“You travel to Nonterrazake. For your father. Well, that is their homeland. It is the Harvesters who hold Kradek-ka.”
Anu sat in stunned silence, unable to speak, unable to think. She had assumed they were fleeing the Harvesters. Now, it seemed, to rescue her father she would have to travel into the belly of the beast.
She gazed up at the stars. They twinkled, impossibly distant. And for a long time, Anu felt her soul melt, felt all hope vanish, and realised that her strength had gone.
In despondency, she went below deck for an endless, troubled, twisting sleep.
Anu slept late, and Alloria awoke her.
“He’s gone.”
“What? Who?”
“Vashell. The man whose face you removed with your claws.”
Groggy, and feeling as if she’d been drugged, Anu stumbled on deck and stared hopelessly at the place where Vashell had been tied. His bonds lay, broken on the deck. He was nowhere to be seen.
Anu ran to the barge’s rail. “Vashell!” she shouted. “Vashell!” Her words echoed out across mountain stone, and bounced back wreathed in early morning mist. There came no reply.
“What do we do now?” asked Alloria, softly.
“We continue without him.”
For the morning they travelled, clockwork engine humming, up the ice-filled river. Deep into the maze of the Black Pike Mountains they navigated, were absorbed, and Anu realised that there was no life this far in. No animals, no birds; nothing. It was desolate, barren, as bleak as another world. Even the vegetation was dreary, white and pale green, grey and black. There were few, or no trees, the heady rich evergreens had vanished leagues behind. Only tufted grass remained, mostly ensnared by snow and ice. And yet the mountains…spoke to Anu. Rock-falls boomed. Ice cracked. Rock walls shifted. Boulders fell, crackling with menace to be swallowed by the Silva River. High up, occasionally, out of sight, they heard the terrifying roar of avalanche.
With every sound, the Black Pike Mountains screamed their dominance.
After a short break for a lunch of dried meat from the brass barge’s hold, they continued, until Alloria, who was leaning at the craft’s prow allowing breeze to stream through her hair, gasped.
“What is it?”
“There! That narrow river. To the left. Follow it!”
“What did you see?”
“Just follow it! Maybe I am going insane.”
Anu nudged the brass barge up the narrow river, and they travelled for maybe a quarter of a league; the water grew deep, channelled between two towering four thousand feet walls of sheer black granite, polished and gleaming with ice, and they emerged into…
Into a lush, green clearing.
The water ended in a circular flat pool, and beyond the water’s edge stood a proliferation of trees, plants and flowers. Colours and perfumes raged through the clearing, and Anu brought the barge to a halt, bumping against a natural sloped jetty of rock.
Alloria jumped out onto the jetty, and stood with hands on hips, smiling. The sun was shining, beaming down, warming her face, and she turned back to Anu and laughed. “What is this place?”
Anu climbed from the boat, wary, aware that when on the boat she had some small sanctuary from the Harvesters. She shook her head. “I do not know.”
“Vashell talked of such a place,” said Alloria.
“He did?”
“Yes, he said it led to…the Vrekken? Whatever that is. He said there would be green trees and flowers; and there would be a tunnel. Follow the tunnel, and the foolish traveller would find the Vrekken.”
Anu turned, and her eyes narrowed. In the far wall there indeed was a tunnel opening. It was too perfect, so obviously man-made as opposed to a natural occurrence. This made Anu even more suspicious.
“Did he say anything else?”
“No. Look! Fruit!” Alloria ran to a tree and pulled down an apple. She took a bite, and laughed through juice. “It’s wonderful! Fresh and clean. I can’t believe this little…garden exists amongst the mountains. And can you smell the flowers?”
“I can.”
Alloria tossed Anu an apple, which she caught and bit. Juice ran down her chin, and she felt her mood lighten a little. Alloria was right; this place, with the winter sun shining down between towering walls of rock, was a serious uplift to the soul.
“We cannot stay. We must stock up with supplies. We must continue.”
Alloria sighed, and waded through flowers to look deep into Anu’s eyes. “What are you searching for, Anu?”
“My father. You know this.”
“Truly? And to what end?”
Anu opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. What she wanted more than anything was to be accepted in the Silva Valley; to be accepted as pure vachine. But that had gone, now. Denied her from an early age by the very same father she sought to save; but he’d had his reasons, hadn’t he? For forcing her to become outcast? And, she realised suddenly, what she wanted more than anything was for Kradek-ka, the great inventor, to make her whole again. To put right that which he had twisted. But it was too late for that. Her chance had gone.
“I would seek acceptance,” she said, finally.
Alloria nodded, and gazed off through the trees. Birds sang in the distance. It was an uplifting sound. “Vashell said there was a path, here; a path that leads south, away, out from the embrace of the Black Pike Mountains.”
Anu stared at her. She licked her lips. “You wish to leave?”
“Yes. I would return to my husband. I would return to my children. You understand this, surely?”
Anu sighed. “Yes. I understand you. But it will be a harsh and terrible journey. I believe the paths are… treacherous.”
Alloria nodded. “I would suffer anything to see my family again.”
“Then go. With my blessing.”
“You could come with me,” said Alloria. “I heard what Vashell said; about this place, this Nonterrazake. And the Harvesters who reside there. You don’t even know if your father still lives! It is insanity to go on.”
“You listen well,” said Anu, a little stiffly. “No. I will travel there. If nothing else, I will discover the truth.”
Queen Alloria moved forward, and gazed into Anu’s eyes. “I know I have been…distant.” She licked her lips. “but…thank you, for saving me, from the soldiers. I find it hard to comprehend your ways, but hopefully, one day, if you arrive at my lands in Falanor, I will be able to extend you some form of courtesy; some help.” She paused, awkward, not really sure what she wanted to say, her mind awash with conflicting thoughts.
Anu smiled, leant forward and hugged Alloria.
“It will be as you say.”
Anu stepped back onto the Engineer’s Barge, the scents of rich flowers in her nostrils, in her golden curls, and she nosed the boat away from this inner sanctum, this temporary Eden, and towards the ominous cave which seemed to beckon her with a tiny, sibilant whisper.
Come to me, the cave seemed to say.
Come to the Vrekken.
The brass barge glided across still waters, and entered the darkness of the tunnel.
Within seconds, Anu was swallowed. Was gone.
For hours the brass barge eased through blackness. Occasionally, it would bump against jagged rock walls, and Anukis found herself praying. She did not want to drown. Even worse, she did not want to drown in a tomb- world beneath the Black Pike Mountains!
The wind whistled eerily down tunnels, and it was with a start Anu realised she was in a maze. The tenebrosity obscured the nature of the labyrinth, and it only came with time, with context, as Anu realised she was
