Empress of Clouds - Chapter 16

                       

Chapter 16

             

            Brythia examined Kiliordes’s leg under the light of the torch Delorick held behind her.  A nasty cut, some abrasions, and probably a slight sprain, she diagnosed.  She washed the area out with a little water Pagryus offered her.  Not too bad—it certainly could have been a lot worse.  Pretty much just the leg and a knot on his head.  No concussion.  Still, she felt guilty over the incident.  Clearly, she had been reckless driving them on at an unsafe speed in the dark of night.  They were lucky that Kiliordes wasn’t more seriously injured in the fall.  She removed a sprig of elfroot from her pouch and rubbed it over the wound.  “That should help with the pain,” Brythia explained to him.

            “Elfroot?” Kiliordes asked.

            “Ah, yes, so you remember that as well,” commented the druidess.  “Though, as I recall, healing never was your specialty.  How’s that?  Any better yet?”

            “Yes,” he answered.  “It feels cool and soothing.”

            “Good,” she said, pulling his pant leg back down.  “Can you ride a little further?  At the very least, we need to find some place to set up camp.”

            “Absolutely,” he answered, “I’m fine, really, no problem.  Here, um, Pagyrus, give me a hand.”

            “Of course,” responded the pilgrim.  “Up you go.”  Pagyrus extended Kiliordes his hand.

             “Easy does it,” cautioned Brythia as Kilordes was lifted to his feet.  He staggered a little as he put his weight on his leg.  Clearly, the sprain was worse than she had thought.

            Brythia was torn.  She wrestled with the guilt, yet was ready to get back on her horse and course through the thick, stygian woods to find her beloved.  Her mind churned with strife and uncertainty before settling on an answer to her internal conflict.  “Look,” she said, “this is too dangerous for you.”

            She met the gaze of each of them with a tilt of her head.  Delorick, in particular, shot her an extremely indignant look.  Ah yes, the male pride, she thought.  “I can’t let you travel any further,” she continued.  “Especially under these conditions.  Follow me at your own pace at daybreak.  It’s just too dangerous in these thick woods.  This game trail isn’t safe to ride.  But I know we are close to them and I can’t let them slip away.”  She got to her feet and handed the elf-root to Findelbres, who numbly took the weed from her.  She walked over to Whisper.

            “Brythia, don’t do this,” begged Findelbres.

            “Please listen to reason,” Delorick said.

            She slipped into the saddle.  “Gentlemen, thank you, but it is reason I’m listening to.  I’ll see you soon, I’m sure.”  She urged her faerie mount to tread the black trail once again.  The way seemed even darker than earlier, but she did not need to see.  Whisper maneuvered the narrow stretch with ease, holding a speedy gait.  Faerie horses had the highly valuable ability to provide their riders with a smooth, steady ride despite rough terrain or other obstacles.  Neither the nighttime nor the thorny brush along the trail interfered with this skill.  Nor did Brythia require light to sense which way the Moonsword pulled her arm with urgency.

            She was hardly settled fully in her saddle when she saw the flicker of a fire.  A small campfire, she discerned, off the trail to her right, partially concealed by a small grove of white birch.  The Moonsword almost jerked her off her horse as she slowed the beast, directing her further down the narrow path, but she had to investigate the camp.  She halted Whisper and dismounted.  Holding the sword before her, she cautiously approached the fire.  She could see no sign of anyone around the flames.  She cast her gaze warily behind and around her.  No one.  She listened to the winter’s quiet and the crackle of the fire.  No other sound disturbed the chill silence.  Then a pop as one of the burning logs sent a small shower of sparks into the air.  Startled, she held still, then furtively crept closer.  Shadows danced on the trees, cast there by the fire’s whimsy.

            She scanned the campsite in the ample lighting the fire provided.  Though there were no signs of anyone there now, clearly someone had left in quite a hurry, only moments before.  Her skilled eyes caught the marks of a woman’s slipper and prints much, much larger than any human could possibly make.  Signs of a hasty departure.  A half-eaten turkey leg lay discarded near the fire.

