What Lies Within (Book 5) (24 page)

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   The following morning was colder. The previous day's light breeze became a cutting wind, descending in sharp, violent gusts to bend the trees and rip the leaves from their branches. From the northeast a pall of thick grey-white cloud began to blanket the sky.

   Midway through the morning, as they rode hunched in their saddles along the rim of a wooded ridge, Leth glanced into the valley beneath them and saw horsemen in great number. He halted and peered down, shielding his eyes against the wind with one hand. Then he quickly drew the children and horses back from the path, well out of sight of the riders below. He dismounted and crept back to observe.

   Crouched in bushes Leth watched as more than one hundred Karai horse-warriors plied their way along the valley floor. They were heading out into the wildlands, on a course that would take them across Angsway within an hour or so. What then? Would they turn to follow Angsway - in pursuit of Leth, or in the opposite direction?

   Their number implied that it was not Leth they sought. Indeed it was unlikely they would have any knowledge of his presence here. Had they a specific goal or were they seeking out remote towns and villages to plunder and raze?

   Leth watched until the last Karai had disappeared into the dark cluster of forest at the valley's mouth, reminded ever more forcefully of the urgency and immensity of what lay before him. Then he rose, brought the children from cover, and resumed his journey.

   The cloud pall dominated the entire sky now. The day was filled with the restless wind and the threat of winter storms. Angsway descended into dense, dark forest, which provided at least a modicum of shelter from the wind. Leth and the children ate in the saddle, for he was reluctant to stop lest the
Karai be riding their way. The sighting of such a large contingent made him more wary than ever, and implied that others might already occupy the route somewhere ahead of him.

   As chill evening closed in Leth and the children came in sight of a long-deserted hamlet, consisting of a huddle of a dozen or so cottages of sombre grey stone in a stand of lonely elms. In one of these they took shelter. Outside the night gathered quickly, with the light of neither moon nor stars able to puncture the dense cloud-cover. With a fire warming the interior of the cottage the weary, saddle-sore travellers ate with little conversation, and quickly settled down to sleep.     

    For another day they travelled, and twice more spied contingents of Karai. Both times Leth and the children were lucky to be unobserved, and the Karai passed on without awareness of them. Neither contingent was as strong as the one they had seen in the valley the previous day. Still, they were ominous enough, consisting of twenty to forty mounted warriors. Leth could only conclude that as the siege of Enchantment's Reach continued, Prince Anzejarl was dispatching units to terrorize and secure even the most insignificant outlying villages. His thoughts went to the villagers of Little Sprike, and to Bicault, Anacissia and their neighbours in their homes beside Wyslow Water.

  
During the afternoon Leth and the children came to the end of Angsway, where it broke out upon a wider trail which twisted away into the forest to right and left. Angsway itself was barely visible here, no more than a vague gap between the trees. The road onto which they now broke out was the western way that would take them to within an hour or two's ride of Ghismile Tarn.

   Ever wary, Leth took the lefthand way. Though they had travelled a good distance since last spying
Karai, he feared that they might be present in greater numbers on this road.  Furthermore, by Issul's account, Grey Venger and the Legendary Child were somewhere hereabouts, if not in Ghismile itself. And the grullags they commanded could be anywhere within the woods.

   They rode for an hour more and then, as they entered a small, dank hollow, Issul stepped from beneath a tree onto the side of the road before them. Again the children clamoured to be with her. They jumped down from their mounts and ran to her. And again the tears glistened in Issul's eyes at the knowledge that she could not embrace them,
nor her husband.

   'You must enter the forest here,' she told Leth, 'and avoid Ghismile village.'

   'Are Venger and the Child still there?'

   'I don’t know.'

   'Why not use this power of projection with which you are endowed to investigate the village?'

   'I have tried, Leth. I have also tried entering Enchantment's Reach, to make contact with Pader. But it is no good. I can bring myself only to you and our children, for I love you all so and yearn to be with you. That is the power that draws me, and this gift permits me nothing more. Perhaps at a later time, with practice, I will develop it further. Listen now, carefully, before I am drawn back again.'

   She gave Leth detailed instructions for finding his way through the forest to the northern shore of Ghismile Tarn. Then she described the trail she herself had followed with Shenwolf only days earlier, which would bring Leth and the children to the secret Karai camp.

   'We will be watching you. When you reach the camp we will attempt a diversion to allow you to enter chamber hidden underground. From there, at last, you can pass through the Farplace Opening, and we can be together again. But be careful, Leth. It is dangerous.'

   'I know it.'

   'You must approach the camp itself with tremendous caution. The
Karai have been there for several days now. They have had ample time to set traps, deadly traps in the surrounding woods. Be alert and don’t let your guard down for a moment.'

   Issul knelt, taut-faced, and touched her fingers to her lips, then motioned as though to transfer the kiss to her childrens' brows, though of course she made no contact. Her image was growing faint.

   'I am drawn from you again. Beware, my beautiful ones. Soon . . . soon. . . '

ii

   They slept that night in the open, huddled together at the base of a giant oak, with no fire to warm them lest it attract watchful Karai or prowling grullags. In the morning they rose, stiff and all but numb with cold. The one mercy was that it had not rained.

   After they had stamped and kneaded and rubbed the circulation back into their bodies they ate a breakfast of cold mutton and bread, then continued on their way beneath the old trees. Issul's instructions for reaching the tarn-shore whilst avoiding Ghismile village itself were accurate and precise. Leth followed a north-westerly path, noting a wide stream and wooden bridge, both of which Issul had described. He crossed the bridge,
then followed the stream's northern course as far as the ruins of an old charcoal-burner's dwelling. Here he led the children away into the forest again, judging Ghismile Tarn to lie now less than three leagues distant.

