The Keeper Of Nimrah - A Sample

The Keeper of Nimrah

Written by Raora aka S. Johnson

A half-stifled scream ripped through the air, and the echoes leapt back from the crumbling walls of the ravine. Jaron stopped breathing. His feet skidded to a stop in the loose gravel that crunched under his splitting leather boots, and half-turning, he looked back. Barely three minutes ago he had given the dying man down there his sworn word that he would not look back. But he did anyway. He could not stop himself.

The body lay limp and unmoving, slouched against the carcass of the fallen horse. The name formed on Jaron’s chapped lips, hoarse and cracked. “Jamin…” Barely more than a whisper, but somehow it carried back down to the rocky floor of the ravine, and Jamin opened his eyes. He was still alive. He did not look at Jaron, not even for a second. That would have given him away. He just stared blankly up at the masked shadows above him and a single silent word slipped through his gritted teeth, contorting his face. “Run.” There was no sound at all, but Jaron read the shape of it on his lips. Still he did not move. With tremendous effort, Jamin sucked the air into his collapsed lung, and whispered, “Run.” And then the spearhead drove through his chest and lodged in the crumbling red rock beneath him.

For a moment Jaron stood still, in spite of everything, and bit the inside of his lip until the slippery skin burst and blood stung his mouth. The taste shocked him to action, and he blinked hard and sprinted out of the ravine.

He stumbled out onto the hard dry footpath that twisted along the brink of the ravine and ran. Blindly, but with every nerve alert, seeing everything, hearing everything, feeling the late afternoon breeze on his sweating face and the ripping red agony in the thin gash that twisted under his arm and across his ribs. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of a dark figure running parallel to him along the bottom of the ravine, less than a bowshot away. A moment later the sound of quick, hard footsteps on the path behind him jarred his practiced ear. They were after him. There were at least two on his trail, and there were sure to be plenty more lurking in the mountains on every side.

He left the path and struck out across the ragged wilderness and up the side of a boulder-strewn hill. It was steep going. He ran like a hunted deer, twisting and zigzagging, looking for a way out - somewhere to hide. Bronzed, muscle-hard legs leaping over the hillside, sweating even in the cool stillness of a spring evening. Firm set lips, almost calm. He had long since given up hope, but he never panicked. He was far beyond panic now. One moment he was sprinting up the hill, a dusky figure among the lengthening shadows. The next, he flung himself on the ground behind a giant red boulder.

He pressed himself into the shadow of the rock, pulling his knees in, and leaned his head back against the stone. Then he froze every muscle, by sheer strength of will, and fought to control his heaving chest, which felt ready to collapse on itself. For several minutes, he heard nothing. Maybe he’d lost them. His right leg started cramping. He did not move.

Then he saw them. One of them, at least. It was coming straight towards him, from the other side of the hill. Framed in the slanting light of the still brilliant sun, it was just a faceless black figure, still far away, sharply outlined. Jaron sat perfectly still, willing himself to be invisible. The shadow of the rock was the only cover he had. Maybe they wouldn’t see him. But the knot of fear pulsing in his stomach told him that they already had. His fingers inched their way to his belt, and closed around the hilt of his broad hunting knife, as he mentally measured the shrinking distance between them, timing the moment for him to leap up and make his last stand.

Suddenly a crunching footstep behind him, directly on the other side of the rock, made his blood run cold. That must be the other one. He did not dare turn his head, even though he knew they must have seen him.

The next moment there was a wooden creak and the snap of a bowstring, and the black figure heading for him stumbled and then crashed to the ground with a hoarse, half-human shriek.

There was a voice, right behind him. “Jaron?”

A man appeared from behind the rock.

“Akin?” Jaron whispered, disbelieving his eyes. The strings of tension stiffening his face slackened.

Chapter One - Bridia

For a moment it lingered above the horizon, a disc of glowing fire, burning on the brink of the vast expanse of gray hills looming dark against the pale sky. Then it slipped into darkness, swallowed up by the grim shadows. It left the western sky ablaze with brilliant shades of crimson, gold and violet, wrapped in swathes of blue. But, all around, the sky was swiftly darkening as the glow of the departed sun began to fade, and in the northeast a seething legion of heavy-laden storm clouds streamed just over the shadow of the mountains, promising a fierce battle in a few hours. Here and there a star could be seen, glistening feebly somewhere just beyond the circle of light, where the ominous darkness crept in from every side.

