Dawn of the Dreamsmith (The Raven's Tale Book 1) (33 page)

“When I was there, looking for... survivors, I found a library,” Captain Brandt interjected.

Caspian shrugged. “That’s mostly reference books for teaching the initiates, nothing that would really interest the Brothers. They kept their books away from the rest, deep down inside the rock below the keep. Once, when I was returning a grimoire for Elder Tobias, I found a different part of the Archive, hidden behind a door. There weren’t many books in there, but the Brothers had separated them from the rest, that much was obvious.

“I got curious, and had a look at one of the books in that room. It was old, and the pages nearly crumbled in my hands as I turned them. It was a Brother’s account of a journey he had taken in the mountains. Bad weather had hit them, and his guides had died in a landslide. He was close to death himself, when he was rescued by creatures he had never seen before. Intelligent beasts, he described them as. He admits he was delirious with fever, but he spoke of creations they showed him, metal devices seemingly beyond the skill of any human smith. He called them the Delvers.” Caspian shook his head slowly. “I wish now I had read more, but I heard one of the novices coming down to the Archive. I slammed the journal shut and put it back on its shelf before I was discovered. I’d forgotten all about it until now. I don’t even know why that book in particular was hidden away.”

“I can take a guess,” Captain Brandt said. “Your Order preaches that man is above all others. They probably weren’t best pleased to read that another race had power and skill far greater than their own. It would be heresy.” He thought for a moment. “You think these Delvers are the same beings that created that city?”

“I don’t know, but it seems likely, I’d say. Whereabouts is Sten’s village?” he asked after a pause.

“Somewhere in the Shadowlands to the south, I think. But I never found out exactly where, you know what he’s like. Why do you ask?”

“The metal lords,” Caspian replied. “The mountain is a long way from his village, then, hundreds of miles. Perhaps his ancestors travelled to the Dragon’s Back and found them, or...”

“Or perhaps they have other cities beneath the Empire,” Captain Brandt finished. He puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, breathing dark clouds around the cabin. “I think we should head to Bloodstone with all haste, and speak to the Legion there.”

“Why, captain?”

Captain Brandt rose and strode towards the cabin door. “From what you and Cole have told me about this giant manservant of his, it seems the Archon has found a way to claim the skills of these Delvers for himself. I don’t know what he intends to do with it, but have little doubt that it means ill for the north, where there is little love for the Order, or even the entire realm. If he’s acting on his own without the emperor’s knowledge, then the Legion at Bloodstone will want to know.”

He flung open the door and marched through. If the crew weren’t sailing south as fast as the
Havørn
was capable of, they were about to receive an almighty ear-bashing.
I just pray we aren’t already too late.

CHAPTER 15

“
W
ell, this isn’t too bad, I must say,” said Cole with forced cheeriness. “Considering we’ve just climbed out of a swamp, this is a definite improvement.”

He took another bite from the apple he had pulled from his pack a few moments earlier. At the sound of the crunch, there was a bad-tempered growl from the leather pouch slung around his waist. He bit off another big chunk and dropped it inside.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, over the sound of muffled, eager chewing, “I’ve seen lovelier forests. But plant a few shrubs around the place, put up a few flower baskets, and it would make for a very pleasant stroll all things considered.”

Raven looked up at him and scowled. “It isn’t wise to mock,” she said sharply. “You never know what might be listening.”

There was a bark of laughter from Harri. “I think Cole is putting a brave face on our situation. There is fear behind his words, if I’m any judge.”

Cole’s face reddened. “And what exactly are we going to find that we should be so afraid of? I haven’t seen anything yet besides trees.”

“Nothing, if we’re lucky. Any number of things if we are not.” Harri stared off between the charcoal-grey trunks. “Hopefully nothing I haven’t faced before.”

With another bite, Cole finished his apple. The sides of the pouch quivered and he dropped the entire core inside. “I suppose you’re not afraid at all, then, Harri.”

“Only a fool walks without fear in the Spiritwood.” The young hunter’s grey eyes met his own. “And I don’t think you’re a fool. Naive, perhaps, but not foolish. Hold on to your fear, listen to it, and it may keep you alive long enough to see the other side.”

They had stopped just a few hundred yards into the forest to catch their breath and eat a meagre lunch after an exhausting climb up the cliffs that morning. It would have been an exaggeration to describe the place they had found to rest as a clearing; it was merely a spot where several trees close to one another had fallen down to reveal a small patch of iron-grey sky above.

Cole was sitting on one of the fallen trunks, and Raven the other. While they had nibbled at a handful of provisions, Harri had prowled around them restlessly. He had been opposed to stopping at all so soon after entering the forest, but after initially picking himself up to follow the young hunter, Cole had soon been brought to a standstill by his aching limbs.

