It was Frysan who greeted Kal and Galli on their return from the Well. He stood watch alone at the mouth of the Cave of the Hourglass. Miserable and dispirited, Kal remained oblivious to Frysan's questions. He was in no mood to talk, not even to his own father, nor to Galli, keeping an obstinate sullen silence, except for the stream of reproachful murmurs that percolated from his lips like brackish water seeping from a soggy downland spring. He muttered to himself—something about "once a knave, always a knave"—although it was not apparent whether he was angrier at Relzor or at himself.
It was Galli who stopped to explain to a puzzled Frysan what had passed at the Well. Morosely, Kal made for the side chamber, where Wilum lay drifting between states of unconsciousness and delirium, still hovering dangerously near death. All the others, adults and children alike, had finally drifted off into sleep, even Gwyn, who had been keeping quiet vigil alone by Wilum's side, after Gammer had done all she could, using her goodwife's knowledge of herbs and simples, to heal him of his wounds. Kal fell to his knees beside the broken man and began to weep. At the gentle noise of it, Wilum's eyes flickered open, and his gaze swam for a moment before focusing on Kal's face. The old man smiled almost imperceptibly, barely lifting the corners of his mouth, but his eyes closed and opened again in consoled recognition of his young confrere's presence.
Kal had lost track of the passage of time, when he finally left the still form of his mentor and crept unseen through the main chamber of the Cave. He skirted the body of sleeping Holdsfolk and drew near the mouth of the cavern. The low voices of his friend and father grew audible, and Kal hung back in the shadows, listening and watching the two men in the moonlight.
". . . so he's taken his sneaking revenge on us twice, the muckworm wretch! I'd never have trusted him." Frysan shook his head slowly, then said, "But, on thraganux? On the night drake? Can you be sure, Galligaskin?"
"Re'm ena, but that's how it happened!" exclaimed Galli. "The beast carried them off and the Talamadh with them. It was all I could do to keep Kal himself from flying back down the Stairs to recover it again. If Narasin and I hadn't held him back—you should have seen him kick—and him being the sole Hordanu, now that Wilum's on death's door—"
Frysan fixed the young man with a stare of raw incredulity that made him falter in his account.
"It's no lie, Frysan, I tell you," Galli said in a soft voice. "Your son is now Hordanu. I heard it with my own two Telessarian ears. Wilum made him Hordanu in the boat, this very morning, while the three of us were out on Deepmere, on our way from Raven's Crag Island."
"You speak nonsense, Galligaskin Clout. This is absurd. How can you make jest at a time like this?"
"By the Stone, Master Frysan, and by all that's sacred in Ahn Norvys, above or below, I swear, it's true. You and all the other folk would probably know it was true by now if Relzor hadn't stove in Wilum's poor old skull. By Right of Appointment, Wilum called it. He said he'd announce it to all the folk in due course, excepting the occasion never came. You know well enough Kal's knack for languages. That's why Landros sent him to Wilum in the first place. Yes, I was sent as well, but we both know that was as much for the sake of friendship as anything else. And you know how Wilum's taken a deep liking to Kal and has explained to him reams of detailed things about Hedric's Master Legendary that most folk, even hereabouts in the Holding, scarce know about. Deeper matters than this plain brain of mine will ever be able to ken—though there are times, I know for a fact, when even Kal's been bewildered by it. And then, there's all that care that Wilum was taking to teach him lore that's been hid since the Age of Echoes, I don't doubt, or even earlier, centuries before the likes of the echobards ever set foot in Arvon."
Frysan turned from Galli and sat on the ground, leaning against the rock face of Thyus, his arms resting on his knees. He laid his bow beside him and rubbed his face with his hands. The younger man kicked at the rocky ground with his toe and continued speaking. "You could tell at every turn that Wilum was favouring Kal, giving him knowledge of things such as remain a mystery to common Holdsfolk. I don't doubt that even Thane Strongbow himself doesn't know a tithe of what Wilum told Kal. Although Kal would never admit it was happening, like he was embarrassed by the attention he was receiving. So he fell to talking all the time, like he was protesting, about how much he was looking forward to becoming a full-fledged wheelwright like his father, like you, Frysan." At this Frysan lifted his head, looking Galli full in the face.
