Illengond Read online

  Now she sat chilled and shivering. The wind howled about her, rocking and bucking the craft. Braga, Cathros, Falien, and Noaem struggled at the oars trying to keep it straight, to keep it from getting pushed back into the shore or simply capsizing. Constant spray of icy water tore into Tienna’s cheek like a myriad small darts, soaking her cloak, and pooling up at her feet. She was sure the boat would be overwhelmed. Still, her eyes were on the distant woods, looking for some sign of the tiger, hoping it was safe, and looking also for signs of their enemy. She knew soldiers massed along the shoreline, but they were just part of the darkness, visible only when one moved past a patch of light rock or snow.

  Then a too-familiar bone-chilling screech filled the air—cut through the howling wind and into Tienna’s ears, piercing her more than the spray of icy water.

  “No!” Elynna shouted. She pressed herself against Tienna, holding her head in her hands.

  Tienna looked toward the skies for the winged shape. She saw nothing but the shapes of clouds passing swiftly across the stars. She dropped her eyes toward the shore. Then she saw the dark shadow that did not move with the wind—a winged shape blotting out a swath of stars and the gray sky just over the trees. It flew straight toward the boat. Her heart fell.

  “How many?” Bandor shouted into the wind. He had another arrow on his bowstring and was looking up at the skies.

  Elynna did not answer. Her hands still clenched tightly over her ears. Beth grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her hands away from her ears. “How many Daegmons? Where are they?” she shouted into Elynna’s face.

  What did it matter? Tienna wondered. One was enough. Beside her, Elynna put her hands over her ears again, as though it would block whatever inner voices tormented her, but now she kept her eyes open and looked toward the shore. Tienna followed her gaze. Two more huge black shapes appeared out of the trees, too large to miss even in the darkness. Tienna knew what they were even before Elynna spoke. “Three,” Elynna said. “I sense three Daegmons. The Gaergaen is here as well.” Elynna grew even paler now, and her eyes widened. “Beware! They gather their power. I can feel it.”

  “Beware of what?” Beth screamed at her. “What do we do?”

  It was too late. Tienna turned to see a red glow between the two Daegmons. Beneath the red light she saw the tall human form of the Gaergaen holding his staff aloft. The red light grew suddenly bright, and a blast of some unearthly power erupted from the staff. Tienna had witnessed this in the battle at the Undeani village—the battle that had cost several of her companions their lives. Such a blast had destroyed the Henetos stone and Cane who held it.

  Tienna threw her hands over her face as the bolt of red power came toward the boat like winged flames. She could do nothing but prepare for the explosion.

  Nothing happened. Long seconds passed. Tienna lowered her arms and looked. The Gaergaen’s flame had disappeared. But where? And how?

  Again she saw her enemy raise his staff aloft beneath a red flame. Again the red glow grew, and then flashed suddenly bright and came hurtling toward the boat. Tienna flinched, but this time she kept her eyes open. The bolt made it half way across the water and then just fell apart, as though blown to shreds by the wind.

  “Look,” Tienna called pointing to the sky above the shore. The airborne Daegmon, though it flapped its wings in furious pursuit, had come no closer to the boat. Harder and harder blew the winds of the gale. Trees along the shore bent in half. Huge cedars cracked. Spruce trees pulled at their roots threatening to overturn. And slowly the Daegmon sank lower to the water and began to fall backward. For all its great strength, it could not compete with the wrath of the wind.

  But how was it that the boat was not overwhelmed? The wind was a fury now, wilder than the worst storm Tienna had seen on the shores of Umgog. Not even a winter blizzard coming off the Plains could compare. And somehow, miraculously, the little boat moved forward. All around the wind howled, its force beating upon the waves, yet it did not blow them backward. Their boat seemed to stand within a small pocket—like some giant hand had come to rest on the water in front of them, sheltering them on its lee side. Waves buffeted the ship, and winds swirled on both sides. Anything that was not tied down flew off. And still they did not falter. Slowly the enemy disappeared behind them as the worst of the storm’s fury fell upon the land. On through the storm they rowed, passing oars from companion to companion as one by one they fell exhausted in the effort. Tienna knew not which way they went, only that it was away from the Daegmons.

