Empress Aurora Trilogy Quest For the Kingdom Parts I, II, and III Revised With Index (Quest For the Kingdom Set) (46 page)

They descended
the path through the willows to the valley below. The spring warmth cooled
gradually as the sun began to set. It took an hour to walk from the peak on
which Zoe had placed them to the lake, now shimmering pink and violet as it
reflected the sunset.

The setting
sun also cast a rosy glow on the gray peaks that encircled the lake,
illuminating them with an unearthly light. At one end of the lake, tall fir
trees cast a shadow over the grass bordering the lake, adding further to the
eerie vista.

As they
reached the valley floor they became aware that they had seen no sign of life,
human or animal. No chattering squirrels gathering nuts, no shy rabbits hopping
away from their approach, no birdsong shattering the twilight silence. It was
utterly quiet, with an eerie stillness.

Marcus decided
they could examine the reasons for the strange absence of life later. For now,
they must seek shelter for the night. He knew that once the sun set it would
become bitterly cold, and further travel would be impeded by it.

They found a
small cluster of trees within the firs that would offer them a primitive
curtain from the mountain breezes. Here within the trees grew low-lying bushes
that buffered them from the cold. They spread their furs over themselves, and
lay down in the cabins of their boat to avoid contact with the forest floor.
There they dozed fitfully through the night and waited for the break of day.

It was the sun
that woke them, filtering through the windows. Here at the heights it rose as a
great ball of fire, warming them even as it blazed in their eyes. It rose
rapidly in the sky and soon hung overhead, so close that it made them uneasy.
Surely it should be placed higher in the heavens? It was so near that they
realized they must be at a very high elevation indeed…

They quickly
broke their fast with some of the cheese and bread and dried fruit they had
taken with them from Grete’s Land. After they ate, they joined together in
prayer as was their custom. Their prayers for guidance were even more heartfelt
than usual, as they had not an inkling where they were or where they were
going.

At last when
they judged it to be about ten o’clock in the morning they set out again on the
path they found the previous day. It continued between the fir trees at the
edge of the lake and wound upward, taking them up to the heights once again.

As they
trudged along the trek became more difficult. The path changed from grass to
pebbles, although still clearly visible as a path. Their pace slowed and their
breath came harder as the air became thinner. Overhead the sun seemed hotter
then they were accustomed to, being closer than was the norm.

By about half
past four in the afternoon, they at last reached the top of the strange peaks
they had spotted on the previous day. They arrived at the summit one by one,
and looked down on a panorama that looked like something out of a dream world…

In every
direction, they saw peak upon peak upon peak. At first glance Marcus saw what
he thought was snow on the peaks in the distance. It was with a jolt of astonishment
that he realized it was not snow, but clouds that shrouded the summits just
beyond in mystery. It would seem that Zoe had brought them to the very rooftop
of the world…

“How,” Felix
said, finally breaking the silence that had overcome them, “shall we ever make
it over those mountains? And for what purpose have we been led here?”

No one
answered for a long moment.

“Yes, it would
seem,” Kyrene replied, “that there is no life to be found here; nothing but the
sun and the moon and the stars.”

Marcus’
attention was caught by her last word. Stars. Instantly he could hear the
Empress Aurora instructing him on his task…

“‘Bring back
to me the Fountain of Youth, a star from the heavens, the Rays of the Sun, and
the secret of life.’”

Which he
wondered was it to be: a star from the heavens, or the Rays of the Sun? For
surely Zoe had led them here to fulfill the quest and find one of the objects
assigned to them?

They lingered
on the summit for a while simply because they did not know where to go. The
path led them on, but to where they did not know. They were still at a loss,
when Felix suddenly spotted the door.

Now the door
was not attached to a house. That was the second odd thing about it. The first
odd thing was that there should be a door when there was not a sign of life to
be seen.

The door
itself was unobtrusive, being gray and fitted into the side of one of the
mountain peaks. Indeed, they would not have spied it at all had not Felix had
the eyes of a lynx and the door knob was a deep cobalt blue.

Yet there it
was, and now they must decide what they were to do about that door: to pass it
by, or to approach it and knock, and find out what manner of people had placed
a door in a mountainside?

They discussed
the alternatives.

“I vote that
we knock and meet the inhabitants, for I am curious to know why anyone would
live in a mountainside,” said Felix with the lilt of excitement in his voice.

“I vote we
pass it by,” Dag stated firmly. “In my land, good men live in huts, not in
hills or rocks. Those that do are bad men; we will not speak of what they are.”

Cort sided
with Dag as did Elena; but Kyrene insisted that Zoe led them here, so it must
be for a good purpose.

