The Stair Of Time (Book 2) (11 page)

Strength of Will

The ride up Hooktooth Hill was proving much more difficult than Eli had anticipated.  It had rained most of the night, and was sprinkling off and on still, turning the road to Sarilla’s house into a slipping, sucking mudslide.  Fortunately, the ruts beneath were hard-packed and covered, at least in part, by pine needles—else what was difficult would have been impossible.

Every minute or two
Eli glanced over his shoulder to check on Mandie.  So far, she seemed to be weathering the ride quite well, looking every bit as cozy as she did in her own bed.  Hoping to soothe his frayed nerves, he began to sing a song his grandfather had taught him when he was just a boy, a tune he often sang while working in the fields.

Through drought and storm, wind and fog,

A farmer plows to earn his grog,

When the ground is hard and full of rock,

A farmer plows to fill his crock.

High ya do ri day,

High ya do ri do,

It’s up at dawn and away we go!

Yes it’s up at dawn and away we go!

The longer he sang, the more lighthearted he felt, his voice rising to meet the road head on.  It was really quite beautiful up here, now that his disposition allowed him to notice.  The forest passed close on either side, mist lingering between the shaggy trunks of hickory trees before dropping into a narrow ravine that fell away steeply to his right.  Broad shelves of rock jutted here and there like the blades of buried axes, remnants of a forgotten battle waged by giants—or so Eli liked to think.

A farmer plows to keep his house,

A
farmer plows to feed his mouse,

A farmer plows to
please his wife,

A farmer plows to
live his life.

High ya do ri day,

High ya do ri do,

It’s up at dawn and away we go!

Yes it’s up at dawn and away we go!

The
next time Eli glanced over his shoulder, he felt sure that Mandie was smiling.  A faint, barely discernible curving of the lips, but a smile nonetheless.  He had sung to her when she was a baby, and with her when she was older, and it had never failed to make her smile, especially when they sang, as she put it, “One of his
silly
songs.”

A farmer plows to get the goose,

A
farmer plows to slip the noose,

A farmer plows to
earn his keep,

A farmer plows to
shear his sheep.

High ya do ri day,

High ya do ri do,

It’s off to work and away we go!

Yes it’s off to work and away we go!

T
he farther up the hill they went, the denser and more primeval the forest became, limb and leaf conspiring to block what little light the day offered.  Soon, a twisting canopy formed above, the branches so tightly woven that Eli could see nothing of what lay beyond.  The shadows deepened until it was nearly dark as night, the tendrils of mist now coiling about wheel and leg alike, covering the ground in a ghostly shroud that made the song die on his lips.

Another few yards and the
forest tunnel was complete, so much so that he would have lit a torch if he hadn’t sensed that it was forbidden.  At this point, it would not have taken a lot to convince him that he was now underground, deep within the bowels of some castle ruins, lost in a sinister labyrinth crawling with malevolent creatures intent on his destruction.

His brow furrowed, lantern jaw jutting in defiance.
  “What sorcery is this?” he asked.

Neither Marnie nor Mandie had mentioned anything like
this.
  Surely they would have, considering how suddenly the trees had closed in, looming close, suffocating and grim.  The air reeked of stagnate, mosquito-infested pools and rotting, worm-ridden timber.

Must not have been
this way for them,
he reasoned. 
Probably some contrivance of the witch to scare off unwanted visitors.

“It won’t work!” he bellowed.  “You hear me, Sarilla?  It’s Eli Johansen at your door, and I’m carrying some mighty precious cargo!  It’s gonna take more than
a bit of sorcery to scare me off!”

No response.  His voice carr
ied little better than a whisper and, if anything, the trees crowded closer.  He’d never been claustrophobic before, but this was getting to be too much even for him.  The air grew more fetid, swarming with gnats and biting flies.  Soon his shirt was soaked through with sweat.

Hours later, despite his stout heart, noble purpose, and brave words, Eli found himself on the verge of turning back.  If not for the swath of blue that appeared with such suspicious fortuitousness around the next bend, beckoning to him from beyond the gloom, he might have done just that. 

