John Fultz - Seven Princes

She smiled and kissed him. “I am glad you do not fear the wild, Vireon.”

His lips lingered against hers until Andoses’ subtle cough made him pull away. “Let us ride,” he said. “A few hours of sun are left… We should cross these Promontory woods with ease.”

Andoses made the sign of the Sky God at his chest. He nodded, but his nervousness was clear in the narrowing of his eyes, the deepness of his breathing. Vireon loved him and worried for him at times. In the past few weeks Andoses had become more like a brother to him than a cousin. Having him near made it easier to bear the loss of Tadarus, and the memories that haunted him each evening. How many times had he promised vengeance to his brother’s ghost? Once he dreamed that Tadarus came to him on a black horse and offered him a golden crown. He could not hear what the dream-Tadarus said, but he smiled at Vireon the same way he had when he was alive. Vireon spoke to no one about the dream.

The horses picked their way through a carpet of moss beneath the red-bark trees. The path was broad and easy to spot, yet it was not well tended. The undergrowth was less thick along its route, and the steeds found their way naturally onto it, skirting thorn bushes, clumps of fern, and rotting logs thick with purple mushrooms.

The fragrance of the deep woods was strong here, and Alua breathed deeply. Her head turned always to the south as they rode, her senses drawn toward the flowering thickets and along the corridors of green shadow. A pale mist wound among the boles, and birdsongs sounded above. Andoses kept his eyes on the path, looking straight ahead. But t ahead. Vireon found himself looking as Alua did, into the leafy depths of the High Realms. Something shadowy, almost like a man, flitted between the trees. Or was it only the mist? Alua gasped. She must have seen it too.

“Ride on,” said Vireon. “We must reach the open way soon.”

Their horses went from walking to trotting. From the corner of his eye Vireon saw a glimmering in the mist, a darting shadow. When he turned his head, there was nothing. Some trick of the forest air. Now he followed the example of Andoses, keeping his eyes focused ahead. He breathed in the fragrance of strange blossoms; huge blooms the color of honey opened along the sides of the path. A large insect buzzed by his head and disappeared into a broad flower. Some distance ahead the light of open ground formed an orange archway in the gloom.

Now they passed beneath the branches that formed that arch and rode beneath open sky once again. The precipice ran close on their left side, and the forest wall stretched away on their right, farther and farther away as they left the Promontory woods behind them.

At sunset they made their usual camp near the cliff’s edge. Alua lit a small fire while Vireon tended to the horses. Andoses extracted cooking implements and provisions from the packhorse’s bundles. He dropped onions, carrots, chunks of dried meat, and sprigs of herb into a pot, filled it with freshwater from a flask, and boiled up a hearty soup. They drank the last of the wine the Boy-King had bestowed upon them, then fell into drowsy slumber.

Vireon and Alua lay beneath a woolen blanket, the fire separating them from Andoses. Vireon slept lightly; several times each night a mouse or night-bird stirred him awake. Yet it seemed that nothing dangerous roamed this narrow way between Stormlands and High Realms.

Tonight it was no wood creature that roused him. It was Alua, slipping from the coverlet and running toward the black wall of forest. He called her name, but she did not hear… or chose to ignore him. He stood and pulled his sword-belt over his shoulder as she disappeared into the darkness between trees.

Andoses raised his head. “What is happening?” He blinked at the moonlight.

“Alua,” said Vireon. “Stay here.” And he was off, racing after her.

Andoses yelled for him to wait, but Vireon was already among the leaves now. Alua leaped through a moonbeam ahead, and he jumped across a wild hedge to follow. He called her name again, but she ran on. Some spell had grabbed hold of her. Or she truly hoped to lose him. He had chased her across the breadth of the northlands and into the White Mountains. She would not outpace him now.

She splashed through rills and streamlets, pounced over mossy heaps of rock, and tore through verdant thickets. The ground was uneven and dense with bracken. Up a slope she ran, then down its far side, dodging low limbs and hanging vines. The moonlight glimmered in her hair, and her pale skin was silver. Thorns and brambles tore her fine Udurum gown to shreds.

Now she became the white fox again, and her speed increased. Vireon whispered a prayer to the Earth God that she turn back and heed his call. But she raced ever deeper into the shadows of the forest. He could ch. He couase her for days, but Andoses must not be abandoned. He ran faster, the white fox a blur between the trees.

At last he climbed the far side of a hollow crested with a stand of silverbark and found her standing at the edge of a great and ancient ruin. Now she was a woman again, and she gazed upon the tumbled blocks of green stone, silent as a ghost. He joined her there, but she paid him no mind. Her eyes drank in the panorama of shattered flagstones thick with lichen and made uneven by sprouting weeds. Fallen pillars lay in pieces beneath shrouds of thick verdure. The forest here opened to the sky, and the full moon poured its gold across the bones of a primeval city.

Alua walked a winding avenue through the collapsed metropolis. Vireon followed, drawing his Giant-blade from its scabbard. They passed the husks of crumbled towers in vestments of blooming vine. Fragments of colonnade and arch stood heavy with curtains of leaf and hanging moss. It seemed that every fragment was made of pale jade. The stones had faded from emerald brightness to pastel green over the ages. In a broad plaza headless statues stood on blocks or lay in pieces among clustered ferns. Some of the figures were tall as Giants, but they bore no aspects of Uduru or Udvorg. These were the effigies of Men, garbed in baroque armor, hefting broken spears or the hilts of swords whose blades had gone to dust.

Curved terraces had become hillsides of wild growth, and fractured fountains of marble had ceased long ago to spill their waters. A high temple stood at the center of the ruins, its dome cracked and open to the night atop a series of terraced landings. Alua was drawn to this place. Vireon walked beside her, but she heard nothing of his whispers. He did not wish to raise his voice any louder in this place, for it held an aura of forgotten holiness. Dusty jewels lay scattered across the moss at their feet, treasures unclaimed for so long they had lost their gleam. Alua climbed the temple steps, and he followed.

A pale skull lay upon the highest step, secured to the stone by clinging lichen. It wore a helm of violet and gold blossoms. Alua glanced at it, as if she might pick it up, then she passed through the open arch of the temple gate. Its portals had fallen to dust long ago, and the high-walled vault within refracted moonlight from its round walls like dirty mirrors. She walked into that glow and a mass of tiny furred things skittered into the corners. Four massive pillars had once supported the dome, and three of them still stood. A dark form stood in the shadows across an expanse of toppled masonry.

She walked into the streaming moonlight and stood before an idol of some ancient Goddess. Vireon’s eyes traveled up the slim figure of sculpted jade, over its naked breasts, and settled on the finely sculpted face. It was a beautiful girl with eyes of inset onyx, or obsidian. The icon stood intact but for a few hairline fissures in its slim arms and legs. The green Goddess held a three-pointed flame symbol in each of her open palms.