Chapter Seven: A Call to War
Prince Karmalaine knelt down and examined the gorge once more. Its smooth sides were an indication of a machine-like mechanical process. Across the deep darkness of the chasm there was the empty town of Wilderben and the mystery which had so far stumped both himself and his companions. Vulthian stood nearby and though it was difficult to tell whether or not the silver claw was scowling Karmalaine sensed he was. In fact, it felt like Vulthian had done little but glower since they'd left Fenn. The Lord-Captain had been caught off guard by the King’s suggestion that he accompany the party; he was not used to being ordered into the field and it showed.
Vulthian Kel-Parr’s inclusion in the group chosen to hunt down Anthony Hallow had been almost as strange as Karmalaine‘s own, but it had been a strange meeting by all accounts...
...The introduction of the giants had proceeded swiftly. They were not a race given to overly enthusiastic social nicety and etiquette. In fact, when Karmalaine’s father had started the introductions the lead giant had interrupted and said, “I am Balg-Miur. Let us begin.” That did not go down well. The King had bristled with anger for the rest of the council but had managed to keep his cool.
The reactions from the four representatives of the other centres of power, upon hearing about the waking of the dreamer, had been guarded. They were all aware of both Ayalla's prophecy as well as the last words of the first Fenn. There had been questions, and also a notable number of criticisms. They wanted to know how a dreamer was able to escape so easily from the Mercurial Chambers. The brothers from Bloodren enquired as to whether the tallow bears responsible had been flayed and eaten in punishment, they were surprised to find out they had not.
Though they were a source of concern and general disgust to the rest of the council, the presence of the demons had been vital. During the Arma uprising Bloodren had allied itself with Arma Geddon. They were a part of his inner circle and might have been able to shed some light on his final days, and more importantly the final days of Ayalla.
The demons whispered and conferred many times during the council. As to any information on Ayalla, they said that she was a nightmare, a witch-queen of rare beauty and rarer malice. Evessa Tremaine had objected hotly to some of the assertions made about witches. The demons suggested that Ayalla had bewitched Arma and that his entire uprising was based upon an agenda of hers. They said that when she came forth from the Dream Sea she came with a dark coven which she called her Rattakurl, who were hooded and masked and never left her side.
Gulgazish even went so far as to suggest that Ayalla did not take her own life as was suggested, but that the Rattakurl had held her down, sliced her open and painted her blood upon the walls. But neither of the demons had been there, and thus was the information treated as hearsay. Beyond this the demons had little to offer in terms of concrete information about the prophecy, so the discussion had moved on.
They had debated and argued for many hours about the prophecy before moving on to more practical concerns, such as how the dreamer was woken and how they would return him to sleep.
At this point King Corul had asked Evessa Tremaine to recount her findings from her visit to the Brazen Gate. When she'd arrived at the gatehouse, buried within the rock of the first pillar she told them that the gate was closed but that the lock was mangled. She also recounted that the salamanders which guarded the gate were still there, but had been frozen in Chalcidian crystal. After some hours of dream-weaving, Evessa had thawed the salamanders out and heard from that what had occurred.
The lead salamander, Firir Curr, said that a jackal had come down to see them bearing an official document from the King. The scroll bore the seal of the screaming raven and so it was thought to be genuine. When Firir broke the seal an icy mist poured forth from it which enveloped them all and frozen them to the bone.
When Veramax the Green remarked that salamanders were barely a step above insects and that they should not have been guarding something as valuable and dangerous as the Brazen Gate, Vulthian told him that Firir and his team had already been removed and replaced by silver claws. The angel Kalwyn had then said that this jackal had evidently made his way through the gate and woken the dreamer from the other side.
A heated debate then started about whom to send through to deal with the jackal. The general consensus was to send a small group of silver claws to slay the jackal on the other side and then bring the body back through the gate. It was known that the first Fenn had decreed the gate to be possibly the most dangerous of all the machines built during the elder days. Many times he'd reminded his people of the grave misfortune that might affect both the mortal realm and the dream lands if the mortals were to become aware of their existence. For that reason the general will was for a small elite force.