"It is gone," Jaron said beneath his breath. “The night comes quickly.” He stood very still on the narrow path, like a gray statue, slender and very tall, and beneath the ghastly mask of red dust and dried blood that crusted his face, he was very young. There was a long narrow scar across the left side of his mouth and his dark hair lashed wildly about his face in a tangled frenzy. He was wearing a worn tunic that made him blend in with the dismal rocky surroundings and a belt adorned with intricate patterns was bound about his waist. It bore an empty leather quiver, a curved knife with a hilt of darkened birch-wood, and a long scabbard. A double-bladed war axe was slung on his back, and he carried a long grey bow that was almost his equal in height. The left side of his chest was gashed open - a thin, shallow wound twisting across his ribs, exposed to the frantic wind through a wide tear in his clothes. His cloak was tattered and his hands were stained with dark blood up to the wrists - his or his enemies or both.

"Jaron." A voice ahead called his name, and he looked down. In the deepening twilight, the surroundings were dark and deceptive. Scattered over the hillside, gnarled scrub oaks struggled for existence among the massive boulders that dotted the landscape. The immense rocks, often taller than a man, lay strewn all around, menacing shadows in the gloaming, as if some giant had hurled them down from the mountains long ago, in some forgotten age of the world. Sometimes he was almost certain they were moving. Farther down there were groves of wild olives eking out an existence on the barren hills and crags, but not here, and farther up even the stunted oaks dropped out of existence as one approached Haran. Nothing grew in Haran. As far as anyone knew, nothing ever had. It was all empty red rock, bare of any living thing.

This was the wasteland of the northern mountains of Haran, the straggling foothills that stretched for several miles before the real mountains began. To his right, a short distance away, there was a steep ravine of broken earth that crumbled into the shadows below. He could just see across the empty gulf to the opposite side, gray and sinister in the growing dusk. He could see the mountains far off in the distance on his left, so immersed in shadow that he could no longer make a distinction between shadow and mountain and they looked more like phantoms than anything else. But they were real, he knew that much - too real. That was the mystical haunt of the Mahdai warriors.

There was a road that wound through those hills, and came out on the other side, an old highroad that was called the Entyra, but he never went out that far - none of the men of Bridia did, nor did anyone from the wide lands south of the mountains. It was forbidden ground to them, and with good reason. For though no one ever spoke of it, everyone knew that somewhere out there in the wilderness of towering mountain peaks, rocky gorges and steep cliffs, there was something else besides the savage hordes of blood-thirsty mountain Mahdai warriors. They called it Marok. The age-old evil that had defiled Haran past all redemption. And somewhere out there, lost in the unbroken darkness that no starlight could ever quite penetrate, the shadow of the mountain fastness of Nimrah kept the land paralyzed with an ancient, half-remembered fear.

No one knew where to find it. No one wanted to try. Sometimes on long winter evenings the women crooned their children to sleep with timeworn songs of the Battle of Nimrah, songs that no one remembered to have written, and few remembered where they had come from. Occasionally, on blustery nights when the weather was wild and there was a rough storm blowing itself out on the frozen windswept waste outside, a wandering story-teller would sit in a fire-lit hall and strike up an old tune on some weathered harp, and tell the story of Nimrah of Haran in order to earn some supper and a night’s lodging. To the people, it was little more than a legend, but the men of Bridia knew better. They knew well enough that there was something deep within the mountains that the legends of Marok had been built upon - something real. But like everyone else, they avoided it as much as possible and only Jaron and a few others fully knew how very real the threat was. He sighed and closed his eyes, remembering.

And then out of the dusky stillness, a long hollow note sounded from somewhere so far away that it seemed to come straight out of a dream. He shuddered as the lonely horn call rang faintly through the ravine, rousing the mournful echoes and shattering the calm. The Mahdai were awake. When the twilight deepened and the dusk fell and the grayness of the world chilled the hearts of men, then they awoke. Scarcely anyone ever saw them. Four years ago, during the war of Eor, the men of Carasul had defeated them beneath the walls of the city and driven them back into the mountains.