They had awoken that morning to another crisp, frosty dawn, and had wasted no time in beginning their ascent of the cliff. Harri chose a spot a distance from the falls. “We’re away from the spray of the water here,” he explained. “Any closer and the rock will be slick and treacherous.”

Apparently satisfied with the spot he’d chosen, Harri had busied himself with organising the equipment he’d brought along for the climb. Cole approached Raven, who was staring out across the tranquil waters of Valdyr’s Mirror, lost in thought.

“Raven, can you help me?” As she turned, he nodded towards the unconscious boggit, which still lay slumped in his arms. “I don’t think I can climb the cliff like this.”

He’d been reluctant to go to her for aid, as she’d made clear her opposition to his bringing the poor creature along, but wasn’t sure what else to do. To his surprise, Raven nodded, and knelt down to rummage through her pack.

“I still don’t agree with this,” she told him as she found a leather pouch and began to empty it of its contents; herbs, mostly, from what he could see. “But better this than you slip and land on that stubborn head of yours.”

The pouch was small but ample enough to carry the still-sleeping creature. After that brief interlude, the climb had gone as well as could have been expected. Harri bound the three of them together using a length of rope. He took the lead, followed by Raven and then Cole. “No offence intended, Cole, but you’re the least experienced climber,” he explained. “If you fall, you’ll have both of us to take your weight and there’ll be no-one to knock off.”

Cole saw the sense in that and didn’t complain. After Raven had climbed a dozen feet up the cliff, with Harri the same distance above her, it was Cole’s turn to begin. As he stepped up to the rock face, his stomach fluttered with nerves. But, with no alternative option presenting itself, he began to clamber up.

The first step was the hardest, he discovered. Physically, the climb was demanding but, as Harri had promised, the rock face was pitted and lined with cracks that served as good hand and footholds. Once, his fingers found loose gravel in one of these pits and slipped free, but that was the closest he came to falling.

Nevertheless, their ascent took most of the morning. Seemingly every part of his body was aching by the time he finally pulled himself to the top of the cliffs, and his companions grabbed an arm each to haul him up and onto flat ground.

After pausing to untie their harnesses, coil the rope back up and return it to his pack, Harri marched into the forest and gestured for them to follow.

Cole held back a moment, looking around at the forest edge. In a strange way, it was almost a disappointment. He had heard nothing but grave warnings of the Spiritwood since the night of the
krigsmoot
... and to arrive and find nothing awaiting him but trees felt like an anti-climax. He’d half-expected something unnatural to skitter out of the undergrowth and leap at his face the moment he set foot within its borders.

Sitting in the clearing now, though, waiting for Harri to signal the resumption of their journey, he had to admit the atmosphere of the Spiritwood was unlike anywhere else he had been. Just as the air appeared to chill as they approached its borders, it was noticeably colder here again than it had been beside the banks of the lake below. Now that he had recovered from the exertion of the climb, he found himself shivering despite his thick woollen cloak.

The trees were different, also. Every trunk and branch he had seen was grey – ranging from a dark charcoal shade to the colour of an overcast sky. It was as if all the colour had been drained from the forest. With the onset of the winter, the branches were all bare of leaves, which made it feel even starker.
Are their leaves even green
, he wondered. Somehow, he doubted it.

Absently, he patted the pouch at his hip, and was met with a torrent of expletives. “You’ve finished eating, then,” he said, smiling as a small hairy face emerged to glare at him.

“Pfeh, you calls that food?” the boggit spat. “Attacked, kidnapped and starved, that’s a sorry fate for anyone, says I.”

“It might not come to that,” Cole replied with a wicked grin. “You might get eaten before you can starve.”

The boggit harrumphed. “Yer, and ain’t this a fine place to wake up? Fifty years I been in that swamp,
sired
there I was, an’ a day after meetin’ you I end up in this bladdy forest.”

“I offered to take you back after I told you where we are headed,” said Cole mildly. “But you just grumbled and said that you’d always dreamed of seeing the mountains.”

A faraway look came over the creature’s gnarled face. “My great-grandsire saw ‘em once,” it said distantly. “Piles a rock as big as the world, he said. Allus hoped to see ‘em for meself one day, but this bladdy great forest’s always bin in the way.”

Cole’s brow wrinkled. “How did your grandsire make it all that way, then?”

“Flew!” The boggit cackled. “The idjit got ’imself cort by an ‘awk. Fevvered bastid carried ‘im ‘alfway cross the wood. Dropped ‘im into the river, but not ‘fore e’d seen the mountins. Fool washed up in the bog a day later, ‘alf drowned, babblin’ bout wot he seed.”

Cole smiled at the image of the airborn boggit. “That’s quite a tale, Grume.”

