Grimenna Page 18

  “What was that?” she asked fearfully.

  “Folka,” he answered. “Don’t fret, they’re many miles away.”

  Renn sat still and calm, unbothered by the deep of the forest and their small presence in it. Paiva let herself relax, trusting the tranquil tones in his voice. For long moments the forest was silent, then the wolves began to sing again and Paiva felt relieved.

  “How long have you been out here for?” she asked, studying his profile in the blue moonlight. He had not allowed them to have a fire, but the moon was bright enough.

  “Seven years I think,” he said as he chewed a minty sprig of a plant he had pocketed earlier that day.

  “It seems different out here,” she pondered. “I was not expecting the River Runners to help us the way they did.”

  “Along with gossip, favors are currency out here,” he replied. “Some men have more credit than others. Besides, the horse will fetch them iron and salt with the Come by Chance gang.”

  She nibbled at more of her meat before setting the rest aside for a meal the next day.

  “I think you believe me now,” she said. “What with my father and the Folka.”

  “Never mind,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

  She gathered the fur that Crowbill had given them and unbundled it, throwing it over her shoulders. She sidled towards Renn where he leaned against the rock wall of the ledge and curled up alongside him. Not close enough to touch, but close enough to be near. She tucked her head under the fur and closed her eyes, feeling safe beneath his watchful shadow.

  Chapter 12

  When Paiva woke in the morning she found that every bone and muscle attached to her ached. The first light of morning was creeping through the woods and Renn was already on foot waiting for her. Blearily she looked up at the daunting slope he meant for her to climb. With the fur tucked about her and rubbing the sleep from her eyes she followed after him, wincing on her raw feet.

  “Just to the top and you can rest,” he would call back to her, but it did little to ease the pain in her feet. They hadn’t made it far before she sat down miserably to shake the exhaustion from her body. He waited for her silently, watching her gauge the steep ascent.

  “Ulrig will make you some shoes,” he noted. She responded by wearily getting back to her feet and hobbling after him. He took a few steps onwards before he turned around and came back. Deftly he grabbed hold of one of her hands and slung her up on his back as if she were no more than a haversack. At first, she was alarmed, but he seemed to hardly notice her weight and went up at a steady pace without breaking his breath. Resigned, she crooked her arms around his neck and held fast. His pace was much more steady and she might as well have been riding a horse for he was sure-footed and quick, hardly seeming to notice his burden.

  He made quick work of scaling the mountain, cresting the summit by the time the sun was hot. There he set her down and stretched his back, searching for a drink from the waterskin. She would never have known the camp was there if not for the smoke that rose from a chimney made of stacked stones protruding from the earth. It was a cave on the top of the mountain, its opening concealed by the thick roots of a dead tree. From the top there was an endless view of Grimenna. Looking southwards the hills could be seen beginning to rise from the Lowlands, while looking northwards they could be seen rising into mountains that broke the skyline with jagged peaks.

  The thin trees that grew above the cave were stretched with animal skins drying in the sun and wind. There was a figure standing amidst them, just as shaggy and leathery looking as the hides. It was a stooped old man leaning against a twisted staff.

  “Ulrig,” Renn smiled. The old man tilted his head curiously towards them. He had a cap on his head stitched together from different colors of tanned leather. From beneath it a set of bushy white eyebrows protruded like antenna. His cheekbones were high and pointed above a long, wispy white beard that was tangled with burrs. He looked every part the image of a wizened old hermit, or perhaps a deranged sheep herder.

  “Renn,” Ulrig said, and blinked at him with speckled green eyes. “Who’s the girl?”

  “Paiva … from Birchloam,” he replied. On spindly legs Ulrig hopped down the rocks to come to a teetering halt on the roots of the tree above the cave entrance. He proved to be rather spry for such an old-looking being. He swung his head down and peered at Paiva with his strange eyes and she found his face to be scarce of wrinkles. It was only the white of his beard and his hunched frame that gave the impression of age. His eyes were clear, a pearly green with rusty flecks. They looked her over with bemused curiosity, and then his lips pulled back in a smile over long yellow teeth.

