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Sixteen

"It was just a glimpse I caught, but, I swear, it was Enbarr I saw riding the thing, like it was a winged horse. The way he did when he escaped us at the Seven Springs with Relzor."

"The trouble is, you didn't wait long enough to find out. I've never seen a body move as fast as you did down that rope."

"As you would have, Galli, if you'd been in the spot I was. I could feel its breath, I tell you. Its tongue was like a giant snake's, hissing. And fire, there was fire flaring out of its nostrils, it was so keen to swoop down on me from the sky. I tell you, I could feel it bearing down on me."

"I didn't see any fire coming from it, when Relzor stole off with the Talamadh. I wish it had. We might have noticed it better creeping up on us in the dark with Enbarr, and it would have saved us a sore pack of trouble." Galli nettled Kal, while Frysan looked on, chuckling to himself at the exchange.

"All right, enough, Galli, but this time it was spewing fire, I tell you. And its eyes were big red round things, like flaming hot coals!" Kal glanced up again as if to assure himself that the night drake was not peering down on them through the double opening that loomed above their heads. "Look, quick now, Galli, there it is! Father, look! Re'm ena, but the thing's gone."

By the time Galli and Frysan lifted their heads, it had disappeared, although it had left in its wake a faint downdraft of air that teased the smoking embers of the fire at their feet. Another moment passed, and the fearsome creature overflew the Cave again, as if searching for the place where Kal had evaded it. The thing passed low. One more pass and the beast alighted on the rim of the smoke hole itself, its silhouette framed against the night sky, as knobbed and gnarled as the weathered butt of an old oak, gripping the chockstone, where the grapnel remained anchored. The foul reek of fetid carrion pervaded the air. Down it peered into the Cave. They could feel its eyes in the darkness, beaming predatory hate, dumbly inhuman and vicious. The three Holdsmen fell back, as the creature emitted a deep moaning cry. The keening ceased, and children began to shriek in sheer terror. Frysan called on the other men to gather the Holdsfolk into the empty sidechamber, bidding them take light and try to calm the children.

"Now we've found out where the mice are cornered, haven't we, Thraganux?" They heard the voice, loud and derisive, but could not see the body behind it, for it was hidden from sight on the saddled back of the night drake. It was unmistakable, though. Enbarr's voice dripped with the purring unction of triumph and power. "Not very welcoming, are they, Thrag, to scurry indoors when they see us coming? And we were just coming to speak our greetings. To give them the heartfelt thanks of my lord Ferabek for the wonderful gift that they've made to him of the Talamadh." His laughter rang in the chamber. "How exceedingly generous a token of their esteem and warrant of their fealty. And now if they but gave themselves up peaceably to my grateful Lord, the Boar, how much easier it would be for all concerned, wouldn't it, Thrag? Rather than play this dangerous game of hide and seek on the mountaintops. Besides, there's not a place they could flee to where we wouldn't spot them, isn't that so, Thrag? If they gave up young Kalaquinn Wright, how happy we would all be. Aye, how very happy," Enbarr continued with relentless spite, conversing slyly with his terrible mount.

"Do you hear me down there?" Enbarr's tenor changed. The disembodied voice was now one of violent challenge, as hard and steely as a thrusting lance. The edge of gloating triumph had given way to one of unqualified anger and, Kal sensed, frustration—yes, undoubted frustration—for there was something that was keenly desired yet by Enbarr and his master, something they still craved. Enbarr's tone was less cocksure, less smugly sinister, and so, in an odd way, more human.

"You have 'til break of day to deliver Kalaquinn, son of Frysan Wright, or you shall all be put to the sword. Don't let that fool Wilum foster your illusions. You have but to throw yourselves on the mercy of my gracious lord Ferabek, and you shall have your precious Stoneholding back, your wayward little pocket clanholding, your highland jewel. Do you hear me, Wilum, you hidebound throwback, you stubborn . . ." He stumbled and stuttered, mumbling out of raw frustration and anger.

"It's all your fault, this chafing at the bit, this delay at a doom that knows no escaping. Or did Relzor make a proper end to you, as he claimed he did? And the rest of you, surely you have more sense than to listen to a dithering old idiot? Surely, you are not all bent on holding out? It is suicide! Do you hear? Suicide! And for what reason? To satisfy a stubborn old man who plays at being Hordanu? Release Kalaquinn Wright to us at the foot of the Stairs of Tarn Cromar by the rising of the morrow's sun, and the rest of you shall live to see another day and many more days besides. There's no resisting the might of my lord Ferabek's hand, as you shall see, for you're trapped up here with no place to run. You're trapped, do you hear me? Trapped!"

