Chapter 23: The People of the Mountains

Though the mountaintop they had climbed to soared above the clouds, it was yet low compared to the giants of the Reinkrag. Brandyé knew that if they continued to climb much further they would end up making their way through snow as much as rock, and they had only a little food left with them. However, his desire to keep within view of the sun kept them aloft, and for some days they made their way through snow and stone, and for Brandyé the glorious light from above more than made up for the dreadful illness he was now suffering. At this high altitude daily he weakened, pausing for rest now so often that they made less than a mile or two each day.

To Elven this was all folly, and he did not even understand what was pushing Brandyé to continue forward at all – what was he expecting to find? But there was no arguing with him, and he eventually resolved to simply drag Brandyé down the mountain once he finally collapsed from exhaustion.

Unfortunately, this was something that would be increasingly difficult to do. When they had descended the eastern ridge of the summit atop which they had seen the sun, it was to find themselves on a series of long, high protuberances that went on for many miles, near vertical drops on either side. From here it was a precarious journey to pick their way across the broken rock, every loose stone threatening to tumble them into the void and to their deaths. Matters were not aided by the clouds that blew past and around them, propelled by the high winds rising from the south. Sometimes there were flurries of snow, and Elven soon became used to his fingers being almost constantly numb. There were no fires up here, and he could not even walk with his hands in his pockets, for he needed them to cling to the sides of cliffs.

Finally came the morning when they ate their last piece of dried meat, and discovered there were only a few drops of water left in the water bottles. “We must descend now,” Elven insisted.

Brandyé felt his heart torn, but he knew that Elven spoke the truth. He also knew that, all the motivation in Erâth aside, he could not continue pushing himself day after day. If he did not take the time to recover from his cold, he might well develop a worse illness – perhaps a fatal one. He had been trying to hide it from Elven for some time now, but he was often taken by fits of coughing, and the phlegm he coughed up was thick and disgusting.

“All right,” he said. “But we will make for the higher lands, the places that are ever above the clouds.”

Elven agreed, and so they set off, trying to find as easy a way down the mountain as possible. In the end, they had to traverse for some distance across the base of a high cliff, for they had discovered that after a hundred feet or so of steep scree, there was a vertical drop of nearly a hundred more feet that they could not hope to climb down. The crossing was terrifying, and every step sent small streams of stones trickling down the slope, threatening to give way entirely under their feet and send them down the mountain with them. Brandyé’s fever was high that morning, and as they were nearing a place where the mountain opened onto a large, wide col, his vision began to swim, and the landscape around him became blurred. He coughed, and felt a pain in his chest.

“Are you all right?” called Elven from behind him.

For a moment Brandyé couldn’t answer for a sudden shortness of breath, and merely coughed again. He stopped moving forward, his hands clinging numbly to the rock near his head. Before long Elven had caught up with him, and for the first time Brandyé could not hide his coughing, which was now deep and hacking.

“Oh, Brandyé…” Elven said, “You have an illness in your lungs; you should have spoken of this sooner!”

But Brandyé shook his head. “No, I’m…I’m fine, really. I just need to rest…”

But it had finally become too much for Elven and he cursed, saying, “You’re not fine! Brandyé, listen to me well: if we do not get you down from the mountain and somewhere warm, you are going to die!”

Brandyé responded with only more coughing, and Elven said, “Come – keep going. I can see ahead of us a way down that is less steep.”

They began to move on, and before long were atop the col, which descended in a great cliff to the south, but to the north spread outward in a large, steep slope, with only small ledges of rock here and there. From the top they could see far in the distance below a valley of moss and grass, and it seemed this slope led directly into it. Elven thought he could even see a tree or two in the distance, and was about to start his descent when, without warning, Brandyé collapsed beside him in a fit of coughing.

Elven rushed to his side and pulled him upright, so that Brandyé was at least sitting on the loose rock. “We must get down from here,” he said. “Can you stand?”

Brandyé coughed again, and he wondered if he was finally paying the price for his foolhardy adventurism, for it felt that his body was almost falling apart. “I…I think I might need some help,” he admitted weakly.

So after a moment’s rest, Elven hauled Brandyé to his feet and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, so that he was supporting some of Brandyé’s weight. Together, slowly, they began to pick their way down the slope, stopping every dozen yards or so for them both to catch their breaths. The clouds began coming in again, and their visibility shrank until they could no longer see the bottom of the slope, and Elven began to worry that there might be a hidden cliff below them that they had not seen from above. Several times one or the other of them slipped, and only through chance did they regain their balance and not fall down the slope entirely.

Soon with the worsening weather came the faint rumblings of thunder, and then the first few drops of cold rain. Brandyé was coughing almost all the time now, and Elven began to feel frantic that they would never make it off this slope and into the valley below. He started to hurry his pace, and it was then that with a sudden great crack of thunder he lost his footing and did not regain it.

Crying out, he began to slide on the loose rock down the hill, pulling Brandyé forward with him. Brandyé cried out himself in surprise, and then there was no time for words as they were engulfed in a sudden flow of rolling stones and rocks. Elven, with his feet facing downhill, was hard-pressed to keep himself afloat on a suddenly moving river of rock, but Brandyé, who had been pulled headlong down with Elven, was tumbling out of control, soon lost to Elven’s sight in the clouds of dust that rose from all around them. He tried to call out Brandyé’s name, and breathed in the stone dust and was set coughing himself, eyes streaming.

Down, they tumbled, and it seemed to Elven some hundreds of feet must have passed before he felt the flow of stones around him begin to lessen, and the steepness of the slope begin to level. By the time he stopped moving he was buried to the waist in rock, and it felt that his legs were crushed under their weight. Desperately he struggled to loosen the stones, but succeeded only in bringing more down upon him from above. His only consolation was that he felt no shooting, dreadful pain, and assumed that he had managed not to break anything.

“Brandyé!” he cried out, but received no response. Desperately he began to claw at the rocks holding him in, his nails soon cracked and bleeding as he flung stone after stone away from him. For every two stones he cleared another slipped down and buried him more, and it seemed hours before he was clear enough to move one of his legs, and a further eternity before he was finally free of the stone prison, and able to move shakily on his own two feet. All this time he kept calling out for Brandyé, and was rewarded with silence.

Still slipping on the now wet stones, Elven began to move across the bottom of the slope toward where he had last seen Brandyé. The rain had quickly cleared the dust, but now a steaming mist was rising from the rocks, and he was just as blind in it. Finally, after wandering aimlessly and calling out for an age, he very nearly stumbled upon a crumpled and hooded form, half-buried in stones and still as death.

Elven knelt beside Brandyé’s inert form in a panic, pushing a heavy stone from above his head and bending his ear down, listening for breathing. To his incalculable relief it was there, though it was shallow and rasping. He pushed Brandyé’s hood away from his face and saw that the side of his head was coated thick with blood. Pawing through Brandyé’s long matted hair, he soon found a deep cut in his scalp, but it seemed the bleeding had already slowed, and the worst fear was of a concussion.

Elven knew that until Brandyé was awake it was a risk to move him, for he could not tell what bones, if any, might be broken. Instead, he set about clearing Brandyé’s body of stones so that he lay free on the mountainside, and lay his own cloak over him so that Brandyé would remain warm, even if he froze to death.

Such actions helped to keep Elven in a sense of calm, but inside he was raging with panic: the air was growing colder by the moment, and the rain, light as it was, was likely to turn to snow at any moment. Above their heads the sky continued to thunder, and looking up Elven could see lightning striking the mountaintops where they had been only hours earlier. He would never have admitted it to Brandyé, but he was dreadfully frightened, and angry. Angry that he had listened to Brandyé, angry that he had not been more careful descending the slope…and buried deep in secret, angry at Brandyé for bringing his life to such a point in the first place.

So distracted by this was he that his surprise was unimaginable when from behind, completely without warning, came the voice of another person. He spun around, and his jaw dropped at what he saw. It was not the fact that there were people here when only moments before there had been no one; nor was it even their garb, which was flowing, bright and colorful, very unlike anything he had seen in Erârün; not even the strange tongue in which they had addressed him. It was that behind them towered a structure that defied his imagination.

It seemed that upon the stones of the mountainside stood a ship – a veritable sea vessel, keel and hull and all – at least fifty feet long and almost half as broad. Yet this vessel rested on stone, and instead of masts bearing sails (which Elven had, of course, never seen) there rose great, thick cords, and these cords held fast to the ship an absolutely enormous cloth balloon, a thing that towered a hundred feet in the air if it stood an inch, smooth and round and possessing a great hole in the bottom. Elven could not begin to understand what this construction was for, nor how it did not collapse on the boat, and most of all he could not understand how it came to be there, in a place where only minutes before there had been only empty space.

But the men that had come from this craft did not share Elven’s astonishment, and moved forward with purpose. He heard them speak to each other in their own tongue, and several of them moved toward Brandyé. At this, Elven’s astonishment dropped a little, and he stepped forward to bar their way. “Stop – what are you doing?”