  The moon disappeared. Clouds thickened in the sky and it grew blacker. They tried to steer east toward the faintest hint of thinner darkest where the sun promised to rise, adjusting their course when the wind tore a gap in the clouds and revealed enough of the stars to guide them.

  It seemed like hours, but Tienna knew the sunrise would not come too long after the moonset. Very slowly the black ahead of them turned to dark gray and then to pale gray. The pale gray spread across the heavens. Still the gale howled. Still they rowed on, mysteriously wrapped in the lee of some invisible hand. Waves rolled beneath them. Wind blow over the top and around on the sides, but the boat did not flip.

  Then, when none of them could paddle any longer, the wind stopped. They had come upon the eastern shore. Above them to the east a great shadow of cloud or mountain towered over them, but overhead the wind had swept the sky clear. Exhausted, Tienna and her companions pulled in their oars, leaned against one another, and fell asleep.

  Tienna awoke wet, cold, and cramped. The pains throughout her body made it clear that she still lived. She had spent the first hours of the new day huddled in the bottom of the boat pressed between Beth and Regon. She lifted her head and looked around. The storm that had struck with such ferocity had blown itself out in the early hours of dawn, leaving Uustgond as still as if it were frozen. How they had made it across the lake, she did not know, but they now drifted lazily in a quiet bay somewhere on the eastern shore of Lake Uustgond. The cloudless sky was full of pale blue morning light. A steep line of hills blocked her view of the sun.

  Some of her companions still slept, but many were starting to stir. Tienna could hear Noaem somewhere behind her, talking slowly as he struggled to communicate in the trade language. “When you and Amanti warrior jump in boat, cat run into woods. Hunters in sheep-skin chase it to kill.”

  This grabbed Tienna’s attention. She spun her head around and spotted Noaem. “Does it live? Does the tiger live?” she asked. She feared the answer. The cat had become like her own flesh.

  “It lives,” Noaem answered. “There was fighting, but your big cat not hurt. It is several hunters who will not return to Undeani.”

  “Where is the tiger now?” Tienna asked.

  “I do not know. I lose touch of its mind and thoughts. It went southeast to cross river and follow us.”

  Tienna breathed a sigh of relief and turned her head back toward the front of the boat where Bandor and Braga sat side by side. Braga was smiling. He had just said something to Bandor, but Tienna had missed the words because she had been listening to Noaem.

  “Do not congratulate me,” Bandor replied. “I only had an idea. Keet and Breanga did it. They made it work.”

  Tienna looked around for the Plains lad who had designed the ship. She spotted Keet huddled in a ball in the bow of the ship, half buried under some Undeani skins, still sleeping soundly.

  “What next?” Braga asked, after a pause. “We are not safe out here—not with the Daegmons. Now that the storm has blown over there is nothing to prevent them from attacking.”

  “The same thought has crossed my mind,” Bandor admitted. “Should we wake Elynna and see if she senses—?”

  Elynna’s groggy voice drift up from the back of the boat. “I am awake. The Daegmons are still on the other shore. All of them. I don’t know what keeps them there, but they don’t approach. Not yet.”

 
“All the same, I’d be happier if we were ashore,” Braga said.

  “No,” Bandor argued. “Not yet. We’ve put too much work into this ship. Let’s use it as long as we can.”

  “And just stay on the water?” Braga asked “What will that gain us?”

  “Maybe a lot. When we were still high up on the slope looking northward, I saw a long arm of the lake stretching eastward toward Mount Illengond.”

  “My people name it Misty Bay,” Braga said. “It makes a narrowing gap in the Misty Hills west of the Great Mountain. I have not been there. I know of it from my kinsmen who fish this lake in the summer. A river flows down off the Great Mountain, through the Misty Hills, and into the bay. In the spring there are many fish there.”