  “From Birchloam?” Ulrig whistled a laugh through his teeth. “I know Birchloam, my daughter’s from Birchloam. Quiet little place. But you’re coming from the wrong direction if you were coming from Birchloam.” Then he swung his arm out and pointed southeasterly, towards the gleam of the river winding through the hills many miles away. “Birchloam’s far over there,” Ulrig nattered.

  “We’ve a long story to tell you,” Renn interjected, “and we’ve come a long way to tell it.”

  Ulrig’s eyes alighted on Paiva, and he reminded her of some sort of toad that would live under a ring of mushrooms.

  “Paiva Ibbie,” Ulrig muttered to himself, his brow crumpling into a frown as he searched his memory. “Are you the one who encountered a mishap on Mummers-eve?”

  “The very one,” Renn answered for her. “As I said, it is a long story.”

  “Yes, Renn. Last I heard of you was you asked your father for a pardon. Then silence after that. I’d begun to worry, just a wee bit. When the Wildermen and the Stones have no news I often think someone has died.”

  A smile touched Renn’s lips. “Very nearly.”

  “Scared the beard off me,” Ulrig said, then he hopped down from his perch and tapped Renn on the head with his staff. “Left me here with a pack of Wilder-whelps to contend with. Best you go make amends with Runa. She’s been miserable since you left.” He then bent and pushed the hide away to enter the cave.

  “Wilder-whelps?” Paiva asked.

  “New gang members,” Renn answered.

  “And Runa?” Paiva looked to Renn as Ulrig disappeared into the cavern. Renn smothered his smile.

  “A sweetheart,” he said mischievously. Paiva remembered how he had once told her how there were other women out here in the Wilderlands. He motioned for her to follow Ulrig and she ducked in hurriedly, swallowing a dry lump in her throat. She found herself wondering if Renn had a stolen woman waiting for him.

  She walked into a smoky little cavern. The air was thick and hot from a choking fire in a crudely built fireplace with black scorch marks blazed into the front of it. The ceiling was half-root, half-rock, and she realized it was a man-made cave: a den of sorts, dug out and reinforced with stacked stone walls and timbers. There were openings for windows, covered with scraps of hide; there was a crude table on which were stacked earthen wares for eating, stone and iron tools of various sizes and shapes, and a clutter of furs and leathers. All about were frames on which smaller furs and pelts were stretched on sinew cords. There were pots and barrels in which soaked raw hides in fowl smelling liquids. There were wooden shelves against the walls containing bags, bottles and boxes, baskets woven from rushes filled with bunches of drying plants and tubers, and a string of pheasants and fowl hanging to soften on pegs from the ceiling. There were horns, antlers, bones tied to the wall and it vaguely reminded her of Lord Pratermora’s trophy room. The rest of the cave was akin to a den of thieves, for there were trinkets and objects that surely must have been scavenged from the lowlands — there was no possible means a Wilderman could procure them without stealing. There were openings in the walls, crooked doors held up by sills of great slabs of stone that led to other rooms into which she could not see, for they were dark and obscured. She th
ought perhaps they were store rooms, but decided to keep her questions for later.

  “Welcome to Far Reach,” Ulrig said to her as he began to clear off a large stone slab that served as a cluttered table. “I am Ulrig Leathermaker the Tinker, Wisest Wilderman in all Grimenna.” He let forth another of his whistling chuckles through his long teeth and procured a small wooden tankard. He drew forth drinks for them from it. He handed Paiva a wooden mug and invited her to sit at the table with him on a stool that was made of a small wooden frame with leather stretched on sinew for a seat. Ulrig began to light tallow sticks to shed light into the room.

  Paiva took her seat and peered warily into her cup, fearing it was a concoction similar to the one Crowbill brewed. Upon tasting it she found it to be sweet and only mildly medicinal.

  “Drink,” Ulrig urged. “It’s wine, not swill. Made from berries and honey. I call it Cures All, for it cures all ills, from miserable moods to the pain of broken bones.”

  Renn took his own cup from Ulrig and downed it heartily, then scanned a glance about the empty cave. “Where are the fellows?” he asked.

  “On a chase,” Ulrig answered. “Been gone for two days.”

