Dawn of the Dreamsmith (The Raven's Tale Book 1) (30 page)

“Cole, I urge you against this course,” cautioned Harri. “We do not know if he would be hostile or act against us in some way. He may harbour ill-will against you after what just happened.”

Cole stooped to pick up his pack, and slung it around his shoulders, taking care not to harm the creature. “You both forget your place, I think,” he said. “Raven,
you
are
my
guide. I am grateful for your help, but not beholden to you. And Harri, it was
your
choice to follow us. I appreciate your advice, but choose not to take it.”

And that, bar a few token protests, was that. Raven and Harri retrieved their own packs, and together they began the long trek down the eastern length of the Mirror. They had delayed more than they had intended, and Harri set a quick pace.

The afternoon passed in silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts. At the rear, Raven alternated between staring out across the water and glaring at Cole’s back. As the hours and miles passed, the creature remained unconscious, lying limp in the young man’s arms.

At first, Raven privately fumed at Cole’s defiance.
What does he hope to achieve by bringing that thing?
She agreed with Harri, the dangers of doing so were great, and the benefits nonexistent. The bolt of lightning that had shot from the creature’s finger to strike Cole had shocked her, and none of them could know what other powers it might possess.

Yet, as they trudged along the soft, muddy bank of the Mirror, her attitude gradually softened. The boggit still lolled in Cole’s arms pathetically, while the young man’s expression of grim determination began to look comical in the circumstances. Once or twice she found herself smiling at the sight of the pair of them.

Their shadows had begun to lengthen when the distant sound of roaring water reached their ears. Ahead of them, the cliffs were clearly outlined against the sky, all save the place where they met the lake below. There, the rock was lost behind a curtain of mist, while the surface of the once-placid lake began to churn. Above the mist, along the brow of the cliffs, the rushing waters of the falls sparkled like diamonds.

“The Ymbral Falls,” Harri announced, as they stopped to take in the sight. “Do you begin to see, Cole, why we did not attempt to cross the river inside the forest? The force of the water sweeps away all before it, and the channel it flows along is steep on both sides.”

Cole squinted up at the cliffs. “Yes, I think I understand now,” he replied. The boggit was still cradled in his arms, its eyes still firmly shut and its body limp. “Will we climb them today?”

Raven shook her head. “It will be evening by the time we reach the falls, and I don’t fancy attempting it in the dark.”

“We’ll make camp at the base of the cliffs, and make the climb at daybreak,” Harri agreed.

Raven watched Cole carefully, but this time he seemed happy to accept their counsel. As they set off once more, he moved the small creature from one arm to the other and shook life back into the one that had been holding it; clearly the burden was not a trifling one.

She began to think on Cole’s reaction on seeing the creature. His first instinct had been to go to it, and speak. A hunter would have loosed an arrow, either thinking it to be a hare for supper or an unusual trophy, while Raven had been inclined to ready her weapon and move cautiously past. Cole’s actions were naive and reckless, it was true, and he had nearly paid dearly for them. But there was also something to admire in his attitude. In the last few weeks he had narrowly avoided death three times by her count, yet did not seem scarred by his experiences.
Perhaps he is stronger than any of us realise
, she thought.

However, the Spiritwood would be an altogether different challenge to anything they had faced so far on this journey. As they walked, her eyes were inexorably drawn to the line of smoke-grey trees above them. The forest was perfectly still, yet that somehow made the sight of it more ominous.

CHAPTER 14

T
he orange glow from the cabin’s solitary candle flickered as the door was pushed gently open. A moment later, Captain Brandt’s bearded face appeared around its frame.

He glanced around the small room. It was dim inside; the candle, burned down nearly to its base, cast a feeble light around the cabin’s furnishings and its lone occupant.

This latter, a thin robed figure, was slumped over the desk, resting atop a profusion of strewn papers. In one hand, the boy still clutched the white feather quill he had been using to write with.

Captain Brandt’s face crinkled into a paternalistic smile, and he stepped into the cabin. He barely noticed the rolling movement of the deck beneath his feet, keeping his balance easily as he moved. The weather was far calmer than when the storm had driven the
Havørn
into the cove, and after the events of the past few days he was relieved just to be on the open sea once more.

He wanted to get it all down on paper before he forgot the details,
Captain Brandt thought.

He approached the desk as quietly as he could to avoid waking the boy. Over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of dense rows of tightly packed, crabbed handwriting. The words were interrupted in places with intricate, surprisingly skilled, sketches. An involuntary shiver ran down his back at the sight of them. Caspian may have been afraid of forgetting details of their journey into the dark, but they would stay with him for many years to come.

