The Eye of the Hunter (18 page)

Aravan spoke. “Even so, Riatha, as dangerous as is this wall in the quaking land, Vulgs and Rucha and Loka are more dangerous still. And just such
Rûpt
are seeking to come unto the rim above us, if we have rightly guessed their foul intentions.”

“Garn,” growled Gwylly, “here we are in the middle of the night beneath the bloody Eye of the Hunter in the Spawn-infested Grimwalls, with no supplies, clinging to a sheer, frozen wall some six hundred feet up, with tons of rock and ice hailing down on us while the Dragon-damaged land rattles and quakes and tries to shake us loose, with Foul Folk below ready to kill us, and Vulgs and maggot-folk somewhere above, also preparing our death, and we’ve no safe place to wait until the coming of the Sun drives “em off.”

Faeril looked at her buccaran and smiled. “Gwylly, my love, I am reminded of that which Patrel said to Danner in the dark hours of the Winter War.”

Gwylly cocked an eyebrow at the damman. “And what that?”

“He asked,” responded Faeril, “‘What are you going to do when things
really
get bad?’”

Gwylly gaped at Faeril, and a tremor shuddered through the cliff. Then the buccan began to laugh, and Faeril giggled. Riatha and Aravan looked at one another in amazement, and then smiled. And as ice and stone shattered down from above, the four clung to the rock wall and laughed.

* * *

They resumed their climb, slowly inching upward. Still the icy chill from above flowed down over them, getting colder with every foot they advanced. An hour or so they climbed, ascending another two hundred feet, stopping now
and again to rest, desperately clinging to stone when the land trembled and rocks and snow and ice tumbled down.

It was Faeril who observed: “It diminishes. The higher we get, the less there is above us to come crashing down.”

From below, Aravan added, “Yet the higher we get, the closer we come to the
Rûpt
who mayhap even now wait for us.”

“Perhaps we can—” Gwylly’s words were chopped short by a bone-chilling howl from above. Vulg-like it was yet…it was a howl starting deep and strong, but trailing off thinly, as if a Vulg were injured or weakened in some manner.

“Look!” exclaimed Faeril. “The Rucks and such below!”

On the canyon floor, Foul Folk milled about in confusion

Again came the howl. And it was answered by a chorus of distant Vulg voices, Vulgs afar, up on the canyon rim somewhere to the south.

From below came voices shouting in jubilation. Gwylly looked down. The Spawn were leaping about as if in celebration.

“Quickly,” gritted Riatha. “We must climb.”

“But—” Gwylly’s words were cut off by the Elfess.

“Now!” she commanded.

And up they went.

Below, Foul Folk rifled the cargo on the stolen sled, and then began jog trotting away, up the twisting canyon, abandoning their vigil of the climbers overhead.

And above, in the distance, on the rim, howls grew louder as a running Vulg pack drew nearer.

“Riatha!” called Gwylly, even as he haled himself up the stone. “The maggot-folk below have left. But above, they draw near. Downward is safety, but upward is danger. Why do we climb?”

Again the chill howl sounded from overhead.

“Dost thou not hear, wee one?” answered Riatha. “That call? Once apast, I heard such a cry—not the same, but near—and it came from the throat of Stoke, summoning aid. And if Stoke is above, and can we come unto him ere the
Spaunen
arrive, then a vile monster we will slay.”

Up they climbed, as swift as Gwylly’s injury would allow. The Vulg howls from the rim drew nearer and nearer. Still the land shook, and debris rained, but it was as Faeril had said: the higher they climbed, the less there was above to
come crashing. And still the icy drift of raw air flowing over them and down grew more chill as they ascended. Even so, their labor was such that perspiration runneled beneath their clothes as up they went, straining mightily, hearts hammering, breath coming in gasps, using their skills to the uttermost to climb rapidly.

They were some one hundred feet from the top when the chorus of Vulg howls seemed to come from directly above.

Riatha stopped. “We have lost the race,” she panted.

Yawls and howls, wrauls and yammering rang through the night, while the four below tenuously clung to rock and ice, and a frigid drift of air flowed down across them, chilling them to the bone. They set jams into crevices and clip-belted themselves to these anchors, taking the strain from arms and legs, taking respite, for they were weary beyond measure.

