The Hekamon (52 page)

Like most things in the marshes, nothing went to waste.
Bone meal was used to supplemented feed-stock, hair for twine and
sinews made for excellent draw strings for bows. Even the skin could
be put to use, the tannery used it to make parchment. While Saskia
had claimed a pouch for the more delicate ointments she made.

When Saskia had finished undressing the prisoner,
Loccsleah returned with some rags and the two of them set about
drying the barely conscious man. They cleaned the mud off him quickly
but his hair took longer to get dry.

"We could put this to use," Loccsleah said,
running her fingers through the luxuriant hair.

"Yes," Saskia replied, she too was weighing up
the prisoner. Running her hands over him, and finding the well built
and muscular Coralainian a much healthier specimen than the last one.
"If he is unforthcoming about what has happened to Alyssa, or if
we find he has harmed her in anyway, he will be both nourishing meal
and a capacious vessel."

Loccsleah laughed in agreement, before her mood turned
somber, "Is it too much to hope that he hasn't harmed Alyssa?"

Saskia sighed, "I'm finding it hard to be
optimistic. He took her dagger, he disarmed her for a reason. She is
no longer acting of her own free will, I'm sure of it. If she was,
she would have returned by now."

With the prisoner dry, Saskia wrapped him in the blanket
and locked the door of the cage. She then turned the winch handle to
raise the cage, before Loccsleah moved to steady it as it swung over
the pit. Once over the hole, Saskia lowered it in. They placed the
wooden slats over the top and rejoined the men in the stockade.

As they entered, she could hear Vondern talking to the
ferguths about the grippers and the significance of their return. But
the only thing that concerned Saskia was Alyssa's return.

She
promised herself, that if the voight didn't extract every relevant
detail out of the prisoner, or determine everything the man knew
about Alyssa's whereabouts, then she would.

"Should we start roasting the nuts?" he asked,
but guessed her answer.

"Yes, let's get them started, that pear helped, but
I'm ravenous."

They carefully placed the nuts that Alyssa had gathered
on a flat stone at the edge of the fire, while eating a few raw as
they did so.

"If you love me pop and fly…" Alyssa
said, crunching on some of the nuts.

"Eh?"

"…if you hate me burn and die."

"What?!"

"It's a song we sing, well, some of us anyway,"
she laughed.

"What's it about?"

"Hazelnuts."

"Ah," He said, laughing too, and before long
all the nuts were roasting.

As they sat, Galvyn once again noticed the small tattoo
just above Alyssa's ankle.

"What's the meaning of that pattern?" Galvyn
asked, watching Alyssa reaction to his question carefully.

Her eyes
flickered with emotion, pain and then pride, before a distant look
took over her. He could tell powerful memories had been brought to
the fore. "You don't have to answer," he added, not wanting
to upset her.

"It's okay, I can tell you. To some, it means life,
death and rebirth, but to me it means truth, wisdom and intuition.
It's the most important of the symbols on the Ettinshel and carries
the most significance. My mother once told me that it gave the
Ettinshel certain powers. I didn't know what she meant, until shortly
after she gave it to me and I experienced the power of it myself."
Alyssa said, her soft voice giving her words an enchanting aura.

It
seemed she was going to say more but the practicalities of their
situation were on her mind. They needed to prepare for a night in the
open air.

"We should really be collecting some bedding. The
cave floor will be too hard and cold to sleep on otherwise," she
said, standing and looking around, "let's do so before it gets
completely dark."

"You're right," he agreed.

They spent the next few minutes gathering material from
the forest floor that they thought might make for a comfortable bed,
and while they did, they talked some more.

"What powers does the Ettinshel have?" he
asked, intrigued.

"It can vary from person to person. I find it gives
me a connection to other living things, birds mostly, I can't explain
how or why."

"Are you sure you don't just imagine it?" he
asked, realizing immediately that this was the wrong thing to say. It
caused Alyssa to stop what she was doing and look at him.

