Chapter 117: The Rock
The blue, grey and gree pattern of the Wave, soft grass and exposed Deranian rock was abruptly interrupted by a mountain formed by rock that did not exist anywhere else in Deran. From its skirts there ran cracks on the earth, which opened up in chasms, gargantuans similar to the ones that, in the South, sheltered Fulion’s hundred riders.
Much lower than the elegant, blue Wave, the Rock was dark, solid, sturdy. If the Wave were indeed a wave and broke over Franária, sweeping away cities, forests, beasts and men, the Rock would remain where it was. At least that was what Vivianne thought, even after she found out that the mountain was hollow.
‘There is the castle,’ she pointed to a structure that, at first sight, looked like a natural formation in the southern face of the mountain. At second sight, you could see towers and walls, the fortress opening up like a butterfly leaving its cocoon. ‘The city begins much lower in the mountain, closer to the base. Part of it is below ground level. It has three gates: the castle, which is the main gate, but thereis also a smaller gate on the north fave of the mountain, and em even smaller passage on the west.’
They tried the gate closest to them, on the northern face. It was exactly where Vivianne’s calculations took them. A solid block built from the same rock as the mountain itself, sculpted in bas relief with the representation of a tree.
‘According to my maps, this tree used to be painted gold,’ Vivianne said. ‘I wonder if there really existed such a golden tree in Sátiron.’
‘It exists,’ said Lucille. ‘It’s not golden like metal, but like autumn. The leaves never fall and the sun, at na angle, paints it in shiny gold. It is beautiful in the summer, when everything is green and Buck, in contrast, is autumn. My favourite time to see it is in winter, because Buck is in the north of Sátiron, where it is cold enough to snow. The golden leaves are much brigher when everything around it is grey, blue and white.
‘Buck,’ said Vivianne. That wasn’t a grand name for such a fantastic tree.
‘He was a wolf before he became a tree.’
‘Is Buck a common name for wolves?’
‘I think so, I’m not sure. It was Yukari who named them and she seemes pretty certain. The yellow wolf, she called Buck. The shadow wolf she named Jack, and the grey wolf, master of minds, she named London.
Vivianne couldn’t see the grandeur in those three names.
‘Shall we go in?’ asked Lucille.
‘I don’t know how to open the gate. I hoped to find a clue around here somwhere.’
There was no clue, lever or hinge. You couldn’t just cross it like the pannel in Chambert.
‘Shall we knock?’ asked Lucille. She didn’t wait for an answear and knocked three times, making a low, dry sound.
No one would have heard it, even if there were anybody inside. Vivianne began to walk back to the horses, but Lucille stood where she was.
‘Lucille, what are you waiting for? The city is empty.’
‘Then why did they lock it up?’
Vivianneés reply died with fear and she stood there, open mouthed. There was a clap, like lightning, and the gate moved up, as slow as an old tired tortoise. From the depths of the mountain came a cold and sorrowful whisper, like a lst sigh.
The horses perked their ears. Vivianne’s horse galopped away. Vivianne herself had to control herself not to follow him. Easy, my feet, she told herself as she forced her feet to go near Lucille, we are going this way. Lucille does not seem concerned, why should I be scared?
Together, Vivianne and Lucille went into the abandoned city’s cold breath.
The houses inside the mountain were graceful, with soft lines against the sharp rock of the mountain rock. Lucille had been here long ago, before the elves were extinct. At the time, the buildings reminded of waterfalls turned to stone; polished lakes of soap stone. Nothing was painted, the colours came from the numerous lanterns of paper and glass, millhions of lanterns, spread on the walls on the roofs, siding the streets, covering the city ceiling. Mirrors captured light, not only from the lanterns, but also from outside the mountain. Tapestries and lace softened the harshness of the rock and, though it was a city under the earth, it was beautiful and colorful. In the past, that is, when the elves lived here and made the city comfortable, even cozy. It was called something else then, something elvish and sonorous, easy to pronounce, but Lucille couldn’t remember the name, only that it meant at the same time reflection and colour. It was beautiful before this veil of pain, this mute scream of agony.
Daylight stopped at the entrance. Inside, there hovered a scream of a thousand voices suddenly silenced. Lucille’s eyes got used to the darkness and she noticed some sort of blue polen that let out na eerie, chimeric light. The abandoned houses looked like curses in the dead blue; windows looked like eye sockets. The living light of day did not venture in there. Inside the Rock, four hundred years ago, the last elves perished. The final stop to the genocide was here.
