The Exodus Sagas: Book III - Of Ghosts And Mountains (58 page)

“
Saberrak, what have you done?”
Shinayne gasped.

“I paid a visit to our stalkers. I don’t think they care for me much. The feeling is very mutual.” He walked past them to get his clothing.

“How many are there?” Zen looked around, listened, waiting for them to come any moment.

“Ten or so camps, roughly fifteen in each camp. They are all around us, even ahead to the west. Half are male hunters.” Saberrak put his belt and cloth back on, then his boots.

“That would be around seventy Mogi hunters then. Alden have mercy.” James grabbed his gear and began putting his chainmail on.

“Two less now.” Saberrak huffed. “They have been scouting ahead of us, taking the cactus. I saw it.”

“Now what do we do?” Gwenneth waited a second before she had her answer.

“Rahaga mogahara ragahamahas!”

The war chant grew louder, male voices this time, echoing from camp to camp, tribe to tribe across the mountains. The hair stood up on all their necks, all save Saberrak.

“We run, that is what. Let’s go.” Shinayne grabbed her gear.

“They can see us in their fires, they watch us with those shadows. Destroy every totem you see, quickly. If we do not stop, they can’t tracks us as fast. Keep to any caves, they don’t fight well when they have no room to stand.” Saberrak ran with Shinayne, grinning from horn to horn.

“I suppose you are happy, now that we are going to be mobbed and eaten by giant cannibals? They are cannibals, right?”

“For certain, I watched them have dinner.”

“Wonderful. I do
not
want to die here, Saberrak.”

“You won’t.”

“Not very reassuring at the moment.” She kept running.

“They will follow me, not you. Remember that, they track by the blood of their own, and I won’t be washing it off any time soon. I will be the bait and the decoy this time, you just keep heading west Shinayne.” Saberrak smiled.

“You enjoy this, don’t you?”

“No,
enjoyment
would be a good fight. Slaughtering evil giants, protecting you from cannibal tribes, through the mountains of certain death, I cannot think of the word to describe it.”

“
Pleasure?
” Shinayne looked at him as they ran ahead.

“Close enough.” Saberrak smiled, running in the night, the hunt was on.

Kendari III:III

Ruins of Stillwood, Eastern Kivanis

Early morning dew put a shine to his boots, dampened his black cloak, and made the lifeless forest glimmer with the intermittent rays of the western rising sun. The birds watched him pass, rabbits sat still, and not a sound emerged from what a normal forest would evoke at dawn. His footsteps, quiet as they were, made the loudest noise within earshot. Kendari knew he was here, he was home, in Stillwood.

He passed the outer wall, in moss covered deprivation it was, and continued inward. Three towers, once grand brown marble of ten stories each, had but thirty feet of foundation that was wrapped with green and gray vines.

“The three towers of the Maglesh, my you have not aged well at all.” Kendari smiled, though his stomach ached in shooting pain. He knew that his deal with the demon Nareene would protect him from most holy and sacred places that his curse prevented him from entering, but this area was likely beyond her hellish powers.

His mind wandered, envisioning what the entrance to Stillwood used to look like. Tall white and gray trees covered in green ivy and vines it was. It was often full of visiting highborne elves of gold from Kilikala. Scattered families from the tan savages in Gualidura lived here too. Even the occasional monarch of dark hair from Shalokahn would venture to Stillwood to implore the mighty court of the Whitemoon. But
his
people, the Loestal River elves that founded Aloeste and New Aloeste, the elves that lived on the Agarian continent long before the northerners knew of it, they ruled and called Stillwood their home.

Kendari walked past, his nausea was mild yet he continued in. The grove of trees, once flourishing with bridges for children and swings as well, now sat dead and white with bare branches. He saw a score of homes, what was left of them. The crumbled temple to the Hedim Anah, the steps to the auditorium where plays and song used to decorate the air with sound, and the cursed swordsman walked through the merchant district that was but overgrown and empty.

You used to play there…

You once bought honey and apples for your mother here…

You sang in the Ehlirien Choir there as a boy…

Do you still remember…

“Silence!” Kendari drew his blades, the voices came from all around him. He saw nothing, but heard the words, four different voices in the elven tongue.

His abdomen throbbed, he knew he was near now. He passed the castle of the rulers of Stillwood, a grand but slim manor once, now toppled and buried in leaves and weeds. Kendari walked further in, further east, toward the center of his home of birth. The statue of Siril, majestic still and standing in elven grace over fifty feet high. His hand reached for a statue across, a statue that lay broken. The arch that once marked the entrance to the open court of the Whitemoon was shattered. He looked to his left, he saw the face of Seirena, cracked stone eyes staring back at him.

Four hundred years ago, you were here…

You should not have returned, cursed one…

Your home still stands, go and see…

You learned the art of the blade in that grove…

You had friends and family here, remember…

“I said silence, damn you
! I remember, I do not need your haunts or whispers, rest and leave me be.” Kendari turned full circle, nothing in sight. No noise, no motion, not a single living thing stirred or sounded. He was alone.

The cursed elf felt the sickness, his body began to sweat, this place was too strong. The memories flooded, the feelings attacked him, and his hands began to tremble as he approached his childhood home. One would never be able to tell of all the dilapidated and ruined houses which was which. But, Kendari knew. A thousand dwellings, roofs long gone, walls falling in, overgrown with wicked looking brush and roots of dead trees, but he counted his steps from the statues. The third road, barely visible now, fourth house on the left, and he was home.

