Jadde - The Fragile Sanctuary (10 page)

He came to a decision, slamming his hands
flat on the table top.

 ‘Finish your food and reflect on what I
have said. I’ll return in ten minutes to receive your information.’

Gamlyn strode to the door and Cabryce heard
him talking quietly to someone. She finished the food and drink and waited.
There was little else she could say without breaking the dead man’s trust. Intuitively
she believed the rebel man’s sincerity, and Gamlyn’s
falseness.

The door opened and another man strode in. A
change of tactics, she thought in alarm. This man scared her. He was unshaven, stunk
of sweat with a healed scar across his left cheek.  His hands were large and
hardened with calluses; he rubbed them together as if relishing some act to
follow. He ran his eyes up and down her entire body as if assessing her for a
certain size coffin or length of rope for the gallows. There was no sexuality
in his stare, just coldness. Her skin crawled as she recognised cruelty written
in his face and hands.

‘The name of the intruder and what he told
you?’ The scarred man demanded in an icy tone.

‘Who are you to ask?’ Cabryce returned defiantly.

She saw his hand coming but it was too fast
for her to avoid it. The slap sent her crashing against the desk. She stood up
and wiped blood away from a cut cheek.

‘I don’t know; he never had a chance to say
a thing.’

Seconds later she was on the floor with her
other cheek stinging. She decided not to move, hoping he would think her unconscious.
A kick winded her and distantly she felt his hot breath on her face. A
malicious laugh echoed in her ringing ears.

‘I love playing this game woman – tell, or
I’ll enjoy myself further.’

Cabryce rose unsteadily to her knees and focused.
She stared into cold eyes and held them silently – for her love of Malkrin, the
memory of her parents and for the truth the dead rebel had convinced her of.

He slowly gathered her hair in a fist and
wrenched it. Her head made contact with the desk leg and she involuntarily
screamed.

‘Wonderful, now I’m going to really . . .’

‘Enough Janna,’ a commanding but distant
voice shouted.

Gamlyn bent over her. ‘Are you ready to
tell me?’

She spat blood into his face.

‘Throw her in the dampest, deepest cell. We’ll
see what a few days there will do to her defiance.’

The room spun, but Cabryce managed to get
to her feet. A brutal hand propelled her from the room. She was pushed and
shoved along endless corridors dimly lit by flaming oil lamps. Then the burning
oil smell was replaced by dank mildew and decay as she stumbled down endless
flights of echoing, faintly lit stone steps. She had descended into the bowels
of the earth. Another short corridor and the gloom closed in. A heavy sounding
door creaked open before her. She was thrust through and the door slammed with echoing
finality.

It was pitch black. The unknown was laced
with sounds of dripping water and with the boom of a river in full flood. A
terrible damp stench filled the cell and she wrapped her arm around her mouth.

And then very close she heard heavy
wheezing breath.

CHAPTER TEN

M
alkrin stood and gestured to Bulwan and his
elders to thank them for their hospitality, then indicated he must leave before
his pursuers returned. The Skatheln elder looked confused; he appeared to have
lost the rapport that Jadde’s scriptures had initiated.

‘Explain to him Halle,’ Malkrin ordered tersely.

After a short time in unspoken explanation Halle
spoke with an undercurrent of tension. ‘I have explained our situation to
Bulwan as best I can, and he has promised not to mention our meeting if the
searchers return.

Seara looked at her father then to Malkrin
and then back to her father as she assessed the gravity of their predicament.

‘Come daughter we must leave immediately.’

Seara wished her new friends a reluctant
farewell. They gathered their backpacks and the Skatheln danced a farewell. After
the short ceremony the tribe retreated to the tree line to watch the three companions
leave. Bulwan alone stood on the path in the open.  With his hand he gestured
what looked like a bird flying away.

‘He wishes us a safe journey,’ Halle said,
and they raised hands in parting.

Malkrin and his companions travelled in
silence for some time along the cliff edge, each deep in their thoughts.
Malkrin tried to guess the identity of the mysterious searchers. He concluded
they had to be Brenna: the only people with access to Jadde’s symbols of
highsense recognition.

They used the rest of the daylight to look for
a crossing point.

‘Keep up Seara,’ Malkrin snapped in
frustration after two hourglasses of travelling the rim of the watery chasm.

‘We’ll never get across – what’s the point
in hurrying,’ she moaned.

‘Quiet daughter, and keep up, you don’t
look tired.’

Like me, she’s just frustrated and irritable
with lack of progress, Malkrin thought.

The cliff dipped down to the water’s edge
several times but was always either non-fordable or the opposite cliff face too
shear. They stopped often to examine the ground for spoor, but it was too rocky
to reveal foot, paw or hoof imprints. Recent rain had washed any prints from
patches of mud and sand. Intermittently, faint paths disappeared into scrub,
but were not frequently used. Malkrin’s highsense was not detecting any danger,
but there was no way of telling whether the mysterious searchers had passed
this way.

