Darkburn Book 4: The Haunt of Ternss by Tayin Machrie - HTML preview

Chapter 12

“We shouldn’t be moving on so fast,” protested Rothir. “We have no idea where we’re going.”

Parthenal peered into the gloom. “I don’t see why we need to stop. Our route lies straight ahead, and there are no obstacles, not so much as a bush for miles. So we’re hardly going to walk into a tree, are we?”

“We could walk into anything,” retorted Rothir. “A ditch.”

“We’d see that,” said Parthenal.

“After you toppled into it headlong.”

Parthenal reached over and patted his arm. “Stop worrying, dwarf. We’re not going to topple anywhere. We can still see for a hundred yards.”

“Much less than that,” said Rothir, who felt a sharp alarm. “Beyond that, it’s like night.”

“A dim brown night, though, not a pitch-black one.”

Rothir thought his friend was much too sanguine about this unexpected freak of the weather. A fog-bank? It was more than that. Rothir had never seen a fog-bank descend so evenly – so menacingly – and then hover twenty feet above the ground. Was it a spell cast by their enemy?

Whatever it was, they were all riding through this dimly-lit underworld, or undercloud, with the dirty red-brown roof above them. It was the colour of earth but formless. He would have thought it was a sand-storm, but there was no wind. Most unnatural. Rothir felt as if the foggy ceiling might just fall, collapse, at any minute, like a landslide, and bury the whole Vonn army underneath it.

“I wonder what Leor thinks of this?” he said, turned round to look back for the wizard. Although he could just see Leor in the gloom, gazing upwards, he could not stop and wait for him without holding up the progress of the other Riders.

And Huldarion seemed determined to keep marching on. His horse was barely visible at the head of the train, in the shadow of the dark cloud-ceiling; yet he showed no slackening his pace despite the drastically limited view.

“We know where we’re heading for,” said Parthenal with aggravating ease. “And the faster we keep going, the sooner we’ll be through and out the other side. Oh, for stars’ sake. What now?”

Just in front of them, Yaret’s horse had halted suddenly, causing exactly the sort of blockage that Rothir had wanted to avoid. Other Riders cried out in warning and reproach as they were forced to swerve around her.

She was still stationary when Rothir and Parthenal pulled their horses up alongside hers. Maeneb too had stopped to see what was the matter.

“It’s Poda,” said Yaret, a little shamefacedly, shaking the reins without effect. “She doesn’t want to move. She doesn’t like the cloud. And I don’t want to whip her on, because she likes that even less, and I can’t say I blame her.”

“She’s always been a nervy animal,” said Rothir. He allowed Narba to walk up to Poda until the two horses were close enough to rub shoulders, the black beside the glossy chestnut, so that their manes combined. He imagined himself similarly rubbing shoulders with Yaret, his dark shaggy hair against her rusty brown; and immediately shook the idea off as a foolish whim.

“Give Poda a few moments with Narba and Alda. She knows them well,” he told Yaret. “When she sees them moving off, she might decide to follow. Parthenal? Keep Alda on Yaret’s other side.” He reflected that riding was not second nature to Yaret as it was to the men and women of the Vonn.

She rode better than Tamu, however. As he came up, his companion Leor stopped, but Tamu had some difficulty controlling his small horse: he ended up several yards away with it stamping underneath him.

Parthenal turned his head away so that Tamu would not see his smile. Rothir was glad of it, because his friend was not always so considerate. He could be cruel to those he took against. But he did not generally take against the weak or vulnerable.

“Well, this is unusual, isn’t it?” said Parthenal, gesticulating upwards. “Ever seen anything like this before, Leor?”

“I… no,” said Leor. He looked slightly dazed.

“Is it something we should be worried about, do you think?” Maeneb asked him.

“I… no,” the wizard said, again. “I think… it is probably benign.”

“Only probably?” queried Rothir.

“How can you be sure?” asked Yaret. “I’ve never heard of any phenomenon like this. What makes you think that it’s benign? It could be some trap set by your enemy. Adon.” She voiced Rothir’s own concern, but Leor shook his head vigorously.

“It is not,” he answered with conviction. “He has nothing to do with this. Of that I am quite certain.”

“Really? Why?” asked Rothir.