The blue polen of lost time covered the streets, the houses, the air with thin curtains of dust. Lucille moved on and kicked a little pebble by accident. The roling sound echoed from the smooth walls, climbed up the rough rock and got lost in the distant dark. The dusty air leaked behind Lucille as she moved on.
She had expected emptiness, but although all life had been swept form the city, it contained something else, this blue despair that tasted like waiting. Rock, air and chimeric light waited for something to happen, they were sure that something had to happen. Unending little spots of raw expectation. There seemed to be an entity there, invisivle, maybe alive, undeniable as fear.
However, Lucille had spent too much time in the company of Nuille to believe herself in danger. As usual, seeing herself without him in a place of magic or darkness, she wished for his presence. On the other hand, she knew that, whatever the possibilities hanging on that still blue air, not one of them was interested in her or in Vivianne. There was na entity inside the Rock, waiting for something, someone, both. Lucille didn’t know what it was, but she knew it wasn’t waiting for her.
Vivianne thought otherwise. Her fear was almost palpable and ir reminded Lucille of her own self when she began travelling with Nuille. The way everything seemed weird and scary doring those first steps. Nuille always waited when Lucille froze with fear. He waited as long as it took her to overcome her terror. She would have prefered him to put a green hand on her shoulder, like she did now with Vivianne, and assured her that everything was all right.
Of course, had Nuille done that, Lucille would never have learned to deal with the eerie alone. But Vivianne didn’t have to learn how to face mysteries and horrors alone. She wasn’t traveling with a mystery.
‘Without you, I can’t go on,’ said Lucille. ‘Remember, I don’t have permission to push the forth a story that isn’t mine. I can only advance at your side.’
‘How can you be so calm?’
‘I know we’re not in danger.’
‘There is something here, waiting.’
‘Not for us.’
Vivianne pressedn her lips together so they would stop trembling. She forced her right foot to move on a step, then the left. Her eyes darted in every direction, and she moved gingerly on, grateful for Lucille’s hand on her shoulder. She focused on the map inside her head and planned a path. Luckily, a city sculpted in rock doesn’t allow for many changes and the Rock was practically the same as the original project. Some areas were not on the original plans, paths that led to deeper layers, carved when the city grew.
The current dungeons (former granaries) were to the south, connected with the castle. What wasn’t clear in the worn out maps was whether they had a connection with the city. Vivianne hoped so. Weird: she was finally exploring elvish, unique architecture, but instead of exhilaration, she was trembling with fear. Couldshe get to the dungeons? If so, wouls she find Marcus? Small fears, large fears, the scream of a ghost hovering over her head in a vulture circle. War, dragons, and Vivianne in the middle: her, who had always been content in spending her life bending over maps and drawings!
Lucille pointed to a red something on the rock. Small, but vivid in contranst with the dark rock, a little scarlet star in the heart of the mountain.
‘Flowers never cease to impress me,’ said Lucille. ‘They bloom in the most improbable places.’
‘Not on paper,’ said Vivianne. ‘That flower wouldn’t bloom in a map.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Lucille.
A terrible power wiped out the elves from Rênuni. The ones who weren’t in Rênuni, were hunted down by the same ferocious wave of power. The last ones hid in the Rock, and here they perished. On the day the Land of the Banished was born, the Rock became ghosts. There were no bodies. The elves simply vanished.
Their death scream still echoed in the empty caves, their memory haunted the mountain. To sleep at night was impossible in that city because of the mute scream turning pillows into pebbles. Not even the light of day calmed the anguish of the dead. There was no peace in the dark of night, no peace in the light of day.
The living ones migrated, locked up the city. Only the castle was left, inhabited by only humans. The original dungeons were inside the mountain, but no guard dared go where death had a voice. The granaries were now too big for only the castle, whose population diminished with the War. Empty, window-less halls, where winter lasted the year. Not unusually did prisoners die in the granaries, lost in the dark between walls. They were afraid to leave the bars and get lost. RUmours were born that there were no walls on the other side, but a chasm and that many bodies lay down there. They didn’t rot because of the cold. Other prisoners (and even some gaolers) went mad with the deathly echo that crawled up the tunnel connecting the castle to the city of genocide.
King Clément had never been to the granaries-dungeons. Not when he was a child and Vivianne wanted to explore the Rock. She went alone. Nor when they grew up and Vivianne, now with notions of architecture, made a point of going there again to measure the corridors, the walls, the doors. Not even when Marcus was arrested did Clément visit the dungeons.
He did, however, save Marcus’ life.
‘Don’t kill him,’ he told his mother. ‘Marcus is like a brother to me.’