But the men ignored him and bent to Brandyé’s side. One of them unfurled a great canvas and stretched it out on the ground, and then another two grasped Brandyé hard by the shoulders and legs, and and lifted him bodily onto it.

“No – don’t move him!” Elven cried out. “You could injure him worse than he already is!”

He moved to stop the men from their endeavor, but an impressively strong grasp held him back. Whirling, Elven saw that he was being restrained by another of their group that had not tended to Brandyé. He tried to wrest the man’s hand from his shoulder and was surprised to find he could not, and it felt as though an iron clamp rested there. Failing, he instead tried to strike the man outright, and in a heartbeat and a deft twist of the arm he found himself lying flat on his back, breathless and aching.

“Stop,” he uttered again. “Please!”

But then the strange man did the unexpected, and held out his hand to Elven, proffering it to him in a gesture of aid. Uncertain, Elven nonetheless grasped the man’s hand, and was propelled upward with great force.

The man looked deep into his eyes for a moment and Elven felt extremely uncomfortable. Then the man spoke, and to Elven’s surprise he understood his words.

“Gray one hurt,” he said, and indicated where Brandyé was now being loaded onto the ship. Elven had never thought of Brandyé in such terms, but understood what was meant by the color of Brandyé’s hair and eyes. “You come?”

Elven looked to the ship, and back at the man incredulously. “You want me to come with you on that thing?”

“You come?” the man repeated, and Elven had the distinct impression that this represented most of the words outside his own tongue that this man knew.

“Yes,” he said instead, nodding his head, and the man seemed satisfied. He gestured for Elven to follow him, and led him to the side of the vessel. Here was a short ladder up which they climbed, and as Elven stood on the deck he wondered if this was what it was like to be at sea. What was to happen next, however, was so unlike being at sea that he was filled with absolute terror and could do nothing but collapse on the floor and hang on for all his life.

For in the center of the vessel was an enormous bowl, and in it must have been a vast quantity of burning coals for Elven could feel the heat through the air from a distance. This bowl was covered by a lid, but it was one that could be retracted by means of a mechanism that involved many handles and gears. Once everyone was on board, a pair of men began turning heftily on these handles and the lid rose open.

With a sudden lurch, Elven felt the deck of the vessel heave, and looking out about him he saw the mountainside ever so slowly begin to move, drawing ever more distant and further below them. He realized the entire ship was in fact rising steadily into the air, and it was then his face turned ashen and he looked desperately for something on to which he could cling. Soon they were floating inside the clouds themselves and Elven could see almost nothing at all. He thought surely they would be struck by lightning, and indeed he could see great flashes of light about them, and the vessel swung madly to and fro as the winds buffeted them with all their might.

But then, inevitably, as they continued to rise the storm became less, and the clouds thinned, and once more Elven felt the warming rays of the sun on him, and for the second time in only a few days he was treated to the view of the clouds from above, none of the darkness of the storm evident at all – only snowy white puffs, forming an endless sea of white, above which only the peaks of the mountains could protrude. This time, though, there was nothing beneath him but the thin hull of a ship, and the thought filled him with such dread that his sight began to blur, and he cried out in fear.

Around him, though, the men of this vessel moved around with ease and calm, opening the coal chamber or closing it to varying degrees, hauling on ropes, and working enormous propellers that spun near the rear of the craft and served to propel them forward. So it was that they rose, and so it was that they travelled, and for hours Elven could do nothing but cower in a corner of the ship and hope that he might die before they fell bodily from the sky.

Of course they did not, and had Elven looked out over the edge of the ship, he would have seen wondrous landscapes pass them by, mountains and ridges and entire valleys that glittered with rock and snow, and all of which were ever lit by the glory of the sun, reflecting its light and glowing with beauty. Eventually even Elven could not help but look up as evening began to come on, and he thought quietly that Brandyé would have given anything to be there at that moment, when the sky turned to blood and the sun sank below the horizon, and the clouds became golden pillows and the mountains pinnacles of crimson majesty. And later, when the stars started to appear, Elven began to weep for their beauty, and his heart ached for the days long ago before the eternal clouds covered all the skies.

It was still night, though hardly dark for the light of a nearly full moon, when they arrived at their destination. All around them were lights, fires and candles and lit windows that cast their glow out from the steep mountainsides into the abyss. Elven’s amazement began to overshadow his fright, and he stood and looked (though from the center of the ship’s deck), and was awestruck. An entire village, it seemed, had been built on the steep and sheer rock of the mountains, spanning an entire valley and to the peaks in the distance.

Soon they were approaching what Elven saw was a grand structure, great wooden towers sprouting high into the air, and at their base was a wide, long platform that stood out from the mountainside entirely and was held up by pillars that seemed to descend endlessly into the dark depths below. It was to this platform they now navigated, and with deft ease their pilots set the ship down with hardly a bump.

Almost as soon as they had touched down, men from the ship were carrying Brandyé away, and Elven hurried to keep up with them. However, as he made to step off the airship, he was interrupted by the man who had spoken to him before. “You grey one friend,” he said, and Elven nodded.

“I need to be with him – let me pass!”

But the man simply stared at him, and then said, “You follow me.”

“No,” said Elven, and made to push past the man. It was then that the man grasped him again with his hand, and Elven remembered how the man had effortlessly flung him to the ground earlier. As much as he wanted to fight this man right now, he had no desire to be flung into the abyss below them, and he relented.

“You follow me,” the man repeated, and with a sigh, Elven stood back and motioned for the man to lead the way. The man seemed to understand, for he turned and started walking away, leaving Elven to lag behind.

As he followed the man down a set of exposed, winding steps, Elven asked him, “Who are you?”

“Naiya,” the man said, and Elven was left to wonder if this was the man’s name, his people, or something else entirely.

 

When Brandyé awoke, it was to a sensation he had not felt in longer than he could remember: sun, streaming through a window, falling lightly on his face. For the longest time he lay there, eyes closed, and simply savored the feeling. For a moment he allowed himself to recall the feeling of waking up in Reuel’s home in Consolation as a boy, knowing even before he opened his eyes that it was going to be a good day, one filled with excitement and adventure with Elven. Perhaps they would travel to Soleheart and spend the day high amongst the great tree’s leaves, speaking of nothing and everything; perhaps they would visit Farmer Tar and help him in his fields. And at the end of the day, he would return home to Reuel and the comfort of a roaring fire and a warm meal.

For a while Brandyé drifted in and out of these thoughts, but in the end he knew he could not believe it, for the blankets were rough and coarse, and the pillow hard; the wind rushing outside the window did not carry with it the sounds of birds and marmots; and there were scents of smoke and incense about him that would never have found their way into his grandfather’s home.

And so he opened his eyes, and in the glad of the sunlight, stared about him. He was indeed in a bed of rough blankets, and all about him were draped cloths and banners of every color he could imagine. In the corner of the small room stood an iron stove, and it was steaming and smoking and filling the air with its warmth. The walls, the floor, the ceiling too – all was made of wood, and Brandyé could even catch the scent of the pine itself, mixed with spices that drifted in through the door that stood open.

But all of this was as nothing compared to the window. The window itself was unspectacular – a cross of wood inset with glass – but what it afforded a view of was beyond words. At first Brandyé could see only the bright glow of the sun, but as he got out of the bed and walked toward the window, his view took in the endless ranges of mountains that coursed onward into the distance like waves of an ocean. All was dark rock and white snow, except in the lowest valleys which were green with grass and trees. In the far distance were the clouds, but they were far below and away, and from this distance seemed utterly harmless.

And over all of it watched a sky of such magnificent blue that Brandyé’s breath was taken away, and all curiosity at his current situation left him momentarily as he surveyed the majesty that lay strewn before him like jewels before a king. For an age he stood there, until he heard from behind him a soft voice, lyrical and accented: “Ah – you are awake! So good, so good!”

Brandyé turned to find an elderly man standing in the doorway, resting on a cane and looking at him with the most placid of smiles. He seemed so genuine and disarming that Brandyé could not help but smile back, and said, “Where am I?”

“That is a long tale,” the man said enigmatically, “but you are safe.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“What does your stomach say?” The old man chuckled, and almost at his words Brandyé felt his stomach growl.

“Days, it feels like.”

“Four,” the old man said. “Come, eat!”

And so Brandyé followed the man out of the room and into another room that housed many large stuffed balls and a stove on which a deep curved pan was sizzling. The smells from the pan were beyond enticing, and Brandyé could not wait to eat. The old man seemed to know what Brandyé was thinking, and immediately spooned a great mass of curried meat and onions into a wooden bowl and handed it to Brandyé. Brandyé dug in with gusto, and the old man laughed to see him eat so fast.

“Slowly!” he said. “Your stomach will turn!”