But still they stole through the darkening land, clinging to the shadows, and sometimes they would come all the way out to the edge of the hills. A deep coldness preceded them and followed in their wake. They did not go past Bridia - Jaron made sure of that. He lived to keep them from ever doing it again. No Mahdai had set foot in Ayta for four years, and that was a long time, in the reckoning of the men of Bridia. The men of Carasul paid no tribute to Nimrah - not yet. But the prophets use to say that a time was coming again when the Mahdai would forsake the shadows and men would forsake the sun. They would break, like everyone else, and the shattered fragments of the Kings of Ayta would tumble into the dust of no return.

"Jaron," the voice called again.

"Yes, Akin, I am coming." He took one last glance at the fading light above the hills, and then stumbled down the steep rocky path. The effort strained him, and he winced and pressed his hand against his wound. It came away stained with red.

"Are you alright?” his companion asked as he came down. “Watch the edge.” He was many years older than Jaron, a battle-scarred warrior with a lean, wolfish face and the fierce black eyes of a hunter.

"Yes," Jaron replied, and smiled grimly, "I have walked this path every night for many years, Akin. I know where the edge is." But he nearly stumbled again as he spoke. Akin held his hand out, and helped him down to more level ground. "It is getting dark," Jaron said.

"I know. A little ways further. I think we can reach the caves before the light is completely gone."

"The Mahdai will come soon," Jaron said in a low voice. They will follow us as soon as the darkness falls, and if we have not reached the caves by then they will kill us. I cannot fight again, Akin."

"We will reach the caves. They are swift, but they are not wizards. They cannot ride the wind. Look there." He pointed a ways ahead to where the ravine widened and its ragged cliffs gave way to a deep valley, "Bridia is down there. I can just see the ruins of the north tower. It is hard to tell in this light, but the caves cannot be more than a half a league away. They are probably not even that far."

"You should not speak so loud," Jaron reminded him quietly. "There are others abroad that would be glad enough to mar the sundown with another death, or stain these rocks with the shedding of more blood.”

"No doubt. I am sorry.” A moment later he went on in a soft voice, “Jaron. What happened last night…”

"I do not want to talk about last night, Akin,” Jaron interrupted quickly. “Jamin is not coming back - leave it at that. We do not forget things, up here in the mountains, but sometimes it is best not to speak of them. Remember, and be silent."

"Jaron,” Akin began, and then stopped short. His voice sank to a whisper. “Something is moving beyond the red boulder to your right." Jaron stopped abruptly and stood as still as the stone in question, following Akin’s hand with his eyes to a dark shadow a hundred yards ahead.

“I see it,” he said quietly. His fingers tightened around the long bow. “They are here. Mahdai. I knew they would come. And we are so close. So very close.”

“I think there is only one, Jaron.”

“There is never only one. And right now one might be enough to take us both. I am not strong enough to fight them again.”

“Are your arrows spent?”

“Yes. And the string is wet. They have finished sporting with Jamin and have come back for us.”

A moment later a cry rang out from a ways ahead.

“Jaron! Akin!”

Akin smiled. “It is Aldain. Not any of your phantoms after all. Aldain! Up here!” The figure below rode up the path towards them and dismounted. He was a tall man, clad in the garb of a scout, his face all but hidden in the folds of his hood. But a pair of shadowy eyes stared out at Jaron from beneath a dark mane of unkempt hair.

“My lord.”

Jaron smiled grimly. He took a step forward, but caught his foot on a stone and collapsed into the man’s arms.

“I am sorry.” Aldain said softly. “I should never have let you go.” He lifted him up as lightly as a child and set him on the horse. “But now we are safe. I will take you to the caves and Elial will clean that wound, and then you will sleep. Tomorrow everything will be well again. Come.” He took the reins and walked the horse back down the path. Akin followed close behind.

“I have been looking for you for almost two days,” Aldain added under his breath to Akin.

“He has been sorely wounded. I did not find him until late yesterday afternoon. He was in a terrible fever all night.”

“Mahdai?”

“Yes. What else? It is a miracle that he lives at all.”

“What of the other? Where is Jamin?”

