He’d grown tired of turning around, but he stopped for a moment to look down the climbing trail. Trees bent in the wind below. Smoke hustled away from the distant chimneys. Parts of the path peeked through the forest until fog hid it all.
Where he’d been didn’t matter anymore, except that sometimes the enemies came from his back. He shivered. Every step today seemed haunted with recognition. That tree! That red thrust of rock, bare on the hill! That small pond with trees leaning in just so! Perhaps he’d traveled so far that nothing new existed. Everything had crossed his path, and the world held no more surprises. Still, he walked on, because that was what he did, the traveler, pushing onward toward the heights.
To his left, scraggly brush that rattled against the wind gave way to ragged granite teeth and a rising slope to black bluffs. To his right, the mountain dropped sharply to a tiny stream cascading from one rock to the next. He thought about mountain creatures: bad tempered long horned sheep who blocked the way, or shag-shouldered bears rearing on hind legs, their claws as sharp as nightmares, or mountain men who’d become more mountain than men with fingers that broke stone.
His hand tightened on the sword’s hilt as he glanced from side to side. The old feeling, the familiar one tingled along his arms’ coarse hair. Something waited or stalked or crouched somewhere on the path ahead. An ambush. An attack. A trap. Or was that it at all? The air had a tinge to it he recognized. The sun slanting through the clouds walked across the distant peaks in a strangely reminiscent way. But he moved forward. Whatever waited still waited, and the road’s tyranny continued. He had to press on, although he couldn’t remember exactly what it was that had started him on the quest, what long-ago undertaking took him from his home. Whatever the deed was, he’d accomplished it. That was clear. But what was it? Every act since had been to return home. Why had he left?
He shook his head. No, he couldn’t recall. Had there been a stronghold long ago that was his own? The memory hardly seemed there. Tall walls that stood against the morning mists? A gate? He pictured an intricately bricked arch and solid columns, a sandy path between. And there was music.
But what was that? A memory? A dream? A wish?
The trail curved around the mountain’s shoulder. His boots ground gravel into the dirt. His breath came heavily and measured. These were things he could sense much more than troubling whispers of nearly lost times. Believe in the road, he thought. Believe in the next heartbeat. The mind should be empty, like a bowl. Empty and aware, or the enemies will catch me in my distraction. All reflex.
Something flicked by the corner of his eye. With a snarl, he snapped his sword around, felt the slight contact, then stood at guard, balanced on the balls of his feet, hands away from his sides. The mountain’s pulse, it seemed, seized for a moment, but nothing else stirred within his sight. The trail curled away as before. A gust of wind hurried over scant grass, bending it down, whistling through his ears, carrying the dry scent of pine before it calmed.
Finally, he looked at his feet. A small gray bird lay in the dust, cleft into two parts, a splash of blood across one extended wing, a scattering of feathers quivering in the air, a bent claw extended and clenching up as if to grasp a branch. Just a bird. But the feeling that a trial waited ahead didn’t leave him. If anything, the feeling grew stronger like a thickening in the air. He wiped the blade clean, left it unsheathed, and then stalked forward, each cautious stride revealing a fragment more of the unknown path. The top of a tree peeked over the hill, then gradually, branch by branch, revealed itself until the whole tree stood rooted to the mountainside. As always, landscape unfolded before him, slowly, oh so slowly, his sword tip arcing before him like a steel finger with each step, until from around the hill his trek revealed a man standing astride the trail a stone’s throw away.
The traveler continued toward him. The man’s shield showed use, and his sword’s grip was worn and practical, not decorative. He wore no helmet, though—his face showed no lines, and his dark hair reminded the traveler of his own before age had grayed it. The man’s arms were crossed on his chest, well away from his weapons.
“Well met, stranger,” said the traveler, lowering his sword.
“I expected you long ago.” The man’s voice carried clearly. “We’ve waited.”
Nothing moved in the trees ahead, and they were too far away for even a skilled archer to reach him. No rock or bush close by seemed big enough to hide an accomplice, and the traveler couldn’t smell horses or men in the wind. Still, he stepped off the trail so he would be above the stranger as he approached. Even in a sword fight, height gives an advantage.
The traveler sheathed his blade. “I am expected?” He looked again at the trees and the trail’s shape. Once again, the feeling that he’d been on this road before struck him.
“Long expected. Long missed.” The younger man’s gaze was steady. His posture was poised, too, competent and prepared.
For a moment, they faced each other without speaking. The traveler puzzled the comment. At last, he said, “Missed by who?”
“My mother,” said the young man, “and me.” For an instant, an intervening cloud blocked the beams of sun that had dressed the mountains behind the man, then it shifted again, and a shaft of light lit a mountain peak as if it were on fire. “I’ve never known you, Father,” the young man said.
The traveler sighed. Of course, he could see it now in the young man’s face, the curve of his cheek, his mother’s eyes. When the traveler had left so long ago, there had been a baby. He recalled now, dimly, a last embrace, a kiss on a baby’s head, before shouldering his pack and setting out from his home. He looked past the young man, his son, and remembered that the path would curve one more time. His holdings would open out before him then. The small fields of hardy, mountain produce. The farmers’ huts, and, behind them, his stronghold, rising out of the mountain’s native stone, like a rock formation.
“I am sorry for my long travels,” he said. “Lead me home.”
After the curve, the trail spilled into a long and narrow valley, much as the traveler recalled, although it seemed there were fewer huts, and the buildings were more aged. Weather stained their wood walls. The thatching sagged on the roofs.
A farmer paused in his digging as they passed, his face a blank page. The traveler nodded in his direction, but the farmer had already returned to his work.
The stronghold, though, stood even stauncher than he had envisioned. From the high parapet two flags snapped briskly in a wind that didn’t touch him as he approached the stone archway. The traveler’s hand brushed against the smooth wall, so solid and cool against his knuckles, and he suddenly remembered running past this wall when he was a boy. He shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment. A boy? It had been so long since his life had been anything except the road and the weary walk.
Beyond the arch, through the thick battlements, a courtyard opened before them, and where the sky wrapped from horizon to horizon before, now the walls dominated, relegating the sky to a much smaller square overhead. Gray stone. Sturdy buildings marked with decorated wooden doors. A closed in smell that brought back a hundred new memories. Wood smoke. Stabled animals. Wet hay.
Across the courtyard, a well appointed elderly woman, flanked by two spearmen waited for them at the foot of the broad stairs that led up to the Great House. As he approached, he could see that she knew him. Her posture, already balanced, became even more regal, but she trembled slightly, and ventured a step toward him that she immediately took back.