‘A path must lead to something,’ he snarled,
thinking aloud. ‘It doesn’t matter which side of the river we are. I’m still
hoping the end of this path will be at a Wolf Clan village.’

‘If they’re hostile we can retreat back
along a path we now know,’ Halle added.

‘Back to the Skatheln,’ Seara added
hopefully.

They camped that night sheltered in a large
circular walled enclosure covered in ivy and scrub. The bowl shaped depression
opened at one side to a gap in the cliff leading down a narrow and treacherous
path to a small pebble strewn beach. The foaming torrent was too deep to wade
and too wild to swim.

     They’d allowed Seara first watch
again. Malkrin could see her now just above him carefully scanning the
surrounding countryside from amongst high grass. She had concealed herself well
with just head and shoulders protruding. He trusted her. She was being forced
by circumstance to mature quickly. But still Malkrin couldn’t sleep, the
revelation that they were being sought by mystery high-people was a real concern
to him. He knew of no one else who currently had any highsense recognised
amongst the Seconchane’s ordinary folk. There was only one conclusion he could
reach – the Brenna, or the priesthood had kept people with three highsense
talents secret from the ordinary folk for some unknown purpose. He dismissed an
earlier idea that the Brenna had raided Jadde’s sacred chest of sun symbols
merely to make themselves appear important.

     What was he being sought for? Or could
Halle and Seara be the ones sought – to be forced back to Cyprusnia to admit
their hidden highsenses. The strangers must have hidden highsense gifts, but
what were they? Malkrin felt weighed down with unanswered questions, adding to
the aches from the journey.

     He propped himself on an elbow, and
noticed Halle sitting watching over his daughter as she guarded them.

‘I see you too are alert. We must be increasingly
wary, lest our pursuers use a highsense to detect us.’

‘Perhaps if we come across more people they
will have information on the searchers whereabouts,’ Halle suggested.

‘Or they may take the searchers side and
hold us until the strangers come to collect us. There may be a reward on our
heads.’

Malkrin finally sunk into a restless sleep
until Seara woke him for his watch. The position of the moon told him she had
done more than her allotted period.

‘Get some sleep girl,’ he ordered softly.

Later Halle took over from him and he only
awoke at the smell of cooking. Seara was roasting slices of venison in the
resurrected fire and Halle was pouring hot nettle tea into three clay bowls.

Today he hoped to find evidence of the Wolf
people and track them to their settlement. But would the three companions be
welcomed? If the Wolf Tribe were friendly then would the meeting follow their
experience with the Skatheln and be an exchange of folklore and tribal legend
containing clues to further mysteries.

He hoped the three of them would pass as
destitute traders from the outskirts of Cyprusnia. They were obviously too poor
to barter anything the Wolf men would want – apart from Palerin and that was
out of the question. Halle’s spear, bow and flint dagger were not for exchange
either.

After a meal they followed the cliff-top
along the huge flooded rend in the earth. A barrier of rocks meant they detoured
away from the cliff. Eventually they found a way back to the cliff by forging
through long grass.

After two days of frustration they rested
on rocks at the river edge to debate whether to strike inland along the next
animal path they found. An hourglass of debate later they carried on following
the cliff-top path.

The third day found them climbing a
particularly steep slope after their latest failure to cross the torrent. The
hill rose to a high crest and they quietly approached the summit not knowing if
Wolf men or their pursuers would be beyond. Malkrin’s highsense again detected
no danger so they continued to climb. The view began to enlarge; a sharp
right-hand bend in the river concealed the opposite bank. By the diminishing
height of the opposite bank Malkrin hoped the cliff also lowered further on
their side.

     Out of breath they reached the summit
and a totally unexpected vista opened out. There before them they had the
crossing they sought. Not gentle slopes leading to a stepping stone strewn
river, but before them stood a huge artificial bridge. Its construction so
unusual that they stood and stared open mouthed.

Two giant trees had tunnels bored through
them the height of a tall man. Thick trunks had been laid horizontally and
scoured flat to provide a walkway wide enough for four horses. Other giant angled
trunks supported a spectacular suspension over the gorge. These boles were braced
at an angle from either riverbank and acted as piers locking into the bottom of
the horizontal span. Ornate carvings of stars combined with horizontal lines to
decorate the exact centre of the span. Faces of gods or warriors had been chiselled
into the wood all along the suspended trunks. Beneath the bridge the river
raged unobstructed.