“I feel as
Kyrene does,” Marcus agreed. “Yet we are split on our vote, and that can not
be. We should be united in our actions, whatever our decision may be.”

They all
pondered on his statement, and all felt he was right. They must all be agreed
or do nothing, yet their opinions were divided, and none was willing to change
their inclination.

It was Felix
who found the solution.

“Let us
continue on the path, and if it winds in a different direction from the door,
then we journey on. But if the path leads to the door, then we knock and meet
whoever is within.”

This solution
seemed fair and sensible to everyone. They set their feet back on the path and
followed it as it wound around in the semicircle of peaks.

It led
directly to the gray door in the side of the mountain. Indeed, it went no
further, for it had been made by those who dwelt in the mountain, and for their
purpose alone.

Marcus prayed
silently that those within would be civilized and friendlier than those of
Jytte’s Land when they first arrived there.

With the
ending of his prayer, he strode to the door and knocked.

Marcus knocked
on the strange gray door that had been set into the mountainside. There was a
long silence, so long they began to fear that whoever had chiseled the door in
the mountain had abandoned it, and therefore they moved away from the door and
back onto the path, there to decide what they should do next.

A grating
sound of stone moving against stone proved them to be in error in their
supposition of abandonment. They glanced back and saw the strange door had
opened and peering out at them in the doorway were two little men as like as
the twin stars that graced the night sky.

That is to
say, they seemed little to Dag, Marcus, and Felix, but in actuality they were a
little taller than Kyrene, and the top of their heads just reached the chin of
Marcus. They had black hair cut short and straight and in a bowl shape around
their heads. Their skin had a faint golden tint, and their dark eyes were wide
with a distinctive tilt at the corners.

At first
glance, they appeared identical, but on closer inspection it could be seen that
one had a short nose with a pointed tip, the other had a nose slightly
flattened with flaring nostrils. One’s chin was sharp, the other’s rounded.
Only their hair and eyes were similar, and both sets of eyes looked warily at
the strangers at their door, as if they were beholding creatures from an alien
world.

Perhaps they
did appear alien and foreign to these men: Dag’s towering height contrasted
with Cort’s small stature, Marcus’ keen gray eyes differed sharply from
Kyrene’s dreamy hazel ones, and Felix’s springy crop of auburn curls was at
variance with Elena’s glossy black mane the color of a raven’s wing.    

Feeling that
someone should do something, Marcus returned to the door and held out his hand
in greeting to the men. They merely looked at one another and spoke to each
other in a tongue Marcus had never heard before. After finishing their
consultation they turned their attention back to the traveler on their
doorstep.

Marcus and the
two men stared at one another earnestly. The silence seemed intensified by the
absence of any other noise.

Marcus decided
to try again to initiate a greeting. He spoke in the Common Tongue, introducing
himself and his companions. The blank stares that he met with increased his
sense of frustration.

He paused a
moment and tried to think of another way to communicate with the men. He once
again introduced himself in the Common Tongue and this time added that he and
his friends followed the path over the mountains.

At the word “path”
the faces of the little men lit up with sudden comprehension. They responded to
Marcus with a steady stream of questions, but in a far older language than the
Common Tongue, and different from the one they had addressed him with
previously. Marcus was able to grasp their meaning, having studied languages
intently under his old tutor, but he was astonished that any man living still
spoke the words spilling from the mouths of these two men, as it had gone out
of universal usage at least five hundred years ago.

He answered
their questions in the same language. And their faces creased into welcoming
smiles. They raised the palms of their left hands in a gesture which Marcus
understood was to be returned. He held his left hand aloft, and Felix signaled
for the others to do so as well.

Marcus spoke
again in the obsolete dialect and requested shelter, and the men opened the
door wider to grant admittance to all of them. The sight that met their eyes
was one they could not possibly have imagined.

They were in a
cave. But it was not a dark, damp cave with bats or water dripping from the
ceiling. No, for this cave was dry and well-lit, there being lanterns of a most
intricate pattern lining both sides of a path that ran through the interior.

The interior
itself was extensive, and they could not see an end to it from where they
stood. Indeed, they heard voices in the distance, echoing through the cavern,
alerting them to the fact that these two men were not the only inhabitants of
the cave.

The two men
beckoned them to enter, so they followed along in their wake to whatever lay
beyond.

The narrow
path, they discovered, had many branches off it on either side. Felix tried to
get a glimpse into whatever they led to, but the men led them in a straight
line into a broad brightly-lit chamber.

They were
amazed to see that the chamber was filled with about two score people, both men
and women, all of them remarkably similar in appearance to the two men who
acted as their guide.