However, Evessa Tremaine spoke again saying that the opening of the scroll was not the full telling of the tale by Firir Curr. Whether by design or fault, the salamanders had been frozen but still awake. Firir was near the gate when his freezing occurred, his eyes had been open and he'd seen the jackal walk through the gate. Evessa told the Council that he had not been alone; accompanying the jackal was a ten-ton-troll.
Firir had told her that he believed it to be Ilich, whom he recognised from an illustrated tome which he'd read detailing the Battle of Morror during the war against Saal. That changed everything; a small elite force was out of the question. The hardiness and fighting capability of the ten-ton-trolls were legendary, that of Ilich even more so. He had stood on Highcorn Hill and single-handedly fended off three hundred spider spears. This was a tough call to make as they now needed stealth but also overwhelming force.
In the end it was the King who made the final decision. They would send one hundred silver claws and a dozen fire drakes. When Karmalaine had questioned why not send a dragon or a giant he was surprised to find out that the Brazen Gate was not big enough. It would fit the fire drakes through at a push, but nothing larger. King Corul added that Mortiune and half a dozen sentinels would go through the gate with a three-fold objective: help the fire drakes and silver claws subdue Ilich, counter any interference from the talented jackal and monitor for mortals, dream-weaving away their memories if need be.
With that settled they moved on to what to do about the dreamer on this side of the gate. The King decided that each of the four would pick a champion to pursue Anthony Hallow. The demons had poured scorn on this idea, asking why the great King did not just send out his hundreds of sky-ships to find the dreamer and bring him back. With incredible patience the King had explained that they would have likely ditched the sorrow hawk and continued on foot, in which case a sky-ship could fly over them a hundred times and not see them.
This was a search that would need to be carried out on the ground. When quizzed on the possibility that he was wrong and that they were this minute flying through the air on the sorrow hawk to Eredyss the King said that he had planned for that contingency. Captain Asgoth would take one hundred ships of the Ravenclaw fleet, they would scour the skies from Fenn to Eredyss and if they found the bird they would shoot it out of the sky. Even if they did not find the bird the fleet would continue on to Eredyss, find the lair of the jackals and launch a full-scale aerial assault on it, bringing down the mountain and burying the jackals.
It was then that Vulthian had suggested it was his duty to lead such an attack, and at that point the King told Vulthian he would represent the silver claw in the hunting party which would pursue the dreamer on the ground...
...“I fail to see what close examination of a hole in the ground will achieve us. The village is deserted and the dreamer is not here”, said the Lord-Captain from behind Karmalaine.
“Are we not duty-bound to investigate what has happened here?” asked Karmalaine, turning to the silver claw.
“We are duty-bound to locate Anthony Hallow and return him forcibly to the Mercurial Chambers. He is not here, thus we should move on.”
“There were thousands
of dreams living here, they are all dead. I would say that regardless of our primary objective we have an unspoken moral mission to get to the bottom of this.”
“My mission was given to me by the King. That is my only concern”, said the silver claw, folding his arms across his heavy grey chest plate and giving every indication that he truly meant to give no help whatsoever.
They'd come across the town some hours ago. Though they had no idea of the route the jackal and the dreamer might have taken the party had decided that their most prudent course of action was to head in the direction of Eredyss until they picked up the trail. They'd flown from Fenn to the Mercurial Chambers to start since it was deemed unlikely that the jackal would have come any further east than was necessary.
Once they reached the chambers they made to continue on foot, waiting only for the giant Balg-Miur to catch up with them. From the chambers they moved on foot, those who did not have wings. Balg-Miur had come for the giants and Vulthian had been sent to represent the silver claws. The dragon Cyra the Silver was with them, the demon Golgoleth the Bloodfiend and Kalwyn of the House of Tangeth-Marr from the angelic legion completed their party.
The search had consisted of Cyra, Golgoleth and Kalwyn ranging ahead over the canopy performing large sweeps in every direction whilst the giant, the silver claw and the Prince made their way on foot down the middle of the range. It was slow going but necessary, Karmalaine had been confident that their pace would pick up once they found the trail, until they'd come across Wilderben and been forced to stop and examine the scene.
Not for the first time, Karmalaine pondered what had prompted him to offer to go along. When his father had asked him why, he said that it was to represent the crown. The King told him that Vulthian would represent the crown, but Karmalaine specified that he would represent the family, the name of Geddon on this mission on which so much might rest. Almost to his surprise his father had agreed, warning him aplenty of the dangers in the wild and that he must be vigilant for enemies that may present themselves from unexpected corners.
