Clackety, clackety, clack, clack.
That primal beat rattled her spine down to the tailbone as she hurried back to the room she shared with Gram. Not again, she thought, not here. She turned the corner to find the guards of Glain still posted outside the Laveriums’ door.
“There’s danger approaching! Wake them up!” she yelled.
The men snapped to attention. “Hey!”
But she ignored them and darted into Gram’s room. “Gram! Up!”
Gram jolted up and looked at her through sleep-encrusted eyes. “What?”
“The frenzied beat. The one I heard at home. It’s approaching.”
An ironbound oak door separated her room from Morvan’s. She threw herself against it, yelling, “Up! Up!”
An instant later, Morvan swung the door open. Behind him, Landor grabbed his scabbard, and Calandoe sat up in bed.
“There’s danger. I can hear it,” she warned.
Clackety, clackety, clack, clack. Her spine contorted at the sound.
Morvan spun around to Calandoe, a wordless command.
The boy concentrated and then shuddered. “Morvan?” he whispered.
“What?”
The boy went pale. “I heard a voice.”
“You heard a voice?” Morvan repeated.
Kora remembered the boy saying he felt Magesty. He didn’t hear it.
“In my head. I didn’t do anything.” Calandoe looked ashamed, as if confessing to some misdeed.
“What did it say?”
The boy paused before responding in a deep whisper, “There you are.”
Ice water shot up Kora’s spine to the base of her skull. The boy corroborated her claim, but she would rather have been wrong.
“What could it be?” Morvan asked Landor, “We’re in the middle of Glain.”
“Cal!” Landor barked at the boy. Calandoe shook his head, jumped out of bed, and helped the raven-haired brother don his armor.
One of the guards entered Kora’s room, annoyed, “What is this uproar? Why do you wake our noble guests?”
“Go,” Morvan commanded, “ring the alarm bell. Danger approaches.”
The guard threw a look at Morvan that made it clear he thought the young man had lost hold of his senses. “Danger? Milord, you’re in the Harkman’s Hollow. There is no danger here, I assure you.”
“Go! Awaken your men!” Morvan joined everyone else in getting packed and armed as the guard backed out of the room, shaking his head, and mumbling something about the middle of the night.
Within minutes, the party had arms in hand and packs readied. As they exited the room, the guard returned with a spooked look in his eyes. “Forgive me… there is some danger.”
“What is it?” Morvan asked.
“We’re… we’re not sure.”
Clackety, clackety, clack, clack!
The strums. So close! “Morvan…” Kora warned, but the guard cut her off.
“Several citizens have been discovered, murdered, in the halls of Glain. The Harkman’s have asked me to escort you all back to the…”
Thwip! Thwack!
A crimson arrow with brown fletching ripped through the man’s neck. It flew out of the hallway the guard had returned from; the same passage that led to the great dining hall, and ultimately, to the front gate.
Landor and the remaining Glanian guard spun around and crouched low, shields up. A torch burned overhead, keeping the immediate area lit, but at the end of the hall it a sudden darkness descended. Whatever light had been down there had been extinguished. Morvan notched his own arrow, colored blue with darker blue fletching, and stepped in front of Kora, shielding her. “Everybody back!”
The Laveriums’ bedroom door stood where the hallway split into a T. Morvan herded Kora, Gram and Calandoe around one corner. Landor and the guard backed around the other.
A growl emanated from the black. Not the low, throaty growl you might expect from a dog, no, but rather high in pitch. Nasal. Gleeful. Kora had replayed it in her nightmares – part growl, part shriek.
The clacking of the bones, and the growl of the beast, stopped, leaving in their place a menacing silence.
Suddenly, Calandoe shrieked, “Get out! Leave me alone!” He twitched the way you might to shake some repellent insect off your face. “He’s coming! He’s coming!” the boy yelled.
“Come then!” Landor shouted into the darkness, “Show yourself!”
Kora heard a shrill, forced series of three piercing notes, as if from a piccolo. A blast of cold air buffeted the hall. She wouldn’t have thought the air intense enough to snuff a torch, but somehow it did, engulfing them in pitch darkness.
Kora reached forward in the darkness and grabbed Morvan’s shoulder. “This way.”
Thwip! Clang! Arrow on metal.
Then the shriek-growl. Claws clacking on stone.
The guard screamed in pain.
“This way!” Kora yelled, pulling Morvan back. “Hold onto me!”
The guard’s scream turned into a shriek of fear. Kora felt Morvan’s hand in her left hand, and the two of them bumped into Gram.
“Where’s Cal?” Morvan called.