Their own
amazement was equaled by that of the people in the chamber, who spun around as
one to face the travelers. All of them, Marcus noted, were clad in long robes
of the same deep blue, the color of the sky in summer after the sun has set and
before the night has deepened to black. A curious feature of the robes were the
decoration of stars embroidered in silver thread scattered about the hem line,
with a crescent moon, also embroidered in silver thread, placed on the bodice
of the robe, on the left side for women and the right side for men.

The women were
smaller than the men, even smaller than Elena. They were of delicate appearance
in both form and feature, with silky black hair caught up on either side of
their faces, and held in place with the assistance of long pins wrought from
silver, and decorated with an exotic flower carved from pale blue enamel.

The two men
addressed the assembled group in the same dialect they had originally used to
speak to Marcus. The people responded to their exhortation to welcome the
strangers, by all of them lining up in a row, and bowing the upper half of
their bodies while raising their left hands.

Marcus and his
friends responded in like fashion. Their two guides then said something in
another language that Marcus did not know to an older man who stood at the head
of the line. The man bowed and left the chamber, walking with the sedate pace
of a maiden aunt.

One of the two
men addressed Marcus and spoke again in the forgotten tongue.

“We have sent
word of your coming to Wangdakene. He will know what is to be done.”

Marcus could
not recall when he had last seen anyone so withered with age. The man who stood
before him was stooped with it, and his face seemed little more than a road map
of connecting lines that crossed over his features, so that they were nearly
lost to sight.

The guides had
led them through another long corridor into a still larger chamber where the
man they called Wangdakene had taken residence. He did not sit on a high chair,
for he was not a ruler. For his people, he explained, were all equal. No one
was higher or lower than another; they were all the same and treated with equal
dignity.

There were,
however, Wangdakene continued, those among them with superior knowledge, who
had studied more and learned more than all others. These were given the title
of the Yeshui, the Wise Ones. They were also the most knowledgeable of all; the
star gazers.

Marcus
marveled at how freely the old man imparted information to complete strangers.
It had been his own experience that the more primitive the civilization or less
knowledgeable, the more likely to withhold information of a revelatory nature
from visitors. These people, he therefore reasoned, must be either highly
cultured or extremely intelligent, perhaps both.

For the
present he decided to enjoy their exquisite courtesy and warm hospitality. For
they had been extended a genuine welcome, and bade to stay as long as they
liked. This people, who called themselves the Khalaman, were not accustomed to
receiving visitors, and it was a novel experience for them.

The reason
they had not seen visitors was clear: they lived in a remote and nearly
inaccessible locale. It was the reason they took the name they chose for
themselves: Khalaman, which meant Path of the Sky. For surely there was not a
better word to describe their mountainous abode, right at the top of the world,
in the path of the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Once again
Marcus and his friends had an interview with Wangdakene. They had been staying
in this mountain abode for nearly a week now, and he marveled at the ingenuity
of these people, and how they had carved out an existence in this mountain
fastness.

For light,
they struck with flint a white substance of some crystal which they called
ahare
.
It was abundant in their cave residence, and when ground to a fine powder and
struck with a flint, it produced a clear light that lasted for quite a long
time. Marcus found it to be cleaner and more practical than candles, which
smoked and would have fouled the air in this underground dwelling that was
without proper ventilation.

For heat, the
Khalaman piped in water from the mountain springs and heated it in a manner
similar to that which the Valerians used to heat the baths. Truly, these people
were ingenious, and in some ways, far more advanced than some other
civilizations Marcus had encountered, in spite of the primitive language they
used.

On this particular
day, he met with Wangdakene with whom he had become particularly friendly.

They had
quickly made friends with several of the people, including the two guards whom
they had first met. Their names were Kipui and Pembui. Never, thought Marcus,
could two people be more unlike. Kipui was a happy, light-hearted soul who
continually smiled and attempted to make jokes with Felix, some of them pretty
feeble indeed, although Felix said the attempt was made from a cheerful
disposition. Pembui, on the other hand, was of a more saturnine temperament.
His grave face rarely smiled, and he seemed to find life a serious matter
indeed.

If Kipui
remarked that the day was rainy, in typical spring fashion, Pembui chimed in
that the streams would probably flood, and they must be careful when they
ventured out to collect water. If Kipui reported that the day was fine, with
plenty of spring sunshine, Pembui commented that the warmth would probably melt
more snow caps on the mountains and that would flood the streams all the more
so that must be very careful if they ventured out.