"If you ask me plain, I think Cloudbeard was lonely, worried as he was by our good and right royal master Gawmage," continued Galli in a sardonic tone, a grin on his fair face, "and set at naught besides by so many bards that should have been paying him their respects and asking his advice and begging his judgements, him as bore the sacred office of Hedric. And laughed at as a throwback, even by certain folk in the Holding itself." Galli stepped towards Frysan and dropped to the ground, sitting beside him. "So there you have it. Your son, Kal, is now the sole Hordanu, or at least the only Hordanu as has his wits about him, although right at the moment I'm not so terribly certain about the wholeness of his mind or the soundness of his wits. Why, he was mumbling and grumbling like a surly mongrel dog all the way here." Galli's attempted humour was met by only his own chuckle.
"By the welkin, so that's what Wilum was trying to tell us." Frysan spoke low, then turned again to face Galli. "It's just that we couldn't understand what he was driving at. Even after you and Kal had left, and we supposed that all his strength was spent, and that he had begun to go out with the tide, even then poor old Cloudbeard summoned forth the energy to say it again, 'Kal . . . Kal . . . Hordanu.' His lips could hardly frame the syllables. But, for all that, they were so blunt that the point of their meaning failed to prick our thick skins.
"Aye, Galli, so our Kal is now Hordanu," Frysan said, shaking his head. "I'm thankful indeed that we have a Hordanu in the fix we're in. But to what end? Our Kal may be Hordanu, but he's a Hordanu without a glence, without a home, and what's worse still, without the prospect of living out the next cycle of the sun, for we're trapped here, as surely as rats in some fast-flooding forsaken dungeon hold in Tower Dinas. I and the others had nursed the hope that Wilum might somehow show us another way of escape, seeing as he's no stranger to the Enclosure. Now there's not a one of us that has his bearings or the least knowledge about this cave, let alone the whole Enclosure. There's not a one of us that has the faintest notion where we should even begin looking, if we're to break free of these confounded mountains. Not a one knows what spot it would be folly or wisdom to try."
Frysan pushed himself to his feet, clasped his hands behind his back, and began treading a path in front of the Cave's entrance. He stopped and peered past the stone pillar into the gloom of the interior, then looked back at Galli. "Ha, a fit place for us to be encamped—Cave of the Hourglass, and the hourglass is fast running out of sand. Far too fast for comfort or, to face the matter squarely, Master Clout, for hope."
"And those manuscripts that I carried up the mountain in the sack. They might have had some useful bit of advice for us amid all those riddling lines. I'm dead sure they would have."
"And sure dead we'll all soon be."
"That may well be, Frysan, but, still, it's too bad about the manuscripts. They're full of ancient lore about people and places in Arvon, and probably the Enclosure too. Or else they wouldn't have been so heavy. Although, I'd give a king's fortune to feel their weight again across my back. If we could get at them, Kal would puzzle it out. He'd gain some idea where we should look, I'm certain."
"I'm certain too," Frysan said, cracking a smile at Galli's trust in his son's powers.
"But, now even the sack is gone," continued Galli. "Who knows how deep it's fallen? Perhaps all the way down to the very roots of Thyus. Who knows? That leaves us here, waiting for the Boar to finish gloating over the cleverness of his attack on the Holding. Then, when he's made ready, he can turn his attention to catching the rest of us and making a clean sweep of it. 'The Broom' he called it. Kal told me."
Frysan had stopped his restless pacing and lowered himself to sit once more against the rock wall. He leaned forward, rubbed his ankle and sighed. "All the same, Galli, we mustn't despair. There has to be a way, even if we have to venture into one of the side tunnels. From what I can tell, there are a number of them that branch out from the central chamber. It seems the place is honeycombed with them."
Galli's eyes widened in a look of questioning surprise.
"Yes, I know," said Frysan. "A dire choice, but at least that way we'd stand a ghost of a chance."