"You sound like my brother," she said, "and
before you ask, no, that's not a compliment. Not when it comes to
talking about my necklace anyway," she added, placing the leaves
she was carrying on the cave floor. "Besides, Saskia senses the
power of the necklace, too, it gives her a connection to the land, or
so she says, and strengthens her powers of intuition. For me, as its
rightful owner, the effects are more powerful. I hear my mother's
voice, she tells me things, words of encouragement, or warnings of
danger." As she spoke, their eyes met, and in the look she gave
him, he could sense her sadness at her loss.

"Are you sure its your mother's voice?" he
asked cautiously, not wanted to question her judgment but finding the
revelation disturbing.

"Of course. It's a woman's voice and sounds very
familiar to me, who else could it be?" she answered assuredly.

"I you believe you," he said, but he wasn't
sure if he had said it out of politeness, or if he really did believe
her. Alyssa believed it, that much seemed certain, and he didn't want
to give her the impression that he doubted her.

With a suitably large pile of leaves placed on the floor
of the cave. The effect was completed by mixing in some long grass
that could be found growing out of crevices in the rocks around
them. Their seeds had long dispersed and the dry stems broke away
easily. Once woven in, the grass helped hold the mattress of leaves
together.

"It should be fine for one night," he
observed.

"Yes," Alyssa agreed, "now let's eat the
rest of the hazelnuts."

They moved back to the fire and Galvyn watched, as Alyssa
took a stick and scraped some of the crisp, golden brown nuts off the
flat rock on which they'd been roasting. Shelling them as she did so,
before carefully popping them into her mouth. Galvyn did likewise and
soon they were all gone.

Their warm and nourishing meal consumed,
they shared a drink of water from Alyssa's flask. Their hunger
satisfied, it was time to try out the bed they had made, to see if it
was going to be comfortable enough to sleep on.

"Do you want to go cave side, or fire side?"
Alyssa asked.

He thought for a moment. The warmth of the fire was
tempting and the dark of the cave forbidding, but chivalry called for
him to do the right thing.

"Cave side," he said.

"You're kind," Alyssa smiled, "but I'm
wearing two layers of clothes, I'll let you feel the benefit of the
fire," she said graciously, leaving him room on the side of the
bedding closet to the fire.

"Thank you," he replied, eyeing the recess of
the cave warily before settling down, laying on his side facing
Alyssa, with his back to the fire, making sure he left her enough
space.

He decided he would let Alyssa determine what was the
appropriate distance for them to lay apart and didn't object when she
chose to be close. As they lay there, facing each other, Galvyn's
attention returned to the necklace.

"I'll do whatever I can to help you get it back,"
he said.

"It's kind of you to help but I don't think it's
going to be easy. I don't know if Tregarron or Jephson know what it
is, but if they do, or find out, they might want to destroy it, and the good it can bring will be lost forever."

"If it's powerful, like you say, won't they want to
keep it?"

"It's powerful, but not something that
can be easily controlled. It has a mind of its own and might tell
them things they don't want to hear."

"I thought you said it spoke with your mother's voice?"

"Only I hear that, besides its a voice you feel
rather than hear."

Now Galvyn was worried. That's how he would have
described it, maybe there was something to it, he listened as Alyssa
continued.

"If they don't know already, that its something
that doesn't want to be possessed by them, it won't take them long to
find out. Someone like Jephson would rather destroy it than allow its
existence, he would find it threatening and risk to his authority. I
can't let the Ettinshel fall into his hands."

"It might already have done so."

"Yes, and it's starting to worry me more. If I'm
ever going to get it back, I will need your help, I'm sure of it."

"Helping you is the least I can do. I would never
have let Tregarron take it, knowing its importance, but I had no
choice, he's someone who can do what he pleases. He wanted to to take
it, so he did."

Alyssa looked at him curiously. "How did you know
it was important? It didn't…speak to you did it?" she
said, raising her head and resting it on her hand.