Akin shook his head. “I think he drew them off. He is gone. The only reason Jaron is alive.”

“I was afraid it would be this way,” Aldain said quietly.

“He will not speak of it."

“We cannot let him leave the caves again.”

“No.” They continued walking along the crumbling path. It was all but dark now and only the faintest hint of crimson graced the western horizon. Everywhere else the night had fallen, vast and forlorn, and on every side the harsh, lonely cries of the mountain jackals pierced the otherwise unbroken silence. The path before them grew indistinguishable and uncertain. Some fifty yards away a lofty precipice rose into the sky directly in front of them, sinister and ominous in what little light there was. And then, a little ways ahead, they saw a dim light shining from a great height above them. Then another one, lower down, on ground level. And then another, a ways to the left.

“Look,” Aldain said in a low voice. “Elial has lit the lanterns for us. He has lit them every night since you left, trusting that you would come back. We are nearly there.”

He quickened his pace, and soon they came up to the entrance of a large cave in the cliff-wall ahead of them. Three guards in long dark cloaks raised their spears to let them pass, and from somewhere within the cavern there were low voices. Several of the men, tall dark men heavily armed, ran out to meet them; they bore smoking torches that smelt strongly of scorched animal grease and the unsteady flames trembled back and forth, casting flickering shadows on the wall. Aldain took Jaron off of the horse and set him on his feet at the entrance.

Jaron leaned against the wall of the cave and pulled his torn shirt over the wound under his arm. Then he slipped the hood of his cloak off. A cry of ecstatic surprise rose from the men, and in a moment he was swept off of his feet once again and carried into the cavern, amid a wild tumult of questions. Someone had run ahead and they could hear him crying, “Jaron has come back!” Aldain smiled and followed them.

Akin gave the horse’s reins to one of the men, but before he went in he spoke softly to the guards. “Keep a close watch tonight. Put three extra men at the outer gates.”

A quarter of an hour later the men of Bridia, some thirty or forty of them, were seated cross-legged around a blazing fire inside the largest cave, and in the back several of them were setting a low round table of rough wood with whatever meat they had in store then. It was not much, but there was new wine that had been sent up from the valley, a thing that did not happen often, and that was enough to get their spirits up in spite of the scanty fare. It had already been opened, and the men drank freely.

Jaron was sitting on an old wolf skin, leaning against the wall. He and Akin had told every one very briefly what had happened; how he and Jamin met up with the Mahdai on their way back to the caves, how they had killed Jamin. Now there was an awkward silence. A silence that was somehow familiar, because they had all faced it so many times before. At length Jaron stood slowly to his feet.

“I am sorry that I could not save him,” he said in a quiet voice, staring at the ground. “The men of Bridia have learned well the lesson that there is little that separates life and death. A few moments of laughter, a few moments of pain. Many others of our companions have been cut off without warning. And one day our time will come. But, at the least we can know that if there is any place for valiant men beyond this bloodstained world, then the men of Bridia will sit at that table. And even if there is not, the memory of the Heroes of Haran will live on with us, and no Mahdai killer from the accursed depths of Nimrah itself will ever take that away.”

A reverent silence fell over the chamber. Then he lifted his head and asked in a clear voice. “Will you drink with me?” The men stood and raised their wooden cups. “To Jamin.” He could have said something else, but he knew that nothing he could say would move them so much as that name, and so he drank to Jamin only. They all repeated the toast and drank, and afterward there was a heavy silence.

As he felt the cool liquid on his lips, a treacherous mist sprang into his eyes and the shapes of the men, the cups in their hands, the wooden table, the crumbling walls of the cave - all faded into indistinct grayness and he could see nothing but the fire, the raging tongues of flame leaping upward towards the low blackened ceiling, the dark heat, the smoky light. A blinding white pain pierced the left side of his body, and he fell against the wall. The half empty cup slipped from his fingers and crashed to the ground. Aldain ran to his side and held him up. The wine spilled out in a crimson pool around the cup and someone refilled it and set it on the table.

“Take me to Elial,” Jaron murmured, “and have the men eat without me.” Aldain took him out of the cave and as he went out, Jaron heard them questioning Akin.