“I’ve got him,” Gram grunted, sounding as if she picked up the boy. Knowing they had Gram and Calandoe corralled, Kora rushed forward in the dark, dragging the crossbow in her right hand along the wall until she felt it fall away. “To the right, there’s an open courtyard!” she instructed.
“Landor?!” Calandoe called out.
In the darkness behind them, she heard Landor reply, “Go, go, go! I’m behind!”
The dim glow of moonlight pierced the darkness at the far end of the hall. They broke into a run, desperate to see again, spilling out into the courtyard dominated by the pool with the rune-carved rim. Around the edges of the courtyard great pillars of smooth stone supported a terrace above. All eyes were on the dark hall as they took positions of cover behind the pillars.
“He’s laughing!” Calandoe cried. The boy looked possessed. His eyes blinked wide with fear, and he shook as he clutched at Gram’s cloak.
“Shhhhh,” Gram whispered, stroking his hair.
Suddenly, Landor spilled out of the dark corridor, panting, “We need to get back down to the front gates.”
“The drumming was strongest from there,” Kora warned.
“Our horses are down there,” Landor insisted.
“I’ll buy you new ones!” Gram blurted in exasperation.
“I know of a way out,” and Kora pointed to the hall leading deeper into the mountain.
“How?” Morvan asked, looking doubtful.
But Kora didn’t get a chance to answer. The six-legged ebon hound leapt out of the dark hall, hopping haphazardly as if its paws were burning on sunbaked stone. It made for a vexingly difficult target and Morvan’s arrow sailed just wide.
Kora’s bolt struck nothing but cobblestones. Such a rotten shot!
The emaciated dog snapped its shark-like maw in warning as it sized up its prey. Its eyes settled on Kora, and she would’ve sworn the devil dog smiled. Behind the dog, a tall, agile figure with white skin and green hair wasted no time charging across the courtyard at his closest prey: Landor. His cloak of thorns flared out behind him as he lunged forward with his narrow blade. He struck out with a rapid succession of blows, but Landor was prepared. He used his sword and shield to parry all three strikes, and then slashed forward to push his opponent back.
Morvan notched another arrow. “Keep your shield up! Fight defensively! Not even a scratch!” he urged Landor as he tried to get a bead on the dog.
“How do I kill him then?” Landor protested.
“Patience! Wait for him to make a mistake.”
Thwip. Chikt! Another arrow shot out of the pitch black of the tunnel but only scraped the stone of the column Morvan used for cover.
This time the chalk-skinned swordsman feinted at Landor’s shield side, only to whip around and try to sneak under his sword. Landor sniffed it out and slapped it away again, holding his defensive stance. The cloak of thorns snaked around the Autumn Folke’s legs and arms, shielding him from danger as he circled, looking for an opening. The hound skulked behind the fountain in Landor’s direction.
“I can’t… I can’t…” Calandoe pleaded as he squeezed his eyes shut, fighting some unseen battle within himself.
Gram embraced the boy, words rumbling out of her like a bass drum, soothing and fortifying both, “Look at my eyes, young prince. Look at my eyes. I need you here. I need you to protect me.”
The boy nodded as he tried to focus on this world.
“Down there,” Kora said to Morvan, pointing to the way she knew.
“You go, we’ll follow,” he instructed, as he drew another arrow from his quiver.
“I’m moving!” Landor called back to Morvan.
“Go,” his brother replied, ready to cover him.
Landor shifted back, skirting the side of the courtyard away from his enemy, but his moss-haired assailant rushed him to prevent escape. Morvan let fly. The arrow found a shoulder, but Kora couldn’t tell if it even breached the thorny cloak. It didn’t matter. The distraction was enough. Landor synchronized his attack with the arrow strike, lunging forward and driving his blade with all his weight, catching his opponent between the edges of his cloak and into his abdomen.
With a SNAP, the cloak closed around the Folke, and he disappeared in a wisp of small dead leaves.
Landor yelled in triumph.
The hound charged, shrieking. It leapt up onto Landor, clawing and ripping at his silver, Glanian chain mail with all six legs. The force of the charge knocked Landor off his feet and onto his back.
Another Folke assailant, taller and thinner than the first, rushed out of the hallway. A female? Landor lay prone, and the attacker smelled blood.
Morvan dropped his bow and rushed to meet her, drawing his sword, a shorter and narrower blade than the one Landor used.
Kora gritted her teeth and fired another bolt from her crossbow, but it sailed harmlessly behind the woman. Why didn’t she practice more!
Morvan arrived to parry her blows, and steel echoed off steel, one, two, three, four times as the two swung at each other with more finesse than force. It didn’t seem to make the female Folke any less deadly, however. In fact, this one seemed to attack with a frightening speed and viciousness. For Morvan’s part, Kora marveled at how adept he was for his age, and it spurred her to drop her crossbow and draw her father’s longsword. She held it with two hands, choked up to the crossbar like her father had taught her.
