Renown of the Raithlin: Book One of the Raithlindrath Series (13 page)

The land continued to change; the patches of oak
forest grew larger, wolves howled in the distance, and the road still
climbed.

They camped late that evening in a stand of trees by
the roadside. A cool wind blew from the west, and they sheltered comfortably in
the lee of a small but steeply sided hill. A hollow had been gouged out of its
side by wind, rain or human intervention. It was not deep but offered shelter
and they used it. A small fire-pit, lined with blackened stones, and obviously
the remnant of other travelers, was set in the middle.

They ate another quick meal and settled down to
sleep early. The wind moaned over the hillcrest through the night; the boughs
of the oaks creaked, and the wolves howled against the dark. Clouds skimmed low
and thick, blocking out the stars and bright Halathgar, but brought no rain.

Lanrik slept poorly. In the pre-dawn darkness, when
the wind stilled and the trees grew silent, he lay still and thought about what
had brought him to this moment. It seemed a long time ago that he had buried
Lathmai and his life had been forever altered.

Something else troubled him though, and he was not
sure what it was. The horses were silhouetted nearby, and at first he did not
know what it was about them that disturbed him. Then he realized their ears
were twitching, responding to sounds that he could not hear.

Swiftly he rolled to his feet and drew his sword.
The noise woke the others, and they looked at him groggily as he surveyed the
darkness. He saw nothing and began to feel foolish. Then he noticed in the
slowly growing light the pale glitter of naked steel. Someone had crawled
within twenty feet of the camp.

“They’ve found us,” he said.

Aranloth, staff in hand, came to stand by his side.

The steel blade flickered. There was a shuffling
noise, and a voice came out of the dark.

“You’re surrounded,” it said. “Don’t do anything
foolish.”

The speaker stood up and came into view. He was tall
and dressed in the uniform of the Royal Guard. He walked forward calmly, sword
in hand, and as he did so five others followed. Their swords were drawn too,
and Lanrik did not like the eager expressions on their face.

The tall man was their captain, and he spoke again.
“This is a dangerous situation, but it needn’t be. You’re outnumbered, and
there’s no point in fighting. You know who we are and where our orders come
from.”

He paused a little then added, “And you know we must
have the sword.”

Lanrik detected something about the captain that he
liked. Prudently, he had not mentioned the king directly, and his hesitation
indicated distaste of the task set for him.

The light was increasing, and Lanrik looked him in
the eye. “And if I give it to you, what then?”

The captain returned his gaze steadily. “I’ll not
lie to you. My orders were to kill you and take the sword, but if you give it
to me freely, you can go. I’ll not kill an unarmed man.”

One of the guards behind him grunted. “
You
may not, but the rest of us will. We didn’t enjoy that long chase. It was the
hardest riding we’ve ever done, and we want some entertainment for our
troubles.”

The other men laughed, but the captain turned to
them coolly.

“Remember that you’re Royal Guards, not gutter
criminals, regardless of the tasks that you’re sometimes given.”

He turned back, and Lanrik felt a sense of
desperation. There was no way out of this. The captain was a good man, but he
was sworn to serve the king and would not leave without the sword. And he might
not be able to control his men even if they got it.

Lanrik could not give him the sword. He did not
especially believe in prophecies, but on the other hand he had seen some
strange things. And Aranloth, who knew about such matters, had warned him
Murhain must never get it.

If he had to fight it would be one against six. He
did not know what help, if any, the lòhren and Erlissa would be able to give.
He looked at the captain and felt sick. He liked the man, but he was their
leader. If he was killed quickly it would surprise and confuse the others. It
was clear that he was the thinker of the group, and without him they would be
leaderless.

Lanrik looked at Aranloth. He seemed a picture of
calmness, giving no indication of what he would do, but he read in the lòhren’s
expression that he knew what would happen next and was ready for it.

Lanrik suppressed his reluctance and turned to the
captain. “I’m sorry,” he said.

He saw perplexity in the man’s eyes and then sudden
understanding, but Lanrik was already whipping out a throwing knife. Draw and
throw were one motion, and the blade hurled into him. It ripped at his throat
and bright blood spurted into the air.

The other guards were dismayed. Lanrik leapt at
them, sword drawn, but before he reached them Aranloth was there, his staff
swinging wildly among them, and the crack of wood on bone was loud as he struck
one on the head.

He joined the lòhren and another man went down, the
shazrahad blade having slipped easily through his defenses.

The three remaining guards fled into the trees and
crashed through the undergrowth. In moments hooves thudded southward on the
road.

Lanrik quickly glanced about him. Two guards lay
dead. Erlissa was kneeling over the captain, but there was nothing she could
do: he was dead too. She looked up at him. Blood was splattered over her hands
and arms from trying to staunch the wound, and tears brimmed in her eyes, but
she said nothing.

