Fair Semblances: An Allegorical Fantasy (Chapter 26)

It was already dusk; and silently, in double file, the company began its journey westward along the bottom of the deep ravine, inching ever closer to the dark halls of Dolos. The canyon floor was rougher than it had appeared from above, and the night was inky and starless, so the progress was a little slower and more laborious than the companions had hoped. Still, they managed to walk quite a few miles without any major mishaps, and not much later than midnight they were already nearing the point at which Gilead had thought to find a way out.

Mishael’s heart had been growing much lighter as they made their way to the juncture of the two mountain passes. The night was calm and peaceful, and the light exertion of the brisk walking had a relaxing effect on his overwrought mind. But all of a sudden, an anxious feeling of impending trouble came upon him, and he turned back to whisper something to Lebbaeus, the Keeper of the Light, who was walking just behind him, next to Tahath, at the rear of the company.

When he turned around, it was just in time to see Tahath arching his back in a grotesque, rapid motion, then stumbling to his knees, with his arms flailing about wildly. He was just a few feet away, but the darkness was so deep that he could only make out the faintest hint of a shadow; and yet, that flailing silhouette informed him immediately that something had gone terribly wrong.

“Cover!”, Mishael cried out, and in an instant, the company had turned and dropped to their knees, with their shields out before them in a defensive position. They were none too soon; for immediately the rearmost shields of Lebbaeus and Ethan (who upon turning had seen Tahath fallen to the ground and had leapt behind at once to shield his cousin together with himself), gave off the familiar, hollow-sounding thumps occasioned by the impact of unfriendly arrow-fire.

Not a moment later, a far more substantial-sounding impact marked the onslaught of panting, sharp-fanged creatures, long, lank, and smelling of blood and putrefaction, which could only be the wolves they had left behind the night before.

“It’s the wolf-men!” Ethan shouted out in a voice terrible with rage and disbelief. “How could they have followed us? There’s no way down into this canyon!”

“Unless they’ve carved out tunnels in the side of the cliff, in pursuit of their yellow god,” Azariah shouted back to him, from somewhere near the front of the line.

However it was, the fact was indisputable that the wolves and their wolfish masters had indeed managed to find the little company again, and were by no means inclined to let them escape so easily. For some seconds, the battle was fierce: Ethan had cast away his shield at the arrival of the wolves, and was wielding his great sword with both hands, and with all the terrible force and deadly precision that had made him legendary. Lebbaeus, right next to him, was showing a surprising store of strength for so old a man, and proving beyond doubt that the cudgel-like staff he kept always at his side was not just an aid for walking. So redoubtable a first barrier were the two of them making that Mishael, although in the second line of defense, saw very little action, only getting the opportunity to thrust his short, broad sword (actually little more than a dagger) into an exposed flank here and there, as the wolves were engaged in their contest with Ethan and Lebbaeus.

After a few moments, however, the wolves that were still alive thought better of their injudicious plan to stuff their maws with some easy prey. Their surprise attack had obviously been unsuccessful and their foes were proving a little more than they had bargained for. And so, yelping in protest, they pulled back out of reach of Ethan’s death-dealing brand, and began skulking around the perimeter of the company, looking for any sign of weakness. In the meantime, a few arrows flew into the midst of the companions here and there, but none of them found a mark.

For some minutes, the wolf-men and the seekers stood each other off in this tense stalemate. The sharp eyes and deadly arrows of Tahath would doubtless have put a swift end to the bestial antagonists, but the lethal marksman was in no condition to draw a bow. He was not dead, to be sure, but his wound appeared to be grievous, and he was passing in and out of consciousness, and moaning and crying out inarticulately from time to time.

The standoff could have lasted all night; but instead, the skirmish soon took a surprising turn: behind the company, on the side opposite that from which they were being attacked, a faint light began to glow; and soon, a volley of arrows was flying out from the source of the light. At first, Mishael thought they had been surrounded by their foes; but to his surprise, the arrows all flew well above their heads, and soon began producing yelps and squeals among the wolves and wolf-men in front of them. The new party, whoever (or whatever) they were, was fighting for them, and against their bestial attackers.

Within a few minutes, the wolves were all either dead or in retreat. A nervous silence reigned for a little while longer, and then, finally, Lebbaeus broke the hush, crying out in an assertive tone, “Our deepest thanks for your timely help, whoever you might be! Are you friendly to us, or simply the enemies of our common foes? If you reveal yourselves, you may be assured that we will offer you no harm; we only wish to thank our deliverers in person.”

A few seconds, later, in a very heavy accent, but still in the Common Tongue, a woman’s voice cried out in response, “We are friendly to all enemies of Dolos!”.

“Then you may show yourselves without fear,” Lebbaeus responded.

The faint light grew nearer and nearer the company; and soon, a small band of tall, slender, fair skinned persons attired in flowing white robes, one of them, who happened to be the only woman of the group, holding a torch, stepped into the midst of the company of seekers. One of the men said something to the woman in the rich, mellifluous tones of a language that seemed as ancient and somber as the Keeper of the Light himself; and hesitantly, she began to translate into the Common Tongue, saying with the same thick accent,

“How do you come to be here?”