The flavors were spiced and exotic, but Brandyé thought he had never tasted anything so delicious. He consumed no less than four bowls of the old man’s curry, and only then drank ice cold water from the pitcher that stood beside him. It occurred to him that he was sitting on a cushion on the floor, which would have struck him as odd had he not been so ravenous.

All the while, the old man sat and watched him with what seemed to be an amused smile. Finally, Brandyé asked him, “What is your name?”

“I am Nisha,” the old man said. He bowed his head, and his chest-length white goatee bobbed. “You are Brandyé.”

Brandyé stared at him, suddenly nervous. If he had been asleep for four days, how could this old man know his name? For the second time in his life, it seemed, he was faced with an old man who knew too much about him. Now that he thought about it, was that a streak of black in the old man’s beard? “How do you know my name?” he asked finally.

Nisha shrugged. “Your friend says it to me. Elven is his name.”

The answer was simple and sensible, but still Brandyé was suspicious. “Where is he?”

“Your friend waits for you. He cares very much for you.”

“Can I see him?”

Nisha smiled and nodded again. “Yes.”

“Now?”

“So fast! You are full?”

Brandyé in fact thought he might be able to eat even more of the old man’s wonderful food, but his desire to see Elven overrode even his hunger. “Yes,” he said. “It was delicious.”

Nisha bowed again. “Thank you. Come with me!”

Nisha led Brandyé to the door of the room, but just before he opened it looked back, and Brandyé saw a definite twinkle in his eye. “Afraid of height?” he asked.

“Why?”

And Nisha pulled open the door, and Brandyé understood, for indeed he very nearly reeled. The door opened onto a desperately steep wooden staircase that seemed built directly into the mountain rock. It had no railing, yet a fathomless precipice yawned wide beneath it, and Brandyé thought he would rather die than take a single step onto it. But Nisha, unperturbed, stepped out and began down the staircase, and Brandyé had little choice but to follow.

Breathless, he took each step as carefully and gingerly as though he was walking on eggshells, both hands always on the rock face for support. His head was spinning, and to distract himself, he tried to talk to Nisha. “You…you speak my tongue well, but I feel it is…it is not your own. Is that so?”

“You hear well,” Nisha called back over his shoulder. “Most of us speak a little of the common tongue.”

“The common tongue?” Brandyé had never heard it spoken of so.

“The tongue of men after the fall of Erâth.”

They had by now reached a wide platform, and Brandyé was glad for the distance from the abyss. “What can you tell me of the fall of Erâth?” he asked with a little more wind than before.

“Another time, another time,” Nisha chided him. “Now is time for friends!”

And indeed, there before him stood Elven, apparently deep in conversation with several of Nisha’s kin. As Brandyé approached Elven looked up, and a look of pure delight took his features. He rushed toward Brandyé, embracing him so tight that Brandyé could scarcely breathe. “I’m so glad to see you up!” he said.

“And I’m glad to see you,” Brandyé replied, somewhat awkwardly. “What happened?”

“Do you remember our fall?” Elven asked, and Brandyé shook his head.

“We fell?”

And so Elven recounted to Brandyé the tale of how they had been buried in the rockslide, and how the folk that now surrounded them had rescued them. “They call themselves ‘Naiya’, and you would not believe their tales!”

As they had been talking, Nisha and the other Naiya had been standing around them quietly. At this point, Nisha spoke up: “Naiya is our name in the tongue of Naiya; in the common tongue, we are ‘Hochträe’. They mean the same: the high people.”

Brandyé looked out at the dazzling, snowy mountaintops, glinting in the sunlight. “You are certainly high!”

“Not all of us are so high,” said one of the two Elven had been talking to. He bowed to Brandyé. “I am Karishi, and this is Serina.” Beside him, Serina bowed her head as well.

“We live low, also,” Serina said, and Brandyé thought she seemed to blush at her own words.

Nisha smiled. “Forgive Serina – she is only just learning the common tongue.” He turned to Serina. “Anta koso naiyashi.” She blushed even further, but said nothing. “I say she may speak our tongue,” he said, turning back to Brandyé and Elven, “I believe Brandyé is a master of tongues.”

Again, Brandyé was filled with the uncomfortable sensation that this man knew more about him than he had revealed, but said nothing about it. Instead, he said, “It is true – I speak two tongues with ease, and I am fascinated by the sound of your own.”

“Then you will hear much of it,” Nisha said. “Wer ira ora saikanta tolu.” And he smiled. “We have tales to tell!”

Chapter 22: Above the Clouds

It took only a few minutes for Brandyé to learn what Elven had done, and why. The Reinsfolk’s hidden fortress, it transpired, was in this same valley under the Pass of Duwoèm, on the other side and closer to the mountain. Had Brandyé been climbing deeper under the mountain’s shadow, he would have fallen into its entrance directly.

Elven had received Brandyé’s message from Sonora the night before last, and had decided in the moment that he would not let his friend pass him by unheeded.

“I said I would be going alone!” protested Brandyé. “How did you know I would even pass this way, and not by some other route?”

“I didn’t,” said Elven simply. “It was a risk.”

Every night since, it seemed, Elven had sat outside the entrance to the fortress, much to the displeasure of the village folk who wanted to barricade the entrance at once.  “They said I was foolish, that it would be better to grieve for your loss than to hope for your salvation. They said if you survived the battle through flight, you’d be hunted as a traitor.”

“They’re not wrong,” Brandyé sighed. “If Tharom ever sees me again I’ll be arrested, if not slain on the spot.” A shadow darker than the night passed across Brandyé’s face then as he thought of the battle, and Elven had the sense to let it pass.

“I saw you climbing this evening from my lookout,” Elven said when the moment had passed. “It was near dark, and so I fetched a torch to find you.”

“And I wish you hadn’t – did you not see the army in the valley?”

In the dim torchlight, Brandyé thought he saw his friend’s face go pale, and with a swift motion he snuffed the torch among the stones. “How?”

Brandyé looked at the smoldering torch, knowing it made little difference now. “I don’t know, Elven. They might have tracked me, but I never saw anything around me, and was careful to leave as few signs as possible.”

“It’s as though they know where we have fled to!”

But Brandyé shook his head, and revealed his thoughts to his friend. “It’s as though they know where I am. Do you think it’s a coincidence that within weeks of my arrival here the largest assault on the Rein should occur? A coincidence that the fierundé should attack Paräwo upon my arrival after so many centuries of peace?”

“Brandyé…” said Elven. “You can’t blame yourself for what Darkness are doing—”

“A coincidence,” Brandyé went on furiously, “that at my very birth, Darkness should descend upon Consolation – a place that has never known Darkness before?”

Elven said nothing.

“I’ve brought death and destruction with me wherever I’ve gone! I killed my parents the night I was born! I’ve killed countless numbers with the weapons I built for the Cosari! I killed Athalya by bringing the fierundé to their home!”

“You’ve killed no one,” Elven protested. “These things happened…perhaps they happened because you or I brought them upon people, but perhaps they would have happened nonetheless! Elỳn said the fierundé were growing in number in the Trestaé long before we ever arrived there. Athalya’s death might have occurred without us – who’s to say?”

“I killed your sister,” Brandyé muttered miserably.

There was a long silence, and then Elven reached out and took Brandyé’s hand. “Sonora’s death was not your fault.”

But Brandyé withdrew his hands as though Elven’s touch was poison. “How can you say that? It was my arrow – my bow! My shot!” And suddenly the weight of a lifetime of Darkness and death fell upon him, and he wept openly. “I’ve never wanted to harm anyone,” he choked between sobs. “I never meant for anyone to die!”

Though he could not have seen it in the dark, Elven’s eyes were tearing as well, and he said, “I have seen more in my time with you than I could ever have imagined. I believe now that there are forces beyond us, and I see that Darkness can influence the world. I see its influence on you.”

Brandyé sniffed. “That’s hardly comforting, you know.”

“It serves only to show your strength,” Elven insisted. “You have resisted Darkness with every breath, so long as I have ever known you.”

“I’m tired of resisting, Elven. I’m tired of fighting for my life. Do you know how tempting it is to give myself to Darkness, this very moment? To flee down the mountain, and join the ranks of those who would destroy us all? It’s powerful, Darkness; too powerful for this world to resist.”

“You won’t,” said Elven emphatically. “I know you – you’re stronger than the Darkness. You’re stronger than you know.”

Brandyé shook his head. “You don’t know. You can’t know. My greatest fear is not succumbing to Darkness – it’s that I want to. And the power I would have to destroy would be terrible.” He looked out, and saw that the faintest dim light of day was beginning to penetrate the shadows of the rocky valley. “This is why I must flee. I can’t afford to be close to Darkness any longer; I can’t afford to jeopardize the lives of those…those I love.” And he looked at Elven directly, for the first time that night. “I’ve already lost too many.”

“You don’t need to lose any more,” Elven said softly.

“You can’t come with me.”

“That’s not up to you.” Elven sounded quite adamant.