“You did not tell us he was wounded,” one of them said.

“An ill-omen,” someone else muttered.

Outside it had started raining. The sky had been clear an hour ago, but already the storm that had been brewing in the north had swept down with a fury. “Will you go to the upper caves?” Aldain asked.

“No. I have not the strength to climb tonight. Where is Elial?”

“He is not far. I will take you to him. Come.” He half-carried Jaron along the base of the cliff to another cave, much smaller than the last.

“Elial is in there. I do not know why he did not come up tonight. Have him clean that cut and bind it up. Do you want me to come back for you when he is done?”

“No. I will stay here. Tell the men that I have had a little hurt and I will not see them tonight.” Jaron stepped up into the unlighted entrance and, holding onto the wall for support, he stumbled in. Aldain watched until he disappeared in the darkness and then he sighed and went back.

“Elial?” Jaron flung the question into the shadows. It seemed a long time before he received an answer. But it came at last, and the voice was gentle and scarcely audible.

“So you are come back.”

“I am.” A few moments later the dim light of a lamp lit up the dark room. It was quite small, with a low roof, and it was bare save for a couch of animal skins - mostly jackals - in one corner and an assortment of stone and clay jars of all shapes and sizes in the other. The man who had lit the lamp set it on the ground and came forward. He was a dark young man with long lank hair the color of a newborn wolf’s pelt. In one hand he held a shallow clay bowl half filled with a cloudy liquid.

“You came back,” he said again, and his mouth twisted into a half smile.

“I told you I would.”

“But I didn’t believe you.”

“Elial,” Jaron said slowly, his eyes on the ground. “Jamin is dead.”

He nodded. “I thought it might be that way. I am sorry.”

Jaron shook his head, speaking frantically, and trembling. “My quiver is empty, Elial. I stood on the cliff as they came and shot them down, I do not know how many. The dry ground ran with their blood. But it was not enough. It is never enough!” He lowered his voice. “And then I left him. Left him with the Mahdai, half dead, and ran.”

“You couldn’t save him.” Elial set his hand on Jaron’s shoulder and lowered his voice. “It was not your fault. At least they did not take both of you.”

Jaron twisted out from under the gentle weight on his shoulder. “I do not need anyone to tell me that. I failed him. All of you - again.” He stumbled and fell to his knees. “I need water.”

Elial half-carried him across the room to the couch, and laid him down on it, breathing hard. He untied Jaron’s sword-belt and set it against the wall.

“Keep it within my reach.”

“I will.” Elial took the bow off his shoulder and set it beside the sword. “You will have to let me take that shirt off,” he said, and he began to strip it off with agile fingers. He tossed it into a corner and brought a jar of water and a coarse cloth.

“Drink some of this.” He poured some of the water out into a wooden vessel and put his arm under Jaron’s head as he drank.

“How bad is it?’ Jaron asked, straining to look at the torn skin, bruised and plastered with half-dried blood.

“It is not terribly deep, but it is not a clean cut either. What was the weapon?”

“A crooked knife. Akin tied it up, but it festered over night.”

“I thought as much.” In the lamplight his face was drawn and anxious.

He made as to turn away, but Jaron seized his wrist. “Tell me the truth. Is it poison?”

Elial shook his head. “No.”

The grip on his wrist tightened. “Swear that it is not poison. If I am going to die, I want to know.”

“Trust me, Jaron. I have never yet told you an untruth. It is nothing more than what would happen to any man slashed open with a Mahdai blade. But it will take awhile to heal completely. You will have to stay here for several days.”

“I will not be able to stay here long,” Jaron said in a low voice, but Elial did not hear him. He bathed the wound with the wet cloth - the soothing coolness relieved the burning pain somewhat - and then he lifted the clay bowl off of the ground and washed it out with the liquid. Jaron winced and ground his teeth. “What is that?” he asked with an effort, “It is like Mahdai poison.”

“It is stone-water from Ismara,” Elial said softly. “It will purify the wound and soothe the pain so you can sleep.”

But Jaron heard him speaking through a dark red haze that throbbed in his head and clouded his mind. The lamplight wavered and trembled and became an intense white fire that flooded the room until he could see nothing else. He flung his arm over his eyes to block it out. A rush of terrible pain stabbed at him and he gave a cry of agony as he felt the flesh on the left side of his body being torn with a sharp crude coldness that burned like fire from the underworld.