“Because I know magic.” And Leor raised his head to stare up at the massive cloud with an air almost of triumph.

Rothir and Parthenal looked at each other. Parthenal shrugged.

“Good enough for me,” he said, and glanced over at the archivist. “Are you riding on, Tamu? Leor says it’s safe.”

“In a minute,” said Tamu with a sort of gasp, tweaking the reins ineffectually. Parthenal turned his head to hide another smile.

But now it was Rothir who was impatient to move on; for while they lingered, most of the army had passed and overtaken them, disappearing into the murk ahead, although a number of the carts were still trundling some way behind.

“See if Poda will follow us now,” he told Yaret, and nudged Narba into a slow walk.

Poda did not want to follow. She half reared and then skittered crabwise until she stood next to Tamu’s equally reluctant horse.

“Whoa!” said Yaret. “She’s still not happy.”

“Dismount, and I’ll lead her,” Rothir suggested.

So she did, while Parthenal and Maeneb looked on impatiently, and Leor kept staring at the cloud.

Poda was just as unwilling to be led as to be ridden. She tossed her head, pulling at the harness.

“I expect Eled could persuade her,” said Yaret wistfully.

“Perhaps,” said Rothir, his mind suddenly filled with the image of Eled, the horse’s original owner. Such a good-natured, brave young man, before his injury. Poda’s nervousness had caused that when she threw him from the saddle. Though perhaps the horse had also saved him afterwards, by luring away the darkburn that pursued him…

All so long ago. So much had happened since. Rothir stood still for a moment while a small unseen cloud of memory enveloped him. Then he shook his head, and put it in a box, and encouraged Poda once again to Move! Instead the horse swung her lowered head from side to side.

“You’d best ride on,” said Yaret. “She’s bound to follow you eventually.”

By now the carts were catching them up. Another Rider trotted over from them to offer help; although Rothir realised glumly that this wasn’t a Rider after all, but Piril, one of the maids from Kelvha Castle, who would be even less experienced with horses than Yaret. She was riding Yaret’s moth-eaten hack Helba.

“Is she at a standstill? My brother always said, if all else fails, try an apple,” said Piril. A quietly-spoken young woman, he thought she easily went unnoticed – a talent she had probably honed within the castle. Yet, surprisingly, here she was, accompanying the Vonn. She produced an apple from somewhere in her drab clothing.

“No, no, you don’t get it yet,” Yaret told Poda as the horse reached its nose out. “You have to walk for it.”

Even with the apple as bait Poda was slow to move. By the time she deigned to walk, the last of the Riders up ahead were barely visible, melting into the brown shadow of the cloud. The carts and carriages were rolling slowly past some fifty yards to their left.

But having crunched the apple Poda began to strut forward, with lofty dignity, and they could all move on. Rothir was relieved. Although the trail of hoof-prints and wheel-ruts left by the army was easy enough to follow, it would be disconcerting to lose sight of the actual train itself. He strained to see into the gloom ahead; the vague outline of the hindmost Riders was just visible.

“Where’s Jebil?” he overheard Yaret say.

“Languishing in the Lady Meya’s carriage,” came Piril’s murmured answer.

“Languishing?”

“Still,” said Piril.

Meanwhile Parthenal, who was riding back and forth on Alda, reported that they were travelling in the right direction. “But those carts are going off course,” he added.

Rothir looked across at the carts and carriages, shrouded in a deep veil of shadow. They were now a hundred yards away instead of fifty.

“Perhaps. But not by much. We should keep following the main army.”

“Maybe I should ride back over to the carts and make sure they know where they’re going,” suggested Piril.

“Don’t do that!” said Rothir. “Poda might just stop again if you ride off. Better stay together.”

“They shouldn’t get lost,” Parthenal reassured her. “They’ve got a good strong trail to follow.”

“Many things can make trails,” said Tamu, and then looked at the ground as if he wished he hadn’t spoken.

“They can, it’s true; but not out here,” said Parthenal with kindly condescension.

“In any case,” Yaret told Piril, “you’d probably get lost yourself, because I can’t see the carts at all now.”

Neither could Rothir. They had disappeared quite suddenly. When he listened he could still hear the faint trundling of the wheels, but the twilight underneath the cloud had swallowed up all sight of them.

