Shadows on the Stars (37 page)

He noticed just then that these twisted, leafless trees had interlocked their branches. Of course! How better to survive these brutal winds up here above the valley floor? That was also why, no doubt, they grew blades of grass instead of larger leaves that could easily be ripped away.

At last, the wind subsided. The tree trunks lifted, as the long grasses surrounding the grove raised their grain-clustered tops. Tamwyn, too, sat up higher. He breathed a sigh of relief that such winds didn’t blow down in the root-realms—except, perhaps, in Airroot. Up here, though, on the trunk of Avalon just below its branches, the wind seemed a fact of life, as ordinary as starset.

Just as he was about to get up again, the tree that he was leaning against shook violently. Tamwyn slid off, then realized that the ground beneath him was quaking just as much. He tried to rise, or even to crawl, but the wild tremors knocked him flat on his face. Dirt sprayed all over him. There was a loud popping sound as the trees’ burly roots pulled out of the ground. He curled into a ball, expecting one or more trees to fall on top of him.

Nothing fell. The quaking ceased.

Tamwyn shook the dirt out of his hair, sat up—and suddenly understood. He could only gasp in astonishment.

All that shaking hadn’t come from the ground, but from the trees themselves! They were standing around him, their roots splayed on the grassy turf, their branches no longer intertwined. The trees—or whatever they really were—had gathered around him in a circle, leaning their faces closer to scrutinize him.

For they did indeed have faces, midway up their scraggly, many-limbed bodies. Each face had a ragged slit for a mouth, a double knob that might have been a nose, and most striking of all, a single, vertical eye, as tall and narrow as a twig. The ring of tall eyes examined Tamwyn, never blinking.

Suddenly he felt a powerful rush of fear. Whether it came from himself or from these bizarre creatures, he couldn’t quite tell. But instinct made him jump to his feet, leap over the roots in his way, and escape as fast as he could down the grassy slope.

The creatures pursued him, their roots slapping against the ground and their grassy limbs swishing through the air like a wintry wind. As fast as Tamwyn ran, he could hear them thumping down the slope behind him, gaining every second. Anxiously, he turned his head to see how close they really were.

Without warning, he tripped on a tussock of grass. Pitching forward, he cried out as he fell, rolling downhill. Finally he came to a stop. Spitting the grass from his mouth, he started to regain his feet—when one of the creatures’ knobby limbs slammed hard against his back.

The force of the blow knocked him flat on his face. Worse yet, the creature began to thrust all its weight onto the limb, pushing down on his back. No matter how much he wriggled, Tamwyn couldn’t escape. Nor even breathe. And the limb grew swiftly heavier. In another few seconds, the weight would surely crush his ribs—or break his back.

“Heeeevashhh! Heeeevashhh!”

As the sharp, hissing sound rent the air, the creature suddenly froze, and ceased crushing Tamwyn. To his astonishment, it lifted its limb slightly—not enough that he could extract himself, but just enough that he could breathe again.

“Oiyanishhhla. Shhheralass, oiyanishhhla!”

Slowly—and, Tamwyn sensed, reluctantly—the creature raised its limb another notch. He pulled himself free, spinning away on the grass. Panting, he knelt on the slope, eager to see who, or what, had stopped the creature from killing him.

A tall, broad-chested figure in a hooded cloak strode toward him. With a sharp wave of his hand, the figure cried out again, louder than before. This time, the knobby creature and its companions actually backed away. With a hiss of disappointment, they turned and slowly shuffled off toward higher ground, their rootlegs thumping on the turf.

Tamwyn watched them for a few seconds to be sure they were really leaving, then faced the cloaked figure again. At that instant, the figure pulled back his hood.

A man! All the way up here in Merlin’s Knothole!

Tamwyn bit his lip. Carefully, he scrutinized the face of this stranger, whose long gray hair and coal-black eyes, gleaming in the starlight, made Tamwyn think, for an instant, that this just might be the person he’d longed his whole life to find.

Yet he knew, in the very next instant, it was not. As much as Tamwyn wanted to believe that he had finally found his father, he felt sure, by some inner sight that had nothing to do with the eyes, that this was someone else. But who? And how did he come to be in this place?

The burly man furrowed his brow, as if he were asking himself the very same questions. At last, in a voice that seemed to echo in his barrel chest, he said simply, “Yer a long way from home, lad.”

