The Dragonstone (20 page)

“Just this, Wizard Zelanj: I want to know whether visions foretell things which
must
be, or instead speak of those things which merely
might
be. Are we locked into a
future which we cannot change…or do we have some choice in the matter?”

“Heh, you’ve asked one of the oldest questions of all: is destiny immutable, where nothing can be changed, or do we have the freedom to choose? As to the truth of the matter, the debate still goes on. Certainly I don’t know what it might be.”

“Oh.” The small disappointment escaped Arin’s lips.

“There, there, my dear, it’s not all that bad.”

“But I was hoping—”

“Hoping that I could answer the unanswerable?”

Arin nodded. “Some such.”

The aged Wizard shrugged and took a bite of his honeycake and chewed slowly and thoughtfully.

Arin set her cup aside, then turned to the seer. “Tell me of visions, Mage Zelanj. Can they be altered? Changed? Their dooms averted? Can the events of my vision of the Dragonstone be changed?”

The ancient seer took a sip of his tea. “Perhaps, child. Perhaps.”

Rissa looked at the old Mage. “Hast thou ever known of a vision whose outcome was altered?”

“Certainly,” said the oldster. “In my manipulation of the aethyr I have seen many things which could be or were changed.”

“A moment, Wizard,” protested Perin. “If things can be altered, then hast thou not answered the oldest question of all?”

“Hai,
brother,” exclaimed Biren, clapping his twin on the shoulder, “I think thou hast hit upon it.” Biren turned to Zelanj. “If things can in truth be changed, doesn’t that say there is indeed free choice?”

“Aye,” appended Perin. “Doesn’t that say we are not marching along in lockstep at the behest of fixed Destiny into an unchangeable future?”

“Aye. Doesn’t it?” echoed Biren.

“Oh, no, not at all,” replied Zelanj, waving his half-eaten honeycake at them. “You see, let us say instead some visions are true and some are false, and that the false ones can be changed, proving they were false in the first place. Even so, we may have no choice in the matter
and be predestined to prove them false, and therefore we take steps to change them, and in fact do. On the other hand, if we are truly free to choose, and if our choice is to try to alter the vision, if we succeed in changing the outcome then once again we will have proved the vision false. Conversely, if we took no steps, or took steps but failed, then would it not be the case that this vision was true? One destined to be fulfilled? In either instance, true vision or false, changed or not, neither outcome answers the question as to whether we have free choice in the paths ahead or are stuck to following a predestined course.” He looked at the twins. “Do you follow what I am saying?”

The twins looked at one another, and then both shook their heads,
No,
and Perin said, “Uh, thou didst take one turn too many for me to step through thy logical maze.” To which Biren added, “Aye, I deem I stepped to the left when thou turned right somewhere along the way.”

“Huah!” grunted Ruar. “I followed thee, Wizard, and if such is the case, then I would ask thee this: what good are visions at all if they may or may not be true?”

“Why, boy, they are to get us to
do
something, or so I suspect. If we have free choice, then they ennoble us to action; if we have no free choice, then they make us
think
we are ennobled to action. In either case we feel a sense of purpose, a reason for being.”

“But, Wizard Zelanj,” said Arin, “is it not also possible that a vision shows us what merely might be, and if we strive to change the outcome we can at times alter the course?”

“Certainly, my dear, that is one view: the notion that free choice can overcome predestination. On the other hand, th’e reverse could be argued as well…that no matter what we believe, the outcome is already fixed.”

Arin sighed. “And in the case of my vision, hast thou any advice?”

“Why, go out there, girl, and
do
something,” replied the ancient Mage. “Perhaps you’ll prove it false, changeable; then again, perhaps not. Heh, the test is in the striving…or not.”

*   *   *

On the ninth day after arriving at Black Mountain, the Elven band prepared to depart, Aiko now in their ranks. The Mages had reprovisioned them and had provided Arin with a horse to replace the one storm-slain. The sturdy mountain ponies were laden with the supplies for the long journey ahead. Silverleaf and Rissa and the others planned to ride with Arin and Aiko along the old trade route as far as the Silverwood and Kaagor Pass but no farther, for to continue with them might jeopardize the mission. And so, when Arin and Aiko would turn north to fare through the Grimwall and head for Fjordland beyond, the remainder would set out southerly, to report on the mission unto Corons Remar and Aldor, and to perhaps bear the word onward to High King Bleys and others.