There were hundreds of towns and villages in the forests of Avalen. It was by chance that Wilderben was on the route they were taking, a chance that led to a grim discovery. When Karmalaine had first asked Balg-Miur to lift him across the gorge around the town the giant had glared down with undisguised disgust, muttering something about small-folk and that he was not some sort of crane. Thankfully, Kalwyn had happily agreed to fly him across the gap.
Wilderben was a scene of grisly discovery. Every home which Karmalaine had explored revealed the same thing, dead and rotting dreams, killed in their beds, killed at their dining tables. The streets were empty though thousands of tracks could be seen, mostly the same heavily armoured tread. Every street had yielded a similar picture until they got to the centre of the town, a white brick building which Karmalaine assumed held the town’s inkling well and was likely home to Wilderben’s Arbiter.
The building had been demolished, it looked as if it had been hit by a hundred projectiles. There were scorch marks everywhere and a few bodies, one of which bore a chain with a golden raven about it which marked him out as the Arbiter. Cyra, Golgoleth and Kalwyn had swept the forest all around the town but there was no sign of any hostile force.
As Karmalaine stood looking over the gorge with Vulthian glowering behind him the other members of their party gathered. In the shadows of Balg-Miur they stood.
“Any clues, any indication as to who was responsible?” asked the Prince of the angel the demon and the dragon, all of whom replied in the negative.
“The air in this place reeks of ironide, young Prince”, said Cyra. Whenever the dragon spoke, Karmalaine could hear the sound of the fires churning deep down inside him, giving his voice a crackling smouldering edge. Ironide was used in the firing of Sabre Cannons.
“Vulthian, have you still got a link to Captain Asgoth?” asked the Prince.
Vulthian raised a claw to his helm before shaking his head, “They will be many hundreds of leagues in front of us by now”, he said before adding, “if it is in your mind that the fleet bound for Eredyss was involved here then put such thoughts to rest. This massacre is many days old, long before the sky-ships reached the Mercurial Chambers.’
Karmalaine nodded before adding, “I was more of a mind that they may have seen something less than having been involved, though it is strange. Do you know of any other force in Avalen aside from the King’s fleet which uses Sabre Cannons?” he asked.
“No, My Prince. It was the case in the elder days, before the advent of the sky-ships, that there were many ground-based variations of the Sabre Cannon. But within modern memory, no. Only your father’s armies utilise them”, replied Vulthian.
“We need to move on”, rumbled Balg-Miur from above them, echoing Vulthian’s earlier sentiment. Prince Karmalaine looked up at the giant. He was clothed in huge armour plates from the knee up to his shoulder, except the armour could not cloak his huge belly which caused a giant shadow of its own. From his arms and legs also hung massive wedges of excess weight; there were times when Karmalaine thought he looked like a giant tallow bear, with a human’s head.
The giant was bald, though he had some fuzzy grey hair behind his ears. The other night when he'd been sleeping against a tree the Prince was certain he'd seen rodents scurrying around inside the hair. He chose not to mention it though, even irritated as he was by the lack of sleep; the giant’s snoring was louder than a war-horn.
“What if what has happened here has something to do with our mission?” bellowed Karmalaine up to the giant.
Again came the frown, the saggy wrinkles on the giant’s face scrunching up as he peered down at the Prince: “You do not need to shout, little Prince. Balg-Miur’s ears can hear small sounds well.”
“So what does Balg-Miur say to my question?” asked the Prince in a normal tone.
“Find the dreamer and we find the answer. No answers here, little Prince, just death.”
“He makes a good point, Prince Karmalaine”, said Kalwyn in his musical tone, “if this incident is connected to Anthony Hallow then we will learn more by finding him. If not then I think it would be best when we find the next functioning inkling, or when we come into contact with kingdom regulars, that we pass word to your father back in Fenngaard of what has occurred so that he can send a separate party to investigate.”
“I take it you are in agreement?” said Prince Karmalaine to Golgoleth, who dipped his horns in affirmation whilst gnawing on a bone. The Prince decided not to ask the demon where he'd gotten his meal from, fearing the answer and instead turned around to where Cyra the Silver sat, still as a statue, silver as the moon, fearsome as the dragon he was. “What is your take, Cyra?” he asked of the dragon.
