Deverry - A Time Of War Part 42

Rhodry and Enj had left Haen Marn when the moon was just waxing full. By the time that they were speaking of Enj's father (and this was also about the time that Dallandra reached Jill's chamber) the moon was past her third quarter. Some days earlier, they'd left the hill country behind for the flanks of the mountains. Although Rhodry had been dreading the climb, paradoxically enough it was in one way easier going than the hills. Though the slopes rose so steeply that at times they walked bent double, leaning upon sticks, once they crossed in to high timber the underbrush thinned out. Huge firs of the kind the dwarves call 'mountain greys', taller than any pillar in a high king's hall, rose straight and dark, dropping a blanket of dead needles the colour of dried blood, thick and spongy underfoot. Although bringing a pack animal through would have been close to impossible, especially since there was no green fodder to speak of, two men could pick their way at a reasonable pace.

'There be little that can grow here, such be this ground,' Enj remarked. 'I don't know why, but it's as if the firs claim these mountains for themselves alone and choke out any usurpers.'

Along the streams, of course, a tangle of shrubs and seedlings fought for water and sun both. In and among them Enj found edible herbs of various sorts as well as fish. Whenever they camped, they set wire snares for rabbits and rodents to supplement what flatbread and cheese they were carrying on their backs. They needed every extra bite they could forage. The forest stretched on and on, a sea indeed, rolling over the high mountains and plunging down into the rare valley. Rhodry felt like a swimmer, making his way underwater to bob up now and then for a view. Whenever they came to the rim of a valley or scrambled over an outcrop of rock, he would always look north, where the white peaks floated far above, still as unreachable as ever, even though he walked among them.

As they worked their way higher, the nights started turning cold, even though their short length told them it was summer still. On dry days they would scrounge dead wood for a fire. Enj was always on the lookout as well for rotting leaves and desiccated needles to augment the meagre supply of tow and rotted rags in their tinder boxes. Since Rhodry's entire life had been spent either in towns or along the roads leading between them, how well Enj lived in the woods filled him with admiration.

"This be my home,' Enj said simply. 'Never have I felt Haen Marn as home since the night my father did drown.'

'Well, you still have my thanks from the bottom of my heart. Without you I'd never be able to do this, Wyrd or no Wyrd. Never have I known a woodsman like you, never.'

Enj looked away fast, blushing round the ears, then glanced at him smiling.

As they travelled Enj scouted for the landmarks his sister had seen in her silver basin. One after another they found them, the rock face eroded in a pattern like an ear of ripe wheat, the hundred-foot-tall fir, dead some twenty years at least, that still stood stark and black on a hill top, an enormous boulder split by ancient ice with a young tree growing twixt the two halves. Other subtler markers came and went, an oddly shaped hill, a pattern of trees, a waterfall that seemed to break in two round rock. Yet the day came when they reached the last of them, if indeed the outcrop they found really did look like a hound's head. Avain might have seen a resemblance; they were both unsure.

'Hound or no, it does provide shelter from the wind,' Enj said. 'So let's make camp here.'

They set out snares, then scavenged for firewood. While Enj split their haul with their handaxe, Rhodry scrambled to the top of the putative hound's head and stood looking round. They were on a slope downhill to their line of march, and to the west he could see a fair ways into the bluish haze of a summer forest.

'Enj! Here's an odd thing! I see hills, flanks of the big peak due north, but then I think there's a plain of some sort. It's too cursed big to be a mountain meadow or suchlike, way at the horizon.'

The ringing of the axe stopped.

'You be the one with elven eyes, not me,' Enj called up. 'Do the peaks rise again on the far side, like?'

'It's too far to tell.' Rhodry shaded his eyes with his hand. 'Looks flat, and oddly barren. You don't know what it might be?'

'I've never travelled this far in my life, Truly, I'd wager that no man nor dwarf neither has ever walked this far north.'

All at once Rhodry felt dizzy. He slid down from his lookout and sat down in the shade of the outcrop, and as he did so, he patted the firm ground just to make sure it was still there. Enj sank the axe into a log.

'If it be round, that valley might be the "G.o.ds' soup bowl" that Avain kept mentioning.'

'It looked long and narrow, actually.'

'Well, then, I don't know.' He grinned, suddenly as sunny as his sister. 'Let's go see, shall we, and be the first men in the world to walk there.'

'That would mean somewhat to you, wouldn't it?'

'Oh, as much as jewels and gold, truly. I do see that you don't care in the least.'

Rhodry shrugged.

'If I weren't heartsick with worry over this siege, it would mean more. For all I know, Cengarn's fallen to her enemies by now, and me stuck here without one thing to do to save her.'