"Perhaps, perhaps. But I wouldn't give much for our chances of escape through the tunnels. Wilum talked to Kal and me about the Cave of the Hourglass not too very long ago. It was last year, I think, just after the Candle Festival, when he was setting out to travel up to the Enclosure, eager to have some time to himself to think things out, with the spring air to clear the cobwebs out of his brain, he said. It was just after Gawmage had sent him an upsetting message, another threat, but this time there was a real edge to it. Kal and I, we were all ears, Wilum was unusually talkative. Normally, he would have sent me away and kept Kal by his side, filling his ears for hours on end with cryptic verses from every dim scarce-remembered nook and cranny in Hedric's Master Legendary. Well, this time he was in such a state—well, he never thought to bother sending me off. I'm glad that he didn't, for I hadn't heard anything half so fascinating since my own dear Gammer—bless her—had filled me with stories of the Hidden Folk and other shadowy creatures—well, like the gathgour. Mind you, they're not so thrilling to me anymore, Frysan. I'd just as soon never again have dealings with such as them."
Galli paused a moment as if to regain his train of thought.
"Well, the Cave of the Hourglass . . . Wilum said as how once, early in the Great Harmonic Age, not too long after Hedric's time, a Hordanu perished while exploring farther into the Cave, even though Hedric had warned them—his successors, I mean. He had warned them, because he knew well enough the dangers. Even the echobards were frightened of it, and by and large they were a fearless lot. They called the caves haunted, for not a one of them ever took to exploring them, but that he failed ever to find his way again to the light of day. A maze of tunnels, Wilum called it, more tortuous than anything human skill could devise. 'Lair of Demons' in the runic language of the echobards, he said to us, one of the few things he or anybody else in Ahn Norvys knows about runes and what they mean. One false turn was all it took, and you might be lost forever. The echobards believed that the passages beyond the Cave near as had a mind of their own, drawing a person to destruction. It sort of makes you think twice about the part of the Cave we're in now, doesn't it? I mean, how can the rest of it be so awful and sinister, and this part of it be all right?"
"Galli's description doesn't sound very promising, does it? But, I have an idea that if we tried going up rather than down, we might profit by it." Galli and Frysan started. Kal's voice sounded firm and equable again, but with a quaver, as if there was some great passion he was struggling to keep in check. He stepped out into the night air, looking up at the windswept starfield above the black mountains.
"What do you mean, son? How's Wilum doing?"
"He isn't long for this life," replied Kal, still facing away from them, as if caught up in some dark solemn world of his own. "It doesn't look good. His breath has begun to rattle and it's getting even more laboured. But, he understood me, and I understood him, I think. Yes, I understood him, after I had poured out to him how I failed him, failed him and the Holding miserably. I, a naive and overtrusting lout—now Hordanu. I, Kalaquinn Wright, Hordanu of all Ahn Norvys, from the Ocean Isles of the West to even the farthest-flung reaches of the shadowedland in the East . . . All the while I held his hand in mine, and even before the bitter words had died on my lips, he sought with his own free hand to press mine, and then his eyes flickered into life, like a dim spark thrown up from the fire that flashes bright for just an instant and then smoulders unremarked, one of a thousand pinpoints glowing, fading, as they swirl towards the dark heavens." Kal cast his gaze to the ground, as if embarrassed at the poetic flight his words had taken. "W-well . . . That's what his eyes looked like. Then, the rattling stopped, or it was masked by another sound, a change in the rhythm of his breathing, so that he closed his mouth every time he exhaled rather than keeping it open. Finally it dawned on me—fool that I am—that he was spending himself, spending the very last of his strength to frame some word of meaning for me.
"And Gwyn, he understood. He could tell what was happening, better than me. It was all poor Gwyn could do to make me see, so daft and slow I am to take up the meanings of things." Kal turned to regard both father and friend, his face soaked with the tears of quiet remorse. " 'Hope,' " Kal said, almost choking on the word. " 'Hope,' the old man had been trying to say to me, again and again, a dozen times or more, even while his hand sought to pressure me into understanding what he meant. 'Hope,' I said, once I had gathered my wits. 'Hope, no, Master Wilum, I'll not let you down by losing hope, I swear by the sacredness of the Stone and the orrthon and all that's holy,' I declared, oh, so boldly." Kal's voice, a cry whispered and impassioned, now cracked, broke. "I suddenly understood how, even in the teeth of death, he had not lost hope, and that he was passing it on to me as a gift, as a blessing, asking me to be its new bearer. I felt a strange surge of confidence, as if the virtue had been plucked out of his very mouth like a fruit, and its sweetness transfused into me, nourishing me. I can't explain the feeling.