“No! Elial! Please!” He felt a hand on his sweating forehead and the white fire faded back to the flickering flame of a dim oil lamp. Elial was kneeling beside him, binding the wound up in a long strip of cloth. There was a small knife on the ground beside him that was dripping dark blood onto the dusty floor. The pain did not subside for awhile.

“I am sorry,” Elial said gently. “I had to do it before I wrapped it up or it would not have healed well. It is over now.” He wiped the knife clean and put it away somewhere among his other tools. When he came back, he sat down and put a cool cloth on Jaron’s brow. “If you make it through the first night then you will be alright in a few days. It is not as evil as I first thought. You will be able to run again soon.”

Jaron was not listening. “Do you remember Bridia?” he asked, staring up at the smoke stained ceiling with a strange look in his eyes. “Not the miserable caves that we skulk in now like hunted wretches running from a hound. The old Bridia. Can you remember the city in the valley before they burned it? Can you remember the sunlight coming through the windows in the morning? Can you remember all the men that fell there, fighting on the walls with the setting sun in their hair? Their faces come to me at night sometimes when I am alone, and then I curse myself and wish I were with them.”

“Jaron.” Elial spoke softly, so softly that his voice could scarcely be heard above the wind outside. He ran his fingers gently through Jaron’s dusty hair. “Do you remember the prophets?” It was a question, not a remark.

It was a long time before he got an answer. But Jaron spoke at last, and his voice was broken. “Yes. I remember.”

“How long has it been since you saw Maldek?”

Maldek. Maldek the old prophet. Yes, Jaron remembered him. “It has been a long time now. Last I saw him was nigh on three years ago, but it seems a great deal longer. He was at Carasul when I came back, where he and Galmir were leading the attack on the Mahdai. The one that sent them flying back from the walls of Carasul like frightened crows. But he left soon afterward. He never told me where he was going, and I never asked. I do not think anyone has seen him since the war.”

“You do remember?” Elial asked, and unmanly tears filled his eyes.

Jaron bit his chapped lip so hard that a little bead of bright blood sprang up. “Remember what?” he muttered, sitting up. “This?” Jaron jerked violently on a worn leather thong that he wore around his bare neck and it snapped and came off in his hand. There was a small irregularly shaped piece of ivory strung on it with one word engraved on its smooth surface in a flowing script: Ertherok. “I have worn this ever since I was a child,” he said, fingering it slowly. He held it up to the lamplight, and it shimmered faintly. “My mother hung it around my neck the day I was born. Maldek came to Carasul on the day of my birth and gave it to her. I never took it off.”

“I have seen it many times, but I never asked you what it was. Is it a life-charm?”

“No. At least, I never thought of it like that. It is a piece of ivory. But the word that was written on it, the Ertherok, that is what made it sacred to me. I wore it for her sake, and I wore it for the prophet’s sake, and I wore it because I believed in what it said, like they did.” His lips were set in a hard line and the scar across his mouth grew very white. His stormy eyes had lost their flame, and they were very dull and gray, and looked as if they could never cry again. “But she is dead now,” Jaron went on in a leaden voice, “and Maldek left us, Bridia is lost, and Narith and Laytha are dead. The hope that men once had in that word is also dead. And I will not wear it any longer.”

The charm slipped off and dropped to the ground. There was a hollow ring as it struck the stone floor. Elial watched it fall in silence, every muscle in his body strung taut like the cords of a harp. Jaron did not look at it, but he gripped the broken thong in his sweaty hand until his nails bit into his flesh and he realized what he was doing and let it fall.

“You need to sleep,” Elial said quietly.

“Sleep? I can’t sleep.”

“Lay down.”

“I don’t want to sleep, Elial. They’ll come back. The dreams.”

“No they won’t. Not tonight. I will be here. Lay down.”

He pressed rigid fingers into Jaron’s chest and shoulder, compelling his reluctant body back onto the stiff skins. Jaron lay down, knocking his head against the hard floor that shoved up under the shallow pallet in a gesture of half-hearted defiance. “Close your eyes,” Elial whispered. “Come on.” And Jaron, accustomed by long habit to doing whatever Elial told him, sank his eyelids down over the dry hurting in his sore eyes, and slipped behind the soft darkness.