“I’ll destroy you.” Brandyé was becoming fearful now, for he could not bear the thought of Elven coming with him, only to find his own destruction. “One day I will succumb to Darkness, and you won’t want to be there when I do.”

“I’ll want to be there, to stop you,” said Elven. “Please – stop refusing help from those who would give it.”

“What about Talya?” Brandyé asked, trying a different tack. “You would have to leave her behind.”

“She knows my feelings, and she understands how I’m bound to you. Besides – I have Sonora to carry messages between us, as she did once for you and me.”

By now the light was growing less weak, and Brandyé could see the determination in his friend’s eyes, and knew that it was useless to argue further. “Your mind is set,” he said instead. And Elven nodded, and together they sat in silence and waited for the dawn.

It was not long in coming, and soon the shadows of the valley’s far side could be discerned. As the light of day filled the air, Brandyé began to imagine he saw shapes moving here and there among the rocks, though at first they were too ill-defined for him to be certain. As the moments wore on, however, he began ever more certain, and creeped forward from his shelter to see better.

The rain had ceased since Elven had found him, though the rocks were still wet, and Brandyé saw now, far down in the valley but coming slowly closer, slipping here and there, a host of men climbing over the rocks on their way up the valley. Fear struck him, for he saw now that in the dim light of the morning as he and Elven had been speaking, the enemy had begun to sneak upon them from below, and were now no more than fifteen minutes behind them at best. They were for the most part on the wrong side of the valley, however, and this did not escape Elven’s notice.

“Brandyé!” he whispered. “They are approaching the entrance to the fortress, and it isn’t yet sealed! We must stop them!”

“How?” returned Brandyé, but in his gut he already knew the answer.

“I will distract them,” said Elven resolutely, and started to move out from their boulders. Brandyé held him back for a moment.

“We will go together,” he said. For a moment their eyes locked, and a silent knowing passed between them in an instant: they were indeed together, for better or for worse.

And so in a flash they burst together from their hiding spot, Elven tossing the spent torch in the direction of the enemy and crying, “Over here – follow us!”

Brandyé almost smiled to hear his friend’s ridiculous words, but he could not deny their effect: within moments, the swarming men on the mountain ceased their progress and stared in their direction. One of them pointed and shouted something to the others, and in an instant every man crawling the rocks was making for them, across the valley and up the hill.

“Hurry!” Brandyé urged, and followed swiftly in Elven’s footsteps as they began their own ascent, now desperately trying to stay ahead of their pursuers. The rocks were slippery, and several times both he and Elven nearly lost their grip and went tumbling down the mountain. Brandyé was soon struggling for every breath, but looking down he saw the men Darkness approaching even faster, and forced himself onward.

Not far above them, the head of the valley disappeared into a great slope of scree, leading some several hundred feet up to the col that was itself the Pass of Duwoèm. “If we can make the pass,” Brandyé panted, “we might be able to hide on the other side as they run past us!”

Elven made no reply, but merely shifted his direction slightly to make for the pass by the shortest route, and soon they had passed directly onto the scree. Here, their progress was greatly slowed, for it felt that for every step they took up the mountain they slipped half a step back in the loose gravel and stones. Climbing directly behind Elven, Brandyé’s ankles and legs were soon bruised and bleeding from the rolling stones, and he moved to one side, leaving behind him a small trail of tumbling rocks himself.

And before long, he could hear far below them the rockfalls of their pursuers as they made their own way up the steep slope. He could hear the calls and the jeers, and despite the burning in his lungs and the pain of his feet and the fear in his heart, he found himself wondering at their harsh and alien language, unlike the Cosari tongue, the ancient speech or anything else he had heard in all his life.

The top of the col seemed to remain ever just out of reach, and several times Brandyé felt himself slip, and begin to give up – they could never reach the top before they were captured. Only Elven’s unrelenting progress above him kept him going, if for no other reason than he could not bear to let his friend down so soon after speaking of continuing on.

But as Brandyé bent his head and looked only at the rocks beneath his feet, he found he was suddenly level with a large boulder he had seen from underneath, and knew he was near the top. Here he paused for a moment, finally utterly out of breath, and after a moment called to Elven.

“Elven – help me!”

Elven looked down, panic on his face. “What is it?”

“I have an idea to slow their progress! Come and help me dislodge this rock!”

In a flash Elven understood, and came crashing down toward Brandyé. Together they began to heave mightily on the enormous boulder, and incredibly, under their combined force it began ponderously to move.

“Keep pushing!” Brandyé cried, and as he heaved he could feel the boulder’s center of gravity begin to shift, until it was balanced on the very edge of a single small stone beneath it. And still, red in the face and cursing, Elven continued to push, and crying from the strain Brandyé continued to push – and then the boulder was moving of its own accord, and as they hauled themselves back toward the slope against the own momentum it began to slowly slide, a great cascade of smaller stones preceding it. Ever so slowly it gathered speed, until with a great roar of falling rocks it started to roll, and below and around it started sliding almost every stone on the mountainside.

The men of Darkness were caught in the avalanche without any chance of escape. A great cloud of dust rose from the drier rocks underneath, and as the cries and screams floated up the slope, Brandyé turned to Elven and said, “We mustn’t delay – this may be our only chance to hide!”

And so, as their enemy was crushed and smitten beneath them, they ascended the final yards, climbing near vertical rock at the very end, until they stood upon the very summit of the Pass of Duwoèm, and looked down into the valley on the other side.

Where the side they had climbed afforded a view of ever-expanding plains and moorland, here there was nothing visible except range upon range of mountains, each taller and rockier than the last. From their feet stretched a wide valley of rock, a stream erupting partway down and tumbling over rocks and boulders until there finally came a sparse floor of grass, through which it continued to flow away and down the mountain. Far, far in the distance and below were trees, but at the height they now stood there was nothing but stone, as far as the eye could see.

“I don’t see anywhere to hide,” Brandyé commented.

Even looked back at where they had come from, and at the ever-rising cloud of dust. “I don’t think we’re going to need to,” he muttered.

For a time then, the two sat and rested, regathering their breath and their strength. It was cold and windy atop the pass, and so they descended a few feet on the opposite side where they found the air quite sheltered, and by comparison almost pleasant. Here they began to discuss where they would go from here, with Brandyé of the opinion that they should preserve altitude as much as they could, for reascending would cost them much more energy than descending would.

“There will be no food, no water here,” protested Elven.

“I have some with me,” Brandyé countered, “and I am happy to go with little for now. The most important thing is to put distance between us and the army of Darkness. We can progress easily and quickly across the rock – see the ridge there, perhaps a mile away? We can reach that almost without descending at all.”

And so, after they had eaten a small bite, they set out, this time at a much more relaxed pace, though still with the nervous thought of pursuit somewhere behind them. The path onward here was treacherous, traversing across steep rocks and scree slopes, the enormous mass of the mountain looming high above them and towering toward the clouds. It was here that Brandyé led the way, carefully picking his way from rock to rock, always testing the footing before putting his weight on it. Every so often he would glance behind him, both to see that Elven was still with him, and that no one else had crossed the Pass of Duwoèm.

Before long the pass was far behind them, and they had reached a long ridge that led ever upward toward the summit of a mountain, here nearly lost in the clouds. It was tempting to Brandyé to ascend, to see what the view would be from such height, but practically he knew there was little to be gained, for there would be no food there, no animals or vegetation, and it was cold – bitterly so, and only his onward movement kept him from shivering under his still wet cloak. Now that danger had begun to pass, his headache was returning, and he could feel his skin flush with fever. When they paused for rest some time later, Elven noticed, and asked him about it.

“I’m fine,” Brandyé said, though he had only once in his life felt so ill. He wondered if dreams would come to him, as they had done then.

“Your cloak is drenched!” Elven exclaimed when he touched him.

“It will dry,” Brandyé muttered.

“Not here,” protested Elven. “Remove it at once!”

Too tired to argue, Brandyé shrugged the cloak from his body, and felt once the biting chill of the high winds. He was not cold for long  though, as momentarily Elven had wrapped around him his own cloak, dry and warm. Despite the guilt he felt at taking his friend’s cover, he was nonetheless grateful and glad. Shrinking into the new warmth, he settled back into the rocks and tried to shelter himself from the wind.

For his part, Elven had already several layers of clothing beneath his cloak, and when he donned Brandyé’s wet one he felt, if not warmer, slightly more sheltered. “We can’t remain here,” he said. “You’ll catch your death of cold.” He looked out, surveying the landscape. Stretched out before them were endless mountains and valleys, and down a steep slope below them was a small vale of moss and grass, strewn here and there with great boulders that had rolled down the mountainside in ages past. Between then trickled a small stream, and he knew well that water, above all else, meant their survival.

