"He's gone clean daft!" cried Roc, horrified.
"No!" shouted Gise and Elof together, understanding Kermorvan's purpose. "No, after him! And make all the noise you may!" Elof sprang forward, crashing through the bushes with a wild yell, and after him Ils with the same exultant shout that had greeted the Mastersmith's downfall. In their wake streamed the company, shrieking and yelling and brandishing weapons. But Kermorvan was far ahead of them, already at the kill. The daggerteeth turned, dripping jaws asnarl, and cuffed at him with paws as large as his head. But their very size made them slow, and he slid between them like quicksilver, slashing at the outstretched claws. Growling and spitting, they fell back from the sweeping blade, but one leaped up on the carcass and poised to spring. Elof grabbed for his hammer, but even as its front feet lifted there came a snap, a hum, and it tumbled kicking among the trampled weeds. Gise brandished his bow, cheering hoarsely, and charged forward with the rest. It was too much for the other killers; their nerve broke, and they slunk back, roaring and snarling to cover their retreat. Right to the clearing's edge they snarled and struck at their tormentors, but once within the tree shadow they whirled about and went crashing away through the brush.
The company fell upon the stag almost as raveningly as the daggerteeth, but Kermorvan himself leaned on his sword a moment to catch his breath. Ils stopped, and passed him her water flask. "I've seen you do brave things enough, long man. But was not taking on three of those brutes the prime of both?"
"Not so!" gasped Kermorvan. "Common enough in the wild that scavengers drive a killer from his kill; wolf packs often do it to daggerteeth, so why not we? It seldom comes to a fight. And I feared famine among the mountains far worse." He smiled thinly. "Well, scavengers let us be! The daggerteeth may yet return. We must butcher the poor brute swiftly, and bear off all we can carry to some safer spot."
Swiftly they stripped the flesh from the great deer, cutting it into pieces of a size they could carry. "Umbels and bones we will leave to the daggerteeth, if they return," said Kermorvan wryly. "They prefer those, anyway. Their dead fellow, also; meat eaters make poor flesh themselves." But Gise took the fangs for a trophy.
They left that clearing, and climbed on through the wooded hills till the near edge of night. The ground grew drier as it rose, though cut and crossed by many small streams and rivulets. At every ridge they came to, the mountain tops seemed to loom nearer. But as the warm summer twilight closed in about them they found a sheltered spot to camp, and could at last cook and eat their fill. They sank down then where they sat, and slept; but Kermorvan did not fail to set a watch. For two days more he bade them rest, gathering their strength and making ready their great store of meat for the journey ahead. Much of the venison they dried and smoked in thin strips, but Roc found a hollow tree trunk full of honeycomb, and the rest they cooked, chopped and mixed with this, berries and wild herbs that Elof and Bure gathered, to make a long-lasting reserve of food.
Those days were to Elof an endless time of peace. "Strange not to be forever in motion," he remarked to Roc as they watched the steaming clay oven at their feet, "pursuing and pursued, hunter and prey. To have leisure to think, and dream, dream of a life that was beyond this Forest…"
Roc grinned. "And that will be, I hope!"
"Will it?" Elof stood and stared up into the rooflike tracery of dark branches, hung with glowing leaves. "I can scarcely believe it. I feel as if the past has dwindled, as if all my greatest joys and greatest pains alike have faded away into the distance, and there's a barrier between them and me. A barrier of trees… always trees…"
"Ach, it's not that bad," muttered Roc uneasily. "You dream too much, that's all. Work under your hands, that's your need! Come tend the oven, though it's a poor substitute for forge and furnace!"
But the sense of isolation only grew in Elof. The times of his youth and his first meeting with Kara he could summon up as glimpses through shifting foliage, one minute bright and dazzling, the next obscured, faded, unreachable. He knew that no more than a year and a half had passed since last he saw her, and yet it might have been in another life. With heart, with mind he reached out to her, but it seemed to him that they were astray, both astray, wandering far apart among darkling trees. He gazed up at the patches of blue sky overhead, seeking, he knew not why, a sweep of wings. But the trees stooped and whispered, hid the sky from his sight and showed to him no more than the mountain tops that he must soon cross.