  Renn nodded and helped himself to another cup of the Cures All. “Well,” Renn admonished, “I’ll let Paiva tell you her tale. I will go to visit with Runa.”

  Ulrig nodded happily and watched him depart through one of the crooked doors and disappear.

  “Who is Runa?” Paiva asked the hermit worriedly.

  “A Berg mare,” Ulrig replied, and chuckled at the relief that flooded her face.

  “You said your daughter is from Birchloam,” Paiva said, quickly changing the subject. “Perhaps I know her.”

  “I’m sure you do; Birchloam is a small village. Her name is Jekka. She works in the apothecary shop.”

  Paiva’s eyes snapped open wide. “Of course I know Jekka!” Paiva cried. “I didn’t know her father was a Wilderman.”

  “Yes,” Ulrig replied, and then Paiva noted a distant look that entered his eyes. “Poor girl. After I was sent to the woods her mother died in the Quarry. It took many years before Jekka would ever talk to me again. Although, Jekka has never been one much for talking.” He nodded his head against some inner pain and he took a deep swig of his Cures All to ease it. “I tell her to stay out of the woods,” Ulrig continued. “But she’s more often here at Far Reach than she is in Birchloam. Comes as she wills, like a wayward wanderer.”

  “Jekka crosses the Panderbank?” she asked in amazement. “All by herself?”

  “It’s only a river.” Ulrig smiled, then he thumbed the double brand on his hand. “When I found my pardon I was determined to go back to the world and set things right between her and I. How the years had passed. I had not realized she had grown into a woman. It was difficult and painful, I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t find my place again. Even if you’re pardoned, people still see the brand and people still treat you like dirt. I ran away again, back to the woods like a coward. But Jekka followed me.”

  “Jekka loved my father,” Paiva said, not meaning to cause the pain that rippled into Ulrig’s strange eyes. “I mean, my father was a teacher. He revered the Old Ways of Grimenna. He believed in the Old Spirits. Jekka was always there to help, always there to give thanks to the forest and listen to my father’s teachings. She believed in the old ways, even when everyone else in the village began to turn away from them.”

  “Your father is Viviel then,” Ulrig said. “I have heard of his teachings. Jekka has shared them with me over the years. She recorded some of the Wildermen stories for Viviel, traded them for his knowledge of herbs and healing.”

  Paiva excitedly spilled the entire story to him then, starting at the very beginning with Mummers-eve and the mask she had bought off of Jekka for her disguise that she had failed to use. Ulrig listened intently, his speckled eyes wide and unblinking. She ended by telling him of what Crowbill had seen of the Folka chasing her father off into the woods in the dark of the night.

  When she was done Ulrig was silent for long moments, digesting it all.

  “So you say your father is an Incarnate, and you intend to find him in the Vale of the Old Spirits?” he asked at long last.

  “I do,” she said with conviction. “But I do not know where it is.”

  Ulrig regarded her another long moment, studying her with a furrowed brow. She did not know if he believed a word she said. But then he rose on his spindly legs and went to a far corner of his cave and rummaged through the contents of his crooked shelves. He withdrew a roll of leather and brought it back where he spread it across the table.

  In the tanned leather was a map burned into it. There was the river separating the great divides of Grimenna, the Lowlands from the Wilderlands. There was a rough marking for where the Keep, villages and towns lay scattered below the river. Above it there were more detailed markings. There were the Stones, starting at the Rock of Regret and spreading out in their navigational network to the farthest reaches of the mountains. There were trails and routes, the different Wildermen camps and territories.

  What Paiva found most interesting were markings of vanished villages and towns, for once before the Wildermen, the forest had been tamed by common people. The map expanded all the way up to the north of a mountain range called the Highpeaks. Ulrig stabbed a finger at it.

  “This map is all I know of Grimenna, all the places I have been and seen and mapped. I can promise you no Warden, not even the Lord himself, has a map so detailed. These here mountains — the Highpeaks — no one has ever crossed. Not since the First People of Grimenna. Not since the Folka were risen.