After a further rest, during which time Brandyé very nearly fell asleep, Elven suggested they make their way toward the stream below, and so they began to carefully pick their way down the slope. It took quite some time, for the rocks were loose, and Brandyé’s footing was becoming steadily less certain. Every so often he would stop and listen, still expecting the sounds of an army behind them, but there was no sound bar the crunch of rock underfoot and Sonora’s calling from above, undoubtedly complaining about the high winds and cold air. Finally they reached the place where the grass and moss began to grow, and here the footing was less treacherous. Soon they were seated under the shade of a giant boulder, hidden from the ridge above, sheltered from the wind around them and drinking water from the stream that was as cold as ice.

After they had eaten what little bread and bacon Brandyé still had with him, Brandyé lay back against the rocks to rest, and Elven set out in search of firewood. At first this seemed like a hopeless endeavor, for there was not a tree to be seen, but as he followed the stream down the valley, he came upon a place where a patch of tall reeds grew, dried and brittle at the outer edges of the clump. As he started breaking off stems it occurred to him that not so long ago their positions had been reversed, and it was Brandyé who had been in search of fire and food while he had lain, feverish and incontinent. He still had no recollection of the fierundé attack and their rescue by the Illuèn, but Brandyé had certainly spoken to him of it. Unsettled, he hurried about his business, unwilling to leave Brandyé for longer than needed.

To his relief, Brandyé was still and asleep when he returned, and soon he had a small, miserable fire going before them as the skies began to darken. He took off the still damp cloak, surprised to find it stiff from the cold, and with great care managed to dry it somewhat over the flames. It seemed to him that staying warm was going to be imperative at these high altitudes, and he looked to the sky, as though expecting to see rain begin to fall at the very thought.

No rain fell, though, and for a while Elven sat in silence, contemplating their situation. It was near dark by the time Brandyé awoke, by which point the fire had dwindled to mere embers. In a hollow gesture, Elven placed the last few branches of reed over the low flames, and was rewarded with a few more minutes of light and warmth.

“I’m sorry, Elven,” Brandyé said as he opened his eyes. “I seem to have come down with something of a cold.”

“You’ll be well soon,” Elven reassured him. “We need to find food and wood, and we’ll manage just fine.”

There was a deeper apology in Brandyé also, but he held his tongue; something told him Elven would not appreciate it. Instead, he said, “It seems peaceful enough here, but there is something about these mountains that bodes ill for me. I would not venture into the valleys more than we absolutely must.”

“We won’t find much food up here,” Elven pointed out.

Reluctantly, Brandyé nodded. “Let us follow the stream here until we find a place to hunt, and we can rest there for a while. When we have good stock, though, I would like to return to the mountains. There is something about the heights that calls to me…”

Elven was uncertain what Brandyé meant by this, and wondered if it was the fever speaking. “We’ll see what we can do. I’ll not have you climbing all over these mountains in a fever, though.”

So began a series of days in which they would spend some time deeper in the lowlands, hunting small marmots and hares and gathering firewood, and then reascending to the ridges and cols that led from one towering peak to another. As they ventured deeper into the mountains, the higher everything became, and so the further they had to travel to find food and water. All the while Brandyé’s headache persisted, and his nose ran, and his skin burned to the touch. Still he persisted, for a great unease was gnawing at him. For over a week there had now been no sign of their enemy, or indeed other men at all, yet something was unsettling him all the same, and he was certain it was more than just fever. Brandyé knew he was looking for something, but he knew not what.

As they went on and the land became ever higher, the air became also ever colder. To their fortune it did not rain again for some time, for it would almost certainly have turned to snow if it had. As it was, small patches of snow began to appear in the shadows, and Elven began to rule fear for Brandyé’s health. Ever since they had been reunited he had had this cold, and he showed no signs of improving. Often throughout the day he would beg to stop for rest, and though he rarely said anything, Elven could tell his suffering from his pale face and gnawed lips.

Brandyé would not have Elven worry, though, and refused to relent, pushing himself onward one step at a time. Often he felt that he might collapse under his own weight, and asked Elven if he might carry their things, which he did willingly. He felt an ever growing guilt at this, magnifying what he felt already for having put Elven in a situation that led him away from Talya, and into unknown danger. Worse was the fact that he was secretly and selfishly glad to have Elven with him, for he knew not how far he might have made it on his own.

So it went on until one day they came across a thing that took even Brandyé’s ailing breath away and caused him to straighten in wonder. Always he had been looking for something unusual, something to soothe the unsettling feeling in his thoughts, and though in his heart he knew this was not it, he could not deny the magnificence of what they saw now before them. Stretching out vast, wide and smooth, toned in hues of white and blue, was an immense lake of ice. It was easily ten miles across, and Brandyé and Elven could barely see the mountain tops on its far side.

“Oh…” murmured Elven, and Brandyé quietly agreed that he was just as speechless.

Immediately before them was a great drop, an enormous crevasse whose depths were shadowed in black. Beyond that were a series of ridges, deep cracks hundreds of feet deep in the ice, before the vast empty plains of the glacier itself. There was clearly no way they would be able to mount the ice lake and traverse it, and so Brandyé looked to the south end near which they were, and saw endlessly high cliffs, broken rock towering above them for hundreds of feet. “We must go there,” he said.

Elven shook his head vehemently. “No. It’s too dangerous, especially in your condition.”

“I’m fine, Elven,” Brandyé insisted.

Instead of replying, Elven reached out and grabbed Brandyé’s arm, resting his fingers on the inside of his wrist. “Your heart is racing,” he said, “and your fever has not abated. You are ill, Brandyé, and you will only worsen if we don’t leave this place soon.”

“There is a thing here,” Brandyé insisted stubbornly. “Something I must find. I don’t know where this thought has come from, but I’ve had it for a long time now. I was ignoring it, thought perhaps it was a sense of usefulness, but I haven’t felt close, even when I was training with the soldiers.”

“It’s Elỳn, isn’t it?” Elven muttered. “You say she gave you purpose, but it seems to me you’ve been sent on an impossible mission.”

“You don’t understand how Darkness has eaten away at my heart!” Brandyé shouted, suddenly furious. “I need to be rid of it, and rid the world of it!”

“How?” Elven shouted back. “By abandoning everyone you know and wandering off into the middle of nowhere? Look around you!” He gestured to the mountains around them. “There’s nothing here!”

“You don’t understand!” said Brandyé, suddenly feeling like a child. “Darkness surrounds me! Look at the clouds!” He pointed to the sky, where the cloud were indeed low and dark, threatening the air with mist and rain. “Would you have me bring that done upon everyone I know?”

“You brought it on me, and I’m still here – what does that tell you?”

And then Brandyé bit his tongue, for the reply that came to his mind was, You’re a fool. “I’m sorry,” he said instead. “You are still here, and I appreciate it – I’m glad to have you.”

Elven sniffed, and then nodded. “I’m sorry also. You want to head up the ridge to the south? Fine. But once we come down again, you’re to listen to me, and we’re descending where it’s warmer until you recover from your fever.”

Then the argument was over, and they rested for a while. As they did, faint tendrils of mist began slowly to creep over the ground, and Elven said, “This weather will make our progress difficult. Are you certain you wish to continue?”

“We can’t stay here,” Brandyé pointed out. “Come – let’s go.”

And so they began to move onward once more, Brandyé leading the way through the chilling mist, and slowly again they began to rise, ascending a long ridge that seemed to disappear into the clouds above. Soon they came to a place where the ridge turned to a sheer cliff, and so they began to traverse along its base, always in an easterly direction. Below, through the thin mist, Brandyé could see the lake of ice spread out before them, and it seemed it was almost reflecting the gray of the clouds above, which seemed nearer then ever.

Their footing became gradually more treacherous, also, and soon they were clinging to the rock with both hands, hundreds of feet of sheer cliff above them, and a vertical drop below. Brandyé’s head began to swim, and he knew that a single misstep would spell the end of his adventure, and his life. Behind him, Elven’s knuckles where white as they grasped the rock, his breathing rapid and shallow. Occasionally Brandyé could hear curses, and they echoed the thoughts in his own mind. He wondered if he had been foolish to pick this route.

Eventually they came to a place where there was a great, vertical crack in the rock face, and within it was a small ledge on which they could comfortably sit side by side. Here they rested again for a moment, and Elven kept his eyes shut against the precipitous view while Brandyé kept his own shut out of exhaustion. As they sat, the clouds descended yet further, until they were entirely surrounded by mist. The valley, the glacier, the view of the other mountains – all were gone behind a veil of gray shadow. After a while, the view was so close that it almost felt that they were not hundreds of feet above the ground, and Elven began to look around them: back, whence they had come, and forward, whence they might go. “Brandyé…” he said.

Without opening his eyes, Brandyé murmured, “Yes?”

“There’s nowhere to go from here.”

“What do you mean?”

Elven turned back to him. “There’s no further path – no footing. The cliff is smooth. We can go no further.”

Brandyé huddled under his cloak, not wanting to hear what Elven had to say. “We haven’t come this far for nothing,” he said. “There must be a way.”