Malkrin stared in awe, running his eyes up
the enormous hollowed trees. As well as supporting the structure they grew naturally
from either side of the gorge. Their upright trunks led far above the bridge
span to where tree tops would have been. But the leafy canopies had been
replaced with glowing domes of curving wood with an infill of yellow glass. The
sun concentrated within the glass to charge the globular structures with a
translucent yellow glow. He guessed the glow remained at night, and knew the
sight would be incredible.

Surely the work of Jadde on her journey
through this world, Malkrin marvelled. He noticed his awe mirrored on his
companion’s faces.

On the far side, the grass bank expanded to
form a rolling meadow. In this wide area a large number of dwellings rose from
the grass looking like artificial hillocks. They also contained glass windows
and doors lit internally by the same yellow glow.

Halle gestured to the nearside edge of the
bridge where the path expanded to form a track to the first tree buttress. It
was guarded by two warriors who stood staring at the three with hands on sword
scabbards in readiness. They wore cloth headdresses of identical yellow colour
with orange and green leggings and matching tunics. One stepped to a structure
at the foot of the bridge and withdrew a long fluted horn. Placing it to his
mouth he blasted an eerie note. The sound echoed around the cliffs
disproportionally louder to the effort the man put in.

Instantly a crowd of people began to spill
from the dwellings. Children ran to the bridge waving coloured banners that
streamed behind them in the same fluttering exuberance as their shrill
greeting. Adults followed at a more sedate pace, waving a welcoming greeting as
they stared at the distant figures of Malkrin and his companions. More men
emerged from beyond the hilltop, leaving scythes and harvesting knives at their
workplaces and approaching the bridge curiously. The guards continued to stand before
the bridge as Malkrin and his friends approached. The children halted behind
the guards but kept up an excited cacophony as if Malkrin’s small band were
returning heroes.

‘Stay here,’ Malkrin ordered, ‘I will ensure
the guards are as welcoming.’

‘I’m sure they are Sire, the children have
not been ushered away.’ Seara smiled her friendly innocence.

Malkrin agreed, but he advanced with his
highsense fully alert just in case.

He caught the children’s excited chatter as
he approached. Strangely, their tongue was similar to their own but with a
heavy accent. He stopped half way to concentrate his inner ear. His highsense
picked out snatches of conversation.

‘Hess noowt  thy same as thee last visitors
. . .’

‘Nowt a god, more a galthern . . .’

‘Naaw, hess a honoured une . . .’

Malkrin could follow the comments now. There
was no threat, merely strong curiosity. He approached the guards who moved
their weight from foot to foot in expectation. Malkrin stopped ten paces before
them and gave the Seconchane sign of greeting and peace. He extended his hands
to his face for longer than etiquette normally allowed. Then he spoke quietly
to confirm his intentions.

‘I wish to meet your people in peace and
harmony, and seek only information not hurt.’

‘Whoo arth thou?’ one guard enquired.

‘I am Malkrin Owlear, once two sun holder.
I am now merely a trader with my two companions.’

‘Trader?’ The man looked hard at Malkrin,
concentrating on his dialect, ‘Trade wot?’ he asked.

‘We trade information, tales and the love
of the great Goddess. We would speak with your village elders.’

‘Elders?’ the guard looked confused then realisation
penetrated. ‘Thy Senate, thou wish ta speak with thy Senate?’

‘Yes, if we may.’

‘I will tak yoo.’

Malkrin was tuning in to the strange
version of Seconchane. He was surprised at how easy it was to adapt to the
strange tongue. The guard waited while Malkrin gestured Halle and Seara
forward. The throng of children closed around them with excited voices as the
guard led them through. Seara took the youngsters hands in quick greeting as
she passed and the children screamed in delight. Seara beamed. Her pleasure
spread to Malkrin and Halle, inducing them to extend the hand-touching greeting
to adults as they passed. Gestures and smiles of welcome were given in return.
It was as if this were a traditional greeting for valuable and infrequent visitors.

As they walked Malkrin peered down below
the bridge to the surging torrent, then to grassy banks as they walked from the
bridge. He relaxed, and felt as if they’d accomplished something to be finally
across the river. The guard led them along a well kept road to a huge segmented
building like a five pointed star. Each angled extension was roofed in living
grass. The green blanket led to a strange turret in the centre where each
section of the building converged. Golden light filled glass windows dotted
through each joining wing and the turret walls. The frontage of the extension
nearest them had an ornate door carved with an eagle with stars in its claws.

 Another guard stood before the door. This
man was bedecked in a triangular cloak of yellow cloth embroidered with an edge
of stars. His arms were folded over a black staff with a vicious half moon
blade on the upper end. As they drew close Malkrin’s sudden unease evaporated
as he realised the moon-blade was wood painted in gold with the cutting ability
of lead.

Again Malkrin, Halle and Seara gave the
welcome sign. The man mirrored it and Malkrin repeated his request to meet
their Senate.