Marcus found
them delightful, as he also did a young woman named Tashima. She was vigorous
and energetic, and was always doing some task, whether it be tending some of
the young children or bringing in water from the streams in pails, one in each
hand, or helping in the kitchen to cook the communal meals. She was never idle.
There was no servant structure among them and everyone was expected to do their
share of the work. It just seemed that Tashima did more than her share.

Her sister
Chodena was a more delicate creature, not built for the heavy labor that
Tashima frequently volunteered for. Chodena helped to lay the table for the
meals, and to pour water in the glasses; she was far too frail to carry the
heavy water pails or lift the iron cooking kettles that Tashima flung around so
effortlessly. Marcus divined that they were sisters, and there was a devotion
between them that was touching to see; Tashima rather protective of the fragile
Chodena, and Chodena clearly admired her heartier sister. He soon discovered
that their mother, Kunchena, was one of the Yeshui, and they breathed her name
in awe, with a touch of trepidation, or so it seemed to him.

The two
quickly struck up a fast friendship with Kyrene, who volunteered to help with
the kitchen work in gratitude for their hospitality. The sisters seemed
fascinated by the tawny waves of Kyrene’s hair, never having seen any shade
other than black, and accustomed to straight locks. They frequently traced the
spirals of its waves with their fingertips, giggling in glee as they did so,
all of which was borne in serene patience by Kyrene.

Elena kept
apart socially, although she helped with the work. Marcus noted that while she
was a tireless worker, she gave nothing of herself in friendship. He wondered
if this was simply true of Elena’s people, or if she had been so deeply wounded
from the loss of her family that she had nothing left of herself to give.

Marcus brought
himself back to the present. He was facing Wangdakene, and he had just posed to
him the question that he had wanted to ask from the moment he knocked on the
door in the mountain.

“Tell me,
please,” Marcus ventured, “how your people came to live here in the heart of
the mountain? Where did they come from, and for what purpose did they settle in
such a desolate place?”

Wangdakene
smiled indulgently at the young man.

“Ah, but to
our people there is no other place more to our liking than where we are,” he
answered.

Such a
statement puzzled Marcus. Why would anyone desire to live in such an
inaccessible country so remote from human habitation? Surely the loneliness of
such a place would depress the spirits, to say nothing of the cold of winter!

“I am afraid I
do not understand,” Marcus puzzled.

“Then I shall
tell you the story of my people, and how we came to our home on the top of the
world,” Wangdakene replied.

The withered
old man took a sip from the tiny cup of
thaelan
which he kept
perpetually at his side. It was a drink brewed from the leaves of the plants
that grew abundantly in the mountain meadows. The Khalaman cultivated it, and
harvested it diligently, for in this remote locale it was all they had to drink
apart from the cold water of the clear mountain springs. They claimed that
thaelan
warmed them when cold, refreshed them when tired, and soothed them when ill.
Wangdakene always had a cup of it near him, and after taking a long swallow, he
turned his attention back to Marcus.

“Long ago,” he
began, “when the world was young, and knew peace, my people lived on the river
plains of a fertile country. We dwelt in harmony with one another, and with the
land around us. None among us knew want of any kind, for we shared all we had.
The land we lived on was our sacred trust, given to us to care for and to
cultivate. For this reason our women wear the blue
malanka
flower,
symbol of harmony.

“We believed
that all we had was a gift; it was entrusted to us, but we did not possess it.
This was true as well of the animals who shared our land; if a bird broke its
wing we nursed it back to strength. If the winter months were harsh, we shared
our food with the creatures around us; the pheasants, the deer, and the wild
foxes.

“Our desire
was to live in peace with all of nature. We took our counsel not from man, but
from the sun, the moon, and the stars, as they coursed through the heavens. For
had not they always lived there, and acquired wisdom that man who was of the
earth, a frail and finite being, knew naught of?

“The great and
learned ones among us, the Yeshui, or star gazers, set their hearts to learn
the secrets of the heavens, to divine the mysteries they concealed from mortal
man. And this they did with great success, imparting knowledge to those who
wished to inquire of them for guidance. They alone wore the golden sun on their
robes of midnight blue.

“In our
country on the low lying river plain they had enjoyed success, but, they said,
how much more would they learn if they could climb up the sky and reach the
heavens!

“It was for
this purpose and this purpose alone, that we left our river plain, and traveled
the lands far and wide until we found the tallest mountains, the highest peaks
we could see. Here we settled, and here we will stay. For where else should we
find such access to the rulers of the heavens, those who divide the night from
the day? For truly they have ordained our days; they have set our course, and
it cannot be changed.”

Here
Wangdakene took another sip of
thaelan
.

“But come,
young friends,” he said, rising slowly from his chair, “and I will show you our
great treasure: our stairway to the sky.”