“Tell all to aid Dara Arin and Lady Aiko, should they come their way,” said Sage Arilla.

“We shall do so,” replied Rissa, smiling briefly at Arin, then frowning, “for I deem aid will be needed to stave off the doom ahead.”

“Assuming it can be staved,” grumbled Ruar.

Following Arilla and the Dwarf, Boluk, they led the horses and ponies out through the postern gate to come to the snow-dusted courtyard before the great iron gates. As Arin mounted up she glanced at the mighty portals where Dragons had come long past. “There is a thing thou never told us, Arilla,” said the Dylvana to the Sage.

Arilla looked up at her. “And that is…?”

“Thou didst never speak the name of the Mage who stood before these very gates and parleyed with the Drakes.”

“Oh, he is no longer with us, and where he is I cannot say. Perhaps on Rwn. Perhaps in Vadaria. He could be anywhere among the worlds of the Planes.”

“And his name…?”

“Ordrune.”

O
rdrune!” exploded Egil, lunging up and forward in his bed, his face distorted in fury and flaming with wrath.

“Waugh!” shrieked Alos, pitching over backwards and crashing to the floor, scrambling across the boards on hands and knees to be away from Egil’s mad rage. Arin gasped in shock, frozen for the moment, but Aiko, her swords in hand, stepped between the wroth man and the startled Dylvana. Then Egil cried out in agony and clutched his head and face, the violent outburst hammering his savaged forehead and eye and cheek with intense pain, and he fell back prostrate on the bed, air seething in and out between clenched teeth as he gritted, “He is the one. He is the one.”

Arin rose and moved past Aiko and her glittering swords and stepped to the wounded man’s side. Against a far wall, Alos whimpered, his one-eyed gaze wide, and switching back and forth between the bed and his ale mug still rolling in small circles on the floorboards, the untasted brew seeping down into the cracks between.

Now Arin poured water into a cup and stirred a white powder in. “Here, Egil. Drink.”

Mutely, Egil took the cup and drank the contents down.

Seeing that Egil seemed rational again, Alos crawled back across the floor and retrieved his mug and tipped it up for the remaining few drops to fall on his waiting tongue. Then shakily he stood and uprighted his chair at the table once more, and from the pitcher he poured another mugful and gulped a great swallow down.

Arin took the empty cup from Egil, and asked, “What dost thou know about Mage Ordrune, Egil? What is it that lies between the Wizard and thee? Does it bear on our mission?”

His one good eye filled with anguish, Egil looked up at her and shook his head, then covered his face with his hands.

With a sigh, Arin set the cup amid the powders and herbs and simples on the small bedside table. She turned once again to the wounded man. “There is a tale here for the telling, Egil, yet I will not press thee for it anow. Even so, it may have a bearing upon what it is we are to do. There will come a time in the morrows ahead when I will ask thee to speak of whatever it is that lies between thee and that Mage.”

“Mages,” growled Alos. “They’re all bad.” He gulped down another great swallow of ale and turned his blind white eye toward Arin. “’Tis a good thing you left them all behind, my Lady. A good thing.”

As Arin resumed her seat, Aiko sheathed her blades and knelt once again upon her tatami.

The Dylvana turned to Alos. “Though there are some who will agree with thee, Alos, not all Mages are sinister. Certainly those we left behind at Black Mountain are no better or worse than thee or me.”

“Hah!” barked Alos.

Aiko growled at the old man.

He shot a swift glance at the warrior and blurted, “No offense, my Lady. No offense at all. Ah, what I meant was, it’s a good thing you left them behind to come here…to Mørkfjord…a good thing, yes, a good thing.” He snatched up the pitcher and poured himself the last of the ale, then looked with dismay into the empty vessel. Sighing, he sucked a slurp from his mug, then turned to Arin and smiled his ocherous, missing-toothed smile, foam coating the scraggly hair on his upper lip. “Did anything interesting happen after you left them? Egil and I really want to know…indeed.” He fingered the froth from his stringy mustache and licked the digit clean. “What say we get us another pitcher of ale and then you can tell us, aye?”

