The Blackstar Legacy - Chapter 6

Osric crouched near a spot of level ground just out of sight of the road, clearing enough rocks and brush to make a good space for his friends to camp.

It had been a difficult day, at least the latter part of it. It seemed like, except for their time in Avendell, his life was destined to be one life or death fight after another. He wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

Talia entered the small clearing as he rose, dusting off his hands. She wore a frown that had lingered ever since they finished that tense skirmish. She was on edge. And rightfully so. Now they weren’t just looking out for the brethren’s own people which, according to Jasper, were not overly numerous. They had to be worried about hired mercenaries trying to track them down and dispose of them.

Of that, there were not a limited amount.

“This should be enough room for all of us,” he said, trying to distract her with mundane things.

It didn’t work. “After everything, I’d prefer to keep everyone in sight.”

He did not like this version of her. Gone was the feisty girl he’d known all his life. Well, maybe not gone, but suppressed, weighed down by fear and worry.

Osric nodded in silent agreement. He caught sight of Jasper, pulling two of their purloined horses into the clearing. He, too, looked worn, although Osric thought maybe that was from the journey and exertion of the fight. He wasn’t sure how old Jasper was, but the man was notably older than the rest of them and had spent years living by himself in a cabin.

This was a lot to ask of him.

As Osric started to get a fire going, Grace and Rowan joined them, bringing the entire group together. Of all of them, they seemed the least affected. Rowan had made it his mission to deal with poachers and bandits and thieves, so maybe for him, this was old hat.

And nothing bothered Grace.

“No, we need to get all this off and brush them down still,” Rowan was saying as they tied the horses up. “They’ll have picked up rocks and burrs under the saddles and it isn’t good to leave bits in their mouths overnight. It can cause wearing and sores. We should also check for the wounds on those who were injured in the battle. I know Jasper healed them some, but I want to make sure they aren’t suffering.”

“Sure,” Grace said, unusually helpful, starting to disconnect buckles and straps for the removal of saddles. “These beauties deserve better than those thugs, anyway.”

‘An odd pairing, those two,’ Osric thought.

He was happy to see them getting along so well, however. More surprising was, after they finished tending to horses, she made her way over to where Jasper sat near the fire while Rowan went to collect his bow.

“We’ll need food for tonight,” he said.

Cinder Rose and padded over to stand next to him.

“I believe he wants to go with you,” Osric pointed out.

“I believe you’re right,” the Ranger said, and the pair disappeared into the quickly darkening forest.

“Why not just ask your gods and make it all better,” Grace said as Jasper checked a small wound on her arm.

“It is not a small thing to ask the gods for help. In battle, fighting in their name, yes, Heathus hold protection over me. Helping a mother birth a child or the infirm battle sickness. These are worthy of bothering the gods for assistance. Small cuts like this would be … rude. Besides, keeping practice on basic medical skills never hurts,” he said, wrapping a bandage over the wound to keep the poultice he put on it in place.

“What do they care, lounging up there, wherever they are. I’m sure they’re bored, and looking for entertainment.”

“They aren’t ‘up there.’ I believe, as the veil separates us from other realities, there are levels to the veil. They exist between our veil and another world’s veil. Part of our world, but apart from it.”

“How can you be part of something and not part of something?” Grace asked, and turned to Talia. “Is that how it works? Like, layers of bedding or something?”

“I have no idea,” Talia said. “Until this all started, I’d never really heard of the veil, let alone knew anything about it.”

“But you read all those books the Sage had,” Osric said.

“I did, but I’m not sure how much the Sage or the other druids know about it either. They may be descendants of these ancients, the Calaphium, but it does not seem a lot of their knowledge came with them. Bits and pieces yes, but that’s just it. A scattering. Enough to know the veil exists and even how it is damaged, but not enough to actually understand it.”

“Do you think there might be more information in this tower?” Osric asked. “I mean, if it was such a central part of their power, for repairing the veil, wouldn’t they have had all kinds of books there?”

“Do you remember seeing much in the way of books in the temple we went to?” Jasper asked.

“I mean, I remember the document,” Osric said.