“Kora, no!”
She heard Gram’s voice, loving her for the reproach. Someone recognized how much bravery it showed for her to be rushing into this fray.
Morvan backed up and continued to parry blows and feint attacks.
Landor threw the demon hound off with a grunt borne of effort and pain, and the beast skidded to a stop right in front of Kora. It peered up at her with bloodshot eyes and red pupils.
She held her breath and swung the sword with both hands and struck it right on its ribs. She expected to cut it in half.
There didn’t seem to be anything between its coriaceous skin and its bones, and apparently its bones were wrought of sturdy stuff. She cut the skin, and the hound certainly hissed in pain as it scratched its way to its feet, scrambling back in retreat, but it was distressing how little damage her direct blow had caused. She wondered if the unholy aberrant could be killed at all.
Landor jumped to his feet and flanked his enemy.
The Autumn Folke warrioress looked at both brothers, readying for their attack. “Eagles of Chrais. You know then what you have,” she said, a whispered, hollow voice.
“And what is that?” Morvan tested.
“Concede now. You’ll never escape him,” the woman said with a sureness that chilled Kora. “He’s here.”
Landor and Morvan shared a silent cue. They swung simultaneously.
But the woman’s cloak snapped shut. BOOM. Dead leaves. The only indication she had ever haunted the courtyard. The black hound fled, its screech echoing out of the darkness of the hallway.
“I’m here, I’m here.” Calandoe whispered, a mantra, with eyes locked in on Gram’s steely fixed look.
“You are,” Gram reassured him.
“They’re here for her,” Landor said.
“Of course they are,” Morvan replied simply as he scooped up his bow.
“I know a way out.” Kora was done waiting. People here were dying. Because of her. She started moving in the direction she knew.
“How could you know that?” Landor asked.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she called over her shoulder. “Follow me.”
Nobody argued. They ran as fast as they could. Down a wide corridor peppered with doors on either side. Across another open courtyard. Gear weighed them down, but fear adrenaline is a powerful thing.
Clackety, clackety, clack, clack!
Kora’s heart sank. As fast as they moved, the music gained. She twisted and turned through corridors, across balconies that looked over rushing falls, and up and up steep stone stairs. She realized with terror that they wouldn’t even make it to the exit before the drumming took them. The group held up remarkably well. Even Gram ran with an endurance that surprised Kora. But still, they were slowing. Landor’s mail, Glanian or no, weighed him down, apparent from his labored breathing. They passed the corridor that led to the huge smithy cavern. Kora consoled herself with the thought that if she died tonight, at least she freed the water Folke. They came to a steep cliff side open to the night sky and again they climbed. They had to slow down to navigate the narrow, slick stairs.
Clack! Clack! Clack!
As she reached the top of the long stairs, Kora reached down to help pull Gram up. Over Gram’s shoulder, she saw the hound scamper out of the passage at the bottom. A sliver of moonlight found its way to bathe the hound in its cold glow. Right on the beast’s heels at least a dozen Autumn Folke poured out.
Morvan went pale when he saw their pursuers. He whispered to Landor, “There’s too many. You pig-headed fool.”
They rushed into the earth again.
Landor struggled to speak between gasps. The stairs had sapped his endurance. “We have to find… a place to make a stand,”
“We can’t stop!” Calandoe pleaded as he squeezed Gram’s hand. Kora felt for the boy. At sixteen, she was terrified. She could only imagine what he was feeling. Someone down there tormented the boy, but she didn’t want to image how.
“Here,” Landor decided. “At the far side, we’ll defend the bridge.”
“We’ll never defeat them all,” Morvan said.
“I’ll die here then,” Landor grumbled through gritted teeth.
Clack! Clack! Clack! The pounding beat rattled through her skull so that she almost didn’t hear it.
A song of hope. A song she recognized.
Whoosh.
Suddenly, the waterfall picked up power. The arc of the fall shifted. The water, ever so subtly, streamed farther out at its center, in a stronger arc, so that it abutted the bridge’s edge. The music emanated from the vertical sheet of water itself, and it beckoned her.
The demon dog screeched. It would soon emerge.
Landor drew his sword. “Behind me!”
“No,” Kora pleaded, “into the water!”
“What?” Morvan looked at her as if she was mad. He looked over the edge again into the rocky falls below.
“Through the falls!” she commanded, praying her faith in her new friend was warranted.
She leapt.
She passed through the thin sheet of cold water and landed on a stone precipice, obscured by the water. She sighed with relief as she felt her feet hit stone, feeling in the darkness for some kind of hidden passage, but no. Dead end. Only a small ledge hid behind the falls.
