The Last Talisman (9 page)

11

Laio's Voyage

On the morning of Sennar and Nihal's departure, Laio woke late and assumed his friends were bustling about the base, so he rolled over and drifted back to sleep. By the time he left the tent, the sun was high in the sky.

After nearly an hour, Laio was surprised he hadn't yet run into Nihal or Sennar and he began to worry. The base was hardly sprawling. If they were somewhere on the grounds, he'd have crossed paths with them by now.

When he didn't see them at lunch, he ate in a hurry and sped off to speak with Nelgar.

The moment the general saw Laio, his expression turned grim. “What brings you here?” he asked.

“I was wondering where I might find Nihal. She wasn't in the refectory, and I've spent all morning looking for her.”

Nelgar lowered his eyes. “I'll send someone to look for her and Sennar after lunch,” he said, without hesitation.

“You mean you have no idea where they could be?” Laio insisted.

“I don't,” Nelgar replied, unconvincingly.

“What are you keeping from me?” Laio's suspicions began to increase.

Instantly, Nelgar crumbled. His hand disappeared beneath his tunic and reemerged bearing a piece of parchment. Wordlessly, he handed it to Laio.

Laio unfolded the letter and read.

I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry. I thought this over for a long time, I debated and weighed the outcome, and believe me, it wasn't easy. In the end, this seemed to me the best option. I've left the base. If all goes according to plan, I'll be well on my way by the time you read this letter. I hope you can forgive me.

I haven't made this decision because I think you're not helpful, or because I don't want you by my side. You saved my life, and I'll never forget that. I need you, and that's exactly why I can't bring you with me. I could never live with myself if something bad were to happen to you. Don't follow me, for my sake. Please. Stay at the base. Or try and reach Ido. Perhaps that would be best. The army still needs you, and Ido could use a good squire.

In order to do your duty in this war, you must not follow me. Your work awaits you in the Free Lands, and I know you'll serve them well. When I return, the day we've all been waiting for will have come. You'll dress me in my armor and hand me my sword, just as always.

Take care of yourself.

Nihal

Laio folded the letter without betraying a single emotion, although the stiff expression on his face was somewhat out of character. “I'd like a sword and a horse,” he said calmly.

“Did you read the letter well?” Nelgar asked.

“Of course,” Laio replied sternly.

“What do you need a horse and a sword for?”

“You know me well. There's no need to ask.”

Nelgar sighed. “I've been instructed to keep you from following her by any means possible.”

“And I'll make sure that I do follow her, by any means possible. Which is why I'm asking you, for the sake of all the time I've spent living here, to avoid useless scenes. Let me go.”

“I can't.”

Laio felt himself channeling the same hard-nosed determination that, a year earlier, had led him to challenge his father in order to be master of his own fate. Now, like then, nothing would stop him. “Give me a horse and a sword.”

“Either you drop the idea, or I lock you in chains,” Nelgar muttered through gritted teeth.

“They won't be enough to hold me back.”

“This is childish nonsense!” Nelgar blurted. “You know it's dangerous to cross into enemy territory. All Nihal wanted was to save your skin.”

“What Nihal wanted was to make the decision for me, but I'm not a child, even if the whole lot of you keep treating me like one. I can be of more use to her out there than I can be here. This isn't childishness. This is my decision,” he said, his voice firm.

“If that's what you've decided, then I guess I have no choice.” Nelgar called two guards. “Lock him in a room and keep your eye on him.”

The two men exchanged looks before one of them spoke.

“But … he's one of ours—”

“Don't question my order; follow it!” Nelgar interrupted.

The soldiers directed their attention to Laio. The squire put up a weak fight, but the two men were far stronger than he. Before long, they had him pinned.

“If you think this means I'm giving up, you're dreaming!” the squire shouted as they hauled him away.

Laio spent the night locked in a damp, dark room. At first, his eyes filled with tears. He was gripped with a crushing sense of powerlessness, but most of all he felt foolish. It felt like he'd gone back to his days at the Academy, when he was the weakest of all the trainees and the butt of everyone's jokes.

All evening he considered ways he might escape from the base. With a bit of luck, it might not prove so difficult. He wasn't an enemy, and therefore his guards kept only a lax watch over him. They hadn't bound his hands, nor had they bothered to frisk him before locking him up.

