Chapter Nine: The Lair
“Maybe it was just a mistake?” growled Carthis.
Rostrom looked up, his black eyes shining in the half-light of the inkling chamber. For the thousandth time since the message had appeared on the piece of paper at their station they had met, the Long-Tooths, in order to discern the meaning of the words. And for the thousandth time, Cathir had suggested that the message from Kannis was just a mistake.
Following the appearance of The Grey, Rostrom had tried replying several times but there was never a response. In the end he had removed the butterfly key from the station which had remained unused since. The station was in the lower part of the Lair. Down here there were no carpets on the floor or rugs on the walls. Down here the Lair was jagged stone and a darkness reluctant to depart even under the gaze of the harshest flames. Down here the cold was so harsh that Rostrom could feel it in his bones; even through his greying fur and hardened muscle, the cold permeated to his core.
Though they all had the right to call themselves Long-Tooth, Rostrom was eldest by far. Cahir and Carthis, the twin pups, had only two centuries to their name, Orfuss had three and old Jakalen three and a half. But at almost six hundred years of age, Rostrom eclipsed them all with his longevity. Therefore, he felt no shame at feeling the cold, though he could never admit it. None of the others seemed uncomfortable. Maybe they are all like me, he thought, maybe we are all sitting here in discomfort with the cold seeping into our souls, locked in place by pride.
“It was no mistake”, said Jakalen. Jakalen had taken a nasty claw from a tallow bear during a minor skirmish in his youth, the bear had torn off the left side of his face. Even now, after many years of healing, the face was bare and the fullness of his fangs shone through. His tongue had also been slashed during the fight which gave him a permanent slow drawl. Nonetheless it was a voice that was respected, Jakalen had proved himself as a warrior many times. Indeed it was said that he eventually vanquished the bear who scarred him, finally sinking his fangs through the folds of loose distorted skin into its neck. "An action performed in haste and under duress, but no mistake, and we should make no mistake about its meaning.”
“Which is?” said Carthis. Though Cahir and Carthis were twins of the same litter there was one major physical difference, Carthis came as close to fat as it was possible for a jackal to be. His large frame bulged through his black robes. Many saw him as an embarrassment to the talented jackals, whose position in the Long-Tooths and the Lair was afforded only due to the prowess of his brother.
Carthis's chambers were a showcase of fine living, pillows, thick rugs, a large bed, golden wine jugs and silver platters from which he feasted it seemed almost hourly. The opulence was in stark contrast to the Spartan chambers of cold stone furnishings and clay goblets that most jackals lived in.
By dint of his seniority, Rostrom's own quarters had a roaring fireplace and were insulated with carpets and wall hangings but even this was sparse and utilitarian compared to the lavish furnishings of Carthis's quarters.
“That is what we met to discuss, and it is the cryptic nature of the message, which was obviously unfinished, that has led us nowhere near answers”, growled Orfuss. Orfuss was a cadava jackal, a slightly different caste to the talented jackals. His snout was much shorter and his ears noticeably smaller, in addition to the distinctive yellow eyes.
His position within the talented jackals and as a Long-Tooth was unique for, in general, most talented jackals looked down on the cadava jackals as an inferior breed. Only Orfuss stood equally amongst them, due to his service and highly skilled dream-weaving. He was arguably one of the most capable dream weavers in the Lair.
“Orfuss is correct”, said Rostrom, “whatever our brother was trying to warn us of we will not find out the specifics until we are confronted with them. We must take solace in the fact that we have received any warning at all. He is now three days late and the scouts that we sent out to greet him report back regularly saying there is no sign. What we need to decide is this: Did Kannis make it back to the Sad Father, or was whatever The Grey may refer to able to intercept him?” He put the questions to the Long-Tooths knowing that there would be no definitive answer.
Rostrom had wrestled with those questions himself for days. There was just no way of knowing and, not for the first time, he regretted the subtlety employed as they had gone about trying to bring the dreamer to Eredyss. Kannis had argued long and hard for the need for guile and stealth over force, and Rostrom had agreed. The Palace of Fenngaard was too powerful to take on directly. They were better off bringing the dreamer to the Lair, and then attacking in a few years once he had grown into the power that Rostrom knew he would become.