He cleaned the blood off his sword and walked
through the trees onto the road. The other guards were gone, and the clouded
sky was red with dawn. He gulped in fresh air and tried to steady his hands.

A few minutes later the lòhren joined him. They
watched the slow surge of the sun over the horizon in silence, a sun that three
other men would never see again, and Lanrik felt bitter. He had killed the
captain, a decent man who had dutifully obeyed his orders. He did not know his
name, and would probably never discover it, or if he was married or a father.

Aranloth leaned on his staff and waited.

“Why?” asked Lanrik. “Why did it have to be that
way?”

Aranloth seemed to know what he meant. “It would
have been easier had the captain not been a good man. But he was. He was
following the orders of his king, and it wasn’t his fault the instructions were
wrongful – yet he paid the price.”

“A heavy price for another man’s greed.”

Aranloth nodded. “That’s so, but it’s often the way
of things. The world teems with injustice, hate, greed, envy and incompetence.
A man can only pick his way as best he can, trying to choose right from wrong.”

“And what of
my
choices?” asked Lanrik.

The lòhren looked at him for the first time. “I know
what choices you made and why you made them. I made my own, as the guards did
also. If you thought your actions wrong, you would not have committed to them.
Had you reacted differently the sword could be on its way to Murhain as we
speak. The ruination of the realm might be at hand, and we would probably be
dead. The other five wanted to kill us even if their captain was willing to let
us go.”

Lanrik kicked the ground. “Was there nothing else I
could have done?”

Aranloth sighed. “I’m old, Lanrik. Older than you
know. I’ve seen many decisions go awry; just as many of the good as the bad.
Sometimes there
are
no good choices, yet life forces us to act anyway.
But you’re not the first to experience this. The Raithlin before you have done
so, back to the days of Conhain, and even before when they served the
Halathrin. They found their way to an understanding, and you will too.”

Lanrik thought of the long history of the Raithlin,
of his own teachers and the words of advice that had filtered down through the
generations. The Raithlin creed that he had recently discussed with Erlissa
came to mind. It was the wisdom of men who had been forced to kill, or see
those they loved killed instead. It was an expression formulated by people who
had endured worse than he had. He whispered the simple words and found they had
new meaning:

Our duty is to
serve and protect

Our honor is to
fight but not hate

Our love is for all
that is good in the world.

It took the travelers over a day to reach
Caladhrist. The road, arrow-straight all the way from Esgallien, twisted like a
writhing snake on descending the gorge.

The landscape was barren. Massive boulders and
sweeps of shattered rock littered the steep sides. Loose stones clattered
beneath the hooves of the horses, and a cacophony of noise came from the
miners: shouted instructions, yells of encouragement, curses and raucous singing.

They followed the road to the bottom. The air, heavy
with smoke and dust, made them cough, and the ridges that hemmed them in cast
groping shadows.

 Erlissa shuddered. “It feels like the bottom of a
grave.”

Aranloth lifted his gaze from the barren ground and
looked about.

“Many men
have
died here. Caladhrist has been
mined since Conhain’s time, and over the years, there have been accidents. But
it was mined even before that. The Halathrin were here long ago, though even
they weren’t the first. They found the workings of other people before them,
their tools and excavations, and their bones too. Not men killed by mishap they
say, but sacrificed. They believe the gorge is haunted by the spirits of the
restless dead.”

“The Halathrin discovered bodies in the swamps of
Galenthern too,” added Lanrik. “It’s said that they found the traces of a
strange and cruel civilization all over eastern Alithoras.”

“Strange and cruel are matters of perspective,”
Aranloth said, guiding his horse around a pile of rubble. “Who knows what those
people would think of us and our ways? Of their existence though, there’s no
doubt. Nor of the men who died here. The miners claim that on some nights they
can hear dead men’s voices in the hiss of the wind over the ridges. Superstition,
of course, and yet it’s not a favorable place for lòhrengai.”

They continued along the bottom of the gorge in
silence. Much of their travel since the fight with the Royal Guard had been
quiet. Erlissa was withdrawn, and Lanrik thought she was avoiding him. That she
was upset over the killing of the captain he knew, but he did not know how to
heal the breach between them. Necessity had forced his actions, but he would
not be able to convince her of that. Perhaps it was better not to try.

They slowed to skirt a massive pile of rubble, and
Aranloth chafed at the delay.

“We have to hurry,” he said. “It’s a hundred miles
to the nearest oak grove in Enorìen, and the mistletoe berries must be picked
when the moon is midway between full and dead. That’s only three nights away.”

Lanrik thought something else was making the lòhren
uneasy, for the time constraint had been there since the beginning. He wondered
what it was while the road meandered past old workings, piles of broken stone
and washes of gravel and sediment. There were miners and soldiers all about,
but most were on the valley sides and few at the bottom.