'My apologies. I keep shoving that horror out of my mind, like. Well, then, Rori, on the morrow, let's keep moving in the direction of this mysterious plain, but if you can't sec any peaks by the time we camp, then we'll have to turn back. We won't be finding our dragon anywhere but near a fire mountain.'

'Truly? Why?'

'That be where they lair in the winter. They be cold-blooded, the great wyrms, and in the winter they'd die without some source of heat.

'I see. I wish we had some scouts to send ahead of us. You know, here's an odd thing! In all of our travelling, I've not seen Wildfolk, not a single gnome or sprite or suchlike at all. Usually they come round me, and every now and then one will run me an errand, too.'

'Well, they shun me.' Enj smiled, but ruefully. 'We Mountain People can see them, but they dislike us, and so I suppose they're avoiding you because I be here.'

'Then that's why I never saw them swarming round Avain. Usually they like a person who shows dwcomcr talent.'

'Do they? I didn't know that. You know, when Avain scried, she kept holding the ring, and without the ring she saw little enough. You've elven blood in your veins, and you wear the dragon's name. Can't you scry for it?'

'Not in the least, or I would have.'

'Well, true, and my apologies. I just feel that somehow we're missing some thing or other that would help us.'

And they needed every sc.r.a.p of help they could get, Rhodry realized. After they'd eaten, while the late sun still shone golden over the plain far to the west, he climbed the outcrop again and stood staring into the view. The longer shadows of sunset did seem to pick out mountain peaks on the other side of the mysterious plain, though far away, as sharp as cat's teeth, these, if indeed mountains they were. He was painfully aware that he and Enj could wander in this unknown range for months, circling round their dragon, even, or missing the beast by a scant mile or two. When he lowered his hand, the ring glinted a reminder.

'Here, Enj, don't think I've lost my wits, but I think me I'll try calling our wyrm.'

It took him a moment to remember what Jill had taught him, and he slipped the ring off, too, to make sure he had each elven letter right in his mind. First he mouthed the words to get the feel of it again, Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz; then he gathered himself, took a deep breath and intoned the name.

'Ar Zo Sah Soth Ee Lor Ez O Haz.'

In the silent mountains, hushed with sunset, the name boomed out like a gong. Like a gong the sound lingered, quivering to a long stop. For a moment he felt nothing but foolish. Down below Enj was staring gape-mouthed.

'Do it again, Rori,' he whispered. 'I've never heard anyone but a priest do that.'

Rhodry gathered himself again, and this time he imagined himself on the brink of some crucial battle.

'Ar Zo Sah Soth Ee Lor Ez O Haz.'

A blare of sound, this time, like the bra.s.s horns in the Dawntime style that Deverry priests blow at Samaen, humming and vibrating as much as it trumpeted over the valley, echoing round, racing, it seemed, to the horizon itself. The answer came, a touch, an aware-ness, a feel of a mind, an alien mind upon his. The dragon lived, and not far, not far measured by the distance they'd already come. He could feel its disquiet - not a fear, certainly, nothing so strong as that - but an ill-ease, a wondering that some thought it couldn't understand had touched its mind.

As he shaded his eyes and stared toward the sunset plain, he knew that the wyrm laired to the west. He tossed back his head and laughed his berserker's howl, the mad chortle echoing round the hills, but yet It sounded almost normal after the intoning of that name. Still grinning he slid down again and clapped his hand on Enj's shoulder.

'We go west. You'll walk upon that plain, lad, just like you wanted.' In but two days more they had solid evidence to match his dweomer-kowledge, when they reached the high plain, a sliver of land caught between two ranges. As they hiked down the last slope leading to it, the first thing they noticed was the change in the trees - still the grey mountain fir, but stunted, with scant branches that drooped more and more the nearer they went to the peak. Rhodry found himself sniffing the air like a dog, finally realized what he'd been scenting. 'Ye G.o.ds,' he said. 'The air stinks of brimstone.' 'It does, at that.' Enj paused to sniff as well. 'Jus* now and again, like, when the wind comes from the due west.' They exchanged a grin and trudged on.

Toward evening they came down at last onto the plain. Rhodry had been prepared for something grim and blasted, but instead it looked ordinary enough at any distance away. As they hiked through, how-ever, they saw that the long stretch of gra.s.s grew scant and pale round black rocks, sticking up through thin soil. What few trees there were stood twisted and sickly. Enj hunkered down and dug his fingers deep into the soil, then held up a black and oddly glossy handful, as if it had started life as cinders.

'My father often told me that in the end, the gra.s.s and trees take back the land from a fire mountain. It must be happening here.' 'Truly, and look, there it is.'

.At the north end of the valley soared a mountain the like of which Rhodry had never seen. Just like the multiple brochs of a great lord's dun, it seemed formed of three peaks fused together - the highest, a truncated cone, rising snow-capped between a much lower, shambling hill, which looked as if their tops had been bitten off by some unimaginably huge beast. The slopes rose dark, striped here and there with trees, here and there creviced with shadow. A thin mist hung at the apex.

