SPIRALS AND VOICES
Graelalea led the company mercilessly over rugged
terrain until abruptly she stopped on the edge of a cliff where the
forest opened up, revealing a lake below. To Karigan’s eyes it
seemed shaped like a beech leaf or a spearhead. Clouds obscured the
far shore.
“The Pool of
Avrath,” Ealdaen said. “I thought never to gaze upon it again. But
it is dark, defiled.”
“What do you see?”
Yates whispered to Karigan.
“We’re looking down
into a valley with a lake,” she replied.
“You must remember
this for the journal.”
“I will.” To be
honest, when they stopped for the night, she was so exhausted she
knew she’d probably fall fast asleep before she could get to the
journal.
“What’s that in the
middle of the lake?” Ard asked.
Karigan could not
make out the details for it was too distant, but some rock
formation stood in the lake’s center. Its shape looked too regular
to have been made by nature.
Ealdaen, whose
Eletian sight was more keen, spoke angrily in his own tongue. All
the Eletians looked incensed.
“What is it?”
Karigan asked.
“It is the Evil
One,” Lhean said. “A statue of Mornhavon.”
“He thought himself
a god,” Ealdaen spat. “The god of all, and he would have known what
it meant to our people to place a statue of himself in the
pool.”
“What would it
mean?” Yates asked, but the Eletians were already moving on, and
Lynx took Yates’ arm to lead him away.
Karigan remembered
sitting in the library of the Golden Guardian in Selium. Aaron
Fiori had sung of Avrath, a Shining Land. He’d believed Avrath to
be a spiritual place of the Eletians. Perhaps, if Avrath were like
the heavens, the Eletians believed it was reflected in the pool.
Whatever the significance of the lake, a statue of Mornhavon
planted in its middle clearly wounded them.
She was quickly
being left behind again, and not wishing to end up alone with Ard,
she made her weary body take a step forward. Then she paused. The
fog on the far shore thinned just enough to reveal tall spires
rising among the trees. They gleamed dully. Before the clouds
layered over them again, they flashed in crystalline brilliance as
perhaps they had long, long ago beneath a silver moon. Then the
light died, and the towers disappeared in the fog.
Karigan blinked,
gooseflesh rising along her arms. Her imagination again? The
poison? As she set off after the others, she was certain of one
thing: Castle Argenthyne, the legend, lay on the other side of the
lake.
Their trail
descended in a series of switchbacks, which meant Karigan was never
really far from the others even if she lagged behind. Ard had
insinuated himself into the middle of the line, making conversation
with Solan. There was no sign of the strange behavior he’d
exhibited in the boulder field, and she shrugged. She should be
more surprised that Blackveil wasn’t making them all behave in
strange ways.
It was dark by the
time they reached level ground, the wings of oversized bats
flapping through the air above their heads.
“We shall camp here
for the night,” Graelalea said. “Tomorrow we shall not stop until
we reach the grove.”
Karigan sensed the
elevated energy in Graelalea, her agitation as camp was set up.
Karigan suspected the Eletian wouldn’t have stopped until she
reached the grove if it had been just her, but she’d taken into
consideration the condition of her companions. It would not do to
face whatever awaited them at the grove when totally
exhausted.
“What happens when
we reach the grove?” Grant demanded. He did not help to set up
camp, but just stood in the middle of everything rubbing his
arm.
“We shall see what
we find,” Graelalea replied.
Karigan knew she
ought to be more worried about what the next day would bring, but
she was too tired; almost too tired to eat her portion of gruel
that Lynx spooned out. And when she finished, she crawled into her
tent and fell instantly asleep.
The next morning the
path became more level and they crossed the remains of broken
roads; the ominous shapes of ruined structures protruded from moss
and tangled vegetation. They were nearing the city of Argenthyne
and its castle. The fog shifted above the treetops just enough to
offer tantalizing views of the castle towers.
The towers remained
dull, tarnished, as Karigan had first seen them the previous night.
They were not made of silver moonbeams as in the songs and stories,
unless silver moonbeams could die. Still, the towers were graceful
and without the fog, Karigan imagined, they must have soared into
the sky. Delicate arched bridges connected the towers at different
levels, reminding her of interlacing tree limbs in a
forest.
Argenthyne did not,
in its current state, resemble what Karigan had always imagined,
but she couldn’t believe she was here, walking into legend. What
would her mother think? Perhaps that such a thing was not so
far-fetched. After all, she’d possessed a moonstone.
She knew they’d
entered the city proper when more ruins appeared around them. It
smelled different, too. Not just of the decayed forest, but also of
the mustiness of structures long emptied of life. Paving stones had
ruptured with the growth of gnarled, sickly trees. Stairs rose to
nothingness. A fountain stood in the center of a square fouled by
black sludge, and above everything the leaden towers
loomed.
Karigan had seen
this before as a vision shown to her by Prince Jametari in the
waters preserved from Indura Luin, the
Mirror of the Moon. The vision had also revealed the contrast of
Argenthyne in its glory before Mornhavon’s invasion, before the
decay of Blackveil.
Sibilant murmurs
made her shiver as though the Eletians who once lived here were
just on the other side of a thin veil, as if her own time brushed
against that past piece of time. Or maybe it was ghosts. Ghosts,
she could handle.
