His younger brother shook his head. ‘Not until tonight, when Mother described it. We have all walked the edge of the Trench. Of course the darkness of its heart is impenetrable – how could we have guessed that a holy site hid within it?’
‘A holy site? In absolute darkness?’
‘The significance of that,’ Fear said, ‘will be made evident soon enough, Trull.’
They began walking, eldest brother in the lead. Into the forest, onto a trail leading northwest. ‘Fear,’ Trull said, ‘has Uruth spoken to you of the Stone Bowl before?’
‘I am Weapons Master,’ Fear replied. ‘There were rites to observe…’
Among them, Trull knew, the memorization of every battle the Edur ever fought. He then wondered why that thought had come to him, in answer to Fear’s words. What hidden linkages was his own mind seeking to reveal, and why was he unable to discern them?
They continued on, avoiding pools of moonlight unbroken by shadows. ‘Tomad forbade us this journey,’ Trull said after a time.
‘In matters of sorcery,’ Fear said, ‘Uruth is superior to Tomad.’
‘And this is a matter of sorcery?’
Rhulad snorted behind Trull. ‘You stood with us in the Warlock King’s longboat.’
‘I did,’ agreed Trull. ‘Fear, would Hannan Mosag approve of what we do, of what Uruth commands of us?’
Fear said nothing.
‘You,’ Rhulad said, ‘are too filled with doubt, brother. It binds you in place-’
‘I watched you walk the path to the chosen cemetery, Rhulad. After Dusk’s departure and before the moon’s rise.’
If Fear reacted to this, his back did not reveal it, nor did his steps falter on the trail.
‘What of it?’ Rhulad asked, his tone too loose, too casual.
‘My words, brother, are not to be answered with flippancy.’
‘I knew that Fear was busy overseeing the return of weapons to the armoury,’ Rhulad said. ‘And I sensed a malevolence prowling the darkness. And so I stood in hidden vigil over his betrothed, who was alone in the cemetery. I may be unblooded, brother, but I am not without courage. I know you believe that inexperience is the soil in which thrive the roots of false courage. But I am not false, no matter what you think. For me, inexperience is unbroken soil, not yet ready for roots. I stood in my brother’s place.’
‘Malevolence in the night, Rhulad? Whose?’
‘I could not be certain. But I felt it.’
‘Fear,’ Trull said, ‘have you no questions for Rhulad on this matter?’
‘No,’ Fear replied drily. ‘There is no need for that… when you are around.’
Trull clamped his mouth shut, thankful that the night obscured the flush on his face.
There was silence for some time after that.
The trail began climbing, winding among outcrops of lichen-skinned granite. They climbed over fallen trees here and there, scrambled up steep slides. The moon’s light grew diffuse, and Trull sensed it was near dawn by the time they reached the highest point of the trail.
The path now took them inland – eastward – along a ridge of toppled trees and broken boulders. Water trapped in depressions in the bedrock formed impenetrable black pools that spread across the trail. The sky began to lighten overhead.
Fear then led them off the path, north, across tumbled scree and among the twisted trees. A short while later Kaschan Trench was before them.
A vast gorge, like a knife’s puncturing wound in the bedrock, its sides sheer and streaming with water, it ran in a jagged line, beginning beneath Hasana Inlet half a day to the west, and finally vanishing into the bedrock more than a day’s travel to the east. They were at its widest point, two hundred or so paces across, the landscape opposite slightly higher but otherwise identical – scattered boulders looking as if they had been pushed up from the gorge and mangled trees that seemed sickened by some unseen breath from the depths.
Fear unclasped his cloak, dropped his pack and walked over to a misshapen mound of stones. He cleared away dead branches and Trull saw that the stones were a cairn of some sort. Fear removed the capstone, and reached down into the hollow beneath. He lifted clear a coil of knotted rope.
‘Remove your cloak and your weapons,’ he said as he carried the coil to the edge.
He found one end and tied his pack, cloak, sword and spear to it.
Trull and Rhulad came close with their own gear and all was bound to the rope. Fear then began lowering it over the side.
‘Trull, take this other end and lead it to a place of shadow. A place where the shadow will not retreat before the sun as the day passes.’
He picked up the rope end and walked to a large, tilted boulder. When he fed the end into the shadows at its base he felt countless hands grasp it. Trull stepped back. The rope was now taut.
Returning to the edge, he saw that Fear had already begun his descent. Rhulad stood staring down.
‘We’re to wait until he reaches the bottom,’ Rhulad said. ‘He will tug thrice upon the rope. He asked that I go next.’
‘Very well.’
‘She has the sweetest lips,’ Rhulad murmured, then looked up and met Trull’s eyes. ‘Is that what you want me to say? To give proof to your suspicions?’
‘I have many suspicions, brother,’ Trull replied. ‘We have sun-scorched thoughts, we have dark-swallowed thoughts. But it is the shadow thoughts that move with stealth, creeping to the very edge of the rival realms – if only to see what there is to be seen.’
‘And if they see nothing?’
‘They never see nothing, Rhulad.’
‘Then illusions? What if they see only what their imagination conjures? False games of light? Shapes in the darkness? Is this not how suspicion becomes a poison? But a poison like white nectar, every taste leaving you thirsting for more.’
Trull was silent for a long moment. Then he said, ‘Fear spoke to me not long ago. Of how one is perceived, rather than how one truly is. How the power of the former can overwhelm that of the latter. Hov indeed, perception shapes truth like waves on stone.’
‘What would you ask of me, Trull?’
He faced Rhulad directly. ‘Cease your strutting before Mayen.’
A strange smile, then, ‘Very well, brother.’
Trull’s eyes widened slightly.
The rope snapped three times.
‘My turn,’ Rhulad said. He grasped hold of the rope and was quickly gone from sight.
Then he turned upon himself and studied what he was feeling. Difficult to find, to recognize, but…
The three tugs startled him.
Trull took the heavy rope in his hands, feeling the sheath of beeswax rubbed into the fibres to keep them from rotting. Without the knots for foot- and hand-holds, the descent would be treacherous indeed. He walked out over the edge, facing inward, then leaned back and began making his way down.
Glittering streams ran down the raw stone before him. Red-stained calcretions limned the surface here and there. Flea-like insects skipped across the surface. The scrapes left by the passage of Rhulad and Fear glistened in the fading light, ragged furrows wounding all that clung to the rock.
Knot to knot, he went down the rope, the darkness deepening around him. The air grew cool and damp, then cold. Then his feet struck mossy boulders, and hands reached out to steady him.
His eyes struggled to make out the forms of his brothers. ‘We should have brought a lantern.’
‘There is light from the Stone Bowl,’ Fear said. ‘An Elder Warren. Kaschan.’