"And he knew, he knew I had bridged the gap, that I had finally understood, for his other hand opened, revealing the pios, as if he was bidding me take it. So, I took it and thought I saw a smile crease the aged lines of his face, even as his eyes welled with tears. Then the message of hope that had been formed by the change in the pattern of his breathing ceased. His eyes closed and he returned to his earlier hold on life, except it seemed much more fragile. He began to look even more pallid. His breathing became louder, more shallow. I couldn't bear to look anymore. I felt that he had given me his leave, had got me to stop looking back, stop living in regret. He wanted me to forgive myself, to carry on, to look to what lies ahead."
Kal wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, drawing a deep draught of the cool night air. He exhaled a groan, long and low. "I left him with Gwyn. Gwyn's by his side now. You'd be hard put to find a better nurse. It can't be long now, I think. That's why I'm here. We've got to help him to pass on now. I mean, you should come to say the Prayer of Passage, now, father. You're the best of us that are left."
"But it's you, Kal, that must say the Prayer of Passage over him," Galli objected. "It's you that's the Hordanu."
"But—"
"No! No, it's up to you, Kal. You're Hordanu now."
"Galli's right, son. He's given you the food of hope. Now, it's up to you to swallow it. Else you'd be flying in the face of Wilum's express wishes, and it's not just his wishes that are at stake here. As it stands now, the whole situation is bound up in other holy terms that we may not amend, neither I nor any other person, for they were invoked by the Hordanu himself."
"But how?" pleaded Kal. "It was all done in such haste, with scarce much time for thought on Wilum's part—or mine. How can it count for anything, when it's you, it's you that's the wisest of all the Holdsmen that are left?"
"It's you that's Hordanu, Kalaquinn." Frysan stood now and faced his son. "It has nothing to do with age or wisdom. Re'm ena, you're like a squirming lamb trying to escape the shearer's blades, my son. The more's the pity, after Wilum as near as rose from his deathbed to stiffen your backbone and give you courage and then handed you his pios as a token. Come, son, there's an old man's passage waiting to be eased."
Frysan did not give Kal the opportunity for a remonstrance, but led the two back through the sleeping cave to where Wilum lay on a couch of matted rushes. Gwyn, who sat crouched on his knees in vigil, looked up, his eyes glistening in the half-light beneath his unruly shock of hair. He leaned more closely over the dying man, listening to the even deeper rattle that now buckled his laboured breathing, eerily magnified by the walls and roof of the death chamber. It was as if the aged Hordanu had in some strange way grown in stature in the gradual disjoining of his spirit from the ligaments of his flesh, so that the place seemed fraught with inexplicable emanations of his being and other beings besides.
In the strong presence of death, Kal had to be encouraged to begin his recitation of the Prayer of Passage, and, as he started to intone the terrible piece, he felt that he was entering into a strange combat with unseen powers. He shuddered, chanting the most dread of all the turusorans, for it charted a road that no living breathing vessel of mortal clay might tread, not until its own doom-decreed time of severing. The tones rose and fell and echoed in the dark cavern.
"You, spirits of the circle of deep heaven, anagoroi most glorious, I beseech you, that you will be assistant with this mortal man that now beginneth to depart, and that you will deliver him mightily from the awaits and fallacies of his adversaries; and that it please you to receive his spirit into your company. And do thou, O Tobar, O principal, O leading, O goodest of the anagoroi, who hast from eternity been ordained to be the warder and keeper of our spirits, do thou, chiefest helper, I pray and adjure thee, do thou now aid and help our brother Wilum, as he setteth forth on his journey . . ."