‘Brother!’ Adelaide was raw sarcasm. ‘Don’t be naïve, Clément. A Kinge cannot trust anyone, not even family.’
Clément had lost count of how many times his mother had warned him against friends, especially close ones.
‘They’re the most dangerous. Do you know why? Because everything they do affect you and the other way around. One’s life depends on the other’s, and when ambition collides with lifestile it is never the ambition that dies, Clemént. Ambition is a kind of hunger: it doesn’t die, it devours.’
During his investigations about his father, Clément heard rumours, very few and very seldom, about a young Queen Adelaide, bright and kind, who had been disfigured by the death of her husband. Clément’s father was murdered, he was sure of that, but Adelaide refused to tell him the truth. Whoever dared speak to him about it was sent to Sananssau, at the Mouth of War.
‘Mother, you were the one who betrayed Marcus, not the other way around. He must not pay for a crime you did commit.’
‘When did I betray him?’
‘You left Vivianne to die.’
There was a hint of despise in Clément’s voice. Part of him hated his moter. The queen turned her back to her son. She didn’t want him to see the pain he caused with that tinge of hatred. Was she losing her son? After everything she did to protect him, everything she gave up, wouls she lose him anyway?
‘Vivianne was dead when I left the camp,’ said the queen.
‘She was alive,’ said Clément. ‘As was Coalim. I wasn’t unconscious.’ That was a lie. He didn’t see anything but fire that day, but he knew he could only be alive because of the Wraith’s magic, and the Wraith’s magic was focused on Vivianne.
‘Marcus is dangerous. Even more now that he has nothing to lose.’
Adelaide had always feared that Marcus would try and steal Clément’s throne. What she feared, the rest of Deran wished for, but Marcus would never do anything of the sort. He was too busy defending Franária from Farheim and Inlang.
‘The best we could do was give the crown to Marcus.’
‘Stop this nonsense! He would kill you.’
‘Half of me is already dead, mother. You abandoned it out there to die. Marcus is all I have left.’
‘What about me?’
‘What about you?’ He scratched the right arm, the burnt arm. The burns itched too much when they didn’t hurt. The withered skin was repulsive. Clément sank his nails on the disgusting arm until he drew blood.
The queen grabbed his hand and began to put ointment on the burns. She was the only one who touched that skin without disgust. Even Clément wanted to be sick when he saw himself in the mirror.
‘Marcus won’t fight us,’ he said. ‘You think he has nothing to lose, but the truth is he has nothing to fight for anymore. He must live. That is an order.’
It was the first order he ever gave the queen.
Clément had the guts to fight for his friend’s life, but not for his freedom. Marcus was kept in the dungeous. Alexis and five hundred Lune’s warriors kept him company now.
When Alexis came to the Rock with his army, demanding news of Marcus, the queen gave her word that he was alive, but promised to kill him unless Alexis and his warriors surrendered. She brought the prisoner out and threatened to behead him then and there. Clément was still abed, deliruous. Away from any magic, it took him a very long time to recover his mind.
Marcus laughed at the queen’s threats, said something very similar to what Clément told the queen when he gave her his first ever order, about how Marcus was already dead and that she had already killed the best part of him.
‘Lune will never surrender to you.’
But he was mistaken. Alexis did surrender when the queen’s sword touched Marcus’ throat. The rain of five hundred shields and swords falling to the ground was deafening, even at the distance.
Ever since that day, all those warriors were locked in the dark. That would have to change. Clément, like everyone elas in the Rock, saw Farheim and Inlang cross Deran toward Patire. In the distance, they saw lints of smoke over the sky that where the city of Sananssau had been. More smoke pinpointed where there had been villages and farms.
‘They will go away,’ said Adelaide.
Clément knew that, deep down, his mother knew that na army like that had more permanent plans than the old northern raids. He asked soldiers why Farheim and Inlang had ignored the Rock.
‘Aren’t they turning their back to the enemy?’ he asked.
‘They don’t see us as a threat.’
Farheim and Inlang had one worry only: Lune. If offered no resistence: it’s soul was half dead, half buried under the mountain. Lune’s fall weighed in every Deranian heart. Sananssau resisted less than two days. The walls fell easily. The people, the animals, the city became food to the Mouth of War.
One day later and there was smoke where Beloú had been. The soldiers of Patire were all in Baynard. Beloú was children’s play to the northern raiders.
The day Vivianne and Lucille went into the mountain, two servants brought dinner to Clément’s rooms. He did not wish to dine with his mother. The servants did everything wuickly, almost furtively. Lately, Clément thought, everyone moved like scared animals, looking over their shoulders, waiting for predators. The soldiers looked gloomily to the South, waiting for the day Farheim and Inlang would return to turn the Rock into smoke.