Tamwyn reached for his staff and rose to his feet. With a nod, he answered, “So are you, I’ll wager.”

“Then ye’d lose, lad. This valley be me rightful home. Has been now fer . . .” He paused, counting. “Seventeen years. An’ in all that time, yer me first guest.”

Tamwyn stiffened. Seventeen years. The time of his father’s expedition! This man might have been part of the team Krystallus had assembled—in which case he’d surely know what had happened to that team. As well as its leader.

Yet as much as he hungered to find out, Tamwyn sensed that the time wasn’t yet right to ask. He’d hold back, at least for the moment.

“Long enough,” the man went on, with a shake of his gray locks, “to learn the tongue o’ them drumalin’s.”

“For which I’m very grateful!” Tamwyn smiled, then asked, “Drumalings? Is that what you call those creatures?”

“Aye. That be not their name fer theirselves, which rolls on an’ on like a damn waterfall, somethin’ like
hershnaganshalaslianooshkalash.
But that be what I took to callin’ them—after the Old Fincayran word fer tree, ye know.”

“Druma.”

“Right, lad.” He stroked his curly gray beard for a moment, then extended his immense hand. “Me name be Ethaun. An’ yers?”

“Tamwyn.” He cleared his throat, then asked the question that burned inside him: “Did you, by chance, come to this place with—”

“Ye must be hungry,” Ethaun declared, cutting him off. “Come on, I was jest fixin’ me own breakfast when I heard yer shout. So now ye can join me fer some eats.”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and started down the grassy slope, angling toward the ravine at the bottom. With a sigh, Tamwyn followed along behind.

35
•
A Name from the Past

Ethaun, who seemed as burly as a bear, led Tamwyn down the slope into the thicker grasses of the valley floor. To the young man’s surprise, his guide veered away from the gardens and orchard, and toward the deep ravine.
Where is he taking me
? Tamwyn wondered.

Just as they neared the edge of the ravine, which dropped five or six times Tamwyn’s height into the fertile ground, he saw a staircase wrought of something that resembled ironwood. The steep stairs led down to a simple earthen hut, its roof made of mossy wooden shingles with a sturdy stone chimney at one end. Outside the hut’s doorway sat a substantial pile of firewood, a chopping block, and dozens of assorted garden tools—hoes, saws, rakes, pruning shears, and the like—many of which looked broken or only half-built.

Of course
, thought Tamwyn as he climbed down the stairway.
He lives down here to stay out of the wind! Or maybe
, he added grimly,
out of the reach of those drumalings.

Following Ethaun’s broad form, he stepped into the hut and set down his pack and staff. As he closed the door behind him, a stone bell that hung on the back of the door jangled. Tamwyn smiled, knowing that his host, like himself, must have spent some time in Stoneroot, the land of bells. As if in response, the small quartz bell on Tamwyn’s hip sounded a note of its own.

With only one window, the hut was quite dark, in addition to reeking of smoke. But as Tamwyn’s eyes adjusted, he realized that some of the darkness was, in fact, smoke. A thick, dark cloud hovered near the ceiling above the hearth.

Ethaun bent over the hearth coals and blew a long, steady breath. The coals immediately burst into flames, filling the hut with more light—as well as more smoke. He tossed a good-size slab of wood onto the fire, sending up a fountain of sparks.

Then Ethaun stepped over to a sturdy wooden table, which held a large carving knife, a blackened pipe—and the largest melon Tamwyn had ever seen, fully as big as a troll’s head. The barrel-chested man started to pick up the knife, then stopped and turned back to Tamwyn.

“Tickle me toenails,” he declared, breaking into a wide, gap-toothed grin. “I’m fergettin’ me manners! Not used to visitors, ye know.” He motioned to a stool by the wall. “Jest slide that over here, lad, so we both can sit at the table.”

As he stepped across the earthen floor to the stool, Tamwyn gazed around Ethaun’s dwelling. It seemed very crowded—and very human. Under the table sat a straw basket full of pipes, most of them carved from hardwood burls, along with a sack of pipeweed that looked like dried leaves of lemon balm. Over by one wall sat a straw pallet with a ragged cloth blanket. And stuffed partially under the pallet’s edge was a torn copy of a book he recognized:
Cyclo Avalon
, the famous Drumadian text by Lleu of the One Ear.

