Bluestone: The Forest, the Path, and the River

BLUESTONE

THE FOREST, THE PATH, AND THE RIVER

Dwayne R. Johnston

If the forest has protected us, and the path has led us all safely here, the river will surely not bring on our death.

© Dwayne R. Johnston 2014

Smashwords Edition

Cover and interior art: © Dwayne R. Johnston

Cover design and About the Author by:

Meron Aklog

Edited in Canada by: Scripta Word Services

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

For my mother, who instilled in me a love of reading.

Pronunciation Guide

Adaelan: a-day-lan

Aethrinee : ath-ree-nee

Caerikweal gate: kay-rick-whale [gate]

Daedskuls: dayd-skulls

Endsæta: end-say-ta

Fealew: fey-lew

Graeswang: gray-swang

Hiliwæthe : he-le-way-th

Iyla: eye-la

Neofogul: nee-o-foh-gull

Prince Elnyian: [Prince] el-nee-yan

Sael: sa-el

Stimayger: stim-ay-ger

Torfasten: tor-fas-en

Valifasten: val-i-fas-en

Yamie: yay-mee

Zames: zaym-z

Many

Beginnings

Chapter One

The arrows pierced his chest and his sides one after another, first in the creases and joints of his armour, smashing, denting, and then penetrating it. He was going into shock; he could hear and feel them strike, and pain jerked his body with each hit, but numbness was setting in. He fell first to his knees, then pitched forward with his face pressed into the ground as he lost control of his body. Everything had an uncanny surrealism about it.

The hosts of enemies closed in, surrounding him, screaming and screeching with glee, but by now he was barely conscious of any of it. He felt himself floating upward. He looked down, and below him they were laughing, jeering, and shaking their fists jubilantly in the air. He saw one beast place his foot on his body, which was still lying on the ground, pierced full of arrows. Ha-ha-ha, we’ve done it, we got rid of the slime, it rasped.

Master, said another, why does their armour always shine like that after we do them in?

It is nothing, just the life going out from them. After a pause the beast added, Think nothing of it.

* * *

See? I told you if they were given the choice, they would betray you and your father, said Arleas.

Yes, I see that, Prince Elnyian said. Indeed, a large number have chosen to follow you, but there are still many more who have not betrayed me and my father, and the armies at the gate are still loyal to my father.

Yes, but it will happen…in good time, Arleas assured him.

Prince Elnyian sighed. We have been at this for some time now, Arleas. It was proven long ago that some would follow you. But in each of the generations that have passed, there have always been some who don’t follow you. And your challenge to my authority was not just that they would turn from me, but that they would choose you and your ways, and that they would be better off with you and your Dark Robes. Generations have passed; has this happened yet? Are those who follow you better off?

Arleas showed little reaction. Yes, but once the power of your soldiers is gone, and the Dark Robes are in full power, then you will see, it will happen!

Humph. We shall see…we shall see, indeed. The prince turned back to the vista visible from the viewing dais.

After a short pause, Arleas said, How can you claim to be the rightful ruler if it has not been proven? His voice intensified with the prospect of triumph. "If everything has not been tried, how can you say you are the only worthy one? Your rule must stand on the people’s choice, and they will choose—yes, they will choose me."

Prince Elnyian smiled faintly, a knowing smile, and said nothing. They both turned and continued watching.

* * *

Driffan flushed when he caught sight of the deer, his eyes widening with excitement. He froze, not daring to move or even to blink, for fear it would see him. The deer dropped its head down to feed on the meadow grass in the bright sun of the open forest. Driffan relaxed a bit, and tried to calm himself—something he still had to do, even after so many years of hunting. The rush of adrenaline made his body tremble. He was in his thirties now, and had been hunting long enough that he should be able to control his elation, but this was no ordinary deer. Only once before, he had glimpsed such a deer as it disappeared into the forest.

He knew well the legend of the Fealew, the deer from the land ruled by the High King in the throne city of Cynestoll. He’d often heard the story told to children around home fires on cold winter evenings. Most people believed it was just that, a legend, a mere fairy tale, and Driffan had never thought otherwise, himself. However, he was in a rarely traversed forest, and there it was right before him, defying reality. He knew this was his chance, probably his only chance.

Looking down, he checked the fletching on his arrow, made sure the arrow was nocked on the string. Then he moved, slowly and quietly, checking with the thin soles of his leather shoes for branches and dry leaves that might make a sound if stepped on, giving away his presence. He knew the slightest unnatural sound would send the beast into flight, quickly as if it had wings. He moved whenever the deer moved, so the sound of his footsteps would be covered by the sound of the deer’s. Slowly he worked his way closer to the deer grazing peacefully in the forest meadow. He had to keep track of any other animals, especially birds nearby, as frightening them would also alert the deer. The forest also seemed to have a presence of its own that Driffan could feel, and now he wondered if it would reveal his location.

There was one last stand of trees and brush between the deer and himself. Driffan stood in the shadows, close enough now to get a shot, but it had to be a clear shot. The slightest touch from a branch or a leaf as the arrow flew through the air might deflect it from its path, missing the target. Driffan pulled back his bow and aimed, knowing his only chance of a good shot would be if the deer moved farther forward into the open meadow where it grazed.

As if heeding his wish, the deer stepped out into the open. He caught his breath, struck by the full beauty of the animal, but the enchantment only lasted for a fraction of an instant. Let’s see how magical you are once I put an arrow into you, he thought.

