Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1) (2 page)

BOOK: Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1)
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Despite the needling doubts, Barryn had no serious fear about his destiny, assuming he returned safely from the dangerous trail he would have to find through the wilderness for his vision quest. He had excelled in his bardic training, having already memorized both the Epic of the Creation and The Fall of Heordethar. He knew what herbs numbed pain and which ones drew infection out of wounds, and he could make refreshing teas as well as intoxicating brews. Barryn had quickly learned the ancient runic letters and the powers of the even older druidic tree glyphs.
 

Hand bells suddenly rang behind Barryn, and he rose to his feet. Six brown-robed druids filed into the temple behind him and assembled in groups of three flanking the altar. A last one, the High Druidess, took her position behind the altar. She was bedecked in a white hooded robe of the same cut as the other druids. Her staff was oak, one of the “star woods” that the mythical Justified Ancients brought to Fentress when they fled the ravages of the Vehir during the Heaven War of mystical antiquity. The High Druidess rapped the butt of the staff on the ground, and Barryn sank to his knees.
 

She began the ritual that would set her son on his way to adulthood.

“What are these on the altar?” she asked, pointing at the quiver of arrows.
 

“They are the arrows that fly quick and straight, but not so quick as the piercing rays of will,” Barryn recited.
 

“And what is this blade that rests on the altar?”

“This is the sword that cuts deeply, but not so deeply as the blade of insight.”

“But what is your most powerful weapon?”

“It is wisdom.”

The woman’s green eyes flashed, her face framed by fiery red hair and the white hood. “And where is wisdom?”

“Wisdom is the treasure hidden in the wilderness that has no rivers, no mountains, no wood.”

“Then go find it,” the High Druidess said, raising her staff. “Bring this treasure back and use it to serve your Clan and honor the Gods. For only wisdom lets us see
nwyventh
, supreme truth, that we may follow it and prosper. Let the Strength of Taern go with thee.”

The other druids took up their part of the ceremony. “The Strength of Taern protect thee,” they said in unison.
 

“The Quickness of Kyntha go with thee,” the High Druidess continued.

“The Quickness of Kyntha protect thee,” the druids said.
 

“The Wisdom of Udric go with thee.”

“The Wisdom of Udric protect thee.”

“Now off with you! Time is short, and the Mighty Ones await,” she commanded. At this, Barryn rose, took the weapons from the altar, and turned to leave the temple.
 

He sped to a trot once he was out of the shadow of the temple and hustled through the village toward the gate in the wooden palisade marking the line between home and the wilds. He passed the timber longhouses and thatched-roofed huts that squatted in the predawn mist, sheltering the families inside them from the chilly spring morning. As Barryn made his way across the village green, he smelled smoke from morning fires and heard the banging and shuffling of households rising to begin the day’s labors.
 

Life among the Caeldrynn was hard, but satisfying. The coming-of-age ceremonies helped forge the people of the Heathen Realms into a strong and hardy folk in ways that the decadent citizens of the Mergovan Empire never cared to understand. The tribes who dwelled in the ruin-dotted wilderness at the periphery of the empire needed to be strong to survive the rigors of the wilderness and the occasional skirmishes with the Mergovans on the frontier.

Barryn had grown up watching men groan and bitch about the bloody fooking deer and the bloody fooking hour a man had to venture out into the cold just to fell one—and the jovial hunting songs they sang when they returned to the village with a couple of fat does field dressed and ready to be hung. The woods were dangerous and harbored creatures far more terrifying than deer, but they also yielded a bounty of game, timber and herbs. The folk of the Caeldrynn kept a good portion of their wealth, contributing as their hearts moved them to the druids and giving the thanes and war chiefs their due. It had been years since the larcenous tax collectors from Brynn Province had come to Clan Riverstar—and subsequently, years since Brynn had sent an ill-omened expedition to avenge the abuses heaped on the tax collectors.