She was about to go on, but to everyone’s surprise, old Elkanah, in a calm and unsurprised voice, said something to the woman in the same rich tones that had characterized the speech of the mysterious stranger. Something like shock registered momentarily in the woman’s eyes, but immediately she regained her graceful composure, and responded to Elkanah in her own language. She was a stately, dignified, and very attractive woman, who seemed to be in her twenties or thirties, but it was hard to tell for sure, as she had a sort of timeless beauty that refused to be contained by any specific age limits. The sound of the soft speech of her own native tongue fitted her very naturally, and seemed to possess that same sort of ageless beauty which characterized her own person.

For a few moments, Elkanah conversed with her, then turning to the rest of the group said, “They speak in the Ancient Tongue”.

“But that’s impossible!”, Ethan blurted out. “No one has spoken the Ancient Tongue since the beginning of the Modern Age; and Elkanah is one of the last remaining persons who can still read the Ancient Characters.”

“Nevertheless, that is what they are speaking,” Elkanah replied placidly. “They say they have lived here for many generations, since the times long before Vrak had built Dolos in the shade of the mountains; and now, they hate and oppose Vrak, but they are forced to a very secretive and difficult existence, living as close to him as they do. They have talked of leaving, building a home elsewhere, but they love the ancient mountains, and so far have refused to move.”

At this point, the tallest man in the group, who appeared to be the leader, interrupted, speaking to Elkanah in the Ancient Tongue. The old seeker listened intently, then said to the rest of the company, “It will not be safe here after the sun has arisen; but they have invited us to come find some rest in their home, which they have hidden away in the dark and secret places of the mountains, which even Vrak has never glimpsed. They say we must go with them now, if we would take advantage of their offer; otherwise, they must leave us, and we will never see them again.”

“We have little choice right now,” Lebbaeus answered immediately. “Tell them we are most honored, and accept their offer willingly.”

Soon, the seekers and the ancient mountain-dwellers were walking briskly down the canyon floor, to the west. Behind them, the first signs of dawn were already beginning to appear on the horizon.

* * * * * * * *

For about an hour, they walked through a labyrinthine maze of narrow passages and tunnels carved out into the mountain walls. In several places, the paths they followed were obstructed by doors hewn out of solid stone and cunningly concealed in the cliffs and rocks, so as to be invisible to any casual observer. The doors must have been perfectly counterbalanced, for they all opened smoothly and silently before the tall mountain-dwellers, who seemed to operate them by means of some system of hidden levers or pressure points tucked away in the clefts of the rock.

Eventually, they entered a tunnel cut through the solid rock and concealed by one of these hidden doors. After walking a couple hundred feet down the tunnel, they noticed that the path was growing lighter; and soon, they stepped out into a narrow green valley, several hundred yards long and only a few dozen yards wide, which was obviously cultivated artificially. The leader of the mountain-dwellers said something to Elkanah, who turned to the company and said, “We have arrived; this is their home.”

Mishael took a few minutes to glance around, and was utterly taken aback at what he saw. Although the sun had arisen, and he could “see” it low in the sky, he suddenly realized that this was impossible for two reasons: first, it was just after daybreak, but the sun was not in the east, but rather almost due north; and second, as he looked overhead, he saw that the valley was not open to the sky at all. They actually appeared to be in a deep canyon, bordered on either side by walls that arched overhead until they met in the middle, and in fact overlapped, so that the valley was completely shielded from the heavens above. Hence, it was impossible that he should see the sun, being in what was more of a cave than an actual valley.

For some seconds he scrutinized the canyon wall, where he thought he was seeing the sun; and he realized that there, in a gradual arc, was a ribbon of gleaming white metal inlaid into the rock, which seemed to be burnished silver. Finally, he realized what he was seeing: although the rock walls overlapped above them, so as to render the valley invisible from the air, the one wall was taller than the other by a height of some feet, and left a horizontal gap, through which one would be able to see through to the inner wall of the canyon, if he were up above; and in fact, the sun, on its journey through the sky, peered through this little gap, and lighted up the wall high above the little valley. Apparently, Mishael thought to himself, the mountain-dwellers had traced the course that the sun made on the wall high above them, and had inlaid that course with a highly reflective silver, so as to light up the valley as if it were resting full in the view of the sun; but actually, it was utterly invisible from above.

The travelers remained with their newfound friends and timely deliverers for a few days. Through the interpretation of Elkanah, or occasionally the tall, slender woman who alone of the whole tribe was able to speak in the Common Tongue, they learned a little of the history of this unique settlement.