Erlissa looked about her in disgust. “It’s hard to
believe that something as beautiful as gold comes from a place like this. How
do they do it?”

“With back-breaking work,” Aranloth said curtly.

It seemed as though that was all he was going to say
but then he expanded.

“Veins of gold are scattered through the sides of
the valley but finding them is difficult. The labor of digging by hand to seek
them would be enormous. Instead, they divert water from a creek several miles
away and hold it in clay-lined tanks at the tops of the ridges. When they’re
ready to explore a particular place they release a wave of water. It sweeps
away the overburden of soil exposing the bedrock and any gold-bearing veins.”

 Erlissa looked around her with new understanding.
“No wonder it’s such a mess here. What happens then?”

“If a vein, or lode, is found they attack it with
fire-setting. That involves building a fire against the rock and when it’s hot,
quenching it with water. That makes it easy to break up, and the barren debris
is swept away with another release of water.”

“What happens if the lode runs deep into the
bedrock?” Lanrik asked.

“It often does,” Aranloth said. “In Caladhrist the
veins are usually horizontal, and the miners drive adits, a kind of tunnel, to
follow the lode right into the sides of the gorge. The adit is made at a slight
angle to dewater it, and sometimes shafts are sunk from above to provide better
air movement.”

Erlissa lifted her hand and exposed her twisted gold
bracelet. She turned it back and forth in the light, admiring it.

“All the hard work is worth it,” she said.

 Aranloth looked closely at the ornament. “A
remarkable piece,” he said.

“It’d be worth a lot of money if you ever sold it,”
Lanrik said.

Erlissa shook her head sadly. “Perhaps, but it was
my mother’s, and I’ll never part with it.”

Lanrik felt stupid. Of all the things he could have
said . . .

They soon passed beyond the middle of the valley and
approached two miners seated around a ring of burnt stones, the fire long since
cold. They had the faces of rough men; people who had worked hard all their
lives for little profit and had endured hardship. Dust and grime covered their
hands and clothes; their yellowed fingernails were cracked and chewed short,
but they were well mannered.

As Erlissa neared, they stood and tipped their hats,
the oldest coughing behind his before speaking. He had a jutting beard that
might once have been red like the remnant of hair on his head, but was now
yellow-white.

“Afternoon, miss.”

Erlissa smiled brightly at him.

“Taking a pleasure ride?” he asked.

“Of a sort,” she said.

“Not many folks come down this way. Specially in the
company of a lòhren and a Raithlin. We watched you ride in and got a notion
that things must be happening in the city.”

Lanrik realized that these men hungered for news.
They lived isolated lives and wanted to hear about things that were happening
in the wider world.

Aranloth seemed to have great sympathy for this.
Anxious about time as he was, he still dismounted to talk to them. Who, thought
Lanrik, would understand better? The life of a lòhren was one of wondering from
city to city, town to town, region to region. He must have spent much of his
own life alone in the wilds of Alithoras, starved for company and news.

“There’s been war,” he said. “Elugs have crossed
Galenthern and attacked at the ford.”

The old man nodded his head solemnly, and his beard
jerked up and down. “We heard rumor of that yesterday. A young boy comes here
time to time to sell knives, but he didn’t know how things turned out.”

“The army met them at the ford and barred their
way.”

The old man looked as though that was what he
expected; nevertheless, there was a hint of relief in his expression.

“I soldiered once,” said his younger companion.
“Spent some time there, and I reckon it’s hard enough just to stand in the
current. Crossing with an army waiting on the other side is a good way to
collect arrows.”

The old man lifted his hat again, this time to run
his hand through the thin hair on his head.

“That’s big happenings, but there must be more going
on. Leastways, I should think so, otherwise you’d not be coming through here.”

Lanrik realized that for all the old man’s
appearance and quaint speech he was shrewder than many who wore the king’s
livery and earned high wages.

“You’re right,” Aranloth said. “The king has
disbanded the Raithlin as well.”

The old man tilted his head in thought. “Now why
would he do that? Seems to me that the Raithlin have always been needed and
likely always will.”

“Costs too much money,” Aranloth said.

“Figures!” the old man said, coughing again.
“There’s more than enough gold coming out of here to fund a thousand Raithlin
and run the city for a hundred years, but the king never seems to get enough.
Spends it on all the wrong things, I reckon. He’ll come to a bad end, that
one.”

Aranloth answered quietly. “That he will.”

They talked a little more, the old man not pressing
further on what brought them to the gorge. Aranloth was a font of information,
even gossip, on the happenings both small and large in Esgallien before they
rode on.

Not long after, they came to the northern end of
Caladhrist, and the road climbed steeply. They struggled up it, the horses
finding it difficult to get purchase on the loose stones, but eventually they
reached the top.