The morrow's dawn came very clear and bright, for the clouds did not hang so heavy over the hill forests as below at this season; it seemed to them all a good omen, bidding them rise early and make good speed. Even that small time of rest had made a great difference to them. Food had hardened failing thews, filled out hollow cheeks; new hurts had healed, old scars grown less stiff beneath clothes that had at last lost their clammy dampness. Roc even began to whistle, as Elof remembered him doing on their boyhood journeys with the Mastersmith, and though Kermorvan cast a wary eye at the trees he did not rebuke him. High reared the mountains before them, and in that day they passed out of the hills and in among their lower slopes. Yet their path never took the company quite out of the shadows of the woods, for the trees grew thick over all the land that was easiest to pass, and the Forest was always with them.
Chapter Five
- The Halls of Summer
Of all that long and terrible journey, least, perhaps, is recorded of the crossing of the Meneth Aithen; yet those peaks were accounted the highest in the land, and a terror to travelers long after this day. It may well be that there was in fact little to tell, that in the mind of one who looked back to it, one day seemed scarcely different to the next. Day after day of trudging on up steep wooded hillsides, following small rivers that had sought or cut easy routes down the slopes, over loose soil and jagged stones that slipped away under scrabbling feet—thus the company wound a long and weary way between the looming mountain peaks. All the passes, all but the very highest slopes were smothered by the Forest, as it seemed to Elof, till he fell idly to wondering how the heights could sustain themselves under the onslaught of so many trees, their roots tearing at the very bones of the rock. But he found this part of the Forest less oppressive, for at these heights they walked once more chiefly among the evergreen pine-woods he knew, the air rich with the same tang of tars and resins as in the Northland forests, though many of the trees themselves proved strange to him, or odd variants of familiar kinds. The cooler, drier clime he found invigorating, and he all but forgot the looming presence he had been so conscious of in the lowlands. Equally heartened were the others from such lands, Roc and Ils and Gise, who was as close to joyful as he had been since the death of his friend; here his hunting skills were at their best, and by his catch and Kermorvan's the company lived well enough without relying too heavily on their precious store of venison. Best of all, perhaps, it was now high summer, and that worst of perils, the weather, was held firmly in check; even the winds in the high passes were moderated by the trees. It seems, therefore, that many long days slipped by without incident, until, passing between two high peaks, they found that no higher ones reared up beyond, and that the trees led them toward a downward slope. Then the company began to believe that the end of their crossing was nigh.
They camped that night in a little valley between two lesser peaks, and set out the next morning, tingling from a bathe in the pools of a mountain spring, eager for some glimpse of the new horizons eastward. But ere they had gone very far downhill they found that the trees came to a sudden end, and even the ground beneath. Beyond them was nothing but blue sky heaped white with cloud castles, as if they had come to the world's end. They guessed it must be the edge of a steep slope or a cliff, the trees growing to the very brink, and they hastened forward, full of excitement, seeking what might be seen from this high place. Kermorvan's stride, long and light, carried him ahead of his companions, and when Elof reached him he stood poised on the very brink, gazing out to the far horizon. Elof prudently caught hold of a hanging pine branch as he stepped out to join him, and caught sight of Kermorvan's face. His look was strange, grimness and great wonder struggling for mastery. Elof turned quickly to see what moved the warrior thus, and in finding his footing he looked down.
The world dropped away from under him, and he was seized in the empty clutch of the abyss. He gazed down upon treetops as tall as those that waved and whispered above his head; it was unnatural to see them so tiny and remote, as if he looked somehow through the eyes of a bird, soaring against the sun. Right to the foot of the cliff they grew, unbroken, as if that wall of stone had been suddenly thrust up out of solid forest, without toppling a single tree. So the Forest was here also, and awaiting them… Then understanding flowed like the Ice into his blood; he clutched the branch with convulsive strength. He had guessed Kermorvan's thought. If the Forest came unbroken across these mountains, then where did it end? To the distant horizon he raised his eyes, across all the broad lands between, and all was dark with trees.
Back to his childhood the sight took him, sitting on the hillside among the herds, gazing out over the immensity of the Western Ocean and wondering what lands might lie on its far shores, if shores it had. This too was an ocean; the wind drove waves across it, the scudding clouds swept purple shadows over it as they did over the green ocean. And this, too, held no promise of a further shore. All they could see was Forest unbroken, unending over this whole face of the world.