Apparently, the tribe was descended from Peliel, the grandson of Esperus, and they still called themselves the Pelites. They had grown into a small tribe very early in the Ancient Age, and were seekers from the beginning, but were so opposed and resisted everywhere that they were constantly having to move and being driven about, until they finally found a secluded home in the Draconian Mountains. There, they had become more and more isolated, until they were utterly forgotten. At the tumultuous end of the Ancient Age, all knowledge of them had vanished away, and so one age passed into another with no effect on them at all. However, Vrak had been building his fortified city in the shelter of their mountains, and soon he had filled the whole range with unspeakable terrors, and all of the Pelites he discovered he killed at once, or else sent to work in his slave camps, where they labored to build his cruel weapons and monstrous machines, with which he hoped to gain an uncontested sway over the whole world and finally to overthrow Lebben-Or itself. Most of the Pelites were eventually destroyed, but one family found this hidden canyon, and built a secret city there. They mined its walls for silver, built a reflective strip in the path of the sun to give themselves light, and then slowly and laboriously, one cart at a time, they hauled up the rich topsoil of the valleys below until they had covered their canyon with black dirt, after many generations of labor. They cut their homes into the solid rock walls of the cliffs surrounding them, in order to free up as much space as possible for their gardens; and to water the little valley, they cut a canal through the cliffs, and brought down the fresh water of a sparkling alpine lake, from a secret hole cut into its rocky floor, many feet below the crystal surface of its waters. They had caught and domesticated some mountain goats, which they used for meat, milk, cheese, and clothing (the white robes they all wore had been woven from the fine hair of the goats); and so they eked out a simple, pleasant existence in their tucked-away corner of the world. They only left their home after dark, to hunt wild game, and they always made sure to be back before dawn. In this way, they had kept their very existence hidden even from Vrak, whose minions combed these parts faithfully, day in and day out.

The lady who spoke in the Common Tongue was the eldest daughter of the chief of the tribe. Her name was Mariah, and some years ago she had been wounded by the wolf-men (whom the Pelites call the Skoli), and left half-dead on the eastern side of the mountains; but a seeker, who lived in the western edge of the plains of Lebben-Or found her, brought her in to his home, and nursed her back to health. She had learned a little of the Common Tongue from this man’s family; but after she had fully regained her health, she had come back to her own people. Her father, the chief, was a dignified old man named Buzi, and her brother, the tall leader of the small company who had found our little group of seekers, was named Buki.

After dwelling with them for three or four days, during which time they had been thoroughly refreshed by the hospitality of the Pelites, Lebbaeus called together a council, to discuss their plans, in light of this unexpected change of fortune. That evening, just as the sun had made an end of its course down the silver arc in the canyon wall, the company gathered together in the middle of the valley, where a sparkling fountain, which supplied the tribe with water, was surrounded by stone benches, and constituted a natural and popular meeting place.

During this evening council, there turned out to be three different opinions among the company of seekers: one contingency, championed strongly by Mishael, was of the opinion that, since the Pelites had graciously offered to supply them with all the food they could carry, to continue with the mission was no longer impossible, and they should set out at once, covertly, to seek the place where Tobiah was imprisoned, and still attempt to free him before winter. Another group, which was strangely enough led by Ethan, who was usually the first to jump at any risky endeavor, no matter how foolhardy, thought it wiser to take only enough supplies to return to Lebben-Or, and there to devise a different plan for Tobiah’s release. Ethan was predominantly moved by his concern for Tahath, who, although he had greatly improved in health by the conjoint influences of Gilead’s vial of the healing balm of Lebben-Or and the rest and fellowship of the friendly Pelites, was still contending with a grievous injury, and could scarcely draw a bow at all. His quiver was generously re-stocked from the Pelites’ own supplies, but the wound in the top of his shoulder was unfortunately inflicted upon a muscle most needful for the use of his bow. And not only would he be left unable to defend himself, Ethan argued, but the whole company would likewise be left vulnerable without his needful marksmanship. The final group, including both Azariah and Elkanah, thought it wise to remain with the Pelites throughout the entire winter, giving Tahath enough time fully to recover before taking any trip at all. But the obvious disadvantage to this plan was that it allowed too much dead time before the question of Tobiah could be dealt with in one way or another; and with every passing month, his doom became more likely. So finally, Azariah and his agreeable father abandoned the plan themselves, and confessed their willingness to follow the decision of the group, whichever way it should turn out.

In the end, Mishael’s argument proved the strongest; the company had hoped to make it out of the mountains and into the surrounding plains of Dolos in secrecy; but even better, they were now in a position where they could arrive and be utterly unsought, due to the belief of Vrak and his wyrms that they had been killed in the avalanche. So not only would Vrak not be aware of their arrival, but he would not even be on the alert for a possible attack, thinking to have precluded that possibility entirely. Besides, they were again fully supplied by the Pelites, and had only lost their mules, which they would have had to turn loose at the foot of the mountains anyway; and those unexpected advantages helped to compensate for the grievous loss of Tahath’s shooting ability. And what did they expect, anyway? A quest without difficulty or opposition? Finally, Mishael had Ethan convinced, and it was a landslide victory after that.

During the whole council, Tahath was strangely silent and gloomy, and never voiced his opinion at all. A bitter sneer very briefly flitted across his face when the decision had been made, but it was immediately replaced by the morose, accommodating expression that he had been wearing ever since he had sustained his injury; and without a word, when the council was over, he arose and returned to his quarters, to gather together his things.

Half an hour later, with Buki and Mariah to guide them, the company left the hidden, paradisiacal valley and wound their way through the secret, sinuous paths of the Pelites to the western edge of the Draconian Mountains.

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