Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (67 page)

“The purpose of having a leader, dear child, is to lead. What I mean by that, of course, is that he tells others what to do. He does not make polite requests.

He tells those under him what needs to be done. They do it, plain and simple.

“That’s what leaders do that non-leaders do not. They give orders. Singular Night will not
ask
the head of the Stihl Clan to give his support to the cause. He will
order
it. Throw in with us and bring together the talents and capabilities of the Stihl warriors, under the common flag of Vultura, with those of the Ravenwild fighting forces, or die. Meanwhile, before he ever issues the mandate, he will have already placed an overwhelmingly large contingent of the Ravenwild army in the area to immediately decimate the entire Stihl Clan if their decision-maker decides to ignore his order. So he will have no choice. ‘Take up with the coalition or die, along with the rest of your clan.’ That will be the order. How he decides will be up to him. He will choose to join. I am sure of it. And when he does, so will the Perpts, Obbs, Jirks, Queen’s Portians, et cetera.

“You must find it interesting that the first nation the Emperor must conquer, to
get
to the final battles, is his own. But that is an irony for brighter minds than mine to consider. Meanwhile, we have an accord, and the pathway to victory will be built upon the very foundation that was put in place tonight. You have raised him well. He will know what to do.”

“Oh Iqbal,” she said. “Would that I saw things as clearly as you.”

“Any time, old friend, any time. Now I will sleep. You know what to do. Go now and speak to him. You know what to say. Go now.”

He began to snore softly. As they were speaking, he had mentally checked all the spells set to secure Elsie’s home. They were all good, so he drifted off.

“How interesting that his very last statement was an order,” she thought. “Not a polite request, but an order. ‘Go now’.” She wondered if that had been by design.

She smiled at the realization that it undoubtedly was.

Chapter 24

Anyone would agree that it’s tough to live every moment of your life in fear that you’re about to die - when there might be danger behind every tree, under every bush, around every bend in the roadway - when every shadow might suddenly transform itself into some hideous creature and rip you to shreds.

This was the mindset of Gracie and Ryan as they dodged patrol after patrol on the footpath to Salem. The closer they had come to the outskirts of the town, the more they had been forced to hide off of the main trail, Fury’s nose proving more than once to be far more trustworthy than Ryan and Gracie’s alternating fore-and-aft scouting tactics. Over and again it was all they could do to get off and into the scrub, after hastily covering their tracks, and lay down to avoid discovery. Once, they thought the voices were Human, but surely did not take the chance of revealing themselves.

Far off down the path in front of them a stick snapped. They both heard it, clear as a bell. Once again they hurriedly swept their tracks, backed off of it, and lay down with the big horse. Once again a patrol passed by going north. Gnomes to be sure, by the chatter, but perhaps Trolls as well. Neither risked a look.

Gracie buried her face in the forest floor, thinking, “This has got to end.”

In a few minutes the war party had passed. They, like those that had thus far passed before them, seemed pressed to move as quickly as possible. This was fortunate because, while they had both worked hard at concealing their whereabouts, had the soldiers not been so determined to hurry along, they might have cast a more discerning eye on the pathway and discovered them. But for the moment they seemed, once again, safe.

“Now what do we do?” she muttered. “We seem to have no plan.”

“Any suggestions?” asked Ryan.

Fury’s ears pitched sharply forward and his body tensed. He shifted back and forth.

Out of the trees strode Lightning and Thunder.

By the looks of them they had not had an easy journey as of late. Both were filthy, their fur was matted, and they looked thin. Fury fairly danced his way over to them, nuzzling each in turn.

Ryan and Gracie exchanged broad smiles, for while
they
had no plan, perhaps the horses had one. They each said hello to their equine friends and rubbed them down to the point that they looked at least halfway acceptable, then Thunder and Lightning led them back through the woods in the direction from whence they had come.

With the arrival of dusk, and now under the dense canopy of the trees overhead, the darkness wrapped around them like a blanket. The horses plodded steadily onward.

There could be no doubting it. They had a plan.

“There is something you need to know,” said Jared. “It’s very important.”

Doreen finished up her dinner of trout, cooked with wild onions and seasoned with wild garlic. “Another awesome boat meal,” she thought, and as soon as she thought it, she wondered where it had come from. They were not on a boat, and come to think of it, she could not remember ever having been on a boat.

“That,” she said, “was great. I want you to teach me how to find these wild plants and spices you’re so good at finding, Jared. I mean it’s one thing to cook food so that you can survive. But then again, you could eat the food raw and survive … ”

“Doreen,” interrupted Diana, “Let Jared finish. This is important.”

Jared busied himself with clearing and scraping the dinner plates, all painstakingly hand carved from forest wood, readying them for Diana to take down to the stream for cleaning.

She gathered them up and went on her way, nodding a firm, “Yes,” to him.

He took a deep breath. This was not going to be easy.

“It’s like this. You don’t know who you are, or where you’re from, and neither do we. But I believe I, we, know why you’re here.”

“Oh really,” said Doreen. “And how do you know this?”

“Before we found you, we ourselves had narrowly escaped from a war party of Gnomes that burned my cabin to the ground.”

“I’m sorry,” Doreen interrupted.

