The Ancient

TWENTY-SIX

Well Found in a Dark Place

Milkeila wasn’t consciously thinking of anything as she walked on the beach one dark and breezy night. Resignation filled her thoughts and filled her heart, so much so that she had abandoned her hopes of what might have been, in full knowledge that her reality simply could never approach those hopes and dreams.

She didn’t know how many days had passed since she had last seen her beloved Cormack. Too many, though, for her to ever expect to see him again. Either he had been found out as a traitor and imprisoned or put to death, or he had buried himself in guilt over his stark actions and had abandoned his wayward course-a course that included Milkeila.

For several days, the woman had tried to concoct some mental scenario in which she could lead her people to go and rescue Cormack; she had allowed herself to fantasize about again besieging Chapel Isle and forcing the monks to relinquish their unfaithful brother.

That could never happen, of course, and she didn’t even know if such was Cormack’s condition. So, for the sake of her own survival, Milkeila had let it all go, had exhaled and exorcised Cormack from her heart and mind.

And always, Toniquay was there, looking over her shoulder, reading her emotions and reminding her, ever reminding her, of her responsibilities to the traditions. She was shaman, and among the Alpinadoran tribes that was no small thing.

She walked the beach this night, the wind blowing aside the mists enough to afford her a wonderful view of the starry canopy above, the water gently lapping the rocks and the black volcanic sand of Yossunfier’s beach, and she was at peace. Until she saw a single light in the southeast.

Milkeila’s heart skipped a beat. She thought it must be Chapel Isle-perhaps a lantern at the top of their evergrowing tower. But no, she realized, it could not be. The light was not far enough away.

A boat, perhaps, she silently cautioned, and she stood perfectly still and tried to not allow the movement of the small waves to distort her perception. After many heart-wrenching moments, she realized that the light was not moving. It was on the sandbar.

Milkeila had to consciously breathe and steady herself. She started for the boats immediately, but her swift stride slowed as it occurred to her that the light could be a trap. Perhaps Cormack had been discovered as a traitor and had been tortured into revealing all! Perhaps a group of monks had lit her and Cormack’s private signal beacon to lure her to the sandbar and capture her.

Those thoughts continued to swirl in Milkeila’s head even after she had appropriated one of the smallest Yossunfier boats and had started quietly paddling out from the shore.

Her heart raced as she came to confirm that the light was indeed coming from the sandbar, or near to it, but she was a bit concerned that Cormack would burn such a light for so long on so clear a night. Certainly it could be seen from Red Cap or Chapel Isle, and after so many minutes, perhaps even some of Milkeila’s own people would decide to go and investigate. Of course, all of this was based on the presumption that it was indeed Cormack.

Milkeila gave one long and powerful pull with her paddle, then put it up and bent low in the small boat so that her silhouette wouldn’t stand out against the horizon as she glided toward the sandbar. Peering through the thin mist, she saw a form, and the way the tall man paced left no doubt in her that it was indeed her beloved Cormack. She started to sit up, even to call out, but she bit back the call as she noted another form on the sandbar, short and thick. A powrie.

Milkeila sat up and speared her paddle into the water to create drag and slow the boat. She was still drifting, the current and her momentum bringing her very slowly toward the sandbar. She didn’t know what to do! She wanted to see Cormack-more than anything in the world, Milkeila wanted to be certain that her lover was all right, wanted to feel his strong arms about her again.

But what was this? Why would Cormack bring a bloody-cap dwarf to their private place? A groan from the far side of the sandbar made her realize that there were others, as well, and soon she was close enough to see another powrie over there, kneeling over something-a man, perhaps?

Despite her caution, Milkeila couldn’t turn away from this. Cormack’s movements showed her that she had been seen, and the man rushed to the point on the sandbar nearest to her and softly called out her name, waving frantically for her to come ashore. And she did, and Cormack wrapped her in as tight a hug as she had ever known.

“Powries,” she said, her voice as shaken as her sensibilities.

“Quickly, here,” Cormack said, taking her by the wrist and dragging her along to the back side of the sandbar, where an injured man lay on the ground, a second powrie beside him. As if that wasn’t distressing enough, a third powrie sat in their boat, just a short distance away.

“Cormack, what are you doing?” Milkeila asked, and when the monk didn’t answer, she just stated, rather severely, “Cormack!”

He stopped and swung about to face her. “We found him. You have the gemstones? He will die.”

“Who?”

Cormack dragged her over. “This man.”

“Who is he?”

Cormack shook his head. “We found him at the base of the glacier, half-buried in the mud.”