“A document protected by powerful magic, so that even the Brethren could not destroy it, only hide it. Beyond that, there were no scrolls, or tombs, or archives. Trust the word of an old man who spent his life collecting the knowledge from books, they are not meant to last. A few hundred years, and books begin to fall apart, brittle to the touch. Another few hundred, and they are little more than dust. The Calaphim ended over three thousand years ago. I doubt very many of their books, if any, have survived that long.”

Talia looked even more sad by the thought. It hadn’t occurred to Osric that she may have been hoping to do just what Grace suggested, finding new works to expand her knowledge. As much as Grace craved coin, Talia craved magic.

Another way this quest had let her down.

They busied themselves with getting the camp ready before dark fully fell, setting out bedrolls, brushing the horses, and repairing clothes and armor as best they could after the fight on the road.

After about an hour, Rowan and Cinder returned, the ranger carrying three plump rabbits.

“This wolf of yours,” he said, settling down to clean his catch. “He’s something else. Knew exactly how to drive the rabbits toward my position. Even waited for my signal before moving in.”

“The gods touched him somehow,” Osric said, watching Cinder settle near the fire. “Regular wolves are clever, but the sage said that Cinder was different. Given intelligence beyond his species.”

The wolf’s amber eyes met his, seeming to acknowledge the conversation about him.

“Well, he is very smart. I wish I had someone like him with me all these years, watching my back,” he said.

Osric was just glad they had the Ranger. He knew more about this kind of life than any of the rest of them. Osric had been a village boy, and a tradesman at that. Or training to be a tradesman. He knew little about hunting or preparing game. Master Ironhand would purchase meat and vegetables from the farmers and hunters around the village, saving them the trouble of skinning their own game.

It had been a privileged life, and one that had ill prepared him for the one he lived in now.

Before long the ranger had the rabbits skinned and on a makeshift spit over the fire cooking.

“Watch these, yea?” He said to Talia. “I’ll take first watch and want to do a good check of the area. Save some of that for me and, if you could, don’t have that warding spell or whatever you put down burn me to a crisp if I come back in late.”

“You’ll be fine,” Talia said, but she laughed seemingly in spite of herself, a little of that darkness fading.

As they ate, the group got quiet, each lost in their own thoughts. Jasper and Grace both turned in shortly after they finished eating, both falling asleep quickly after such a long day. For a while, Osric just sat, staring into the fire, thinking.

Finally he said, “This has been hard on you. I never wanted you to face situations like today.”

“We’ve been through this,” Talia said.

“I know, and I’m not saying I don’t want you here. I’m saying I’m sorry for it being necessary. The more this goes on, the sadder you seem to get. I don’t like that I’ve been the cause of your pain.”

“You haven’t,” she said, turning to him, her green eyes reflecting the firelight. “It’s … I’m more bothered by me than by what we’ve had to do.”

“By you?”

“Yes. I know you think the killing is weighing on me, and I won’t say I’m apathetic to the death I’ve caused. I’m not like Grace, or even Rowan. I do wish we could find a way to not be the cause of pain, but I don’t feel bad about it. And that’s what bothers me. I should feel worse about the killing, and I don’t.”

“Maybe it’s because you understand what we’re fighting for. The stakes we are fighting for.”

“Perhaps,” she said, pulling her knees to her chest. “But don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t want to change what has happened to us, even if it means I’ve had to kill. Being here, learning real magic in Avendell, it’s more than I ever dreamed possible. I’m not the same girl who left Eldham. That simple little village girl.”

“You were never a simple little village girl, Talia. Everyone knew how special you were. Elder Miriam saw it. She took you in, no one else ever earned that honor.”

“Maybe so.” She looked around their camp, where Grace and Jasper were sleeping. “It’s not just what I learned though, it’s … this. I would never have thought I would meet people like this and yet, we’ve become something more than just strangers thrown together by circumstance.”

“I think I know what you mean. Since Avendell, it changed things for all of us. We’re not just racing to stop the Brethren anymore. We’ve become...”

“A family, of sorts,” Talia finished, standing up and brushing off her dress. “And that’s what I wouldn’t give up, if I had to choose again. Some things are worth the price.”

