Then they entered the Kennon, its rugged walls rising about them, great slabs of stone split by the slow swing of time’s axe, and Paranor was lost from view.
Only Bremen knew where they were going, and he kept the information to himself until they camped that night above the Mermidon, safely down out of the pass and back within the sheltering forests below. Kinson had asked once when he was alone with the old man and Risca had asked in front of everyone, but Bremen had chosen not to respond. His reasons were his own, and he kept them that way, offering no explanation to his followers.
No one chose to contest his decision.
But that night, after they had built their fire and cooked their food (Kinson’s first hot meal in weeks), Bremen revealed at last their destination.
“I will tell you now where we are going,” he advised quietly.
“We are traveling to the Hadeshorn.”
Chapter Five
They were seated about the small fire, their dinner finished, their hands busy with other tasks. Risca worked to sharpen the blade of his broadsword. Tay sipped from an aleskin and sketched pictures in the dust. Kinson worked a fresh length of leather stitching through one boot where the sole was loosening. Mareth sat apart and watched them all with her strange, level gaze that took in everything and gave nothing back.
There was a silence when Bremen finished, four heads lifting as one to stare at him. “I intend to speak with the spirits of the dead in an effort to discover what it is that we must do to protect the Races. I will try to learn something of how we should proceed. I will try to discover our fates.”
Tay Trefenwyd cleared his throat softly. “The Hadeshorn is forbidden to mortals. Even Druids. Its waters are poisonous. One taste and you are dead.” He looked at Bremen thoughtfully, then looked away again. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
Bremen nodded. “There is danger in visiting the Hadeshorn. There is greater danger still in calling up the dead. But I have studied the magic that wards the netherworld and its portals into our own, and I have traveled such roads as exist between the two and returned alive.“ He smiled at the Elf. ”I have journeyed far since last we were together, Tay.”
Risca grunted. “I’m not sure I want to know my fate.”
“Nor I,” Kinson echoed.
“I will ask for whatever they will give me,” Bremen advised.
“They will decide what we should know.”
“You believe that the spirits will speak words that you can understand?” Risca shook his head. “I didn’t think it worked that way.”
“It doesn’t,” Bremen acknowledged. He eased himself closer to the fire and held out his hands to capture its warmth. The night was cool, even below the mountains. “The dead, if they appear, offer visions, and the visions speak for them. The dead have no voices. Not from the netherworld. Not unless...”
He seemed to think better of what he was about to say and brushed the matter aside with an impatient wave. “The fact remains that the visions will give voice to what the spirits would tell us—if they choose to speak at all. Sometimes, they do not even appear. But we must go to them and ask their help.”
“You have done this before,” said Mareth suddenly, making it a statement of fact.
“Yes,” the old man admitted.
Yes, thought Kinson Ravenlock, remembering. For he had been there on the last occasion, a terrifying night of thunder and lightning, of rolling black clouds and torrents of rain, of steam hissing off the surface of the lake, and of voices calling out from the subterranean chambers of death’s mansion. He had stood there at the rim of the Valley of Shale and watched as Bremen had gone down to the water’s edge and called forth the spirits of the dead into weather that seemed made for their eerie purpose. What visions there were had not been his to see. But Bremen had seen them, and they had not been good. His eyes alone had revealed that much when finally he had climbed back out of the valley at dawn.
“It will be all right,” Bremen assured them, his smile faint and worn within the creases of his shadowed face.
As they prepared for sleep, Kinson went to Mareth and bent down next to her on one knee. “Take this,” he offered, handing her his travel cloak. ”It will help ward off the night’s chill.”
She looked at him with those large, disturbing eyes and shook her head. “You need it as much as I do, Borderman. I ask no special consideration from you.”
Kinson held her gaze without speaking for a moment. “My name is Kinson Ravenlock,” he said quietly.
She nodded. “I know your name.”
“I stand the first watch and do not need the weight or warmth of the cloak while I keep it. No special consideration is being offered.”
She seemed put off. “I must stand watch, too,” she insisted.
“You will. Tomorrow. Two of us each night.” He kept his temper firmly in check. “Now, will you take the cloak?”
She gave him a cool look, then accepted it. “Thank you,” she said, her voice neutral.
He nodded, rose, and walked away, thinking to himself that it would be a while before he offered her anything again.
The night was deeply still and breathtakingly beautiful, the strangely purple heavens dotted thick with stars and a silvered quarter-moon. Vast and depthless, free from clouds and empty of conflicting light, the sky looked to have been swept by a great broom, the stars spread like diamond chips across its velvet surface. Thousands were visible, so many in some places that they seemed to run together like spilled milk. Kinson looked up at them and marveled. Time eased away with the smoothness of glass.
Kinson listened for the familiar sounds of forest life, but it was as if all who dwelled within these woods were as awestruck as he and had no time for ordinary pursuits.
He thought back to when he was a boy living in the borderland wilderness east and north of Varfleet in the shadow of the Dragon’s Teeth. It was not so different for him even then. At night, when his parents and his brothers and sisters were asleep, he would lie awake looking out at the sky, wondering at its size, thinking of all the places it looked down upon that he had never been. Sometimes he would stand before the bedroom window, as if by moving closer he might see more of what waited out there.
He had always known he would go away, even while the others had begun the process of settling into more sedentary lives. They grew, married, had children, and moved into their own homes.
They hunted, trapped, traded, and farmed in the country in which they had been born. But he only drifted, always with one eye on that distant sky, always with a promise to himself that one day he would see all of what lay beneath it.
He was still looking, even now, with more than thirty years of his life behind him. He was still searching for what he hadn’t seen and didn’t know. He thought that would never change. He thought that if one day it did, he would become a different man than he had ever imagined being.
Midnight arrived, and with it Mareth. She appeared unexpectedly from out of the shadows, wrapped in Kinson’s cloak, so lightfooted that anyone else might have missed her approach entirely.
Kinson turned to greet her, surprised because he was expecting Bremen.