Arin now looked at Egil, the man once again in control of his emotions. She raised an eyebrow; he nodded; she gestured for Alos to go after the brew.

T
he Elves rode back the way they had come, Aiko now in their band, following the trade road south and west and leaving Black Mountain behind. The way was yet covered by snow and the going hard, and riders and horses took turns breaking trail for one another, as well as for the ponies following after. They wended their way through the Grey Mountains, moving ahead by day and resting by night among the cold cheerless stone. And the moon on the nights it could be seen slowly waxed from half to full and then waned to half again ere they came once more unto the village of Doku.

The trembling villagers were dismayed that the demons had returned, their ranks strengthened by one, and that one disguised yellow as if she were a villager herself—a deception which fooled no one. Yet the people of Doku were heartened when the demons traded gold for supplies: food, grain, and charcoal for cooking. And when they left two days later, again the villagers celebrated, hoping that this time the demons were gone for good…though some in Doku counted their newfound wealth and wondered whether dealing with demons was all that bad…yet knowing all the while deep in their hearts that if any of these strange beings had ever
changed
into the monsters they truly were, no amount of gold would suffice.

West they rode, did Arin and her companions, breasting through the snow, and days passed and some days more, until in all a week after leaving Doku they came to the broad flat between where the Grey Mountains ended and the Grimwall Mountains began. Some two hundred miles wide it was, with little shelter between, and on the day they arrived at its edge, a brutal polar wind
thundered south through the great gap from the icy Barrens above.

“We cannot venture out in that,” called Melor above the yowl. “The horses and ponies will die in a matter of strides.”

From the shoulder of the foothill the travelers looked out at the howling, brumal blow, snow and ice flying horizontally across the stony flats. With a sigh of resignation, Arin turned her horse back toward a sheltering ravine they had passed but a quarter-mile arear.

On the edge of this gap they huddled some four days waiting to risk a crossing. At last the wind faded and they rode pell-mell northwesterly, the way before them nearly swept clean by the savage polar blast, and they covered the span in just over six days altogether. And Dame Fortune smiled down upon them, for no sooner had they reached the protection of the foothills of the Grimwall on the far side than the wind rose up in fury, as if raging at missing easy prey, and snow rode in on its angry wings.

Now they fared along the southern flank of the Grimwall, following the old trade route, no longer used this far west, or so they deemed.

Nearly a month later, on March nineteenth, they espied the Wolfwood to the south and west and rode along its northern marge, where the abandoned path wended its way through the foothills above.

The next night in a freezing rain they celebrated the vernal equinox by stepping through the Elven rite, with Arin and Rissa guiding Aiko through the intricate steps. Before they were finished, the rain turned to sleet and then to snow. Springday had come at last.

West they rode, passing beyond the bounds of the Wolfwood, and although they kept a sharp eye out, they neither saw Dalavar nor his Draega nor aught else in the yet wintry woods.

They passed north of the Skög and some days later forded one of the rivers flowing south to the Khalian Mire, the river waters on the rise with the coming of the snowmelt and the spring floods.

They camped in a thicket that night, and just ere bedding
down, of a sudden Aiko hissed, “Quench the fire. Muzzle the horses. Peril comes.”

Without question the Elves extinguished the blaze and drew their weapons and stepped in among the animals, soothing the steeds while all waited in the slender shadows. Overhead a waxing gibbous moon shone down on the land. And ere it had moved a handspan, Arin could hear the ching of armor and the distant thud of boots jog-trotting through the night. Now and again there came a snarl of language, but in a tongue she did not speak. Moments later in the moonlight, a jostling band of Rucha trotted into view, coming from the north, heading to the south.

Still the Elves stood silently as the
Spaunen
loped toward them and past and onward into the night beyond, and slowly the sounds faded in the distance. At last Aiko said, “It is safe once more. They are gone.”

Arin turned to the Ryodoan warrior. “Until now I had thought that Elves had the keenest senses of all. How didst thou…?”