“Though it pains me to side with a giant I must agree. We all know of the cost contained within that prophecy. Even without it, for the jackals to have in their possession a dreamer is an unacceptable upset to the balance of power. We dragons are not the only ones who feel that that the jackals got off too lightly during the Binding”, Cyra responded.
“So be it”, said the Prince, “we press on until nightfall.” As the dragon, the demon and the angel lifted into the air and began circling over the forest once more, Prince Karmalaine turned to Vulthian, “I want you to tell me if you come within range of another silver claw. My Father must hear of what happened here as swiftly as possible.”
“As you say, Prince Karmalaine”, said the silver claw before stalking off into the trees. The Prince followed with the giant lumbering along behind them. As they walked the Prince thought on the silver dragon’s words. Again, the Binding had been mentioned. Prince Karmalaine had been barely one year old when it had happened and therefore had no actual recollections of it. But he'd read up extensively and thought often of its consequences.
The last serious challenge to the line of Lor Geddon had come in the form of Saal Geddon. Lor and Arma were the twin sons of the First Fenn. At the end o
f the first millennium had come the Arma Rebellion, when Arma and his sons had risen up against the rule of the first Fenn and tried to wrest control of the Palace of Fenngaard from him. In that conflict Arma had fallen along with two of his three sons, Baniwel and Felorn. However, his third son Saal had survived the battle of Meregoth.
The first Fenn himself had received a mortal wound in the lord of all battles. There was therefore much wroth against Saal, but Lor, who had inherited the throne from his father, decreed that Saal should not be harmed but banished back to the Dream Sea.
Thus had it been so and the line of Arma Geddon was no longer considered a threat. Many centuries of relative peace went by. Power passed from Lor Geddon to Dray Geddon. Yet Dray, Karmalaine’s grandfather, was the next to fall foul of the Arma line. Dray was poisoned and the kingdom thrown into disarray. That very night Saal Geddon returned to Avalen and at his back was an army of nightmares from the Dream Sea.
Chaos erupted, angels, demons, dragons and giants all fought each other. Saal and his nightmares ravaged the land and many innocent dreams were extinguished, their light gone and forgotten. It was a dark age which lasted for many years. Due to the manner of passing the Hammer of Fenn had gone beyond the grasp of the Geddon family, so they were left to fight using conventional armies only.
However, after some years Karmalaine’s father, Corul Geddon, had gleaned the secret of the Hammer of Fenn and succeeded in pulling it forth from the ether. With the hammer his enemies did not stand a chance. Saal was destroyed at the Battle of Kaymar Bridge, the nightmares were driven back and order was restored. But Corul Geddon did not stop there. He'd seen the horror of war and the scourge it had brought to the lives of normal dreams, how through their ancient enmity the giants, dragons, angels and demons had wrought appalling destruction on the fertile and free lands of Avalen.
So came the Binding and the leaders of the land were brought forth. Be they dragon, giant, angel, demon, centaur, arachnid, troll or jackal, all were brought to the Palace of Fenngaard. There the newly crowned Fenn Corul Geddon demanded from them an oath of peace and fealty. Each swore and to each he told the consequences of breaking such an oath, that they would be erased from the history of dreams, that he would raise the Hammer of Fenn and strike at them with such ferocity and might that they would be obliterated from the history books. There would be no banishment, simply destruction.
To each of the four great powers he granted territory, Torabane to the giants, Archaven to the angels, Mirgarden to the dragons and Bloodren to the demons. Though there was a largely symbolic element to this as the races had inhabited those area for aeons now, they were granted official autonomy over their lands, and those lands only. Except now, if they passed beyond set boundaries in exercising their authority then the Hammer would find them wherever they were. This treaty was called the Binding.
The King had then turned to the matter of the talented jackals. Given the aid that they'd given to Saal Geddon most expected at least banishment, at worse the destruction which Corul had so sworn the other races would meet if they raised their hand against the crown once more.