The words echoed through the cavern.

"But you may yet do my lord Ferabek's bidding and survive, aye, and you may flourish even. Either that, mark you well, or you and your children will be dashed against the Rock of Gharssûl. So you must decide, and decide soon. All you need do is unfurl a flag of truce at the Stairs of Tarn Cromar and send a messenger down with young Wright, and your hides are saved. Do you hear me? Do you hear me, I say? Speak! Loosen your tongues or let the Enclosure be your tomb!"

"Aye, we do, Enbarr," yelled Galli, "We hear you. Every twisted word. Begone with you, you traitor, with your head crammed full of long-winded lies. Better still, come down and I'll gladly knock them out of your head for you."

Frysan took up the defiant cry, shouting with all his might up into the vacant air of the Cave's top chamber. "Surely, you take us for backward dolts, to think that we believe a single word of what you've said! And even if we did believe you, do you suppose that a Holdsman, of even the slightest bit more mettle than you possess, would succumb to your blandishments merely to add a few days or even years to his span of life? "

But Enbarr did not make answer nor await a further exchange, for the night drake slipped his talons from the open roof of the Cave and climbed up into the sky with his rider.

"Go back to your master and tell him that while there is yet a man or woman of the Holding drawing breath, we shall not yield! Not now! Not ever!" Frysan roared, shaking, red-faced, his fist raised.

"It's no good, Father. He's gone." The far-off, parting cry of the night drake, soaring now high above the Cave, drifted down to the Holdsfolk. "And now he knows exactly where we are." Kal looked away from the circle of night sky above to his father beside him. "Not that it matters much anyhow. Enbarr was right about us being cornered and there being no place to run."

A deep and fearful hush had descended on the cave, broken only by the choked sobs of one or two children not yet exhausted by fear and, presently, by the murmur of whispered conversations. From the side chamber, the Holdsfolk emerged and, as if to establish some semblance of the normal in the face of their straits, moved about the familiar activities of life—children were comforted and laid again to sleep despite their fretfulness, another torch was lit, and someone stirred up the remains of the fire, laying more fuel on it, until it leaped brightly again in the centre of the cavern.

The women, while yet keening, had begun dressing Wilum's body for burial, as was the immemorial custom in the highlands. In the morning, they would inter him somewhere in the Enclosure, providing they were still alive by then. The commotion in the main chamber had been violent and had drawn the women from their corpse-duties. All of them, both men and women, had heard Enbarr's demands and sensed Frysan's air of hopeless dejection. There was a feeling of oppressive uncertainty in the Cave, spreading among them like a pollution. Thurfar had turned his hand to the fire again in an attempt to further push back the gloom that no mere firelight could dispel. Their restlessness grew.

"Don't you think, Manaton, that we ought to consider Enbarr's proposal?" whispered Gara to her husband. "I'm thinking of the little ones. Let them have a chance at living."

"I know what you're all thinking and whispering, too, amongst yourselves"—Devved's deep voice broke through the uneasy buzz of furtive conversation—"that it'd be better, perhaps, to make treaty with them Scorpions as Enbarr's taken up with. That if they want young Kal Wright, it'd be best to give him up for the remains of us, especially these young ones, for it don't matter much what happens to the likes of me, I tell you honest, for I've had my sum of days on this highland clay of ours." Devved paused and looked around himself at the hushed people. The dispirited tiredness of the Holdsfolk was palpable, as was their willingness to consider whatever means were at hand to escape the end they had reached. Now that Wilum, their Hordanu, lay dead, their last link with what remained of an older order seemed gone, and a creeping futility and resignation had spread through the Cave.

"Are you so foggy that you can't tell a rotter by his headmarks, or do I have to touch you with my hammer to knock some proper sense into you? There ain't no trusting Enbarr nor his cousin Kenulf. I'd sooner trust a fox to guard my henhouse, I know that for a fact."

"By my ten finger bones, but I'm a rank fool if Devved's not right on the mark!" said Diggory Clout. "Why, we'd all be like them knaves as run things in Dinas Antrum to trust in them false-forged hollow words of Enbarr's, him as has betrayed most all our clanfellows and his own to the Boar and his bloody Scorpions."