Elven crept to the edge of their ledge and looked out. To the west was the broken and jagged rock cliff they had been climbing across for the past many hours; to the east was a smooth, unbroken wall of nearly vertical rock, and indeed there appeared to be no footholds or handholds anywhere on its surface. “Brandyé, please come and look!” he pleaded. “This is impossible!”

With a frustrated sigh, Brandyé opened his eyes, but for a while did not move. Instead, he stared up above him, into the highest reaches of the crevice that was sheltering them from the worst of the weather. Finally, he said, “You say we can’t go any further across the cliff.”

“Yes. Even Sonora could not land on that cliff.” He looked down at the bird, who had come to rest with them, regarding them curiously as if to ask what they were doing so high.

“What about up?”

Elven frowned at him. “How could we climb the cliff up, if we can’t even cross it?”

“Not the cliff,” said Brandyé. “This crack. Look.” And he pointed above his head. Indeed, the crevice climbed upward for what seemed to be hundreds of feet, perhaps even scaling the full hight of the cliff, though its height was shrouded in cloud. But it climbed at an angle, though steep, and was lined with dozens of pits and cracks and small ledges that would provide ample footholds. To Brandyé it looked like a giant, uneven staircase. “This, we can climb – it’s no harder than what we scaled with Elỳn in the Trestaé.”

And though Elven protested, climb it they did. The rock was cold and hard, but with every step upward there seemed to be a hold just in the right place. Upward and into the clouds they climbed, and Brandyé was filled with the thrill of height – his palms dry, his stomach churning, chills running down his arms and to his legs. As he climbed he began to sweat, and before long he had almost forgotten the fever that plagued him, and excitement began to grow in him. This felt right – almost like he was meant to be here, at this moment, climbing this very mountain.

And as they ascended slowly, pausing every now and then to rest, a curious thing began to happen. The clouds that surrounded them began to become thinner, and the air around them began to brighten. The change was subtle and slow, and at first neither Brandyé nor Elven noticed, until Brandyé saw that the rock under his hand was darker than the rock around him – he had a shadow.

It took a long time for the significance of this to truly come to him; he had not seen his shadow in almost ten years, and had indeed forgotten what it meant. Then the truth slowly dawned on him, and he was filled with a burning excitement that drowned out all ailments and headaches, and pushed him to climb at a frenzied pace so that Elven was left calling worriedly below him.

“Come!” Brandyé cried. “Climb faster – climb higher! There is something we must see!”

And as he went on, suddenly the crevice in which they had been climbing opened out, turned into a steep slope of loose rock. Here he paused for a moment so that he did not dislodge stones down upon Elven, but when Elven came abreast of him, he began climbing again, crawling up the slope on hands and feet, digging into the loose rock. Here and there were patches of snow, and Brandyé marched through these heedless, and Elven could do little but keep up.

All the while the clouds were growing bare, and the light was now bright, casting shadows on the stones all around them. And finally, as Brandyé burst to the top of the mountain and stood atop its very peak, the clouds parted entirely, and the sun, in all its glory, burned down upon him and lifted him such that he felt that he was flying above the very world. All around them was a vast, endless sea of cloud, white and soft, and through it grew tall the mountains of the Reinkrag, becoming ever higher to the east so that entire valleys and ridges could be seen above the sea of clouds.

Brandyé was speechless, and and Elven arrived, together they stood and marveled for an age. “I’d forgotten the sun,” Brandyé said finally, and Elven murmured an agreement.

When they had seen their fill – and it was a long time, indeed – they sat down to eat just below the summit where the wind was weaker. They had to find a place that was free of snow, and as such they were in the shade of the mountain, without the sun on them, but Brandyé thought that he would rather be in the natural shadow of a mountain, knowing that the sun was behind them, than the dreadful shade of eternal clouds brought on by Darkness.

Finally, it came time for them to move, although secretly Brandyé would have liked to have stayed on the summit for the sunset, which he was now desperate to see. But he realized that to do so would be to invite freezing temperatures and high winds, and they likely would not survive the night. So it was they began to descend into the clouds once more, but before they lost sight of the sun entirely, Brandyé looked to the sky once more and vowed that he would not rest until he reached a place where the sun could be seen all day without fear of Darkness.

Chapter 21: The Pass of Duwoèm

Never had Brandyé seen such a mass of twisted and dark creatures. Men there were, and fierundé, but moving between them, darting here and there, were creatures no higher than a child, and the sight of them chilled Brandyé’s blood. They moved on two feet but could hardly be called men, for their hands ended in great claws, and their eyes were sunken into skulls barely covered by dark skin. Brandyé had no doubt these were the skøltär, and despair took his heart. He stood alone between the fleeing villagers and a true army of Darkness, and he could not hope to survive.

Standing, he turned to face them fully, and as they began to descend the hill he saw several of their number begin to run forward and toward him. Onward they came, and he drew Fahnat-om, determined that he would destroy at least some creature of Darkness before they in turn took him. Bracing himself, he saw that one of the skøltär was only moments from him when suddenly the advancing creatures drew up short, and stopped only paces from him.

Heart pounding, Brandyé could not understand their pause until, ringing clear over the moor land, a great horn answered his question. Risking a glance over his shoulder, to his astonishment there was a wall of riders, each standing tall and proud, and he knew that it was the remaining forces of Erârün, come from Rythe’s Helm to engage the enemy away from the defenseless. How they could be here, though, was beyond his reckoning – their advance riders ought to have still been a day from Rythe’s Helm, and it would have been a further three days before the soldiers of Erârün could have traveled this far.

The horn sounded again, and Brandyé saw at the front of the legion of soldiers was Tharom Hulòn, surrounded now by six other fellow knights, all clad in their black dragonstone armor. They made a most impressive phalanx, and at the second sounding of the horn the soldiers began to advance as one unit, slowly gathering speed and closing the distance between they and Brandyé.

This was clearly a development the army of Darkness in its disarray had not been prepared for, and Brandyé could see the fear on the faces of the men closest to him. Turning swiftly, the creatures that had begun to approach him retreated to the safety of their larger numbers, where they rejoined the ranks and began their equal advance on the army of Erârün. Brandyé stood still, now uncertain what to do – he was still caught, but now in the middle of two forces that were about to engage at speed almost exactly where he stood.

Taking a few steps back, he began to turn toward the soldiers of Erârün, hoping that he might be able to retreat behind the mounted soldiers, but he found that in their speed the first of their number was nearly upon him, spear raised and pointed forward. With a cry of panic Brandyé threw himself to the side, his arm on fire as he landed upon the ground. The soldier plowed on past him, and only moments later Brandyé could hear, above the deafening galloping of hoofs, the first clashes of steel: the battle of the Rein had begun.

Wave upon wave of horses rushed past Brandyé as he lay in the grass, and by some miracle he was not crushed underfoot. When they had passed – some hundred at least, by his estimation – he painfully regained his feet, and looked on upon a scene of desperate horror.

As many as the soldiers of Erârün were, Brandyé could see almost at once that they were hopelessly outnumbered by the forces of Darkness. Riders on horses stood in the midst of a swirling maelstrom of creatures and men, hacking and slashing at will about them in an effort to keep from falling to the ground. Many had already done so, and fought valiantly against their opponents as they rose from the earth. Many did not rise at all, hewn down by the blades and fangs and claws of their enemies.

This, beyond anything, was the true horror of the battle: against the men of Darkness, the soldiers of Erârün fought well – defending themselves with blade and fist, slaying them easily for their lack of armor. Blood ran thick, and the sounds of steel crushing flesh and bone was sickening. But against the creatures, they had no experience: Brandyé watched in terror as fierundé, tall as the soldiers themselves, threw men to the ground in great swipes, their claws tearing through armor like paper. And everywhere darted the skøltär, and Brandyé felt bile rise in his throat when he saw them fall upon the soldiers and tear open their throats with their teeth.

In the middle of it all, still standing tall and proud, were the seven knights of Erârün, their black stone armor glistening with the blood of their enemies. Brandyé saw Tharom cry and lash out again and again, and with each blow, another enemy fell to his sword. Equally keen were his fellows, and before long a circle had widened around them as the enemy came to realize they were a foe of particular reckoning. But they did not rest, and urged their horses back into the fray with fervor. When their horses fell to blades and claws, they pursued the fight without pause, and Brandyé now saw what made these men knights, and not mere soldiers.

But even seven knights of the first order of the dragon were not enough to turn away and entire legion of Darkness, and slowly but surely, the battle advanced upon Brandyé, until there came a point when he could not but join. Only yards away he saw a skøltar tearing at the neck of a fallen soldier, and as he looked closer he saw with a churning stomach that it appeared to be actually drinking the blood that was spilling forth so plentifully. There was no doubt that the poor man was dead, but the sight fueled a sudden rage in Brandyé, and almost without thought he kicked himself forward and raced upon the skøltar, falling on it before it even knew he was there. In a single stroke of Fahnat-om he cleaved the creature’s head from its body, and thick black blood flowed forth and coated the blade.