  “Beyond the Highpeaks is a valley I have only ever heard tell of. It is in the Old Stories, a valley filled with babbling streams that run down into the great river. Beyond this valley is the Winterlands of Grimenna, that is where the mountains begin to rise so high above the earth they become covered in snow and barren of trees.” He tapped his finger thoughtfully on the map.

  “It is in the valley beyond the Highpeaks wherein the Old Stories tell tale of a place called Morinvere. Some say it was a castle, some say it was a shrine built around the heart of the Forest from which all life flowed — a pool that runs deep into the earth, filled with magical waters. They say there were pilgrimages to it, by the penitent and the worshippers of the Forest who cast their prayers into these waters. No one knows for sure, for it crumbled into ruin and was swallowed by the Forest as all the Old Stories have been swallowed and forgotten.

  “It is said there was a sorcerer who guarded it who conjured the first Folka. He used the powers of these waters for his own self-gain, and then he was punished and turned into a cursed creature himself. Morinvere fell, its secrets forgotten, men driven out.” He shook his head sadly. “It is said that this creature is Varloga himself. The cursed white magician, possessed by the Dark Humor of Fear. His mistress is the Strix, the very one who punished him for being so wicked.”

  He slid his hand away from the map as Paiva stared at it and sat heavily back in his seat. He began to pull at a burr stuck in his beard as his eyes filled with troubled thoughts.

  “There are only a few places in the woods the Wildermen do not dare pass,” Ulrig muttered. “We have respect for the ghosts who dwell in the old vanished villages, and we respect the Highpeaks, for it is there the Folka are thick and dangerous. The valley beyond those mountains is filled with nightmares. No man who wanders into it ever returns.”

  “That is where my father is going, for that is where all the Good Spirits have been banished.”

  “Banished,” Ulrig exacted the words.

  “Driven there by Folka, by creatures gone astray.”

  Ulrig nodded solemnly. “But how will you overcome the Folka?”

  “The Folka will not kill me, I would already be dead if the Strix or Varloga wished it. They want to use me and ruin me, not
kill me. From my broken thoughts they will reap more nightmares. As long as I hate her I am safe.”

  Ulrig blinked at her and a slow smile spread across his face. “Yes, they may let you enter the Vale. But how will you return? Varloga guards the Vale with his Folka creatures,” he said.

  “But I’d summon the others back somehow. Surely, they could rally against him,” she said.

  He sighed. “The Old Spirits are weak, they are trapped. What if you can’t coax them back?”

  “I will.”

  “You will have to cut off Varloga’s head,” Ulrig said. “You would need the help of a powerful Virtue. You would need the very son of Courage.”

  “Grand,” she sighed. “And you wouldn’t happen to know where he is?”

  Ulrig smiled.

  “Indeed. He is the very one who brought you here.”

  She blinked in astonishment.

  Ulrig nodded his head eagerly and snatched up their mugs to fill with more Cures All. “I feel it in my bones, from the bottom of the good earth up to the top of my skull. This isn’t coincidence. This is fateful synchronicity. This is the power of prayers that has coincided you two together, however unlikely it may be. At last, at last, Courage has found his Hope in the dark of the woods.” His eyes glazed over as he spoke and a toothy smile spread across his face. “The Old Ones must have brought you together, they must have designed this. They are trapped there, of course, in the heart of the Forest. It must be so; it must be meant that you two were to find each other, so to set the Old Ones free.”

  “Ulrig.” She drew him back sharply from his rambles. “Renn … is a Virtue?”

  “Indeed, indeed. Long before I became a Wilderman I was a Knight and I had the Lord’s favor. I hunted with him and I was the champion of many of his tournaments. But I fell from grace, on account of a woman.” Ulrig handed her a drink and took a deep swig of his, as if steeling himself for a painful truth. “The Lord enjoyed his hunts in the lowlands. I was with him one day in the woods when we startled a most peculiar-looking stag. Its fur was black as coal, its eyes shining a strange silver like an alchemist’s mercury. Its antlers had so many points we could hardly have counted them all. We took chase and set the hounds on it, firing arrows and lances after the poor creature, not knowing we were trying to kill an Old Legend. We chased it hard until it suddenly disappeared, bounding away over a great rock we could not pass with the horses. The dogs chased after it and came across a woman.