Galli had lit a candle and held it out before him, above the failing shell of Wilum's body. At length, Kal trained his eyes on its narrow golden fillet of flame. The glow from it spread a pool of radiance over Wilum in a shallow arc that, with every flicker, sent probing fingers of hooded light feinting and thrusting at the veiling night. The primal mystery of light and darkness was being played out before them within the close compass of that death chamber. They scarce dared breathe. Each was caught by the awful gutter of the candle and the lugubrious soul-searing chant. Kal's voice grew in presence, somehow more real, more solid, more tangible. Kal had become a keening spirit, his eyes glazed, blind to the chamber, to light and shadow, to the gathered Holdsmen, and to the life-drained body over which he prayed.
It felt to him, as he droned the words of the Prayer of Passage, that he himself was being lifted out of the containing envelope of his own body, and that he was as free and unencumbered as a skylark whirling in carefree circles of flight through the vast blue sky beyond the lowering confinement of the Cave. Coupled with this sensation was the notion that he was being swept along like a leaf tossed, turned, and pushed by an overpowering current of air.
Kal found that he was not alone. There were mysterious presences close by, luminous ill-defined pillars that looked on him ablaze with a benison of glory. Kal basked in their bright warmth. Then came a change. It grew chill, and Kal felt his aerial self trembling, shuddering with a nameless dread. The light-filled creatures became thin and diaphanous. Indistinct, too, remote and unreachable, not so much because they had undergone some change in themselves, but, rather, because they were now mantled by a dark distorting medium, like smoked glass, that seemed to shift and coil, like a wisp of veiling mist. In a tingling instant of recognition, Kal knew that what he had supposed to be glass were in fact other presences—sinister misbegotten creatures, without form and chaotic, unlike the first ones he had encountered. The dark barrier of glass grew more fluid, seductive drifts of smoke sinuously shifting shape. Only these were not the whimsical playthings of nature, driven by vagrant breezes. They were real and animated of their own, now taking on one form, now another, leering at him out of the grey murk with distorted faces, so misshapen that they froze Kal to the marrow. Kal cried out once, but a strong impulse from within kept him reciting the Prayer of Passage without pause. They were closer to him, raucous, taunting and upbraiding him, mocking him for losing the Talamadh, for his failure, for clinging to hope, when there was none. His spirit smarted at the stings. The vapours had become thicker, a noisome miasma, enveloping him. It was as if he had flown into a black storm cloud from which there was no escape. He started to lose the feeling of airborne buoyancy, of being free and light. The other beautiful beings seemed to have abandoned him. One of the dark ones, leering and brazen, pulled at Kal's hair, wrenching his head down, using the long strands like a tether. And they laughed at him with throaty relish.
Kal interrupted the Prayer again with a heart-rending cry, his elation at his bird-like lightness having changed now to a desperate fear that he was plummeting down to earth, like a ponderous gobbet of lead, the curling shapes of smoke having become heavy and oppressive weights, dragging him down into murkier depths. Kal clung to the rhythmic accents of the Prayer of Passage, as if it were a talisman. Without it, he thought, he would be overwhelmed, dashed to bits on the stern pinnacles that stretched out beneath him. Kal could see them, rocky and cold and ice-covered, yawning with jagged gorges, standing ready to swallow him.
Some strange impulse prompted Kal to look behind him, even as he reeled in that dizzying freefall. It was Wilum. He could see him, surrounded by myriad luminous beings, piercing the mist with the brightness of their forms. A window of clarity was opening up in his wake. Wilum held something round and glittering in his right hand, as if to proffer it to Kal, but Kal could not tell what it was. Wilum smiled to him across the void, which was somehow obscured and unobscured at the same time. It was as if Kal was peering into another world, but only as a watcher, for there was no bridge, no way he could surmount the forces that thrust him down back to Ahn Norvys, back to the clay from which his body drew its sinew, flesh, and bone. Wilum was calling out to Kal, only his voice capable of spanning the two disparate worlds. Kal could hear him, his words wafting to Kal's ears like a healing unction.
"Briacoil, Kalaquinn. I thank thee, Enefguthyas, for chanting me home to safe harbour. Fear not, gil nas sverender, my lord Myghternos Hordanu."