But Kannis had evidently run into a foe that he had not anticipated, and now he was possibly lost or dead, as was the dreamer. The Long-Tooths discussed the matter for some hours but, as predicted, they got nowhere. In the end Rostrom called for silence, and said, “Enough. They may be dead, they may be captured and they may be on their way here as we speak. The only solid conclusion we can come to is that here, in the Lair, we learn nothing.” Rostrom stood up from the solid wooden chair on which was sat. “Time slips through our fingers. I believe that, though I was a keen advocate of stealth and acting covertly, my cold old bones tell me that the time for this tactic is passing. I mean to send out the sorrow hawks with riders to ascertain our lost brother's location. Do any of my fellow elders find fault with such a solution?” He posed the question knowing that none would go against him. A boon of leadership was being able to make all the decisions, the curse of leadership was having to shoulder the responsibility.
Rostrom left the inkling chamber and started to make his way up through the Lair. When Corul Geddon had first awarded Eredyss to the talented jackals it had been seen as a slight. This was a cold barren part of the world pressed right up against the Dreamstone Wall. The Elementis Forge had difficulty reaching this far from Fenn, a fact which Rostrom suspected Corul knew when exiling them here.
But though the jackals were known as a people for nursing their resentment they had not let it stand in their way. In their thousands they arrived in the mountainous regions of Eredyss. The King had outlawed the sorrow hawks which they traditionally used to get around, stating that the realm of the sky would now be reserved for the sky-ships, though Rostrom noted that the restrictions had not been passed on to the dragons, angels or demons. Without flight they had been weary when they reached the mountains but launched straight away into construction of the Lair.
During the days of Arma and Saal the talented jackals had dwelt within whichever hall the current lord of the jackals dwelt in. Arma had his fortress at Malladoon in the southwest of Avalen whilst Saal had constructed a sprawling base beneath the surface of Lake Nemeral which was called the Hall of Sharks and Bones. Outside of these periods of turmoil the jackals had had no permanent residence. Certainly some of them lived in Fenn but they never felt at home there, not least because of the suspicion with which most of the dreams that lived there treated them.
The talented jackals simply could not settle in the city, they felt restless, in need of the true outdoors, the forests and the rivers. Following the Binding, Corul Geddon had given them a unity they never before possessed; the jackals were gathered en-masse, one mighty pack in Eredyss where they built the Lair. Some might think it ungrateful that barely a day had passed after the King’s generous terms were imposed on them before they were plotting the downfall of the raven.
But it made sense to the jackals; one concession following thousands of years of persecution did not wipe the slate clean. Arma had given life to the jackals, he had lifted them up out of the savage beauty of the wild, taught them speech, order and the ability to weave dreams. For that they owed him everything, including vengeance for the fate which his own family had brought upon him. Struck down in the field at Meregoth, with his passing the eternal hatred of the talented jackals for the Geddon family was cemented.
The jackals had chosen a mountain which they called the Arma Peak to build their home in. Their ability to dream weave meant that their home took shape with incredible speed. They used no tools but their minds and the dreams they wrought. The rocks were made living liquid and shaped into a den for a pack of thousands. The actual face of the mountain was altered until it resembled the face of a jackal. Within this huge visage they carved out halls and chambers in which to live.
The Lair went deep, below the mountain and into the old rock of Avalen; it was impregnable. During its construction and many times since the jackals had seen sky-ships from Fenn in the distance keeping the peace, spying for the Palace of Fenngaard, but the jackals paid them no heed. All the sky-ships saw was the face of the jackal in the mountain, they could come no further for outsiders were not welcome in the Lair.