Shaking with fury and with terror, Brandyé looked around to see that his action had not gone unnoticed; several other skøltär had looked up from the fray to see their fallen kin, and were approaching Brandyé stealthily. With a cry of rage, tears in his eyes, Brandyé ran upon the nearest one, driving Fahnat-om bodily through it before it had a chance even to raise its terrible claws. Swiftly, he let the creature’s body fall and turned to face the others, only to find that they had been supplanted by a fierund, huge and terrible, snarling at him and already set to lunge.

Throwing himself to the ground, Brandyé barely evaded the beast’s claws as it leapt upon him, landing precisely where he had been standing only moments before. Unable even to regain his feet in time, Brandyé did the only thing he could think of: he hurled Fahnat-om at the fierund, disbelieving relief flooding through him as the blade sunk deep under the creature’s eye before falling to the ground. Blinded, the creature flailed wildly, pawing at its wound and writhing on the ground.

Then, even as Brandyé was trying to stand, a black-clad soldier stood over him, and Brandyé saw that it was Tharom. Sword in hand, Tharom approached the fierund and drove his blade clean through its neck, at which the beast dropped still and silent to the earth. Without a word Tharom stooped and retrieved Fahnat-om, and passed it to Brandyé.

Brandyé looked at him without a word, and in that moment saw the despair on Tharom’s face: he knew they were doomed. “We must flee!” Brandyé panted.

But Tharom shook his head. “No! Our duty’s to fight, and fight we will. Abandonment’s treason, soldier!”

But suddenly all Brandyé could think about was Elven, and how he knew he had to see his friend again, that his place was not to die on this battlefield. “Sir – I must go!” he called.

“You will fight!” shouted Tharom, and there was not time for another word for one of the enemy soldiers had flung himself upon Tharom, who deftly threw him to the ground. And then, before Brandyé’s eyes, Tharom ran the now defenseless man through, and the awful sight settled him: he could not kill another man, even a man twisted by Darkness.

As he started to turn from Tharom and his killing, Brandyé heard over the cries of battle a new sound – that of cheering, of triumph and of power. Looking over the heads of his enemies, Brandyé saw bearing down on them a new force of mounted soldiers, this from the north – the patrolmen they had abandoned had come to their aid.

And then Brandyé began to run, sheathing Fahnat-om as he did. He heard Tharom’s cry of rage after him: “I’ll find ye, coward!” He paid him no heed, driven now by desperation to escape the battle, and to find Elven. Ahead was a horse whose rider had abandoned it – by choice or by death, he knew not – and at a run he flung himself on its back and urged it to a gallop. By his ear he heard a whisper, and an arrow plunged into the ground beside him. He did not look back to see its provenance; he had half a mind it was Tharom himself who had loosed it after him.

And so Brandyé left the battle of the Rein, not in victory or in organized retreat but in a dreadful panic, driven by the horror of death and the burning need to save his friend. There was no time for thought, no room to consider the voice in his mind that suggested this was a rash course, that he should pause and consider. Onward he rode, and as he did he felt the Darkness of the battle begin to leave him, and he began to breathe easy again. Only after he had ridden a mile and the sights and sounds of the battle were behind him did he finally stop and dismount from his horse. There, he fell to his knees and vomited, and then wept: wept for death, wept for Darkness, and for his inability to do his duty. Despair took him, and he cried aloud to the dark skies. How was he to defeat Darkness, when they could muster such twisted and hateful creatures? How could he, a single person of no consequence, possibly hope to succeed where the armies of an entire kingdom could not?

Eventually he brought himself to his feet once more, feeling weak and pathetic, and with an effort remounted his horse. He set off once again, southward at a slower pace, for he knew the horse could not sustain a gallop for long. Before long he began to come up behind the convoy of villagers, who had continued on their journey even as the soldiers of Erârün died to defend them. He found he could meet their eyes, and ignored their cries and calls after him, and soon he was past the them and on the south road alone.

He worried that he would meet further soldiers on his ride, ones who had perhaps not been able to leave with the first draft, but in the two days it took him to reach Rythe’s Helm he met no other folk whatsoever. The road was ever long and desolate, and he kept throwing glances behind him to reassure himself that the enemy was not coming upon him. He did not sleep during the night, but paced back and forth in the dark while his horse rested. His thoughts were torn between between the soldiers dying in the fields, the villagers who now ran defenseless, and the fate that awaited Elven, Talya and himself. He did not know if Sonora had passed his message on to his friends, although he had never known her fail to deliver a message in her life. Had they received it, would they have fled already? Perhaps he would arrive in Rythe’s Helm only to find they had long since abandoned the place, leaving only a battalion of soldiers to arrest him for desertion.

As he rode, the clouds above him began to grow ever darker, and he could not help but take this as a sickening omen that the battle to the north had gone ill. Despite the hundred soldiers from the south, and the fifty or so patrolmen from the north, they had nonetheless been vastly outnumbered by the forces of Darkness, and as well-trained as their soldiers were, the creatures of Darkness fought with a rage and fury that was terrifying and overwhelming. Soon it began to rain, and so it was that Brandyé arrived, drenched and cold, to find Rythe’s Helm deserted.

At first he thought perhaps the townsfolk were simple indoors because of the weather, but he soon began to realize that there were no lights in the windows, no smoke from the chimneys, and no sounds through closed doors and curtained windows. Panic beginning to rise once more within him, he dismounted from his horse and began walking from door to door, pounding and crying out: “Is anyone here? Please – answer me!”

But no answer was forthcoming, and Brandyé could feel himself beginning to succumb to fear. There was no sign of the enemy, no sign of violence, but nor was there any sign that a single person lived here still. Becoming desperate, he ran to the inn where he had stayed with Elven and Talya while she was yet recovering. When he arrived he bid his horse stay, and pushed upon the door. To his surprise, it opened easily, and he stepped inside, and out of the rain.

Inside, everything was still and silent. The patter of rain outside and his own breathing were the only sounds, and the place was cold. Tables lay out bare and empty, chairs arranged around them as though waiting to be filled. In thoughts, he saw the ghosts of soldiers and townsfolk sitting in those same chairs, laughing, drinking and talking, and a chill passed through him. What had happened here?

He stepped further into the inn, and went up the stairs to the bedrooms where he and Elven had slept. Again here all was empty and quiet; some beds were neatly made, while others appeared to have been only just recently vacated. Not a one was occupied. He entered the room he, Elven and several others had shared, hoping for some clue, some idea of what had happened, but he could find nothing but dust and pillow feathers. Only the window, open and letting in the rain, struck him as odd. He moved to close it, and it was only then that with a soft cry and a flutter of feathers Sonora dropped through the window into the room, a note tied to her leg.

“Sonora!” Brandyé said softly. The bird returned his greeting with a caw, and hopped forward toward him. He knelt down, and untied the note bound to her. Unfolding it, he was at first confused – it was the same note he had sent to Elven, still stained with his own blood. Yet he had not tied it to Sonora, and so he flipped it over to find, in Elven’s neat and small handwriting, a further message:

 

Dearest Brandyé,

I can only hope this note finds you well. You cannot imagine my fear when I received your message, for I know well what ink you used to write it. My heart tells me you are still alive, though where and how I do not know.

I would have you know that I did not act idly on your warning; the moment Sonora landed by my side, I alerted the knights here in Rythe’s Helm to your warning. As the word of a soldier of Erârün, they took your message to heart and acted swiftly. The knights marshaled every soldier they could muster, and rode out to your aid this very morning.

At the same time, Yslvan Lorié, the commanding knight here in Rythe’s Helm, ordered the evacuation of the town. There is an ancient fortress in the mountains three days east of here, built into caves and hidden from view. There is no road there, but it is under the Pass of Duwoèm. If you face due east from this town, it is after the third peak to the left of Fiertan, the tallest peak straight before you.

Talya and I have left with the townsfolk, but I have bid Sonora stay for some days in the chance that you might arrive. If you are able to, we will see you there.

I wish you all the luck I have, and I am certain we will meet soon.

Ever your friend,

Elven

 

For many moments Brandyé considered the note, at a loss for what to do. He had hoped to find Elven still here, though what he would have done next he was unsure. He did not think he could remain in the kingdom of Erârün, however – Tharom knew him now as a deserter, and in his understanding the punishment for such treason was severe. If Tharom survived the battle, Brandyé would become hunted throughout Erârün.

This left him with a choice, but even then he was fearful and uncertain. He could travel south and to the west, and try his luck in the kingdom of Kiriün, who might even welcome him as an exile from Erârün, for whom he understood they held little love. But in the back of his mind, the burning of Darkness was overwhelming, and threatening. Everywhere he had gone, he had brought Darkness with him: to Consolation, to the Cosari, and now even to the great kingdoms of men. What right did he have to bring Darkness upon yet another unsuspecting population?