Kal struggled to turn back, clambering against air to reach his master and mentor. He was being flung down by some unyielding force. There was no fighting it. Then, Kal recognized with shocking clarity that this was Wilum's final blessing and farewell, and so absorbed was he by it that he lost that harrowing helpless sense of plunging through the sky earthwards to his doom. The next thing he knew, he was lying prone on the floor of the chamber, being gently lifted by his father.
"Are you all right, son?"
"Aye, Father, all right . . . All right, but sorry to be back here and not with him."
"We must each of us wait for our time."
"He's gone, Kal," Galli said with solemn finality, still holding the candle.
"I know," said Kal, groggy and uncertain, like a man waking from a dream, except that he felt, to the contrary, that he was emerging from real life into a dreamworld, dim and unlit, an exile in a place where clay-shrouded forces contended in the shadows. Oh, that he might have been dashed against the rocks and liberated like Wilum into the light! It was the anagoroi who had met Wilum, and he had run for Wilum the gauntlet of the fallen ones, who prey like jackals on freshly loosed spirits. Enefguthyas, Soul Warden, Wilum had called him. And that poignant valediction, destined, as he knew, to be vain and fruitless until his own life had run its bounden course—gil nas sverender, until we meet again.
Frysan folded Wilum's arms across his chest, to make the ceremonial corpse symbol of crossing over, then left to awaken his wife. At the entrance to the death chamber, he met Athmas, Thurfar, and a handful of others woken by the doleful chant. He nodded to them and passed. Soon, the ritual lament of mourning would fill the Cave. Wilum's long hair took on a vivid hue of white, like a brookside bed of spring lilies, so that it shone above the sallow welted face—a coronal of glory. Although Wilum's eyes were closed now in death, there was a sheen that rose from them beneath the marbled parchment of his lids. The redness of his wounds had paled, leaving a waxen mask composed in peace. The wail rose in the stillness, a single voice swelling, now joined by another, and now another.
"May the rest of us find a like end to our journey someday," Kal said to Galli and Gwyn, who were left with him beside the husk of Wilum's body.
"That's a fine thing to wish on friends, to have their heads knocked in by the likes of Relzor."
"I didn't mean that, Galli. I meant, look at him, look how peaceful he seems. No cares to bother him in this world or the next."
"Well, for now, we'd better be about our own cares, for we have our feet still very solidly planted on the soil of Ahn Norvys. At least I do. It's too early yet to be chanting the Prayer of Passage for the rest of us that want to stay here and keep our hides for a while longer yet. What we need now is some plan of action."
Kal sighed heavily, gathering himself back to the world of flesh and blood by act of will. The need to survive superseded the need to grieve. As the women began to file past him into the death room, he turned to Galli and pointed out into the main chamber.
"What I thought was, that, if we still have that rope and grapnel, we could do some exploring and see what's up above the Cave of the Hourglass here."
"That's a fair piece up, Kal."
"Well, the rope's long enough. We could use it to get a grip on the edge of the smoke hole in the centre of the Cave, lift ourselves up to the upper chamber and then use the rope again to latch on to the topmost opening. What if we can find a way out there above the roof of the Cave?"
"An excellent idea and well worth trying," said Frysan, who had returned. "I'll get the rope and grapnel again from Athmas."
Soon, the three were staring up at the stars that twinkled down at them from the clear patch of night sky through the double tier of smoke holes in the middle of the Cave. The fire had all but died, giving them an unobscured view. Gwyn kept his own strange vigil for Wilum, and even his affection for Kal could not dislodge him from it. So, he stayed with Wilum yet. Around them rose the ululating moans of keening Holdsfolk, woken from their sleep to pour out their grief for the slain Hordanu.
It took them a few throws to affix the grapnel onto a butting edge of rock. Galli took hold of the rope and tugged on it. The grapnel bit into the stone above their heads and held. Slowly, Galli applied his weight to the rope, until he pulled himself a few inches from the ground. He let go of the rope and dropped to the floor, rubbing his hands together.
"So, then, I suppose it's me that climbs. Re'm ena, but it seems a fair piece up," Galli said, looking to where the rope hung from the lower smoke hole.
"I'll climb," said Kal, seizing the rope.
"You? But you're the Hordanu."