   Leth pressed on slowly and deliberately, pausing from time to time when his vantage allowed him to scan a reasonable distance ahead. He watched, listened, but the forest appeared still and undisturbed.

   The sun, a wash of brightness beyond the cloud, rose to its zenith and began its long descent, and in due course Leth stood with his two children beneath the cover of trees fringing the shore of Ghismile Tarn. The roofs of a few of Ghismile village's cottages and outbuildings and the gloomy battlements of the old keep previously occupied by the brutal tyrant Baron Ombo were just visible through the trees in the distance. For a brief moment Leth was tempted to steal along the shore and investigate the village. The thought of both Grey Venger and the Legendary Child being holed up there was almost too tantalizing to bear. If he only had a force one hundred strong! How much might be resolved in a swift and sudden strike upon the village?

   Ah, but it was a dream. Leth was alone with his children and the risks were too great. He turned his gaze to the northwest, across
a wide wooded lowland. Beyond was a long low promontory, just as Issul had described. Leth studied it sombrely, feeling a welling in his gut.

   Not so far now, but oh, so dangerous!

  'There is where we must go,' he whispered softly.

   With the children behind him he began to walk his horse away, keeping to the cover of the trees and moving parallel to the shoreline. They had gone barely ten paces - a shifting of the air. Issul appeared before them.

   'Wait, a few moments. Triune is sending her seeking eye to investigate the village.'

  
'Triune? Seeking eye?' queried Leth.

  
'One of the Highest Ones, my darling. One of those who our people have called gods.'

   'You are with this Triune?'

    Issul nodded. 'And the seeking eye is the means by which we keep watch over you. Now listen, Triune has agreed that, when the eye returns, it will reveal itself to you. That will be the signal for you to continue on your way. Not before. Without the eye we cannot follow you. And when you continue, remember, tomorrow will bring you to the Karai camp. Assume at all times that the woods are watched, and set with deadly traps.'

   'Are we walking into a trap?' said Leth with renewed concern.

   'Pray not, my love. Pray not. We will do all we can.'

   Issul's form shimmered and dissolved. Leth waited impatiently in the saddle, darting weighted glances back towards the little village and its dour keep. He spoke in guarded undertones to Galry and Jace, trying his utmost to explain once again their mother's painfully fleeting appearances and the reasons they could not touch her ghostly form. He struggled to reassure them that soon, very soon, they would all be together with her once more, and voiced nothing of the doubts and fears he felt.

   In his mind his thoughts spun him through a torrent of emotions. Triune? One of the Highest Ones? It seemed that wherever he went he found himself consorting with the gods he had formerly denied.

   No, not denied! Never denied! Questioned and enquired into their true nature, yes.
Seeking knowledge, in the spirit of King Haruman's Deist Edict. Haruman had been wise. He had seen the factions rise, seen how they manipulated and dissembled to control the will of the people, invoking the names of beings they truly knew nothing of, pretending knowledge they did not possess. Haruman had seen through their deceptions. He had taken measures to curb their influence, the political power that they had accumulated, which was tearing Enchantment's Reach apart; and to simultaneously seek truth. Truth and enlightenment for all!

   And now I have discovered these beings to be mighty indeed.
But not gods. No, not gods. In their own way they reveal themselves to be as fallible, as subject to emotional frailty and the blindness of their individual wishes, desires and passions as we are.

   And if we are truly to be pitched against one or more of them, then there, surely, must
lie the means by which they may be overcome!

   Could it be so? A flicker of hope and optimism lived briefly in Leth's breast, to be dampened almost in the same breath as he thought again of what lay before him.

   Minutes passed. Leth grew uneasy. He peered back again towards the village, hidden now by the trees. Twenty paces away the chill, dark water of the tarn lapped testily at the shore, stirred by mounting breezes into small, fast-moving waves. The sky had darkened as if portending storms, and the trees and undergrowth had begun to whisper in discontent between themselves.

   At last Leth's attention was drawn to a new, closer element. A small, silvery-dark orb hovered before his vision. It was not easy to focus on,
being almost transparent and seeming to have no true substance of its own. Leth did not see where it had come from, but it had to be the seeking eye that Issul had spoken of. What else could it be?

   He looked at it, a little uncomfortable in the knowledge that he was observed but not entirely sure by what. He wondered what the eye had spied in Ghismile. The orb offered no elucidation. It rose and moved swiftly away and was lost to sight. Leth stared into the trees, seeking it without success. He turned back and urged his horse onward.

   Soon they had crossed the wooded lowland and mounted the slopes taking them to the promontory. Ghismile Tarn was a dark shine, glittering distantly between the trees at their backs. Before them the great forest deepened. Leth moved on, tension gripping his spine, wondering whether he was watched - by grullags, by Karai, by enemies unknown - wondering whether he was leading his children haplessly, trustingly into ever greater peril.

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   By nightfall Leth estimated them to be within a league or so of the secret camp. He found a hollow where massed, moss-strewn boulders at the foot of a crag offered protection and concealment. They ate, again with no fire to warm them or toast their supper, and Galry and Jace quickly settled down to sleep.

   Sleep did not come so easily to Leth. Too much depended upon the morrow, and his mind would not allow him the rest he craved. He rose and left the nook where his children lay, and silently paced back and forth, then returned and lay down again. In time he did at last succumb to sleep, but it was fitful and he woke more than once, believing his enemies were upon him.