“Thank you,” said Jared, patiently. “But, as I was going to say, in the cabin before it was burned, I had a collection of books. You know what books are, right?”

“Of course,” said Doreen.

“Good. All right. Many years ago here on Inam'Ra, centuries ago, there was some sort of Great War. It must have been a cataclysmic thing, and most of the world was destroyed. Anyway, not long after that it was decided by the leaders of the peoples who managed to survive that books would henceforth be illegal. Not reading or writing, mind you, but it was decided that no writings of any sort could ever be bound together in the form of a book. I don’t know why, but I assume they must have concluded that the act of binding written works together was somehow linked to, or maybe causative of, the Great War. So they were declared illegal, contraband, the possession of which would be associated with stiff penalties.

“But my father decided when he was a young man that this was a foolish notion, a thoroughly ridiculous notion. He ended up dedicating his entire life to tracking down any of the books that had survived the bonfires, and assembled a pretty large collection which, to make a long story short, I ended up with.

He paused and she nodded for him to go on.

“One of the books Father left me was a book on prophecy. Do you know what prophecy is?”

“You mean, like, predicting things?”

“Correct,” he said. “And in this book of prophecy,
you
are named as the one who will come to us and deliver us from this dark age of war.”

There. He had said it. He watched her reaction and was surprised that there didn’t seem to be one. She just kind of sat there. Here he had told her that she had been professed to be the savior of the planet from the scourge of war, into which it had yet again descended, and she was not in the least bit fazed.

“Get out,” was all she said.

“Doreen.” He glanced around them, at the mountains that soared upwards and disappeared into the moonlit night sky, at the entrance to the cave that they were occupying as their temporary home. “We
are
out.”

“No,” she muttered, “That’s not what I meant. It’s an expression where I come from.”

Diana returned with the clean serving plates. Placing them carefully in their packs, she sat to join them.

“Did you tell her?” she asked.

“I did,” he said.

“Do you understand the significance of this, Doreen?”

“Of what? And stop talking to me like I was six years old. That I’m in some book that predicted I would come here to save the planet?”

“So you
haven’t
told her.”

“Not the second part,” he said. “Doreen, the actual Prophecy goes like this. I think you should hear it. It will help.”

He closed his eyes. By the flickering of the flames of the Burnfast, his face had a decidedly green caste. It was eerie.

“
There will come a dark time when the Trolls will be led by one with a heart as black as the darkest night. Under his command they will subjugate the Gnomes. The Gnomes will then fight with them as the only means to their survival. Together, then, they will try to eliminate every remaining Human, Elf, and Dwarf from our world, and they will never stop until this they have done. Nothing done by those that survive the first assault will matter, except to forestall the inevitable, for the force that hunts them will be too great. The final attack will come in the spring after the fall of the Great Wall. Left to themselves, all will perish.

“
But from beyond the stars there will arrive a lost girl, on the verge of womanhood, in the great reaches of the Ravenwild forests, who can be their savior if she is herself first saved. She will travel to the Enchanted Northland, spelled since the time of the Great War by twelve great wizards, whose bones will have long since turned to dust, but whose sorcery will never weaken nor fail. There she will match wits with the Dukkar, a creature given life from lifelessness by the power of those same twelve wizards, and if successful, she will come to possess a talisman that will give her more power than has ever been seen on this world, since even before the Great War.

“
If she fails, all is lost.

“
She will be recognized by those who save her by the blood-red gemstone that she wears on her neck, on the finest of golden chain. It will be in the shape of a heart, and two serpents will wrestle at its center. Take great care with this precious stone, for it will be how she finds her way home.”

Doreen fiddled with her stone pendant. She was trying to remember what the doctor had said to her about it when she was a captive in the fortress in Ghasten, and about not being from this world.

“That’s it?” she asked. “How did you ever remember that whole thing? Did you memorize all of the books your father left you as well as that?”

Jared nodded, saying, “Well, not all of them. But many of them, yes.”

“Well, I’m impressed,” said Doreen.

Diana was staring at her. Doreen turned to her. “And
you
,” she said, “y
ou
need to lighten up. And please stop asking me if I can remember who I am, and where I’m from. It’s annoying. If I do remember, you’ll be the first to know.

“Just because some guy in a cave, who’s living with some girl who
claims
to be some sort of runaway princess, tells me it’s my job to save the world … Doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

Diana was obviously confused about what Doreen was saying.

“Are you saying you won’t go?” she asked.

“Hey,” Doreen barked, “Didn’t I tell you, like two seconds ago, that you needed to lighten up? Man, talk to her Jared, will you?” She stood up, wrapping herself tightly in her newly fashioned buckskin wrap, and walked down to the stream.

As she sat there, listening to the soft gurgle and bloink of the stream’s voice, a vague and distant memory stirred deep inside her. This same sound had been a part of her everyday life when … when … It receded again. She knelt. It was real. Someday she would remember. This was the closest she had come to having an actual memory from her previous life. She found herself fiddling with her stone again. She slipped the chain over her head and stared at it for a while ...even running her finger softly over the two snakes, that were wrapped tightly around the staff in the middle of the gem, seemed to fit. She smiled. She
would
remember. Someday. She knew it.