Carol Berg - Son of Avonar

“Paulo isn’t the only one who communicates with horses,” I mumbled as we started up the steep rock stair. I couldn’t say why I felt so resentful.

An hour’s difficult walking brought us out of the gorge onto open, gently sloping tundra, surrounded by spires of ice and rock. It was as if we had stepped back a season. Everything was huddled to the windswept earth. No trees. No growth of any kind stood taller than a finger’s height. The afternoon had turned gray and bitterly cold. We came to the crest of the modestly rising ground, and before us lay an ice-bound lake, ringed with sheer cliffs. There was no going any farther.

A gust of wind billowed D’Natheil’s cloak as he looked out over the gray lake. He said only, “I think we have arrived.”

No hint of green could be seen in that ice-bound vale. Rather a thousand shades of gray and white lay one upon the other, as if the artist who had painted that particular canvas had forgotten to dip his brush in any other region of his palette. Massive stones lay jumbled about the water’s edge, and behind them steep, ice-clad slopes of crumbled rock footed jagged cliffs that soared straight into the iron-hued sky. A faint tread wound from where we stood through soggy tussocks to the lake shore, skirting granite slabs that stood two and three times D’Natheil’s height. It was hard to imagine anyone, man or beast, coming willingly to such a desolate spot. How could it be the refuge of the J’Ettanne? No life existed here, only rock and ice, dead water and silence.

The fifth clue was the most obscure of all. Though he cannot see it, the hunter knows his prey, for it speaks to his heart whether he turns right or left.

Nothing in that landscape spoke to the heart; nothing beckoned or charmed or seduced. The wind off the lake whined through the boulders, nosing at our cloaks like a mournful dog. I wrapped the scratchy wool close about my face and tried to remember it was summer.

Willing my blistered feet to take a few more steps, I joined D’Natheil and Baglos on the rubble-strewn edge of the lake. There was nowhere else to go. No passage, no trail. Nothing but cliffs and rocks. Journey’s end. I was so tired that I could not rejoice in the stopping, and so uncertain that I could take no satisfaction in the accomplishment. “Where could we have gone wrong?”

“We’re not wrong,” said D’Natheil, his voice hungry. “Can’t you feel it? It’s like the heat shimmer that rises from the desert.”

I felt nothing but my feet. “Are you saying that what we see isn’t real?”

“Not at all. It’s just there’s much more than substance here—layer upon layer hidden behind what we see. I’ve never felt such a concentration of life.” Was it anticipation or dread that dropped his voice to a whisper and colored his skin like burnished copper?

I wrenched my eyes away, sank to the ground in the lee of a rock, and wrapped the damp tail of my cloak about my freezing ankles. “I still don’t understand the fifth clue.”

“It’s doesn’t matter. The Gate is here.”

He was right, of course. And the fifth clue was no more obscure than the others. From somewhere high in the encircling crags a white-tailed hawk screeched the doom of an unlucky rock-mouse, the lonely call reflected once, and then again, and then again from the rocks, a perfect triple echo. Then, from somewhere beyond the three reflections of the hawk’s cry, a thousand other birdsongs teased at the edge of our hearing, the songs of birds that had never known this pocket of ice and snow: flamboyant birds of deserts and jungles, sweet singing birds of deep forests, majestic birds of the ocean’s edge, larks and pipits and magpies and loons. Indeed, enchantment existed here. And abundant life.

Hardly had the eerie music faded when I discovered the tiny yellow and white flowers, each no bigger than the head of a pin, packed together tightly in a rocky crevice just beside my hand. When I rubbed a finger across the miniature garden, I was enveloped by the scent of lilacs, roses, jasmine, and a hundred varieties of flowers that could no more live in the thin, cold air than those tiny jewels could live in lowland heat.

I was going to call D’Natheil to come and see, when I was startled by a booming, “Hello!” rolling across the lake.

He was standing on the lake shore, and he turned to me, his eyes piercingly bright. “Do you hear them?”

“Hello… hello… hello,” rang through the air, accompanied by a chorus of innumerable voices: cries of greeting, of joy, of farewell. Voices without bodies. Memories of life.

“Yes. Yes, I hear them.”

“The Gate must be somewhere beside the lake,” he said. “Come on.” He set off along the narrow shoreline, his steps as vigorous as if he were just beginning the journey.

“What of pursuers, my lord?” asked Baglos anxiously, hurrying to match his short steps with D’Natheil’s long stride.

“They’re holding back. They should have been on us by mid-morning.”

Waiting, I thought, as I hobbled after them. They’re waiting for you to show them the Gate. The Zhid didn’t know the way. I shivered, but not from the frigid wind. These Zhid were not heedless, hotheaded bullies, rushing after us ready to pounce and fight. I thought back to Montevial, to the forest, to Tryglevie. Even back to Ferrante’s house. They had stayed just close enough to follow, to prevent our escape, pushing us… herding us… to the ending. Much more dangerous. And yet we could not stop. Not now.

We examined every slab and boulder around the lake shore for a passage or entrance. Hundreds of people would have lived in the stronghold during the Rebellion: women, children, old people. No matter what destruction had overtaken them, there had to be some remnant of the space where they had slept and sheltered from the harsh winter that would settle here for all but a few weeks of the year. But in many places the ice extended right down to the water, leaving treacherous footing, or the way was blocked by boulders from ancient landslides and we had to clamber over them or slog through the icy water. Halfway around the lake from our observation spot was a long, narrow strip of sand fronting an expanse of barren cliff face, but we found no breach in the rock.

When we returned to our starting point, D’Natheil picked up a rock and slung it into the water, breaking the gray wind-ripples. “We’re missing something.”

“Four hundred and fifty years,” said Baglos. “Perhaps there’s nothing left.”

“No, it’s here. I’m sure of it. I’ve been here before…” D’Natheil’s voice trailed off, as if he weren’t quite sure what he was saying. “As far as this wooden head of mine can tell me, I was born on the shores of this lake. Here I began running, from terror and confusion and because I was so cold, I thought I would die before I had a clear thought. My clothes had been torn off me in a violent storm… darkness, lightning, fire, screaming… and I had only the knife in my hand. I dared not stop”—he dragged the words out of himself—“and then sometime, though not at first as we believed, but later, in the lowlands, past the end of the meadow with the flowers, I knew I was pursued by servants of… I didn’t know what it was… this shadow that wants me. I believed that if the pursuers caught me, I’d never find what I was looking for.” His bleak face yearned for answers. “I was looking for you.”

I wanted very much to give him what he needed. But I was a plodding mundane, as Baglos had told me so often. “Let’s look at the journal again. As you said, we’re missing something.” I pulled the fragile volume from my pocket, trying to shelter it from the blustering wind. Baglos huddled beside me, while D’Natheil leaned against a boulder and stared at the lake. The page with the diagram held nothing new, and the following entry was a long description of the Writer’s difficulties with spring planting.