"The distance, that I knew!" breathed Kermorvan, his face suddenly very young and uncertain. "But this makes it real, real and terrible! From here to that horizon we must travel many times over ere we could hope to find the Forest's end. And how far beyond that to what we seek?" He shook his head. "I begin to wonder if I shall ever find that. If it can be found."
"The Eastlands?"
Kermorvan hesitated a moment. "I fear not. Oh, it may serve Kerbryhaine to find them. Or it may not. But I, I see now that I sought something more, a thing for which the east was only a guise… Some shadow perhaps of the glories of old, when my ancestors were kings. When I would have been a king!" He grimaced angrily. "A shadow indeed! And folly cast it. A phantom of things that are not, that never were, perhaps. Nobility, heroism, true kingship; have they fled the world? Or were they never truly in it? Were they always lies and glosses by chroniclers upon the folly and malice of men? If I were borne back to Morvan of old, would I find it any better than Kerbryhaine? Or Kerys itself any greater than Morvan, save in power and pomp? Can the hearts and minds of men have changed so much in the passing years? I fear not!" The youth faded from his features, their lines deepened and set; years beyond his own settled upon him like motes of graying dust. As harsh and ancient as the raw granite below them was his face now, and as unyielding. Thus he had looked in the court of the duergar; but now it was against himself he turned that stony judgment. "I hunted a dream, that lies not eastward nor any other way. And whither has my false quest led you all? And at what grave cost?"
Elof looked up at him. "Not all dreams are false! I also seek one. To follow the sunrise I am pledged, till I find my life's fulfillment, or its end. The others also have their dreams, I do not doubt, of wealth, honor, adventure if nothing else; they knew their peril, if not its nature, and chose to follow regardless."
"But you have touched your dream, and it lives. She lives. Of mine I am no longer sure…"
"Is that any reason to cast it aside? Give it life! Make it live! Give it your life, if need be! Even if you fail, it need not be wasted. Make some part of it true, at least, and you may inspire others. But my lord, I tell you this! In all my wanderings I have met no man more able to bring such a dream as yours to birth than are you yourself. You owe yourself the attempt, yourself and all the others we have lost."
Kermorvan stiffened. He said no word to Elof, but glanced quickly at the others ranged along the cliff, staring unbelieving at the expanse of trees before them. When he called to them his voice was clear and strong. "A barrier indeed! But our forebears crossed it, women and children, young and old, all alike. Shall we deem ourselves so much weaker than they? They found ways, and so shall we! For a first step, why not a safe path down? Let us search!" He turned away from the brink, and as he faced Elof he smiled his thin smile. The gray years had passed from his brow.
"A way there must be indeed," muttered Roc to Elof, as they and Ils made their way along the cliff top. "But by all accounts, there were plenty never came through that crossing! Let's hope it's not their way we find."
"Indeed," said Elof. "But perhaps the way mattered less than they who trod it. Those who came safe to the west had great leaders, this man Vayde for one. And that is our strength also. It is his doubt I fear, the division of his will."
Ils grunted. "Better a captain who knows doubt than one who doesn't, as is that creature Bryhon!"
"If only doubts do not consume him," said Elof. "As within sound steel a tiny flaw may spread, or a bright firecoal burn away from beneath, and fall to ash." To that the others made no answer.
It was long leagues of uneven ground before they found their descent, and the bright clouds of morning had been ousted by dark fleets racing southward before the wind, trailing drizzle across the treetops. The cliff face had no sudden end, but turned gradually to a steep slope with many patches of perilous scree and only a few pine trees, chiefly foxtails and whitebarks bent and tormented by the prevailing wind. Finally the slope became a broken surface of shelf and outcrop, a natural stair. Trees grew on every ledge that could bear them, providing welcome handholds; on steeper passages the travelers found themselves all but swinging from one branch to the next, never trusting the grip of their feet on smooth stone and shifting soil. Once Bure slipped and went slithering away across the rock, but fetched up against a stout pitch-pine sapling with only a few scratches. "As well you've been on shorter commons of late," laughed Tenvar, "or it might never have stood the strain!"