“They’ll just have to look after themselves,” he said. Turning to face front again, he swore under his breath. In the few seconds that he’d looked away, the rear of the army had also disappeared into the gloom. There was nothing but the trodden grass to guide them.

Rothir felt the weight of responsibility descend upon him, as oppressive and inescapable as the cloud. He had left Kelvha with a carefree heart; but it could only ever have been a temporary respite. The habit of responsibility was ingrained in him, he was all too aware. He peered into the gloom, in vain: his view was confined to a band of shadow.

“Leor? Can’t you give us a bit of light?” begged Parthenal, half-jokingly.

“Light?” said Leor, as if he barely heard. He looked quite distracted. In fact, Rothir was not convinced that light would help. He felt as if this cloud would somehow smother light: absorb it.

“Let’s just keep going,” he said. “We can follow the hoof-prints.”

So they rode on, the seven of them close together, along the trail marked out in mud.

“This strange weather has to clear sometime,” remarked Parthenal after a while. “Leor, what do you think?”

“I can’t tell,” the wizard answered. Tamu cast him a quick, thoughtful glance.

“Ah!” said Parthenal. “I saw that look. Tamu, perhaps you know something that we don’t?”

Tamu cleared his throat. “Um, no, nothing useful,” he murmured. “I’ve never read about anything like this in all my books.”

“And I suppose that’s what really counts,” said Parthenal lightly. The archivist stared at the ground. Parthenal, with a faint smile in his voice, added, “Actually, any shred of booklore about this type of weather would be very welcome.”

“I don’t have any,” muttered Tamu.

The rumbling of the carts had faded from their ears entirely now. Well, thought Rothir, the carts will find the path eventually. Parthenal is right – this cloud must clear, or lift, some time… so long as we aren’t all riding round in circles.

For the hoofmarked trail ahead of them was curving to avoid a ring of low, weatherbeaten rocks, the remnants of some ancient habitation. Once they had gone round those ruins, however, the track appeared to stretch out straight again.

Until, suddenly, it didn’t. There was an unexpected splash. Instead of muddy grass they found themselves floundering through water.

“What?” said Leor, as Bryddesda’s hooves sprayed small fountains. “Where are we?” He spoke as if he had just been awoken roughly from a dream.

“In the water,” answered Rothir curtly. He allowed his horse to walk on, but with great caution. Narba was splashing up to his fetlocks in murky shallows. At least it didn’t seem to get any deeper; but it only needed to be an inch deep to completely hide the army’s trail.

“They must have ridden through this,” Parthenal called out to the others, “so we shall too.”

“Is it an overflowing stream, or a pool?” asked Yaret.

“So far as I can tell, there is no current.”

“And it smells fresh, not stagnant,” Piril observed.

“Wetlands,” suggested Parthenal. “Perhaps this is the beginning of the Red Roads, which as I understand are actually shallow waterways. In which case, we can expect a lot of this.”

Rothir rode on ahead of the others, Narba tramping sturdily through the water. Although its surface was a dark mirror showing and reflecting nothing in the gloom, it remained only a few inches deep at most. Beneath Narba’s careful tread, he could feel the ground was firm: there was no sticking of his horse’s hooves. Indeed, it sometimes felt as hard as rock. None the less he was wary lest it should suddenly grow deeper.

Leor, however, charged on, splashing noisily and recklessly past him with no such fears. Rothir found himself almost willing the wizard to flounder in an unseen sinkhole, as payment for his lack of caution.

But evidently Leor’s confidence was justified; for he cried out, triumphantly, “It’s getting shallower! I see the end of it. Yes! Here’s the shore!” The wizard turned to face the others, grinning as if he’d saved them all. Rothir could see that Bryddesda’s hooves stood once again on grass, and felt a surge of thankfulness.

“The end of it?” said Maeneb doubtfully. She was staring out beyond Leor, into the broad gloomy tunnel created by the overhanging cloud. Rothir lifted his eyes from the water to look out for the Vonnish army.

No army could be seen. No living being at all. But there was something in the gloom, only thirty yards ahead, unmoving.

As he rode out of the water onto squelching turf, the thing took on a firmer shape. It was as broad as it was high, and flat-topped, uniformly grey: a looming, murky tower built out of shadow.