Barryn was too young to remember the last time the Clans had given the Castle Dwellers a good thrashing, but he knew exactly where the battle was fought. He often explored that wooded ravine east of the village and sometimes found rusted steel arrowheads and harness buckles scattered among the roots and underbrush. The decaying artifacts were all that remained of the last army that Lady Drucilla of the Waters sent against the Caeldrynn. Barryn wore one of his favorite arrowheads tied on a thong around his neck for luck on his quest. He fiddled with the pitted steel talisman, then hid it under his tunic so the fey would not see it and flee from him.

Barryn’s veins surged with a thrilling warmth that raised the hair on his forearms. The excitement of his journey—and a nagging twinge of fear—banished the exhaustion of his nightlong vigil.
 

He stopped at the gate in the weathered timber palisade. A pair of watchmen
 
in cloaks and steel-riveted nasal helms paced the top of the earthen berm forming the base of the ancient defensive work. Two more cloaked figures approached Barryn from the dreary morning gloom. Fine swords hung from their belts, and they were dressed for a long journey. “A traveler in the wild is only as good as his companions,” one of them said.
 

Barryn recognized the deep voice of Paardrac, one of the druids of the clan and his favorite teacher. He recalled the answer to this next part of the ritual. “I go to the Neverfar Realms where none living may follow,” he said.
 

The other figure replied, “The path is dangerous and full of enemies. Whom will you trust on the journey?” This one was Paardrac’s acolyte, Banton, who had taken this very journey five years ago.
 

“I trust only those whom I can see in spirit,” Barryn recited.
 

At this, the two figures drew back the hoods of their woolen cloaks, showing themselves to be men, not formless shades. “Before you trust others, you must first trust yourself,” Paardrac said.

“Before you search others with spirit, you must first behold yourself,” Banton followed.
 

Barryn recited the final piece of the ritual. “I behold you and see that you are friends.”
 

Paardrac smiled through his long, gray-streaked beard and clapped Barryn on the shoulder. “Let’s be off, then.”

CHAPTER TWO
Barryn

Barryn and his companions walked a few hundred yards down the rutted, muddy road then turned north along a logging trail. They probed their way through the thickening woods, stopping only to give a brief salutation to the sun when it showed its face through a break in the coniferous trees. Ancient, rotted limbs that were lopped off harvested trees lay in tangled clumps along the path. The debris and stumps were all that remained of the greatest trees in this part of the forest, lying in the shadow of their lesser brethren as the underbrush wound and tangled around them.
 

“Which trees do the loggers fell?” Paardrac asked Barryn as they walked along.
 

Barryn paused by one of the larger stumps and imagined the massive tree that once stood in its place. “The greatest ones, I suppose,” he said. “The trees with the tallest and straightest trunks are used by the seafaring clans for masts on their ships, and our people use them to make beams for longhouses. We take great hardwoods for furniture and the sacred carvings in the temple.”

“The great trees also end up as bowls and rake handles,” Paardrac said.

The druid narrowed his eyes, blue like an evening storm and surrounded by tan, wrinkled skin, and thrust his graying beard toward Barryn. He pointed at the stump. “This tree began as a humble acorn lying in the dirt, then took root among all of the other saplings crowding the forest floor. It somehow grew taller than the rest and for hundreds of years. Its branches reached to the great lights of the heavens, and its roots delved toward the heart of Fentress, into darkness that the greatest druids can only glimpse. It lived long, only to be cut down by men now dead to be made into huts and tool handles that did not outlast this stump,” Paardrac said, tapping the stump with his staff. “You say the greatest trees are those that the loggers cut down, but these are not the greatest. Which ones, then, are the greatest?”

Barryn considered. “The ones that can defend themselves, the man-eating woodwight trees from the Sagas?”

The druid persisted. “No. Which of
these
trees, the ones you’ve ever seen?”

Barryn looked back at the stump. “I don’t know.”

“A great sage taught the ancients in the heavens eons before they fled the ravening Vehir. His name has been lost to the ages, but his parables live on among the secret teachings of our order of druids,” Paardrac said. “There was once a tree with spindly, gnarled branches and a knotted trunk that no carpenter would give a second look to. Its leaves were bitter and caustic, offering no medicinal value and no pleasant flavor for cooking. And so it grew, unmolested by carpenters and wheelwrights and healers, until its great canopy could shade a multitude below and shelter flocks of birds in its branches above. It was rejected by the highly skilled artisans and powerful men of that age, and thereby lived in peace for thousands of years.”
 

