Fair Semblances: An Allegorical Fantasy (Chapter 23)

The sun had already set when the company began to notice signs of other life on every side of the caravan; but it was not yet dark, only that dusky gray that seems to linger in the mountains long after sunset, which they who live on the plains know nothing about. At the time, they were riding along the edge of a grassy slope which dropped steeply beneath them, and curved ahead of them like the rim of a cup. The bowl-shaped depression that it plunged into quickly became too steep for the mules to negotiate, and above them, on their left hand, the ancient pine forest was too deep and tangled to admit any sort of facile progress. Even where the trees were growing far enough apart to allow the passage of the broad-backed mules and the cordilleras with their wide packs, the deadfall was stacked up at least four feet high, requiring a prodigious effort to scramble over, and more importantly, presenting the danger of more broken legs, which the travelers could not at all afford, if they hoped to retain any reasonable chance of success.

There was a light breeze blowing along the tops of the pines, and the gentle sway of a thousand trees with a thousand branches each gave the impression of a constant, subtle kaleidoscope of motion. So when the riders first began to suspect that some of the movement round about them was not animated by the wind, they at first doubted themselves, and chalked it up to the dusk, the breeze, and their strained nerves. But suddenly, Lebbaeus drew up to a halt, and holding his hand up in an attitude suggestive of a command to stop, he nodded with his head toward the steep hillside stretching down to their right. All the travelers looked toward where he was motioning, just in time to see a grayish streak swiftly crossing the open space at the very bottom of the bowl, just between two fingers of the pine forest. The narrow strip of level space at the top of the rim had just then widened, due to a slight depression in the forest, and so Lebbaeus motioned the riders onward, and when they had gathered about him, began to whisper his suspicions:

“It’s a little too dark to tell for certain, but I’m fairly sure that was a wolf that crossed just below us. I’ve been noticing movement in the forest above for some time; and I suspect that it’s been caused by the rest of the pack. They appear to be surrounding us and judging our strength; but I don’t anticipate a serious threat – when they realize that we’re a united company of sharp-hooved mules and well-armed men, they’ll certainly look elsewhere for easier prey. Nevertheless, I don’t think it would be wise to continue traveling with them on every side when it’s pitch black; so let’s set up camp as soon as we find an accommodating spot, perhaps just on the other side of this rim.”

The company nodded in agreement, Lebbaeus started off again, and one by one the riders all fell into single file behind him.

They were just a few yards from the far side of the rim at the time, so very soon thereafter they found themselves picking a tedious way through the dense woods that surrounded the bowl; but Lebbaeus was right, it was not very long before the forest began to give way to another grassy depression, this one not nearly so steep and wide as the valley they had just encompassed. As they stepped through the far boundary of the forest they saw a little meadow, about fifty yards wide and a hundred yards long, stretched out ahead of them, and surrounded on three sides by the forest. On the fourth side, however, to their left, the valley ended in an abrupt rocky cliff face, far too steep to allow any sort of progress. Behind this cliff there arose several high mountain peaks, all of them capped with snow and still glistening in the rapidly fading evening light. From somewhere under the cliff, a little mountain stream gurgled out, wound its way through the middle of the valley, and plunged into the forest on their right.

“This spot will work well,” Lebbaeus whispered to the riders behind him; “Let’s set up camp in the shelter of that cliff. We can build a small fire beneath one of its overhanging projections; the fire may be intimidating to the pack of wolves, and sheltered by the cliff above, it will remain invisible to any of Vrak’s servants, should they chance to fly by.”

Soon, the company was busy at work setting up camp, building a fire, raising a few crudely defensible ramparts, and settling down for the night.

* * * * * * * *

Mishael had proved very adept at working with the mules, and since the beginning of their journey he had assumed the responsibility of caring for them – leading them to water, picketing them out to graze, saddling and unsaddling them, and so on – when the rest of the company was engaged in setting up the camp. It therefore turned out that while everyone else was gathered together in the shadow of the cliff above, he was in the meadow below, watering the mules at the little meandering stream. But suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, one of the mules he was leading squealed in terror and fell down in front of him. He caught the sight of an arrow protruding from its neck, and letting go of the other two mules he was leading, he cast himself to the ground, just before two more arrows came whizzing by just where he had been standing.

He did not have much time to lie there reflecting, however, for immediately he glimpsed a hairy, stooped-over figure rushing upon him, wielding a massive black axe. Feeling for the dagger at his side, he strove to jump to his feet and engage this bestial antagonist in hand-to-hand combat, but his foot slipped on the wet grass bordering the little stream, and he fell to his hands and knees. The hairy axe-man flourished his weapon once more above his head, in preparation for bringing it down upon our unfortunate hero’s skull.