Caspian shifted in his sleep, and after a moment’s thought Captain Brandt lifted him upright and half-carried him to the low cot he had set up against one wall of the cabin. It hadn’t felt right asking the nervous boy to room below-decks with the rest of the crew and, besides, having a desk and writing materials to hand helped his research with the books and papers he had brought with him from the Crag. Caspian’s eyes opened briefly as he was laid down, but closed again almost immediately.

As he straightened, Captain Brandt’s gaze came to rest on the pages Caspian had laboured over for a day and a night. Curiosity was not in his nature, and normally he would have respected the boy’s privacy, but nonetheless he found himself sitting at the stool in front of the desk. He shuffled through the papers, trying to discern their correct order. The meticulousness Caspian demonstrated when it came to his sketches did not apparently extend to his record-keeping.

It’s not spying,
Captain Brandt told himself,
after all, I was there.
All the same, he was interested to read the boy’s own account of their days underground.

“Ah, here it is,” he murmured under his breath, as he located the first page of the journal. “My name is Caspian Gretch, novice to the Order of Enlightenment and formerly...”

With a faint hiss, the candle finally burned itself out, plunging the cabin into darkness. Captain Brandt cursed, and patted his overcoat pockets until he found his tinderbox. He then groped blindly in front of him until he felt the drawer he was looking for, and rummaged around for a spare candle. It took three strikes of the flint until the wick caught, and he rammed it unceremoniously into the holder on top of the desk.

Finally, sitting in the light once more, he began to read.

*      *      *

My name is Caspian Gretch, novice to the Order of Enlightenment and formerly of the island bastion known as the Crag. The following is a true account of a journey undertaken by myself and the captain and crewmen of the fishing vessel
Havørn
. The nature of our expedition is such that I cannot state with any accuracy the location of our discovery, but in the appendices of this journal I will attempt to plot our course onto a map. It is my hope that anyone reading this account will be interested to hear about what we discovered in the secret places far below the land of Callador.

The boy had signed his name beneath the introductory paragraph, and scrawled a date. Yesterday’s, when he had begun to write. Captain Brandt’s brow wrinkled slightly at the formal tone of the opening, before continuing.

Day one

When the back wall of the cave we had taken shelter in revealed itself to in fact be a doorway of unknown origin, leading into unfathomable blackness, my first and only thought was to investigate what lay beyond.

Fortunately, the
Havørn’s
captain, Olyvar Brandt, has an adventurous spirit, and he agreed. The first mate and one crewman were ordered to stay behind and tend to the ship as it lay at anchor within the hidden cove, leaving Captain Brandt, myself and crewmen Jan and Sten free to explore the tunnel.

I had no idea what might lie in store for us, if anything. For all we knew, it could be an old abandoned mining passage that led to a dead end a hundred miles further on. But the discovery of a metal appendage similar in appearance to one I had seen mere days before on the Crag, worn by one of the Archon’s servants, made me believe otherwise. It was unlike anything myself or any of my Brothers had ever seen. The chance to perhaps uncover the truth behind that mystery made me even more determined to investigate further.

The captain led the way, the light from his burning torch illuminating his face and the cold, damp rock walls of the tunnel. Sten followed, then Jan and finally I brought up the rear. For countless miles we proceeded in this manner. The further we ventured, the more I began to fear stumbling and helplessly watching those tiny islands of light disappearing into the distance, leaving me stranded alone in the dark. I realise how craven that sounds, yet I promised a full account of this expedition and will do my best to make sure no detail goes unrecorded.

Perhaps the worst part was being unable to tell how far we had walked, or for how long, and how far remained ahead of us. At the start, I tried to count the footsteps in my head to help me keep my bearings, but I abandoned this exercise many hours later somewhere around the twenty thousand mark. In that time, we came across not one single turning or junction. As best I could tell, this one tunnel continued in the same direction as we had started. Standing at the door we had entered through, with a powerful enough bow you might have been able to fire an arrow at our backs.

The second worst part was the rats. The first time one ran across my foot in the darkness my loud yelp seemed to echo around the walls forever, and Jan laughed so hard at my surprise I thought he would choke on his own merriment. The second and third times were little easier, but by the twentieth time something small skittered unseen past me I barely noticed.

With no means of measuring how long we had remained underground, we were forced to rely on the hunger in our bellies and the ache of our feet to judge the passage of time and distance. When our legs became stiff, we rested. When we hungered, we stopped to nibble on the rations in our packs. It would not have surprised me if these breaks were not so different to our usual mealtimes. The body is remarkable in so many ways, and years of habit are hard to break even when there is no way of marking the passage of time.

During one of these brief stops, I remarked to my companions that I had no idea where we would now be if we were above ground. Captain Brandt’s sense of direction must be keener than my own, as he confidently predicted that we were likely directly beneath the Granite Pass, and heading towards the The Tail, the narrow western tip of that range of mountains known as the Dragon’s Back. Sten, never one to waste unnecessary words, gave a mute nod of agreement.