"Which makes it my responsibility, Galli." Kal pulled himself onto the rope, wrapping his feet around it beneath him.
"But if you fall—"
"I won't." Kal began climbing.
"Let him go," Frysan said, then patted his son's leg, where he dangled from the rope. "But do be careful, Kalaquinn, we surely can't afford to lose you now."
Grunting with the exertion of it, Kal inched in jerks up the rope, 'til at last he reached the first smoke hole some dozen or so yards above their heads.
"By the welkin, but it's dark here," he yelled down to them, squatting on the lip of the upper chamber. "I can't rightly tell where I can or can't step, if I'm not to fall off into some sinkhole, and then you'll never hear from me more." The rope disappeared, tugged up the hole behind him. "I hope this sprig of ash does what it's supposed to do too, in case the gathgours are around. Well then, I'll just throw this up to see if I can't catch onto that chockstone. It's a farther ways to get to the top than even it was to get here—Aye! what's that? Something flew at me here." Kal yelled, reeling off balance.
"It's a pigeon!" cried Galli, looking up at the bird that had sent Kal ducking and bobbing at the edge of the smoke hole. Kal squatted at the edge of the smoke hole and saw the thing fly a circle in the cavern before fluttering to a rest in the wicker cage, cooing plaintively.
"It bears a message." Frysan had walked to the cote and reached through its opened door to lift out the bird. "It's been hurt, the poor thing. It's bleeding from one of its wings, and I can feel its heart thumping. The bird's had some scare," he said, cupping the cowering bird in his hands and taking it to the hearth fire, still glimmering a feeble light from its bed of coals. He untied the banded scroll from its leg, placed the delicate creature on the ground, and began reading the opened message by the uncertain glow. Galli edged closer.
"It's in Wilum's own hand," said Galli. "I recognize his writing well enough. What does it say?"
" 'We are invaded by Ferabek. The Stoneholding is lost. Will meet you at Cot as soon as possible.' " Frysan handed the thin slip of paper to Galli, who took it and read it to himself.
"This is a message to that Aelward fellow. Wilum was telling you about him, when we were leaving Raven's Crag Island." Galli looked up again to where his friend stooped over the opening above them. "Aye, Kal, do you remember how he went out for a moment, before we left the keeil, and mentioned something about a message?"
"I do, yes. But the poor bird never made it, or if it did, there was nobody there."
"Wilum said it had been some time since he had heard from Aelward."
"Do you think Dhu might have harmed it, Kal?" asked Frysan.
"No, I've taught Dhu not to attack doves or pigeons on account of Wilum's keeping them. Keep that message, Galli, I want to see it."
Frysan picked up the wounded pigeon and replaced it in the wicker cote. Some of the children, awakened by the wail of lament, had gathered to look at the little creature. Frysan gave them stern instructions not to touch the bird, because it was hurt, but to find it grain or crumbs and a vessel of water. He lowered the dovecote on its rope. Kal smiled as the children scattered to scavenge provender for their charge—a comforting distraction for them in this time of distress.
Frysan returned to the centre of the chamber, lifting his hand to Kal, pointing in mock agitation. "Go on then, Kalaquinn. There's nothing to be gained by gaping down at us. Up you go! Carry on! Courage. We'll be right beneath you to mark your progress—"
"Or catch me if I fall," Kal said, turning his attention from the two below him to the hole above. With a slow, fluid sweep of his arm, he threw the grapnel up to the second smoke hole at the very highest point in the upper dome of the Cave. He cast the climbing iron once, and then again, each time having to guard against its falling back and knocking him on the head or gouging his flesh. Three times the hooked metal grapnel fell clanging beside him in the darkness before the thing caught. Kal made trial of it carefully, putting weight on the rope, until he was more or less sure that it would hold him.
Then, he pulled himself onto it and up. It proved a much more hesitant ascent than his first climb, and more laborious too, for he was uncertain about what awaited him up above on the outer rim of the Cave. With painful trepidation, he reached the cavern's apex, and pulled his upper body over the edge of the smoke-blackened opening. He let go the rope, which hung down through both smoke holes to the cavern floor below him, and took a deep breath of the outside air, cool and almost intoxicating after the stale must of the Cave and the exertion of his climb.