'Smoke?' Rhodry said.

Enj merely shrugged, staring fascinated at the volcano.

'I think your dweomer did lead us here,' he whispered at last. 'Even if I should die tonight, seeing this mountain would have made the journey worthwhile.'

It was, Rhodry supposed, very beautiful, but still, he couldn't understand Enj's fascination. He himself would have preferred a view of the High King's palace or suchlike any day.

'I see water over there,' Rhodry said. 'Let's hope it doesn't reek of brimstone, too.'

They camped that night between the mountain's feet. For the first time since Othara had given him the talisman, Rhodry dreamt, these long and vivid dreams of flying far above the earth, of seeing trees and mountains swoop by underneath as his vision wheeled and soared. Yet along with the delight worry touched the dreams, a faint dread, a wondering if danger lay nearby. He woke suddenly at dawn and lay in his blankets, hands tucked underneath his head, while he stared at the peaks rising above. As the light brightened, deepening the shadows, he could pick out fissures and strange long formations of rock, twining down the mountainside like rivulets of black water between green-grey banks of trees. Here and there the rock pooled as well or made boulders shaped like drops, the record of ancient splashes from a time when the mountain had spilled liquid rock like metal from a blacksmith's spoon. As he studied the slopes, he felt the earth tremble under him, just for a few beats of a heart before it stilled.

'The land of blood and fire,' he whispered.

Rhodry sat up and began to study the two side cones. Not only were they lower, the left somewhat more than the right, but they were far more deeply eroded, with the leftward the most heavily forested of the three. The left, then, would probably offer the easiest way up. Given how tired they were, and how little food they had left, it would be best if their first choice were the correct one. He considered calling the dragon to see if he could form some impression of its direction, then realized that to do so would warn it.

Enj woke soon after, and he'd also been worrying about their route. After a scant breakfast of squirrel caught and roasted the day before, they discussed which of the two lower peaks to climb.

'Or should we climb either, for that matter,' Rhodry said. 'I feel in my very soul that the dragon's up there somewhere, but that's not a rational thought or suchlike. I'd hate to have you depend upon it.'

'What else do we have to depend on? I think, Rori, that if you're meant to have this wyrm, then we'll find it easily, and if you're not, well, then, we'll die no matter which way we go.'

'Imph. An unlovely thought, that, but I think me you speak true. What we need is an omen. Too bad Otho's not along to cast us a geomancy.'

Enj laughed, then went back to studying the mountain. Even though the day was growing sunny and hot, the grey mist still hung at the highest peak. Rhodry rose to his feet and walked a few steps away.

'Well, if there's truly dweomcr at work here, then we can invent our own way to take omens, and it'll be good enough. If there isn't dweomer at work, well, then, we're doomed.' Laughing, he drew his silver dagger and held it up. 'May the G.o.ds look down and decide!'

Remembering a chance remark of Jill's, he made sure that he was moving deosil, then spun round and round like a child playing a game. When, after a few dizzy-making turns, he saw out of the corner of his eye the high peak flashing toward him, he let the dagger fly. It arched up, winking in the sun, and fell pointing straight at the leftward of the two low and broken peaks.

'Done, then!' Enj called out. 'We'll see what the G.o.ds have in store for us.'

It took them all day to work their way up the leftward slope. The morning, or so Enj said, they spent learning how to climb, inching from crack to crack, from patch of scrub wood to fissure. Much to Enj's relief they did find decent water, tinged with sulphur and warm, but drinkable, in the occasional pool or cranny. On the lower slope they could make steady if slow progress; by noon they could look back at the plain below and see the trees as tiny marks on barren ground. They rested crammed into a more or less horizontal fissure where trees as gnarled as gnomes were breaking black rock apart, and moss and lichen lay thick, a green if slimy carpet.

After a scant meal they started again. The upper slope rose so smoothly that it seemed they climbed for hours yet travelled not a mile. Up and ever up they went, bent double against the angle, eyes fixed on the next barren streak of black rock, the next patch or pocket of thin soil, slippery with dead gra.s.s. All round them the wind gusted this way or that, tainted with brimstone and ancient ash. At last, just when Rhodry's legs seemed to be melting into water, he glanced up to see a horizon of sorts hanging above him - the blackish line of the rock face against blue sky where it lipped over to flatten. When Rhodry hauled himself over, he found another slope ahead, but this one slanted down, broken here and there with flattish spots where a scrawny tree or two lifted its bare branches.

'Almost there,' Enj panted. 'Hang on.'