  “So the river would lead us closer to the mountain!” Bandor replied. “That is what I hoped. If we can find that river and follow it upstream it could save us many miles of trekking in the woods.”

  Braga was incredulous. “Paddling upriver? We won’t get anywhere.”

  “Wait,” Elynna interjected. “Bandor has a good idea. Even if we can’t navigate the river, just paddling up the bay would help if it’s very long. As for the river, well I’ve lived on water all my life. In springtime when the river ran with melting snow, I’d not want to paddle it. But currents run slower in the winter. If the river is not too big, we might still move upstream faster than we could walk, especially if Breanga could fashion another pair of oars. Though if the river is too shallow we have a different problem.”

  “Even loaded as we are, this boat does not draw much water,” Braga said. “Eight or nine inches. No more.”

  “But where is this Misty Cove?” Braga asked. “Have we come north of it already? Or is it still beyond us? We could spend days exploring this shoreline.”

  “We could,” Bandor answered. “Yet for a bird—a crow, or hawk, or some other far-sighted soaring bird—it might take only an hour or two. Surely Noaem could find out for us.”

  Braga still looked skeptical. “Let us see if such a bird will help,” he said.

  A few minutes later Noaem spotted a large raven sitting atop a tall pine by the shoreline, looking down toward the boat full of people. They must have been a curious sight for the bird, Tienna thought. She wondered if it had waited out the storm in that tree.

  “He’s been watching us,” Noaem said. “He wonders what we are, and whether we have any fish.” He stopped talking and held out his arm. Several times in the past Tienna had seen him speak with animals, or listen to their thoughts—perhaps in the way Cathwain spoke with humans without using her voice, or perhaps even how Tienna herself understood health. Nonetheless she was still surprised to hear the crow start cawing a whole string of different sounding crows that went on for several minutes. Then it opened its wings and dropped down out of the tree and started gliding straight toward the boat and Noaem’s arm. Before it reached him, however, it veered away and started climbing into the sky. As soon as it was high enough, it set off on a straight line southeastward over the trees.

  Noaem took a deep breath. “It will help us,” he said.

  “What did it say?” Several curious voices asked.

  Noaem turned to his brother and spoke for several minutes in their own tongue while Tienna and the others waited eagerly for more explanation. Noab then translated for the others. “My brother says she was a talkative bird and wanted to know if we had any food. She is young, and does not yet have a mate, but is expected to find one before the end of winter. She was several miles north of her colony flying on a scouting mission of her own looking for a spring nest. She was late in returning home, because the storm surprised her and stranded her. My brother told her the urgency of our situation. When she understood that we were enemies of the Daegmon, she was willing to help us. She does not know this land well, but she will search for a long inlet.”

  While they waited for the raven to return, the company rowed to shore where Breanga shaped two more oars from long cedar limbs. The raven returned a short time later while they still sat on shore. It alit on a branch near where Noaem sat, and preened its wing feathers. Tienna saw now how big the bird was. Not perhaps as large as the eagles, but much bigger than the crows of the Plains.

  While the bird sat there, Noaem dug into his pack. He pulled out a bit of meat left from the previous day, and also found a couple small nuts still left in the pack. He gave them all to the bird. It then passed on its report to Noaem, who communicated it to his brother, who passed it on to all the others. Just around a point to the south a long inlet ran eastward between a pair of hills —toward the rising the sun, as the raven had said. At the sunrise end, a wide river flowed down into the lake. Looking some distance upriver the raven saw a great mist rising between the hills. Then it turned and flew back with the news. Noaem thanked it, and gave it another piece of meat.

  The company then gathered around Elynna, Bandor, and Braga.

  “Your Misty Bay, perhaps” Bandor said to Braga.

  “It may be,” Braga said with a shrug. “Whether it is or not, if it brings us farther from these soldiers from Citadel, then I will be glad. But we must travel south first. If the soldiers pursue us, they will come from that side.”

  “The soldiers will pursue us,” Elynna side. “But so will the Daegmons. And they can fly straight here. Though I do not like to travel even one step in the direction of our enemies, I think Bandor’s plan is the best.”