"I could tell It didn't belong to Tansley, and
since it was obviously valuable, I guessed its real owner would be
looking for it."

Alyssa nodded, seeming to be satisfied by his
explanation.

What
he didn't tell her, was that when he held the necklace in the
workshop, he
had
heard a voice, a woman's
voice, and one that sounded familiar to him, too. He'd felt the
sentiment rather than heard the words, and though the message it
conveyed was clear, it was hard to make sense of,
'Don't
mend the chain.'

Why not? Had he heard right? Had there been anything to
hear? At the time he thought he'd imagined it, now he didn't know
what to believe.

Perhaps
he
should
he tell Alyssa. It might make more sense to her, but at the same
time, it might trouble her.

He would sleep on it, he didn't want to
say anything that might upset her. Besides, saying it out loud would
make it more real somehow, and doing that might upset him.

Of course, he might not have heard anything, and had
just imagined it. Yes, that would explain it.

The pair settled down, and as the glow of the fire
flickered around them, Galvyn lay back and watched the patterns it
made on the roof of the cave. The shadows cast on the rock
fired his imagination, which brought a question to his mind.

What did it mean to say he had imagined it? He had never
really thought about it before. Was it just memories? It couldn't be
that, since he could see things in his mind that had not happened.
Galvyn tried to activate his imagination, it wasn't something he normally
tried to do, and he was not very practiced at it. Then he felt a
spark.

Suddenly, he was gripped by a feeling that his thoughts
were not uniquely his own, but part of something greater. A mindscape
of past, present and future seem to appear before him. The cold, hard
rock of the cave fell away and he was bathed in a soft, warm light.
He could see clouds and blue sky, hear voices and birdsong, smell
flowers and feel a summer's breeze on his face. He momentarily opened
a door to this world and in his mind's eye, he saw an imagine of
something beautiful, and just as quickly, it slammed shut again, and
the world before him was lost.

Before the image in his mind had disappeared completely, a
feeling manifested in him strongly, that to open the door again, he
would need a key.

The vision had come and gone so quickly, that Galvyn was
momentarily disorientated by the experience. Unsure what, if
anything, to make of it.

Within seconds, most of what he had seen had
become a distant memory, and knew that he would have forgotten all of
it within moments.

He had seen it with no ordinary senses and used a
part of his mind that neither held memories, or existed in the
physical world. He clung to the only feeling that he knew would
persist, that there was something more and that there was a way to
unlock it.

Galvyn lay still on the damp mattress of leaves, with
the roof of the cave above him, his eyes following the flickering
shadows.

What was it he been thinking about again? There was
something that he needed to remember, something important.

It would come back to him.

In the mean time Galvyn
decided that he needed to learn as much about the necklace as he
could. He felt sure that the more he knew about it, the more he would
be able to make sense of it. It held the key to something, but what?

"Is the lock of hair inside the pendant your
mother's hair?" He asked, turning onto his side to face the
Fennrean girl again.

"No, that tassel of hair is called the Solsceafa,"
Alyssa replied, her brown eyes given a golden hue in the light of the
fire. "At least, that's what I was told, but I don't know whose
hair it is."

"That has a name, too?"

"Yes," Alyssa smiled, "I did think of
discarding it at one time, since only the necklace is important, but
something Saskia told me changed my mind. She thought it had been
placed inside the pendant for a reason, perhaps for safe keeping. By
whom and for what reason, she didn't know, but I agreed with her
thinking, and kept it."

"Who is Saskia?" he asked, finding himself
becoming just as curious about the people of Fennelbek, as about the
necklace.

"Saskia is a herbswoman. She is knowledgeable about
such things. She was a friend of my mother and came to live with us
shortly after her disappearance. Vondern seemed certain my mother
would not be returning, and thought Saskia would be helpful in
raising my brother and I. She accepted in return for being given
refuge from the augur, a man from whom she'd fled. Her talents as a
herbswoman were in demand."