He examined the room's four walls. They were built from large blocks of stone stacked one on top of another. One of the stones seemed slightly loose. With a day's work, he'd be able to wiggle it out of the way to create a passageway for himself. He checked his pockets and found his knife, still there from his days spent living in the forest, before he'd become Ido's squire, then Nihal's. The blade was a bit blunt, but it would do just fine. He only needed to scrape away the lime mortar between the loose stone and the stones around it.

Without stopping to rest, Laio kept busy at the wall for the entire day. Only at mid-morning and mid-afternoon did a guard enter to bring food and check on him. On both occasions, Laio realized how sharp his senses had become during his long voyage with Nihal and Sennar. He heard the guard approaching with enough time to sweep the lime dust into a corner and toss his blankets over it. Then he sat in front of the stone, blocking it from the sight of whomever entered.

By his second night as a prisoner, he was ready to make his escape. At nightfall, he wriggled out. Luck was on his side—the guard was dozing in a corner. Laio crept up to him on tiptoe and withdrew the sword hanging from the guard's hip. Then, wrapping himself in a black cloak, he hurried toward the fence surrounding the base.

Reluctantly, he was forced to abandon the idea of taking a horse. To pass through the main gate would be too complicated. Better to climb. He chose a point along the fence that seemed the most scalable and the least patrolled, heaved himself up, and dropped down on the other side.

Once free, he took off running for the woods.

He raced as fast as his legs would carry him, sprinting at first, then slowing to a jog as he began to tire. His plan was to get as far from the base as possible before daylight came and they sent someone on his trail.

He wandered aimlessly through the night. Only when the sun began to creep over the horizon did he think about where to go. He knew he needed to head toward the border, and to avoid stumbling into the battlefront, but the information he had on the region was over a year old, from his days living at the base, and he wasn't sure how far the enemy line had advanced since then.

Reaching the edge of the forest, he rested for a moment, considering his next move. His familiarity with the geography of the Land of the Sun was negligible, with the exception of the road to Makrat. As he strained to remember even how to reach the border, he felt utterly lost. He hadn't the slightest clue what to do next, and his journey seemed over before it had begun.

He exited the forest and stepped out on the plain. As he traveled across the vast landscape without encountering a single soldier, he decided that this might be the best point at which to cross the border. All morning, he hiked. The bold determination that had inspired his journey had already waned, and he began to feel stupid for having disobeyed Nihal's and Nelgar's orders.

As he drew near the border, he noticed a black line along the horizon. Before him, in the distance, stood the vast array of the enemy troops. Crossing the border here would be out of the question. As if things weren't already bad enough, he realized he had no food or water, and so much distance still left to cover. His only choice was to seek out the nearest village.

After a half-day's travel, he spied the first houses of a small village. It was nothing more than a sparse gathering of huts, ten at most, built around an oblong central square. The war front wasn't far off, and fear had stripped the town of its inhabitants. There was, however, one inn, with a tavern where he could fill his stomach and a covered stall fit to shelter animals and humans alike. Fortunately, Laio was carrying quite a bit of cash. He was the one in charge of managing all finances during his travels with Nihal and Sennar, and he kept the money on him even in his sleep.

He ate, and afterward decided to ask someone at the inn for advice. The owner, a bear of a man with a bulging belly and a jolly face, seemed trustworthy enough. He inquired about the current situation on the front.

The man glanced suspiciously at Laio, his eyes dropping immediately to the sword at his side. “You're not a solider?” he asked.

Laio blushed. “I'm a squire, and I need to reach my knight.” In some sense, his story was true.

“The fighting's going on about ten miles from here,” the innkeeper replied, more relaxed. “There are soldiers stationed basically along the entire length of the border. Only the Sershet Mountains are unoccupied. Not even the Fammin show their ugly faces around there.”

So, he'd have to trek through the mountains. From what the innkeeper had said, the journey was likely to be a long one, and Nihal and Sennar had gotten quite a head start. Laio did the math in his head and figured that if he spent all of the funds he had left, he'd have enough to buy a horse and provisions for the entire trip. As soon as he had finished eating, he made these purchases, mounted his new horse, and set off.

He galloped as fast as he could. Even if he managed to cross the border, he would still have to find Nihal. He had no clue which direction she'd taken or where the sanctuary was located, nor could he risk asking around any of the villages once he'd entered enemy territory.