But just as suddenly, the axe-man stopped in his tracks. He slowly lowered his weapon to the ground, and clutched at his throat with both hands. There, between his clenched fists, the shaft of an arrow from Tahath’s deadly bow was gruesomely protruding.

Mishael leapt up again, and running as low to the ground as he could manage without losing his footing, he beat a hasty retreat back to the camp. He did not look behind him, but heard the sound of several arrows hissing by, and the fleshy thumps and grisly squeals and gurgles that their impacts occasioned behind him. In a few moments, he was in the circle of firelight, surrounded by the rest of the company, including the deadly bowman, with his fingers white against the curved wood of his taut weapon, and his eyes gleaming with a stunning ferocity.

For some seconds Tahath scanned the dark horizon, and then, seeing nothing else moving, he un-nocked his arrow, turned, and flashed an angry gaze on Mishael, spouting out in his fury, “I hope you’re satisfied to have caused the loss of the rest of my arrows by your inexcusable folly in separating yourself from the rest of us. I would have done better to have spent what few I had left in rescuing Tobiah, who has been one of us for many years, and has contributed much to our safety in return. But what have you given us yet but loss and trouble? In fact, were it not for you, Tobiah would be with us still today, and we would not even be on this accursed mission, which is doomed to fail if any mission ever was.”

The entire company was taken aback, and for some seconds no one spoke. But finally, Ethan stepped up to him, gently saying, “Tahath, my dear friend, this is not you speaking, it is the enemy. Don’t allow his lies to poison your heart, or else you will fail indeed. But if you do not resign yourself to failure already, maybe we will still succeed.”

Then, after pausing a few moments, he continued, “And do you think Tobiah himself would approve of your words? He chose his own actions, and he did so bravely and nobly. When you make it out to be Mishael’s fault, do you not rob him of the honor he deserves in his willing self-sacrifice? I beg of you, my friend, do not dishonor the courageous actions of our comrade, but crown them with glory by finishing what he has begun, and doing what he would do if he were still here.”

For awhile, Tahath gazed straight ahead, the fire of hate still smoldering in his eyes. But at last, the words of his cousin did what no one else’s words could have done, and turning amicably toward Mishael, he bowed wordlessly, in a gesture conveying his polite (albeit evidently superficial) apology and proffer of reconciliation, then turned abruptly to the center of the camp, and sitting down beside the fire began to count out his remaining arrows.

All that night, the company was surrounded by what they had thought at first were wolves, then decided were hairy beasts half-resembling men, and finally concluded were an admixture of both, existing together in a strange, bestial sort of symbiosis. The travelers were well-shielded by the trees and rocks with which they had surrounded themselves, so the occasional arrows that flew into the camp all proved to be harmless enough. However, the remaining mules and cordilleras, who were too tall to hide beneath the crude ramparts, were all picked off right away.

From outside the camp, where the other mules had been killed, there came a ceaseless flow of grunts and snarls. As it had become thoroughly dark by this time, they could not quite tell what was taking place in the meadow below them; but once or twice they flung a flaming branch that way (which was all the illumination they dared produce), and this provided just enough light for them to make out the forms of squat, hairy men and sharp-fanged wolves all tearing off hunks of warm flesh from the freshly killed mules, and devouring them raw.

When things had quieted down somewhat, Elkanah, the oldest of the company besides Lebbaeus, spoke up:

“When I was a child, I heard stories of a race of men that had been captured by Vrak, and sent to the iron mines in the Draconian mountains to dig out ore for his tools and weapons. As they labored in hard bondage, they found veins of silver and gold, and began to horde them up greedily, hoping someday to escape and build for themselves a new life, supported by their vast riches. But in the end, the gold itself proved a stronger master than Vrak, and they spent all their time digging out vast mines in the earth, ever in pursuit of a little bit more, until they became as bestial as the wolves and bears around them, and could no longer even be called men. I was told this story as an old wives’ tale that was obviously untrue, but was passed on for the moral instruction it gave. Apparently, some old wives are wiser than one might think.”