And so the only option left to him was to continue his flight to the north, past Erârün and Kiriün and into the unknown mountains of the Reinkrag. This was a wild and dangerous plan, for there was little known about what dwelt in those lands, and the further north he progressed, the further into territories of Darkness he was likely to become. He realized this was a danger he feared beyond all else, beyond even death: that were he to venture into the realms of Darkness, he might find strength there. He recalled his fevered dreams and visions during his enslavement to Abula Kharta, and how the burning of his scar became a source of power, how it gave to him the strength to slay all that opposed him: including his own friends.

And so this presented to him a final dilemma: what was he to do about Elven? He desperately wished to see his friend again, but he feared that if he did, Elven would insist on going with him. If he was indeed going to travel into the unknown lands of the north, he knew he must do it alone; he would not put any other person in such danger. Elven would probably insist on bringing Talya, and that was yet another life Brandyé could not bear to have on his hands.

He resolved finally that he would write a note back to Elven, warning him of his intentions; whether Elven would try and seek him out he could not say, but he would not – despite the pain in his heart the thought caused – seek to find Elven again, and would pass by the fortress without stopping.

He took the paper, and after much seeking for a pen he wrote over his own dried blood:

 

Dearest Elven,

I would have you know I am well, and I am gladdened to know you are also. I hope that you and Talya will be safe with the folk of Rythe’s Helm, and I must return your wish of luck, for I will not see you in person.

Please understand, I do this out of love for you, and the desire for your safety: I am to pass into the north, and I will do so alone. I have brought too much Death and Darkness upon too many folk, and if I remain in Erârün I will be hunted as a traitor.

Please take care of Talya, and I will continue to hope that one day, if this Darkness should pass, we can be together again.

Your friend,

Brandyé

 

Tears were in his eyes by the time he had finished the note, and he spoke softly to Sonora as he tied it to her leg. “I will likely not see you again either. You are a wonderful bird, but you are getting old. I wish you all the best in your age.” He stroked her head for a moment, and Sonora closed her green eyes in relaxation. Then he released her, and said, “Take this note to Elven, and make him understand – do not seek me out!”

With a flutter Sonora rose from the floor, and after pausing briefly on the windowsill, she set out at speed, and within moment was lost to sight. For a while after, Brandyé sat on the end of the bed in the room and considered what he was to do next. Most of the food would have been taken by the villagers, he expected, but he might find some remnants of bread or dried meats to carry him into the hills. He would need shelter, too, if possible – and water containers.

One thing he would not need, he decided, was his armor, and so he stripped himself of it there in the bedroom, letting the metal lie where it fell. He then set about finding what provisions he could, and wrapping them all tight in several blankets. Finally he found an old cloak in a trunk in the innkeeper’s closet, and with the hood up to repel what rain it could, he mounted his horse once more, his crossbow and Fahnat-om at his side and his pack well fastened to the horse.

Elven had not been wrong in his letter: there was no visible road to the Pass of Duwoèm, bar the wheel ruts left by the villagers’ passing carts. The land was thus treacherous, and in the rain swiftly turned to bogs in many places. Brandyé’s progression was slow, and by the time full dark had come he had traveled less than five miles. He was then forced to stop, for to continue in the dark would certainly mean his horse falling into a hole, and he would not have the beast’s leg broken.

So began the first of three miserable, lonely and dark nights on the road to the mountain pass, during which time the rain refused to relent and he developed a dreadful cold, and was shivering and coughing all the time. The year was turning and the air was cold, and there was no shelter to be found on the wide open plains that lay before and rose up to the mountains.

During all this time he saw sign of neither pursuit nor quarry, and on the morning of the fourth day he came to a place where high rocks began to rise quite suddenly from the earth, and the mountains seemed almost to spring up from nothing, towering massively above his head. Even these low mountains on the fringes of the Reinkrag, he could see, were capped with snow, though the valleys remained drenched in rain. Onward he rode into the valley that lay stretched before him, until the path became steep and rocky, and unmanageable for the horse.

Here Brandyé dismounted for the final time, and bid farewell to his steed. “I wish I had known your name,” he said to him, “for you bore me well.” He patted the horse’s muzzle. “Take care of yourself, and if you know what’s best, ride south – there, you might be safe!”

The horse snorted, its breath steaming in the cold, wet air, and with a final pat on his hindquarters Brandyé sent the beast back down the valley, away from him, and away from harm. Then he turned back to the mountain, and began to climb.

The valley rose steeply, a stream coursing violently through its depths, but Brandyé could see, at least two thousand feet above him, a great col between two high peaks. This col was lower than the clouds, and apparently lower than the snow line, for Brandyé saw no white on its ridge. He had, in fact, no particular desire to pass over the col and so bring himself near to the secret fortress of the Reinsfolk, but were he to venture northward into the mountains, it was the most sensible place through which to pass.

So he set his sights on reaching the top of the col before nightfall, which with a pack at his back and a cold in his head was no easy task. Many times he slipped on the wet rock, and many times he found his way impassable, and had to retrace his steps back down the gorge and find another route. Once, around midday, he came across an abandoned cart, lodged firmly between two large boulders, and wondered at how it could have come to be there; certainly a horse could not have climbed this far, never mind pulling an entire carriage!

He rested a moment here, huddled under the cart and grateful for the brief respite from the rain. He had begun to feel quite feverish, and was beginning to wonder if he ought not to find the hidden fortress anyway, if only to get out of the rain once and for all. The cloak he had stolen was pitifully leaky, and he was soaked to the bone.

As he sat and looked back down the valley, it struck him how far he had climbed; he could no longer identify the spot where he had left his horse, and the valley floor looked to be miles away. The features of the land far down and away were tiny and indiscernible, and so it was some moments before he became aware of the tiny flares of fire that were slowly beginning to dot the land. It was not until smoke began to rise that he realized that there were folk down there, moving here and there and setting fires in the rain as though the falling water did not affect them.

And as he looked closer, he began to realize that among the folk there walked also larger animals, larger than horses and darker in hue. Dread began to fill his chest as he realized what he was looking upon: the army of Darkness, now moved past whatever resistance Erârün had to offer and bent on the destruction of the villagers in their secret forest. It did not occur to Brandyé that it might have been him they were seeking.

Fear gripped him, but for just a moment reason held sway: if he could barely make out the enemy so far below, surely they would be unable to see him, especially if he were to stay close to the rock and move in the shadows. He was wearing nothing bright, and with luck would be indistinguishable from the mountainside. With great trepidation he moved slowly out from under the cart and back into the rain, keeping one eye on the gathering army in the valley as though he might be able to tell from their movements whether they had seen him or not.

Eventually, of course, he had to turn his back on the valley floor to continue climbing, and he then moved slowly and carefully, measuring every step and handhold carefully before leaning his weight upon it lest a rock should loosen and tumble down the mountainside. A headache began to creep upon him, however, and his vision soon became clouded, and he knew he would not make the pass that night, and that he he must find shelter before long or he would fall off the mountain himself.

He began looking for caves or overhangs where he might stay dry for the evening. Before long he came upon a hollow where a great boulder had fallen upon another boulder, and with utmost relief he collapsed into the dry shelter, unwrapping his pack and withdrawing the blankets therein, digging through them to the center to try and find the driest one. He removed his cloak and drew this tight around him, and felt slightly better, if not exactly warm.

For a while then he dozed, and by the time he awoke the sky was dark, and the distant valley was nearly impenetrable to sight. In the darkness he groped in his sack, and withdrew a small pouch of nuts, and ate them. The dry rest had done him some good, and he felt, despite the blackness all around him, that his eyes were clearer than they had been before.

But it was not long before a thing happened that made him doubt his thought: slowly but surely, he became aware of a tiny dancing light before his face. At first he thought it was merely one of the many colors that flash behind closed lids and in absolute darkness, but it persisted, moving only slightly from side to side.

He reached out a hand to touch the source of the light, but oddly found that, reach though he might, it remained just outside of his grasp. The most he could do was blot it out, if he raised a hand between it and his face.

As time went on, the light began to grow steadily brighter, until Brandyé started to quite worry about what it was. Suddenly it disappeared, and in the dark Brandyé thought he could hear a sound – the soft crunch of feet on rocks. The light then reappeared as suddenly as it had disappeared, and it struck Brandyé finally that the light was not in front of him, but moving toward him across the valley – it was a person carrying a torch. Then Brandyé’s courage faltered, for if he could see the light, then surely the army in the valley was now more than aware of it as well.

The sounds of footsteps grew ever closer, and then he began to hear a voice, calling out softly – calling out his own name. A chill went through him, and he shrunk further back into the cove where he was nestled. But it was of no use; the person seemed to know exactly where he was, and in only a few moments, the footsteps were directly above him. “Brandyé?” the voice called.

And finally, Brandyé recognized it, and called out in a whisper, “I’m here – directly below you!”

He heard the person tumble down the rocks to the side of the great boulder, and suddenly the torch hove into view, full sized now and illuminating a familiar face, and Brandyé despaired. “Oh, Elven – you have doomed us all!”