The countryside could not contrast more with the
barren valley. It was a land of downs, sloping grasslands, rivulets and thick
belts of trees. Before them, a road ran west to east, straight as the one from
Esgallien, though it was wider and better made.

Lanrik looked at it closely. It was ancient and
rarely used, yet its construction was superior to any in Esgallien.

Aranloth noticed his curiosity. “It’s one of the old
Halathrin roads. Follow it a hundred leagues west, and it’ll take you to their
home of Halathar. Follow it forty-five leagues east, and you’ll end up at the
coast north of the city of Camarelon. But we’re not going that far. We’ll turn
away before then and strike into Enorìen.”

They moved onto the road, enjoying the level ground
and lack of obstacles that marred Caladhrist, and made good ground eastward as
the afternoon progressed. Aranloth’s sense of unease now seemed to infuse
Erlissa as well, and she became even more introspective.

Lanrik rode behind them. He wanted time to think and
clear his head. So much had happened lately, and he had come to grips with so
little of it.

The riding was hard but it freed his mind to think,
and he enjoyed the sensation of the miles being eaten up and put behind them.
Each moment that passed brought them closer to their ultimate goal of saving
Lòrenta, and when that was done, he would try to find a way to get on with his
life.

Dusk swept along the treed downs, and Aranloth
called a halt. They cared for their horses, and then began the usual chores of
setting up camp. It was a routine for them now, and they did their jobs quickly
and efficiently.

Lanrik prepared a fire-pit and Erlissa, apt at
finding dry wood, searched beneath a stand of trees. Aranloth collected water
from a nearby rivulet and would also cook the evening meal. He was, Lanrik
thought, the best camp-cook he had ever known. No doubt a lot of practice was
the reason for it; he had said himself that he was old, older than they knew,
and that got Lanrik thinking about him.

Stories about lòhrens were many and varied. In some
they had great power, yet Aranloth had not shown any. Certainly, he had not
used lòhrengai against the Royal Guard, but only his staff as a physical
weapon.

Children grew up in Esgallien hearing tales about
the exploits of a lòhren called Aranloth. In one cycle of ballads he was
portrayed as a mythical hero of antiquity. In a group of adventure stories he
was head of the Lòhrenin, the Council of Lòhrens. In yet another group of poems
he was just a kind-hearted vagabond wandering Alithoras and helping those in
need. A Raithlin instructor had once insisted the name Aranloth was actually an
inherited title used by successive leaders of the Lòhrenin.

When they finished their meal, Lanrik determined to
find out something of the truth.

“You know how to fight well with that staff,” he
said.

Aranloth shrugged. “You learn as you go. Travel far
enough, live long enough, and you acquire useful skills.”

“Where did you learn it?”

“I’ve spent much time among the Cheng tribes in the
far west of Alithoras. They call me a sage, rather than a lòhren, but it all
comes to the same thing. Theirs is a warrior nation, highly skilled in combat,
with or without weapons. Some of their masters are extraordinary.”

“Why use the staff to defend yourself instead of
lòhrengai?”

Aranloth cocked his head in thought. “An interesting
question. Some, and by that I mean elùgroths, use sorcery indiscriminately. But
there’s a price for each use of elùgai and lòhrengai. Something of the user,
however slight, is lost. Likewise, something of the energy that is gathered and
transformed becomes part of them. Power should be used sparingly, only just
enough to achieve the goal, and only when it can be accomplished in no other
way.”

“That’s why an elùgroth is inhuman,” added Erlissa.

Aranloth looked at her. “They would argue that
freeing themselves of love, sympathy and compassion makes them stronger.”

“It does,” she said. “But what’s the point of
strength if there’s no higher purpose to use it for?”

Aranloth did not answer. Erlissa had endured the
presence of a sorcerer and knew what she was talking about, but Lanrik had not,
and hoped never to do so. He had learned something though, even if there was
more that he wanted to discover. But they were all growing tired, and soon
after lay near the fire to sleep. The howling of the wolves started again, and
this time another pack answered from the north.

Lanrik went to sleep listening to the wolves, but he
woke some time later to silence. Hours must have passed. There was no noise at
all. The fire had died to embers and all was still, but something had woken
him.

Aranloth was kneeling near the embers, his staff in
his hand, and his head tilted to one side, listening. He looked over, but said
nothing.

Minutes passed, but Aranloth did not move nor was
there any noise. Yet the uneasiness that Lanrik had sensed in the other two all
afternoon now infused him.

Erlissa woke suddenly and looked at them but did not
speak. The silence continued, then far away they heard the baying of dogs. It
was the sound of a hunting pack, of a team used by a great lord, but nobody
lived here nor would they hunt at this time of night.