The villager had lead them down into the cave for almost an
hour. They could only see as far in front of them as their feeble lamps could
show, so that they seemed to be floating in a moving orb of light through a
world of darkness, with massive stone spires springing to life three feet in
front of them and vanishing from existence three feet behind. Once, twice,
three times they passed a stream of water peopled by strange spectral fish,
white as moonlight, who cared neither for their coming nor their going. And all
along the cold grew and grew. The Ultor remembered a song he’d learned as a
child, sung by a long-ago people from a desert land, of a warrior who had
descended into the land of the dead to rescue his true love. He had fought long
and bravely, and freed her from the monsters of the deep; but when they
returned to the land of the living they found they could not stay, for they had
grown so cold the sun could no longer warm them. A trickling breeze caressed
the Ultor’s neck at that moment, and he shivered.
At last the villager led them to a large outcropping above
what must have been an enormous cavern, for the light of their lamps, held at
the utmost reach of their arms, revealed nothing but darkness, above and below.
The villager showed them a series of irregularities, of the type which in
nature must pass for a stairway, to the right of the passage they’d just
emerged from. These led up to a crack in the wall, invisible to anyone not
standing on the farthest edge of the outcropping, which turned out to conceal a
room-sized cave almost directly above the passage itself. There the villager
left them, with whispered instructions to the little translator and an
inscrutable look to the Ultor as well.
For some moments they sat in silence. The Ultor, once he’d
explored the room and checked for alternate exits, stationed himself next to
the doorway. Eventually, the girl broke the silence.
“So what’s an Ultor?”
“It means avenger.”
“Oh. Is that all?”
He looked over at her. He’d put his own lamp out lest it
give away their position to any searchers, but she kept hers lit, on the far
side of the cave, and he didn’t tell her to snuff it. She sat eyeing him.
“The Ultor is a sacred
avenger,” he recited. “Do you know what sacred means?”
“Really important?”
He smiled a little in the dark. “Something like that.” He
resumed: “I cannot rest, nor stay, until
my task is done; I am the Ultor. I cannot live, nor die, until my task is done;
I am the Ultor. By my hand the
evildoer must die—blood for blood, bone for bone, flesh for flesh. Let these
words be my seal until it is done—amen.”
The last word—the seal—echoed softly in the chamber after he
finished. The girl sat silent for a moment, in her little glow, frowning at
him.
“So … what does that mean?”
“What part confuses you?”
“I don’t know—all of it? Like, what does it mean, you can’t
die until your task is done?”
“I’m not allowed to die until my task is done.”
“Can you just decide that? I mean, what happens if you do
die?”
“I cannot.”
“But what if you do?”
“I cannot.”
He didn’t mean to snarl, but the cavern caught the fatigue
in his voice and echoed back an angry rumble. She shrank back.
He sighed. “I have a duty. Part of it is to stay alive.”
“Until you kill the evildoer.”
“Yes.”
“And what then? You find another evildoer to kill?”
“No.” He lifted his sword, “Once HE dies on my blade—I am
done.” She looked at the blade as it glinted softly in the light, and he
remembered belatedly that it was not his blade; it was hers, or her father’s,
rather. He’d snatched it from her when she freed him.
“Why did you free me?”
She shrugged, still watching the blade. “I wanted to hear
your story.”
“My story?” he scoffed, “Why should you risk so much to hear
my story?”
“You crossed the uncrossable mountains. No man has ever done
that before, and only a few gods. You are a man, aren’t you?”
“I am the Ultor.”
“But that’s a kind of man?”
“I suppose so, in the end.”
“Well, if you’re a man, and you want to kill another man so much that you can do something no man
can do—you must have an amazing story.”
He pointed the sword at her. “That’s a lie.”
“Why?”
“You’re far too clever to risk your life for such a foolish
reason.”
“Oh, but you don’t know what I’d give for a good story.
There’s barely over a hundred people in this town, most of them idiots, and I’ve
heard all of their stories five times at least. If I could hear just one good
story, one really good story, and completely new from beginning to end—that would
almost be worth my life.” She leaned in: “And if I got to be part of a really good story—one really good story—well … I guess people
have given their lives for worse.”
He sighed and shook his head. “What a fetching little liar
you are. You must cause no end of mischief.”
She shrugged.
“I suppose our friend won’t return for many hours yet?” he
asked.
“Not until the fourth watch.”
“And I need to stay awake. Very well. But come closer—men in
hiding do well not to shout. No, leave your lamp there. Let’s not give away our
position needlessly.”
She hesitated, but finally screwed up her courage and
crawled near him. She settled against the wall, just over an arm’s length away.
He listened a moment, and collected his thoughts. Nothing
stirred below; the great nothingness beyond the crack echoed only silence to
his straining ear.
“I’m from a land called Freya—do you know where that is?”
“The other side of the mountains.”
“Do you know, or are you guessing?”
“Guessing.”
“Freya lies on the far side of the Great World Sea, in one
of the oldest and most fertile valleys in the world.”
“It’s just one valley?”
He laughed. “It’s a valley as wide as six or seven of these
mountains, child.”
“Oh.”
“As I say, it’s a very old land, ruled by a very old dynasty—and
in my time ruled by two great queens. The first, Queen Disidaya, Empress of
Light, died an old woman, full of years, in her own bed, with her children by
her side. This was when I was a young man. The second, Queen Danafreya, Empress
of Lasting Peace, died in my arms seven months ago. Her story is my story.”
No comments:
Post a Comment