Time eked past, and still the Vulgs above gave clamoring voice. But then came the sound of ironshod boots tramping as the Foul Folk arrived, soon followed by shouting
Rûptish
voices and cries of jubilation.

After some time, a hundred or so paces to the south of where the foursome clung, a Hlōk came to the rim and shouted down below. What he called is not known, for he used the Slûk tongue, a language that none of the four on the wall below knew. And they clung to the stone without moving, hoping that their stillness and Elven clothing would keep them from detection.

The Hlōk was joined by several Rucks, and they ranged along the lip above, peering downward, shouting out to one another, obviously searching for the four comrades. Hearts hammering, the climbers remained utterly still, now looking down so that the whiteness of their features and the glitter of their eyes would not give them away. And now they could hear Foul Folk directly overhead. And still the four pressed into the wall and moved not, and kept their faces hidden.

The land trembled as another quake shuddered through the mountains. Rock and ice showered down, falling into the depths below. The Rūcks drew back from the edge, fearing that the shivering would cast them off the wall or bring down sections where they stood.

Once more the Hlōk shouted, moving southward, away from the comrades, drawing the searchers with him. Southward,
too, receded the clamor of the remainder of the Rūcks and Vulgs and Hlōks on the rim, slowly diminishing as if they marched off in a band.

As the voices faded, the four cautiously raised up their faces and scanned overhead, seeking foe, finding none. Even so, they remained still, waiting. Time passed, and yet there was no movement above. At last Riatha quietly murmured that it was time, and they unsnapped the harness straps and recovered the jams and cautiously began ascending again, trembling from fatigue and cold, but moving as stealthily as their dwindling strength and skill permitted.

The Moon had passed beyond the lip of the wall, and they clambered upward in shadow.

Finally Riatha came to the rim and cautiously peered over. Signalling that all seemed safe, up and beyond the edge she climbed, disappearing from view. After a moment she reappeared and motioned them upward, the rope growing taut as she took up the strain to help.

As Faeril, then Gwylly, and finally Aravan clambered over the lip and onto the flat, in the near distance before them they saw by moonlight a vast, looming wall of white extending beyond seeing to north and south. The frigid air pouring over the brim and down into the canyon below flowed from this mass. It was the eastern edge of the Great North Glacier.

With chary eyes they quickly scanned the landscape, seeking foe, sighting none. Yet southward, a furlong or so distant, silhouetting an enormous mass of ice that had calved away from the glacier, there came a faint golden glow.

All four felt themselves pulled toward the light, as if called.

Even so, “’Ware,” said Riatha softly, drawing Dúnamis from her shoulder scabbard. Aravan swiftly untied the three climbing ropes from one another, and Faeril coiled and bound them in hanks to be hung from their climbing harnesses. As the damman affixed the lines to her belt and Riatha’s and Gwylly’s, Aravan unslung his crystal-bladed spear. Then the foursome set forth, moving toward the light, Riatha leading, Aravan trailing.

Faeril loosened her daggers in their scabbards, drawing one of the steel blades to carry, ready for throwing. Gwylly set a bullet in his sling and attempted to swing it about, failing, inhaling sharply with the pain, his injured arm unable
to complete the motion. Replacing sling and bullet, he unsheathed his dagger instead and held it in his left hand.

Steadily they drew near the glow, cautious in their advance. Towering above them to their right loomed the eastern wall of the glacier. Ahead lay the vast chunk that had cleaved away, lying midst the shatterings of its breaking. Round this huge mass of calved ice they fared, Riatha whispering that it was freshly split from the pack. “Mayhap that great cracking and thud we heard…” murmured Aravan. Between calf and parent they stepped, moving toward the golden light.

Now they could see the radiance before them, shining from the wall of the glacier, brightest at the source, some fourteen or fifteen feet up from the level, there where the he was cracked and crazed, up a slope of shattered ice. Even as they looked, the earth trembled and a mass of frozen shards fell away and slithered down the ramp of glittering scree. Of a sudden, Riatha moaned and rushed forward, clambering up through the sliding rubble, heedless of foe or other danger that might be present.

“Riatha!” barked Aravan, but she did not stop. Swiftly they scrambled after.

Riatha climbed to the golden light and called, “Quickly! Aid me!”