She turned and walked to her bedroll, leaving Osric to contemplate her words in the growing dark.

***

The horses picked their way carefully over the uneven ground as the group crested what Rowan had promised would be the last rise before they got to the base of The Claws. The darkened, jagged peaks had been in the distance since the day after they left the Great Road and the forest on a small dirty road heading north.

That had been four days ago, and after each day of riding from sunup to sundown, it never seemed closer, and Osric had started to wonder if they’d ever reach it, or if it was just a mirage, always on the horizon but never reachable.

As he saw the path leading from the gently rolling plains begin what looked to be a treacherous ascent up the mountain, he almost wished he’d been right.

Osric had not seen mountains before, but he didn’t imagine they looked like this. Steep cliffs seemed to appear from nothing, as if they had ripped out of the plains into existence.

Although, based on what Jasper had told them, this might be true. Craning his neck up, Osric looked where the tops of the peaks seemed to pierce the sky, their sharp angles and unnatural formations like some monstrous hand clawing its way out of the earth.

It was easy to see where the place got its name.

A little snow dotted the tops of the highest peaks, but the rest were almost blackened to an unnatural color.

“By the gods,” Grace muttered, the sight halting even her unrelenting pessimistic optimism. “It looks like something out of a nightmare.”

“It feels wrong,” Talia said. “I can feel the energies rolling off that place.”

“How does it feel wrong?” Jasper pressed.

To Osric, the cleric sounded almost excited, as if this were an academic exercise and not a place they would soon be risking their lives to enter.

“It’s hard to explain. It feels … twisted. Chaotic. I can feel it pressing in, like a physical weight.”

Osric thought maybe he could feel that too, and wondered if the magic was so strong even those who could not wield it could be affected by it.

It would explain the sparseness of the area. They hadn’t seen a cultivated field or a farmhouse in almost a day, shortly before the dirt road had given way to a barely discernible track. Even the wildlife seemed to have abandoned this cursed place. The only sign of life was the occasional twisted tree, their branches gnarled and contorted into grotesque shapes, or the scattered boulders that littered the foothills, like the remnants of some ancient, cataclysmic battle.

Movement caught Osric’s eye, way in the distance, near one of the far peaks. Osric squinted, trying to make them out. They wheeled about in the air around the peaks, but their size seemed much too big.

“Are those...birds?” he asked, squinting, “They’d have to be monstrously huge to be seen so far away.”

“If those are birds,” Jasper said. “Expect them to be unlike any you have ever seen. This place ... it warps everything. Once we venture into it, don’t expect anything to be what it seems, even if it looks familiar on the surface. Trust nothing.”

The humans weren’t the only things troubled. Their new mounts stamped the ground and shook their heads. The animals were restless. Even Cinder, who stared at the path that disappeared into the cliff face, his hackles raised.

“If this tower is where your vision indicated, I expect it to be two, maybe three days’ ride into the mountains, to the center of the range. It would be closer on more even terrain, but here … it will probably be more.”

“Should we take the horses in there? If the ground is bad?” Talia asked. “They don’t seem happy with the idea.”

“I imagine not,” Rowan said. “No, it might be best to leave them. I can see about arranging a temporary corral for them.”

“That will have to work,” Osric said. “The last thing we need is them getting spooked and injuring one of us. We need to decide if we’re making camp here or pushing on. Neither option feels particularly appealing.”

“Those things up there,” Grace nodded toward the distant shapes, “they’re going to be harder to spot in the dark. We’re already going to have to spend several nights in that place, no reason to add to that.”

“There’s an outcropping over there,” Rowan said, pointing to an area far to their left. “It would give us some cover, at least on one side. Better than staying exposed here.”

Osric didn’t know how his eyes picked it out, but after a moment, he found what the Ranger was pointing out.

“Works for me. Let’s go. The sooner we’re under some kind of cover, the better.”

As they turned for their temporary shelter, a distant sound came from the far distance, inside The Claws. Not exactly a howl, but not a scream either. Something strange and otherworldly that sent a chill down Osric’s spine.