heart of Feerien, had subsisted, heart-like, on the sustenance flowing to it from every corner of the kingdom. Yet as the Scavengers swiftly seized control of the land and plundered its supplies to glut themselves, while at the same time cutting off most access to the Castle by killing peddlers and taking hold of their horses, what little food was left was hoarded by survivors to feed themselves and their families.

  And as it slowly dawned on the Castle’s dwellers, noble or not, that their home was turning from a stronghold to a gaol where they would most likely waste away from hunger, an unprecedented panic overtook them. Ladies of the court were trading their finery for bread, storekeepers struggled in vain to protect their wares from the growing crowds of famished people turned thieves, Spirit Servants consumed the herbs used in their spells and tried to grow more on barren patches of earth, Scribes boiled and ate their parchments, household animals disappeared into the bellies of their owners, while even more desperate people were seen at the shore that spread behind the Scriptorium, trying to fish in waters that, since the Disaster, were as lifeless as the Drowning Isles.

  And while the summer’s warmth gave way to the first spells of autumn chill, all these frightened men and women, from their homes or hideouts, would turn their eyes to the darkening skies, counting with bated breath the slivers of the moons.

  The Kobold family had been fatally stricken by the onslaught of the Scavengers, torn in half like a tree severed by lightning to its roots.

  What had ultimately undone them was their faith in Yodren’s stature, so that even though word of an approaching army of murderous barbarians had reached them, they still expected word from their eldest son, inviting them to the Castle to weather the assault in safety. Little did they know that in the time since his last communication, the young Divinator, because of the King’s desperation and the madness of the Queen, spent his days locked up in his cell because of some prophecy concering him.

  However, once it was obvious that unless they fled they would die a horrifying death, the Kobolds devised a plan which, unlike hiding in the basement of their home or taking to the hills – feeble solutions, that were said to have been the end of many a Farmer – would shield them from danger and keep them alive the same way it had been keeping generations of Farmers alive: they would take cover in the earth itself.

  And so, after gathering all the provisions they could find and wrecking their home themselves to give the appearance that it had been already attacked and raided, they retreated into the furthest, darkest corner of their earthen cellar, and began to dig a tunnel into the soft soil. So great were the fear and hope driving them, all four of them took turns diggind, even little Yonfi, who, unaware of the imminent danger, showed great enthusiasm and surprising strength and resilience, burrowing with his tiny hands in a frenzy of exhilaration, like a mole which, after years of living aboveground, has suddenly discovered his true nature. And after a few days of nearly ceaseless toil, they had managed to excavate a hole big enough to fit them if they crawled about, supported by wooden beams, laid with cloth for them to sleep on, and connected through a second, sloping tunnel to a part of the woods concealed by thorny shurbs and undergrowth.

  And though they weren’t very comfortable, – indeed, at times, the hole became suffocating, making them feel as if they’d been buried alive – at least they were secure, invisible to the approaching army except for brief, speedy trips to the surface, to get a breath of fresh air or fetch water from a nearby brook. What was more, although its entrance was hidden under a pile of dead leaves, the burrow provided the Kobolds with an unexpected bounty of small, wild beasts of the woods, which ventured into the hole thinking it uninhabited and were promplty caught and devoured, even if their raw flesh was bitter to the taste and hard to chew without a carnivore’s sharp teeth.

  But after the novelty of their shelter had worn off, Yonfi became restless, constantly begging to be allowed to climb out of the hole to bring water, musrhooms or berries, so that they had to keep an eye o
n him, lest he unwillingly give them away.

  And then, early one morning, tragedy struck, in the guise of a squirrel who had climbed into the Kobolds’ burrow to escape death at the paws of a lynx. As luck would have it, he was a particularly handsome squirrel, and Yonfi, whose senses as of late had been unusually heightened, stirred from his slumber and saw the critter’s beady eyes staring at him, filled with innocence and terror. Now Yonfi knew that if the others woke and saw the squirrel they would breakfast on his meagre meat, and so he chose instead to scare the endearing creature away by chasing it up the tunnel and into the woods.

  It was his son’s laughter that broke through Yern’s uneasy sleep, and as he groped around a sprinkle of soil, displaced by Yonfi’s energetic climbing, fell on his face. For a moment he saw the beloved shadow outlined in the morning light and then both he and his boyish giggle were gone.

  Beside himself with fear, Yern clambered to the top of the burrow, just in time to see Yonfi scampering down the slope, heedless of the mortal danger his cries of glee and noisy dash upon the dry leaves invited. And fearing that calling out his name might seal their doom, Yern ran after him, despairing at his son’s incredible speed.

  Over the brook he chased the boy, and into thorny thickets that tore through his clothes and flesh but which Yonfi crossed without slowing down at all. Finally, as he scrambled up a hill, breathless and faint from the exertion, Yern gave up and bellowed at his son to stop, come back this instant. Which, obedient as ever despite his devilish race across half the Farmlands, Yonfi did, holding the precious squirrel by the tail while the poor thing screeched and clawed at the air in vain.