“Thank
The Watcher,” he muttered.

At long last, he’d come to the end
of the trail and, in all likelihood, the top of the hill.  The sky had apparently cleared while they were in the tunnel, supporting his assumption that the pall surrounding them now was as unnatural as it was abhorrent.

The end
lay no more than a hundred yards ahead, calling to him with the sweet promise of rest and sanctuary—of answered prayers.  And although he didn’t trust it, he found himself spurring Bo forward with lusty abandon.  After all, false hope was better than no hope.

Eli
was suddenly overcome by an inexplicable euphoria that was so intense and so unexpected that it made him gasp. A broad grin spread across his broad face as his mind was purged of worry and grief.  He couldn’t help it.  So complete was his relief that he laughed aloud, earning a curious and somewhat reproachful glance from Bo.

He shrugged his shoulders at the horse
, as if to say, “I don’t know.  I don’t understand it, either.”

But t
his isn’t right,
he thought, his grin faltering.  I mean, what possible reason did he have to be euphoric?  Suspecting some enchantment was at work, he ordered his heart to re-embrace the anxiety expected of it in situations such as this.  But to no avail.  In fact, in spite of his best efforts, he felt his many burdens continue to drift away, one after another, leaving him more at peace than he’d been in years.  A state which, all things considered, he found
very
unsettling.

The disparity of emerging from the tunnel into the clarity of a bright spring day was enough to make Eli jerk back on the reins.  He surveyed his new surroundings with watering eyes, blinking against the sudden brilliance like a newborn emerging from the womb.

Ol’ Bo, usually calm to a fault, whinnied in surprise, or
consternation, or both.  Eli didn’t pretend to know the minds of horses—especially ones as stubborn as any ass and as old as the hills. 

Bo
tugged against the reins hard enough that Eli had to plant his feet against the buckboard and haul back with all his might.  “Whoa!” he shouted.

Bo
tossed his head with manic force, fighting him.

“Whoa there
, Bo!” he shouted again, feeling the enchantment lift. “What’s gotten into you?”

Bo
half whinnied and half screamed, rearing up onto his hind legs.

“Don’t you do it, damn your mangy hide!  I said
WHOA!”

Either
responding to the panic in his master’s voice, or to something of a more…bewitching nature, Bo shook himself, snorted, stamped, and finally began to settle.

Eli wrapped the rei
ns around his gloved right hand and set the brake with his left.  “I know, I know.  I’m feelin’ a might out of sorts myself, but you’d better get a hold on yourself, boy.  Remember, you’re carrying my darling daughter in the back today, and I’ll knock ya in the brainpan with my shovel, love ya as I do, before I let ya harm my Mandie!”

Without another word, good ol’ Bo, ever t
he reasonable cuss, lowered his head to chomp on some grass, a patch that looked especially thick and green, savoring each mouthful as if it had been his idea to stop in the first place.

Now that Eli’s eyes had fully adjusted, he could see that they were indeed on top of the hill, or rather at the edge of its grassy, treeless crown.  At the
exact
top stood a cheery looking cottage, bright, canary yellow planks basking in the sun above a short skirt of cobblestones.

The forest crowded against the crown on all sides
, no doubt halted by another contrivance of Sarilla’s.  How powerful must a spell be to impede, much less halt, a forest of such obvious contrariness?  Of course, if it was
her
forest and it did
her
bidding…well….  Eli shuddered.  Some thoughts were better left unfinished.

A
s if this weren’t enough, he could now see that the sky had not cleared, after all.  A translucent, concave barrier rose from the crown to form a dome a mile across and The Watcher only knew how high, its boundaries partially delineated by the surrounding atmosphere. 

Thick c
umulus clouds hung above the forest, heavy with rain, pressing against the walls of the dome, dark and ominous in both affect and action, flashes of lightning branching across the heavens with pyrotechnic splendor, arcing off the sides of the dome as though angry at being held at bay by the likes of a witch woman named Sarilla—greatest soothsayer ever to live or no.  