They rested for a few moments, blowing for breath, pushing back sweaty hair from their foreheads, then settled their packs and moved on. As the slope became a proper cliff top, Rhodry got a glimpse of what lay ahead, a huge rise of distant cliffs, as flat and circling as Lin Serr's wall, with the snowy peak beyond catching full sun, but it wasn't till they reached the edge that he could see the entire view.

'Ye G.o.ds,' he whispered. 'Ye G.o.ds.'

In front of him the ridge they'd been following dropped away for hundreds of yards to a vast valley floor, unrolling on and on to the distant rise of precipice that had once been the inside of a mountain.

These cliffs formed a semi-circle, just as if they were the rim of an enormous drinking bowl made of clay, but one ruined on the wheel by a slip of the potter's thumb, that is, the depression where they'd crawled over. Rhodry shook his head, trying to imagine what had made this crater. Over the lip of cold rock on which he now stood fire and liquid rock had once run like wine spilling from the deformed bowl, and the rock had bubbled, too, just like boiling water. He found it hard to believe, yet he knew that Enj's father had taught the truth of the matter. The bottom of the bowl now formed the living valley, covered with gra.s.s in places and dotted with trees that flamed red and gold, as if in homage to their home's fiery birth.

Autumn came early, he supposed, at this height.

'The Soup Bowl of the G.o.ds,' Enj said, grinning.

'It is! Avain was right, after all.'

'Good name for it, truly. Lacks a certain poetry, mayhap.'

'Whatever we call it, it's huge.'

'A fair two mile across at least, I'd say.' Enj held up a thumb at arm's length to help himself gauge.

'Hard to tell. And those cliffs there at the other lip must stand a good mile above the floor. That be a wretched piece of luck.'

'Why?'

'We've got to get over them, that's why. Look, you can just see the apex, rising behind the far cliff. The fire must have burst out part-way up the mountain's side first, and as for how long ago, I don't know if we have a word big enough. Then it would have burst out on that other cone, a little closer to our own day.'

'And now we've got the peak itself to worry about.'

'Worry? I - er, truly. If that thing should blow while we're here . . .'

They stood for a moment, staring at the peak with its scarf of grey rnist, whether smoke or cloud, they couldn't tell.

'If we need to be round, hadn't we best just go round?' Rhodry said. 'Not go down to the valley at all, I mean.'

'Use the cliff tops as kind of a road? You be probably right enough, but I don't fancy camping out here tonight, clinging to this slope like a fly on a tankard.'

'Why not? We've slept on worse.'

Enj hesitated, staring up at the clear sky while he chewed on his lower lip.

'We're dead tired already,' Rhodry said. 'If we start down now, and slip or suchlike -'

Enj went on staring at the sky and said nothing. Rhodry waited in silence.

'I was just thinking,' Enj said at last. 'Suppose the creature be out Hunting, and here we be, out walking, where there be neither tree nor overhang for a good mile.'

Rhodry started to speak, then merely laughed. Enj winced.

'Ye G.o.ds, Rori, when you laugh like that it does creep my flesh. Now, if we head round to the west here for a-ways, we might be able to take that slope down. See over there? There's a fissure, like.'

In the direction of the fissure, the cliff top seemed to be sloping clown somewhat, shortening the distance they'd have to climb, or so Rhodry hoped. Although he'd rested enough to keep going, he could feel his legs and feet aching in stripes of pain along every long muscle. Up in the lead, Enj suddenly cried out and threw up an arm for the halt.

'Now that do be what I call a drop-off! Come up and have a look.'

Down at the bottom of an enormous shaft lay a lake, at least a hundred yards across. The pit looked like a giant finger hole, poked by a G.o.d, perhaps, into wet earth which had then turned to rock round the poke and caught the rain. From the rim where they stood, cliffs of the usual dark grey stone fell straight as a plumb line down to the water, some hundred feet below. Wisps of steam rose and floated on the surface.

'Somewhat nasty lives in that, I'll wager,' Rhodry remarked. 'A demon, most like. A pack of evil spirits at the least.'

'We're not going to hang about long enough to find out. Quick march.'

Once they reached the crack in the cliff face, the eroded slope within its walls did seem more forgiving, a possible though not gentle angle down. Enj studied it for a long moment, then turned to Rhodry.

'What do you think?'

'You're the leader here.'

'I think we can manage if we start right now. It's needful that we reach the valley floor before it turns dark.'

They did, but only just. They climbed roped, with Rhodry in the lead and the experienced Enj at the rear to anchor the team should he fall. Every yard gained was a matter of careful thought, of a long look down to gauge not only the possible hand and foot holds at the particular spot but whether or not other holds existed further along the proposed route. They had to retrace their route only once, and even then, ifRhodry hadn't been along, the dwarf might have managed to inch himself past the bad spot. As it was, with a cheerful 'better delayed than dead', Enj ordered them back and round to a safer, if slower, route.