  “Look, Papa! Can I keep him? Oh, please say I can keep him! Look how tiny he is – there’s hardly any meat on him! Papa? Can I – ”

  Still doubled up and panting, Yern told the boy in a stern voice to hush and let the squirrel go, and when Yonfi kept pleading and whining, Yern gave him a slap across the face which he instantly regretted, for Yonfi raised a hand at his red, smarting cheek, his lips quivered, and shutting his watery eyes he set off a heartbreaking wail.

  Yern, for once forgetting the risk of being heard, took the boy in his arms and kissed his tears away, whispering a thousand contrite apologies. And when the sobbing subsided, he raised Yonfi, surprised by how heavy he’d got, and started slowly back, determined to carry him all the way while stroking his back and head and planting more remorseful kisses all over his face.

  It was the smoke he saw first, rising from the woods like the black trail of death itself. And then, rushing ahead in mad, blind panic, Yern caught the horrible smell.

  For some accursed sentry stationed near the burrow must have seen father and son emerge from the shrubs, and trying to smoke out anyone left at the bottom of the hole he’d set their cave on fire. And all Yern could do now was hope, pray that Yenka and Yofana, the love of his life and the apple of his eye, had perished from the smoke before they had time to feel the excruciating pain of being burned alive.

  There was no one around, but even if there were, Yern didn’t care anymore. Half his heart urged him to run to the burrow, see if by some miracle it wasn’t too late, yet the other half dreaded to approach the unthinkable source of that smell.

  It was all he could do not to crumble and die in misery, but though he hadn’t fully come to his senses – perhaps he never would – Yern knew he must protect his son, who was stubbornly dragging him towards his mother’s and sister’s corpses, asking why Papa was on his knees, was he tired, and what that nice smell was.

  That nice smell! For in his childish goodness, poor Yonfi, orphaned and sisterless in one fell swoop, couldn’t conceive of the evil in the world, the horridness of man, and thus his empty stomach craved the tang of burnt flesh that wafted from the woods.

  Ridding as best he could his mind from the agony that clouded it, Yern picked up Yonfi again, placed him upon his shoulders, and began to briskly walk away from the hole where a part of his heart, torn off and bleeding, would remain for as long as he lived.

  “Papa!” Yonfi shouted at him, “Turn around! It’s the other way!”

  A lie, Yern thought, and at once it was presented to him, like a beacon of hope: Yodren, his firstborn, the Spirits bless him; Yodren who was safe, who must be safe, and who could ensure the safety of his little brother.

  “Remember how you always said you wanted to meet your big brother?” he said, trying to stop his voice from choking.

  “Yodren?” Yonfi cried. “We’re going to see Yodren?”

  “Yes, we are. You saw the smoke back there, didn’t you? Well, it was a signal your mother and I had agreed on. If, for any reason, they thought they weren’t safe in our secret place anymore, they would set off for the Castle and light a fire so that we’d know not to go back but follow them, and meet up at the Castle’s gates.”

  Yonfi mulled this over for a moment. Then, “Why weren’t they safe?” he asked.

  “Well...” Yern said, racking his brains for a reason, “...because of the bear.”

  “The bear? What bear?”

  “Oh, in the night, while you and your sister were asleep, I heard a scraping from above, and looking up I saw the muzzle of a bear, who probably thought our hideaway was a rabbit nest, and was trying to make the hole wide enough to crawl through. Lucky for us, bears sleep during the day, but Mama said that if it came again we should leave, before the tunnel caved in and we got buried like earthworms. So I imagine this morning she came out and saw the bear sleeping nearby, and decided to take Yofana and head to the Castle, where Yodren lives and where we shall all be perfectly safe.”

  Yern’s heart stung at the lie, for he knew that, if they survived and did reach the Castle, he’d be forced to deliver the awful truth to Yonfi like another slap, whose pain would never leave him. But for the moment the poor love seemed thoroughly convinced, bombarding him with questions about Yodren and Scribes and bears and the King and Queen and asking how soon they’d get there to meet Mama and Yofana and how come they didn’t all go together. And even though after a while his back began to hurt from Yonfi’s weight, Yern was grateful the boy couldn’t see the tears that streaked his face, and confused the heaving of his stifled sobs with the bounce of his shoulders.

  However, despite his devastation, Yern had to keep his promise, and make sure they weren’t roaming blindly but were actually headed towards the Castle. From the last time he had traveled there, he recalled it was a two-day journey by horse (and thus possibly three or four times as long on foot) and that he’d been following the second moon as its roundness waned and gave way to the waxing of the third. And judging by the time of day and the shape of the moons, if they stayed on this path, at some point they’d see up ahead Mount Copper looming, and the edge of the deep dense forest that encircled the Castle – provided they weren’t slain by the Scavengers in the meantime.