            “Damn, they’re gone,” she said out loud.

            A whiff of perfume caught her nose.  Tolian’s perfume.

            She ran back to Whisper.  She bounded up into the saddle.

            “Tolian,” she shouted and kicked the great mare.  With the Moonsword outstretched before her and pulsing with an anxious vibration, she urged the faerie equine forward at a terrific speed.

            Her heart was pounding and nervous energy coursed through her veins.  Her thoughts raced.  She was so close now she knew it.  She tried to focus on the Moonsword, but scarcely needed to.  There was nowhere else for them to go, no offshoots, no more off-trail glades or meadows.  Just the trail which was getting even narrower, yet impossibly her horse galloped unconcerned.  The occasional branch or thorn vine tore at her face, but she considered such assaults as mere annoyances.  She did have to be certain to grasp the magick sword with the firmest grip or it would have pulled itself out of her hand and flown towards Tolian of its own power.

            Occasionally, she yelled Tolian’s name at the top of her lungs.  Her shouts seemed to fall behind her, so fast was her pace.  Nonetheless, she strained to hear a reply.  Her heart begged to hear Tolian’s husky voice echoing from the darkness ahead of her.  She heard nothing.

            As she rode, she could feel the moisture in the air increase and the temperature rise slightly as clouds moved in, creating a gray ceiling high above her.  It would snow sometime that day.  She was still a good enough weather witch to know that.  The thought of snow did not particularly trouble her.  With the Moonsword doing the actual tracking, and Whisper handling the travel with little instruction from her, the impeding snowfall should be little worse than a nuisance.  Certainly, it was nothing to be concerned with, and she did not allow such thoughts to occupy her mind for long.  Nothing did.  Except, of course, for her poor Tolian. 

            “Tolian,” she intoned softly.  “Hold on, my love, I’m coming.  Just hold on.”

            Images of Tolian, powerless and in the clutches of that villain, prompted her to urge Whisper to undertake even greater speed down the now twisting game path.  She was still baffled as to how Dowbreth had managed the whole thing.  Tolian was the epitome of power, of strength.  She was a goddess.  How was it possible, even for a faerie, to rob her of her vast strength?  From the evidence she had seen at the hastily abandoned campsite, it was clear that Tolian was no longer unconscious.  Yet, perhaps the drug the faerie warlord had used had somehow blunted or neutralized her divinity.  Perhaps, but the Moonsword seemed still quite focused on her trail.  It was a mystery to her.  Brythia was tormented by this question and by her imagination, which pictured her love at the mercy of the enigmatic Elven knight.

            “Faster, Whisper, faster,” she said to her steed.

            Fatigue began to tug at her after a couple more hours of the pursuit had passed, but not enough to check her manic resolve.  She could not let her concentration flag now else the lunar sword, which guided her, would slip from her weary grip.  It seemed that even the incredible speed of her horse could scarce keep up with the blade’s urgency. 

            Then it happened.  Suddenly the eager vitality seemed to diminish from the Moonsword’s vibrant pull.  Brythia sensed a deep confusion from the otherworldly weapon.  Something was wrong.  Uncertainty.  A sense of shock, of loss, of pain.  It became quite clear to Brythia that the sword was suddenly at a loss.  She reined Whisper to a much slower pace.  Perhaps, she surmised, the sword just needed a moment to recollect its bearings, but she truly felt there was a more significant cause for the blade’s behavior.

            The reduction of speed did nothing to aid the Moonsword.  It was now inert in her hand.  She attempted to mentally communicate with it again.  She quieted, then opened her mind to the sword and “listened” for any impressions she might receive.  There was almost no effort necessary.  The Moonsword was sending a strong signal.  An overwhelming feeling of confusion and worry poured from the blade to her mind.  She tuned herself in, even more, to the stream of the weapon’s energy.  She projected a thought, a question.  What’s the matter?