Dangling, he held tight to a handhold, a crack in the solid rock that edged the opening. He felt, with a tentative sweep of his free hand, that his arms were resting on a table of rock that would probably support his full weight. Very slowly, he hauled his whole body over the edge, easing himself onto the flat rock. For a long moment, he lay listening, his face pressed against the cold stone of Mount Thyus. At length, he rolled over, sat up, and looked around. He drew a sharp breath, for the sky was cloudless, and the thin moon shone liquid silver on the mountainscape about him. Whichever way he turned, there rose rugged spires, fantastic crenellations, that heaved themselves to prodigally dizzying heights and plunged wantonly into deep unplumbed abysses. Facing him, on the other side of a gulf that seemed infinitely deep, there trickled a crystal streamlet, wedged into a rocky tier of Mount Hecla, like a strand of gems in a protective casket, but so far away that its murmurs were stifled. Below the snowline, thick masses of forest reared against the slopes, each tree like a rider bracing himself stiff when his horse plunges down a gully. Behind him, a razor-edged ridge dipped from his stony perch and rose again to meet the sheer heights of Thyus, snowcapped and glimmering in the moonlight, that towered over him.
Kal stared into the very heart of the Radolan Mountains, which ran like a spine down the western flank of Arvon, separating the land, time out of mind, into highlands and lowlands. And more frightening still, he found that the outside of the Cave was shaped no less like an hourglass than the inside, for the rock fell away from him smoothly on all sides. Only the ledge on which he sat, and the knife's edge ridge of stone connecting the dome to the stark side of Thyus broke the curve of the rock. This ledge seemed to have been cut out of the Cave's outer dome deliberately, perhaps as a lookout during the Age of Echoes. Kal shifted his weight with painstaking slowness. His stomach was knotted, and he felt giddy from the heights, not relishing the thought of working himself back onto the rope.
He leaned forward and peered down the hole. "There's no way out from up here, let me tell you, unless you're a bird or a gathgour. And no way back down, I'm as like to find out," he cried down to the two Holdsmen below, trying to dull the edge of his growing anxiety, wondering how even the gathgours for all their nimbleness could challenge the time-sculpted smoothness of this granite dome, an uncertain island in a wilderness of angles and steeps. From every direction around him, the mountain canyons echoed back his words, and in that moment it came to him how exposed and vulnerable he was. He longed to be back down with Galli, his father, and the rest. While the echoes died, the keening moans drifted up to him, like a distant music, making him feel very much alone, small and insignificant, on this spectacular but treacherous roof of the world.
The wind picked up, its chill fingers tugging at his tunic. Kal turned, feeling for the grapnel lodged in the rock at the edge of the smoke hole. This was the worst part, trying to get back down, much worse than it was on that tree at the Perch earlier in the day. If only it was just the tree he had to descend now! With its many branches, the thing was all footholds. How was he going to get into position to let himself down into the Cave again without losing his grip and breaking his neck, or worse still, slipping off the edge of this smooth half-globe into the emptiness beyond?
As Kal corkscrewed his body around, edging himself closer to where the grapnel bit into the granite, the wind grew fiercer, in draughts that made him catch his breath and cower. The buffeting of the wind caused him to throw his right arm back and with it clutch at the edge of the smoke hole, while he lay on his side, huddled on the ledge, which seemed now to grow smaller and smaller. Exposed and helpless, he waited for the gusts to subside.
It was while lying on his side that he saw the night drake. The first grim sight of it chilled his heart, freezing his limbs with horror, as it threaded the corridor of the Radolans that opened solemnly to the south. On the night drake's back, Kal thought he spied the outline of a rider. It appeared he had not been seen, for the creature drifted away from him. But, suddenly, it wheeled around.
Now there would be no agonizing wait to screw up his courage, like a swimmer making his first plunge in spring, daintily testing the bracing waters of Deepmere. He was given no time to indulge his new-formed fear of heights, for the great creature bore down on him under the silver light of the setting moon. One vault over the side was all it took, and Kal was grappling with the rope, sliding down it to the floor of the Cave so quickly that he burned his palms in the descent.