The deer swung its head up, looking first in the opposite direction, then straight at Driffan. He released his fingers, and kept his eyes on the arrow as it flew toward its target. It was as if time slowed down. There was a look on the deer’s face that Driffan sensed as something akin to a knowing smile. There was a burst of stardust as the arrow penetrated and passed through the deer’s body, turning its surroundings into a dreamlike landscape. The deer turned and leapt away, bounding across the meadow with a shower of firefly sparks trailing in its wake. It stopped, its body now glowing and transparent, a shimmering bluish-green, and stretched out its neck to trumpet a call in three short bursts. Then it looked back, as if waiting for Driffan to follow.

Driffan immediately broke into a run. As he approached the far side of the meadow where the deer had briefly stopped, the leaf-strewn ground beneath him turned into a path of bluish-green stones. Driffan stopped, amazed. He was certain it hadn’t been there before; it was as if it had formed out of the earth, or had come into existence at the deer’s bidding.

He continued running after the deer, following the path as it snaked and rose, then fell again, then twisted around, heading up and then down, following the contours of the forest. Gradually it rose into the forested hills, farther up than he had ever been. The deer stopped before each twist and turn and at the top of each crest, looking back to see if Driffan was still following.

Suddenly, the deer melted into the forest and was gone.

The path was still there, the area around it less dreamlike and more real now. As he continued along it, the paving stones slowly lost their shine and turned to ordinary stone, then into a dirt path, and then into a faint game trail. Driffan kept following what trail there was, walking farther and farther into the forest until darkness took hold, and he could no longer make out the trail. As he stood in the dark trying to decide what to do next, a clear, deep voice reverberated inside his head: Follow the path.

Driffan shook his head and looked around for the source of the voice, then shook the whole thing off as his imagination playing tricks on him. For a while he just stood there in the dark, thinking about his situation.

It was an especially dark moonless night, with the leaves of the overhead canopy blocking out the stars. Although he was used to camping in the forest, making camp in the dark would be almost impossible, so he settled into the most comfortable place he could find with his back to a tree, legs tucked up, his cloak wrapped around him. There was nothing to do now but wait until morning light broke, and then, hopefully, he could find his way back to territory he knew. He had never been lost in the forest before, but he had never tried to shoot a mythical deer before, either.

I guess that didn’t work. He laughed, then admonished himself, You will not be laughing tomorrow, if you can’t find your way back home.

His home was farmland and forest on the edge of the great chain of hills and crags reaching down from Baedholt Forest. Somewhere in Baedholt Forest was where he was now. He pondered on what had just happened to him, and then his mind wandered to family and friends back in the community where he’d grown up. The small town had few buildings—a flour mill, an inn, and a few shops, along with a handful of stone and half-timbered houses. Most people lived on small farms in the surrounding countryside, including the grandparents with whom he lived. Every Saturday the villagers sold and traded wares at the town market, and it had been then, several days before, in the noise of the local inn, when he’d had a conversation with friends. He had, perhaps, been drinking a little too much.

Soldiers are mostly only good at burning tax money that we all work so hard to earn, he jeered before downing a gulp of local ale.

His friends all nodded; they didn’t think much of soldiers either. More mugs raised and ale downed.

Just so long as you’ve paid your ale-gafol, a man in a dark cloak had interjected, shocking Driffan back to sobriety.

The local Dark Robe had sat down just behind him without any of them noticing, in the hustle and bustle of the crowded inn. Dark Robes were administrators of tax, among other things, for the central government in Valifasten, the capital city far to the south.

You don’t pay very much ale tax, as I understand it, he continued, his voice heavy with sarcasm, because you spend way too much time in the forest hunting for game, rather than hunting for a wife and starting a family, which you could support by growing hops and barley, which you could sell in the market. And then you would pay more ale-gafol. The Dark Robe turned back to his drink, saying no more.

Driffan was quiet but scoffed in his mind, They want everyone under their thumb, plugged into their system. They would probably burn the whole forest down if they could, just to keep me out. But he had dared not say anything aloud, and was especially surprised that the Dark Robe knew anything about him at all.

Driffan continued thinking about all this until his mind went dark as the night around him, and he was chasing a mythical deer that pranced and jumped around him in his dreams, always escaping and melting into a sea of sparks and fire before him.

He awoke shivering in the cool, damp air of early morning. Now there was enough light to find wood, start a fire, and warm some pematack, the dried journey meal he always carried with him into the forest and when he travelled. After eating and warming himself by the fire until he felt dry and revitalized, he set off in what seemed to him an interesting direction. He was not overly worried about finding his way home; he knew, taking the sun and the time of day into consideration, that he could maintain a southerly direction long enough that he would come out of the forest onto the central plains with its farms and villages. Although he knew if he veered too far either east or west, it might require days of travel to get back to the familiar areas of the farmstead owned by his grandparents, the only parents he had ever really had.

In the meantime the forest held endless fascination for him. Not only that, he still needed to accomplish his task, the reason he had come into the forest to begin with—to replenish his now diminished pematack supply. So he returned to hunting, all the while thinking about the deer, the sparks, and the trail the day before, which already seemed more illusory than real.

By late afternoon he had accomplished the first part of his task. In a small forest clearing he had the meat laid out to dry on a rack of green wood he had fashioned, a small fire beneath it drying the air and keeping the flies away. The process would take a few days, but while it dried he would gather forest plants to add to it to turn it into pematack;