Kendari hit his knees, his swords dropped to the patches of grass and cobblestone, and he wiped his marked face with his gloved hands. He looked up, still two stories tall, red stone on the bottom, wooden double doors with gold handles, and bleached white wood for the walls and frame. The windows held stained glass no more, roots of trees had shifted the whole base to a strange angle, but it was his home. There was no doubt.

You were born here, raised here…

You ate your meals here, ran out the steps…

Your room was the one on the right, go in…

“
No!
Shut your mouths, all of you! I will kill you, show yourselves, I will cut each of you down!” Kendari stood, pain shooting up his chest now, nearly intolerable. He was crying, he could not control it.

You already did, all of us, remember…

“I had no choice!”

We all have choices, you chose to murder your entire city…

Those that were with you all took their lives…

Only you remain…

Do you remember your friend, Bilrossi the Small…

Your friend you killed while he slept, the twig, helpless…

“I had no choice!” Kendari fell back down, the emotion, the memory, stronger than any sword he had ever met.

Your family, they pleaded, they did not believe it…

You wanted fame, glory, to win and to rule…

You hated your father for loving your brothers more…

So you killed them too, all of them…

“I was young! I did not know what would happen!”

We all know right and wrong, it is instinct…

You chose to ignore it, and now you have won…

You are the deadliest elf with a blade…

And what do you have for it, Nadderi…

Go to your tree, go and end it, take the sword…

“No!”

Kendari stood, in great pain, shaking. He picked up his swords, sheathed them, and stumbled in search of the tree, the tree of Nadderi, the tree of judgement that had the thorns. He remembered them putting the thorn in him, the pain had never stopped. It was still there four hundred years later. After the battle was lost, his surviving mercenaries had all committed suicide as their faces changed like his, all but Kendari had ended their lives immediately following their sentence, as did most so judged and cursed.

He fell again, crawling now, he passed the stairs that led down to the sacred tree of Stillwood. It was here that judgement was passed, very seldom, as elven sin is rare. The curse had been administered to forty three before his company were captured. Kendari and his surviving men numbered seventeen that night, and sixteen put their swords through their own chests moments after. He had met only a few like him ever, but they were pitiful creatures that deserved death, and he had given it to them. Since Stillwood was abandoned, no one knew nor recorded when, or if, the elves of the other kingdoms came here to punish their guilty in the old tradition. As far as he knew, Kendari was the only Nadderi alive.

He looked up, his vomiting had ended as nothing but bile remained. The tree hovered over him like a thousand guillotines. White branches full of nails, seven trunks twisted into one, roots that climbed and dove into the earth like giant serpents, and black thorns were the only fruit that the skeleton of a tree bared. A rusty elven blade, curved and stained, rested in its driven spot in one of the trunks. He remembered when the elves offered it to him, when they pulled the nails out of his arms and legs, his body next to his vanquished and dead comrades. Kendari recalled the sickness, the hatred that nature felt toward him all of the sudden, how his hair darkened and his skin paled with the spiral black marks that never left. He remembered running, screaming, being chased by the Hedim Anah into the Gimmori Mountains. Then he was visited by Nareene, a priestess then, and mortal. She worshipped Vasentanessa, the lover and judge, but in secret she worshipped another. By the time he knew, she was gone, the deal done, and his chest had the flames of hell to mark ownership of what lay inside.

Kendari looked up the tree, over a hundred feet of death waiting for him in the silence of Stillwood. The Nadderi tree called to him, without words, it told him to take the blade and join the other elves it had cursed. He spit on it.

“I will outlive this curse, wait and see!”

No you won’t, Kendari kinslayer, you will die here…

You want redemption, justice, and forgiveness…

It will never happen, not ever, the Gods despise you…

But you may die fighting…

“And which hunter of the Hedim Anah or guardian of your pathetic temples do you wish to see slain?” Kendari calmed his voice, resisting the urges and messages to end himself, defiant to the taunts of the spirits that lingered here.

Not one that can be slain, but all who cannot…

They honor that request for you, to see you to your end…

Now you must die, and die you will, finally…

Kendari glanced around, the sky darkened with sudden breezes and clouds. The wind whipped leaves and brush. Footsteps came from every direction. Slow steps, cautious steps, he saw the feet as he sat on his hands and knees. Transparent, devoid of color, just white to gray to black they were, but feet walking in Stillwood. Hundreds at first, then thousands, their soft steps crunched the grass and ground into a deafening breach of the dead peace that existed. Swords drew, thousands of swords, phantasmal swords from all those that died in Stillwood that night four hundred years past.

The Nadderi swordsman stood. He met the hateful gazes of the dead, they remembered him well. He drew
Shiver
in his right, then the holy crossblade in his left, held reverse. He crouched low, and looked at the horde of spectres that waited. He smiled at the ghosts of all the elves as he stood in front of the Nadderi tree, green eyes glaring at his father and brothers, his childhood friends, the army of soldier swordsmen he had killed. When the battle took place centuries past, his army was two thousand strong, he and sixteen had been captured after a nearly victorious battle. Ten thousand dead in his revolt, and they all stood here before him in undeath, swords drawn on just him.

Time for judgement, Kendari of Stillwood, time to end it…

“Not even close
.”

Cristoff III:III

Shanador Tradeway, North of the Misathi Mountains

“How many did your men count, Sir Leonard?”

“Two hundred nearly sire.” Leonard was breathing heavy, his steed as well, it had been a fast charge back in the summer heat.