When our tired legs finally became too heavy to lift, we stopped to sleep. The captain organised a watch, for although a sentry would have been unable to see an attacker before they fell on us, they still might chance to hear something approach. Each of us was to stay awake for a couple of hours, as best we could guess with no means of measuring time, and he himself took the first watch (or should that be ‘listen’?)

Although the tunnel floor was hard rock, I was relieved to lie down and take the weight from my legs. Had we walked thirty miles that day? More? It was impossible to tell, and the prospect of a similar journey the next day was not an appealing one. I was almost of a mind to apologise to the crew for suggesting the expedition, and advise us to turn back around when we awoke and return to the ship. I am glad that I did not.

As I fell asleep that first ‘night’ below ground, it seemed to me that the mind is as remarkable as the body, if not more so. When I started the journey I had been filled with excitement, anticipation... and fear. Yet now, after untold hours walking along the same tunnel, I found that I was bored. The mysterious and unknowable had become mundane.

I don’t know how long my mind was filled with such thoughts, but eventually an exhausted sleep took hold of me, and I passed from one blackness into another. Our first day in the tunnel was done.

Captain Brandt leaned back from the desk, still holding the journal page. Caspian’s account of their first day covered both sides, its small, closely written script broken by sketches of the metal doorway, the discovery of which had launched their expedition, and the metal appendage the boy had discovered on the ground beyond.

He reached into a pocket of his topcoat and withdrew his clay pipe and a leather pouch, and proceeded to fill one with tobacco from the other. He used the candle to light the bowl, and took several deep puffs as he pondered on what he had read.

It was a true enough account of that long march. Caspian had delivered on that promise. Captain Brandt smiled wryly at the lad’s imagination, though. His own mind had frequently wandered to thoughts of home, of Freyja and the warm fireside he would not see again for many months. Nevertheless, it was interesting to relive the journey through another’s eyes.

The stool let out a creak as he moved his weight slightly, and Caspian shifted on the cot with a low moan. Captain Brandt glanced behind him, but the boy was still fast asleep. With another thoughtful puff on his pipe, he searched the strewn papers until he found the next page.

Day two

I awoke disorientated, for a moment unable to recall where I was, or why I could see nothing around me, as if I had been struck blind in the night. Then, when my wits returned to me and I remembered the previous day, I became afraid that I was alone; that while I slept my companions had moved on without me. A moment later, Sten’s heavy hand clapped my shoulder. It was time for my watch, the last of the night.

I raised myself into a sitting position, but otherwise stayed in the same place I had slept. There seemed little point moving into the tunnel in either direction, and I didn’t want to stumble over the sleeping forms of my companions. Not being familiar with such a duty, I sat quietly and listened attentively. The only sounds, however, were the breaths and snores of the crew.

Doubting whether I would even be able to hear anyone approaching us in the dark, gradually my mind began to wander. How far would we continue down this tunnel before the crew grew tired of this fruitless venture and demanded we turn back? Or if not, then what might we find waiting for us?

Perhaps sleep had refreshed my mind more than I realised immediately upon waking, but I found my worries of the night before had faded. I was once more looking forward to exploring further, although I knew it would probably not be long before the soreness of my legs began to sap my enthusiasm.

I don’t know how long I sat there, alone with my thoughts, but after a while I became uncomfortable with the need to relieve my bladder. I suspected my companions would not be overly pleased with my completing my ablutions so close to them, so I stood and walked a ways along the tunnel. My back and legs were as stiff from yesterday’s exertions as I had feared, but any discomfort was quickly forgotten.

As I stood, my mind wandering, I felt something that we take for granted above ground, but had not experienced in the past day at all. It was so faint, that at first my brain did not even register what it was, and in the few moments after that I still did not realise its significance. A breath of air brushed past my face. Barely enough to move a strand of my hair, but it was undeniably there.

For the whole of the previous day, the air in the tunnel we marched along was near-stagnant and as still as the grave. Faint as it was, that waft of fresher air shouted one thing to me, when my addled mind was finally able to recognise it: we were nearing our destination.

My excited shout had already begun to rouse the sleeping crew when I stumbled back down the tunnel, nearly tripping over my own feet in the dark. Jan asked curtly whether I had found any more rats (I could picture the sneer on his face as he did so), but the captain lit his torch. I told them about the change in the air, and together we walked up the tunnel, where he felt it himself. He congratulated me for the discovery, and said that the passage must open up somewhere ahead, and not very far away at that.

We broke our fast before setting off once more, but my excitement was such that I could barely eat a bite. I was afraid as well, fearful of what might await us. The combination of the two made my stomach flutter.