Leading Aravan, Faeril and Gwylly scrabbled up through the slithering mass, coming at last into the luminance. The bulk of the glacier loomed high above, white and glittering, but before them at the top of the ramp, the ice was clear though crazed from the calving, and the light from within suffused the myriad splits and cracks, shining as would the Sun through a fractured glass window. And even as they stood up to their knees in the sliding shatter, stood in that fragmented golden glow—Elfess and buccan and damman, Riatha with the Lastborn Firstborns at her side—overhead the Eye of the Hunter streamed crimson through the sky.

But neither gold nor crimson caught their sight. Instead it was what they saw in the center of the scattered light: for out from the shattered wall jutted a hand, a large Man’s hand…

…and the fingers moved.

Throughout Eras
[Past and Present]

A
ravan rode out of the dawn and into Mithgar in the early days of the First Era, coming to the youth and wildness of this new world, leaving behind the stately grade and beauty of ancient Adonar. When he emerged he found himself in a misty swale, the grassy crowns of mounded hills all about. He was not surprised by the cast of this terrain, for the crossings in between are fair matched to one another. But unexpectedly to his ears came the distant sound of
shsshing
booms. Intrigued, the Elf turned his horse toward the rolling roar, riding southerly among the diminishing downs. Upward his path took him, up a long, shallow slope, the sounds increasing, the wind in his face, a salt tang on the air. And he found himself on a high chalk cliff, the white bluff falling sheer. Out before him as far as the eye could see stretched deep blue waters to the horizon and beyond. It was the ocean, the Avagon Sea, its azure waves booming below, high-tossed spray glittering like diamonds cast upward in the morning Sun. Aravan’s heart sang at such a sight and his eyes brimmed with tears, and in that moment something slipped comfortably into his soul.

Although Aravan had not before this day come unto the midworld, perhaps he was home at last.

Enamored of the sea, Aravan settled along that shore, and for a century or more he was content to walk the sands and study the tides, driven as they were by the Moon, influenced somewhat by the Sun. Often would Aravan stand all
day on the high, chalky headland, fascinated by the ocean’s shifting hues and shades: the dark, dark blue, so nearly black, of the waters above the deeps; the jade and turquoise and crystal and foaming pearl of breaking waves curling translucent; the sapphire of tides ebbing and flowing. Too, he marvelled at the ocean’s ever changing ways, slow and undulant or wild and thundering, savage or mild, long rolling combers or short chop or mirrorlike smoothness, ever changing, ever changeless, fickle in its constancy.

A century passed and a century more, and at last Aravan was drawn to see what lay in the waters beyond the distant horizon. He sailed as a navigator with a captain from Arbalin, the island Realm just then coming into its own as a Nation of seagoing traders. Although Aravan had neither maps nor charts of the seas, still he knew as do all Elves the courses of the stars and the Sun and Moon, and so the Arbalina captain signed him on as pilot and taught him what he needed to know: of espying shoals and judging currents; of gauging drift and speed; of the reading of wave patterns, reflecting the resonances of islands standing athwart the ocean streams; of rowing through irons, skiffs towing the ship; of riding out storms with sails reefed partially or in full, the ship tethered to sea anchors cast astern; of masts and sails and sailing, and of making the most of whatever wind there was; of maneuvering asea or in harbors or near docks; of ship’s routine and standing watches; of traders and trading and the lading off and on of the precious purchased cargo.

A century or two, or perhaps more, he plied the oceans among the Arbalina sea merchants, learning their ways and learning as well the ports of their then limited world: of the Avagon Sea and of the coastal waters of the Weston Ocean, and of the westward course to Atala.

Too, he sailed on a whaling ship—just once, no more, for he could not abide the slaughter of the lords of the sea. While he was in Diel, a northern port of Jute, the city was assaulted by Fjordlanders, and after the battle the raiders fled from the burning town in their swift Dragonships. The Arbalinians put to sea to give chase, but were quickly left behind by the longboats of the northland warriors.

Upon enquiry, Aravan was told that no other vessels were as fleet, and that the Fjordlanders sailed their sleek ships to far-off shores, shores of lands unknown to other Nations. Captivated by the speed of these Wolves of the deep and
the lure of lands afar, Aravan made his way to that northern Realm, to learn their ways and sail the distant seas with them. After some hesitation these Men of the North took him into their confidence.