The creature sniffed. “Allus wanted to see them after that. Just didn’t fancy gettin’ meself cort by an ‘awk to do it.” He eyed Cole doubtfully. “Not sure yet wevver I’m better off or not than ol’ pappy. At least he flied over most of this mess.”

Before Cole could reply, the hairy face withdrew into the pouch. He felt it wriggle as the creature settled down within. He glanced up, and Raven was smiling at him knowingly. “Don’t say it,” he warned. The creature had finally woken almost as soon as Cole stepped inside the forest to follow Harri’s rapidly disappearing back.

They once more set off into the trees, and Cole very quickly decided he didn’t much care for the journey. His only other experience of a forest was the one in which he had first met Raven. That hadn’t been particularly enjoyable, filled as it was with instances of being slapped in the face with leaves and twigs, and regular moments of panic as his horse had stumbled into a burrow of some kind and threatened to pitch him head-first over its neck.

But such moments were mostly caused by his own poor horsemanship. By way of contrast, the trees of the Spiritwood seemed to actively conspire against him.

As he followed Raven’s back through the silent grey trunks, he lost count of the number of times he tripped over a protruding root, even when he was certain the ground had been clear before placing his foot. Once, Harri and Raven had pushed through a thick bush that blocked their path, disappearing from sight. As Cole followed, when he emerged on the other side they were nowhere to be seen. He’d finally spotted them far away to his right, almost hidden from view by a number of tree trunks. Later, they told him they had continued straight on without turning.

Cole began to regard the grey and silent trees with suspicion, and from that point on made sure to stick closer to his guides. He didn’t relish the thought of being left behind and having to find his own way through the forest.

That first day in the Spiritwood, Cole did not see another living being or creature. Nevertheless, as the hours wore on, he became uncomfortably aware of the weight of eyes on him. Every so often he thought he caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of his vision, but whenever he turned to look the forest was perfectly still.

The only sounds were the snaps and crunches of the dry twigs and leaves beneath their feet. Otherwise, a deathly silence lay over the wood like a thick blanket. In a way it was strange that the absence of something should be so obvious, but Cole found himself missing the birdsong and rustling of various small creatures going about their business that had filled the other forest. He hoped their rations would last, unsure what was worse: that there was no game for Harri to hunt, or the thought of what he might return to camp with if there was.

By the afternoon, as they continued to push deeper into the forest, Cole began to see monstrous cobwebs draped across the high branches... in several cases almost covering entire trees. In one of their rare moments of conversation that day, he pointed them out to Harri. “Pay them no mind,” the young hunter replied. “The spiders of the Spiritwood are unnaturally large and unpleasant to gaze on, but if you keep your distance they won’t harm us. All the same, we will take care to camp well away from their webs tonight.”

“What do they look like?” Cole asked, wondering at the size of the cobwebs.

Harri looked up at the silk-covered trees and shrugged. “As far as their kind go they are uglier than most, like everything that dwells in the Spiritwood. But the main danger is that the unwary traveller doesn’t notice them until it’s too late.”

Cole was perplexed. “But I thought you said they were big.”

“Grotesquely so,” Harri agreed. “But the spiders of this forest have learned to disguise themselves in the colours of the boughs they inhabit... mimicking them so closely that you would barely notice one before it is right in front of your face.”

“Foul creatures.” Cole shuddered.

“Most assuredly. Fortunately, it also means that you are never forced to gaze upon their foulness as you journey through the forest.” Harri laughed. “Provided you take steps to avoid them, then they are far from the greatest danger one might face here.”

The atmosphere was sombre as they made camp that night. The temperature fell even further, and Cole shivered despite the small measure of warmth afforded by the meagre fire Harri had built. “Is that wise?” Raven asked him.

Harri shrugged in response. “There is no hard and fast rule, sadly. Half of what lurks in these woods would be attracted by the flames, but the other half is as likely to be repelled by them. At least this way we’ll have a hot meal inside us and light to see by.”

The supper was indeed hot, and Cole was thankful for that. Unfortunately, there wasn’t nearly enough of it; he evidently wasn’t alone in worrying about running out of supplies. Immediately after finishing the steaming cup of broth Harri had cooked up for them his stomach growled for more. He stared gloomily into the fire, trying to ignore the hollow feeling inside.

“You are quiet this evening, Cole,” Harri observed. “How are you feeling after your first day in the Spiritwood?”

“It is... different to what I expected,” Cole admitted, trying to keep from glancing up to search once again for webs in the branches above them. “I expected dangers, some sort of foe we would need to face. But this place... it just seems to sap the life from you. I feel unwelcome, oppressed even.” He shivered again. “I don’t know which is worse.”