Surrendering to a feeling of less than wholesome character,
Eli turned around, checking to make certain the tunnel—his escape route—was still there.  It was there all right, although it comforted him not at all.  The thought of re-entering said tunnel, now so like the vile esophagus of some deranged beast, made his gut churn. He shivered and turned back around, praying the witch would show him another way down.

Assuming
, that is, she would even speak to him.  She had made it all too clear during her infrequent trips to Fairhaven that she did not look favorably upon uninvited guests.  Hopefully, since Mandie was the one in peril, and she and Sarilla had been on amicable terms, she would make an exception.  Hopefully.

Into the Waste

At nineteen, Kindere Muldune had been the youngest scout in the Rogarian cavalry, a thrice-decorated officer of what had been coined, predictably enough, The Shapeling Wars.  Kindere had been a hero of the highest order, respected by men, admired by women—and all before he was old enough to grow a proper beard. 

The trouble was, now that he was twenty, having celebrated his birthday just last week, he was bored
to tears.  Every day was the same, seeming, after all he’d been through, unbearably bland.

So,
he asked himself,
where do I go from here?  What do I do?

Now that the war was over, and the shapeling threat had been eliminated, there was very little, beyond training exercises, for the scouts
to do.
  Before the war, there had at least been the
threat
of invasion.  Nobody had thought it would actually come to that, but in the interest of knowing thine enemy, they had been sent out on deep reconnaissance missions to keep an eye on things, never knowing from one day to the next what they would find.

What
’s my purpose?
  Kindere asked himself. 
What’s the point of it all?
The way things had been going, he felt like a complete waste of skin.  Surely, there was more to life than merely eating, sleeping, breathing, and training exercises.

And then it hit him
.  No man, woman, or child had crossed The Waste in recorded history, in part because of the shapelings, and in part because of the lore.  Some believed The Waste was endless, the boundary between this life and the next, home to naught but deadly foes and lost souls, a sort of purgatory for the damned.  Others believed The Waste was literally the physical edge of the known world, much like sailors do with uncharted seas.  Supposedly, if one walked far enough into the desert, one would simply fall off the end of the earth and go spinning into space.

No matter what one’s
beliefs regarding the purpose of The Waste, all seemed to agree on one thing: it was teeming with every manner of mythical beast known to man, most of which had little to nothing to do with The Lost One and his shapelings. 

Naturally, there were dragons
—burrowing sand serpents that tunneled beneath the desert floor, winged air serpents that breathed fire from the sky, and even wingless behemoths that shook the ground for miles around as they lumbered past.  In addition to dragons, there were trolls, goblins, harpies, giants, dark elves, skeletons, lizard-men, bear-men, and snake-men.  And that was only scratching the surface.  Indeed, it was said that to venture too far into The Waste was to court death like a fair day dandy courts girls.

Of course,
Kindere thought this was utter nonsense, made up by folks with too much time on their hands, folks attempting to liven up their mundane lives with the romantic notion of strange and dangerous creatures lurking just beyond their purview.  It was this, coupled with your everyday run-of-the-mill fear of the unknown that had created these myths—the dynamic duo of worry and drudgery that fueled humankind’s unquenchable need to catalogue everything, to attach a name and story to that which they did not understand in order to feel less vulnerable, less adrift in a world subject to seemingly random and, ofttimes cruel, acts of fate.  After all, what was more frightening?  An enemy you know and understand, as awful as that may or may not be, or an enemy that remains a mystery, and thus can become anything the imagination devises?   

If Kindere had believed in even the most modest part of the most modest legend, he probably wouldn’t be doing what he was doing now.  What, in fact, he’d been doing for the past three days—namely, riding boldly due west into the desert, heart and mind alight with sun-drenched dreams of fortune and fame.

And that’s what it was, damn it. 
All
it was.  The Great Waste, the source of countless nightmares for generations of Rogarian children, was nothing more than a big damn desert.  “There has to be something on the other side,” Kindere had often argued.  “It can’t just go on forever.”  And now at long last, he was going to find out what that something was. 