“Old wives’ tale or not,” Azariah answered his father grimly, “the stark fact is that we have lost all of our mules, we are surrounded by creatures whose arrows possess a very factual sting, and we dare not even use the light of our torch, for fear of calling down all the wyrms of Vrak on our heads. Tahath may not be right in all that he has said, but he is at least right in this, that our chances of success are laughable. Maybe we should admit our failure, cut our losses, and turn back at daybreak. We may still be able to walk down out of this mountain before we are overwhelmed, but we will certainly not make it to Dolos and back again.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Lebbaeus began, addressing the whole company in his stern but affectionate tone as their undisputed chief; “You may be right, and to turn back now is a very real possibility that we might consider without any loss of honor; and yet, I suspect that the night may hold some further surprises for us, which will drastically affect any choices we have to make; so for now, let’s not plan for the future, but only concentrate on keeping ourselves safe until daybreak. For the rest of the night, we will sleep in shifts, with two of us on guard at all times. Who would like to stand watch first?”

“I will,” both Mishael and Tahath replied simultaneously, then looked at each other doubtfully, while the unspoken feeling passed between them that, if each had known in time that the other would volunteer, he would have remained silent. But the choice had already been made, and so, a little reluctantly, they took their places on the outside perimeter of the camp, and began to scrutinize the blackness surrounding them.

* * * * * * * *

About half an hour passed with Mishael and Tahath keeping watch while the rest of the camp slept; and just then, Mishael remembered his mirror of discernment, which the High King had given him as a gift, and which he was still not quite certain how to use. But deciding to see if it offered any obvious solutions, he took it out from beneath his cloak, where it hung around his neck, and looked into its smooth, reflective surface.

At just that time, Tahath was walking back behind him, carrying a few sticks with which to stoke up the little fire; and Mishael saw him in the mirror, together with the fire behind him, and the burst of sparks that the wood had caused by its being thrown into the coals.

But in the mirror the sparks did not fade away, but growing brighter and larger, they finally turned into fiery bats, which at first just flitted about the fire, and then turned and swooped down on Tahath. He cast his arms about him in a fury, trying to drive them away, but the harder he fought the greater they became, until at last they overwhelmed him, and flew into his body through his open mouth and nostrils. For a few seconds, Tahath writhed about on the ground in an agony, and then began to convulse and foam at the mouth. After one or two of these convulsions, he vomited out a huge, black bat, that grew as great as the entire camp, and swooped down upon the sleeping company, trying to devour it whole. Mishael started, and jerked around to look behind him, half expecting to see this bat swallowing up the companions in truth. But all he saw was Tahath kneeling at the little fire, stirring up its coals and casting on a few more logs. Mishael turned back again to keep watch, but his heart was full of doubt and sorrow.

It was not long afterward when Mishael began to experience a feeling of terror and blackness such as he had not known since he first stepped into the Impenetrable Thicket surrounding Fair Semblances so long ago. At first, he thought that his doubts about Tahath, the cutting words he had spoken that still caused him to burn with shame and sorrow in the depths of his soul, and the nervous excitement produced by all the events of the evening, were conspiring to overwhelm him with phantasmic fears ungrounded in reality. But the feeling became too strong for him to contain, and so a little reluctantly he walked back to the center of the camp, and whispered, “Lebbaeus!”.

Immediately the Keeper of the Light sat up and whispered back, “What is it?”.

“I don’t know…something’s amiss…I feel…”

But Mishael had no chance to finish, for Lebbaeus was suddenly springing to his feet; then, lifting high the torch of light, which had been lying beside him, he uttered what sounded to Mishael like an awkward, incoherent sentence, in a language with which he was entirely unfamiliar. The sound of the sentence fell upon Mishael’s ears something like this:

“En-auto-zoe-ain-kai-hay-zoe-ain-to-fos-ton-anthropon!”

Immediately, a brilliant luminescence leapt up from the torch and flooded the whole valley with light; but not before a redder, smokier light had erupted just in front of the company, bearing an overwhelming stench of sulfur that hit them with the crippling force of a deadly tsunami.

But no sooner had the fiery belch of the wyrm entered the camp, than the light of the torch swallowed it up and rendered it harmless. And the wyrm itself, who had come a little too close, found itself fully within the brilliant circle of light.

For a few seconds it screamed and writhed about in the air (and Mishael at once thought of Tahath’s writhing in the reflection of the mirror); and then, crashing into the midst of the camp, it shuddered again, and became still. Immediately, Ethan was upon it with his sword, and wielding the terrible blade above his head with both his brawny arms, he brought it down with a terrific force, and dissevered the wyrm’s scaly head with one stroke.

Collectively, the company heaved a deep sigh of relief, shaken to the core by the experience, and the reflection of how near they had all just been to complete annihilation.

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