Against the opposite wall, many smaller tools hung on hooks. There were hammers of several sizes and shapes, knives, tongs, thin-bladed saws, a set of chisels—and many implements that Tamwyn couldn’t recognize, including some sort of glass globe in a leather strap. All the tools showed considerable craftsmanship, whether they had been made from wrought iron, polished hardwood, or chipped stone.

In the far corner of the hut sat a set of triangular shelves, drooping from the weight of the chunks of iron ore, slabs of obsidian, and coils of heavy rope that they supported. Nearby rested several large bags, overflowing with colorful seeds. And in baskets by the shelves sat more enormous fruits and vegetables, all jumbled together. These included a bunch of fist-sized grapes, a single carrot as long as Tamwyn’s arm, a leaf of lettuce that could have covered his entire back, a batch of giant scallions, and a turnip that looked about as heavy as one of the iron chunks.

Tamwyn’s gaze moved back to the hearth. Shaped as a semicircle, and built from blocks of granite, the hearth and its chimney took up most of one wall. Beside it rested a flat, oblong hunk of rock that looked very much like an anvil.

All at once, Tamwyn realized this place wasn’t just a home. It was also a smithy! He nodded to himself as he spotted the heavy, charred apron hanging from a hook over by the tools.

“Well, lad, are ye comin’ to breakfast er not?” called Ethaun from his seat—a pair of unopened seed bags by the table. “Bite me boots, this melon be tasty.”

Tamwyn grabbed the stool and slid it over to the table. Seeing the hefty slice that his host had set aside for him, he took a big bite of the melon’s juicy white center. For some time after that, the only sounds within the hut were chomping teeth and dribbling juices.

Although Tamwyn ached to ask about his father, he could sense that Ethaun would need to be in the proper mood. So, biding his time, he asked instead about the strange creatures who had nearly killed him.

“Meant no harm to ye, them drumalin’s,” declared Ethaun as he cut himself another slice of melon.

“No harm?” asked Tamwyn, incredulous. “That beast nearly broke my back!”

“Not knowin’ly,” the gray-bearded man insisted. “It was jest overly scared, ye see. Truth be told, them drumalin’s be scared o’ everythin’. Even their own bitty little green mustaches! Not to mention that wild wind up there on the slopes, which scares them even though they can anchor theirselves with rootyfeet.”

“I still say,” countered Tamwyn, pausing to swallow, “they’re dangerous.”

“Maybe so, lad. But they’re also spectac’ler gardeners.” He waved his big hand at the baskets of fruits and vegetables. “‘Course, they never grow anythin’ but salads an’ fruit. But count me curls, they do that well! An’ all year round, too, since it never gets so cold here as to frost er snow. Why, they even grow me all the firewood I need fer me smithin’.”

He paused, his eyes suddenly bright, and leaned toward Tamwyn. “Ye don’t have any dried strips o’ meat in yer pack there, do ye?”

“No. Sorry about that.”

“Not so sorry as me! Seventeen years without a single lick o’ meat, think o’ that.”

Tamwyn nodded, deciding that maybe the time had finally come. “So tell me,” he said as casually as he could, “whatever brought you to this remote place?”

Ethaun slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then spoke as if he hadn’t heard the question. “Soon after I arrived, it strikes me these gardeners do pretty well with their bony stickfingers, but what if they had a few real garden tools? So I makes them a trade. They gets some tools, an’ I gets all the food I can ever eat.”

“But tell me, Ethaun. When you came here, did you—”

“Here, lad. Have a carrot.”

Tamwyn peered straight at him. “Just tell me this. Did you come here with a man named Krystallus?”

At the mention of that name, Ethaun suddenly looked troubled. He set down his melon rind. “Now that be a name from the past,” he said finally, his voice as low as a thrumming grouse. “But aye, I did travel with him, leastways fer a while.”

“A while?”

Picking up his pipe, Ethaun chewed on its stem for a moment. Then, in one deft motion, he took a pinch of pipeweed and pushed it into the bowl with his little finger. From his tunic pocket he grabbed a pair of iron stones, much like the ones Tamwyn himself carried, and lit a spark. After a few thoughtful puffs, he finally spoke again.

“That be a long tale, lad. Are ye sure ye’d like to hear it right now?”

Tamwyn’s face looked just as hard as the stones of the hearth. “I’m sure.”

He took another puff. “Well, I s’pose it’d do me good to tell somebody. Been a dragon’s age, it has, since it all happened.”

36
•
The Dagger’s Blade