The four kingdoms were surrounded on three sides by what sailors
considered uncrossable ocean, and on the fourth by The Waste.  It had been theorized for centuries that this finger of land representing the known world might, in actuality, be a peninsula sprouting from a much larger continent.  It was an unpopular view, dismissed by the scholarly elite out of hand as preposterous, but had endured for a reason—no one had been able to disprove it.

It had also been theorized that,
instead of enchanted waterfalls cascading over the edge of the world into space, oceans flowed between massive continents, of which the four kingdoms were but a small part, cut-off from the rest of the world by untold leagues of water and sand.

That was the other roadblock to enlightenment.  What would it do to their view of the universe, not to mention their preeminence, if they
discovered that they were not only
not
alone, but not even the most formidable kingdom in the land?  Much better to remain ignorant, to be a big gem in a small crown—or so most believed.

There was a whole nother world
out there.  Kindere knew it.  He felt it in his bones.  It was just that no one had gone far enough yet.  Leastways, no one had gone far enough and returned.  Perhaps they had discovered something so miraculous that they didn’t want to return. 

If Kindere had been a sailor, he probably would have set out, sai
ls a-flappin’ in the breeze, to disprove the myths concerning sea monsters, the edge of the world, and the like.  But he was not a sailor, he was a desert scout, and as such felt it his duty to humankind to cross The Waste and disprove the myths concerning
sand
monsters, the edge of the world, and the like.  After all, the myths were obviously linked, forged in the same fire, shaped to a keen edge by two of humankind’s most talented smiths.  Fear and pride.  Disproving one went a long way towards disproving the other.

Kindere had
personally asked King Laris for permission to go, for the necessary equipment and supplies, as well as the appropriate fanfare due a venture of this magnitude.  To his relief, the king had approved the journey, instructing Kindere’s commanding officer to spare no expense.  To Kindere’s disappointment, however, he had not officially—in other words, publicly—sanctioned the expedition, believing Rogar’s sense of self was too fragile to weather either success
or
failure.  Hopefully by the time Kindere returned, things would be different.

Determined
not to be discouraged by his anonymity, Kindere pored over what maps he could, calculating the best route to take.  There was a lot to consider.  Average day and night temperatures, topographical layout, and areas most likely to have water and shade, just to name a few.

According to the latest map he’d found,
there existed a network of underground caverns no more than forty miles west of his current position where there was cold spring water, edible plants, and even fish.  He would have to meander his way across The Waste until he left what he’d come to think of as “The Quasi-Known-Zone” and crossed into the vast, unexplored reaches of Kadra-scorched sand, replenishing his food and water stores as he went.

There was no way to know how far the desert stretched, but his gut told him no more than
four hundred miles, and he’d learned to trust his gut.  The desert had been partially mapped for about seventy-five miles.  If he could set out at that point, at that last way station, with full rations and a rested horse, he just might make it.  If, on the other hand, the desert neither came to an end nor provided enough food and water between here and there, then he would not only be unable to return, he would be dead.

As s
obering a thought as this was, he would not be deterred.  Nothing risked, nothing gained.  As far as Kindere was concerned, if a man dies doing something he believes in, something that truly matters, then it’s all right.  He can die in peace.  In the end, we all must pay the reaper his due.  It’s simply a question of how and when.  His uncle taught him that.

If, on the other hand, he dies while on a pointless training exercise, or with fever in his bed, or after putting the wrong foot forward down a flight of stairs, his heart would weep with regret for the things he never
tried, for the squandered opportunity to truly live.

And so it was, with head raised in defiance against the witherin
g sun and countless leagues of desert, that Kindere rode west atop his trusty mount, Trika.  Would they find the end of The Waste, or, like so many before, would The Waste find an end to them, leaving nothing behind but grinning skulls buried in the sand?  Only time would tell.

Whichever way it
turned out, Kindere would be at peace, for he would have done as his heart commanded without allowing fear to crush his spirit.  On this day, more than any other before, he was a man, and he intended to stay that way, without giving or taking quarter to the bittersweet end.