“This place is
haunted,” Grant muttered, echoing her thoughts.
“No,” Ealdaen said.
“Eletians leave no shades behind. It is only your kind that is too
restless in death.”
If that was so,
Karigan thought, then she must just be sensing air currents weaving
through the towers, the moans of broken buildings. Whatever it was,
Argenthyne still had a voice.
Could a whole city
be a ghost? They certainly walked its corpse.
They stopped by the
fountain. A beautiful figure held a cracked bowl above her head.
Or, she’d once been beautiful, but the light stone she’d been
carved from was stained, black tears seeming to stream down her
face.
“So where is this
grove of yours?” Ard asked.
“The east leaf,”
Graelalea replied.
“The what?”
“The city,”
Graelalea said, “is laid out in a triad of leaves, or sections. The
Pool of Avrath makes up the south leaf. We now stand in the north
leaf.”
The castle, Karigan
thought, must rise up in the middle of the leaves like a blossom,
the nexus of it all.
“I have walked these
streets many times,” Ealdaen said, gazing at the ruins all around
them. “I know every one of them, from the Great Stem to the
narrowest winding. This was my home.”
Silence fell upon
them, though the city still sighed hollowly.
“Then you shall lead
us,” Graelalea told Ealdaen.
He nodded and they
fell in line behind him, staying alert for danger hidden among the
ruins. Claws scrabbled on stone and a rat much larger than any
wharf rat Karigan had ever seen bounded across the road ahead of
them, vanishing into rubble.
It was difficult for
Karigan to imagine the city alive with Eletians despite the vision
she’d once seen in the Mirror of the Moon. It was hard to believe
there had once been so many Eletians walking the lands. Somehow
Mornhavon, with his tremendous powers, had overcome
them.
She studied Ealdaen
as he strode ahead, shoulders set, the spines on his pauldrons
catching the light. He looked from side to side, facial muscles
taut. Did he remember those last moments in Argenthyne as he fled
Mornhavon’s armies and weapons? Of course he must. What was it like
for him to see his city in ruin after so many centuries? The same
way she’d feel if this were Corsa or Sacor City. Devastated.
Devastated not so much by the ruins left behind, but by the loss of
the civilization they represented.
When they began this
journey, she’d been very unsure of Ealdaen. He’d tried to kill her
once, after all, and she remained wary of him even though the bonds
of the group working for mutual survival had outweighed personal
motives. So far. Seeing the effect of the city on him, and having
seen his reaction to the remains of Telavalieth, she no longer
viewed him as quite so cold and immovable.
The cluster of
towers that was the castle remained to their right, its heights
fading in and out with the fog. The voice of the city came again to
Karigan as she trudged along, this time as a mournful
song.
Karigan soon
understood what Ealdaen had meant when he said he knew every
“narrow winding.” There was not a single street she could discern
that traveled in a straight line. The streets here put the Winding
Way in her own Sacor City to shame.
They walked endless
looping curves, but just when she thought they must complete a
circle, they’d come to an intersection and start going around in a
completely different direction. Were the Eletian road builders
insane? Well, they were Eletians, and
despite having journeyed so far and long with a few of them,
Karigan could not say their ways were any less mysterious to her
than when they’d begun. It was maddening that they must travel in
such a roundabout manner when they’d reach their destination much
more quickly if the streets were straight. It reminded her of one
of those frustrating dreams where, try as she might, she could not
get someplace she needed to be or complete a task.
There was no way to
cut through the ruins that she could see that would shorten their
way—at least none that looked safe—nor did the Eletians seem the
least inclined to seek such a way. They appeared intent only on
staying their course, circular as it was.
“The nythlings don’t
like the spiral streets,” Grant muttered to himself. “No, they do
not.”
Besides Grant, no
one showed signs of being perturbed, so Karigan shrugged and
decided the Eletians knew what was best and that she’d do well not
to worry about it.
She still thought
the road builders must have been insane. Or maybe drunk. Did
Eletians get drunk?
Such speculation
amused her, held errant masked dancers at bay. It took her mind off
the pain that stabbed her leg with each step and the murk that
seeped low over the city—dead neighborhood after dead
neighborhood.
She could not block
out the city’s voice. Sometimes it was a stream sluggishly
murmuring unseen among the ruins, accompanied by a rhythmic
dripping tapping out a secret message. Sounds like distant weeping
chilled her, and sometimes she thought air currents chimed through
the towers. It sucked her in till she could almost hear her name
expelled on a deep exhalation.
She wondered if
Yates, who must depend on his hearing more than ever, heard the
city as she did. She thought about asking him, but she feared
breaking the silence of the company might shatter something
fragile, bring the sky down on them, or awaken a sleeping
god.
Ealdaen halted and
Karigan, so caught up in spirals and voices, looked up startled.
They’d come to a wall that rose precipitously above them and above
it yet soared one of the towers of Castle Argenthyne.
Predictably the wall
was not straight or squared, but bent in a curve. They followed a
street that flowed along its contours, the castle remaining at
their right shoulders. On the other side of the street, the dank
ruins and rubble abruptly ended, and the forest of Blackveil reared
over them. It was clear to Karigan they’d departed the north leaf
and were now heading for the east leaf, where the grove of the
Sleepers awaited them.