Brushing aside his fear, he tried to think things through logically. The sanctuary had to be located somewhere accessible, as the previous three had been. And once they'd grabbed the stone, Nihal and Sennar would make for the Land of Night by the shortest route possible. He could intercept them there, in his native land. His father had fled when he was still only a child, but he'd described the region to Laio in countless stories. The squire was quite certain he'd be able to find his bearings there. With his mind now set at ease, he turned toward the Sershet Mountains.

Four days after his departure, his climb began. Luckily, he had a general idea of how the mountain passes were laid out; Ido had spoken about it while Laio shined his armor. His recollections of Ido's tales, however, were vague and contradictory, and in the end, he decided to plunge through the first pass he came across. A decision he'd soon regret.

He galloped hurriedly toward the pass, taking no precautions. Arriving at the path's entrance, he was greeted with a sudden and violent snowstorm; by the time he came within sight of the fortified wall, a thick cloud of white flurries shielded his view. The trail, as it seemed to him, was in excellent condition. He praised his good fortune and spurred his horse onward.

He was speeding along untroubled when, without warning, he found himself standing before a group of Fammin who were patrolling the mountain pass.

The second Laio caught sight of the approaching enemy, he turned and fled at full gallop. The first to fall was his horse, but Laio did not let that discourage him. As soon as he hit the ground, he sprang back up and took off running up the mountain, sword in hand. The last time he'd clashed swords with anyone had been back at his father's house, when Pewar had forced him to fight in a duel against one of his underling soldiers—a pointless battle, his father's ploy to convince him to become a knight. Squeezing his hand tighter and tighter around the handle of his sword, Laio did all he could to keep from losing heart. If he died now, it would all be a waste.

His manic sprint came to an end at the foot of an extensive rock wall. There was no hope of getting by. Only one option remained. Laio turned and launched himself in attack at the Fammin. He succeeded in wounding one of them, but before long he was overcome. He felt the blade of a sword pierce his shoulder and an excruciating pain course through his body from head to toe. He fainted, falling into enemy hands.

12

In the Desert

Nihal had often wondered what her land was like. In her mind, she'd always pictured it as a place of magnificent beauty, filled with rich forests and pure streams, where the sun always shone and it was eternally spring. At times, in her dreams, she'd seen images of vast landscapes, cities, majestic palaces. But the scene she looked upon now could not have been further from what she had imagined.

Before her stretched an endless plain of dull yellow. Rising up from the parched landscape were blobs of clustered buildings like grotesque caricatures. The structures were linked by a web of white roads, broad and straight, that cut across the ground like a wound. All around rose tall columns of smoke that polluted the air. A few patches of trees had sprouted here and there, but their leaves were of a dull, dying green.

Nihal scanned the landscape. Nothing but desolation, bleak and monotonous. To the east lay a languid desert, its dry, gold fingers creeping toward the plain. To the west, an immense stretch of pale green, splotched with black puddles. A swamp.

It was there that something caught Nihal's attention. Strange white structures loomed over the sickly green. She wasn't sure why, but the image stirred something in her mind. She closed her eyes, and her memories bloomed with vivid colors. She saw the Land of Days as it had been fifty years earlier, before it fell to the Fammin's fury and the Tyrant's cruelty. She saw a luxuriant landscape rich with forests and immense pastures upon which flowers painted a colorful mosaic. And there were several cities with resplendent white spires rising toward the clouds. To the south, she saw a lake, the sky so lucidly reflected upon its waters that it seemed a piece of the firmament itself had fallen from the home of the gods as a gift of gratitude to the land's industrious people. And forests in every direction, lush, boasting every shade of green: dark where the vegetation was most dense, light where the trees were sprouting their first leaves, emerald where the water rushed from springs. This was the Land of Days. This was the land her ancestors had occupied for centuries, the land she knew she belonged to, the land she loved deeply and unquestionably. The one place where she'd never feel like a stranger.

I'm home. … Finally, I'm home. …

She opened her eyes and reality overwhelmed her. All that she'd envisioned had been erased. The forests devoured by the desert, hacked down by the Fammin to build their barracks. The prairies and flowers suffocated by smoke. The pure water and clear air siphoned off by the Tyrant. Years of merciless rule had destroyed all that was precious, and not a memory remained. Nihal alone possessed the last scraps of memory. She was the only one capable of envisioning her land with the gaze of one who had lived there.

“Nihal, what is it?” Sennar asked, concerned.