And the only person who could do anything about it was locked under Clément’s feet..
We’re beggint to die, thought Clément.
Marcus kept his men active. He made them measure the size of the cells in the dar by counting the steps. When they mentioned the rumours of a precipice at the end of the cave, Marcus, who had already begun to count his steps, replied:
‘We will find out if it’s true. If you hear me scream, you know I fell.’
The granaries were large enough for them to run laps. Abs, push ups, even fighting practice. Impressive what you can learn in the dark. What you notice with ears and touch.
They controlled time by counting drops. There was a person responsible for keeping track of drops in each one of the five hall. Marcus shouted his orders through the bars. Were they going to die in the dar? Most probably. But, by the sword of Nakamura, they would die sane.
As long as they didn’t look into the mountain, that is.
Someone kept watch at every cell door, watching for movement from the castle, connected to the dungeons by a door framed with light. That door was the end of a corridor that began in the depths of the mountain. For four hundred years no one had entered the mountain. Marcus always thought that was because of superstition, but from the mouth of the corridor there came a reverberating silence, a backward scream.
‘It is darker in that direction,’ said Alexis.
‘Naturally. There are no torches or candles there,’ said Marcus. ‘Much weirder it would be if it were lighter.’
Another voice joined the conversation. Marcus couldn’t recognize it because it was distorted with fear.
‘What if they come to get us?’
‘What if who comes to get is?’ shouted Marcus. ‘Have you seen any ghosts? Answer me.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then what makes you whink they would ome now? To shut your lamentation, perhaps?’
Others laughed.
‘Spare the ghosts the trouble,’ said Marcus. ‘It must be a hell of a climb up here.’
More people laughed. Lately, the dripping fear had given way to a strange kind of hope. Eleven nights ago, a real King had visited them in dreams.
‘Master,’ Alexis called. His voice was urgent and, but the shape of it, Marcus knew Alexis was not looking at the door to the castle, but at the corridor to the mountain.
Marcus joined Alexis at the bars. From the bowls of the Rock there came two wraiths, white like the ghosts of two candles. The silence around him told Marcus that everyone else had noticed the ghosts. Whatever those wraiths were, they brought a promise — of a break in the light-less monotony of the dungeons, maybe even of an end.
The ghosts gained shape as they came closer to the cells. Arms, legs, a feline swagger. One of them had a voice. It said:
‘Something smells.’
The answer didn’t come from the other ghost, but from Marcus, who nearly squealed:
‘Vivianne?’
Three drops fell at the back of the cave.
‘Marcus?’
‘Are you a spirit?’
‘You’re alive!’
‘You’re dead!’
Pause.
‘I’m not dead,’ said Vivianne.
She wasn’t dead. Marcus was taken by such relief, such happiness, that his knees buclked and he had to hold on to the bars not to fall. Then, he was angry. Months of mourning, pain so deep that it nearly killed him. Wolf of Sátiron, he hadn’t even resisted when Adelaide arrested him! And all the while Vivianne was alive.
‘You could have warned me,’ he shouted. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Rescuing you, of course.’
Of course! Marcus grabbed the bars. Anger gave way to fear. Vivianne was in danger. He relied on his sister for everything. For advice, for judgement. But war and danger, that was his job. And yet, there was Vivianne, walking paths of ghosts and curses, coming back from the dead through the city of dead. And the dragon. Marcus thought of Clément, deformed and delirious. How was Vivianne? What had she suffered? How did she live?
‘We crossed the city inside the mountain,’ Vivianne said.
A murmur of admiration filled the caves.
‘Looks like everyone is alive,’ she said.
She felt like laughing. She nad hever been so far away from home for so long. To think that her world and life could so easily collapse. Now, holding Marcus’ had through the bars (he groped her arms and hear, looking for burns and wounds), Vivianne found a piece of her home. Marcus was locked in the dark. Weak, possibly ill, but alive. Then, he asked.
‘Can you set us free?’
And Vivianne’s heart sank. She had no keys. How stupid was that? To come all the way here and have no keys? A lock stood between her and her brother. Vivianne, adopted child to the Wraith, who survived dragon fire, faced a living death inside the mountain, kissed Nuille, couldn’t do anything against that lock. She hadn’t thought about it. Crossing the dead city seemed like such a big feat, but what was the use od big feats without a key?
I’ll come back, she thought. I’ll find something, a tool, and I’ll come back. The idea of walking those dusty blue paths not only once again, but twice, turned Vivianne’s blood into cold water.