            The Moonsword answered her mental probe immediately.  She has closed herself to me.  She doesn’t want me to find her.

            “No,” replied the druidess, out loud this time, “She does want us to find her.  Please try again.  Please.”

            The sword sent its answer to her.  “She told me to stop, and she cut herself off from me.  It hurts me.  She is afraid.  It hurts.  Please, Brythia,” the Moonsword begged, “please help her.  I cannot.”

            She sighed, brought the sword to her lips, and kissed it gently.  “I will find her,” she assured it.  She slid the blade back into her sheath.  But how?[KR]If she’s asking a question, she’s wondering.     

            It was clear, at least, that the faerie would be unable to leave the narrow way of the game trail, so tight and thick was the forest in that region.  With some optimism, she simply followed the trail, until it ended a scant two miles later emptying (as well as Brythia’s hopes) onto a more typical and well-maintained country road.  There was, of course, no clear indication of their path.

            She had already discovered that she would be unable to track them in the traditional sense, and to renew such an attempt would only waste more valuable time[KR]Cliché. You can use it if your want, but see if you can find another word for precious.      .  No, she needed to employ more arcane techniques to pursue them.  She could employ several methods if she had more time.  She could use the Spirit Vision, if she could find the right type of mushrooms quickly enough; but the impending snow would likely render such a course of action impossible.  She forced her fatigued mind to concentrate, to think of the way.  Then, it came to her.  Ah, yes, she thought.  There was only one choice.  She had to attempt the Whole Forest Assumption.  A difficult meditative practice under the most ideal conditions.  Yet, she could think of nothing else. 

            She slid off Whisper, and cast a last, less than hopeful look in either direction down the road.  She could feel the tiredness around the edges of her consciousness, eating away her ability to concentrate.  “Wait here,” she instructed the horse.  “This could take a few minutes.”

            The Elven steed whinnied in response.  The druidess gently stroked the beast’s neck, before turning her attention to the task.

            Brythia walked a few yards away and sat cross-legged on one side of the gravel road.  She drew a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to calm her frantic mind.  She looked around her as she did so, almost as though she was breathing the surrounding landscape into her lungs.  The air was cold and hung heavy with the sweet icy scent of the coming snow.  The sky had brightened now as the heavy snow clouds seemed to glow with anticipation, for it was still too early for the sun to be responsible.  It afforded her enough light to see the gray, bare branches of the trees, almost twiggy fingers, interwoven and reaching solemnly up to the sky.

            Steadier, deeper breaths.  She closed her eyes.  She had to quiet her worries and thoughts.  She focused solely on her breathing.  Deep breath in, count to four.  Hold for four.  Exhale for four.  Let the stress and anxiety fade, get past the sleepiness, she ordered herself.  Let there only be the breathing.  Slow, steady, deep.  And with each breath, a gradual simplicity took hold of her tumultuous mind.  It occurred to her that she had not practiced even basic meditation in some time; most novices could calm their minds more easily.  Then she reminded herself that even such thoughts as that were a distraction to the calming of the mind.  She let the thought go.  With more breaths, she let everything go.  It was coming back to her, now.  Inhale, Hold, Exhale.  The quieting of thoughts.

            Once there was only the breathing, and nothing more, Brythia allowed herself to become conscious of the shadowy forest around her.  First the cold hard ground.  She opened up her imagination and meditated on what it must be like to be the frigid, leaf-covered ground.  A great blanket of icy coldness seemed to descend upon her as she did so.  Cold, hard, and dead.  No, not dead.  There was a quiet network of life nestled inside her, roots twisting and delving, asleep in her chill embrace.  Down deep in her being it was warmer, and larger creatures were nestled in their burrows, dens and nests.  She was all of these creatures as well, she reminded herself.  By realizing this and incorporating them into her awareness, she felt a powerful wave of sleepiness take hold of her.  She could not fight this feeling as it was equally part of the meditation—she had to fully realize every aspect of the forest and every creature in it, even those in hibernation.  She followed the roots back up—climbing the tangled maze back to the trees and out of the ground, though she tried to hold all that she had felt beneath the Earth in the back of her mind.