"And what's more," said Galli in a low voice, "Kal's now the Hordanu. Wilum made him Hordanu earlier today. Re'm ena, but it's so. The guardianship of the Talamadh and Wuldor's Howe has been given over to Kalaquinn Wright," he affirmed. A look of quiet incredulity met this news. "Wilum was going to tell you all himself, but never got the chance. You may be sure that's why the Boar wants us to hand Kal over, although how he knows that he's been made Wilum's successor is clean beyond my reckoning. Maybe it's that Thrygian sorcerer of his."

The public announcement of the election of a new Hordanu was always a solemn moment in the Stoneholding, and often nature itself conspired with the event to make it singularly joyous, alive with the mystery of change and new beginning. The old folk of the Holding, steeped in their own experiences and the lore of generation upon generation of their ancestors, most often likened the occasion to one of the bright fresh days of midspring, even when the election happened in the dead of winter. New energies seemed to flow lavishly into the Holding and Wuldor's Howe on the accession of a new Hordanu. Even now, a subtle sense of present witnessing spirits pervaded the Cave of the Hourglass.

All eyes had turned on Kal. Frysan stepped forward from beside him, sweeping with his gaze the faces of his fellow Holdsmen. "Aye, it is so." He broke the spell of wonderment, as Marina choked a cry. "You can feel it. It was what Wilum was trying to tell us. And you know it was Kalaquinn who chanted the Prayer of Passage for him. It is Kalaquinn who is our High Bard, our Hordanu." Frysan then turned to face Kal and fell to a knee, his head bowed before his son. "Hail, my lord Myghternos Hordanu." His voice resonated in the charged atmosphere of the cavern. The last syllables of his homage hung in the air, faded, then all fell silent.

He rose and faced the Holdsfolk again. "And now we'd best get some sleep, or we'll not have the strength to do a thing, even if the ground beneath us were to gape open to show us a way out of here. I've no doubt but we'll be needing our strength before too long. As for myself, I'll keep watch here for a while yet. The men at the Stairs are like to be signalling to us anytime, and then it'll be time for all of us to make our fighting stand. Let your swords and bows lie ready to hand. Does everyone know who's on the relieving watch?" There were nods from the three men slated to relieve Narasin and his sons at the Stairs. "Good! It won't be long now, I'll wake you when it's time."

He had dismissed them before anyone could say or do a thing. In stunned quiet, the group broke, people returning each to their place of rest. Kal wore a look of bewilderment. Frysan smiled and placed an arm over his shoulder. "Come," he said, "you should get what rest you can, too. The call to arms will come soon enough."

"But don't you think we have a while yet, 'til daybreak at least?" asked Kal.

"Aye, son, if you think that Enbarr was telling the truth. There's not a word that comes from that man's mouth that has any hold in it. More slippery and full of twists and turns than an eel, especially when he's after something. But enough, go and get some sleep."

Once again, an uneasy stillness cloaked the Cave. All the men and women seemed quickly to fall into as deep a slumber as the children, for now, at last, they were simply too tired to let worry keep them from it. All except Kal, who bade his father and Galli goodnight and lay down beside his mother and Bren, racking his brain for the faintest suggestion of a clue that might aid their escape. What had Wilum told him in days gone by that might be put to use? And underlying this, there was a further nagging question that his mind rebelled to address. He tossed and turned, heaping thought upon thought, until he supposed that the very heaviness of his reflections might press him into the weightlessness of sleep.

Tiring of his fruitless efforts, he arose wearily and stepped to crouch beside the remains of the cookfire, which still glowed feebly. He pulled from his pocket the tiny scroll that Galli had given him, unfolded it and held it an an angle to catch the faint orange light of the coals. His eye fell to the graceful flowing script his master's hand had set on the small leaf of onionskin. "The Stoneholding is lost . . ." Wilum is lost, he thought. He let the thin paper slip from his fingers onto the embers, where it blackened, smouldered, and smoked for a moment, before it flashed to flame, then glowing, it dwindled and was spent.

