Mirkwood.”
“Now you tell me! Anyway, it was all very confusing. Except this, I stink like a garbage fire”
“So then what happened?”
She told him, and when she got to what she saw in the pool, he came out of his funk.
“That’s it, don’t you see! That’s a passage! A place to go through. Maybe it was worth it. You saw her, my God. Ara!”
“Yes, I … think so. So let’s go through this. I need to read everything you’ve translated so far.”
He got up and gathered an unruly stack of hotel stationary and yellow legal pad sheets crisscrossed with sentences, mark-outs, and lines. It was readable, but barely. She scanned the pages.
“So, is Ara still alive in this story?”
“Yes, for now. I’ve been tracking her. And so have others. Read this.” He clutched a handful of yellow pages.
Cadence read, holding the pages for a long time and seeing a dark trail:
Hafoc became restless and soared away, back to the north, as if scanning for pursuing trouble.
Staying to her southerly bearing, Ara came at last to a frost-stiffened wood. Through it there was but one path, hugging the bank of a fresh stream that led down a wooded defile that grew ever narrower. One other path joined from the side, and by this way entered bloody drag marks, as of a man’s body rudely hauled by his feet. These marks were accompanied by the heavy boot prints of a band of men, their feet hastily sidestepping the bloody grooves. Ara slowed. She bent over, her eyes trying to read this tale in the dirt and leaves. She was hesitant to catch up to the track-makers, but the steep gorge offered no other way. Turning back would mean days of lost time, days she already counted as deficit. She smelled the air and surveyed the encroaching forest, then moved on, keeping to the side of the trail.
The path continued into an ever more dismal forest. Trees grew over the widening and now stagnant stream, as if trying to cover it up. The water eddied in dark pools and emptied toward a small mere that she could glimpse through the trees. She heard men’s voices, urgent and labored with fear. She left the trail and came upon them, staying hidden but close enough to listen.
Before her were arrayed nine men in heavy battle gear, all facing away and staring down into a rocky cove. They were still gasping for air, swords and bows at the ready. At their feet, where the drag marks went into the water, the pool boiled with bloodshot gore, its dark waters frothing with a red and green infestation of writhing serpents. A black upwelling brought a foul reek of decay and sulphur. Some of the men turned away. Closest to the pool was a large man, evidently the leader, bearing a princely helm hooped with boar-shapes and surmounted with a ridge of shining black bristles. To his right was a smaller man dressed in the cloak of some monkish order. The smaller man spoke loudly to the large man. His voice had surprising articulation and power.
“Is there no true God in this land, that he would allow such blasphemy to exist?”
The leader spoke. “Your new god is for you, scop. I know not who has forsaken whom to beget this corruption. I do know that a man’s life is too brief to do more than glimpse such things, and his one true tale is the only creation he can master, if at all.” Fastening the leather strap of his helmet and checking his battle gear, he raised his sword and continued. “This abomination, however, shall finally end if I can bring Hruntings’s sharp edge to the task full measure.”
One of his companions broke in. “Be wary, my lord, the heat of her blood has melted other great swords.”
“Yes, Talis, so I saw long ago in the great hall at Thornland. There, behind the king’s own chair, made fast to the wall, is an esteemed relic. A great blade of ents, those mystical giants of long ago. All that’s left is a bladeless hilt, its stub of damascened steel diminished to a gory icicle. Her scalding blood may eat all that it touches, but I need but one swift stroke!”
With that, the large man deftly tossed Hrunting into the air. As it twirled and caught flashes of light, he leapt feet first into the pool. So agile was he that in midair his hand closed solidly on the hilt even as the water splashed and took him. His companions closed to the bank and watched. The serpents slithered away and his golden helm glistened for a final moment as it sank into the murky depths.
Another man then spoke. “We will wait. That blade has what now seem ill-boding runes. I fear for Beowulf this day.”
Then the man looked at the monk and continued. “And you, scop, have you more to show from your relic trade? Will holy nails and wood splinters save us now? Shall I suddenly trust in your fantastic tale of a god that forgives all? Shall I abandon the known gods given to us by our grandfathers, the gods of our sage elders who, unlike you, have wintered into wisdom?”
“Your heart will be your guide, sire.”
“For now, our watchfulness will be our guide.” The warrior laid aside his shield and stood watching the pool. All of the band gathered beside him and stared into the now still and silent water.
Ara, unsure of the motives of these rough men, quietly moved back and then examined the trail ahead. The way was clear of the drag marks and bore no witness to evil. She hurried on, leaving the band at the mere’s edge, their tale for others to tell, if they survived.
Cadence looked up and over at Osley. He was consulting the key less and less now. His eyes and hand danced to the rhythm of his own translation. She thought about the blood that melts swords, and the movie
The hobbitess moved swiftly all that day, emerging into a plain that left her visible and uneasy. Hafoc returned and stayed close by, nervous and jumpy in his movements, and so aggravating her disquiet. She skylighted the horizon by dawn and dusk, and so spied, far away, what she thought were twin figures following her trail. She changed her path and patterns and often doubled back, but they stayed true to her bearing, as if reading the very marks of stumbling and sliding on rock and branch. They held back, sure and relentless and patient.
She finally lost the sense of their distance and so redoubled her pace. The land rose and became increasingly rocky. It led to a promontory among foothills that were but miniatures of the mountains that loomed ahead in ranks of shade, a range of purple summits remembered from the map she had seen. Everdivide. She reached the small promontory at sunset and climbed and looked back. She scanned the horizon and then looked down. She froze.
Below, no more than a mile away, close enough that her scent was still fresh, loped the pursuers. Two in number and man-like, they stooped low as they ran, like hounds fixed on the spore. The fast-setting sun propelled their shadows far to their sides. They disappeared from her view behind an outcrop, so that only their shadows were visible. These became long penciled creatures, wild and outlandish in their movements, wobbling on exaggerated legs independent of the flesh and blood hunters that now ran full out to secure her fate as their prize.
Their shadows stopped suddenly. They were relieving themselves, like wolves or jackals do before the final chase.
She scrambled on in sheer panic. She stumbled and flushed a covey of wild brautigans that rocketed along with the wind and passed only a foot off the ground through a gap in the rocks before veering up and away. She made for the gap, climbing up uneven tiers that may have been steps for giants with unmatched legs.
At the top she was forced to stop. Before her rose a darkly- veined mountain wall that rose thousands of feet, sheer and void of pathways. Only among the debris field at its base, perhaps a half-mile away, did she spy a darker place, a crevice or, if she was lucky, a cave. Hafoc took wing in a wild flurry and she sprinted toward that spot as fast as she had even run in her life.
The page ended.