“We? You and the powries?”

“Yes.”

“Cormack?”

The monk paused and took a deep breath. “I was expelled from Chapel Isle, beaten and left for dead. This powrie-”

“Mcwigik’s the name,” the dwarf interjected.

“Mcwigik saved my life,” Cormack explained. “They’ve taken me in.”

“Every dwarf needs a dog,” Mcwigik mumbled.

“We were going to come and get you,” Cormack continued. “We’re leaving the lake.”

“You and the powries?”

“A few, yes. But we found this man, and he will surely die…” As he finished, Cormack reached for Milkeila’s tooth-and-claw necklace, and twisted it out of the way to reveal the string of gemstones he had given to her. “Help me, I beg,” he said, and reached to remove the magical necklace.

Milkeila instinctively bent and helped him do so, following Cormack as he rushed to the supine man, fumbling with the gems to find the powerful soul stone. He went to work immediately, pressing the stone against one egregious wound, where the man’s leg was swollen and possibly broken. Milkeila put her hand atop Cormack’s and began a prayer of her own, using the soul stone connection to the wounded man to impart her energy into the gem to heighten Cormack’s work. The man groaned and stirred a bit.

They went to the next wound and then the next after that, and with each application of gemstone magic their bond tightened. They shared smiles after every victory, though they had no idea of whether or not these little bits of mending would win the largest battle of all and keep this stranger alive.

“He’s wearing your cap,” Milkeila remarked.

“Magic in a powrie beret,” Mcwigik said from the side.

If either Milkeila or Cormack heard the dwarf, neither showed it, for they had locked stares and hearts and to them at that moment, the outside world didn’t exist.

“He fell from the glacier?”

“And somehow he is not dead,” Cormack answered. “The mud, I guess, for the ground at the glacier’s base is soft.”

“It is a long fall,” the woman replied, obviously doubting.

“And yet he lives,” said Cormack with a shrug, as if nothing else really mattered.

They had worked their way up over the most obvious wounds by that point, and Cormack put the soul stone on top of an area of swelling on the battered man’s forehead. Again he sent the gemstone’s magical energy flowing into the stranger, and again Milkeila put her hand atop his to help.

But then the supine man did likewise, his hand snapping up to grab Cormack by the wrist. His eyes popped open wide and Cormack instinctively tugged away.

“No!” the stranger started to say, but the monk and Milkeila had moved too forcefully for him to prevent them from pulling the stone from his forehead, and as soon as that happened, he lost all strength and the two healers fell back, staring at him.

“Gemmm… gem… ge… ge… ge,” the wounded man pleaded, his jaw shaking and drool sliding from the side of his mouth.

“I think ye forgot to put his brains back in,” Mcwigik quipped, seeming very amused by the man’s sudden and pathetic attempts to sit up or even to communicate.

“Ge… Ge… Gemmmm,” the man cried, reaching out at the recoiling duo.

“I’m thinking he lived by landing on his head,” Mcwigik said, and his two powrie companions chuckled.

“He wants the soul stone,” Cormack surmised.

“The poor man,” said Milkeila.

The stranger kept stuttering and drooling and shaking so badly that he seemed as if he would just collapse.

“Give it to him,” Milkeila said.

Cormack looked at her incredulously.

“He cannot run away with it,” the woman reminded.

Cormack reached out and put his fist, clenched over the soul stone, in the stranger’s shaking palm. As soon as the man tightened his grip about Cormack’s fist, Cormack relaxed his grasp and let the gemstone fall to the wounded man.

Shaking fingers immediately stilled and closed over the gemstone, and with a great and collected exhale, the wounded man lay easily on the sandbar. Many heartbeats passed.

“I think it killed him to death,” Mcwigik said, but then the man reached his hand up and pressed the gemstone against his forehead.

“Or not,” muttered the dwarf, and his voice reeked of disappointment.

Many more heartbeats slipped past and the stranger remained motionless on the ground, his hand pressed against his forehead. Then-with hardly an effort, it seemed!-he sat up, still holding the gemstone to his forehead, and said in an accent that was obviously from south of the Gulf of Corona, “Well found in a dark place and know that you have my eternal gratitude. I am Bransen.”

They hadn’t hit anything vital, he believed; the wound was not mortal. It hurt, though. How it hurt, and it was all poor Olconna could do to turn his focus to his surroundings and not the cut in his belly.

He had managed to secure a knife; he surely would have preferred a sword, but the knife he had hidden away in his boot would have to suffice.