As he walked up the stone steps of one of the many spiral staircases in the Lair, Rostrom passed large vaulted chambers where talented jackals practised fighting with weapons of all forms, daggers, spears, swords, maces, curved kalans and more. In others he saw jackals practising their dream-weaving, fireballs of ten different colours flying through the air and bouncing from invisible shields, lances of lightning skewering the air with hundreds of spikes of light which exploded when they hit their targets.
In one chamber he saw Kalum Sathr showing some young pups the mastery of invisible cloaking. The young jackals stared in awe as Kalum vanished from sight from one footstep to another, disappearing and reappearing as he walked. Though the tall jackal made it look like an act he performed with ease it was not. The young jackals would spend decades learning this art, and many other dream weaves, before they were adept enough to replicate Kalum’s skills. He nodded and raised a hand as he saw Rostrom on the stairwell walking up through his chamber into the next.
Up and up he went, through the chambers where they kept their herds, up and up until the artificial construct of the Lair was left behind and Rostrom found himself walking up natural mountainside. He thought sometimes about getting a staff. He imagined that he could pass it off as a symbol of authority and prestige, but he feared they would call it a walking stick, which it would be.
As he left the Lair he came out under the shadow of the Dreamstone Wall. He stopped to gaze upon it, despite having done so thousands of times. When one comes in sight of such a wonder, the fact of having seen it before becomes irrelevant in the eye of the beholder. The wall was flawless. It was the colour of desert sand and it stretched up far above the clouds. Somewhere up there the Octaris patrolled around the clock, keeping the nightmares at bay and maintaining a vigil over the Dream Sea.
The wall stretched to the horizon in both directions and Rostrom knew that if he was to walk along with his hand upon the wall he would one day return to the spot from whence he started, many years older and wearier than now. The wall ran for tens of thousands of leagues and cradled all Avalen in its arms.
The talented jackal moved on up the snow capped peak. The snow had been a new addition to the mountain, one which Rostrom felt added to its beauty. Such things had been denied them by the Elementis for many years. That would change if the jackals won the day, if all Rostrom’s plans came to fruition, but that was years away yet. The top of Arma Peak had been hollowed out into a crater by the hands of the jackals. As Rostrom reached the edge of the crater he heard the distinct cry of the birds which were housed there.
Standing on a flattened platform overlooking the crater, Rostrom gazed upon the nest of the sorrow hawks. Their cry was a single note, long and forlorn, a lovely sadness which was best heard in a chorus, for when one cried others joined in creating the song of sorrow for which they were named. Thousands of them were nested within the top of the peak, here and there were scattered nests and eggs. Rostrom was pleased with their progress in gaining the loyalty of the birds.
The sorrow hawks had originally dwelt to the north-east in Torabane. The giants brought them with them when they came to Avalen. Out in the Dream Sea the hawks had been enslaved by the giants for it was known that the giants navigated the Dream Sea by floating along in a hardened carapace in a dormant state and that they used the sorrow hawks to draw their bulk along. When not in this dormant state they used the hawks as messengers and also to go into the small places where the giants could not to hunt down their tiny prey.
However, after they settled in Avalen they became less and less reliant on the birds to do their bidding. Gradually some of the hawks were captured and trained by the talented jackals and now, many years later, they had been disciplined to the point where they would hold a rider. The hawks would be vital in Rostrom’s future plans, they were the only way the jackals could fly and would be vital in seizing the palaces of Fenn, if they ever got that far.
Rostrom whispered a few words and in the air before him appeared a flute, which he grasped in one hand and started to blow on. The notes emitted from the flute mimicked the call of the sorrow hawk. It had taken Rostrom a long time to learn their language, but now he had it mastered. As he blew several notes a number of the sorrow hawks lifted themselves up to the edge of the crater. They walked around near him, looking for instruction. Once he had fifty or so hawks with him on the ledge he made ready to take them down to the entrance of the Lair where he would call forth riders to take them into the sky in search of Kannis and the dreamer.
But as he made to walk from the platform Rostrom saw something in the distance. The clouds were low and heavy and at first he dismissed it as another of the many cloud-mirages which had been forming of late, but as he looked harder he saw a line of objects starting to appear on the grey horizon...