Nihal shook herself back to the present. Her cheeks were wet, and she realized she'd been crying. She dried her eyes with the back of her hand and pointed into the distance, toward the swamp. “Seferdi once stood there. The capital, the White City. The crystal of its royal palaces was said to be the most brilliant in all the Overworld, its bright gleam visible for miles.” She indicated a point farther to the east. “Over there was the Bersith Forest, beloved by Nammen.”

“But … how do you know?” Sennar asked in a whisper.

“I saw it. The spirits, they showed me. What have they done to my land?”

Sennar stepped closer and wrapped his arms around her.

Descending into the valley, they spared no precaution, seeking out the least traveled, least accessible trails. The journey would take longer, but at least they'd avoid any unwanted confrontations. From what they'd seen, the vast plain of the Land of Days was crawling with Fammin.

It took them one extra day of hiking, and as evening fell, they took refuge in a dark, damp cave that they'd spotted from the mountainside. There, Nihal hurried to consult the talisman. Throngs of voices chattered incessantly in her head. It required an immense effort to concentrate. In the end, she was able to perceive their next direction.

“In the desert, a palace … farther east.”

“Wonderful. This whole Land's a cursed desert. …” Sennar muttered. “It took us two weeks just to reach this burned patch of ground. And it's freezing, even though it's spring.”

They decided to stick close to the mountains until the cities were behind them and they'd reached the first stretches of desert. During their first few days of travel, they felt at ease in the shadow of the Sershet Mountains, where there seemed to be no guards and no villages, only desolation.

As time passed, Nihal grew increasingly distant and distracted. When Sennar tried to initiate conversation, she replied only in monosyllables. She was tormented ceaselessly by the voices in her head. It was like a chant, a rhythmic pattern, beating in time with her footsteps, and almost always incomprehensible: words, voices, sighs, shouts, disconnected phrases recounting stories of death and carnage. Come nightfall, when she finally managed to doze off, the torment persisted in her dreams, to the point where she could hardly wait for her shift as night watch.

Trying to picture what the desert might look like, Nihal imagined vermilion sunsets over a sea of rolling sand dunes—a desolate landscape, though charged with a certain savage beauty.

The place they reached at dawn on their fifth day of travel, however, was utterly different. Here and there was the supple curve of a dune, but for the most part the land was bleak and arid, covered in gray gravel. Even the rare outcroppings of vegetation had a touch of harshness to them, the plants brownish or acid green and covered with long thorns and strange-looking flowers. They stretched grotesquely toward the leaden sky, casting menacing shadows over the land.

It was cold. Hardly a ray of sunlight penetrated the blanket of dark clouds above. The hours passed, each indistinguishable from the next. Dawn would begin as a pale glow in the east, tingeing the gray clouds white before the day unrolled between the eternal shadow of the clouds and the cawing of crows. At the end of it all came the squalid, sallow sunsets that carried off what little daylight was left. Nights were passed shivering in silence.

After three days, their provisions ran out, and they were forced to nourish themselves with some roots they'd collected at the edge of the desert. They still had water, but no more than a week's worth, and they hadn't the slightest idea how much longer they'd be traveling. In every direction, they saw only more desert, more gravel, more of the godforsaken twisted plants that seemed to be taunting them.

Little by little, they lost all perception of time or how long they'd been trudging though the desert. Night followed day, the light grew brighter, the light grew dimmer, and neither could say which way was east or west. They were in the middle of nowhere. Nihal was close to losing her mind and Sennar felt completely powerless.

“Not another step!” Nihal howled suddenly. She fell to her knees. “Get me out of this place! Get me out! Make them shut up! Shut up!”

Sennar rushed to her and hugged her. Just then, a frigid wind rose and whipped across the desert.

“We have to find cover, now! A storm is coming!” Sennar shouted. Nihal lay motionless on the ground, as if she hadn't heard him. “Listen to me, Nihal. You need to get up!” the sorcerer insisted, but she was paralyzed.

Sennar lifted her in his arms and set off running blindly through the wind. The dust had risen, blocking his view, and he couldn't even employ a spell to set them in the right direction because he hadn't the slightest idea where he was supposed to be going.

“Stay strong! The storm will pass in no time, you'll see,” he encouraged her, though she made no reply. “Speak to me! Say something!”

He felt nothing but her cold hand against his chest, gripping his tunic.