He couldn’t deny his fear as the giants lowered him head-down into the ice chasm, a thick rope tied tightly about his ankle. But Olconna had spent the better part of his adolescence and all of his adulthood in battle, and had faced tremendous odds again and again. Always he had found his answer, his way to victory or at least to escape, and he had no reason to believe that this time would be any different. Ancient Badden had erred, Olconna believed, because he had allowed the man to greatly recover from the wounds he had received in the fight when he had been captured.

He brandished the knife. He forced himself to extend downward and stretch the wound, as he couldn’t hope to battle whatever beast might be down here while doubled over.

It was darker now, for he was well over a hundred feet down from the ledge, but not pitch-black. Olconna forced himself into a slow turn, taking in the myriad edges and jags of the chasm walls, trying to pick out a shape among them that foretold something else.

“Faster,” he muttered under his breath, wanting to be on the floor and free of the rope before this beast appeared. In the back of his head, Vaughna’s last words, “every moment precious,” played over and over like a constant echo of regret. For the man, cautious in everything but battle, hadn’t lived that way-until he had encountered Crazy V. The notion weighed on him for a short moment, but Olconna turned that fear that he had lost his chance into determination that he wouldn’t let it end now, that he would find a way to gain some years where Vaughna’s words would guide him as sound advice.

But a moment later Olconna heard a low rumble, like a huge rock rolling down a hill. The beast smelled his blood, just as that old wretch Badden had predicted before he had stabbed Olconna in the belly.

Olconna slowly turned at the end of the rope, his gaze passing the long and open stretch of corridor. He noted a movement down there, a quick glimpse of something large, something awful. He tried to battle his momentum, to stop and face the beast, but he kept going around. He managed to twist about, eliciting terrific pain from his torn belly, to catch a few quick views of the approaching monster. It looked like a gigantic worm, or more accurately a caterpillar, for the many small legs scrabbling at its sides. Giant mandibles arched out in semicircles before its black, round maw-the type of toothy orifice often found on sea creatures, which seemed to pucker as much as open.

“Faster!” Olconna said again, cursing the giants who were lowering him, but as if on cue, the rope stopped.

He hung there, twenty feet from the ground, too high to try to free himself, for the fall would surely leave him helpless in the face of the monster. But too far, he believed, for the approaching beast to get at him. He managed to steady his turn properly so that he could face the crawling nightmare.

They’ll let me bleed out up here, above it, he reasoned, and he decided then that if the worm came under him he would cut free his ankle and drop upon it, all caution be damned!

That thought rang as a beacon of hope in his mind, turned his fear into action, into violence, as he had trained to do for all of his life.

But the worm reared up like a cobra, and before Olconna even appreciated that fact it lashed out.

Olconna tried to respond with the dagger, but so shocked was he that he didn’t even realize that his weapon arm was gone until he saw it disappearing into the awful beast’s mouth!

Now he screamed. There was nothing else. Just the pain and the helplessness-that was the worst of it for a man like Olconna.

No, not the worst. The worst of it were Vaughna’s echoing words, a creed for her, a lament for him: Every moment precious.

The worm took its time, lashing and tearing, and Olconna felt no less than six more stabbing and slashing bites before he finally slipped into that deepest darkness.

Cormack sat on the rail of the beached boat, his shoulders slumped as if all of the air had been sucked out of his lean body. Before him, Milkeila paced nervously back and forth, continually glancing at the surprising man in the black suit.

The man who had just informed them that their entire world was soon to be washed away.

“Are you to let him keep the soul stone?” Milkeila asked, pacing.

“It is your stone.”

The shaman stopped and turned on her lover curiously.

“I would counsel that you let him keep it,” Cormack decided. “It is the most important of gems, I agree, but if what Bransen says is true, then he is all but helpless without it.”

“And with it, he walks with the grace of a warrior,” Milkeila added as both watched the young man, who stood across the sandbar going through a series of movements and turns, the practice of a warrior, as brilliant and precise as anything either of them had ever seen. Cormack in particular appreciated Bransen’s movements, for his training in the arts martial as a young brother of the Order of Abelle had been extensive and complete.

Or so he had thought, but in watching Bransen, Cormack recognized an even deeper level of concentration than he had ever achieved, and by far.

“I believe his every word,” Milkeila admitted, and she seemed surprised by that statement. She turned to see Cormack nodding his agreement.

“It is too outrageous a story to not be true.” “We have to tell them-all of them,” said Milkeila. “Your people and mine.”

“And even Mcwigik’s,” Cormack added. “At the very least, Mithranidoon must be abandoned.”

Milkeila lamented, “A wall of falling ice to wash us all away.”