She turned to Lucille. Lucille was visible. Something highlighted her, not exactly light, bum something as mysterious as Líran’s purple eyes. Lucille was paying attention to the door connecting the dungeons to the castle. She seemed to wait.
Vivianne studied the dim light framing the door. Nothing happened. Was Lucille really waiting for something? Then, CLANG, so loud in the silence, and the light grew wider, turning into a rectangle. In the middle of the light there stood a man. Light and shadow stretched on the floor.
‘I need a torch,’ said the silhouette at the door. ‘It’s too dark.’
Someone must have handed him a torch, for the light shifted and grew stronger, then advanced into the corridor and a thousand shadows began to dance.The light also showed the man’s face.
‘Clément.’
Clément dropped the torch. The flame protested vehemently at his feet.
‘Vivianne? Are you here to haunt me?’
‘I’m alive, Clément. Do you have the keys? Give them here.’
She was rough, even rude. Clément had allowed Adelaide to lock Marcus in the dark. He gave her the keys and she saw his arm, in much worse condition than Coalim’s or even Bojed and Germon. She stilled before that raw flesh.
‘At least we didn’t have to amputate,’ said Clément. ‘Though sometimes I wish they did.’
The torch scratched the air between them. Clément noticed the pity on Vivianne’s face, she noticed the tears straeming down his eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘For everything I did, but mostrly for what I didn’t do.’
She took the keys and said, not as na accusation but as someone who understands:
‘You shouldn’t be king.’
‘I know.’
Vivianne unlocked the cells. Thin men and women dripped out onto the corridor.
‘I don’t know how to take them out of the castle,’ said Clément. ‘I have the key, but the castle is guarded by soldiers faithful to my mother.’
‘There is another way,’ Vivianne’s voice reached him from behind five hundred pairs of owlish eyes.
In an instant, all those eyes were gone. They had turned in Vivianne’s direction, toward the dead city.
‘Two roes,’ said Marcus. ‘March.’
Two by two they disappeared into the rocky throat. Not one of them wanted to go in that direction, but if they didn’t follow the Master of Lune, who had survived a dragon and come back for them, they would have to follow a king who had keys but couldn’t open doors.
A terrible pain bit down Clément’s arm, so sudden and deep that he couldn’t even scream. Lucille had grabbed his arm.
‘Why aren’t you doing something?’ she asked. ‘All your fears have come true. Franária needs the Rock.’
As quickly as if had struck, the pain was gone, and the mystery girl with it. She wasn’t swallowed by the cave like Marcus’ soldiers. She remained vividly blurred, like lightning stuck to the back of the eye.
Finve hundred soldiers followed the two clames of hope down the path inside the Rock. What kind of mystery kept them alight, where everything else was darkness? A different darkness than the one commanded by War, but darkness nevertheless.
The path took the soldiers to the screaming death inside the mountain. Blue duest enveloped them, stuck to their hair and clothes. Many would have turned around, but Marcus marched resolutely on beside his sister, who had crossed all that once before. For them. Lucille had joined Vivianne and Marcus at the head of the queue. Nobody knew who she was, but they felt power surrounding her. She promised them that the death inside the mountain was not looking for them.
Lucille could say whatever she wanted, that the very wolves of Sátiron would protect them, but they couldn’t relax. Mortals tend to fear all deaths, just as those who can’t swim fear all waters. It made them feel a little better, though, that those specific waters didn’t want to drown them, and therefore wouldn’t storm on them.
Vivianne hadn’t foreseen the calm she would feel when crossing the mountain a second time. In fact, she felt like exploring those obscure depths, almost as exciting as the secrets of Chambert. She glanced at the soldiers over her shoulder. To think that five hundred warriors could be so silent.
The first time Vivianne entered the mountain behind Lucille, fear clouded her mind. Now, after long hours of nothing happening, after the meeting with Clément being the most extraordinary thing in that adventure, Lucille’s calm finally got to Vivianne. Fear retreated, other feelings flourished. She felt like crying for that death inside the mountain, trapped there, like Marcus until now. A death that shouldn’t have happened.
The darkness surrounding the Rock belonged to that death. It weeped the genocide that was caused by itself. It had been forced to swallow all the elves. Some deaths are perverse, most are unwelcome, but there rarely is a death that doesn’t want to happen. Vaster than many deaths, this one wished it had never happened. Four hundred years it had wept these dusty blue tears, lamenting ghosts that should have been lives.
Vivianne absorbed that melancholy. Behind here, fear reigned. Beside her, Lucille smiled.