However, the King chose a different path. At the last moment the talented jackals had turned against Saal and helped to best him at Kaymar Bridge. This Corul remembered and, given that it was a time of reconciliation, he chose to forgive the jackals their early mistakes. He awarded them some small territory far off in the dense mountainous wastes of Dyss. Thus had they founded their city, Eredyss, and thus had they now once again become a problem for the realm.
It had not yet been spoken, but Karmalaine sensed a deep anger from his father over what had happened. The arrest and detention of the talented jackals in Fenn had proved that, this time he knew that they would suffer for raising rebellion once more against the line of Lor.
The Prince was interrupted from his recollections by the sound of something large landing in the trees in front of him. He entered a clearing to find Cyra the Silver filling it where, despite having landed in a clearing, a number of trees on either side had been snapped and pushed over by the towering silver form.
“Prince Karmalaine, I have a scent about an hour to the east.”
“Jackal or dreamer?” asked Karmalaine.
“I could not say, which would indicate the dreamer. I have hunted in Avalen for many centuries, My Prince, and am familiar with the scent of most dreams. This does not resemble that of any that I have come across.”
“Lead the way!” shouted the Prince. Karmalaine was almost tempted to ask the dragon to bear him on his back, but caution stayed his hand. The dragon was likely to react with the same level of disgust as the giant had when Karmalaine requested he carry him over the gorge, possibly worse. From the books he'd read on the dragons they were proud creatures, not beasts of burden, and would treat it as an affront to even have the suggestion raised.
One thing which had come about as a result of their voyage so far was that the fire of wanderlust had been lit on the soles of Karmalaine’s feet. He had spent all of his life in Fenn, certainly there had been the occasional trip out on a sky-ship, but never anything like this. The feel of the forest was intoxicating and he was mesmerised by the complex life cycle of the dreams which made up the wild.
Out here there was a sense of freedom and possibility which Karmalaine had never felt whilst surrounded by the old stones of the nineteen pillars, locked up in high towers behind high walls. He resolved that when this crisis was over he would ask his father for permission to study in the Sentinel Forest. He envisioned a cabin overlooking a wooded valley, a place where he could find the inspiration for invention which had eluded him in the city. Surrounded by the dreams of nature he knew that he would finally be able to innovate and give life to his ambitions, to be the next great name in the Geddon family.
The Prince ran through the forest following the shadow of the dragon, which surged on ahead. Over fallen trees, beneath the gaze of an ancient oak, through sunlit glades and across gatherings of ferns Karmalaine ran until he came to another area where the dragon had landed. This time there hadn't been a sufficient clearing for the dragon to land, so he had simply crushed a large section of forest beneath him. Karmalaine wondered who was cutting the greater swathe through the trees, Cyra or Balg-Miur. The giant had also felled many of the trees as he bulldozed through the forest.
Cyra motioned to some trees which he'd managed not to crush beneath him when he landed and Karmalaine approached. There was an old fireplace, not used for many days, and two sets of tracks. One set was undoubtedly jackal and went back in the direction of Wilderben, the other went north.
Prince Karmalaine did not have the tracking ability of a dragon, but even without the scent he felt a strange feeling, a tingle down his spine, as he knelt in the clearing where the dreamer had evidently been.
“Can you track him from here?” Karmalaine asked Cyra, as Vulthian and Balg-Miur arrived.
“Most certainly, the trail is old but unique. The scent is so strange that I could pick it out from beneath a thousand others.”
“We have a trail. It is old but traceable”, the Prince explained to the others.
“Then let us assail this dreamer that I might return to the heat of Bloodren. The failure of your magister has left a cold blot on this land”, growled Golgoleth. Even as he said it Karmalaine felt the falling of a fresh rain, it had been on and off for the entirety of their search. The Prince noticed it was getting cold as well, and would likely snow soon. He had read about snow in books but never seen it himself. He was fascinated by it, as well as slightly daunted about what such a phenomenon might do to their search.
The demon flew off again. Prince Karmalaine had noticed that the fiery red glow which it had brought with it to the Hall of Providence had faded slightly; he wondered if the weather was having a tangible effect on the durability of a creature quite literally born in the fires of Bloodren.
They continued on through the forest. Cyra led the way, Golgoleth and Kalwyn cont
inued to circle and Vulthian, the Prince and Balg-Miur squelched their way through the muddy forest floor in search of their prey.