She heard feet landing on the stone shelf next to her. Two sets, then a third, and lastly what must have been Landor, judging from the clank of metal.
“Thank our ancestors,” she heard Morvan whisper. “Kora?”
“Yes.”
“Now where?”
“I don’t know,” Kora admitted in a hush.
“You don’t know?” She couldn’t see Morvan, but she imagined how distressed he looked as the waterfall shifted back to its normal flow.
A dull, amber glow illuminated the bridge on the other side of the waterfall and the party fell silent, their backs against cold, wet stone. The eerie orange glow grew as it got closer, and now they saw vague figures running nimbly over the bridge.
The footsteps slowed. At the back of the posse there stood a figure towering over the others by a full eight to ten inches. It came to a stop right in front of them. It held the source of the amber glow up in its left hand and the illumination allowed Kora to make out his shape through the water. It occurred to Kora that if Landor held out his long sword in front of him, he could probably touch the figure with its tip.
“Why have you stopped?” the figure called.
Kora heard the black hound yelping and whining from the front of the pack. A voice followed, “He has lost them.”
“Lost them? Impossible,” the towering figure replied.
“Tis true,” the voice at the front of the group replied. “He tells me they disappeared in haste.”
A tense silence.
Kora heard the hound whine and carp in high-pitched squeals.
“Impossible,” the man said softly in disgust.
It looked as if the imposing figure now looked right at Kora through the water. But she knew better. The water in front of her sang a soothing song of triumph that, apparently, only she could hear.
Another of the Autumn Folke spoke up, “How could this be, Garakul? How could they escape Scharzger?”
“It appears,” Garakul replied darkly, “that despite my vow not to, I have once again underestimated my little flower. Somehow, she is again aided by one of the Eagles of The Pales.”
“How could the Eagle affect Scharzger?”
Garakul looked ahead and behind. “This place is inundated with a strong Mey Folke presence. I suspect someone has somehow whisked my prey away and robbed me of my prize. A prize that grows in value with every hour, it seems.”
“And now?” the other Autumn Folke asked.
“And now, we whisk back and conceal ourselves at the city’s entrance. Her Mey ally can’t protect her forever. They will emerge,” Garakul answered, unwavering.
Garakul turned and strode out of sight, his light receding with him. His companions followed with Scharzger, head hung low, at their tail.
Kora stood in the blackness, with the waters rushing before her, for a long time without saying anything. Finally, she heard Landor slide down the wall in exhaustion. They all followed suit, resting with their backs against the wall, the spray of the water drenching them from head to toe.
“Kora, how did you know?” she heard Morvan whisper next to her.
“I told you, I couldn’t sleep.” She was too exhausted to tell him the whole story. She would someday. At least she hoped she had the opportunity.
“Well, you saved our lives.” In the darkness, she felt his hand take hers. “Anduir owes you a great debt. Thank you.” His hand gently pressed hers and his fingers gently ran across her palm.
“He’s out,” Calandoe whispered with relief.
“We’re far from safe,” Landor interjected.
“There’s a back exit,” Kora offered, “through a crack in the earth, farther ahead. I know the way.”
“She knows the way… because she couldn’t sleep,” she heard Gram say, filled with wonder.
“Let’s give the Autumn Folke plenty of time to leave Glain before we move,” Landor said.
“Autumn Folke… Did you know they existed?” Kora asked.
“Yes,” Morvan replied.
“He called the tall one Garakul,” Calandoe whispered. “That was him…”
“I heard him,” Morvan said in a low voice.
“I’m… I’m sorry. I wasn’t brave.” Calandoe’s voice quivered with shame.
“You were very brave, Cal,” Morvan reassured.
“His voice… was in my head. He couldn’t believe you brought me here. He kept saying I was so young. So… innocent.”
They sat there resting in the darkness for a long time before they made the jump through the water back onto the stone bridge. Landor and Calandoe jumped together, hand in hand. When they had all jumped through, the center of the falls ebbed back to its natural flow. Kora heard the tune of her water spirit friend, but no longer in the falls, now it sounded on her. The water that soaked her hair and cloak hummed with the spirit and it imbued her with a reassuring calm.
A lullaby.
A soft blanket.
After a dozen twists and intersections navigated, they finally pulled themselves through the crack in the mountain and out into the pre-morning night. The slightest trace of dawn streaked the eastern sky. The overgrown path snaked down below them. The river that tumbled down from the mountain’s peak split here, most of it flowing into the mountain, but some of it snaking down alongside the path into the lowlands hidden between the mountains below.
Kora resolved she would spend as much of the descent in the river as possible.