The druid paused and gripped his oaken staff. Barryn noticed its grain and the intricate knot work carved into the wood as he considered the meaning of the parable.
 

“Think deeply on the rejected tree that mastered the
nwyventh
of being useless,” Paardrac said.
 

They continued up the logging trail for a time while Barryn tried to understand the wisdom of being useless. This was a new concept for him. Nothing of the tree lore or the sagas he had learned even hinted that being useless was a virtue. He walked as quickly and silently as he could. They were making for the volcanic springs at the headwaters of the Crone River, one of the three great rivers issuing from the Stone Kingdom Mountains. It was a sacred place for the Caeldrynn, but especially so for Clan Riverstar. Many of the other clans took their names from totemic animals or heroic ancestors. Clan Riverstar was one of the few named after celestial bodies or high holy places.
 

Late in the afternoon, Barryn felled a deer with one of his bronze-tipped arrows, and the three made camp among the trees on top of a small hill. They had left the logging trail and were now following the hare-sized rune stones and bent trees marking the path to the headwaters. Barryn took first watch after their satisfying meal and tended the coal beds over which they smoked the remaining venison. When it was his turn to sleep, he curled into his woolen cloak and immediately fell into an exhausted slumber.
 

Barryn awoke with a start toward the end of the second watch and reached for his bow. He was fumbling to string it when Banton stopped him. “Peace, lad. Shush! It was only a dream.”

Paardrac unfolded from his rumpled nest of leaves and blankets and rose to sit on his haunches, wrapping his cloak tightly around him. “There is no such thing as ‘only a dream’ on a vision quest. What did you dream, Barryn?”

The boy had now strung his bow and nocked an arrow. He scanned the darkness beyond the reach of the dull red glow of the coal beds. The treetops were black and ragged against the brilliant, starlit sky with its two crescent moons. “I have dreamed about spiders all night,” he said. “Sometimes I was covered in them. Other times they were crawling out of my clothes or into my bed. Just before I woke up, a beautiful woman brushed a huge one off my chest, but it jumped back at me. And I still feel it coming for me.”

“Barryn, calm your breathing and put your bow away,” Banton said. “You’re armed, afraid and exhausted. That is when accidents happen.”

Barryn whipped his body around, drawing and firing into the darkness behind him. The arrow ripped through the night and stopped abruptly with a wet and crunchy thud. A tangle of cane-like legs and a chitinous, bulbous body festooned with spines, fanged mouthparts and multiple sets of inky black eyes half-charged, half-flopped out of the trees and fell on Barryn, knocking him down and scattering one of the coal beds with an eruption of sparks and half-cured venison. The horrid thing hissed and squealed through the plates of its exoskeleton, and its five pairs of segmented, clawed legs thrashed and flailed the wolf-sized body around the campsite. Banton snatched the boy and dragged him away from the struggling creature, and Paardrac charged it with sword drawn. The two men hacked and chopped at the thing, methodically destroying legs and wickedly spiked pedipalps before they hurt the druids in the monster’s death throes.
 

Paardrac cleaned his gory blade and sheathed it after the mangled creature ceased its struggle. He found Barryn’s arrow buried to the fletching between two rows of the thing’s eyes and gingerly pulled it out, then he set it down gently next to Barryn and touched his shoulder.
 
“Come. Your arrow killed this creature, and you must lead us in the blessing of its spirit.”

The boy sat in the dirt trembling. “It’s horrible,” he gasped.

“Its kind was here before the Justified Ancients conquered Fentress. It died seeking food, and it fought valiantly,” Paardrac said. He helped Barryn to his feet. “And so did we. Come.”
 

Barryn helped the men drag the creature away from the camp and said a blessing over its tangled carcass. When they returned to camp, Barryn collapsed into a sound sleep the rest of the night. He dreamed, but remembered very little, only glimpses of a golden-haired angel or goddess calling his name.
 

BOOK: Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1)
10.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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