  At first, even though he took care to make his way through the most overgrown and arboreous patches of the Northern Farmlands, sticking close to rivers they could dive in or rocks they could duck behind, Yern was constantly terrified of hearing the sounds of imminent bloodshed: the war cry, the galloping of horses, the whistling of an arrow. But it seemed that after showing them its cruellest face, Fate had at last relented, for no matter how hard and long he listened, nothing stirred, not even runaways like them. So after a while, to spare himself the exhaustion and satisfy Yonfi’s curiosity, which prompted him to shriek, “Look, Papa!” every other moment, he agreed to let him run ahead if he promised he’d remain within sight and wouldn’t chase after anything.

  And then something very strange happened. As swiftly and unknowingly as he had handed his mother and sister over to their slayers, so now Yonfi seemed suddenly possessed of some profound knowledge of their surroundings, a wisdom, almost, though he had never been in this part of Feerien before. Urging his father to follow, he would lead him to brambles laden with fruit not merely edible but delicious, indicate tree
s in whose hollows they could rest while nibbling on the mushrooms that grew on their bark, and communicate with the animals they encountered in a way so immediate and wondrous it bordered on the magical.

  First it was a beautiful fawn, which, after nuzzling affectionately against Yonfi’s extended hand, trotted slowly ahead and took them to a grove where lay the carcass of a grown deer (its mother?), fresh as if it had just succumbed to the Shy Death, on which father and son feasted heartily. This was followed by a groundhog that, upon emerging from its hole, instead of disappearing at their sight scurried over to Yonfi, sniffed his bare, earth-caked feet, and led them to a cavern formed by an eroded rock and the roots of a gigantic oak – where, snug on a thick layer of moss as if on actual bedding, they spent a peaceful, restorative night. And the morning after, while they crouched by a creek to drink and wash themselves, Yonfi was approached by an otter, followed it to a spot where the water deepened and ran beneath a bridge formed by the interwoven roots of two willows, and promptly returned with an armful of writhing trout, whose fishing not even he could explain. “They jumped right into my hands, Papa, like they wanted to be caught!” It was so odd, this bounty of nature revealed to them, that Yern decided it had to be the spirits of Yenka and Yofana watching over them – and so, his eyes welling with tears at their thought, he thanked them in a silent prayer.

  Yet his belief in some such otherworldly force protecting them, and his blindly following Yonfi whichever way his tiny feet guided them to, after a while dulled Yern’s alertness. And on the third morning of their wanderings, when the blanket of clouds obscuring the first three moons cleared, he saw to his great consternation that the hulking mass rising in the distance hadn’t the brown-reddish hue of Mount Copper, but shone in the moonlight, as its name denoted, like gold.

  He’d let himself get stupidly disoriented, which would cost them at least another week of walking along the Minelands, which Yern had never much liked, and liked even less now that they were said to be overrun with Scavengers after the precious metals that had been forever denied them. Of course, with a little more of the luck that had kept them safe thus far, they might chance upon one of the mines the Miners were hiding in, and even if they were unwilling to share their scant food and confined shelter with him, they would hopefully be kind enough to let Yonfi lay low amongst them.

  And there was another possibility, remote though it seemed. For the Cave of the Seers was rumoured to reside somewhere between Mount Gold and Mount Silver. No one was certain exactly where that was, and there were even some who believed it could magically move from one place to another depending on who sought it, and whether he or she was truly needful of the Cave and worthy of conversing with the mind-reading Oracles. Could it be that Yonfi’s peculiar intuition hadn’t led them astray but in fact towards the fabled abode of the Seers, drawn by their power which many considered equal to the Spirits’? Well, one way or another, they would soon find out.

  Though Yern could not imagine how terribly soon this would be.

  The sixth moon had just set, and they were squatting under the overhanging roots of a great redwood, roasting chestnuts on a small fire, when they suddenly heard the sound Yern dreaded so: the canter of an approaching horse.

  At once he turned to Yonfi with wide eyes and a finger to his lips, and gestured him to take cover inside the small wooden cage formed by the redwood’s roots and the ground. Then he quickly put out the fire, though by now there was little chance that the rider of the horse hadn’t noticed the smoke, and flattened himself on a bed of wet leaves, holding his breath although he felt the throb of his heart was louder than a drum.

  Letting out a whinny, the horse came to a stop just behind the tree; Yern could hear the animal’s breath. And then a voice, a woman’s voice said,

  “Where is that light coming from?”

  Yern turned around, terrified that in his haste he’d missed some still-glowing ember, but saw none. Then another voice spoke; this time it was a man’s voice, and to Yern’s utmost confusion, the man sounded as scared as he – if not more.

  “Who-whoever you are,” he stuttered, “sh-show yourselves! The High Servant commands you, by order of King F-fazen! Show yourselves I say!”

  So they weren’t Scavangers. But before Yern could decide whether to obey or to grab Yonfi and flee to be safe, Yonfi had already snuck out of his hiding place, and was shouting, “Papa! Come see the strange Master and his Lady!”

  That left him no choice, so he rose and came out of from behind the redwood, bowing his head and mumbling words of humility and supplication.

  But when no further order came, and Yonfi was dragging him towards the horse and urging him to look, Yern at last raised his head and looked.

  Never in his life had he set eyes on a stranger sight.