            Now she was the trees, still the delving root ways, but now also the proud trunks and noble branches.  The sap ran so slow through her wooden veins.  The trees were sleeping as well.  Another powerful urge to sleep.  This time she had to fight it to some degree or she would fall asleep herself.  In doing so, her doubts began to creep in to her consciousness, the nagging feeling that it was all really just her imagination.  This was a perilous doubt; it could disrupt the entire work.

            She felt herself as the thousands and thousands of branches reaching in silent entreaty for the return of the sun, or at least for the snow.  It had been a dry autumn, and Brythia could feel in her countless wooden limbs the subtle yearning for water, a primordial thirst, less in her great oaks than in the maples and smaller trees and undergrowth.  She began to feel the strain in her mind.  Attempting to experience the perceptions of an entire forest was no easy task, and as a rule the trees were where the mind began to get bogged down.  Clearly, the winter should be easier than the summer, but there was still the winter-slumbering lassitude to contend with.  In any case, somehow, Brythia was doing it, and the assumption was unfolding splendidly.

            Her mind raced down the gentle banks of a brook.  She was the frozen stream, flowing beneath its icy surface.  She was the fish and frogs asleep in the deeper regions.  She was the wood mouse searching the dried leaves of the forest floor for food.  She was the great owl.  She felt the rush of air beneath her wings as she swooped down on her unsuspecting mousey self.  She cast her consciousness out further and further into the surrounding forest, attempting to catch some glimpse of her beloved and her captor.

            The hibernation instinct was so completely diffused over the nighttime woods that Brythia had to find as many nocturnal creatures as possible simply to maintain some state of wakefulness.  Many such creatures moved through the darkened woods even at night.  Was she imagining the family of possum that slipped over the log as she looked through their eyes?  She battled her own skepticism, her amplified tiredness, and the enormity of her undertaking, almost constantly now.  The druidess did not stop, however.  She kept expanding her consciousness so that she was the entire forest for at least a three-mile radius.

            Then the snow began to fall and she was the snow.  She drifted, first idly, as a thousand timid flakes moving down through her outreaching branches.  Her pace quickened and she danced through her forest self in crystal patterns of infinite variety.  She became almost dizzy.  Her animal selves moved in haste to find food before all was lost in the frozen white blanket.

            Suddenly, it happened—she was no longer the forest; she was Brythia once again.  But she was not as she would have expected, sitting cross-legged along the roadside.  She was, instead, moving through the tightly knotted trees, searching.  She was surprised by this, and wondered how long it was that she had been doing so.

            The snow fell all around her, moving with its gentle hush through the trees.  Brythia tried to remember the feeling of being the snow, of being the trees, but the Whole Forest Assumption had faded, and she was left with only a few vague, vestigial impressions.  There was something magical, perhaps divine about snow.  An infinite variety of unique icy crystals covered the world in a white blanket of purity.  It seemingly wrapped everything in an innocence that briefly hid even human hypocrisy and hatred.  One of her favorite weather magicks was the Call to the Snow.  She roused herself from this reverie, and tried to concentrate on her situation.  Where exactly, was she?  How far had she wandered from the road?  Fog clouded her brain, making the task of thinking difficult.

            A nearby sound caught her attention.  She turned in the direction of the sound.  She could just see it.  A white shape, now holding still, in the dim light and falling snow.  It was a great white hart staring intently at her.  Brythia stood motionless and casually regarded the remarkable creature.  The druidess uttered a greeting in the subtle clicking language of the deer-clan and waited for the customary response.  She was wholly surprised by the white hart’s reply.

            “Hail to thee, Brythia, Priestess of the Sun, and well met,” the animal said plainly in human speech.

 

Copyright 2004, 2015 Diana Hignutt