  “So be it,” Braga replied. “I do not object. Where you go, I and my people will follow.”

  And so, just an hour after Tienna awoke, the company began making its way back south while a curious raven circled overhead watching the spectacle from her lofty vantage point. With three pairs of oars, the boat moved swiftly. Twenty-five minutes later the boat came around a rocky promontory. A long narrow inlet opened up to their left and Uustgond shot out an arm toward Illengond, the Great Mountain. The raven gave a loud caw of delight, then turned and flew southward disappearing over the trees.

  Half an hour later, the boat glided between a pair of hills where the lake narrowed to just a few hundred feet. Illengond now loomed almost directly in from of them, spanning much of their sight from north to south and disappearing into the clouds above. It was the closest Tienna had ever been. She cast frequent glances up its steep slopes as they continued their eastward course through the morning. All the while, the sky darkened overhead, but the air was still. Braga said it would snow. They shared the remainder of the meat they had gathered over the previous two days. To avoid stopping, they scooped their drinking water from the lake.

  In the middle of the day, fine white flakes started falling on them. The air was cold, but still calm. They stopped once more just after midday to stretch cramped legs. Bandor and Theo made a quick foray into the woods in search of game while Breanga plied the water for fish with the same small rod they had earlier used to catch the eels. None of them were successful. With empty food wallets, they boarded the boat and began rowing again. All the while the bay was slowly narrowing. Soon it looked more like a river than a bay. They were close enough to both shorelines that Tienna could have shot an arrow into the woods on either side.

  Toward the middle of the afternoon Keet announced that they were now working against a mild current. Bandor looked over the side and confirmed the observation. “Look how the smoothly the boat cuts through it, though,” he added. He patted Keet warmly on the shoulder. Several others also complemented Keet and Breanga on their work. Keet didn’t reply, but his eyes beamed with pride.

  Still the rowers continued on. They had six oars now, and so there were always a quarter of the company rowing. Tienna had taken one turn in the morning and another in the early afternoon. She took a third shift in the late afternoon. Though she was not quite tall enough to sit comfortably, it felt good to work her muscles after sitting so long cramped.

  When she wasn’t rowing, she g
azed quietly at the water, the sky, the shoreline, and most often up the river at the towering cloud-wrapped majesty of Illengond. She saw that the river grew swifter and shallower as they continued upriver, and the hills on each side higher and steeper. By early evening she could see the current swirling around rocks and creating eddies. Their progress, measured by the shoreline moving past them, had slowed to the pace of a steady walk. The bottom of the river was only six or seven feet below them. Here and there ice-covered rocks jutted up out of the water. A layer of ice had formed in coves and places where the water was still, but in the middle of the stream the water was still clear of ice. Onward they paddled.

  Somewhere behind her, Tienna knew, the Daegmons and the armies of Golach and Creagon were making their own plans. And still the Great Mountain loomed ahead. Its lower snow-covered slopes filled the horizon, reflecting the purple of the setting sun far behind. Its peak was lost in the gray cloud blanket that covered all but the far western sky. As the sun set, the mountain faded into the general darkness of a starless winter sky. Elynna consulted quickly with Cathros, Bandor, Braga, and Tienna.

  “Let us put as much distance as possible between us and our pursuers,” Bandor said. “Maybe we cannot escape the winged beasts, but the armies of Citadel, at least, we can outrun.”

  “And those who are not rowing can rest,” Braga added.

  “Though finding a place to do so in this boat is no small challenge,” Cathros said.

  So they agreed. Braga lit torches. Breanga put his hand on the boat and hummed, and his power vibrated through the wood, and torch holders appeared at the bow and stern.

  And so onward they rowed by the light of torches under a dark cloudy sky. The river flowed beneath them, trying to drag them back, but they did not give in. Wind came up from the west and aided their cause, lending its strength to that of the oarsmen. Tienna’s stomach growled with hunger and her legs ached to be stretched again, but she said nothing. She was aware of darker shadows rising up on both sides of her as the shoreline grew ever steeper.