He slept. Nervous, fragmented sleep, nodding in and out, sometimes so close to waking that the only thing between was the hair’s breadth of shadow sheltering his eyes, and the light and the face above him started fading onto the scarred surface of his consciousness. But sometimes so far and deep that there were many unremembered worlds flooring the great gap from reality.

The hours crawled, but there is no relation between hours here and hours in the place where dreams are made, the place without clocks. Elial never moved from the side of the couch, except to bring water and cloth to wash Jaron’s sweating face. It was uncomfortably cool in there, and Elial had a jackal skin flung around his shoulders, but Jaron never stopped sweating. It was a violent sleep, and he moved almost continually, rolling and tossing and sometimes muttering strings of fractured words. The clouds that no one saw got slowly heavier and thicker, hanging low over the caves. They were almost ready.

It was still dark outside when Jaron got tired of sleeping. Something roused him, some unidentifiable sound or motion or thought, which had its origin in the things around him or came from inside his own mind. He opened his eyes - the stain shapes on the ceiling leapt onto his vision, glaring back at him. It was time. He sat up stiffly. Elial rubbed the blinking sleep from his eyes and leaned forward. “Are you alright?”

Jaron stood carefully to his feet. “Ask Akin to get me a fresh horse.”

“Why?” Elial asked, without moving.

“I am riding to Carasul.”

Elial sprang to his feet, instantly worried. “Do not be a fool, Jaron.” His voice had a new edge to it. “You know that you are not strong enough to make that journey.” He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “I know how much you want to go,” he said softly. “I know.”

“She is waiting. Last night, I saw her there. And the night before. She was waiting.”

“It was a dream, Jaron.”

“I know. But she will be waiting. I promised I would come. I promised I would be there. I have to go.”

“You are mad.”

“I am not. I will come back to Bridia soon. Very soon. I swear.”

“You are not yourself. You were nearly killed last night. You have lost much blood and you are very weak.” He lowered his voice, “She will not remember that promise. A year is longer than you think.”

“That is a lie,” Jaron muttered fiercely. “Don’t ever say it again.” Elial frowned sullenly. “You have cleaned the wound,” Jaron went on. “There is nothing else to do. I will send Galmir up with a fresh company to keep the pass until I come back.”

“I will send for Galmir, if you command, but I am the healer right now, and you will not go anywhere until I say you are able to.”

Jaron turned on him fiercely. “Is that so?”

“It is.”

Jaron’s eyes blazed. “I am the King’s son, not a sick child,” he said between clenched teeth. But even as he spoke his step faltered and he nearly fell.

“You have started it bleeding again,” Elial said quietly. “You are weary and the fever is heavy on you. You do not know what you are doing. Lay down.”

“No. Give me my knife,” for Elial had taken the sword belt up from the ground when he got up and he held it.

“I will not. Your sword is gone, and you are out of arrows. Wait until I can send and have it made ready.”

Jaron pulled his wet shirt back on. “Give it to me.”

“No. At least wait for the dawn. You will never make it to Carasul alive if you journey in the dark. The new moon is not until tomorrow. You have time. Wait till tomorrow.”

“It is tomorrow!” Jaron insisted, exasperated, and wrenched the belt away from him. “I have been sleeping for hours. It will be light any minute.” He stumbled to the entrance of the cave.

“Let someone come with you!” Elial ran after him and grasped his wrist. “Jaron, you cannot do this. Please.” But Jaron did not listen. He jerked himself free and thrust Elial away from him. “You are cruel to make us face this again,” Elial said quietly. “We only just got you back.”

“Have you ever found anything in this life that was not cruel?” Jaron shot back, without turning. Elial said nothing, and Jaron staggered out into the rain. But, before he left, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Elial was standing at the entrance, lamp in hand, looking after him. The ivory charm was pressed to his lips. For a passing moment Jaron’s eyes lingered on the warm lamplight, and then he turned and the darkness swallowed him. A blast of freezing wind swept into the cave and the lamp went out.