He crept to the side chamber where Wilum's body lay in endless slumber. Perhaps he might bequeath to Kal some of his vast store of forgetful sleep, or forge, by the very presence of his body in repose, some fresh meaning from their predicament. All the hope that he had felt earlier oozed from him, like a slow-bleeding and mortal wound. He needed Wilum's help. The question he had in mind now was not one he could resolve—a dire question—and Kal knew that it was beyond his own competence to decide. As holder of the ancient office of High Bard, he now bore a grave responsibility.

In the death room, a pine-pitch torch still guttered a pale wavering light, letting the shadows weave a death mask for the old Hordanu, who smelled fresh and clean from the ablutions the women had performed preparatory to his being buried. Kal found himself all alone with Wilum's body, which lay on the couch where he had died. Kal half-expected to see Gwyn, who had been clinging to Wilum the whole evening, from the time of their first discovery of him after the attack by Relzor to when Kal pronounced the Prayer of Passage. Kal looked twice to make certain he was not mistaken, for there was a wraith-like hiddenness about Gwyn, an indistinctness and slightness of form that seemed to merge with a dark night or a foggy mist, imparting to him an elusive want of shape and visibility. It was strange. Where could the lad be? Kal did not remember seeing him in the main chamber in the aftermath of Enbarr's ultimatum. His eyes had sought him then, when everyone else had crowded around the sullen hearth fire.

Kal slipped back into the large chamber to check if Gwyn had not somehow eluded his notice to curl up in a corner. He lit a torch and crept between the bodies of exhausted sleepers. "Where have you got to, my little Mommick?" Kal whispered. He stumbled over Thurfar, who mumbled something incoherent and rolled back to sleep. At the entrance to the Cave, he asked his father if he had seen Gwyn. Like Kal, however, Frysan had seen or heard nothing of the boy.

"Don't worry, son. You've but missed him in the poor light. It'd be better if you got some sleep rather than worry yourself about Gwyn. We have a hard time ahead of us yet, with a sore fight against Ferabek's Scorpions awaiting us at the Stairs, if we mean to keep them at bay. And here you are, wearing yourself out looking for Gwyn."

"Aye, but I've been sleepless too with supposing that our chances are slim, slimmer than a snowflake's on midwinter's hearth." He paused and looked out into the night before speaking again. "It's me they want, that's clear enough. What if we give them what they want, and then the rest of you will be quit of them?"

"It would be fool's work, Kal. You'd better take off your blinkers on that score. And I don't say this because I'm your father and you're my son. Don't suppose that I would scruple to allow you to make a sacrifice of yourself, if in the balance your mother and your brother and all the others here could find themselves saved. But, I've heard tell of the Boar often enough. Even in the Holding, he's cast his long shadow, for there's not a traveller comes our way but quavers when he speaks of the Gharssûlian League, and how its iron rule has grown amain, not only in those far places that lie beyond Arvon, but in our own downlands, most particularly in Dinas Antrum. How can anyone not feel the aftercurrents of his slightest move, when he's forged, by the might of a hand that knows no scruple, the deadliest alliance of forces that Ahn Norvys has seen since the time of Tardroch? Besides, Kal, you're more now than just my son. You're Hordanu, and don't pay heed to those that doubt you, as they doubted Wilum."

"Doubts? Even now? Even with all this evil they've unleashed on us?" asked Kal.

"Aye, especially now, when they've seen in which quarter the tilted balance lies. To get some peace, they think, as if peace were something that came dropping slow and easy, like an overripe plum that doesn't need to be plucked, but comes down on its own." Frysan heaved a sigh against the palpable weight that had settled over them. He faced his son squarely and said, "No, Kal, if being Hordanu in the selfsame line of Hedric means anything still, you must carry on. At any cost except dishonour, you must save yourself. Even if I and all of us here go down to defeat by Ferabek's awful butchery, you must save yourself. You owe it to the office you now hold, to every Hordanu who's preceded you, to every bard who sings the orrthon, to all of Ahn Norvys, even to the Great Harmony itself. And you owe it to Wilum and to those mightier spirits in whose company he now stands. I felt it when you were reciting the Prayer of Passage, Kalaquinn."

"Felt? Felt what?"

"That you were like a lodestone, attracting to yourself . . . I don't rightly know what. But something mysterious and powerful and the seed of something greater. It was laid open to me and shrouded all at once. But one thing's sure, I could feel it in my gut . . . the strangest feeling."

"What was it, Father?"

"That what you had, I shared in—nay, more exactly, that I had passed it on to you, and that you shared it with me, as a son. As my son."

 

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